Coffee and Provocation

Number One With a Bullet
Coffee is the most popular psychoactive drug in the world, and the second largest internationally traded commodity, after oil.  The U.S. drinks about 25% of the world's coffee and about 90 percent of US adults consume some form of caffeine every day.

Clothes Made in America by Americans:
The L. C. King Manufacturing Company of Bristol, Tennessee has been in the clothes making business for 100 years. What's their secret?  Simple:  they make work clothes that fit the needs and wants of the rural South, from light canvas jackets that are worn into the fields in the morning and taken off as it gets hotter in the day, to jeans and overalls that are cut for regional preferences.  And guess what?  A Japanese designer took the Pointer Jacket made by King, fiddled with a bit, and then put it out as high fashion in Japan, where they were sold for $800 a pop.  For those who want the real deal at a better price, let me suggest a visit to this web site.  Buy American from people who make it in America using American labor.

A Wolf in Kentucky:
The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources reports that a 73-pound animal that was shot as a coyote has been DNA-tested  as a wolf originating from the Great Lakes region.

Alberta is the Only Rat Free Spot in the World:
Rats have overrun the globe, with one exception: Alberta, Canada. The province has has waged a successful war on rats for 50 years. In Albert, owning pet rats is forbidden except for zoos and research institutions. The province maintains a 70-kilometer rat control zone along its eastern border which is staffed by eight professionals who poisoned, gas, or shoot any rats that are found in the No-Rat Land.

Drone the Forest:
Small drones with cameras and GPS mapping software are about to change what we know about forests, and how we map them. My bet is that we will see a sea of new species identifications once the drones are able to fly at night, sense hear, and take infrared pictures.  This will happen within 10 years.

Fifty Free Farmstead eBooks:
Because free is always a good price.

Discount Trick
Most grocery stores have rewards programs, but if you don't want to give out your personal information, or if you're at a store you don't usually shop in, just plug in "Jenny's number:" 867-5309 (you know, from the song). Most stores will already have this in their system and you'll get the club discounts without the club card.

Beyond  Chinese Dog Food
If you have ordered lamb or mutton for hotpot in Shanghai over the last four years, you might have been served rat, fox or mink, China's Ministry of Public Security says.

Ostrich Egg Globe Oldest Showing New World
A globe dating from 1504, and made out of two Ostrich egg domes glued together, appears to be oldest in the world to show both the New World and the Old. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands and the lone sentence above the coast of Southeast Asia, is “Hic Sunt Dracones,” or ‘Here be dragons’.  The ostrich egg globe appears to be the model used to cast a copper globe which was previously believed to the oldest globe showing any part of the New World, as the two globes are identical down to their smallest details, from the wave patterns on the ocean to the disproportionate size of continents, and even the typos match up.