The SDS “Gluttony” voting round has come to an end.

Here’s the updated logo . . .

If you want to know more about the SDS challenge, THIS Post <<link explains it.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins stories submitted for the Sin of Gluttony and see the results of the vote, THIS POST <<link is what you want to visit.

But, I know few people will bother with the link, so here are the links to the stories and the results of the voting.

Here are the links to the Gluttony stories.

MEHBO <<link
Writer: E. J. D’Alise
Word count: 2,010  words – approx. reading time: about 8 minutes based on 265 WPM

Punishment for Glutton <<link
Writer: Perry Broxson
Word count: 7,610  words – approx. reading time: about 29 minutes based on 265 WPM

The G.O.A.T. <<link
Writer: R. G. Broxson
Word count: 5,682  words – approx. reading time: about 22 minutes based on 265 WPM

And, here is the result of the poll:

Much like on the last round of voting, Perry made a late surge. Last time he fell short, and this time he caught up to Gary, resulting in a two-way tie for first place.

Congratulations to the Broxson twins for the valiantly fought battle for first. It’s fitting it ended in a tie just so I don’t have to listen to one or the other brag . . . although I’ll still have to listen about me finishing a distant third.

I’m always telling my readers I be average at best, and now we have solid proof . . . I’m third tier!

Once again, we had twenty-five votes, so that establishes a pattern going forward. Actually, there are twenty-six votes for both Lust and Gluttony, but in each case, one of the votes came in after the deadline.

And, yes . . . those votes would have changed the outcomes.

It just goes to show them Chicago boys have it right . . . vote early, and vote often.

. . . er . . . just listen to half of that advice.

The Greed stories will go live on Thursday. Perhaps we’ll be able to draw more votes for that round, but twenty-five is a nice number. I mean, I don’t want to be greedy!

I should perhaps acknowledge all the chunky effluent hitting the air dispersal units here and around the world . . . but this is meant to be an escape from all that, if only briefly — and probably only minimally — turning our attention away from depressingly difficult and complex events.

One thing I will ask is this . . . there are many opinions out there about many topics. For your sake — and all of ours — don’t close your minds to multiple opinions.

I offer this bit of advice: if you have simple explanations and/or solutions for any (or all) of the complex challenges we face, trust me when I tell you this about that: it means you don’t know shit and you’re likely a huge contributor to making those challenges even more difficult to address.

Let me see . . . what else can I talk about while keeping away from stuff in the news cycle?

Oh, yeah . . . hummingbirds. They are beginning to swarm at the feeders, so I did a little research.

So, I tend to put the feeders apart from each other and — whenever possible — not in line of sight of each other. The idea is to minimize the tendency of single birds to “guard” feeders and fight off other birds.

Well, I just read that’s the wrong approach. Some experts suggest clumping feeders works much better at giving access to more birds. And, in fact, the feeders that I clumped use up the sugar water much faster than the feeders that are isolated from each other.

The hypothesis is that multiple feeders are difficult for any one bird to patrol, and even if there are a few birds trying to keep others away, the fact that there are many feeders in the immediate vicinity means that birds have a better chance of slipping past the guards and drink up.

I have ten feeders out, and two window feeders that I’ve yet to deploy. The window feeders last year were a problem because they attracted ants (there’s no ant guard on the feeders that attach to the glass).

The bigger problem is that I don’t have any other shepherd’s hooks, so even if I bought more feeders, I don’t have where to hang them (I don’t have any trees conducive to hanging feeders).

Anyway, because groupings seem to attract more birds, I’m considering reworking the distribution of feeders around the house.

“Why would I care?”

That seems a bit passive-aggressive, but I’ll ignore it. The reason you care is that I think it will give me the opportunity to snap even more hummingbird photos (I already have some I’ll be sharing soon) but, more importantly, hummingbird videos.

I also think I’ll stop trying to get them to land on my fingers. I mean, I love it when they do, but I’m disrupting their feeding, and they have to prepare for an incredibly long journey.

I think I’ll wrap this up with the photo of an interesting house I saw while in Florida in 2014.

The original size versions of these photos are in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery, but you can still click on these photos to get a slightly larger version to open in a new tab or window.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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