There is Never a Shortage of Morons

      Just a couple snippets for today. 
      I don't know how many of you heard about this one, but police in Wisconsin are going to be pressing charges against five men who put a T-shirt on a deer.  The five men set a trap for the deer.  Once it was captured they wrestled it to the ground before putting a T-shirt on it.  They shot a video of the whole incident and posted it on Youtube.  Morons.  I have a sneaking suspicion that beer was involved. 
      Police in Oak Creek Wisconsin were getting calls from people who said they saw a deer wearing a yellow T-shirt (I saw the related video and it looked more like orange to me - hunter's blaze orange). 
      It was after these reports that the police were alerted to a video of the event posted on Youtube.  It was entitled something like "How to Put a T-shirt on a Deer."  Youtube has removed the video, but below is footage from it on a news report. 

      The local police were able to identify the men in the video, and will be pressing charges.  Here is a newspaper report from the area where this happened. 
      It's people like this who work real hard to disprove evolution, because they sure aren't getting any smarter. Truth is way stranger than fiction.  I suppose that years from now if we try to retell this story to someone they will think that we're giving them a load of bull. 

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     I have had this blog for a few weeks now and it's interesting to see some of the stats.  I have visitors of course from the US, but also Canada, England, Russia, Venezuela, Austria, the Ukraine, and Germany.  In fact of all the countries outside of the US most of the readers come from Germany.  Because there are so many visitors from Germany, to you I say, "Miigwich." (das bedeutet "Danke" in der Odschibwischen Sprache).  Die folgende Botschaft ist für euch.  Vielen Grüße an meine langverlorenen, Deutschen Brüdern und Schwestern!  Von der Familie meiner Mutter stamme ich ja doch aus den Amerikanischen Indianer - bestimmt von der Odschibwishen Leute (Ojibwe), aber meine Vorfahren der Familie meines Vaters sind aus Deutschland in die US eingewanderten.  Unsre Nachname in Deutschland war “Von Stettin.”
      Ich weiß nicht wie ihr meinen Blog gefunden habt, oder warum ihr so oft ihn leset, aber bin ich froh, daß ihr meinen Blogspot besucht.  Hoffentlich findet ihr ihn informativ und unterhalteten.  Danke - Miigwich - für eure Lesenschaft. 

A New Ice Age, or Global Warming?  

Science Fridays

      We're almost half way into April here in Minnesota, and we're having another week of winter storm warnings.  We had a full fledged blizzard today in the northern part of the state, and this was day three of the white crap for the southern part of the state.  It makes people wonder, "where is this global warming that we've been promised?  Are we experiencing global warming, or are we entering a new ice age?"  
      Let's start to answer that with a few facts about ice ages.  According to the paleo-geologists the earth has undergone several of them, but most of them were during the Hadean geologic eon.  There was another big one at the end of the Devonian, one really big one at the end of the Permian, and another at the end of the Triassic.  The Cretaceous meteor impact caused not just one, but five ice ages.  The first one happened right away as a result of the sunlight being blocked from the Earth.  However, the meteor hit the planet hard enough that the Earth got knocked out of its orbit.  We now orbit farther from the sun than we used to.  The Earth will never again be as warm as it was during the Paleozoic or Mesozoic eras.  The ice caps are here to stay, and they will occasionally spill over into the lower latitudes.  I've never read anything about the causes for the moons orbit to be farther out than it was before, but this might be the reason for that too.
      A second reason for the frequent ice ages since the meteor impact is how the continents split up and bashed back together again.  North and South America used to be separated, and so was Africa from Eurasia.  Also Africa and South America used to be connected (Gondwana), and Europe used to be connected in a continent called Laurentia.  Both Laurentia and Gondwana split along the Mid Atlantic Ridge (some think this is due to the meteor impact, but I'm not one of them).  Then Africa slammed into Eurasia, and North and South America collided after that.  Before all this massive continental movement, equatorial  and tropical water currents circled the globe unhindered.  The polar currents stayed near the poles as well.  If our ocean temperatures were color coded, the oceans would have been banded and would have looked like Jupiter or Saturn.
      After the closing of the east-west Ocean currents the ocean's water then flowed in a polar to tropical pattern.  This brought the cold polar waters south, thus cooling the planet.  As the cycle now goes, every so often things warm up so much that the polar ices begin to melt, bringing more very cold water toward the tropics and the Earth cools down.  Then an ice age sets in and the earth drys out because so much water is locked into ice.  With less cold water making its way to the tropics, the earth warms up again, and the continental glaciers recede.  This is a repeating cycle.  Sometimes it is a mild cooling/warming, and sometimes it is quite severe.  The last cycle of cooling began in what is called the "mini-Ice Age." 
       I have an excellent ancient history reference book that is called "Conquest by Man."  It was published in 1954, and was written in Germany by Paul Herrmann.  Its German title is "Sieben Vorbei und Acht Verweht"  It covers the history of man from the late Mesolithic to the Age of Exploration.  Herrmann used many resources for his work, including the logs of ships' captains.
      It is because of one such captain's log, that we can pinpoint for a certainty the year that the Min-Ice Age began.  In the summer of 1342 Ivar Bardsen sailed to the Western Settlements of Greenland.  He saw that the settlements were empty, and all that was there were the livestock of sheep, cattle, goats, and horses grazing in the fields.  There was no sign of anybody there.  They checked on the Skraeling settlements to see if the Greenlanders had been captured, but the Skraeling settlements were empty too.  Bardsen states that they returned to the Western Sttlements and took all the livestock they could and killed the rest for mercy's sake, as they wouldn't have survived the coming winter.

      Previous to this the Greenlanders were able to grow enough hay for farmsteads that had an average of 350 stalls.  That's a lot of hay.  Besides this they even grew their own grain.  In one year's time the climate cooled so fast that they could no longer grow the grain, nor even enough hay to last the winter.  They abandoned their settlement.  They didn't go to the other settlements though, because according to the Bishop of Greenland (who finally visited his bishopric) "the Western Settlements had gone the way of the Skraeling."  He went on to describe how they dressed like the Skraelings, and worshiped their gods, and although they still spoke Norse, they also spoke the language of the Skraeling.  I therefore conclude that they left Greenland with the Skraelings (note: these Skraelings were not the Eskimos/Inuits who inhabited these regions later, but were an Annishinaabe speaking people closely related to the Naskapi). We know that 1342 was the year they abandoned the colony, because the animals were still alive and grazing in the fields when Ivar Bardsen got there in early August. 
      What lessons can we learn for today from this?  The Mini-Ice Age began very quickly and set in in just a year or so.  We know that up until that time the Earth's climate was warm enough that you could grow an immense pile of hay and even grow grain in Greenland.  Today you still can't even grow a crop of hay there, much less any grain.  Are we experiencing global warming? (despite the very late arrival of spring this year - that is still normal too - in 1988 we had snow up here on May 10th and 11th)  Yes, the earth is warming.  Also, if it can cool down rapidly in about a year it could get warm AGAIN just as fast.  Oh no!  Should we panic?  No, these cycles are normal.  The "Chicken Littles" are squawking about how we need to walk to work, turn off our heaters and bundle up as we eat cold food in the dark to prevent this, because we are "colder than normal" they say.  Well, according to this recent, recorded history (1342) we haven't even seen true normal.  It's still too cold to grow grain or even a good crop of hay in Greenland.  When we can do that again, then we will have reached a historically normal climate. 
      So again I ask, "should we panic?"  No, we should be rejoicing because the Mini-Ice Age is ending.  I'm sure that the people at the end of the last major Ice Age didn't panic and get despondent when things warmed up.  I think that they were darned happy about it. 
      If it gets warm enough to grow grain in Greenland again, what would we be able to grow up here in Minnesota?  Right now it might be a good idea to invest in some land in Greenland. 

Taxes Rain Supreme in Maryland

      I thought our taxes in Minnesota were bad.  The greedy politicians in Maryland are instituting a "Rain Tax."   Yes, you read that right.  When I first read about it I said, "Are you ......... serious?"  I wouldn't blame you for feeling the same way.  As ridiculous as it sounds, starting on July 1st residents in many parts of Maryland will be taxed on the rain that falls on their roofs, patios, driveways, and sidewalks. 
      The cause of this tax is due to some demands from the EPA.  My good friends (sarcasm) at the EPA, the ones who were such a major and constantly rising cost to my business that we couldn't afford to keep the doors open anymore.  Now the product and service we provided is done cheaply by companies in China and other places where there either is no EPA or their environmental rules are just ignored.  Enough of that personal rant.  What they did in Maryland is demanded that there be no more rain  run off into the Chesapeake Bay.  They demanded that the State of Maryland build a $14 billion dollar facility to catch all the rain water and get it all into the ground water tables, and not into the Bay.
      Maryland can afford this facility as much as you or I could afford a joyride on a space ship to the moon.  Therefore the government of Maryland decided to pass that cost on to others.  They couldn't pass the cost onto the one responsible for the rain.  Taking God to court, or fining Him doesn't work to well.  I suppose they could have tried to get the money out of churches, since they are supposed to be Christ's possession,... but so many churches today in mainline "churchianity" don't even believe what's in the Bible, that it would be too hard for government laymen to know which churches are really His.  So they went with plan B.  They are going to tax the people who get rained on.
     They will base this tax on how much rain falls per square footage of residents' roofs, driveways, sidewalks, and patios.  The homeowners will be assessed by information from satellite photos. 

If you seriously thought I was kidding about this, here's a protest against the tax

      People can avoid this tax if they build their own containment systems so that no rain runs away from their property.  They would have to catch and hold all the rain until it trickled down into the ground water.  If they do that, you know what's going to happen, don't you?  Their basements will either flood or collapse.  And if they're really lucky another government agency, the US Department of Forestry (when they're not busy lying to children about "Truffala trees) can declare their property a "wet land," and fine them, force them to move (but first pay to have their buildings demolished and removed and have the ground sanitized by a hazardous waste clean up crew), or both. 
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     There are some other bizarre tax laws already on the books.  Here are a few: 

In Colorado they have a tax on what they call non-essential food packaging in restaurants, fast food joints and C-stores.  This mean napkins are taxed.  I guess you have to bring your own napkins from home.  Cups for soda and coffee are ok, but not the lids.  Lids are taxed. 

People in Indiana are taxed for labor and design of custom made costumes (for Halloween, partys, and historical reenactments.   

In Kentucky you are taxed on candy that does not contain flour in it. 

Maine has a complicated boat sales and service tax   You are exempt if you are non-resident and take your boat out of state and don't ever bring it back.  If non-residents bring the boat back to Maine for any reason they pay 40% of the tax.  If you are a Maine resident you are taxed full no matter what you do with the boat.  They must hate boats there, not to mention their residents. 

In the state of New York you are taxed for visiting a haunted house.  And in The Big Apple you are taxed about 9 cents with a prepared food tax if you by your bagels pre-sliced.  That's 9 cents per bagel. 

In Washington since the 1960's they have had a dance tax for any place where dancing is available.   

Something is Amiss in the Bat Cave

      You've heard of the phrase "He's got bats in his belfry."  On the eastern seaboard that phrase could become as out dated as "you sound like a broken record."  That's because the bats out there are in trouble - real trouble. 
      You might be thinking, "That's good.  I hate bats.  They creep me out.  They fly around my head and they'll get caught in my hair and bit me.  And they carry rabies." 
      Well, the truth is they fly above your head because mosquitoes, gnats, sandflies, and other blood sucking biting bugs fly above your head.  The biting bugs are there because they are attracted to the heat rising from your body, and the carbon dioxide you exhale.  When you notice a bat flying around your head, don't panic. Just stand still a moment and let him eat the bugs that want to eat you.  The bat will disperse the bugs and leave to go after them. 
      The problem they have is called White Nose Syndrome.  It started in the northeast US, and has now moved south through the caves system, and is now affecting the bats in the south east.  The entire eastern seaboard is infected.  As much as 90 to 95 percent of some species have perished because of this disease.  Some formerly common species of bats are about to go completely extinct. There is already a huge bat shortage in the region. 
      The disappearance of this many bats will have devastating effects.  For one thing, bats eat a huge amount of bugs.  Bugs spread disease.  Bugs eat crops.  It is estimated that due to a shortage of bug eating bats, there could be a loss of 22 billion dollars a year to east coast farmers. 
      The causes of White Nose Syndrome is not a bacteria or virus.  It is a white fungus.  This fungus attacks bats while they are sleeping in hibernation.  The fungus damages their wings, and gets into the bats' noses and respiratory systems.  That's not what kills them though.  The fungus disrupts their hibernation and they wake up off and on throughout the winter when there are no bugs to eat.  The bats basically starve to death. 

Bats affected by the fungus

Geomyces Destructans; the fungus responsible

      Unlike the mass deaths of honey bees, this one can't be blamed on pesticides, nor can it be blamed on Monsanto (like the pesticide resistant weeds that have accidentally been created due to unintentional genetic contamination). This one can't even be blamed on global warming, as the offending fungus doesn't do well in warmer weather (anything above 68 F).  It can thrive in temperatures as low as 39 F, the temperature of an average cave in the wintertime.  
      The Joker, Riddler, Penguin, or Catwoman might think they can hurt Batman, but they never really do.  He always wins in the end.  But White Nose Syndrome, that's his real nemesis. 

Adapting to a Different World

      The people who came to the New World had a lot of adjustments to make.  They had to get used to an almost entirely different diet.  Some of them had to get used to new types of clothing, or at least new materials for their clothes.  They had to get used to a world that had very few roads, compared to all the roads they had in Europe, some of which dated back to the Roman times.  Actually there were roads here that predated the Roman roads by millennia.  These were the rivers, but that meant they had to get used to a new form of transportation; the canoe.  Oh sure they did build roads to and from their cities and towns, but these were nothing like what they were used to in the Old World. 
      Clothingwise, especially on the far reaches of the frontier these newcomers saw that their European style clothes didn't work the best out in the wild.  Many of them began to wear Breech cloths, leather leggings, and moccasins, while retaining their coats, weskits, and long shirts. 

 A Longhunter wearing Leather leggings, moccasins and a loin cloth

      Those of us whose ancestry here dates back to the arrival of the Solutreans during the last glacial maximum had a few things to get used to with their arrival too.  The Natives began to wear the traditional long shirts of the Europeans, and their wool jackets were quite coveted too.  Of course we like their guns, and their iron kettles and copper boilers.  There was also the need to get used to them putting in all those darn roads.  Among the native people there were a few sizable towns, especially among the Iroquois, Huron, Susquehanna, and Cherokee, in their walled villages.  These Europeans though, they were crazy.  They crowded their cities with so many people it was like they were stacking them in like cordwood.  Their diseases weren't too fun to get used to either.  Foodwise, there was milk and all of its products, such as cheese and butter.  That's not easy for a lactose intolerant people.  Whiskey, rum, and the other fire waters (Ishkode waboo) were a bad addition too.  Then there was wheat (bakwezhiganamin) and all that could be made from it. 
      For the European out in the deep woods they had to get used to eating what we had available out there.  They learned to eat manoomin (wild rice), mandanamin (corn/maize), zinziibaakwad (maple sugar), maskigamin (cranberries), miinan (blueberries) and lots of venison (waawaashkeshi-weyaas).  If they would have been caught eating deer meat in the Old country they could have been hung or at least imprisoned long enough to die from the dysentery in the prison.  Now they were eating it all the time.  They also learned how to eat squash and pumpkins, and while on the road they ate that horrid travel food, pemmican, just like the natives did.  Pemmican is such a horrible tasting travel food that it makes discount, generic Slim Jims seem like gourmet cuisine. 
      Sometimes they took the recipes from the native cooks just like they were, while at other times they mixed the new ingredients with some of their own foods.  The voyageurs and the long hunters did this the most often.  Unfortunately for those of us today, they had no imagination whatsoever when it came to naming their concoctions.  The simple recipe below was named by them "Corn & Grease."  It's actually really good, despite the unappetizing name.  If anyone has a better name to give it, then please leave a comment and do so. 

      Corn & Grease  

Fry up a pound of bacon.  Pull it from the pan and cut it up into smaller pieces (dice it). Remove some of the bacon grease if you want to. 
Chop up a medium onion and fry them till they are lightly carmelized.
Drain and add one can of hominy to the pan (no, the voyageurs and the Longhunters didn't have canned hominy, but unless you want to start with dried hominy and soak it overnight and boil it for a million hours, use the canned stuff). 
Add a bag of dried cranberries (your own or craisins). 
Put the bacon back and heat it all till it's hot. 
Dinner is served. 

      It's tasty, and hearty.  The cranberries kind of cut the grease and impart a little sweetness.  The ultra-bland hominy mellows it all out and takes on all the other flavors, and how can you go wrong with bacon? 

The Attacks of the Tax

      With the deadline for taxes coming in just a few days, I thought I would ponder the very concept of taxation.  Taxes are never enjoyed (except by those who get to collect them), but are rather  endured.  Rebellions and full out revolutions have been caused by them.  There seems to be a magic endurance level, which if exceeded those being taxed go berserk.  Therefore that is called excessive taxation.
      Taxes are in a unique club of two things from which you can't escape - taxes and death.  That makes sense, because taxes are almost as old as death.  That particular profession which is often called "the oldest profession" actually isn't the oldest, for the tax collector was the oldest profession.  I'm pretty sure that "employees" of the 2nd oldest profession had their wages (or services) taxed by those of the true oldest profession.
      Throughout history, the tax collector was disliked absolutely hated, and they were rarely invited around for dinner.  That's why people were so shocked when Jesus attended one of their banquets, and even chose one of them to be an apostle (Matthew did have to quit his job to become one though).  The highly religious, nose-in-the-air Pharisees of Roman era Israel were certain that a tax collector could not ever go to heaven.  Back in the day hillbillies would shoot at "revenuers" who were coming to shut down their stills.
      The Boston Tea Party, and eventually the American Revolution was a reaction of the British Colonies here to being taxed.  Up until that point they hadn't been taxed at all.  That was the basic policy England had.  The colonies wouldn't be burdened with taxes in order to grow and become successful.  Once they had become successful, though they were to be taxed just like all the other British citizens.  By the early 1750's the colonies were just about successful enough for the British government to start thinking about introducing a tax or two to these overseas citizens.  When a young British Colonel in the colonies tried to make a name for himself and attacked a French fort (very unsuccessfully), and subsequently brought the Seven Years War to North America, the idea of taxing the British colonial citizens was firmly clinched in the minds of Parliament (Oh Colonel Washington, what hast thou done?).

 This is how successful Colonel Washington's attack on Fort DuQuesne was.

The colonies weren't angry about excessive taxes.  They were angry about having any taxes at all.  Previously they had no taxes at all, and their brethren in England had to bear the burden of it all for them.  It began with a tax on legal documents (which went over like a pregnant pole-vaulter), then they tried a tax on tea which was also a failure.  The spokesmen for the Colonies said that if they were to be taxed like any other British citizen then they should have a representative or two in Parliament (at least in the House of Commons) like any other British citizen, and that member of Parliament should be me.  Washington actually fancied being a member of the House of Lords, whereas the others would have merely liked to have been in the House of Commons.  "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." (It's ironic that I quoted a British band, The Who, for this)  Mad King George, who went through many bouts of insanity, completely rejected their requests for Parliamentary representation. 

      Taxes not only brought on the Revolution, but the problem of taxes is what created the United States as we know it.  After the Treaty of Paris, thus ending the war, the former colonies (the southern ones - the six northern colonies remained loyal and never joined in the Revolution, and became the provinces of Canada) became thirteen separate nations.  Each one had their own taxes on imports, or tariffs.  In the summer of 1787 representatives from each nation-state met to create a free trade agreement (Traders had to pay a tariff to bring goods across what today would be state lines - if you had to get something from Vermont to Boston, for instance, that could be quite expensive).  They came back instead with a series of documents that dissolved the individual nationhood status of the former rebellious colonies, and created one single nation out of them all.  The common people were glad to get a Constitution and Bill of Rights out of the deal, but they were still a little miffed about losing their individual nationhood status.  Oh well.
      Taxes were the first order of business for the new government.  It was a lack of taxes that became the final push to unify all the separate nations in the first place.  None of these nations had paid on their war debt to France.  Their next step was to figure out who they could tax to pay for it.  If they taxed the populous cities they might have a new revolution.  They settled on taxing the grain farmers from the Hudson River Valley and from western Pennsylvania.  Shipping grain was expensive, but converting that grain to whiskey made shipping easier and cheaper.  A nine cent per gallon tax was imposed on whiskey.  That might not sound like much, but a single penny then would buy you a night's stay at an inn, a meal, and a half dozen ales.  Today that would be the equivalent of about $100 or so.  This tax then was the equivalent of about $900 per gallon.  These grain farmers were intended to bear the entire burden of the US debt to France.  Again with the visual; that went over like a pregnant pole-vaulter.  These farmers simply couldn't pay this tax as the tax was much higher than the worth of the whiskey.  President Washington sent a regiment up there under "White Horse" Harry Lee (grandfather of Robert E.) to collect.  There wasn't really anything to collect, but he came back from the campaign, having victoriously crushed the "rebellion."
      In the broad scope of things these incidents are considered modern events.  The first taxes were in goods and services for the most part, as money hadn't even been invented yet.  Although the first cities, such as Asikli Hoyuk and Catal Hoyuk,  were somewhat commune like, those who grew food would have to plant extra to put into public storage.  Those who were craftsmen were taxed in their crafts.  They would spend time making a government building, make extra beakers for the king, extra chairs, extra carts, or extra chamber pots - whatever.  Over time the government decided that they had plenty enough chamber pots so they had to figure out a more universal mode of collecting.  "When you make a chamber pot, and you trade it, you have to give us some of what you trade it for."  they said.  Sometimes what they traded the camber pots for wasn't something the government wanted either.  So initially jewelry became an accepted medium of trade (which the Norse did right up through the end of the 1200's - they traded with rings), and then it was finally coins.

      Coins were the normal medium of trade and the normal form of taxation right up to the present, but goods and services prevailed in places and times of economic depression.  The tithings of Old Testament Israel were really a series of taxes.  There was Temple tax, Priest tax, and some other tithe.  On top of that besides the required tithe/tax, there was the free will tithe.  For that you paid however much you wanted to pay, much like the collection plate in church is supposed to be today.  In all the required tithes added up to about 30% of a man's income.  The people of Israel told Samuel one day that they wanted a king.  They were like, "The people of all the other countries think we're weird because we don't have a king.  Some of them don't even want to trade with us, because they think we're so weird.  Could we please have a king like all the other countries?"  Samuel flew into a tirade, and explained to them that a king would tax them even more - above that of the required tithes.  "They will take your sons and your daughters and your horses and the food off your tables."  They didn't listen.
      In Anglo-Saxon England, money was scarce, so once again people were taxed in mostly goods and services (the Church got most of the coins).  Instead of a tax to buy a military, every village had its couple weeks of service, wherein they would send a specified number of men to serve in the "Fyrd," the standing army.  The village blacksmith provided their weapons, and the village storehouse provided their men's food for while they were gone.  Government building projects were accomplished in the same way.

      Does knowing all this make paying your taxes any easier?  No, but at least you know who to blame. 

A Truffala Tree; Really? 

      There is a public service announcement playing on TV that is just heinous.  What makes it especially wrong is that it is put out by the U.S. Forestry Service.  I don't know if you've seen the ad, but it begins with an animation sequence that is out of the world of Dr. Seuss, from "Horton Hears a Who" I think.  Then the announcer asks, "Have you ever seen a Truffala Tree?  There is a place where you can find lots of them - the forest!"   By this time I either hurry up and hit the mute, or my ears automatically close off, as my brain refuses to hear any more.

      Unfortunately though, I have heard the remainder of the ad before.  The announcer continues to talk about how there are many things you can see in the forest, how it's such a great place and you must go visit it some time.  While this is being said, the animation has a lot of Dr. Seuss type creatures are running around, building pyramids with themselves, and singing in harmony.  This is what you will see if you pull yourselves away from your computer games, and get off your dead keester and go out to the woods for a change.

      Then of course they have a web site to go visit, so you can learn how to go outside (to the forest).  It's something like "visit the forest dot org."  Maybe the web site teaches these couch potatoes and Halo and WoW addicts how to put one foot in front of the other till soon they are walking out the door.
      I'm sure that they have good reasons to deceive the children of America.  Childhood obesity and the diabetes that goes with it is at an all time high.  At the same time funding for the forests, public or private is at an all time low.  That might be because interest in the forest is also at an all time low.  They are so desperate to get kids off of their couches and away from their keyboards, and out to the woods, that they feel they must trick them into doing so.
      Dudes, the ends do not justify the means!  You are going to give these kids a warped view of life in the woods.  They are going to be out there looking for a Truffala tree.  They will be looking for Dr. Seuss animals who sing to them and just see squirrels who chatter squirrel curse words at them from up high in a tree (that is NOT a Truffala tree).  There is no such thing as a Truffala tree U.S Department of Forestry, and you know that (unless the education for a forestry degree has gone down hill in that last several years - maybe you don't know that), and you shouldn't tell kids that there are. 
      Some kids will want to go see this Dr. Seuss land and will attempt to go out there without supervision.  They'll go crashing through the woods, and being inexperienced out there, they will get twigs in their eyes, trip on roots, eat the "pretty" berries, and probably get lost.  Maybe they'll think they can have a nice conversation with a smiling, singing rattlesnake, or a water moccasin (depending on your locale).  Maybe they'll think they can go play with a cute, cuddly bear cub, and learn the hard way that their momma doesn't like that (maybe that's the intent - get rid of couch potatoes the Darwinian way).

      Maybe I don't like this because when I grew up the forest was only a few hundred feet from our back door.  I had already been out there as young as a year old as my mom was picking various wild berries in their season.  When I was old enough to go there myself (about seven or eight) I was already told how to find my way out if I got turned around, how to look for land marks such as certain hills, creeks or tall trees, and what berries are edible.  I was taught how to go from tree trunk to tree trunk to avoid an angry bull moose, and I was taught that bear cubs aren't cute, and they won't sing to me or play games with me, but that at first site of one I should leave immediately before their mother saw me.
      I spent many, many hours out in the woods alone and with my brothers.  We ran along the deer trails, jumping over lower branches, and ducking under higher ones without ever breaking pace.  We crossed swamps along the ridges of beaver dams.  We cut pieces of diamond willow to make canes, walking sticks and other crafty items.  We built "forts" - various types of shelters.  We loved it out there, and we still do, and we never had to be tricked into going there by someone telling us it was like a Dr. Seuss land.
      By doing this U.S. Department of Forestry, you are teaching kids not to trust adults, because they lie all the time.  Your forestry lie will just be filed away along with the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause, Tooth Fairy, and other lies.  To quote myself from an earlier b'log entry, just like a bunch of marauding Vikings, you do more harm than good.
      Maybe you could have an ad that tells kids to go visit abandoned warehouse districts, and tell them that this is Halo Land, World of Warcraft Land, or Medal of Honor Land.