Varmint IQ

possumtrap1

There’s something I don’t understand. Okay, there are a lot of things I don’t understand, but I’m going to limit this discussion to one thing in particular, and it isn’t quantum mechanics. It’s why people seem to want to believe that some traits are hard-coded in our genes, while others aren’t. Usually, it’s the crappy [...]

Resolved

steiger23

Like everyone else on the planet, Kevin and I are determined that 2012 kicks off our serious effort to get back to our fighting weights. For me, that means dropping 15 pounds. For Kevin, it’s 21, which is about the same proportion of his body weight. To up the ante, we’ve decided that there’s a [...]

My year in calories: The 2012 Challenge

Bluefish: our single biggest line item

Last year, our local paper, the Cape Cod Times, did a story about Kevin and me and our flock of turkeys. We made the front page (it was a slow news day), and there was a gigantic picture of Kevin, above the fold, carrying a turkey. There was a smaller picture of me, and the [...]

Don’t hunt and think

Let’s talk about hunting philosophy. Let’s use, as a jumping-off point, a piece on yesterday’s New York Times op-ed page by a man named Seamus McGraw. You can read it for yourself, but if you’re not inclined, I can pass along the important bits. The piece is a justification both of deer hunting, and of [...]

Busted

graph

We all of us have a favorite Monty Python skit. (All of us of a certain age, that is.) Maybe it’s a classic like Dead Parrot or Argument Clinic. Could be the Silly Walks or the Spanish Inquisition. Maybe it’s more obscure. Upper Class Twit of the Year, anyone? Or maybe you’re just a sucker [...]

What to do with a giant squash

A 40-lb. squash. Wine is for scale, and for consolation.

This year, we grew a kind of winter squash which has only one thing to recommend it: size. I couldn’t tell you the name of the variety; we’ve been calling it Sasquash so long that we’ve forgotten its real name. Sasquash is bland, it is watery, and it is very, very large. Together, the five [...]

A Starving Survey: Oysters and housekeeping

I have a theory.  It’s a theory about oysters, and housekeeping, and how they’re related. It’s unfortunate that the Internet has given us tools to test these kinds of theories, because it means I can’t just keep going around talking through my hat. So, in a Starving first, I’m going to solicit your input in [...]

Hunt and wool-gather

Lt. Frank Otis (d. 1937), pilot and surgeon, for whom the base is named

Hang out with hunters and you’ll hear it, probably sooner than later: If you need to kill in order to have a successful hunt, you’re not a hunter, you’re a killer. Being in the woods, the reasoning goes, is an end in itself. You learn the animal’s habits and habitat. You learn how to make [...]

How not to sell oysters

wtfishdrying

Many years ago, on a soy bean press junket to Peoria (yes, my life is non-stop glamour), I met a man named Brian Wansink. Then at the University of Illinois and now at Cornell, he’s made a career out of studying how environment affects what we eat. Thanks to Wansink, we know that people drink [...]

A better bitter battler

collardhand

I hate adages that don’t make sense. Like that one about which came first, the chicken or the egg. (That does count as an adage, doesn’t it?) It’s perfectly clear that the egg came first. It was laid by something that wasn’t quite a chicken, which had been bred to something else that wasn’t quite [...]

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