25 Feb 2009
Blackies Go Visiting

My good friend Kevyn came over last evening and loaded three of our Blackie (Scottish Blackface) ewes in a band spanking new stock trailer. They're headed for Connor Prairie for the summer, and will be bred (late, for sure) to a Horned Dorset ram they have over there. They were a bit skittish, but it only took about half and hour to get them loaded and gone. They'll be back in October with lambs in tow - the lambs are my price for the use of them over the summer, and we'll be heading over at shearing time to help with them and others. All in all, a pretty good deal for us.

Connor Prairie is selling the red stock trailer I sold them two years ago - wish I had some extra cash to buy it back, but, alas! no such luck. The new trailer Kevyn had was something else: the gates locked back with push plates, so opening and snapping them shut was easily done with an elbow or a shoulder - much easier than struggling with pin latches in older trailers. A simple innovation, but one that makes a lot of sense.

07:59 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Biologist discusses sacred nature of sustainability

Environmental concerns fit pretty neatly within the context of all Earth-based religions: it's the revealed religions that seem to have some difficulty with the idea. And the simple reason for that is that the revelations took place many hundreds of years ago, under different circumstances and conditions, yet they're supposed to be eternally relevant because "god" said it...

This is one theological thorn bush that heathenry lacks, and that's a good thing, because we have more than enough other bushes to trim.

The hot topics of global warming and environmental sustainability are concerns that fit neatly within the precepts of religious naturalism, according to Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to being a renowned cell biologist, Goodenough is a religious naturalist and the author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, a bestselling book on religious naturalism that was published in 1998.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

07:44 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link

Court Upholds AP For 'quasi-property'

Unbelievable. What the Hel is "quasi-property"? Isn't that like being "quasi-pregnant"? You cannot own facts - oh, wait, of course you can, since we began allowing patents on math, genetics and software.

I guess even this humble blog had best watch what I link to to going forward. Because the slippery slope some of us have been railing about for years just got a good greasing.

A federal court ruled that the AP can sue competitors for 'quasi-property' rights on hot news, as well as for copyright infringement and several other claims. The so-called 'hot news' doctrine was created by a judge 90 years ago in another case, where the AP sued a competitor for copying wartime reporting and bribing its employees to send them a copy of unreleased news. The courts' solution was to make hot news a form of 'quasi-property' distinct from copyright, in part because facts cannot be copyrighted. But now the AP is making use of the precedent again, going after AHN which competes with the AP, alleging that they're somehow copying the AP's news. The AP has been rather busy with lawsuits lately, so even though the AP has a story about their own lawsuit, we won't link to it.

(link) [Slashdot]

07:39 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link