Bull riders play in NY, farmers work in Salt Lake

At times over the last two years, I've played at being a rodeo reporter. I've posted updates from the Pendleton Round-Up in 2005 and 2006 and made some blog posts from the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas last month. But if would like to see some regular updates on what's happening in professional rodeo, here's your chance to speak up.

Veteran radio/rodeo man Butch Thurman of Pendleton, Ore., is offering the Capital Press the opportunity to run his column on a trial basis to see if our readers are interesting in reading his comments on a regular basis.

Butch has covered rodeo for 27 years and this year, in addition to his radio duties, which includes doing a daily radio show on rodeo and his weekly column, he's got another little side gig. Thurman is this year's president of the Pendleton Round-Up board of directors.

So, check out his column about bull riders taking on the Big Apple and let us know if you like it.

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Capital Press Executive Editor Elaine Shein and California Editor Bob Krauter will be in Salt Lake City this weekend for the American Farm Bureau Federation convention. They will be posting updates from Salt Lake City.

Bob previews the convention here. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will address the conference. Check for updates beginning Sunday and early next week on capitalpress.com.

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On another note, I'm still making mistakes, and still learning, about this whole podcasting thing. I ended up having to re-post Episode 7 of the Farmers' Capital Press Agriculture Podcast today. When I posted it yesterday, for some reason the file had about 5 minutes of dead air at the end of the file. I would have though the blank portion wouldn't add to the files size, but I would have been wrong. Dead air makes for a big file.

Who knew?

So, I lopped off the dead are and reposted the file.

Live and learn.

If your iTunes subscription downloaded the big file, my apologies. Someday maybe I'll get all this stuff figured out.

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Technorati tags: Agriculture, American Farm Bureau Federation, Rodeo, Podcasting

Glad you made it

I'm glad you found us.

Surprised, but glad.

I've spent much of this week, off and on, trying to figure out what's wrong with our primary blog site. We started the process to migrate to the new version of Blogger. It has not gone well.

We have been unable to create, save and publish any new posts since Wednesday. So, until that gets sorted out and corrected, this will be our new blogging headquarters for the Capital Press.

Beyond all that mess, I have to admit I'm not too motivated to be working today. The year is about over. My alma mater, Oregon State, is playing in a college football bowl game today. And I am behind schedule on creating, editing and posting a new podcast.

I am interested to see what will happen with the FDA's announcement yesterday that food from cloned livestock would be safe to eat. Now there's a 90-day comment period on the documents FDA compiled on the issue. I expect a lot of foot stomping and tooth gnashing over that issue.

Is cloning a viable option for livestock producers to use regularly in managing their herds? Should it be? Is it just the next high-tech evolution of artificial insemination? Are there ethical worries in cloning animal for food? For any purpose?

It's gonna get interesting. What do you think?

Technorati tags: Agriculture, Blogging, Blogger, Podcasting, Cloning,