Farm News 02-04-07
Sunday morning, after chores, cold
Ad Astra
The moon has been doing exactly what was predicted, with the full moon appearing at sunset on Friday, Groundhog Day. It is now a waning gibbous moon until next Saturday, when it is in the Last Quarter, after which it will be a waning crescent moon, which is where we started last month. If there is any change in the predicted lunar cycle I'll try to let you know.
Mercury is visible in the western early evening sky this week, slightly to the lower right from Venus. Venus is a very bright object in the western evening sky. Because Mercury is always close to the Sun we only see it in the morning or evening sky. It's overhead every day but the Sun's brightness hides it.
Cold
Where is global warming when we need it? Perry Lake is covered with ice, something that doesn't happen very often. Keeping the stock watered is becoming difficult. The dogs, cats, and wild birds all use the heated water bowl on the porch, so they are easy, and there is a heated waterer in the chicken house, also. I have a heater disc that goes into a bucket or pan, but if I put it in with the goats and geese one of them will pull it out of the water within minutes. Curiosity is sometimes a real nuisance trait in domestic animals.
The problem is that if we have a 1° rise in average temperature, it means that, in Kansas, the summer highs will be 11° higher and the winter lows 10° lower. Adding more energy to the weather system brings up the temperature a little bit and increases the extremes a lot more. At the rate things are going Kansas will, in another century, have Texas summers and Montana winters.
Poor Me!
On Wednesday, Paula slipped on the ice, fell, and broke her right wrist. I feel terrible! My sweetie is hurt and I couldn't prevent it. Even worse, now I have to do a whole lot of women's work. I even have to help her put on her clothes; the opposite of the part of this activity I am used to doing. Oh, well, broken bones usually heal in six weeks.
The break was a small crack with no displacement of the two ends. Her pain has been mild to moderate and she is quickly learning not to move her right wrist. She is in a short cast and the physician says she might be able to shorten it even more in three weeks.
This event has been the activator for some interesting speculations. We hear a lot of research about the differences in the health care given to men and women, but not much about the differences between men and women in seeking health care. Paula didn't want to go to the doc and have her wrist x-rayed. The neighbor woman across the road is having abdominal pains on the lower left side, but she doesn't want to see her physician to check for appendicitis. Is the difference in what health care is provided a result of physician bias or patient bias? By the way, the physician my wife sees is also a woman, which probably is not of any relevance.
Our culture seems to be coming off a peak of ascribing all gender differences in behavior to socialization instead of genetics, yet most parents who have children of both sexes are certain that they differ from birth. Somebody watched baby monkeys when they were offered their choice of toy trucks or dolls. Little female monkeys liked dolls and little male monkeys liked trucks, generally. Not all of them were that way, just most of them. Although one might expect young monkeys to respond in some way to dolls, it makes no sense that young male monkeys would like trucks more than dolls unless one accepts the idea that something deeper, not explicitly stated, is being detected.
Dolls look enough like monkeys that one can understand why little female monkeys would like them, but there is nothing in the ancestry of the primates that looked like a pickup truck. Social influences could be used to explain why human boys like pickup trucks, but not monkeys. When our genes, and those of the monkeys were selected out of the pool there were no mechanical devices around. Evolution is not forward looking, and no grand designer selected a set of genes that would lead to male monkeys liking mechanical devices.
What, then, were the characteristics being selected that led male primates to like mechanical devices and females to like dolls? It makes some slight sense for females to be more interested in dolls because they are the ones that will raise the next generation of babies. Perhaps males like pickup trucks more because, for some reason, more of the genes that incline primates to use tools appear only on the Y chromosome.
As I said at the beginning, “Poor me,” because my wife's broken wrist has led me to a very perplexing puzzle. Maybe I'll ask my daughter what she thinks about this question.
Ad Astra
The moon has been doing exactly what was predicted, with the full moon appearing at sunset on Friday, Groundhog Day. It is now a waning gibbous moon until next Saturday, when it is in the Last Quarter, after which it will be a waning crescent moon, which is where we started last month. If there is any change in the predicted lunar cycle I'll try to let you know.
Mercury is visible in the western early evening sky this week, slightly to the lower right from Venus. Venus is a very bright object in the western evening sky. Because Mercury is always close to the Sun we only see it in the morning or evening sky. It's overhead every day but the Sun's brightness hides it.
Cold
Where is global warming when we need it? Perry Lake is covered with ice, something that doesn't happen very often. Keeping the stock watered is becoming difficult. The dogs, cats, and wild birds all use the heated water bowl on the porch, so they are easy, and there is a heated waterer in the chicken house, also. I have a heater disc that goes into a bucket or pan, but if I put it in with the goats and geese one of them will pull it out of the water within minutes. Curiosity is sometimes a real nuisance trait in domestic animals.
The problem is that if we have a 1° rise in average temperature, it means that, in Kansas, the summer highs will be 11° higher and the winter lows 10° lower. Adding more energy to the weather system brings up the temperature a little bit and increases the extremes a lot more. At the rate things are going Kansas will, in another century, have Texas summers and Montana winters.
Poor Me!
On Wednesday, Paula slipped on the ice, fell, and broke her right wrist. I feel terrible! My sweetie is hurt and I couldn't prevent it. Even worse, now I have to do a whole lot of women's work. I even have to help her put on her clothes; the opposite of the part of this activity I am used to doing. Oh, well, broken bones usually heal in six weeks.
The break was a small crack with no displacement of the two ends. Her pain has been mild to moderate and she is quickly learning not to move her right wrist. She is in a short cast and the physician says she might be able to shorten it even more in three weeks.
This event has been the activator for some interesting speculations. We hear a lot of research about the differences in the health care given to men and women, but not much about the differences between men and women in seeking health care. Paula didn't want to go to the doc and have her wrist x-rayed. The neighbor woman across the road is having abdominal pains on the lower left side, but she doesn't want to see her physician to check for appendicitis. Is the difference in what health care is provided a result of physician bias or patient bias? By the way, the physician my wife sees is also a woman, which probably is not of any relevance.
Our culture seems to be coming off a peak of ascribing all gender differences in behavior to socialization instead of genetics, yet most parents who have children of both sexes are certain that they differ from birth. Somebody watched baby monkeys when they were offered their choice of toy trucks or dolls. Little female monkeys liked dolls and little male monkeys liked trucks, generally. Not all of them were that way, just most of them. Although one might expect young monkeys to respond in some way to dolls, it makes no sense that young male monkeys would like trucks more than dolls unless one accepts the idea that something deeper, not explicitly stated, is being detected.
Dolls look enough like monkeys that one can understand why little female monkeys would like them, but there is nothing in the ancestry of the primates that looked like a pickup truck. Social influences could be used to explain why human boys like pickup trucks, but not monkeys. When our genes, and those of the monkeys were selected out of the pool there were no mechanical devices around. Evolution is not forward looking, and no grand designer selected a set of genes that would lead to male monkeys liking mechanical devices.
What, then, were the characteristics being selected that led male primates to like mechanical devices and females to like dolls? It makes some slight sense for females to be more interested in dolls because they are the ones that will raise the next generation of babies. Perhaps males like pickup trucks more because, for some reason, more of the genes that incline primates to use tools appear only on the Y chromosome.
As I said at the beginning, “Poor me,” because my wife's broken wrist has led me to a very perplexing puzzle. Maybe I'll ask my daughter what she thinks about this question.
posted by The Geezer at 9:52 AM
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