sundries

[rm]

I am home, but Patty doesn't get home until the weekend-ish, so all is not quite right with the world yet.

There will be some interesting, accessible to the public, outgrowth of the conference stuff available soon. Soon, of course, as regards academic timelines, which I find to be geologically slow. More about that from my own perspective later, but for now, soon there will be stuff for you, also I will still post my notes.

Also need to write about the Martin Carthy gig.

I have to say, Virgin Atlantic handled the gluten-free meal requests MUCH better than Delta. I did get a roll yesterday that contained "gluten-free wheat starch" that I was too scared to eat, because gluten-attack on an airplane? NO WAY IN HELL DO I WANT THAT EXPERIENCE. Do any of the other celiacs reading this have any insight into "gluten-free wheat starch"? Is it derived from clean oats (which I can't eat anyway) or is it some other bizarreo process?

Thank you to everyone who posted auction items to graduate_maria while I was away. I'll try to check up on and update tags and stuff tonight, and bidding will open in a few days. People who have asked me to post items for them or host pictures, I will also try to get that in order tonight. Sorry for the delay, things have been overwhelming.

George Steinbrener has died.

I cannot believe all this drama about the possibility of a mosque near the WTC site is still ongoing.

Oh, this kid again. Teen serial thief arrested.

Paperwork fuckery is preventing a team of lacross players from the Iriquois Confederacy traveling to an international competition in Manchester because the UK gov't is worried the US won't allow them back into the country with their tribal passports. The US won't guarantee that they will. WTF?

The Son of Sam, his image makeover and a bunch of evangelical Christians.

Geese removed (via death) from Prospect Park in response to flight that ditched into Hudson a year and a half ago. 1. Ugh. 2. You know the thing with birds? They'll make more. Killing park geese isn't going to stop them from flying into airplanes.

The Advocate has starting putting up the Day in Gay America photos.

Big DADT trial begins today, thanks to the Log Cabin Republicans.

That damn writing meme going around. It told me it thought "Because Men Once Went West" is written like Stephen King. That would be no.

Since I can tell it's going to be that type of morning, and I've other stuff to do: Yes, I've seen the purported Torchwood casting sheet; no, I don't have anything to say about it at this time.

Comments

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Glad you're back with minimal travel misery. IMO Heathrow is only in the two-thirds horrible if you don't have to go through customs/immigration, but one of the most horrible in Europe if you're not an EU national or citizen. (I passed out in their passport line once from lack of oxygen and nearly got interrogated.)

I was just reading the Economist article on wheat rust and wondering whether celiacs were feeling a little ironic about wheat endangerment.

I look forward to the NAN vs. Homeland Security arguments, and hope like hell that the team gets to go play in good time. Normally I don't mess with the passport office people, but I am also a NAN partisan.

Goose deterrent is becoming a big business, and Canadas are a serious pest problem. I personally think they should get turned into food, but I have no idea if they are safe to eat. They're particularly drawn to grassy areas and water, which is an awful lot of airports, and they're big and fat. The darn birds have stopped migrating and settled into being full-time grass-eating hazards to indigenous wildlife as well as airplanes, and with a lack of predators of anything their size in most settled places, something's got to get done. (And anyone who thinks they're cute has never been attacked by a goose.)

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

anyone who thinks they're cute has never been attacked by a goose

Can offer painful testimony here. My uncle owned a pair of Canada geese he called Mr & Mrs Vicious. Ne'er were fowl more aptly named.

[natf.livejournal.com]

I have eaten Canada Goose. A butchers near Rye, UK that does the best free range meat on the planet (IMO) had some. It is like tough game bird (e.g. pheasant) but quite yummy (and safe, of course).

[sanat.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Canada I think, but a friend served roast goose in some kind of berry sauce for Yule last year. Decadent!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I'd be a bit worried that Canada geese which spend their days eating heavily pesticided grass in areas like golf courses might be a bit of an issue, and hadn't actually bothered to check.

If the birds are as fatty as geese tend to be and these suckers ought to be eating all that grass, then they should be pretty tasty. But I'm probably horrifying somebody (and if not yet, wait til I mention goose liver foie gras).

[weirdquark]

We live on a lake which has a small flock of Canadian geese that the neighborhood association brought in with clipped wings, and another small flock of Canadian geese that showed up on their own and stay because people feed them (along with some ducks and a swan.)

Most of them are nervous enough around humans that they'll back off when they see you coming, but there's this one goose which we refer to as "The Goose That Hates The Earth" because it obviously does. This goose hisses at people, it hisses at the other geese, it hisses at the swan, which is bigger that it is and can kick its angry little goose butt. And you would think, okay, geese will fight over food and chase each other away to get at food, but this goose will hiss at you when you're feeding it, chase all of the other geese away, and then NOT EAT THE FOOD.

When I went to the last neighborhood meeting, someone suggested that we have a goose cook-off; the menfolk'll go hunting and then the womenfolk'll cook 'em. They were joking, but we may decide to go through with it eventually.

[sanat.livejournal.com]

You know I hadn't thought of it, but that makes a lot of sense, about changes wrought by human habitation affecting goose population. I just found out that poison ivy is more rampant than it ought to be for similar reasons.

[graene.livejournal.com]

Just before I moved away from Chicago they were having a similar debate about the deer, one of whom had recently sent a child to the ER with a torn scalp when he sat up straight in his sandbox just as the deer passed over it. I definitely favored the 'rangers cull the herd with anesthetic darts and give the dressed meat to homeless shelters/money from sale of meats to soup kitchens' option over the so-called environmentalists' proposal to 'release native cougars into the wildlife preserves.' I just kept wondering exactly what they expected said felines to do if chasing a deer resulted in a bloodied toddler in their path.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

There's always going to be a conflict for any of the predator which might attack a human, which is a shame, as some of them would happily eat those darn deer and geese, and many of which are endangered by humans moving into the animals' environments. Maybe it's my mean side speaking, but if people want to live in places where there are yards and trees and birds and so on to raise their children amongst, then they're gonna have to get used to cougars and other predators. (And anyway, the cougars in CA are already perfectly happy to eat deer or tourists.) Cougars may be endangered, but nothing's going to get rid of coyotes and a dozen other opportunists, any of which will happily bite a baby.

[graene.livejournal.com]

I'm talking about a heavily developed area that hasn't seen a cougar in at least a hundred years - enough so that there was also debate about if that was the correct feline predator to be discussing anyway. There were/are zero other wild predators left in Chicago/close 'burbs and the houses, even most with huge yards in outer burbs, are still closer together than the range of the anesthetic dart guns under discussion.
People moving into undeveloped areas and expecting there to be no wildlife in their yards are absolutely missing the big picture of new development and 'pretty' nature.