Silflay Hraka

What keeps the biggest brewery in Mulim Pakistan afloat?

Hypocrisy, of course.

Who’s to blame for declining fish populations?

Why those goddam recreational fishermen, of course!

Taking a hard look at the common belief that recreational fishing accounts for only 2-3% of total landings in the U.S., a new study published in the journal Science (August 26th) reveals that recreational catches account for nearly a quarter of the total take of over fished populations, including many of the most economically valuable species such as red snapper, red drum, lingcod, and bocaccio.

For specific depleted populations in the U.S.–particularly the large charismatic fishes that people care about most–recreational landings outstrip commercial landings. This is true for red snapper (59% recreational) and gag (56%) in the Gulf of Mexico, red drum in the South Atlantic (93%), and bocaccio on the Pacific coast (87%), among others.

The study ignores the fact that most commercial landings for species like red drum and red snapper are totally banned, so of course recreational landing percentages are going to be large–and in many cases those species, like the striped bass, are undergoing a rebound in total numbers. If anything, it’s an arguement for even more restriction on commercial landings.

Want a fish population to recover? Make sure 90% of the ones caught are caught by private anglers, and in ten or twenty years you’ll have a fishery again.

I’m entering coot-hood early, it seems.

The primary drinkers of Scotch are men aged over 45, with younger people of both sexes preferring to drink imported American whiskey brands such as Jack Daniels.

Memo to future North Carolina governors: Get us state workers at least one raise every four years, or we’ll turn on you like rabid dogs.

Gov. Mike Easley lost the support of a key ally Tuesday when a state workers association endorsed his Republican challenger in the November election, saying Easley has failed to provide adequate raises and protect the group’s retirement system.
…
Easley, a former attorney general, won SEANC’s endorsement in 2000.

“It really is historic; we’ve never endorsed a Republican candidate before,” said Dana Cope, executive director of SEANC.

You’ve got to really, I mean REALLY, piss off state workers before they’ll endorse a Republican, yet Easley has managed to do so. True, he’s had a crappy economy to deal with, but the union’s kinda touchy about the retirement funds.

Full disclosure–I am not a member of the union. They haven’t gotten me a raise in the whole time I’ve been a state employee, so what good are they? For the most part I think of them the same way they think of Easley. At least he doesn’t clutter up my mailbox with pleas for support.

May vote for Ballantine anyway. He’s the friend of a friend, or so the friend claims. Besides, I could use a 15% raise, even at the expense of my fellow taxpayers.

On the other hand, if Easley wins re-election….man, are we screwed.

The soup is bad. We need more cooks!

Latter link via Insty

Every now and then I flirt with the notion of canceling my newspaper subscription. It’s not like there’s a lot in it that I can’t find online–comics especially–and the news within is almost always outdated by the time I pick it up, though admittedly I wouldn’t know as much about the local news if I had to count on running across it online.

Sometimes though, one just has to have an offline subscription to get the full…flavor of a news story.

Take this keep-the-wife-awake at night scare story from the Washington Post, The Man of Your Nightmares: When Good Husbands Go Bad, which, as tabloidy as it is, seems more or less benign. I took one glance at the first paragraph this morning over coffee, then skipped the whole thing. Inside though, the pulp and ink version of the story has something the electronic versions lack–handy photos.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” the SW commented to me as she was reading the article–she having somewhat more interest in the general idea of husbands going bad, for some odd reason.

“What’s not fair?” I enquired.

“Putting the gay guy next to the murderers.”

That made sense. Presumably the N&O, our local rag, wherein the story appeared this morning, or the Washington Post, where the article was originally published, would be among the first to object if a picture of John “I committed the same kind of atrocities” Kerry appeared beside those of William Calley and Adolf Eichmann in a Swift Boat Vets commercial, yet the N&O* at least has no compunctions about treating a gay man in the same manner.

Yes, I realize that to some homosexuality is as just as much of a sin as murder** (or worse!) but to be honest, I didn’t really think consider the Washington Post and the News and Observer to be members of that group. Perhaps I should.

*I don’t have a physical copy of the story in the Post to compare the N&O article with, and the photos above have a byline of “News & Observer File Photos,” so there’s at least a strong possibility that only the N&O is at fault here.

**Or an “accused murderer”, but Hacking has already confessed to killing his wife, and do you really think Peterson is innocent?

The latest five day forecast on Frances has it coming ashore in Florida, but according to the meteorological discussion there’s reason to think that the track might need to be shifted to the right.

Which would be bad for the NC coast, and we don’t have much luck with the F-hurricanes. One or two more days, and we’ll probably know for sure.

In an effort to save…let’s see here…carry the one….less than $100 per annum, I no longer patronize the upscale and luxurious haircutteries of the world. Instead, when time comes for the shearing, we visit the in-laws, where my flowing locks are removed courtesy of the father-in-law’s home barber kit. He doesn’t use it, mind you, but it’s good enough for the likes of me.

The first time I submitted to the ministrations of G-daddy’s electric clippers it was an event. SW sat me up in a chair outside on the deck, running her fingers lovingly through my hair. The kids were gathered round to watch, and a towel was gently wrapped round my neck prior to the wielding of the scissors.

“This isn’t so bad,” I remember thinking. The more fool me. The shepherd may be gentle the first time, but once a particular sheep is used to the shearing, what’s the point?

As you may have gathered, there was no such production this past weekend. No chair, no wife, no running of fingers through the hair. There was just myself, the barber kit, and a vaguely bored Ngnat on the back deck of the in-law’s house, with no mirror save the poor one provided by the windowpane in front of me.

To be fair, it’s not like my haircuts are complicated things. All one really needs is an electric clipper with a quarter or half inch guide attached, depending on how much hair I wanted left on my head at the end of the process, and ten minutes of time. The end result is perfectly acceptable to me–I’d consider any more effort on the part of my head to be the exercise of needless vanity*, and even when I patronized the discount barberies of the world my main concern was to get in and out in a minimum of time, with a minimum of chat. Getting my haircut was a chore, akin to taking out the trash or emptying the cat box.

All of that floated through my head as I pawed through the contents of the home barber kit, looking for the clipper attachments, eventually leading to two logical, at least to me, conclusions;

“The less I have to mess with this crap the quicker this will be over with.” and

“The shorter my hair isat the end of this, the longer it will be until I have to do it again.”

Now it turns out that used normally, the non-guide enhanced electric clippers will cut hair down to about an eighth of an inch, but even that setting can be adjusted downwards, to something that I estimate leaves less than a sixteenth of an inch of stubble behind–and it was quick. Save for some minimal retouching in the back, I was done in about three minutes.

It was a very positive experience, made more so by the reaction of the wife, who declared that I couldn’t be left alone for more than five minutes at time without doing something stupid, dammit. She then intimated that perhaps I should have had a pass at the eyebrows as well, they being a little too MarkTwainian in appearance for her tastes. Scotty blinked in confusion for a few seconds when he first beheld the new me, but was otherwise pretty phlegmatic about the whole thing.

Ngnat liked rubbing my head, but told me I didn’t look like Daddy anymore.

“Who do I look like?” I asked.

“That man from Annie,” she replied, to the general amusement of all round.

I’m thinking about getting one of these for next time, though the extra time I would have to spend shaving would argue against it. On the other hand, use of it apparently drives the women crazy with desire.

*Oddly enough, I developed this attitude only after marriage. The thing I feared most as a teenager was that Mom was going to make an attempt to cut my hair with her home haircutting kit–a process that not only felt like it took forever, but left me looking like the class retard.**

**In my opinion. I may well have looked worse.

Admittedly, I most likely will not watch much of the RNC this week, mostly because I have been so tired at night, not because I don’t care. However, I will try to catch some of the names in prime time, especially Bush on Thursday. I saw bits and pieces last night, but did not make it all the way through McCain’s speech, although he is someone I am usually interested in listening to. However, one part of last night’s festivities did catch my attention, and almost caused me to pee in my pants.

During these “festivals” of each party, the candidates like to have celebrities stand up and endorse them. Some of the most popular names in music, television and film are herded through the convention halls in support of their guy. Given the usual liberal tendencies of Hollywood, the DNC is full of some of the most powerful names in entertainment. Last night it became clear to me that the Republicans are having to search long and hard to find an equal amount of entertainers to appear with them.

This was blantantly obvious to me when the RNC showed a video of a tribute to veterans aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid. The “celebrities” involved in this display of patriotism included Rip Torn giving a speech, while the music was performed by The Gatlin Brothers. Wow, and I thought they had all died by now. Yes, the RNC will have Arnold on display, but that may be about it. Does this matter? Probably not. Do you really care what any entertainer thinks about politics? Most likely the answer is no. Still, the fact remains that most people want to see some glamour and Hollywood Royalty when sitting through 3 hours of convention coverage and speeches, and that may be lacking from the RNC.

However, I did hear that Kid Rock might be involved as well, and that would be better than the Gatlin Brothers for sure. Maybe Bush can play off of this and enter the arena on Thursday by screaming, “My name is Georggggggggge……George Bush!,” and then go into his version of Bawitdaba. Now that would be worth tuning in for.

Here is someone else’s take on Hollywood and politics from a Republican’s point-of-view.

Apparently this guy was responsible for the driving duties after a night on the town near Atlanta. In fairness, he did get his friend’s body home safely, unfortunately, his friend’s head was not as lucky.