Update

Day before yesterday we had eight deer in our forested backyard. Yesterday we had exactly zero deer.

What changed? You’d have to ask the deer, they come and go as they please. So far we have not seen a spotted fawn, maybe they’ll show up in June.

Most of those 8 were does, females. We did have at least one buck whose antlers were buds maybe the size of the first joint of my thumb. 

We’ve mostly left the forest natural, aspen trees plus an understory of bushes that bear white berries, plus wild flowers and wild grasses. The deer ‘prune’ this mix without doing it any harm, and it likewise doesn’t harm them. 

After we discovered a clever doe using her long tongue to empty a bird feeder, we no longer feed birds. We settle for those which come for what’s naturally on offer. Mostly broody robins, some “wild canaries” and the occasional summer tanager later in the year - the tanagers are real beauties.

Fun Stuff

Not everything we do here is serious, amirite? For some fun, I refer you to the other DrC’s blog where she shares the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile ‘race’ in the pre-race activities at the Indy 500 race, which is traditionally held this weekend.

They got the entire contingent of promotional vehicles to Indianapolis for this special event - excellent PR for the company. It may be a first. 

In 51 years of wandering around North America in a succession of  6 RVs we’ve seen Weinermobiles more than once, it is always a treat when it happens. Thank you, Oscar Mayer.

Attack Imminent?

An article at the Middle East Forum website predicts Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear enrichment and weapon development locations. Their estimated timeline, Israel will strike within days, not weeks.

Expect repercussions not only in the region, but elsewhere against Israeli, Jewish, and perhaps U.S. installations and interests. The next several months may not be an ideal time to be an American overseas.

When things have looked this tense in the past, Iran has backed down or at least cooled provocative behavior. This could happen again, but those who study the region think it less likely. 

Stay alert, take precautions.

Weird Anthropological Science

Aeon has a long article on how the current human species emerged from something like 10 earlier pre-human species. See what the article concludes.

After thousands and millions of years, one lineage emerged to replace all the others. This probably explains something about our history, and our tendency towards war and conflict.

We may live in civilisation today, but the genes within us are those that made us the sole survivors of hundreds of thousands of years of intertribal conflicts and bloody, genocidal wars. We replaced all the other humans because we were more dangerous than all the others.

That's us: "more dangerous." We not only eradicated the competition, it's possible we hunted them as food. If we encounter other star-faring species, it is likely their backstory may be as violent as ours. 

Heinlein's Starship Troopers could be in our future.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Weird Biometric Science

DEI has resulted in individuals with less ability being admitted to medical schools in relatively large numbers. In spite of the Trump administration declaring the practice unlawful, it continues. Doing so almost certainly degrades patient outcomes. 

A study done in Norway found primary care physician (general practitioner) quality related to patient outcomes. See what they report:

A one standard deviation increase in doctor quality is associated with a 12.2- percentage point decline in a patient’s two-year mortality risk.

Because of DEI, people are dying. Take care your GP was not admitted to med school to fill a quota. 

Thursday Snark

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, 5/22/2025.

A Good Trend

Ruy Teixeira keeps writing columns trying to get his Democrats to change course, these make very agreeable reading for Republicans. Some choice pickings from his latest article which looks at Catalist's demographic breakdown of the 2024 election data.

Obama carried black voters in 2012 by an amazing 93 points. Harris managed only a 71-point margin. Democratic decline: 22 points.

Obama carried Latinos by 35 points; in 2024, the Democratic margin was down to just 8 points. Democratic decline: 27 points.

Obama was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the working class as a whole (2-point margin). (snip) Democratic decline: 12 points.

In 2012, Obama dominated Hispanic voters under 30 by 51 points. In 2024, the Democratic margin among these voters was just 14 points. Democratic decline: 37 points.

The widening of the gender gap between 2012 and 2024 is entirely attributable to Democrats doing worse among men, not to doing better among women.

I'm loving these numbers, obviously Teixeira is not. He thinks they prove Dems should change from a DEI pitch to an economic message. Dems on the other hand think their problem is that they have no Trump-style performer-candidate. 

I think it is both. The Dems' DEI message resonates with many who've experienced university indoctrination, but they constitute a minority of voters. And Trump is a uniquely talented politician.

We Told You So

Sally Quinn is a longtime Washington DC society insider, a Washington Post columnist, and the widow of its Watergate era editor Ben Bradlee. In a recent interview she has blamed Jill Biden for Joe Biden's attempt to run for reelection, calling it "elder abuse." Quinn however refuses to accept guilt for not telling us this when it still mattered.

A quick search of COTTonLINE shows we first called pushing Joe into the limelight elder abuse in 2020. We continued to contend elder abuse was an issue here, here, here, and here. In other words, Joe's obvious inability to function has been evident for close to five years.

It is beyond disgusting that 'reporters' are writing tell-all books about his disability now, when it has been on display for all to see since he ran from the basement in 2020.

Plastics Fight Poverty

I like it when conventional wisdom turns out to be something less than wise, which I suspect to be the case much more often than is recognized. I have an example for you this morning.

Plastics have been made a villain, microplastics circulating in our bloodstreams and less micro ones clogging our oceans. A website labeled The Daily Economy runs an article describing all the ways plastics help fight poverty, prevent disease, and actually save thousands of lives once lost to malaria each year. It poses this question:

If we were to stop using plastic tomorrow, global supply chains would collapse, food wouldn’t reach the people who need it in remote areas, and millions would lose access to life-saving medical supplies. Are we willing to accept this increase in human suffering to live in a plastic-free world?

It is clear the article’s author is not willing. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

N.B., Apparently The Graduate (1967) was given good career advice.

Irritating the Pig

I was born in Hollywood and grew up in an orange orchard; you can't get more Californian than that. And I lived there most of my life, domiciled at various times in northern, central, and southern CA. 

I spent my career as an employee of the CA state university system, and retired there. While I no longer live in CA, I know it better than most people.

California needs high speed rail about as much as fish need bicycles. The few high density cities have public transit that works sort of, some of the time. High density development is what you need to make high speed rail work, and CA neither has nor wants it for most of its citizens.

CA is a big, roomy state and it has grown based on the automobile. Suburbs, where families like to live, are based on auto transit. Commercial air traffic between the Bay Area's three major airports and the LA area's 4-5 major airports makes passenger rail redundant.

As a nation we need to stop wasting money on high speed rail. It fits Japan, Europe and maybe China. It is useful in the Acela corridor, it doesn't fit most of the US and especially CA. This is a reality urban planners refuse to grasp.

Forcing Californians into high speed rail will be like trying to teach a pig to sing. It won't work and it irritates the pig.

Weird Oncological Science

Who knew lung cancer had a racial component? UPI reports findings that I find amazing.

An estimated 57% of Asian-American women diagnosed with lung cancer have never smoked, compared to only about 15% of all other women, according to a recent University of California-San Francisco study.

A Korean researcher named Kim reports:

In Korea, more than 85% of female lung cancer patients are non-smokers. As a result, increasing attention has been given to evaluating the effectiveness of lung cancer screening, or LCS, in traditionally low-risk populations in Asia.

As to why this might be the case:

The cause of this remains unknown, but suspicion is centered on genetic mutations developed during a person's lifetime rather than inherited, such as damage to a gene that codes for a protein known as EGFR, which prevents cells from growing too quickly.

This genetic damage is believed to be caused by environmental toxins including second-hand smoke and even fumes produced by high-temperature stir-fry cooking in rooms that lack proper ventilation.

Thus: Grok the wok. 

Peace in Ukraine Unlikely

The Atlantic leans left, reliably. For all that, it is still a serious publication. Today Anne Applebaum reports on another visit she recently made to Ukraine, her column echoed at msn.com. 

Certainly the Ukraine government wanted to show her positive things, nevertheless I believe her column is worth your time. Two particular points of interest I found, here's the first.

Trump repeatedly misunderstands Putin, overrates his alleged friendship with Putin, and often attributes to Putin motives that are really his own. "Putin is tired of this whole thing," Trump said on Fox News. "He is not looking good. And he wants to look good." In reality, it is Trump who is "tired of this whole thing." Trump who is not looking good, and Trump who wants to look good.

Applebaum could well be right about this, it would be an example of the psychological process called projection where we imagine others feel as we would in their place. Here is the second.

Ukrainians believe the war will continue, and the prospect no longer scares them. (snip) Ukrainians are confident that they can continue fighting, even without the same level of American support. 

On the front line, this war has become a drone war, and Ukraine both produces drones - more than 2 million last year, probably twice that many this year - and builds software and systems to run them.

All of that helps explain the nonchalance, even the humor, with which many Ukrainians now talk about the war, as well as their assumption that they will keep fighting no matter what happens.

Skynet smiles. Bottom line, don't expect negotiations to produce much reduction in the war anytime soon. If her take on the situation is accurate and the talks stall, Trump's reaction will be interesting to observe.

That’s Twice

Over the past 30+ years I’ve been fond of saying that the DrsC have opted for spring-like conditions more-or-less year-round. Specifically that we arrive in WY in time to see the last snowfall of spring and leave after the first snowfall of autumn.

I can’t make that claim this year, this morning I saw my second late-spring snowfall here at 6300 ft. in the Rockies. There may even be more to come. 

This late in the season it is gone within hours and doesn’t accumulate at our elevation. Farther up the mountain it adds to the snowpack still there. This a.m. there was no wind and the fat flakes drifted straight down in dead silence, of course. Snowfall is notoriously stealthy.

Later ... It is now late afternoon, the skies are blue, the sun is shining, and you'd never know we awoke to leaden skies and fat flakes of snow.

Wrong-Think on Stilts

A physics prof retired from Idaho State U. has crafted a ringing condemnation of our current national state of play. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link. 

We are, these days, a nation in the thrall of lazy, dishonest, spineless, clueless, incompetent, yet endlessly entitled and arrogant academics, bureaucrats, politicians, media figures, and other “experts” who can’t seem to find their way from their heads to their asses with their hands when something important, like, say, COVID or the 25th Amendment, is in play.

But it doesn't slow them down in the slightest when they decide, despite millions of years of evolution (and a plethora of other ancillary evidence to the contrary), that men can transform into women, that merit is a manifestation of oppression, that opposing ideas are vulgar, and that disagreement is tantamount to prejudice. 

He's almost a neighbor in Pocatello, it's maybe 120 miles away from where I write this. Distances are relative in the spacious Mountain West. I've driven 230 miles to keep a doctor's appointment.

Owning the Failure

Hollywood in Toto has a Bill Maher quote on the sad state of education in this country, and on where the blame is to be placed for said sad state.

Democrats absolutely have to own education. Because that is their portfolio in the government. They wanted it. They own it. If you go to the Democratic convention half the delegates are teachers

The Democratic party is way too beholden to the Teachers Union and the Teachers Union has to answer to the fact that kids don’t know anything.

Among other things for which they should answer ... but never will. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

Hyperawareness

The journal Science Alert weighs in with a nice long column on the various seemingly subjective methods Polynesian navigators used to sail sea-going outrigger canoes thousands of miles and reach destinations maybe not much bigger than an mile wide in the planet's most vast ocean.

The amount of remembered signs and portents and the modifiers to each were enormous, and the sensory awareness of quite subtile variations in star patterns and wave types and directions seem to almost defy belief.

All of this accomplished with zero precision instruments, and total reliance on memory retention and sensory hypersensitivity. I'm surprised the early European explorers of the region didn't attribute Polynesian navigation excellence to witchcraft or pacts with the devil. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Update

We've had a gloomy day, no sunshine and this evening, as I write this, we're having a thunderstorm with hail, tap-tapping on the window. We get interesting echoes of the thunder with the shock waves bouncing off the mountains which, a mile or so east of the house, shoot up another 3000 ft. The peaks will be getting snow. 

Given the geometry - those peaks cast a big shadow - our sunrises aren't early. I'm okay with that as I'm a bit of a night owl, normally up past midnight.

Believe it or not, in our WY valley along the ID border the only restaurant we find reliably acceptable is a casual seafood place. Yep, here we are some 900 miles from the nearest ocean and we have a decent seafood restaurant. Go figure.

My usual meal there is a hollowed-out boule filled with excellent clam chowder and they aren't chintzy with the clams. The other DrC normally orders fish and chips, but today had the coconut shrimp and chips and pronounced it good.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.