AdamSmith

LOL. Like women say about knitting--reading and posting here gives me something to think about while doing my daily routine of work or whatever.

Course Clinton dynasties are fine with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UExTN3_UOIY

Just noted this slightly startling observation by The Guardian. Emphasis added. ...Should either of the present 2016 frontrunners secure a second term in office and serve through 2024, Obama's current second term with vice-president Joe Biden and secretary of state John Kerry may mark the only time in 44 years -- nearly a fifth of US history -- that neither a Bush nor a Clinton occupied one of these top three positions in the US executive branch. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/hillary-clinton-jeb-bush-political-dynasties-voters-candidates

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmHABUfjYPI

Again, lacking a Nerd forum...I recall watching many Apollo launches narrated on TV by this man. See the video link embedded in the story for video of the Apollo 11 countdown. NASA Mourns Loss of Former Launch Commentator, Jack King In the Firing Room of the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Control Center, Jack King's announcements keep the public up-to-date during the countdown for Apollo 12, the second lunar landing mission launched Nov. 14, 1969. With one exception (Apollo 13), King provided launch countdown commentary for every American human spaceflight from Gemini 4 in 1965 through Apollo 15 in 1971. Credits: NASA Jack King on the day he was honored for his service when he retired from United Space Alliance Communications and Public Relations in 2010. USA was NASA's Space Program Operations contractor. Credits: NASA Jack King, the first chief of Public Information for NASA's Launch Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, briefs the news media on the May 2, 1961 postponement of the launch of Mercury Redstone-3 due to unfavorable weather. Three days later, astronaut Alan Shepard made history as the first American in space. Credits: NASA By Bob Granath NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida John W. (Jack) King, former chief of Public Information at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, died June 11, 2015 He was 84. A resident of Cocoa Beach, Fla., King worked in the space agency's Public Affairs office from 1960 until 1975. He returned to Kennedy in 1997, working for space shuttle contractor United Space Alliance until his 2010 retirement. King is being remembered by many, including Kennedy's Director, Bob Cabana. "Jack King counted down the launch of Apollo 11 and all of us watching on television will never forget his calm, reassuring demeanor," said Cabana, a former space shuttle astronaut. "Jack was a true professional and helped us understand in common English the complexities of space flight. He was great at communicating what we do at NASA and he will be missed." Video: Jack King's Apollo 11 Launch Commentary According to Hugh Harris, retired director of NASA Public Affairs at Kennedy, King was instrumental in instituting open communications with the public during the beginning of America's civilian space program. "Jack helped establish the original systems to ensure the news media received timely and accurate information about both the early human flight programs and the unmanned missions," Harris said. Born in the Brighton section of Boston, Mass. in April 1931, King was the son of the sports editor for the Associated Press. In 1953 he earned a bachelor's degree in English from Boston College. King was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army artillery corps immediately after graduation and served two years in Korea and Japan from 1953 through 1955. After his military service, King followed in his father's footsteps as a news reporter in the Associated Press Boston Bureau. Shortly after the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958, King was assigned to cover the fledgling space program from Cocoa Beach, Fla. In 1960, Kurt Debus, Kennedy Space Center’s first director, hired King to serve as NASA’s chief of Public Information based on his experience as the space reporter and bureau chief for the Associated Press Cape Canaveral Bureau from 1958 to 1959. Many of the launches were classified military rockets and a new mindset was required at the growing launch center. "The biggest PR job I had to do was with our own people in order to get information that I could pass out to the news media," King said during an interview for an oral history project in June 2002. "These were the early days when things were just starting out." During that time, the attention of the world and many of America's leaders focused on Cape Canaveral. Three weeks after Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, President John F. Kennedy raised the sights of the space program even further. "Right after the Shepard launch is when Kennedy said, let’s go to the moon," King said. "After (John) Glenn was launched ... Kennedy was at (Cape Canaveral) welcoming him back." King served as manager of press operations for 12 years, spanning the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. During that time, King was the "voice of launch control" for virtually every human mission from Gemini 4 to Apollo 15. He described countdown events as millions around the world watched the liftoff of the Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. In 1972 King became director of Public Affairs for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. There he had wider responsibilities for directing programs that included education outreach, exhibits and astronaut appearances, as well as intergovernmental and community relations. After the United States and Soviet Union agreed to a mission in which an Apollo spacecraft would link up with a Soyuz in July 1975, King joined a three-member team that negotiated the joint information plan for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, or ASTP. The resulting agreement included the first live television coverage of a Russian rocket launch and Soyuz landing at the end of the Russian portion of the flight. After ASTP, King moved to Washington, D.C., accepting a position as director of Public Affairs for the Department of Energy Research and Development to build an agency wide publicity program in solar, fossil and nuclear energy. King left government service in 1977 to work for Dr. Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental International Corp. for whom he developed and implemented a wide-ranging public relations program. He also served as the chairman's speech writer and coordinator of media events in connection with his numerous travels and philanthropic activities. After Hammer's death in December 1990, King served as vice president of Powell Tate, a leading communications and public affairs firm in Washington, specializing in defense, space technology and energy issues. King returned to Florida's Space Coast in 1997, assuming responsibilities for news media relations for United Space Alliance (USA), NASA's prime contractor for day-to-day Space Shuttle Program operations. King was a two-time recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and winner of the Aviation/Space Writer's Lawrence Award as the outstanding U.S. government public information officer in 1969. In 2000 he was one of the first two recipients of the Harry Kolcum Memorial News and Communications Award presented by the National Space Club Florida Committee, recognizing the highest standards in journalism and public affairs work. King retired from USA in October 2010, but continued to serve as a NASA public affairs volunteer. A widower, King and his wife Evelyn were married 39 years prior to her death in 2005. They had three children and five grandchildren. Last Updated: June 15, 2015 http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-mourns-loss-of-former-launch-commentator-jack-king

...? Looking for clues to Supreme Court's final rulings in Ginsburg's good mood http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/looking-for-clues-to-courts-final-rulings-in-ginsburgs-good-mood/2015/06/14/b9690b46-1288-11e5-89f3-61410da94eb1_story.html?tid=HP_more?tid=HP_more

Christopher Lee obituary http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/11/christopher-lee

Christopher Lee 1922-2015: an appreciation by Mark Kermode http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/14/christopher-lee-an-appreciation-mark-kermode

Aw, butchering wasn't that bad. My grandparents kept hogs. Each winter on hog-killing day I loved to go into the smokehouse and handle the job of sliding the kidneys into these little oiled-paper sacks to be taken to some market somewhere. Bet you thought it was going to be a story about chitlins.

Besides the main points, I was interested to learn of those two dog breeds. Had never heard of either one.

Once I get sick of writing about software I think I will go raise sheep. ‘Exploding demand' for grass-fed meat is saving lamb market and giving dogs jobs Demand for lamb is regaining strength, along with a growing consciousness about the provenance of animals. But to stay in business, sheep farmers need dogs to guard their flocks from predators like coyotes Guardian sheep from predators. Photograph: Jason Wilson for The Guardian Friday 12 June 2015 09.00 EDT Last modified on Friday 12 June 2015 09.05 EDT The relationship between shepherds and their dogs is one of the longest-running stories in human history. But in the US, that story paused for a while and almost looked like it might come to an end. Since the second world war, by and large, Americans have stopped eating sheep. In 1945, there were 55 million head of sheep in the US. By 2013, there was around a tenth of that number. The decline in the demand for wool led to some of the liquidation of the sheep flock, but so did changing food tastes. Americans used to eat upwards of 4lbs of lamb in any given year, but now two out of three don’t eat any at all. The consumers who still eat lamb are a now a small niche market, incorporating immigrants from countries where lamb is a staple and foodies in search of pasture-raised authenticity. Demand is slowly regaining strength, along with a growing consciousness about the provenance of animals and the conditions they’re raised under. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michelle Canfield, sheep farmer, with Bronte (right) and Moses . Photograph: Jason Wilson for The GuardianFor farmers like Michelle Canfield, who since 2008 has run a small herd of sheep near Snohomish, Washington, it brings both opportunities and constraints. First, she runs “shedding sheep”, which drop their hair, meaning she doesn’t have to pay to shear them. Hers are Katahdin Hair Sheep, first developed in Maine and prized for their prolific lambing and easy-care characteristics. Second, the absence of a USDA-approved slaughterhouse close by means that if you want to eat her sheep, you have to take them away and get them butchered yourself. She doesn’t have a problem selling them – Seattle is close by, she says, where “the Muslim market is huge” (she says it is thanks to the number of migrants who have moved to work in the tech industry). As much as any other foodies, this highly educated clientele “want their grass-fed, natural, local meat, but they want to do their own slaughter, and make sure it’s Halal”. This “exploding demand” for strictly grass-fed animals means that she has to leave the flocks out in the fields full time, including overnight. In turn, the animals are vulnerable to predators, particularly in lambing season. The most dangerous, persistent and clever predator of lambs is the coyote. Canfield tried llamas as guardian animals, and they worked for a while, but the coytoes worked out how to get around them at the same time her border collies did. She started to take losses. Lockjaw traps are illegal, and poison is fraught with risks, so she needed another solution. This is where Moses and Bronte came in. Both dogs are around eight years old, weigh in well over 100 pounds and are off-white in colour (so they can be distinguished from predators). Each is descended from two different ancient lines of livestock guardian dogs. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Moses (left) and Bronte resting in the grass. Photograph: Jason Wilson for The GuardianBronte, the Maremma, was the first dog Canfield adopted . Maremmas are an ancient central Italian breed, created to protect the flocks of Abruzzo, Tuscany and Lazio, a job they still do in a country where wolves are present and protected. Bronte had been raised in the traditional manner of guardian sheepdogs, in a barn with sheep to whom she was bonded. She loved Canfield’s flock, but she had to learn to cool her exuberance. “She tried to play with them, she’d want to wrestle with them, even the lambs.” She was challenging and wilful. “She went feral for a while and I had to retame her with food.” It worked, and now Bronte attends to the flocks dutifully and gently. She looks and acts a little like an oversized Golden Retriever, one who “perceives the sheep as her primary peer group”. To keep her company, and to help at the times when they needed to split up the flocks, they got Moses, a Kuvasz. They are a Hungarian breed whose precise origins are lost in time, but who are said to have arrived with the Magyars in the Carpathian Valley some 4,000 years ago. Kuvasz almost disappeared in the second world war, when many were killed by German or Russian soldiers for protecting their families. There were revived, and now they are another part of the array of working dogs available to livestock ranchers. Moses was a failed show dog; he was too reactive and grumpy for the ring. When Canfield acquired him, she quickly realised what the problem was: “He’s terribly far-sighted. He was growly at dog shows because everything up close was just a jumble of stuff. He’s worked out well here.” The fact that he has learned to be a guardian despite not being raised as one is a tribute to Canfield’s training. While other breeds of guardian dogs might be more assertive and aggressive, these two mostly get the job done with their booming barks. A bark is enough to warn Canfield (“I’ve learned to tell which kind of bark means trouble”) and is also enough to scare off a coyote. They haven’t yet had to physically tangle with a predator. Looking to the future, Canfield worries about wolves. “We’ll see how quickly they make it out here”, she says. Reintroduced in Idaho and the still-protected apex predator, wolves are slowly making their way west of the ranges. They’re already in western Oregon, and one day, perhaps, they will show up in her corner of Washington. Perhaps the same conflicts that have played out in eastern Oregon and Washington between conservationists and ranchers will play out closer to the big cities of the Pacific Northwest, or maybe by then new techniques and new dogs will provide a solution. For now, these two dogs are happy sleeping, living and eating with their flocks. Soon, Canfield will introduce a new puppy who will learn from them – which is how a tradition as old as domestication itself will be renewed. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/12/demand-grass-fed-meat-saving-lamb-market-giving-dogs-jobs

Leg and a thigh!

...No-piece?