The semiotics of barbed wire fence
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
For instance, the first wire in the article is labeled "Kelly loose barb". That corresponds to the Michael Kelly patent [1]. The next name is Scutt, describing the improved barbed wire invented by H. B. Scutt [2].
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US283614A [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US195239A
For cattle operations, barbed wire is somewhat obsolete, anyway. There's a wire mesh called "King Ranch fencing".[1] No barbs, but strong enough to contain cattle. With fewer scrape marks, the leather is more valuable. No risk of animals caught in barbed wire. Less sagging wire. "We don't fix fence, we build fence" - King Ranch slogan.
[1] https://redbrandstore.com/products/king-ranch-field-fence-66...
I have two 330' rolls of a similar Red Brand field fence I bought about 20 years ago, 660' total of it like the roll in the listing. I paid $75 for each 330' roll.
I think mine is the Monarch Field Fence roll with the graduated spacing beginning with 3" at the bottom. The same rolls sell for more than $300 each today according to that site.
Time to build a cheap fence with my old wire.
The CARES Act passed the Senate unanimously. If Trump caused inflation due to profligate spending, he did so with plenty of help from Democrats. He couldn't have stopped it even if he wanted to, that's far past the veto proof majority.
Being fiscally conservative in a way that gets no play in the mainstream political discourse, and given how much the current narrative is hanging the now-apparent price inflation on the current administration (including how the incompetent Democratic party is just going along with it!), I'd say it's worth coining a term that points to when that monetary inflation actually occurred. Despite what those benefiting from all of the monetary creation would have you believe, these effects have causes!
Apart from CARES there was also interest rates. I had been cautiously optimistic that Trump was actually going to buck the trend there and continue pulling up from ZIRP (hence the hate from the MSM). But nope, as soon as that line started to go down, it was printing press time. Rates are not under the control of the President directly, but there is obviously significant influence.
There's also the issue of anti-leadership paralyzing society (thus the economy) much more than it had to be. A little positive leadership would have given Trump a shoe-in second term from the war/crisis time boost, but the dude only knew how to continue with the spiteful divisive poor-me whinging from the campaign.
(Related to this subject, I'll give positive credit for the steel tariffs as something that needed to be done. It was yet another spike in prices, but that was really only revealing what ZIRP had already hollowed out)
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Tensile-Wire-Gal...
I prefer to buy US made wire products but with that said how would I know whether my supplier bought counterfeit rolls sold with domestic branding? The fact that they use a Red Brand photo front and center and then the other photos of their palletized rolls don't have any examples of rolls with the red top wire suggests they just "borrowed" the photo for the brand recognition it brings.
I can see how the price difference makes the Chinese knock-off very attractive for someone who is fencing a large area. I think as long as the strand gauges and wire strengths are similar I see no reason why the Chinese wire rolls would be an unattractive option. A fence serves to deter traffic (foot traffic from people or animal traffic on trails) from one plot to another and there are many different types of fencing materials that are effective. Here at home I have several types of fencing including chain link, barbed wire, field fence, cattle panels and polyethylene deer fence. It depends on the objective. On my own property I have one stretch of field fence (like the rolls in your post) that is decades old and in need of replacement. The cedar posts are old and loose, staples have fallen out and the fence material is largely vegetation-supported today. Once I remove all the birdshit hackberries, elm, privet, and cedar that has grown up over the decades, the wire will lay itself down and take a well-earned break.
I bought my rolls of wire to replace that stretch a long time ago and just haven't found the time to do it, yet. I'll get there one day.
It costs a lot so after spending that money it's normal [1] to put barbed wire on top. The 'dog' refers to the smaller spacing at the bottom.
[1] By normal that's what I've seen. Can't confirm it's more than 50%. You might not do it for internal fencing. - Picture of a bespoke cow with barb and dog fence - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ratters1968/16377626013
We don't barbwire ours because we have (miniature) goats.
The important key is farmers don't consult with others to be intentionally different. (farmers will consult with each other but that is only to see what works for someone else to copy it - if a farmer has barbed wire that doesn't work they will replace it and tell the neighbors). They all have the same set of choices to work with.
Farmers also have no reason to care if their fence is different. They know where their land is (and often are leasing land that someone else built the fence). Barbed wire isn't something that a dishonest farmer would steel - it gets harder to work with after it has been put up once so a fresh roll is better.
None of this has anything to do with semiotics. I was expecting the exact same thing as you -- semiotics would be about what does seeing barbed wire in specific spaces/contexts mean to different groups of people?
What are its associations with prisons, compounds, neighborhoods, safety, security, the state, private security, militarization, crime, farming, cattle, trespassing, the American West, freedom to roam, and so forth? When you see barbed wire, does it make you feel safe or nervous or scared? How does that change if it's in a residential neighborhood vs. around a military base?
Your experience in South Africa is a perfect example -- thanks for sharing.
It also don't think crime stats went up much over the last decades in general (may be different in specific neighborhoods), but there is definitely more fear of safety that leads to more security.
That said, you’re a little out of date on SA - violent crime across the country was relatively stable for a decade or two, but since 2021, violent crimes across SA have spiked, and now even Cape Town is in the 20 most dangerous towns in the world, and in the top 10 murder / capita towns in the world.
If the neighborhood is safe, the barbed wire would be unnecessary to make the home protected and safe. Not really sure why the distinction is necessary. In your South African's take, what happens when you leave the protected and safe property. To me that means you are stepping into an unsafe neighborhood.
The above doesn’t always work. You need to ensure the gates can’t be crowbarred off. Happened to us a few times. The amount of IQ allocated to breaking in is amazing. Serious innovation on the criminal side. Think of your smartest friends very keen to get into your house and working together for years on how to do it.
The kids who make it through all that to e.g. get a job in a bank are absolute heroes.
The righteous fury of those denied the dignity of land and agency burns a cultural brand into the skin of the body politic, an endemic disregard for the "rules-based order" that orders them to the back of the line (however it's said and whoever has the megaphone). The people who benefit, only willing to provide an an ounce of the pound of cure necessary, mask-and-hazmat-suit-up to weather the plague they wrought. It looks ridiculous because it is.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/5/13/oscar-pistorius...
Barbed wire isn't widely used for security anymore, so it's mostly just on farms, and around here it's usually supplemented by an electric fence. In fact, half our fences at home were just a single length of barbed wire at the top with regular fencing wire for everything else.
Today, they need Kremlinologists and Russian speakers all over again.
What goes around, comes around...
Unlike certain jurisdictions we didn't shelve that one; we actually put it into our constitution (if slightly after the 70s).
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-...
"there was nothing out here but millions of buffalo and some scattered Indians"
Basically, as settlers moved westward, they needed to contain their livestock as well as separate sheep and cows. Sheep apparently eat grass down to the ground whereas cows don't, thus sheep would deprive cows of food.
So, barbed wire was developed for this purpose and the military saw the utility of it as well. Fast-forward to WWI and the vast battlefields there and needing an inexpensive way to slow enemy advances on foot. This led to the development of tanks to overcome the barbed wire obstacles. Machine guns also became more useful as a way to spray large areas when attacking troops were held up by the obstacles.
1: https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/explore/barbed-wire/
2: https://www.rushcounty.org/BarbedWireMuseum/BWexhibits.html
To better put it, I'll just quote from The Monkey Wrench Gang by Eddward Abbey: “Who invented barbed wire anyhow?” Hayduke asked. “It was a man named J. F. Glidden done it; took out his patent back in 1874.” An immediate success, that barbwire. Now the antelope die by the thousands, the bighorn sheep perish by the hundreds every winter from Alberta down to Arizona, because fencing cuts off their escape from blizzard and drought. And coyotes too, and golden eagles, and peasant soldiers on the coils of concertina wire, victims of the same fat evil the wide world over, hang dead on the barbed and tetanous steel"