The Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area is a 5,100 acre upland tract, situated approximately eight miles west of Dansville, New York. Roughly two-thirds of the area lies in southern Livingston County, while the remaining third lies in northern Allegany County. The tract was purchased in the 1930’s under the Federal Resettlement Administration and is one of several such areas turned over to DEC for development as a wildlife management area.
The area is appropriately named after the Timber Rattlesnake, which may be occasionally found in the more remote sections of the “Hill”.
The area offers an interesting blend of upland habitats such as mature woodland, overgrown fields, conifer plantations, old growth apple orchards and open meadows.
The area is inhabited by a variety of game species and is open to public hunting. The white-tailed deer, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, grey squirrel, cottontail rabbit and woodcock are found on the area. An occasional snowshoe hare may be observed adjacent to thick creek bottom brush or conifer plantation habitats.
A number of small marsh units have been developed and provide limited hunting for waterfowl. Some of the area’s furbearing species such as mink, beaver and raccoon may be occasionally viewed at these marsh units.
The Debian Package Manager turned 25 years old last year, and apt-get has been around for two decades now. I am old enough to remember manually installing packages using RPM and having to go around searching for dependencies.
And building a lot of software from source code using to ./configure; make; make install — and having to search around for packages to fix missing dependencies during the configure process. Good ol’ days of GNU Automake. It’s very rare these days to have to build something from source code, unless you are tweaking some of the lines of code.
I have always been very fascinated by the now quite old Richard Hofsteader essay. While his decades-old essay is mostly about the right-wing movements of the earlier centuries, paranoia is a central part of “fringe” politics. Sometimes it’s distrust of monied interests, sometimes it’s Hollywood or big business, sometimes it’s a distrust of a religious group, race or political party.
The Mayo Clinic defines paranoia as a “An unrealistic distrust of others or a feeling of being persecuted”.
If you look hard enough at any community, you are bound to find some people aren’t completely honest. There is a lot incentive to cut corners and we all develop cliques and have close connections that sometimes blind our objectivity. Sometimes there is outright corruption or criminal activity, but they tend to be a lot less frequent then the paranoid imagination would imagine. Most people don’t engage in criminal conspiracy, simply because of the risk to their own reputation and the fact that most institutions are built in ways to actively discourage criminal behavior by having audits and positive reinforcement for good behavior.
Out groups often don’t see that. People who believe the politicians are ignoring their wishes are likely to believe that the reason that representatives aren’t representing them is because they are somehow corrupt or evil. That’s ignoring the fact that politicians often have very active feelers on public opinion — elected officials read and study the newspapers and regularly conduct public opinion polling to ensure that they are acting in ways that the public wants. After all, if a politicians isn’t representing the public will, they are likely to get voted out of office, which means fired from their jobs. And most elected officials want to be loved, not hated by the public if only to stroke their egos.
Sometimes people just have ideas that are different then the majority’s view in their community. The farther you go out and up — the county, the state, the national level — the more diverse the electorate and the more likely to have a majority opinion different then your own in-group. Seeing one’s own political ideals ignored and snuffed out can be alienating, and lead people to search into the depths, looking for evidence that they have been defrauded and that their opponents are not playing honestly, using deceit and other illicit means to achieve their power and prominence.
Often I see paranoia being emphasized as a right-wing phenomenon, but if you look at many of environmental, labor, housing, and anti-war movement activists, you will see many of the same paranoid trends on the left. Some of it might just be rhetoric – often political rhetoric is more paranoid-sounding then actual belief. But you can’t look at the far-left activist and not hear many of the same conspiracy theories you hear on the right.
Are the fracking companies really working to poison your drinking water?
In 2016, spring came early with our first 81 degree day on Wednesday, March 9. It was an exceptionally warm day, the earliest 80 degree day on record. We got rain on Thursday but with temperatures in the low sixties, meant it just further melted the snow and kept the ground from getting too dried out. So what I do? I went out to Schoharie County to camp down at Betty Brook.
It was in the 40s to start out that Saturday, but got up to mid-60s by mid day. Lots of blue skies, although the grass was pretty day. I first started out the day at Franklinton Valie outside of Middleburgh.
I then went down to Mine Kill State Park on this most beautiful of early spring days.
It was wonderful camping down by Betty Brook.
A bit cool in the morning, but I brought my heater.
But by a few hours in the morning, after the time change, it was back up in the 60s. Not bad for March 13th.
The next day I hiked along the Old NY 30 at Max V Shaul State Park, aka Towpath Mountain Park.
After that I hiked Vromans Nose. It looked more like late April then early march this year.
Don’t you wish all mid-March days could be this nice?
One of the most important things for our next president is their job as the chief of law enforcement. The most important laws in our country regulate manufacturing, they ensure products we use every day are as safe, healthy, efficient and non polluting as possible. Regulations push industry to build better products, to innovate and to protect the public interest.
Some are pushing for radical changes in our country. I don’t believe in them. Instead, I think we should push industry to follow the law, and make incremental improvements as standards are increased to better protect the public as a whole.
ο»ΏOne of the problems I think there is with climate change, is it’s discussion has become fraught with self-evident truth. The assumption is that if you believe in the science of climate change, that itβs self-evident that you must believe in radical action to address it. You canβt be numb to human suffering after all, can you? Maybe so.
I am a believer in science, but at the same time, Iβm a practical person. Infrastructure take decades to evolve, and while we should do more to reduce the carbon intensity of our society, and ultimately work towards the goal of reducing emissions, I donβt think the necessary reductions to fully limit the worse impacts of climate change is even realistic. Instead of planning to do what we can do to limit the worse impacts of climate change, we should look more broadly at what we can do to reduce the harm more broadly both by reductions in emissions and adapting our infrastructure.
Many of the impacts of climate change are well studied. When we are upgrading or repairing damaged infrastructure we most certainly should look at the science and work to minimize future harm. We obviously should not be building new large coal plants, and building new renewable generation were ecologically appropriate. We should continue to improve the efficiency on new automobiles and appliances, and work to expand the electric automobile and transit fleet where practical.
Society needs a measured approach β not ignorance but also realistic goals and plans that can be adopted as we upgrade and continue to modernize our infrastructure.
I’ve been watching as Elon Musk is canceling all the subscriptions that various federal government agencies have to newspapers and industry publications, in theory to stop what he is calling payola to “liberal” press. I am a bit horrified, as having been a Communications Coordinator for years, and knowing how important it is to read the papers to know what is happening on the ground and react.
Yes, the press does benefit from government subscriptions and it is an important part of their bottom line, but so is sales of gravel and cement to government. Nobody says though that it’s a pay-off to gravel and cement companies when the public works department buys such materials to build a government office building or highway. Good decision making is based on having information, and depriving government of what the press is writing about it doesn’t help it make good decisions.
I do remember that song from a quarter century, well actually 30 years ago now, and how those old cars with their then new-fangled computer controlled transmissions would “fail” into second year so you could drive them to junkyard and the auto dumping grounds yourself. I know that music is newer then what I usually listen to but it’s songs for my childhood, some three decades ago.
The sun is rising on this very cold February morning. π Clear but very cold. I doubt I’ll catch the earlier express in this morning, as I am kind of in a haze from that sleeping pill last night but I’m well rested and coffee and caffeine pills are kind of making me snappy even if my head is still in a haze. I know I should quit my pill popping habit, but I would never get any sleep in winter between those long periods not spent up in wilderness next to a fire. π₯ I am sure that cold waiting for the bus this morning will really wake me up. I didn’t turn the heat up above 50 degrees last night but it was fine, as while it was windy for a while and cold, it wasn’t that extreme cold and I kept the cabinets open under the sink as the old landlord always reminded me, not that I’ve had problems with drain pipe freezing in 2009 when I lost power for three days in an ice storm. βοΈ That was a long time ago now though.
Icy this morning outside for sure. Need to be extra careful walking down to the express bus into the city. Big hunks of ice all around, and the black top except for the very well salted roads is a mess. I do wish I could wash the salt off my truck but it wasn’t worth it trying to get home from the car wash last night as it would already be encrusted with salt. Going to walk laps in the Plaza this evening. Big Red is parked for the week, though potentially Thursday or Friday after work I might go Tractor Supply to get propane and any extra food I might want if I decide to get out and spend a night in wilderness. I need to burn things and sing along with the Dire Wolf to restore my sleep.
Wearing that werid magent shirt that I got at the thrift store a few weeks ago. I like the colors and look of it on my and it was only $6 bucks but rather then having buttons it has magnets, which means sometimes the sleeves and shirt can pop open unexpectly. I am sure it was previously owned by an old dude or an autistic kid who couldn’t handle buttons but I liked the look and I figured it’s not that bad. Of course, I guess the advertisers have decided I’m looking for dress clothes, so now I get so many ads for the Men’s Warehouse and other dress shirt manufacturers, even though in my current position I just have to look professional but don’t need a suit and tie, and thrift stores are good for that. Plus it’s not buying more garbage for $40, saving of money that can some day used for hog feed or million other uses when I eventually own my own land. Money saved now will grow to be more money when invested. It’s kind of hay, cattle and manure.
Maybe I can ride in on Wednesday, but it has to be a bit warmer. Not sure how the bike trail will be, probably icy but the bigger issue is how pock marked it will be from the hikers. π² That said, it was so slick on Saturday but I tend to think it will be better now as we got some snow on top of ice over the weekend. Today though I’m bussing it as I need to bring my laptop into the office π₯οΈ and don’t want to beat shit out of it, it’s already on it’s last legs. Plus I have a Save the Pine Bush zoom at 5:30 PM and I figure I can participate while getting my steps walking laps πΆ in the Concourse after hours, as I avoid the homeless and schizophrenic individuals. π€ͺ Then I’ll take the later local bus home and do some reading π.
Eggs, spinach, onions, broccoli and beans for breakfast. π« π₯¦ π§ π₯ While I didn’t buy eggs this week I did see those “inexpensive” white 18 pack eggs in the Styrofoam trays that burn so black and are pungent are now up to $8.65 at Walmart. If I’m going to buy eggs at the store, I might as well get commodity eggs in my book as they’re all about the same. I don’t believe any of those “greenie” labels — i.e. organic free range and hugged by the farmer — at the supermarket. π·οΈ In my mind, they’re all the same thing as the label gets charred in the fire π₯. That said, I was seeing one of my neighbors growing up is selling her own eggs for $5 a dozen and with spring coming she has a bunch to sell. It’s tempting as it would be good to establish a business relationship with her as she also sells hay and if some day I do end up with land out that way, I’ll probably need a hay supplier. πΎ π
That electric toothbrush πͺ₯ seems to do a good job, especially polishing up the back of the teeth. though I do just think it’s another thing to wear out and break. It’s not like it was expensive but it still just more plastic crap that will eventually get tossed into the fire. And I’ll have to pick out the windings and metal parts out of the ash. Still having good teeth is so important π¦·as I’ve learned from my now fairly elderly parents. It’s kind of horrifying what can happen if you don’t take care of yourself and eat the crap π they are selling on the television πΊ. My dad is dying from diabetes and he’s got holes rotting into his feet. π¦ΆBut their house is always full of candy π¬ and, every meal π΄ has meat cooked in fat πwith dozens of processed foods. These days I only really eat meat when I’m there or out somewhere but all that saturated fats not only plug your sink but also your arteries. π«
The thing about meat is it’s good but I’m not convinced it should be an everyday thing. I do like some of that $13 bacon from For the Love of Bacon, but it’s a treat, something I enjoy when I’m up at camp over several days usually fried up with a load of vegetables. Asparagus in spring time, fried in bacon fat and bacon is so good. Lots of saturated fat, nitrates and salt but also delicious. Meat is something you can also enjoy in the winter when there isn’t as many fresh fruit and vegetables that you can grow or purchase locally. Livestock such as pigs and chickens are such good organics recyclers, turning things like apple cores and banana peels into high quality fertilizer in the form of manure. Plus all that grain you run through them not only becomes meat, eggs and milk, it also become manure. It’s a great way to rebuild soil. As that Youtuber, For the Love of the Land points out, you run hay through cattle which produces manure, which produces more hay, which produces more cattle. It’s a bit more complex then that but it’s how it works in general. My sister has long been a vegetarian, and into all the weird PETA crap, but I don’t have any problem about putting a bullet through the head of a cute animal but I do think a lot about those saturated fats that are literally killing yourself.
Need to be extra careful walking down to the express bus into the city. Big hunks of ice all around, and the black top except for the very well salted roads is a mess. I do wish I could wash the salt off my truck but it wasn’t worth it trying to get home from the car wash last night as it would already be encrusted with salt. Going to walk laps in the Plaza this evening. Big Red is parked for the week, though potentially Thursday or Friday after work I might go Tractor Supply to get propane and any extra food I might want if I decide to get out and spend a night in wilderness. 
I need to burn things and sing along with the Dire Wolf to restore my sleep. 
I like the colors and look of it on my and it was only $6 bucks but rather then having buttons it has magnets, which means sometimes the sleeves and shirt can pop open unexpectly. I am sure it was previously owned by an old dude or an autistic kid who couldn’t handle buttons but I liked the look and I figured it’s not that bad. Of course, I guess the advertisers have decided I’m looking for dress clothes, so now I get so many ads for the Men’s Warehouse and other dress shirt manufacturers, even though in my current position I just have to look professional but don’t need a suit and tie, and thrift stores are good for that. 
Plus it’s not buying more garbage for $40, saving of money that can some day used for hog feed or million other uses when I eventually own my own land. Money saved now will grow to be more money when invested. It’s kind of hay, cattle and manure.
I do like some of that $13 bacon from For the Love of Bacon, but it’s a treat, something I enjoy when I’m up at camp over several days usually fried up with a load of vegetables. Asparagus in spring time, fried in bacon fat and bacon is so good. Lots of saturated fat, nitrates and salt but also delicious. 
Meat is something you can also enjoy in the winter when there isn’t as many fresh fruit and vegetables that you can grow or purchase locally. 
Livestock such as pigs and chickens are such good organics recyclers, turning things like apple cores and banana peels into high quality fertilizer in the form of manure. 
Plus all that grain you run through them not only becomes meat, eggs and milk, it also become manure. 
It’s a great way to rebuild soil. As that Youtuber, For the Love of the Land points out, you run hay through cattle which produces manure, which produces more hay, which produces more cattle. It’s a bit more complex then that but it’s how it works in general. My sister has long been a vegetarian, and into all the weird PETA crap, but I don’t have any problem about putting a bullet through the head of a cute animal 
but I do think a lot about those saturated fats that are literally killing yourself. 
