Al Gore's global warming or the big chill?

Or just another cock and bull story?

The latest long-range space forecast predicts a prolonged drop in solar activity after the next peak — and scientists say that might cool down temperatures here on Earth, or at least slow down the warming trend a bit.

Scientists have studied sunspots and the sun's 11-year activity cycle for 400 years, and they're getting increasingly savvy about spotting the harbingers of "space weather" years in advance, just as meteorologists can figure out what's coming after the next storm.

Storms from the sun are expected to build to a peak in 2013 or so, but after that, the long-range indicators are pointing to an extended period of low activity — or even hibernation.

Look, see, I'm holding this crystal ball to my head and I predict....an inconvenient truth.

As Quark said to Snark as they circled the earth in their flying saucer one hundred years ago: "I think Barnum's got the jump on us with this lot."

Sleep and the "inner caveman"

Maybe it's because I was born and raised in Africa but this sounds sort of lazy and comfy. Jessa Gamble on sleep:

Solitary sleep on a softly cushioned surface, between four walls and under a roof—it’s hardly typical. Anthropologist Carol Worthman has spent many years in the field studying nighttime in traditional societies. In contrast with the Western sleep model—a regular bedtime followed by continuous sleep until morning—the Eje of Congo have some level of social activity persisting through all hours. The sleeping area of a family will see coming and going as some members retire, grooming each other for parasites that might disturb their sleep, and others hear the familiar strains of a thumb piano and get up to dance.

Botswana’s !Kung have similarly staggered bedtimes in their two-metre-round huts made of sticks and leaves. The huts aren’t much of an insulator for heat, sound, or predators—they mostly just keep the rain off—and it’s easy to feel embedded in the social interaction outside the hut. This setup lends itself to a less defined difference between sleeping and waking. Adults and children alike stay up as long as something interesting is going on, and it’s perfectly acceptable to check out of a group conversation by going to sleep.

It's no wonder that I fit right in with hippie communes in the Sixties.

But it's fine for kids - and people who do not have to run a modern business. Us old capitalist farts prefer "solitary sleep on a softly cushioned surface". Democrats on welfare, hippies and the !Kung don't seem to mind subsistence living. The rest of us have real jobs to do - mostly because we prefer some modicum of individual sovereignty and financial independence instead of being blown away by the next storm. I guess that's known as the "protestant work ethic."

Raising hackles

And I don't mean this. I mean this:

Fly shop manager Jim Bernstein was warned that hair stylists would come banging on his door, but he didn't listen.

Sure enough, less than 24 hours later, a woman walked into the Eldredge Bros. Fly Shop in Maine and made a beeline toward a display of hackles — the long, skinny rooster feathers fishermen use to make lure.

"She brought a bunch up to the counter and asked if I could get them in pink," he said. "That's when I knew."

Fly fishing shops nationwide, he learned, are at the center of the latest hair trend: Feather extensions. Supplies at stores from the coasts of Maine to landlocked Idaho are running out, and some feathers sold online are fetching hundreds of dollars more than the usual prices.
...
"It takes years and years and years to develop these chickens to grow these feathers. And now, instead of ending up on a fly, it's going into women's hair," said Matt Brower, a guide and assistant manager at Idaho Angler in Boise.

"I think that's the reason a lot of people are a little peeved about it," he said.

The feathers are not easy to come by in the first place.

They come from roosters that are genetically bred and raised for their plumage. In most cases, the birds do not survive the plucking.

At Whiting Farms, Inc., in western Colorado, one of the world's largest producers of fly tying feathers, the roosters live about a year while their saddle feathers — the ones on the bird's backside and the most popular for hair extensions — grow as long as possible. Then the animal is euthanized.
...
It's not uncommon to find a package of rooster saddle feathers that would have cost around $60 at a fly shop now priced from $200 to $400.

A package of the most popular fly tying hackle for hair extensions, a black and white striped feather called grizzly saddle, would normally retail anywhere from $40 to $60. It sold for $480 on eBay last month after 31 bids.

Read the rest and weep. Of course, by euthanize, they mean behead, butcher and eat the way normal human beings do.

And to think of all the hackles we've thrown away. The thing is to pluck the hackles out before beheading our cocks. That way they aren't covered in blood.