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    The Land of the Free: How Virtual Fences Will Transform Rural America - February 8, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder

    A relatively straightforward technological innovation -- GPS-equipped free-range cows that can be nudged back within virtual bounds by ear-mounted stimulus-delivery devices -- could profoundly reshape our relationships with domesticated animals, the landscape, and each other.

    When European farmers arrived in North America, they claimed it with fences. Fences were the physical manifestation of a belief in private ownership and the proper use of land -- enclosed, utilized, defended -- that continues to shape the American way of life, its economic aspirations, and even its form of government.

    Today, fences are the framework through the national landscape is seen, understood, and managed, forming a vast, distributed, and often unquestioned network of wire that somehow defines the "land of the free" while also restricting movement within it.

    In the 1870s, the U.S. faced a fence crisis. As settlers ventured away from the coast and into the vast grasslands of the Great Plains, limited supplies of cheap wood meant that split-rail fencing cost more than the land it enclosed. The timely invention of barbed wire in 1874 allowed homesteaders to settle the prairie, transforming its grassland ecology as dramatically as the industrial quantities of corn and cattle being produced and harvested within its newly enclosed pastures redefined the American diet.

    In Las Cruces, New Mexico, Venue met with Dean M. Anderson, a USDA scientist whose research into virtual fencing promises equally radical transformation -- this time by removing the mile upon mile of barbed wire stretched across the landscape. As seems to be the case in fencing, a relatively straightforward technological innovation -- GPS-equipped free-range cows that can be nudged back within virtual bounds by ear-mounted stimulus-delivery devices -- has implications that could profoundly reshape our relationships with domesticated animals, each other, and the landscape.

    In fact, after our hour-long conversation, it became clear to Venue that Anderson, a soft-spoken federal research scientist who admits to taping a paper list of telephone numbers on the back of his decidedly unsmart phone, keeps exciting if unlikely company with the vanguard of the New Aesthetic, writer and artist James Bridle's term for an emerging way of perceiving (and, in this case, apportioning) digital information under the influence of the various media technologies -- satellite imagery, RFID tags, algorithmic glitches, and so on -- through which we now filter the world.

    The Google Maps rainbow plane, an iconic image of the New Aesthetic for the way in which it accidentally captures the hyperspectral oddness of new representational technologies and image-compression algorithms on a product intended for human eyes.

    After all, Anderson's directional virtual fencing is nothing less than augmented reality for cattle, a bovine New Aesthetic: the creation of a new layer of perceptual information that can redirect the movement of livestock across remote landscapes in real-time response to lines humans can no longer see. If gathering cows on horseback gave rise to the cowboy narratives of the West, we might ask in this context, what new mythologies might Anderson's satellite-enabled, autonomous gather give rise to?

    Our discussion ranged from robotic rats and sheep laterality to the advantages of GPS imprecision and the possibility of high-tech herds bred to suit the topography of particular property. The edited transcript appears below.

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    The Land of the Free: How Virtual Fences Will Transform Rural America

    IDF Snubs High Court Ruling to Remove West Bank Fences - February 8, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder

    A Palestinian farmer near the fence between Israel and the southern Gaza Strip (Reuters)

    The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has ignored a high court ruling to pull down two illegal fences around settlements in the West Bank which block Palestinian farmers from reaching their own land.

    The IDF had vowed to remove the fences after the Palestinian villages of Jaba and Silwad lodged petitions in protest, with the support of human rights group Yesh Din and lawyers Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zacharia. They claimed that illegal fences had been built around the settlements of Adam and Ofra cut off Palestinian farmers' access to their fields.

    But Haaretz reports that the IDF, which said it would take down the fences by 2012, has not even started to plan the dismantling.

    After the petitions, the Israeli government presented to the high court a plan to build alternative security fences in the area.

    "As part of the background work to map the illegal fencing in the Binyamin area and after examining their legality, a draft has been prepared of a comprehensive operational demand with regard to the security of the settlements, intended to regulate the establishment of alternative security components in the hope of limiting damage to private property as much as possible," read a 2011 statement.

    It also established a timetable for erection of the new fences "to be carried out at the end of 2012, subject to completion of preparatory work, authorisation and budget". The fences were listed as high priority.

    Following the state's resolution, the High Court of Justice cancelled the petitions, assessing the proposal as "sufficient" to solve the problem. However, the IDF did not obtain defence ministry approval of funding to build new fences and did not tell the high court that it would be unable to meet the timetable.

    To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail: To contact the editor, e-mail:

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    IDF Snubs High Court Ruling to Remove West Bank Fences

    Cooper over fences – Video - February 6, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder


    Cooper over fences
    Eligible green pony; easy going; shown at A and AA rated shows; auto-changes

    By: perfectpartnercooper

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    Cooper over fences - Video

    Open Fences: Tanya – Video - February 6, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder


    Open Fences: Tanya

    By: HaleStormie

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    Open Fences: Tanya - Video

    Intermediate Fences: Haley on Fergie – Video - February 6, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder


    Intermediate Fences: Haley on Fergie

    By: HaleStormie

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    Intermediate Fences: Haley on Fergie - Video

    Novice Fences: Dominique riding Groovy – Video - February 6, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder


    Novice Fences: Dominique riding Groovy
    Commentary is awkward...we #39;re strange.

    By: HaleStormie

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    Novice Fences: Dominique riding Groovy - Video

    Washington to direct Fences film? - February 4, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder

    Denzel Washington has revealed he is interested in directing the Fences film.

    The Oscar-nominated Flight star is eyeing up a stint in the director's chair for the big-screen adaptation of August Wilson's Broadway play, which he previously starred in with Viola Davis, reported Empire.

    "I really do want to direct [the film version]," he told the magazine.

    It would mark Denzel's first directorial project since 2007's The Great Debaters - he also directed Antwone Fisher in 2002, both of which he starred in. He did not mention if he would also star in the Fences film.

    The two-time Oscar winner has revealed that starring in the play, in which he won the Tony award for best actor in 2010, "reawakened" him.

    "It reawakened me about the work, and my commitment to the work," explained the 58-year-old.

    "I said to myself: 'I've got to dig deeper. The reason I did Fences is that Scott Rudin sent me the script August Wilson wrote - the only one of his plays that he wrote as a screenplay - to act and direct."

    The 50s-set drama focuses on a rubbish collector, who is haunted by his unfulfilled dream of becoming a baseball star.

    Press Association

    Original post:
    Washington to direct Fences film?

    Damaged fences flood's 'worst part' - February 3, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder

    BEEF producers Phil and Shirley Ballin, Camden, Nanango, rate the 2013 floods similar to those experienced in 1984 and 2011.

    The Ballins trade in beef cattle and grow Lucerne on their property, which is at the junction of Barkers Creek and Meandu Creek.

    Mr Ballin said significant rain upstream in the Bunya Mountains had contributed to the flooding.

    "Here at home we've had 255mm - we recorded 190mm in just one night, and we'd had 45mm prior to that," Mr Ballin said.

    "The creeks have come down, but they're still flowing across the flats.

    "The D'Aguilar Highway heading into Kingaroy has been washed out, but there are people repairing it now," Mr Ballin said.

    "The worst part for us is the debris and the fencing, because the posts and wires all come out together. We put up brand new fences two years ago after the last floods, and now it is all gone.

    "We lost a couple of irrigation motors as well, because we just couldn't get to them."

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    Damaged fences flood's 'worst part'

    Fences to mend among Republicans after vote over party chairmanship - February 3, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder

    BIRMINGHAM, Alabama Shortly after he was re-elected Saturday as Alabama Republican Party chairman, Bill Armistead pledged to "mend fences" to unite the party.

    But in the moments before ballots were cast in the heated race for the state GOP's top job, Armistead was criticizing one of the party's most formidable figures: Rep. Mike Hubbard, the speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives who opposed Armistead's bid for a second term.

    "...They say there is disunity in our party but I don't believe that," Armistead told Executive Committee members minutes before they would cast ballots to choose between him and challenger Matt Fridy. "Let's be honest. Divisions in this party have been caused by one person."

    Armistead didn't call out Hubbard's name. He didn't have to because he then launched into a strong defense of his decision to seek a financial review he calls it an audit of the party's spending in 2010, Hubbard's last year and his most successful year as party chairman.

    It was a year that saw the party sweep to overwhelming control of the Legislature for the first time in 136 years and much of the credit for the victory went to Hubbard who had recruited candidates and raised millions of dollars to give Republicans control in the state Senate and the Alabama House, which would select him as the first Republican speaker since Reconstruction.

    The so-called audit found what Armistead and his closest supporters inside the party believe was questionable financial moves by the party then under Hubbard's control which resulted in an Auburn printing company that Hubbard has part ownership in earning over $800,000 through a contract to print political flyers mailed to voters across the state in 2010 supporting GOP candidates.

    Hubbard has said he had no involvement in awarding his company the contract and that the $9,000 in profits he made from the deal he invested back into the company. Hubbard has also pointed out that in 2010 he donated $40,000 of his own money into the GOP's efforts to win control of the Legislature.

    Armistead told committee members Saturday that his decision to seek the audit was the right thing to do but that doing it had angered powerful elements in the party who only became angrier after The Birmingham News/AL.com in November reported the findings after having been leaked a copy of the audit.

    "I didn't release that audit ... but its release is why we are here because some decided that 'we've got to bring that chairman down.' That's what this is about," said Armistead.

    If Armistead has fences to mend with Hubbard, he also has them to mend with Gov. Robert Bentley who personally recruited Fridy to run against Armistead. In a strongly worded letter this week Bentley urged committee members to support Fridy and reject Armistead.

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    Fences to mend among Republicans after vote over party chairmanship

    Frustration as Tesco fences off public footpath - February 2, 2013 by Mr HomeBuilder

    Frustration as Tesco fences off public footpath

    7:00pm Friday 1st February 2013 in News By Damian Fantato, covering Summertown, Jericho and North Oxford. Call me on 01865 425429

    TESCO is facing a backlash after it fenced off a public footpath and a piece of green space at a controversial site in Marston.

    The company has been planning since 2008 to turn the old Friar pub at the corner of Marston Road and Old Marston Road into a supermarket despite local opposition.

    With work yet to begin Tesco has erected a fence around the site because of concerns about its state of repair.

    But the fence has sparked uproar as residents claim it is blocking off a public footpath and much-loved green space.

    Crotch Crescent resident Eric Perkins, 54, accused Tesco of using bully boy tactics.

    He said: This fence has blocked off the footpath in front of the old pub and also the area of grass and trees in front of that.

    In Marston we are very passionate about our green space and our trees because it gives a feeling of open space to the area.

    There was no public notice about this fence. Someone just turned up and started to erect it, blocking off a public right of way.

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    Frustration as Tesco fences off public footpath

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