Yearly Archives: 2012

A Quorum of Crows

3/8/2012 – 3:13 pm

The collective noun “school of fish” comes from a corruption of the term “shoal of fish,” which seems like a fairly accurate means of quantifying fish in the days before GPS. This led to an unfortunate anthropomorphic trend of naming aggregations of animals based on some perceived quality – a “pride of lions, a gaggle […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

In Like a Lion?

3/1/2012 – 3:47 pm

February and March are (traditionally) the heaviest snow months in Vermont, although not the February that ended yesterday, extra day notwithstanding.  It did snow last Friday.  We were all duly warned about a winter storm and got maybe an inch and a half.  The snow did, however – more or less – stay on the […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Poisoning Continues, Now with Government Approval

2/23/2012 – 4:37 pm

Twenty years ago, as a young(er) toxics campaigner, I and many others worked to limit the effects of the industrial uses of chlorine.  Short version: when we put chlorine in the front end, we get a host of pollutants out the back end that persist in the environment and cause cancer, birth defects and reproductive […]

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The Stalking Horse

2/16/2012 – 5:17 pm

A stalking horse, for hunters, is something of a moving blind.  The idea is that the prey – often birds – would be startled by the appearance of a human, but not a horse or cow, so the hunter uses the stalking horse (“stalking cow” doesn’t have the same ring) to approach unseen, until the […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy, Global Warming | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Graph

2/9/2012 – 3:43 pm

In the last week or so (31 January, that is), all your 2011 sources of income were supposed to have sent you an accounting of how much you earned.  Adrienne is better at keeping track of these things than I, but I have learned through the years to put my W-2 in the folder on […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy | Tagged , | Comments (1)

The Weeks of Winter

2/2/2012 – 3:15 pm

Happy Groundhog’s Day.  The news reports that the various prognosticating groundhogs cannot agree on whether winter has or has not ended.  Maybe they can’t agree on whether it’s started.  I’m not sure human-groundhog communication is all that sophisticated. Yesterday was the Imbolc, the Celtic feast of pregnant ewes, a harbinger of spring soon to come.  […]

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For the Record

1/26/2012 – 1:05 pm

Late in the day last Thursday, federal Judge J. Garvan Murtha ruled the Vermont legislature cannot intervene in the continued operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. In his 102-page ruling, Judge Murtha closely tracks the arguments made by attorneys for Entergy, the owner of Vermont Yankee.  Entergy argued and the judge agreed that while […]

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