Friday, October 30, 2020 – BigPineKey.com

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

[Feeding Key Deer Starch] Tuesday’s post about the rice cake-eating deer of Japan flies in the face of what the Key Deer Refuge people have been telling us about feeding starches to our deer. More deer die from eating plastic bags than starches in Japan. The Jap deer have been living on a diet of mostly rice cakes for many years and are as healthy as can be. If they are sick, I doubt after all these years it’s from the rice cakes. I think this example of starch not harming deer puts to rest what, now appears to be a myth of our Key deer not being able to properly digest starches. Scientist may tell us not to feed starch to the deer, but Japan’s real life example of deer fed a diet of starch proves that starch is not harmful to them.

I’m not turning my clock back on November 1 because, seriously, none of us needs an extra hour of 2020!

[Friday Joke] I Owe My Mother.
1. My mother taught me to appreciate a job well done, “If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”
2. My mother taught me religion, “You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”
3. My mother taught me about time travel, “If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week!”
4. My mother taught me logic, “Because I said so, ! that’s why.”

[Coconut Telegraph Wins Award] 2020 Best Big Pine Key Physical Therapy Award. I’m emailing you to let you know that you’ve been selected for the 2020 Best Big Pine Key Physical Therapy Award! For the next year you’ll be promoted on BestPhysicalTherapyAwards.com so anyone searching for a physical therapist in the Big Pine Key area will find you. There is only one winner in each city. You’ll also get a badge for your website, social media graphics, a certificate for the office, press release, and more. The next step is for you to claim the award here: No.
Let me know when you claim it so that I can get everything over to you,
Rich Schaffer, Awards Specialist
(Ed: Thank you, Rich, if it was a mental therapy award, I’d accept it.)

[Winners of Photo Contest] This collection is amazing. Every photo has a title. Link

[Cyber Crooks] Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking. In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services.” Link

[“Name that bird”] Kingfisher—a woodpecker that solely hunts fish. Should be called a fishpecker

[Taking Our Land] A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the Monroe County government and two property owners for an approval the county commission gave granting a road abandonment on Stock Island to the owners, but the plaintiffs have asked for rehearing on the issue. Circuit Court Judge Tim Koenig ruled the court does not have jurisdiction “because the petitioners lack standing and the extraordinary relief sought is unavailable,” he wrote in his ruling. “Since road abandonment is a legislative act, it is not proper subject of petition for an extraordinary remedy,” Koenig stated. The plaintiffs in the case, Diane Beruldsen and Aramis Ikatu, asserted the road abandonment was quasi-judicial, but one of the property owners contended it was a legislative act and the court can’t rule in the case.

[Friday Joke] Morning Grace. The visiting pastor asked an older farmer, decked out in bib overalls, to say grace for the morning breakfast. “Lord, I hate buttermilk”, the farmer began. The visiting pastor opened one eye to glance at the farmer and wonder where this was going. The farmer loudly proclaimed, “Lord, I hate lard.” Now the pastor was growing concerned. Without missing a beat, the farmer continued, “And Lord, you know I don’t much care for raw white flour.” The pastor once again opened an eye to glance around the room and saw that he wasn’t the only one to feel uncomfortable. Then the farmer added, “But Lord, when you mix them all together and bake them, I do love warm fresh biscuits. So, Lord, when things come up that we don’t like, when life gets hard, when we don’t understand what you’re saying to us, help us to just relax and wait until you are done mixing. It will probably be even better than biscuits. Amen.”

The Monroe County Department of Public Works continues to live up to their less than sterling reputation. Today the tractor with the large rotating saw blades was “working” my street. Actually, he was just driving along cutting off what seemed to be random tree branches — not ones that were close to the power lines, not ones that were hanging out over the road, just branches here and there for no discernible reason (that is when he was moving at all). From 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. he sat motionless by the side of the road in the idling tractor’s air conditioned cab. I suppose for some of that time he may have been on his lunch break, but I’ve yet to have a job that allowed me two hours for lunch, especially one that is being paid for with taxpayer dollars.

[Friday Joke] I’m so scared of being called a racist, I’ve started sending money to Nigerian scammers.

Set your clocks one hour ahead this Sunday night.

[Starch-Eating Deer] I’ve been to Nara Park in Japan and was blown away by so many deer in one place. Everyone seemed to be feeding them, but I never saw what food it was. I now find that it’s rice cakes. How come their deer can live on a diet of starch but ours can’t? They say starch will kill our deer. Or make them very sick. What’s going on? Is this more fake news?

[Hurricane Zeta] Zeta sped across the Southeast on Thursday, leaving a trail of damage and more than 2.6 million homes and businesses without power in Atlanta and beyond after pounding New Orleans with winds and water that splintered homes and were blamed for at least three deaths. A Category 2 hurricane when it hit the southeastern Louisiana coast Wednesday, Zeta was still a tropical storm late Thursday morning with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph about 100 miles northeast of Asheville, North Carolina — unusual even in a region accustomed to hurricanes and their aftermath.

[Made Me Laugh] “Gonna Be a Bear” and “Free Helicopter Ride” were hilariously funny. Thank you for including them in Friday’s CT.

[Electric scooters in Key West] Oh my. Stealth mode? You can not even hear them! You think they abide by traffic laws? Hell no! They’re as bad as the jet ski rentals and tours run by 21-year-olds that forget to stay away 300 ft from a diver down flag. Maybe a bang stick will wake them up? Imagine one of those silent scooters sneaking up behind you while going 30 mph.

[Friday Joke] A woman playing Gull hit a man nearby. He put his hands together between his legs, fell on the ground & rolled around in pain. She rushed to him and offered to relieve his pain as she was a doctor. Reluctantly he agreed. She gently took his hands away. Unzipped his pants and put her hands inside. She massaged him tenderly for a few minutes and asked, “How does it feel?”

He replied, “Feels great, but I still think my thumb is broken.”

The VW Phaeton factory in Dresden, Germany is most cool & impressive! Video

[Fake News] If the Titanic had hit the iceberg in 2020 rather than 108 years ago here’s some of the arguments against it sinking.
‘If I drink fuel, I won’t freeze.’
‘It’s dry way up here in the stern, sinking is a hoax.’
‘Only elders and non-swimmers will die.’
‘Nobody can force me to wear a life vest.’

Unfortunately, this is too believable. Lord help us.

This miscellaneous photo is somewhere in the Keys.

[Lay Face Down] Proning for Covid-19 patients. Add one tablespoon of cumin seeds and few slices of fresh ginger. Bring this to boil and reduce it to half. Strain and drink this when lukewarm. You can also add some lemon to this drink to taste. Link

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Thetis returned home to Key West on Friday, after completing a 42-day patrol to the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean. Thetis is a 270-foot famous-class cutter homeported in Key West and has a crew complement of 104. They interdicted over 8,000 pounds of illegal drugs coming in, including what we call a low-profile vessel that had almost 4,000 pounds of cocaine on board. A low-profile vessel is something similar to a cigarette boat or a race boat. It is very low, maybe only a couple of feet off the water, and are hard to detect from the sky or from the ship’s radar.

[Tariffs] ‘Big price increases.’ The probable reason for the big price increases is Trump’s tariffs. Nobody seems to understand how tariffs work. The US Govt charges countries higher import taxes (tariffs) on their goods coming into our country for sale. We in turn, raise our prices to cover the cost of the tariffs. Our government does not make any money on tariffs. It’s an added expense we have to pay for imported goods. Some people think it will help American companies compete, but we don’t have any American companies to compete against them or their low wages. So, we, the consumer, now have to pay more for imported goods.

A recent spike in COVID-19 numbers in Monroe County has prompted local health department and county officials to remind residents to not let down their guard down when it comes to wearing masks, washing hands and social distancing. As of Tuesday, there have been 2,214 reported cases in the county, including 2,168 residents, according to the Florida Department of Health. State-wide, there have been a total of 786,311 reported cases of the coronavirus, with 204 deaths.

[Good Times Ahead] US economy grew by record 33.1 percent in third quarter. Link

[Super Soldier] It’s not Sci-fi anymore. Billions of American tax dollars have flowed into the Pentagon’s Frankensteinian dream of “super-soldiers” and “Extended Performance War Fighter” programs. Not only does the EPWFP envision “injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, [and] the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings,” but as Chris Floyd in an article for CounterPunch a while back continued, “some of the research now underway involves actually altering the genetic code of soldiers, modifying bits of DNA to fashion a new type of human specimen, one that functions like a machine, killing tirelessly for days and nights on end…. mutations [that] will ‘revolutionize the contemporary order of battle’ and guarantee ‘operational dominance across the whole range of potential U.S. military employments.’”
An article in The Atlantic says about the EPWFP logo, “According to Belfiore, the images chosen to represent certain projects may also be a way of helping workers cope with the ethical gray areas of their work. “There’s a kind of gallows humor,” he said. Marcus agreed: Irreverence, or what he called “cuteness design,” can be a way to make grim things seem more palatable—like the brain drawn for the Extended Performance Warfighter Project, an attempt to use advanced genetics and neurological science to keep soldiers awake for weeks at a time.”

[Elitist] The only real problem with buying property in the Keys is the peasants ruining the area and sunsets.

Quotes from ex-Harvard Psych professor and LSD promoter Timothy Leary: “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” and “Think for yourself. Know what you are doing. Question authority.

[Retail Prices] The probable reason for the price increase is Trump’s tariffs. Nobody seems to understand how tariffs work. The US Govt charges countries higher import taxes (tariffs) on their goods coming into our country – who, in turn, raise their prices to cover the cost of tariffs. We (the USA) does not make any money on tariffs, consumers just have to pay more for their products! Some people think it will help American companies compete, but we don’t have any American companies to compete against them so we – the consumer – now have to pay more for imported goods.

The end of the lockdown has just been announced: Octemburary 54th.