Hmm... Well if you add enough spices, you can eat anything! I don't even want to think about some of the "meat" that I've had in spicy dishes in Asia! ;~) As long as it's stopped moving and doesn't try to talk to me... I'm so mad! One of my worst rual terrorists got away last night! :~( I set my trap with a duck egg and finally caught another fox. It was 11'ish and I left dealing with it for today. I'd been out doing fence repairs and just wanted to shut down for the night. This morning, it was gone!:~0 They aren't suppose to be able to get out of these. With the ponds getting lower and lower, my few ducks left...will be no ducks left! We did have a truce until they started raiding the poulty and gardens so badly! One or two were fine, but now I have a ravenous horde! Fortunately, they don't seem interested in orchids. Although, I wonder if they've been diggin' in my Cyps!

Sorry to get on the soapbox here, but I can't let some of this stand as "fact." A lot is being left out of this debate. I do not think either sociology or biology has solved the "nature/nurture" debate. Not all animals rape to get sex. Many animals have complex mating rituals. There are many successful mating strategies, rape is only one. Nature is full of biological diversity, it's not one thing or the other. And I don't know where the child molesting, old woman raping and bestiality comes in, since that isn't procreation based. It is violence based and power based, which is related to procreation/survival. But violence and power is only ONE procreation strategy. There's seduction, sneakiness, hormonal cues, and some animals just have sex all the time. Others aren't in the mood at all for most of their lives. And as far as bestiality, I dunno. Dogs sometimes try to hump cats, but sometimes, even when the opportunity is there, they just don't. Not in the mood I guess. And men aren't the only beasts. As for the hard wired nurturing mommies, if she doesn't want the baby, a woman can kill it very easily, and some do. Even primate societies couldn't survive with the level of violence your estimation of "natural" behavior would engender. The brakes aren't just goody goody, they ensure survival of the species. How can a human population survive without consequences, consequences come from your fellow humans whom you need to survive. Higher primates have many types of social rituals, not all of them violent. It's a balancing act. Primate observers have observed the most horrific violence in those societies, and yet it does not happen all the time, why? Because in a species that needs to live together as a group to survive, there are ALWAYS consequences of some sort. Even primates do not do violent things to their friends, because they do not want to get away with it, the relationship meets other needs they have besides their sexual urges. Yes sex is a powerful urge, but it is not the only urge. Survival doesn't just depend on sex--you have to survive and your offspring have to survive for your species genepool to continue. How could we survive if every person was trying to rape and pillage every other person? That's illogical. Human life without consequences is an oxymoron. Imagining a "natural" life for humans where there are no consequences has never existed and never will. It is actually unnatural. Human existence is social, and social behaior is built on consequnces. What those consequences are is a varied as the human genepool. Violence can be counter productive to survival in the long run, which is why violent events in nature are only part of the picture. Animals are violent, but not all the time. You can rape and pillage some people some of the time, but you can't rape and pillage all the people all the time indefinately. And I know enough decent men and women to know that some are just decent to the core, hardwired that way. Whether it is in their genes or what is still somewhat of a mystery and will keep the biologist and psychologists up to their ears in grant money for many years to come. Sorry, but there is just as much evidence to suggest that our hardwiring also includes compassion, a very valuable survival mechanism, in addition to violence. Humans are social animals. As long as we have societies, there will be a need for compassion. It exists in primates right along with the violence. They have the whole spectrum available to them, and so do we. Luckily our brains give us lots of survival tactics, thousands more than even the smartest primate. The biggest problem with violence is if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, while the sweet quiet guy lurking in the corner canoodles your conquest and passes on his genes to the future. Consequnces or not, he doesn't rape because he doesn't have to.

Nancy, I bet the dinner was fun. Tim is going to tackle one thing at a time, so after the ball bearing or bearings come in (I don't remember if the problem was one or more than one) and he fixes that, he'll work on the electronics control panel think. Tim's incentive to be a great handyman is that he is cheap and hates buying new appliances. lol lol lol. I don't disagree with him either, but I also don't like having an appliance that only partially works. When I was telling him about the control panel on the dryer, I pointed out that having all those different drying cycles means nothing if 75% of them don't respond to the little button beside them being pushed. I also mentioned I was researching new washer/dryer sets while he was gone and that, if we have to buy a new dryer, we'll buy a matching set in blue or red to add some color to the mostly neutral laundry room. He said "okay, we'll get new ones if we have too" but I noticed that he then got really, really busy researching our appliance models and how to fix them. I suspect we won't be getting new ones anytime soon and I'm okay with that as long as he can fix the old one so it will work. (Calling a repairman chaps him because he believes he can fix these things himself, and he usually can.) Amy, I love baby goats. Especially the cute little dwarf goats. Every single time I see a video of fainting goats, I want to run out and buy a dozen of them. However, I know better. Lots of kids here raise the larger goats for FFA or 4-H projects, and goats can be cranky, stinky escape artists. If they escape from their pens and find an unfenced garden, then heaven help that garden. My brother had some of those big goats and they took great delight in climbing up on his boat. Yes. His boat. We have a family joke, ever since then, a sort of Dr. Seuss type comment on goats and boats "Could you, would you, with a boat? Could you, would you, with a goat?, goat on boat?" etc. Such silliness. Whenever someone brags about how sturdy, strong and prolific Heidi is, I am so happy and proud for Heidi. If there is a better paste tomato plant for our OK weather, I've never found it. To me, Heidi is the energizer bunny of the tomato garden. I have to be careful to avoid planting too many Heidi plants or it will kill me trying to keep up with the harvest. Gotta love plants like that! Of course, it goes without saying that a tomato variety whose seeds were brought here from Africa is likely to be able to handle our weather. Owasso sounds so lovely, even though it has grown a lot and become concreted over. It happens. Eventually people found those lovely little quiet spots, move there, etc., and the increasing population can make it challenging to keep the lovely little town from changing too much. Owasso sounds like it still has a lot going for it---good schools are priceless. I agree about digital appliances, but they're taking over the world now. You know, last year when our brand new dishwasher wouldn't work, it was the digital stuff that wouldn't work---and replacing the two digital control boards (thankfully, under warranty since it was brand new....) was approximately the same price as the new dish washer had cost. That made it our choice to either get a replacement dishwasher or a repair, and we chose the repair as opposed to having the brand new one uninstalled and another brand new one installed. What if the second brand new one didn't work too? I'd lost faith in appliances at that point. sSo, are we to believe all the value is in the digital stuff? I did get to watch the repairman replace the boards and it was so simply...unplug old ones, plug in new ones. Test to make sure it works. I bet it didn't take him 10 minutes from the time he came into the house until he left, and we spent a good portion of that time just chatting. It was amazing how quickly it was fixed. So, of course, I'm hoping the clothes dryer electronics are as easy to replace, but I bet they won't be. I'm also hoping our local top-notch repair guy doesn't retire (he was definitely thinking about it) because he is so good at what he does. Our local weather didn't seem that bad last night. Of course, with these storms that tend to move from the sw/w to the ne/e, we are the last ones to get them, so well before the rain even arrived here, we were hearing the news about the probably tornado hitting the RiverWind Casino in the Norman-Goldsby area, and even seeing the photos of the damage. When our weather arrived, we had maybe 10-20 minutes of strongish wind, but nothing scary here---you could hear the roar of wind arriving at about 50 mph, but that part was over quickly and then we were only getting gusts in the low to mid 40s, while rain and lightning raced through pretty quickly. We only got 0.60" of rain, and had only the most minor of tree limbs down. I have seen photos posted of worst damage from locations significantly further north and east in our county so they might have gotten more wind than we got. I also remember that at a certain point our local Emergency Operations Center lost power and was operating on a generator. We never even had our power flicker here...but we are so far south that our electric feeder lines come up from Thackerville, whereas the power further north of us (by less than a mile) comes from feeder lines running down from Marietta, so often we keep our power when folks further north lose theirs. It just depends on where the power pole/power line/transformer damage occurs relative to where one's home is located. The forecast for the weekend is looking awfully cold. Not complaining here. I've been waiting for relief from the heat forever and forever. The trees this weekend have a lot more gold in the foliage than they did last weekend, and our baby red oak is turning pinkish-brownish now. It is a random seedling from a large, old red oak right beside it and the baby turns red about 3 weeks before the mother tree does. So, our baby red oak tree ought to be red 7-10 days from now, and then the mother tree will be red a couple of weeks later. Lots of leaves are coming down now, at least from certain types of trees like elms and hackberries. This afternoon's sunshine sure is nice. It is amazing how nice sunny, mild weather feels---so much more pleasant than sunny, roasting hot weather. Dawn

Well, I’m not a boomer (I’m GenX) but I can guarantee you that there was not that level of casual sex in the late eighties, early nineties when I was in college. Obviously people had sex, but at least among my friends and sorority sisters...it was pretty taboo to have random sex outside the context of some sort of relationship. I am sure there were girls that did, but they were outliers. Maybe they were happy & liberated & doing what they wanted...but the few girls who I was aware of that did this were girls with self-esteem issues. They were treated badly, and it was sad. I really hope you are correct, Robo, and the article is being sensational. I also hope that it isn’t that bad where we live in the SE.