{"id":4299,"date":"2011-02-21T03:05:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T10:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=4299"},"modified":"2011-02-21T03:05:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T10:05:39","slug":"monday-miscellany-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/21\/monday-miscellany-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday miscellany"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Confessions of a Spendaholic.&#8221; How to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/15\/confessions-of-a-spendaholic-how-to-curb-compulsive-spending\/\" target=\"_blank\">curb compulsive spending<\/a>. (And that&#8217;s not just for people who have closets full of shoes they never wear. Even thrift-store impulses can bite you. Ask me how I know.)\n<li>Turns out that drug-dog and bomb-dog handlers are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/babbage\/2011\/02\/animal_behaviour\" target=\"_blank\">unconsciously signaling the animals<\/a> to produce false positives. That&#8217;s aside from the ones who do it deliberately. ADDED: <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2011\/02\/21\/the-mind-of-a-police-dog\" target=\"_blank\">Radley Balko has more<\/a> on this study and others that show how cop-canine interaction is used to hurt the innocent.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/index.php\/site\/article\/10192\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Dogs must be banned from all public places!&#8221;<\/a> (Never fear: spoken with tongue firmly in cheek.)\n<li>Still, the Brits &#8212; or at least a goodly share of their government officials &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-1356388\/Villagers-outraged-police-order-protect-garden-sheds.html\" target=\"_blank\">really are amazing idiots<\/a>.\n<li>But while we&#8217;re on the subject of animals: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tonic.com\/article\/a-couple-in-california-have-pledged-their-lives-to-caring-for-unadoptable-animals\/\" target=\"_blank\">A Chance for Bliss<\/a>. Now these folks are animal heroes.\n<li>State governments <a href=\"http:\/\/classic.cnbc.com\/id\/41665142\" target=\"_blank\">are increasingly exploring gold as money<\/a>.\n<li>Every once in a while I&#8217;ll be googling about some topic and one of my old articles will pop up high among the results. Quite often, it&#8217;s an article I&#8217;ve forgotten all about, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.loompanics.com\/Articles\/humpingdog.html\" target=\"_blank\">this 2006 Loompanics piece<\/a>. Parts of it are definitely dated. But yesterday&#8217;s blog about HBGary and its creepy &#8220;spy ties&#8221; between the federal government and big money definitely make it feel relevant.\n<li>Who said that strikes by government employees were &#8220;unthinkable and intolerable&#8221;? You&#8217;ll probably never guess. But there was a time, and not so long ago, when virtually nobody thought government employees should have collective bargaining &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2011\/02\/18\/the-first-blow-against-public-employees\/fdr-warned-us-about-public-sector-unions\" target=\"_blank\">because even the biggest liberals recognized<\/a> it was unfair to taxpayers who would have to pay but would nave no seat at the table.\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Confessions of a Spendaholic.&#8221; How to curb compulsive spending. (And that&#8217;s not just for people who have closets full of shoes they never wear. Even thrift-store impulses can bite you. Ask me how I know.) Turns out that drug-dog and bomb-dog handlers are unconsciously signaling the animals to produce false positives. That&#8217;s aside from the ones who do it deliberately. ADDED: Radley Balko has more on this study and others that show how cop-canine interaction is used to hurt the innocent. &#8220;Dogs must be banned from all public places!&#8221; (Never fear: spoken with tongue firmly in cheek.) Still, the Brits&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/21\/monday-miscellany-29\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Monday miscellany<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,20,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dogs-and-cats","category-government","category-money","category-war-on-some-drugs","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}