[FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

Nick -


> Steve, 
>
> Isn't this the story of the 500 Spartans who, in defending Greece, backed themselves into a canyon and fought off the Persian hoards successfully, until some traitor showed the Persians a path around the canyon and they were attacked from behind?

Probably, sounds good to me...   it is all useful (or not) as a parable
juxtaposed with Glen's "no hill to die on" which I am intuitively
aligned with.  Subsequently this demanded I seek a little more parallax.

Do you have "a hill to die on"?  Or are you more prone to the taking the
"Spartan's route" (don't forget, they are also reputed to leaving their
(male?) newborns out in the elements for a day or two at birth to weed
out the weak...   raises the threshold on the "viability" measure of
when a potential-human becomes a human, no? 

<careening tangent?> For your interest in Corvids crossed with
viability, I should  let you know my resident pair (giant cottonwood out
back) have just fledged 2 new offspring (first brood in 5 years at this
location, best I can tell).   I don't know what happens   Their
hatch-to-fledge period seems to be at least 6 weeks...   I think our
Jays are more like 3 weeks-to-fledge.  Humans (except for Oliver Twist,
Mowgli, and Tarzan) seem to need at least a decade and a half to fledge
fully.   There must be some moral implications to this.

I also have a resident pair of Doves who have settled in year-round now
that there is always cracked-corn out for the chickens.  

We get a slew (slough?) of Jays in the shoulder seasons, but I believe
there are a single mated pair at any one time (serial monogamists?) who
have staked a claim to my pond and chicken-scratch area (the jays, the
doves, the chickens and the rock squirrels all seem to share well).

- Steve