KIDS ATTACKED BY COYOTES in the Los Angeles suburbs. I guess the Wild West is back. Better strap on a six-shooter. Er, unless you’re six. Still, it’s more evidence that David Baron was onto something. And the advice from experts in the article is stupid: “Authorities dissuade people from hunting renegade coyotes themselves and suggest that they instead make noise or throw objects to scare them from neighborhoods.” Yeah, a few yells and they’ll leave the neighborhood. Right.

They’re not scared of people because there’s no reason for them to be scared — why should they be, when the worst they’re likely to encounter is people yelling or throwing rocks? Some related thoughts on that problem, here.

UPDATE: Reader Chris Steinmayer emails:

I live in a Detroit suburb, that is relatively forested (Farmington Hills). For the past several years, Coyotes have been an issue. Peoples pets go missing, and we see coyotes quite often. Not long ago, my step daughter pointed out a funny looking dog just standing by the road – a busy street no less! I told her, that’s no dog, that’s a coyote!

They used to avoid people because people used to kill ’em. Now there’s no reason to avoid people, and plenty of yummy reasons to hang around. There’s no magic about settled areas that keeps predators away. On the other hand, there’s this bit of advice from Shannon Love:

Guns are not effective against coyotes. More effective techniques include canyon cliffs, anvils, defective novelty items and non-newtonian physics.

Who says you can’t learn from TV?

Well, for certain values of the word “learning,” anyway . . . .

UGH: Aid trickles into Burma, but toll ‘could reach 1 million if disease set in’. At this point the increasingly-dreadful numbers are basically made up, because nobody really knows what’s going on. But the situation is certainly awful. If you’d like to help, this Katrina donation list is still a good place to start. But I have to say that I still lack confidence that the regime in Burma will let the aid actually get to the people who need it.

MOTHER’S DAY THOUGHTS from Rachel Lucas.

RANDY NEAL ON THE MEDIA’S DISRESPECT FOR APPALACHIA:

After anointing Obama as the nominee on Tuesday, the media narrative has shifted to the West Virginia and Kentucky “Appalachian” contests. They are reduced to quaint curiosities in which poor, white, uneducated mountain people from a “bygone era” have been trained to make their way to a school gym and push a button just like real people for the delight and amusement of the media elite.

The “dueling banjos” video in this post entitled “On to Appalachia” is a good example. Presumably it is a reference to the retarded West Virginia inbred voter demographic making up Clinton’s 20% to 40% margin of support there.

Because it’s “silly season,” as Obama called it, let’s analyze that more closely.

The scene is from the movie Deliverance. It was filmed on the Chattooga River, which is the border between Georgia and South Carolina. Obama won both of those primaries. Other scenes were filmed in North Carolina. Obama won that primary, too.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader B. Hartwig emails: “You really think a parochial backwater like Kentucky, with half the population and gross state product, equals North Carolina?” Sounds to me like this is making Randy’s point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chad Olson emails: “Just echoing B. Hartwig’s thoughts here that it’s weird that a parochial backwater like North Carolina, with half the population and gross state product, equals Florida. How many delegates does Florida have at the convention this year?”

And Will Cate emails: “Pooh-pooh our friends in the Mountain State at your own peril: no Democrat has won the presidency and failed to carry West Virginia since 1916.” I’m guessing that calling them a bunch of dumb hillbillies won’t make that easier for Obama.

BILL ROGGIO: Operations continue in Sadr City.

VACCINATION UPDATE: Tightening up in Britain? “Children who have not received all their vaccinations should not be allowed to start school, a Labour MP has suggested.”

Meanwhile, in the United States: Bay Area School Closed Due to Whooping Cough. “The state averages a 99 percent immunization rate. But at East Bay Waldorf School, health officials say less than 50 percent are protected from the disease and say that’s why it was able to spread so easily. . . . The Waldorf School System was founded by Rudolph Steiner in 1919. He believed children were made stronger through illness and believed in a holistic approach to medicine. A school spokesperson says they do not make recommendations to parents regarding immunizations.”

I do. My recommendation is, get the shots. Meanwhile, has McCain ever backtracked from his Imus-inspired anti-vaccine talk? According to this report from Farhad Manjoo he hasn’t, and Clinton and Obama seem to be on board too. However: “McCain and Obama are the worst offenders.”

UPDATE: Some must-read (and -listen) thoughts from Shannon Love.

THE FIVE BEST movie-star Gap commercials. My favorite is the one with Scarlett Johansson and the bicycle.

FROM THE “CAN OF WORMS” DEPARTMENT: Pastors to Challenge Ban on Political Activity by Endorsing Candidates From Pulpit on Sept. 28. Can the I.R.S. audit them all? Yes they can!

HILLARY’S STILL GOT HER FANS: “Pundits marvel at how and why Hillary Clinton would keep going when her chances of winning the nomination are now essentially nonexistent. We can all examine the psychological and political motives that keep her going long past the point when common sense would dictate that she throw in the towel. But they underestimate the fervor of her support, and perhaps the difficulty many Democrats will have in moving on to support Barack Obama.”

WELL, WE’VE GOT IT: Obama’s new Kentucky ad focuses on coal.

OOPS (CONT’D): Second McCain aide quits. “The second McCain aide in as many days has left the campaign over ties to a public relations firm that once represented the Burmese junta.”

TIPS FOR TAMING RISING GROCERY PRICES, plus some perspective: “Food prices have actually been fairly stable for more than a decade. According to the latest Department of Agriculture figures (from 2006), American households spend less than 6 percent of their income on food — that’s less than in any other country.”

UPDATE: Various readers dispute that six percent figure. Well, Steven Malanga says this: “In 1984 the average family spent 9.3 percent of its after-tax income on food at home, but by 2006 (the latest year statistics are available) that percentage had fallen to just 5.9 percent of after-tax income.” That’s a Bureau of Labor Statistics number. On the other hand, this USDA figure is 9.5 percent for 2004. I assume different measurement techniques account for the difference, but I have no idea how to determine which is more accurate.

MORE ON PROBLEMS WITH IMPORTED ELECTRONICS: “Are chip makers building electronic trapdoors in key military hardware? The Pentagon is making its biggest effort yet to find out.”

Commercial hardware tends to turn over pretty fast, reducing this risk somewhat. Military hardware tends to stay in service for a long time, making the hazard greater.

LOTS ON LEBANON at MichaelTotten.com. And here’s Michael’s piece on Lebanon’s Third Civil War, for Commentary.

MORE VITAMIN D NEWS: “New research shows that people who regularly use sunscreen and avoiding sunlight may be sacrificing important vitamin D, which is made by the skin when it’s exposed to sunlight. Now, the recommendation is to get 15 minutes of sun at the peak of the day three times a week to help avoid a vitamin D deficiency. . . . For years, Americans have been taught that as summer approaches, they should reach for sunscreen to protect themselves from a scorching burn – and the skin cancer it might trigger. But new research shows that by covering up, they may be sacrificing important vitamin D, which is made by the skin when it’s exposed to sunlight. . . . Vitamin D deficiency is associated with reduced bone strength and risk of fracture; a twofold increased risk of some cancers such as colon, breast and prostate; an increased risk of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes; worse control of diabetes for those who have it; decreased immune function; and possibly also heart disease.”

A GREEN TAX REVOLT IN BRITAIN: It seems large majorities of voters believe that climate-change talk is mostly an excuse to raise taxes. So is this in spite of all the PR about global warming, or because of all the PR about global warming? It’s been pretty heavy-handed. Anyway, as I’ve said before, this is why if you want to implement carbon taxes, etc., they need to be revenue-neutral. And it’s also why, if our “leaders” want us to treat this as a crisis justifying public sacrifice, those leaders need to act as if it’s such a crisis themselves, instead of treating it as an opportunity.

RON ROSENBAUM ON AVOIDING inadvertent nuclear war. Yeah, we’ve got that to worry about again, thanks to Putin.

GETTING RID OF “vampire” energy drains?

IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY: Feminists sharply divided between Clinton, Obama.

IN THE MAIL: Harry Jackson’s The Truth in Black and White.

I MENTIONED the lukewarm response to Lamar Alexander’s grand energy plan, but this take is my favorite:

Good Lord, now we’ve got Republicans proposing Five Year Plans and Seven Step programs like some 1930’s Soviet Beet Kommissar. The last thing we need is the know-nothings in Congress pretending they have the expertise required to plan the future of a market segment as huge and critical as energy. They have no such knowledge because that knowledge doesn’t exist anywhere as some type of accessible whole. It takes a market with millions upon millions of people, each with their own intimate knowledge of their own needs and capabilities, participating in an open energy marketplace with free prices to coordinate such an unimaginably huge, ever-changing body of knowledge and action. Gas prices have been elevated for several years now due to many reasons, and already the marketplace is responding with the millionth shipped hybrid, high mileage clean diesels, flex-fuel vehicles, and endless number of promising technologies from compressed air vehicles to hydraulic drive trains, all with ZERO input from Washington.

The problem for politicians is that voters often demand a plan, even when letting the market work is best.

UPDATE: A counter-plan from Democratic opponent Mike Padgett.

MICHAEL WEISS: A defeated Hillary’s best bet.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! Don’t miss the Protein Wisdom post . . . .

UPDATE: A look at Mother’s Day down the generations.

OOPS: “The McCain campaign’s handpicked RNC convention czar, Doug Goodyear, resigns after Newsweek reports that his firm, the DCI Group, was working to make the government of Myanmar look good.” Possible McCain spin: “We wanted a guy who’s not afraid of a challenge!” Don’t see that flying, though . . . .