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2022 February

Friday, February 18, 2022

Letters to the editor with pictures since 2002.
Published on Big Pine Key’s garbage days, Tuesdays and Fridays.

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[Public Meeting] The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hosting a public meeting to answer questions about the Big Pine Key Hydrologic Restoration Project Feb. 26 from 3 -5 p.m. Located at the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges Nature Center, 30587 Overseas Highway, Big Pine Key, the meeting will be outside on the porch deck.

The USFWS National Coastal Wetlands Grants Program awarded Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) funds to restore the natural hydrology of the Central Slough in the interior of Big Pine Key, the largest freshwater wetland in the Lower Florida Keys. The project will remove six small roads and build water control structures; two under Key Deer Boulevard and two under Watson Boulevard. Removing the roads will restore lateral freshwater flow within the Slough and the water control structures will allow natural water flow outside the roadways, manage water for the benefit of wildlife habitat, and release saltwater following hurricane storm surges to minimize local flooding to the area. The project is scheduled to begin in April.
More info Kevin Kalasz 772-205-7140 or kevin_kalasz@fws.gov

[Movies] Everyone’s an architect, artist, finance broker, interior designer or other professionals with high education. Doesn’t any movie character work at Walgreens or Winn Dixie or on construction? Can only rich, successful people have movie adventures? (They all seem to be named Alex) Moves seldom show the middle class. Hollywood forgets that the only difference between rich people and poor people is money. They all have the same problems, except money isn’t one of them
[Russia] How come NATO let the USSR take Crimea but not Ukraine?


Autism
sometimes makes people very special.  I love this story and hope you do also. Enjoy it. Video

[Unruly Passengers] What happened? Did people forget how to fly? Here’s how: Just sit down, have a drink and take a nap. It will soon be over. And keep your yap shut! Nothing you can do can change anything on that plane for the better.

[“Name that plant”] Seeing as you seem to have a resident naturalist or two reading the CT, let me ask if they know the name of this hardy plant. We call them snake plants. They don’t require much to thrive, just some dirt and rain now and then. Just break a few inches off the stalk and stick it in the ground. And the best part of all is that the deer don’t eat them!

[Friday Joke] Wife: “There is a problem with the tractor. It has water in the carburetor.”
Husband: “Water in the carburetor? That’s ridiculous”
Wife: “I’m telling you the tractor has water in the carburetor”
Husband: “You don’t even know where the carburetor is. Where’s the tractor?”
Wife: “In the pool”

NOAA predicts one foot sea-level rise by 2050.  Link

[Stupid People] The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a type of cognitive bias, where people with little expertise or ability assume they have superior expertise or ability. This overestimation occurs as a result of the fact that they don’t have enough knowledge to know they don’t have enough knowledge
[Killing Aztecs for the Lord] His Holiness may approve and allow that the wicked and rebellious, being first admonished, may be punished [tortured and murdered] and chastised as enemies of Our Holy Catholic Faith, which will be an occasion of punishment and fear to those who may be reluctant in receiving knowledge of the Truth; thereby, that the great evils and injuries they practice in the service of the Devil, will be forsaken.
[“Changing rules for live-a-boards”] The real question is, where do they take a dump? throw their garbage? and pay taxes like the rest of us?
Why the quadruple axel jump is nearly impossible to land. There’s a razor-thin margin of error for figure skaters attempting these feats (unless you’re taking performance enhancing drugs). Link
On Tuesday a contributor wrote about oil company subsidies.  More accurately, the contributor cut and pasted a screed on the issue that was written by Generation180.  FYI generation 180 is a group that advocates for the elimination of the petroleum industry.

The screed is propaganda; it intentionally tells you that your tax dollars are being paid to oil companies.  That is totally false.  The government does not pay a cent to oil companies as an incentive to produce oil.  The screed is specifically designed to make you angry at oil companies.  What is true is that the oil companies do receive certain tax breaks.  If you are in business you are very familiar with tax breaks (ie depreciation).   If you are an employee, you are familiar with tax breaks (i.e. mortgage interest deductions, deductions for medical expenses, deductions for child care, etc.) Ask yourself if you feel that you are being subsidized by Uncle Sam?

I’ve tried to watch the Olympics twice during prime time but both times it was curling…snooze. Are they kidding with curling as a sport? Checkers requires more mental skill than curling. Tidily winks–more dexterity.
[Development Guidelines] This is one of the convoluted ways the FWS uses to figure the effect development has on the Key deer:
Percent Risk(50) = 2.2e 0.58H and Additional Annual Human-Related Mortality (males plus females) = -0.65H 2 + 4.85H – 0.34.
There’s a lot more, but you get the picture. It’s probably some grad student in another state, whose never seen a Key deer, deciding what happens down here.
Moonlight kayaking guided trips benefiting the Key Deer Refuge will be resuming soon.  We have 2 on Big Pine scheduled for this spring, March 16 and April 14.  Both will run from about 6-8 p.m. You should arrive about 5:30 so we can set you up with all the gear.  Click on the link to reserve your space. Link
The virus has no greater ally than the American far right.
[Movers] We bought almost $10,000 of bed and living room furniture from Rooms To Go. First delivery: 2 dressers damaged; both back sides cracked, 1 had a hole in the side. The delivery guys damaged the wall to the the upstairs bedrooms scuffed, knicked, and a wide crack in the drywall. Second delivery replaced damaged items, but more scuffs and knicks to the wall. Dealing with customer service was useless. The second delivery was a week after the first. There was no problem with the furniture made in Vietnam. The delivery persons were the problem. He would be hard pressed to obtain a job at a fast-food restaurant.
How much radiation do TV screens put out? It must be a lot, because my kids have turned into blithering idiots in only a few years, watching the junk being broadcast
[Pretend Cops] LA had Charles Bronson. San Franscisco Clint Eastwood.

[Contamination] North Carolina Poultry Frenzy: 500 million birds and zero transparency. Now it’s not only hogs but chickens and turkeys. Link
[Glad To Be Home] I was visiting my kids in Palm Beach, Florida for a few weeks. The traffic is 5-lanes and absolutely crazy. I’ll take good ol’ 2-lane Overseas Highway any day. It’s darn nuts up there
[Coastal Cleanup] Join the Coast-love Big Pine Change Makers as we clean up the natural areas of Beach Drive & Warner Street off US 1 on February 20th from 9-12. This area was hit hard by Hurricane Irma and is an important habitat for the Endangered Key Deer and many other coastal species, so we are rolling up our sleeves and getting to work! Make sure to sign up on the event link provided to save your spot. As we will be working in an area with sensitive wildlife and vegetation, spots will be limited to avoid disturbing the ecosystem. Register with the following link & additional information on what to bring & what is provided. Link
[Captain Doom and Gloom] It really pisses me off that the stupid Olympics are on TV and replacing my favorite shows with a bunch of useless eaters doing useless stunts for useless dummies who only can dream of such garbage!! Why don’t they have a separate channel just for that mess? People are dying all over this planet and these a**holes are doing figure eights and sliding down hills like kids. Grow up people.
[Browser Tracking] Ever notice on Bing and Google when you search for anything within a few minutes you are bombarded with unsolicited ads for whatever you searched for?  Of course. Due to unforeseen issues in my household I have been doing more than my normal number of online searches in the past few months. I finally tired of the browsers tracking my every move on searches on a personal issue.  I have (it seems so far) found a solution to stop tracking.I found 5 browsers that (say) they do not track and respect/ensure search privacy. I tried all of them – they all work and in the past month I’ve been searching with the no tracking browsers I have had NO ads appear after a search.  None. I’ve culled the 5 and use 3, as 2 of the engines seemed to have internal ads and/or limited results in a search. I placed them as icons on my desktop for easy access and so far, I rotate and use one my 3 on every search.  When I have a brain fart and use B or G the ads start and remind me to pay attention. DuckDuckGo
America sure is having some bad luck. It’s almost like it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground.
[Friday Joke] A woman, cranky because her husband was late coming home again, decided to leave a note, saying, “I’ve had enough and have left you. Don’t bother coming after me” Then she hid under the bed to see his reaction.
After a short while the husband comes home, and she could hear him in the kitchen before he comes into the bedroom. She could see him walk towards the dresser and pick up the note. After a few minutes he wrote something on it before picking up the phone and calling someone, “She’s finally gone. Yeah I know, about bloody time. I’m coming to see you. Put on that sexy French nightie. I love you. Can’t wait to see you. We’ll do all the naughty things you like.” He hung up, grabbed his keys and left. She heard the car drive off as she came out from under the bed. Filled with rage and with tears in her eyes she grabbed the note to see what he wrote:
“I can see your feet. We’re out of bread. Be back in five minutes.”