Comical

If it wasn't such a serious subject the appearance of a comic book superhero before a city council would be comical.

Extra credit to Batman for drawing attention to a gravely serious subject.

Rare Walk In The Woods

From a day it wasn't single digit or below zero temps.

Dang, it's been colder than (fill in the blank)..... 

 

Friday Music

Composed by lead vocalist Ray Davies the Kinks released this song on their 1972 album - Everybody's in Show Biz.  My high school years.

Aside from mentioning Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame the song includes a Who's Who of film stars.

The Kinks have been featured here several previous Fridays.  This is one of my favorites.  And you'd likely agree Davies is a damn-fine guitarist.

Celluloid Heroes...

Datapoint

I didn't see this coming; consequently, it caught me by surprise.  

Here we are, barely one month into the new year, and the Conference Board's long-running consumer confidence index fell 9.7 points from 94.2 in December.  This was a sharp drop with all five components of the index deteriorating making it one of the largest monthly drops in four years and placing American's confidence in the economy at the lowest it has been in a dozen years.  

click on image for a closer look

Popular sentiment about the economy is both a curious and fickle phenomenon.  Over the last couple of years consumer confidence did not necessarily reflect the underlying strength of the US economy.  This drop is an assessment of survey respondents' current state of economic affairs and their expectations for the future.  Notably, the index is now below the level it sank during the pandemic when unemployment was approaching 15%.

Asked about jobs the share of consumers who shared that jobs are plentiful fell to 23.9% from 27.5% in December.  Similarly, 13.9% expected more jobs to be available in the next six months compared with 17.4% in December. 

Economists suggest that these data point are the latest evidence of American's perceptions of a weaker labor market than the actual numbers may imply.  It this a wariness of potential impacts from artificial intelligence?

Again, economists over at the Conference Board suggest that respondent's answers to the survey continues to trend pessimistic with elevated concerns over food and grocery prices, health insurance, utilities, future business conditions, income prospects and trade war impacts.

Despite robust GDP growth and an overall low unemployment rate U.S. consumers are pessimistic about the general economic outlook.

Go figure. 

Winter Adaptations

 

Sunrise the other day dawned at a brisk -4F (feels like -15F).  And while we have to deal with decisions about venturing outside our process has more to do with is it just taking the dog out to go potty, are we going out for an hour to check trail cameras or is this a trip to town for a scheduled meeting or a gallon of milk or do I have to dress for a Packer game at Lambeau Field.

All of the foregoing involve different sub-decisions about how to layer-up or is the trip even necessary.  How do the resident critters that make their home around here adapt and adjust?

The short answer is that wildlife does have adaptations to the seasons and this time of year they manifest as both physical change, behavior or a combination of the two. 

Thinking of the critters that show-up most frequently on the trail cameras; the resident white tails, raccoons, coyotes, fox and other mammalian species all grow a thicker coat of hair and fur that absorbs sunlight, and provides camouflage properties avoid detection by predators.  Additionally, this fur coat generally consists of several layers; the softer, thicker layer adjacent to the skin traps air and retains body heat.  Next to this undercoat is an outer layer of guard hairs that repels rain, snow and wind.  

As I observe the dark-eyed juncos scratching in the snow beneath my bird feeders they look like grey on white puff balls.  They also have two layers of feathers to repel the elements and retain body heat.  This effect, related to goose bumps, is called piloerection and animals puff up their fur or feathers to not only look larger as a defense mechanism but also as a means of thermoregulation to conserve energy and retain heat.  

In the run-up to winter wild animals consume more calories to build-up stores of fat. This additional fat not only adds an extra layer of insulation it also is a store of energy reserves that can be metabolized during periods of food scarcity. 

Deer and rabbits modulate their circulatory systems (an evolutionary mechanism - not a parlor trick) such that blood vessels found in the ears and other extremities have reduced blood flow helping to retain core body temperature. 

Naturally, many animals (just like many of my neighbors and friends) beat it out of dodge before the Thanksgiving holiday and return with the warmer temperatures and lengthening days of springtime.  The herons, cranes, orioles and many other birds winter in warmer climes along with many of their warm season human neighbors.  

Other animals split the difference.  They don't migrate and they don't recreate; they hunker down to ride-out the winter.  The resident skunks, snakes, muskrats, salamanders, chipmunks, badgers, bears, turtles and other burrowing wildlife retire to their underground dens and enter a state of torpor or hibernation - a condition characterized by reduced metabolism where they survive on fat reserves or food caches over the winter season.  While our apex species, the whitetail deer, do not have a location or den; they do regulate their movement during the harshest winter conditions and seek bedding areas in thick conifer cover which provides browse and serves as a windbreak and thermal protection. 

Over millennia native wildlife have evolved and developed adaptations to managing all seasons and living conditions.  It is both remarkable to witness and not so remarkable to understand.  Get yourself a trail camera and situate it within view of a deer trail.  Over the course of a season you can use your citizen science skills to document the changes one animal undergoes as they go through their annual molt.

Quote Of The Day

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

-Winston Churchill*

 

 

 

 

 

*Attribution to Churchill is questionable.  Still a good quote.  

 

Sayonara

That didn’t take long at all.

Border Czar Tom Homan is arriving in Minneapolis today.

Homan is a cooler head with a steady hand who’s worked under multiple administrations and is a solid career law enforcement guy.  He oversaw and shepherded Obama's record-breaking deportation of undocumented criminals, security and terrorism suspects without the loss of any US citizen or other civilian lives as a consequence of deportation operations.

Lessee if Homan can wrangle the shitshow Bovino and Noem have unleashed on Minneapolis before any more asshat masked ICE paramilitaries kill another of our countrymen.

Meanwhile, Greg Bovino has been immediately relieved of command for unspecified legal, operational and safety reasons.    

Good riddance.