Original Post: rdunne.com
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
The show must go on?
Horse herpes outbreak forces rodeo queens to ride stick poniesby ksl.com
FARMINGTON -- While the state has yet to officially cancel any events involving horses that might have been exposed to a local recent equine herpes outbreak, owners and arenas are taking precautions.
Because of the outbreak, contestants at the Davis County Sheriff's Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest had to cowgirl up Thursday night without their mares.
Instead of competing on horses, as is typically the case, contestants were asked to trot around the arena with stick horses as their show ponies.
"It's kind of weird, but you can't really help that the disease is going around," said former queen Savanna Steed. She said the stick horses will test the riders' knowledge of whether they know the routine, rather than letting the horse do all the work.
Utah has 13 suspected and seven confirmed cases of equine herpes virus after horses at a regional cutting horse competition at the Golden Spike Arena in Ogden first showed symptoms of the illness.
Horse herpes is not sexually transmitted and is not considered a danger for humans, but it is highly contagious among horses and other animals of the equine family. The most common way for the virus to spread is by direct horse-to-horse contact, but it can also spread through the air, contaminated equipment, clothing and hands.
The disease can be fatal to horses and is incurable.
Posse member Kim Jensen said the annual contest has already been postponed for a week to possibly wait out the quarantine, but as it is still in effect for all public arenas, the Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest had to go on.
"Instead of using horses, we are testing the girls' knowledge and ability to adapt," she said. "This will test if they know the pattern, but they are disappointed they don't have their real horses."
The contestants still showed their horsemanship, though with a little more effort.
"With a stick horse it's a lot different because you have to do all the work, and I think it's going to be a lot more tiring than with a real horse," said contestant Kylie Felter.
What really shined were the true traits of a queen: poise and personality amid trying times.
"It will give you experience for if you happen to have a problem like this later in life," Steed said with a smile. "You already have the experience of riding a stick horse!"
Ladies, we tip our hats to you.
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Story written by Nadine Wimmer and Wendy Leonard.
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via m.ksl.com
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists | The New York Observer
So the logic is that not only is the dollar worth far less than we think it is, but everything is more expensive and will only move further in that direction. Especially food, the value of which may have risen due to population increases, especially in places like China, where a consumer-happy middle class has finally started to emerge.
The rising cost of food can be seen even in New York's yuppiest enclaves, where prices are high to begin with. Bloomberg food critic Ryan Sutton has been running a blog called The Price Hike wherein he measures the shifting costs of food at the plate in Manhattan restaurants. Mario Batali's Del Posto is charging 21 percent more per meal since October. Gordon Ramsay at The London? Sixty-nine percent more since last month. Michelin favorite Bouley? Forty percent. The Breslin, at the Ace Hotel? Thirty-three percent. And so on.
But farmland isn't an option for most investors. Farming is still mostly made up of family-run businesses, in the U.S., at least. Much of the farmland being purchased in America is purchased at estate sales. Pure-play farming isn't a readily available product.
You can invest in John Deere for equipment; you can invest in Monsanto for seeds and agricultural tech. You can even invest in Kraft, which puts the plants on the supermarket shelf. But for now, it's difficult to invest in a one-stop-shop farm. Additionally, there isn't much arable land out there, it's not increasing, and the quality of the land varies from parcel to parcel. And to make money off a farmland investment, you can't just sit on it. You have to know what to do with it. "If you farm it like we do, you can generate a yield," says the hedge fund manager. "We think the farmland will be worth 5 to 10 percent more every year, and on top of that, you get the commodities yield." In other words, hedge funds are growing, picking and selling corn.
Asked if the American public would eventually see a chance to invest in Old McHedgeFund's farm one day, the manager replied in the affirmative: "Yes. Without a doubt." He estimated it would be only a few years before this happened. Just two weeks ago, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that El Tejar SA, the world's largest grain producer, is planning on selling $300 million of bonds this year before a planned IPO. The plans for the IPO will be fast-tracked pending the sale of the bonds. If farming IPOs begin to emerge en masse, then farming-already often a dicey proposition simply on the basis of its being difficult to do correctly, the volatility of the weather and the possibility of entire crops going bad-may be vulnerable to a bubble.
There is, of course, a slightly more sinister reason to develop a sudden interest in agriculture. Last year, Marc Faber recommended to anyone: "Stock up on a farm in northern Norway and learn to drive a tractor." He sees a "dirty war" on the horizon, playing on fears of a biological attack poisoning food supplies. Those sort of fears drive capital into everything from gold (recently at an all-time high and a long-time safe haven for investors with currency concerns) to survivalist accoutrements. In this particular case, one might buy the farm in order to avoid buying the farm.
That may seem extreme, but even the lesser scenarios are frightening to some. When asked if this is an end-of-the-world situation, the hedge fund manager replied: "It really is. I tell my fiancée this from time to time, and I've stopped telling her this, because it's not the most pleasant thought." He pauses for a moment. "We just can't keep living the way we're living. It'll end within our lifetime. We're just going to run out of certain things. We'll just have to learn how to adjust."
via observer.com
Monday, May 16, 2011
Young ladies singing their country proud
5 young ladies - these little girls are really something! A definite must see! This was at a Texas Tech Basketball game. The U.S. National Anthem is sung by five young ladies (ages 6-8). Have never heard it performed better than this! An entire arena remains completely silent throughout the song. You could hear a pin drop. Take a moment to listen to this. Trust me, you will not regret it. The two young ladies on the right are 6 years old. The two in the middle are 7 and the one on the left is 8.
Original Post: rdunne.com
My Irish Brother
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Obama in the old countryBy Aoife O’Riordain Published: May 13 2011 22:03 | Last updated: May 13 2011 22:03
Moneygall, County Offaly, is on the way to lots of places but has never been much of a destination. This small Irish village on the road from Dublin to the south-western city of Limerick is a blink-and-you-miss-it type of spot. Recently bypassed by a new motorway, the flow of traffic that used to pass through its main street from dawn till dusk has now ebbed to a trickle. But later this month this hamlet in the heart of rural Ireland will have its moment of fame. On May 23, Barack Obama is due to make a flying visit to Moneygall to pay his respects to his Irish ancestry. For in the furore over his Hawaiian birth certificate, what many may have missed is that the president is – in small part at least – Irish. Genealogical research carried out the year before his election found Obama, or O’Bama as he has become known in these parts, is the great, great, great grandson of Fulmuth Kearney, who hailed from a family of Moneygall cobblers and emigrated to America in the 1850s. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. This article can be found at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2187ab5e-7ce4-11e0-a7c7-00144feabdc0,_i_email=y.html | ||||
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Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Weather or not...
excerpt taken from:
By Jeff Saut May 09, 2011 12:30 pm
Since last August I have been writing about the building La Niña weather pattern, combined with more volcanic ash in the atmosphere than anybody can remember, which has caused the Hadley cell winds to expand toward “the poles” (North and South). Recall the Hadley cell winds dominate the tropics, carrying hot equatorial air up into the troposphere where atmospheric circulation carries them north and south. The air eventually sinks back to Earth. Where the air rises, the atmospheric pressure is low, causing heavy rains and storms (tropical). When it sinks, it produces high pressure areas characterized by deserts like the Australian outback. Unsurprisingly, the Hadley cell winds’ outward shift has played havoc with the trade winds producing droughts in otherwise moist parts of the world and monsoons in previously dry locales. Said “shift” has allowed tropical zones, and deserts, to expand dramatically. It has also fostered hurricanes, tornado, floods, etc. This is not an unimportant observation because the changed weather patterns have major implications for agriculture and the world’s soil bank. Such insights sparked this question from one of our more thoughtful financial advisors:
Jeff, from somebody on the ground in Memphis, the word "epic" to describe the current situation seems woefully inadequate. My thinking is that we need to be thinking about the "what if's." What if the entire flow of the Mississippi river migrates west into the Atchafalaya Basin? What would be the impact on all the natural gas storage and infrastructure in the area, not to mention the other implications? It remains a much more likely possibility than people understand.
Floodway into the Atchafalaya Basin saves New Orleans: Oliver Houck
Bonnet Carre Spillway opening serious matter, but residents enjoy the spectacle
Original Post: rdunne.com
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