08 November 2008

That Lottery Pick

An interesting rumor began circulating in the last couple of days: on election night, the Illinois Lottery "Pick Three" numbers were 6-6-6. Within hours, I'd heard the same thing from two different friends. As this sounded too coincidental to be true, I took a closer look.

It turned out to be extremely easy to investigate. The Illinois lottery publishes all of its results online, and you can search all the way back to 1980. With a couple of clicks, I determined that none of the draws on Tuesday November 4th included a combination of 6-6-6. Here are all of that day's picks:

11/04/2008 Evening Pick 3 8-4-5
11/04/2008 Evening Pick 4 2-7-2-0
11/04/2008 Little Lotto 02-09-21-29-30
11/04/2008 Mega Millions 10-21-23-41-55[09]
11/04/2008 Midday Pick 3 6-0-5
11/04/2008 Midday Pick 4 9-3-8-2

But take a look at the evening pick of the very next day, after Barack Obama's election:

11/05/2008 Evening Pick 3 6-6-6

Naturally, many will read some kind of significance into this. As for me, I do think it's interesting --- but I'm far more interested in probability than in numerology.

As the three lottery balls are drawn independently, the odds of getting three sixes (or any other three numbers) are .1x.1x.1, or one in a thousand. Indeed, this calculation matches the odds posted on the Illinois Lottery's website. So far this year, there have been 1160 Pick 3 or Pick 4 drawings (the only games, as far as I can tell, with balls between 0 and 9 drawn independently). By the laws of probability, there should have been only one or two 6-6-6 combinations drawn this year. In fact, there have been five. (Nov 5th, Oct 23rd, March 22nd, and Jan 16th on the Pick 3, and July 5th as part of a Pick 4.) In other words, this combination isn't as rare as you'd expect. And besides November 5, none of those other dates even comes close to corresponding with significant Obama milestones or primary victories, or good debate performances.

Further evidence that 6-6-6 isn't as unusual as you'd expect: In all of last year, there were 1364 Pick 3 or Pick 4 drawings; 6-6-6 occurred three times (again, more than the laws of probability would predict).

There will always be those who read significance into the occurrance of certain numbers. Remember the kooks who said Ronald Wilson Reagan was the antichrist, because each of his three names contained six letters? In the current case, I'm more inclined to believe that the state lottery is the province of the devil than to believe that the November 5th Evening Pick 3 signals that Barack Obama is the antichrist.

But if, on January 20th of next year, one of our goats gives birth to a kid with seven heads and ten horns, I'll make sure I publish the news here.

06 November 2008

Moving Back Down?

A week or two ago, I posted an amusing video with instructions for liberals who might be interested in moving to Canada after the election. I guess that's no longer necessary (but the video is still pretty funny, and one can only hope that our friends on the left will be dusting it off four years from now).

But that has gotten me thinking about two questions:

1) When will the liberal American ex-pats start moving back home from Canada?

and

2) Can the rest of us get to Galt's Gulch before January 20th?

04 November 2008

One Big Family

One of the best things about being Catholic is that you're not alone. Regardless of your personal family situation, you're part of a much larger family. That's really been brought home to me (in a manner of speaking) these last few days, when I've been in NYC on business. There is a Catholic church right around the corner from my hotel, and right on the way to where I'm working. It's been easy to stop in for Mass, and it's remarkable the diversity of people who are there: the business executives, the Fordham students, the young married couples with small children, the homeless man huddled in the back pew...all here. All part of this crazy family.

And the family isn't just here in this particular church building, or the one we attend back in Michigan, or anywhere else. All of us are only one slice of the family; the saints who've gone before us, and are now in heaven, are the older brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles we've heard so much about and are looking forward to meeting again. And especially during this month, we're praying for the souls in purgatory, that they can be speeded along their way to that family reunion as well.

I think it was James Joyce who said the best description of the Catholic church is "Here comes everybody." And it's hard to think of a pair of days that illustrate that better than November 3 and 4 do. Today is the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, one of the most prominent reformers at the Council of Trent. He grew up in the aristocracy, became a cardinal archbishop at the age of 22, and his uncle was a pope. He lived a life of outstanding holiness, and cleaned out many of the abuses in the 16th century church. And yesterday, November 3, we celebrated the feast of St. Martin de Porres --- a contemporary of Charles Borromeo, but living in a social situation which couldn't have been more different. He was the illegitimate mixed-race son of a Spanish nobleman and a young black freed slave in Lima, Peru. He grew up in abject poverty, and lived a life of austerity and menial labor (which he regarded as a tremendous blessing, because all work is a participation in God's own creation).

November 3 and 4. Two men, alive at the same time, on different sides of the world, in entirely different circumstances...and yet both are my older brothers who I admire and who have a lot to teach me.

I posted the following video some time back, but it somehow seems especially appropriate to recommend it again today:

02 November 2008

Sure Enough...

Like I was saying yesterday about Zogby's Friday night tracking result being unreliable unless substantiated by an additional day:

After a strong day of polling for Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday, Democrat Barack Obama experienced a strong single day of polling on Saturday, retaining a 5.7 point advantage that is right at the edge of the margin of error of the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll.

But as bleak as the situation looks for the GOP at this point, I'm still not prepared to concede defeat until the votes are counted.

01 November 2008

That Zogby Result

By now many of you have heard the news that John Zogby's tracking showed John McCain up by a point in last night's interviews --- which narrowed the gap to about five points in the three day roll. As willing as I am to grasp at straws at this point, and as hopeful as I know this news makes many of you feel (except you, J.D.), I need to throw a bit of cold water on the story.

There is one glaringly obvious fact that was missing from Zogby's press release: Last night was a Friday. And Halloween.

What difference does this make? All the difference.

As many of you know, in my day job I am a political scientist and public opinion researcher (sad to say, but farming does not pay the family's bills). Before going into business for myself, I spent many years working for a Republican political polling firm. In the last three or four weeks leading up to every election day, we would be in the field nearly every night conducting tracking interviews.

Every night, that is, except Friday and Saturday. Well, occasionally Saturday. But we almost never interviewed on Friday. And during the rest of the year, when a regular poll was in the field, we almost never interviewed on a Friday night. There is a simple reason for this: the kind of person who is home, and willing to sit around answering a series of questions about politics, on a Friday night, is...well...not all that representative of the electorate as a whole.

And then there's Halloween. No matter what day of the week Halloween fell on, we tended to regard that night's interviews with skepticism. If we didn't have to be in the field that night, we didn't interview on Halloween. Simply put: many young and single people are out at parties that night. Go to any big or not-so-big city on Halloween night, and you'll find lots of twenty and thirty-somethings out and about, dressed in bizarre costumes. You'll also find, pretty much anywhere in America, single parents out taking their kids door-to-door. Who's home to answer the phone when the pollster calls? Disproportionately (and that's the key word), married parents of young children (home to answer the door for trick-or-treaters while the other parent takes the kids door to door), or single people with no social life, or empty nesters whose children have grown.

A pollster can weight his sample all he wants to make it representative in terms of age, gender, race, and partisanship. But when the available sample on a certain night is fundamentally skewed on certain other dimensions, that's something more difficult to weight into proportion --- assuming the pollster is even able to identify those other biases in his sample that night.

I'm not saying John Zogby shouldn't have interviewed last night. Heck, we interviewed on Halloween (at least when it wasn't a Friday) at my firm. Rather, what I'm suggesting is that there's a strong possibility last night's sample is fundamentally unrepresentative of the electorate as a whole. I'd love to be proven wrong. But until Zogby reports a similar result in Saturday's interviews, I'm going to remain highly skeptical.

29 October 2008

Lambs to the Slaughter

The first batch of lambs went in to the butcher last night. As long-time readers of the blog know, we had a bumper crop of lambs born this spring; the 8 ewes had 16 lambs between them. One succumbed to disease and one was killed by a dog, but we had 14 survivors --- and they've been extremely healthy. I credit several factors for this year's success:

1) A clean, brand-new pasture with no parasite build-up from previously grazing animals;

2) Climate that is more similar to our flock's native Iceland than the swelteringly humid Illinois summers we've had;

3) An excellent barn, providing better shelter, especially to newborn lambs;

4) Mineral feeders always kept full and sheltered in the barn --- back in Illinois, they frequently ran out of mineral or it was ruined out in the pasture;

5) A switch from rain water (in Illinois, collected in tanks from building run-off) to iron-rich hard well water.

Yesterday afternoon, Scooter and I rounded up the whole flock and secured them in the barn. I then backed my old 1984 Ford Bronco 4x4 into the barn, put the seats down, and spread a tarp in the back. One by one, I selected the largest male lambs and hoisted them into the back; one of the children stood guard at the truck's tailgate to ensure we had no escapees. We managed to fit seven large male lambs, plus the yearling female who was rejected by her mother and proved too small to be bred last fall (she also had a lousy set of horns, another reason to cull her). And to the great joy of Homeschooled Farm Girl, we also loaded up Biscuits (the pathetic goat kid who was so stupid, he never learned to drink water from a bucket and had to be bottle-watered his whole life).

So, down the highway we went, NPR on the radio, and Scooter the Amazing Wonderdog perched on the passenger seat with me for the ride. Actually, we deliberately avoided highways and made the 11 mile trip almost exclusively on deserted country roads. This proved to be a wise decision, as I had nothing to separate the testosterone-laden back of the SUV from the passenger compartment. Biscuits in particular seemed to be squeezing the last moments of trouble from his miserable life, repeatedly trying to climb onto the truck's console and into my lap. I shoved him back each time, and each time he again stuck his face up to my neck and tried to nibble my collar. Had we been on a busier road, driving at high speed, I probably would've caused several accidents.

Finally, after one especially firm shove, Biscuits waded through the ovine hoard and made his way to the back of the truck. My first reaction was relief, but this proved premature. After smashing his long horns against the ceiling several times (destroying the headliner), I then noticed him trying to butt his head through the window on the tailgate. Being an old truck, we haven't been able to latch that window in years. Each time he tried opening the window, I slammed on the brakes to force all the animals to move forward. This only worked, however, as long as the truck was rolling. At the next stop sign, Biscuits seized his opportunity --- and disappeared out the window.

Disgusted, I slammed the truck into Park and got out to look for him. He'd hopped into a ditch, but appeared too stunned to figure out what to do next. I easily caught him, without even needing to get Scooter (I brought him along in case of a massive jail break). Once Biscuits was again loaded in the truck, we were fortunately only a mile or so from the butcher. We arrived without further incident (apart from complete destruction of the headliner).

This butcher, unlike the one we used in Illinois, has an extensive set of holding pens in a barn out back. At first I thought this was wonderful, as it meant I could bring the animals the evening before --- rather than loading them up and driving early in the morning on the day of slaughter. However, once we began unloading the animals, the butcher and I immediately grew concerned: their gates are set up to contain commercial-sized meat animals. Standard breeds of sheep would've been fine, but we never would've used gates like these to contain Icelandics on our farm. We managed to get all of them into a pen far in the back; even if the lambs had worked really hard and gotten through a gate, there were two additional sets of gates they'd also need to negotiate to get totally loose. Also working in our favor: several members of the flock were too big to squeeze through, and because they were in a strange place we knew they'd all stick together. Plus, dusk was closing in and they'd want to stay in a shelter.

Even so, I worried about my flock last night and even considered driving over to check on them. These were our biggest animals, and represent hundreds of pounds of meat that would be literally impossible to replace on the open market. There was a busy highway not far from the butcher, and I imagined my little flock wandering onto it in the night. Funny how, even when the animals are within hours of being slaughtered, a shepherd can't help worring about their safety and well-being. In the end, I decided to entrust them to the intercession of St Francis of Assisi, and told myself to get a good night's sleep. This proved to be a good decision; I called over this morning, and they confirmed everything was alright. All the same, next time, I will bring the animals in at 8am on the day of slaughter.

It was a little strange last night, securing the barn and seeing such a reduced flock. I don't exactly miss the lambs we took in, but it was an odd feeling to see so many fewer. A little sad. But those feelings evaporated this morning when I put hay out for the remaining flock, and saw how much easier it was for the smaller lambs to get at it now. We'll give those little guys a couple more weeks to put on weight, and then take them in at the same time I pick up the meat from the first batch.

Yummmmm. I can hardly wait to enjoy some Icelandic lamb chops again.

23 October 2008

Time to Play Ball

Very moving:



H/T: Baseball Crank.

20 October 2008

Shorn Again

Yesterday was sheep shearing day again on the farm. "Mrs. Lisa, the Sheep Shearing Lady" (as the kids call her) was up here from Indiana for the weekend; she drives a huge circuit across the region, hitting a nearby flock on Saturday and then us on Sunday. (As posted elsewhere, we don't typically like to do work on Sundays, but in this case we didn't have much of a choice --- you need to get the sheep shorn when the shearing lady is available.)

We got 25 beautiful fleeces from our flock, ranging from the very small (a couple of our undersized triplet lambs) to the very large. In all, we have 14 lambs and 11 mature adults. Apart from the fleeces, shearing day gives us an excellent close-up look at each individual member of the flock. We won't be keeping any lambs as breeders this year (our flock is plenty large), but under normal circumstances this is a good chance to identify the best-conforming animals.

It's also a time to identify definite culls. One male had a beautiful set of horns, had reached a reasonable size, and had a nice fleece; until shearing day, I'd been thinking of possibly keeping him for breeding next year. But with his fleece off, we immediately spotted a big problem: he has a significant hernia on his belly. He will be among the very first to go to the butcher.

Today, the whole flock was out again in the pasture, enjoying the fall sunshine and 60 degree temps with their coats off. Here they are, enjoying some windfall pears that I'd tossed over the fence for them. (This picture also gives a good look at how expansive the new pasture is.)

16 October 2008

Moving On Up

If John McCain somehow manages to pull off an election upset, that will no doubt be the final straw for a whole lot of liberals. They'll finally make that move to Canada they've been threatening for so many years! In that vein, someone has put together this very funny instructional video:



Though I do wonder, with Conservatives winning in the recent elections up there, if any Republicans might be looking North with longing eyes this November...

15 October 2008

Going with Goats

We really like our dairy goats, and enjoy eating the male offspring, but Icelandic lamb has been our primary meat of choice.

That said, the New York Times has put together a great story about a former cattleman who has gone into meat goats big-time. He was an early pioneer in the humane treatment of livestock; like us, he believes that the better an animal is treated, the better it will end up tasting.

We don't believe animals have "rights," but we do have a duty to exercise responsible stewardship over them. And part of that responsible stewardship means letting a sheep or a goat glorify God by allowing it to behave in the way God designed it to behave. Remarkable how when you allow animals to behave in the way they were designed...they end up having all the wonderful flavor and nutrition that their Designer intended them to have.

Sorry for that digression. The goat herder profiled in the Times doesn't express this kind of philosophical argument for humane animal treatment, but his story is still very instructive for anyone contemplating raising livestock for meat:

He and Nicolette Hahn Niman, an environmental lawyer, were married five years ago, and now they are raising what they hope will be the best-tasting animals around. They have a handful of premier cattle that fatten only on pasture and a flock of traditional turkey breeds they personally chauffeured from Kansas to Bolinas last spring. Mr. Niman also has an organic pig project going in Iowa.

But he hopes goat will be the cornerstone of his comeback. That’s in part because he has more of them around, and because he sees a wide-open market for pristine, pasture-raised goat meat. The guy is, after all, a businessman.

“I don’t need to get 10 percent of the market anymore,” he said. “I just want to be the best.”

Chefs on both coasts are fast discovering his goat meat, although it is still available only in limited amounts, under the name BN Ranch.

In June, Mr. Niman stopped by Eccolo in Berkeley with a piece of shoulder, a loin, a leg and a rack of ribs. The chef and owner, Christopher Lee, now breaks down one or two of the 30-pound goat carcasses a week.

“It was succulent,” Mr. Lee said. “It was mild. It was just perfect.”

Like other chefs who have begun to cook with goat, Mr. Lee predicts a bright future for the meat.