Animal Magnetism = Clean Energy

According to Yahoo News, this may be why my garden hasn't had any animal pests; those huge powerlines in the easement behind the house is screwing them up:

High-voltage power lines mess with animal magnetism. Researchers, who reported last year that most cows and deer tend to orient themselves in a north-south alignment, have now found that power lines can disorient the animals.

When the power lines run east-west, that's the way grazing cattle tend to line up, researchers led by Hynek Burda and Sabine Begall of the faculty of biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They also found that cows and deer grazing under northeast-southwest or northwest-southeast power lines faced in random directions.

The research team studied cows and deer using satellite and aerial images.

In their report last August, Burda and colleagues suggested the north-south orientation was in response to the Earth's magnetic field.

The new study adds weight to the animals responding to magnetic effects, since power lines also produce a magnetic field. And the effect was most noticeable close to the power lines, declining as the magnetic field of the electric lines was reduced by distance.

Wind and weather can also affect which ways cows choose to face, but without such factors about two-thirds of them tended to align north-south when away from power lines.

The Earth's magnetic field is thought to be a factor in how birds navigate, and other animals also are believed to respond to it.

My garden runs east-west, as do the giant power lines. Rabbits hop around in my garden all the time, but don't touch my vegetables in any appreciable manner. They usually hang out with me when I am weeding and eat the weeds. They are completely happy and companionable. It could be that the power lines have created demented rabbits? I will take it.

I sent this article to my husband, and he had another wild idea. Leave it to the engineer.

I see a buttered cat array topper in this story.

(This was a psuedo science idea that tickled me in Omni Magazine in the 80s. The theory goes, all cats land on their feet. Buttered bread always lands butter side down. If you strap buttered toast to the backs of cats butter side up and drop them, they will not land but instead hover and rotate, and we can harness the power they expend like turbines. Back to the husband:

I'd call it the Lazy Susan Cow Grid. Put a bunch of cows on giant lazy susans under power lines that run both north-south and east west. Alternate the power to
the two sets of lines, causing the cows to turn to realign, causing the
lazy susans to turn, powering generators, which power the overhead
lines. I'd also put in a Dizzy Cow Station next door, where the cows
would go after an hour on the grid. That would just contain the lazy
susans with no overhead lines, where the dizzy cows would keep spinning
in circles for about an hour until their brains readjust.

Perhaps he has something there. We should go for some grant money. That guy is full of ideas.

News Briefs - How I get the news now, briefly

Rush Limbaugh is not news. I don't want to hear about him anymore. Enjoy your obnoxious little Mr. Potato Head, Spudlettes. He is a distraction, and I don't want to be distracted. Actually, isn't that the problem with the GOP leadership right now? Too many people want to be Zaphod Beeblebrox, no one actually wants to lead.

Jon Stewart's lambasting of the Cramer-dude from the visually unwatchable show, "Mad Money"(CNBC) was sort of weird. Sure, Cramer is a douchebag and gave awful advice, but he isn't the cause of the whole meltdown, or even the worst of soft headed, disingenuous "newspeople" that work with CNBC. Cramer was so contrite, I was worried he was going to start crying.

The thing is, to a certain extent, ALL the networks are far more concerned with appeasing their advertisers than anything else, including reporting truthfully and to the best of their abilities. All network programming caters to either pleasing the eyeballs of their watchers, or scaring the hell out of them so they stay focused through the commercial breaks.

A better paradigm would be to have a news source that is beholden to no one for monetary support. Kind of like public radio or public television, yeah. Except with less begging and pledge drives.

The Sears Tower will now be the Willis Tower. Already known better now as the "Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis" Tower. Brilliant. Gives me all sorts of hope for the Willis Insurance Company moving in there from the UK. Apparently, they insure kooky hijinks and teachable moments.

A bit of a Dash

Now I am in the working world, I have even less time to think up bloggy things. I apologize.

Change can be Good

First and foremost, I must report that, much to my consternation, I (aka my fake identity) have been banned from TeamSarah.org. If you can't march in lock step with their "values" (which don't include free speech, apparently) you can't be on their site. I wasn't rude, just not agreeing with some people who cannot see reason. That was enough.

I know. I know. Where will I get my dose of illiterate conservatives blogging with sooo many spelling and grammatical errors? The hypocrisy of pro-lifers against regular birth control who revile low income parents who can't support their children? Where will I be able to stay updated on the latest on rumors that must be true because it was on the internets? I guess I will have to just watch Elizabeth Hasselback on The View.

I think I got dinged because I couldn't support worshipping Rush Limbaugh as King of the Conservatives. And I wouldn't apologize.

Well, I guess I will have to make do. It will make jumping over to the Huffington Post a little less like jumping into a cool freshwater spring after a hot miserable day, but that will be okay.

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I started back to full time employment in sales as of late last week. It is weird to go so easily back after spending so much time freelancing and full time mommying. It's an adjustment, but so far not so bad. Luckily, it's with some really decent co-workers and bosses who seem pretty drama free, logical and reasonable, so that makes it easier.

The only problem is pretty normal--which is, you have to go prospecting for clients before you can do any selling. This is the really tedious part of the process. Completely necessary, but oh, I hope to move out of this stage soon. The only way out is to do a lot of calling and networking. Anyone reading this need to plan a business meeting and are looking for some pretty awesome destinations and properties? Shoot me a note! Hotels have some mighty sweet deals going on....

My husband has had the opportunity to work part of the day at home lately, so he is there for the kids after school. They are not used to him standing around and asking them how their day went. I am not sure why this is freaking them out a little. I think they were hoping for unsupervised, unlimited video gaming time.

Overall, we are having some change going on in our lives, but change is good.