"We got on the lake about 9 in the morning,'' said Jeff Klein, 26. "We weren't in our fish house long before a guy from another house not far away said he saw the biggest muskie of his life pass below his fishing holes, headed for us. He told us to get ready.''The rest of the story is at Dennis Anderson's column in the StarTribune.
Klein, of Waconia, and pals Jason Mechtel of New Germany, Minn., and Ryan Schmakel of Waconia quickly lowered their baits into the lake.
"All of the sudden, one line took off,'' Klein said. "The line was running and running. Finally, I said, 'I have to set the hook.' And I did. Real hard. The hook busted.''
Then Schmakel's and Mechtel's lines began to unfurl. And unfurl. When they stopped, the pair began to reel, figuring they had hooked a muskie akin to Moby Dick, or Disney's Nemo.
Klein knelt on the floor, an elongated gaff in one hand, peering into the dark fathoms, ready to do battle.
But instead of a finned creature, he was greeted by a mysterious air bubble that gurgled up from the water below.
Followed by a ... hand and arm. Holding a rope.
"I jumped back to the other side of the house,'' Klein said...
Despite his reputation as a tax slasher, Reagan raised taxes three times, and tripled the deficit during his eight years in office. Sadly, his working-class "Reagan Democrat" admirers don’t seem to remember that one of his tax hikes raised payroll taxes, which hurt poor and middle-class Americans and shielded the wealthy. The main reason he's remembered as a tax-cutter is because of what he did to tax rates for the uber-rich: He slashed the top rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, and income inequality has soared ever since...More at the link.
If that 70 percent rate sounds a little high, it's useful to remember that the top rate was 94 percent at the end of World War II, and after a brief drop to 82 percent, it stayed in the 90s under Republican Dwight Eisenhower; it was Democrat John F. Kennedy who slashed it to 70 percent... Those are the tax rates that powered the postwar boom -- the expansion of public education and universities, highway construction and home-ownership, government-funded research and development -- that we think of as the American dream...
To review: Under Reagan, income inequality began to grow, household savings dwindled, household debt correspondingly began to rise, and the clout of the financial industry exploded. The top 0.1 percent of Americans saw their share of income climb higher than it was before the Great Depression. And here we are...
Asmodeus (Asmodai). The manuscript which these engravings are from is called "Compendium totius rarissimum Artis Artis celeberrimos Magicae sistematisatae per hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli Me Tangere "Next I checked Wikipedia, which offered this information:
Asmodeus or Asmodai... is a king of demons mostly known from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit... He was supposed by some Renaissance Christians to be the King of the Nine Hells. Asmodeus also is referred to as one of the seven princes of hell...I also checked my Advanced D&D Monster Manual from 1977, which lists Asmodeus as an arch-devil of Armor Class -7 and with 199 hit points (!) and 90% magic resistance. Formidable.
The Asmodeus of the Book of Tobit is attracted to Sarah, Raguel's daughter, and is not willing to let any husband possess her (Tobit, vi.13); hence he slays seven successive husbands on their wedding nights, thus impeding the sexual consummation of the marriages. When the young Tobias is about to marry her, Asmodeus proposes the same fate for him; but Tobias is enabled, through the counsels of his attendant angel Raphael, to render him innocuous. By placing a fish's heart and liver on red-hot cinders, Tobias produces a smoky vapor that causes the demon to flee to Egypt, where Raphael binds him (viii.2, 3). Asmodeus would thus seem to be a demon characterized by carnal desire...
This is a German book on demonology written in Latin, which was published in 1775, covering all aspects and mastery of the art of magic in the years 1057.The second demon is not identified at the link; perhaps someone can read the script above his head. The third guy is Beelzebub - who doesn't look particularly scary.
The US teen birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in 70 years, a study said Wednesday, as an expert pointed to regular contraceptive use by teens as the main cause of the drop.More at the link.
The 2009 rate was 39.1 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19, or 59 percent lower than the high of 96.3 births per 1,000 recorded in 1957, said the report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)...
"But the US teen birth rate still far outpaces most European countries," Lindberg cautioned.
The teen birth rate in Russia was nine percentage points lower than in the United States, while among European Union member states, only Bulgaria had a higher rate -- 43.4 percent -- of teen births than the United States, according to UN statistics included in the NCHS report.
In France and Germany, only around 10 percent of teenaged girls have babies, while in Britain the ratio is around one in four, a high rate for Europe but still around 13 percentage points lower than in the United States.
Etymology: < Anglo-Norman coeverfu, = Old French cuevre-fu, quevre-feu, covre-feu (13th cent.), < couvre, imperative of couvrir to cover + feu fire...and the definitions:
1a. A regulation in force in mediæval Europe by which at a fixed hour in the evening, indicated by the ringing of a bell, fires were to be covered over or extinguished; also, the hour of evening when this signal was given, and the bell rung for the purpose.More details (and the image above) from Chambers' Book of Days, via Scribal Terror:
1b. Hence, the practice of ringing a bell at a fixed hour in the evening, usually eight or nine o'clock, continued after the original purpose was obsolete, and often used as a signal in connection with various municipal or communal regulations; the practice of ringing the evening bell still survives in many towns. In extended use: a restriction imposed upon the movements of the inhabitants of an area for a specified period. The primary purpose of the curfew appears to have been the prevention of conflagrations arising from domestic fires left unextinguished at night. The earliest English quotations make no reference to the original sense of the word; the curfew being already in 13th c. merely a name for the ringing of the evening bell, and the time so marked.
In those old times, people, in general, possessed nothing like clocks or watches; they learned, by the practice of observation, to judge roughly of the time of the day, but in cases where it was necessary to know the exact hour, they were entirely at a loss. Any implement for measuring time was rare, and belonged only to a public body, or institution, or to some very remarkable individual, and the only means of imparting to the public the know-ledge gained from it, was by ringing a bell, or blowing a horn, at certain hours of the day. This practice was first introduced in the monastic establishments..And finally, some tidbits from Elfinspell: the Curfew Bell, from Old Church Lore:
It was attempted, in towns especially, to meet this evil [nocturnal lawlessness], by making it criminal to be found out of doors after a certain hour; and, as otherwise offenders might plead ignorance, it was ordered that the hour should be publicly sounded, generally by the town-bell, and when that was heard, all people were compelled to shut the doors of their houses, put out their fires, and retire to bed, those who were out of bed after the sounding of the bell being liable to severe punishment. It was an efficacious way of clearing the streets. The bell sounded for this purpose was, in France, called popularly the couvre-feu, or cover-fire...
The curfew is still rung in many towns and parishes in England, in some at eight o'clock, and in others at nine. At the end of the last century, as we learn from the Gentleman's Magazine for 1790, the curfew was announced at the latter hour at Ripon, in Yorkshire, by a man with a horn, which he blew, first at the market-cross, and then at the mayor's door...
It is quite a mistake to suppose that the curfew-bell was peculiar to this island—it was a natural expedient for serving a generally useful purpose, and was adopted in France, Italy, and Spain, and probably in all parts of continental Europe. More-over, a corresponding bell was rung in the morning, to inform people of the hour at which it was customary to rise...
In England, the curfew law is said to have been made an established institution by King Alfred. When that monarch restored the University which had been founded at Oxford by St. Frideswide, he ordained, among other thoughtful regulations, that a bell should be rung every night at eight, when all the inhabitants of Oxford should cover up their fires and go to bed. The intention was not that the fires should be put out, but merely deadened. As Mr. Lomax observes, “The old fires were made in the centre of a large hearth, and the accumulated ashes were swept to the back and sides. At the curfew, the large logs were removed, and the cold ashes raked over the fire so as to cover it. A fire so covered will often keep smouldering for days, and can be re-lighted by adding fuel and admitting air, a most important consideration in the days of tinder-boxes. The same custom is still pursued in the backwoods of America, in the Australian bush, and in our own ‘black country,’ where the great coal fires are ‘raked’ in the old fashion nightly.”..
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day...” [Thomas Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard].
As battles raged between the two sides, some pro-Mubarak protesters were captured by his opponents. Some were terrified to be caught and begged for their lives, screaming that the government had paid them to come out and protest...
Several CNN journalists heard from pro-Mubarak demonstrators that they worked for the government. Staff from the national petrochemical company said they had been ordered to come and protest.
"These (pro-Mubarak) protests were organized by the government and the ruling National Democratic Party," analyst Kamal Zakher told CNN. The government mustered government workers and lawmakers whose seats are threatened, he said.
"They were ordered to go out today. They are well organized and that is suspicious -- especially the use of camels and horses. These are abnormal techniques to demonstrate," he said, referring to the shocking charge of about 50 or 60 mounted men through Tahrir in the middle of the afternoon...
State television called the pro-Mubarak demonstrators tourism workers. At least some Egyptians working in the tourism industry are known to be genuinely upset at the anti-Mubarak demonstrators, accusing them of hurting their business by bringing instability...
Forest loss across the world has slowed, largely due to a switch from felling to planting in Asia. China, Vietnam, the Philippines and India have all seen their forested areas increase in size.Many severe problems remain, especially with regard to old growth forests. Discussed at the link.
There are also gains in Europe and North America, but forests are being lost in Africa and Latin America driven by rising demand for food and firewood...
Although 52,000 sq km were lost per year between 2000 and 2010, that was a marked improvement on the 83,000 sq km annual figure seen during the previous decade.
Europe traditionally has been the region with the biggest increase; but now, Asia has overtaken it. A net loss of forest in Asia during the period 1990-2000 has been transformed into a net gain in the decade since.
"China has increased its forest by three million hectares (30,000 sq km) per year - no country has ever done anything like this before, it's an enormous contribution," said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, assistant director-general of the FAO's forestry department.
"But we can also highlight the case of Vietnam, a small and densely populated country that's implemented very smart and comprehensive forest reform - or India, which has not controlled its population as China has and where standards of living are even lower.
"Nevertheless India has achieved a modest growth of its forest area, and the Philippines has turned things around as well - so we're seeing improvement across Asia except in the weakest states," he told BBC News.
The flower, named EA Bowles after the horticulturalist Edward Augustus Bowles who used to own Myddleton House, has had gardeners scrambling to buy it because its six petals are all exactly the same length and are pure white on both sides...The Telegraph offers some context:
Andrew Turvey, Myddleton House head gardener, said: “We have a number of
snowdrops and this one grew through natural cross-pollination. It has taken us to this point to get a saleable bulb. One was produced in 2008 that sold for £265, then we managed to produce 19 this year...
The lust for snowdrops, however, speaks to something rather more obsessive. Soldiers returning from the Crimean war brought home the first G plicatus, and the Victorians rapidly fell in love, seeing them as emblems of purity. The first snowdrop conference was held in 1891, the forerunner of an annual gala...
Joe Sharman, who sold the £357 “E. A. Bowles”, dates it to 2008, when a single bulb of Galanthus “Flocon de Neige” made £265 at auction. (It’s a double version of the ordinary snowdrop that grows wild in woods and churchyards – such variants can crop up anywhere, but you need to be tremendously knowledgeable to spot them.)
A retired chocolate factory worker who took an old vase to a provincial auction house in a cardboard box is in line for a million-pound bonanza after being told it was a Ming moonflask. Experts at Duke's in Dorchester, Dorset, were stunned when the 79-year-old man, who used to work for Cadbury, showed them the 29cm-tall vase, thought to date from between 1403 and 1424...
"It is the largest recorded example from a rarefied group of early Ming moonflasks dating from the Yongle period."..
Last year, Duke's sold a Chinese vase from the Qianlong period for £765,000. It had been used as an umbrella stand by its owners.
One by one, American mink are being removed from rivers in Scotland, in what has been described as the biggest conservation scheme of its kind. These animals first arrived in the UK in the 1950s, imported from America to be farmed for their fur.The story reminded me that mink were found to be responsible for the bizarre phenomenon of the "dog suicide bridge" in Scotland, where 50 dogs have jumped to their deaths.
But after some escaped - or were released - they have spread around the country, and scientists estimate there are now tens of thousands throughout the UK.
And the predators have had a devastating impact on local river wildlife, affecting birds such as moorhens, coots, widgeon and teal, fish and most markedly water voles, which have declined by more than 95% over the last 50 years...
Even animal welfare organisations like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals make exceptions to their strong stance against killing wild animals when it comes to invasive species...
"We very much find evidence that water voles are making a comeback - some areas that have not seen water voles for 10, 20 years are now being reoccupied. And we expect species like moorhens will make a recovery. They used to be abundant, but we don't see many now.
