Saturday: Hili dialogue

December 31, 2016 • 7:45 am

It’s the last day of the year—December 31, 2016, and within a month we’ll have to refer to “President Trump”—a phrase that sticks in my craw. But such are the laws of physics. Today is National Champagne Day, but also National Vinegar Day: a strange pairing. Koynezaa is now over (though not technically, since I was born at 11:45 pm on December 30), but it’s the sixth day of its namesake holiday, Kwanzaa.

On this day in 1759, the Guinness factory was opened, and the stout is still being made and is still good for you. In 1853, Wikipedia reports that this happened on December 31: “A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London, England.” That was, of course, 6 years before Darwin’s Origin was published.  On this day in 1857, Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of Canada, and so it remains.  On December 31, 1879, Thomas Edison demonstrated his incandescent light bulb to the public for the first time. In 1991, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved, and one year later Czechoslovakia was split in two. On this day in 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigned as Russia’s president, leaving the odious Putin in charge, and on that same day the U.S. handed over the Panama Canal to Panama.

Those who were born on the last day of the year include Henri Matisse (1869), Simon Wiesenthal (1908), Alex Ferguson (1941), Ben Kingsley (1943), Donna Summer (1948, died 2012), Bebe Neuwirth (1958 ♥), and Val Kilmer (1959). Those who died on this day include Robert Boyle (1691), Roberto Clemente (1972; I saw him play for the Pirates), Marshall McLuhan (1980) and Natalie Cole (2015). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Ms. Hili can’t think of what message she wants to impart to the world at year’s end. Perhaps tomorrow. . . .

A: What would you like to tell the world today?
Hili: This requires some thought.
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In Polish:
Ja: Co chciałabyś dziś przekazać światu?
Hili: To wymaga przemyślenia.
Finally, I wanted to put up a drawing that Official Website Artist™ Kelly Houle (creator of the Illuminated Origin project) made for me. There is of course a backstory. I don’t think it’s a secret that Kelly and I are working on a children’s book together—one about a wonderful Indian man I met in Bangalore, Mr. Das, and the fifty cats whom he’s taken into his house. I did the text and Kelly has the much harder job of doing the illustrations. One of the jobs I had was to get the names of all fifty cats, which was no easy task given that Mr. Das had forgotten many of them! But with the help of his grand-nephew, I recovered them. But there was one kitten left over—this one:
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Always eager to slap my name on every unnamed cat I find, I told him that it should be named “Jerry”. Mr. Das bridled, telling me that “Jerry” was actually a female kitten and that women weren’t named “Jerry”. I immediately Googled Jerry Hall and showed him that women could bear that name, and so he relented, and that’s the kitten’s name.

Now Mr. Das is famous as a sweetmaker: he runs the K.C. Das & Company chain of sweetshops, and has factories in Calcutta, and Bangalore. One of his products, and my second favorite among all Indian sweets (the first is sonpapri which is very different), is rasmalai, a declicious confection of Indian cottage cheese boiled in sugar syrup and then served soaked in cream or condensed milk, flavored with cardamom, pistachio, and sometimes saffron. It’s served cold.

So here we have kitten Jerry enjoying a treat on his (presumably my) birthday. This is not an illustration for our book, and I hope some publisher actually picks up our book, but I hope we will get it published and that both American and Indian children (and their parents) will like it.

The kitten is ecstatic, of course (her eyes are closed in joy!), and Kelly has called this sketch:

Rasmalai for Jerry
December 30, 2016

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Don’t forget that you can support Kelly’s work by purchasing some of her art at her eBay store, and don’t forget the fantastic gold-embossed Darwin greeting cards, now back in stock (only 7 boxes left).

A very cryptic frog

December 30, 2016 • 12:45 pm

From a tw**t by J. Rowley (h/t: Matthew Cobb), we have a very cryptic frog; the caption is “From #Moss to #Frog in a single move. It’s no wonder this species is called the Vietnam Moss Frog (Theloderma corticale)!” Actually, it’s called the “mossy frog”, is semiaquatic, and lives in the primary evergreen forests of Southeast Asia.

To enhance the crypsis, they curl up in a ball, like the one on the left, to hide their froggyness:c04gcijuqaao0ii

A photo from Wikipedia (go to this page to see a lot more):

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And from WildFacts:

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And here’s a short video:

B-day treats for the squirrels

December 30, 2016 • 11:30 am

In honor of the last day of Koynezaa, all my squirrels get an extra ration of peanuts today. I’ve taught most of them to take the nuts from my hand, though there are still a few shy ones out there. But here’s the usual regimen:

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For an article on me and my squirrels in the U of C magazine, go here.

More solipsism: reader Su produced this awesome announcement of today’s festivities”

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Maajid Nawaz on the US’s vote on the UN resolution

December 30, 2016 • 10:30 am

Maajid Nawaz (I hadn’t realized that he was only 38) is, as most of you know, a former Islamist extremist and now an Islamic moderate who runs the anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation. And he’s a brave man. I don’t know if he has bodyguards, but given his calls for moderation in Islam and his vigorous condemnations of Muslim oppression, he would seem to be in danger. (He regularly gets death threats.) His latest piece at The Daily Beast, “Why did Obama pander to the UN’s stunning anti-Israel bias?“, isn’t going to make him any more friends, for it’s largely pro-Israel.

Although Nawaz is against Israel’s building of settlements and in favor of a two-state solution, he’s an even stronger critic of despotic Arab regimes, and pulls no punches about it—or about the bigotry of low expectations that concentrates in Israel while ignoring the far greater oppression in many other lands. First, his position:

In truth, I believe Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, built on occupied land, and that Netanyahu has been uncooperative while in office, and that a two-state solution is not only still possible, but is the only viable option for solving this conflict. Yet still I maintain that Resolution 2334 was an amateur, emotional move by liberal dogmatists that will only aid the Israeli right.

(See Malgorzata’s recent post on the risible UN Resolution here; she disagrees with Nawaz about the illegality of settlements and the intransigence of Bibi.)

As I don’t want to brain much today (it’s my damn birthday!), and you can read the piece for yourself, I’ll give just a few excerpts about the bigotry of low expectations, and the “whatabouttery” gambit:

Opposing Israel is The One Ring that binds us all. It is the sacred god that must not be questioned. So deep runs this bias against Israeli transgressions, that to call it out is to arouse immediately incredulity and ad hominem abuse.

So entrenched is it, that few noticed how on the very morning of Resolution 2334 a motion seeking to stem the flow of weapons  going to what the UN itself fears are genocidal killers in South Sudan failed.

The Security Council could not even bring itself to adopt the simplest of resolutions calling for a seven-day ceasefire to halt the tragedy of Aleppo. Yet when it came to pushing through a final year-end condemnation of Israel, the Security Council suddenly mustered the will to act.

(Nawaz loves Lord of the Rings analogies!) He goes on about the hyprocrisy:

On Wednesday, Secretary Kerry reinforced the view that the two-state solution “is now in jeopardy… The result is that policies of this [Israeli] government… are leading towards one state.”

This is simply false. The fact that this sentiment is even expressed betrays the deep bigotry of low expectations held in the West toward Arabs and Palestinians.

Settlements are illegal. But why is it that Israel is expected to integrate—and does a reasonable job of including—the 20 percent of its population that is Arab, yet a Jewish presence of 500,000 settlers in any future Palestinian state is deemed “an obstacle” to the two state solution? Are Palestinians assumed to be ethno-fascists? Are they not capable of building a multiethnic state just like Israelis? Is this how low the standard is to which Western leftists hold Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims?

In fact, there are eight million people in Israel, so Arabs constitute 1.6 million of them, many of them Israeli citizens with full voting rights. There are Israeli Arabs sitting in the Knesset. Yet Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly said that if there were a two-state solution and Palestine absorbed the West Bank, every single Israeli Jewish settler (but not Arabs) would be expelled from that area. Is that fair?

And then, taking a big risk, Nawaz goes after the Arab states:

. . .there is not a single crime that Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stand accused of that an Arab totalitarian despot or absolute monarch has not committed manifold times and on a daily basis. From torture and occupation, to proxy wars in foreign countries, to treating non-citizens—including Palestinians—as second class, to a lack of democracy, Arab despots top it all.

Look at Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his coup in Egypt, the chaos in Libya, even the Taliban, Lashkar al-Tayyiba, al-Shabab, Boko Haram and ISIS, sexual enslavement, beheadings, child soldiers, and the use of chemical weapons—the reality of the greater Middle East lies bare for us all to see. Yet as America’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power noted, this year the UN passed more resolutions against Israel than these other problems combined.

I simply can’t comprehend that but have some explanations at the bottom.

And Nawaz’s ending:

. . .  I maintain that Resolution 2334 was an amateur, emotional move by liberal dogmatists that will only aid the Israeli right.

There is nothing unique about the Israel conflict deserving such disproportionate attention. Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Cyprus, Kashmir, and Taiwan are but a few other disputed territories not fetishized like Palestine is at the UN and in our media. All of these disputes involve deep religious, historic, and political meaning for their respective parties.

Only the overwhelming narcissism of our Abrahamic faiths – including those among us who define themselves against them—would deem the religious and historic significance of the “Holy Lands” to mean anything more than other lost holy lands for Buddhists in Tibet, or Sikhs in Khalistan, which was lost to Pakistan a year before Israel’s creation. Only by releasing the “exceptional status” pressure from this conflict, by stripping it of its religious hyperbole, by removing it from the spotlight, by simply placing it on a par with every and any other conflict in the world—tragic but not unique—do we stand a better chance of solving it, because the stakes are lowered and the frothing prophets of doom, with their Armageddon pathology, are taken out of the equation. Let us call this “Israeli unexceptionalism.”

I remain unaware of a single Middle East pundit not tied to Obama’s State department who holds that the outgoing president has done a good job in the Middle East. Obama cut a deal with Iran and conditionally lifted sanctions, while the Iranians, Hezbollah and Russian President Vladimir Putin aided Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he used crude chemical bombs and massively destructive weapons against his own people. And just as Obama’s inaction allowed others to act in Syria, his inaction at the UN set the tone once again, this time reaffirming the notion that Israel is the region’s biggest problem. That is despicable. It is inexcusable. And I could remain silent no more.

Our actions in Syria, or rather failure to act against a state that bombed hospitals and used chemical weapons against its own people, was reprehensible. And yes, both Kerry and Obama’s actions of late have been despicable, singling out Israel while tacitly supporting far more egregious actions by Arab states. I hate to say this, as I use the words rarely, but I see the concentration of the UN’s opprobrium—and the Left’s opprobrium—on Israel, as a form of anti-Semitism. Is there another explanation for considering Israel an “apartheid state” (a misnomer if ever there was one), while remaining silent on the crimes and oppression in places like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia? And if it’s not anti-Semitism, it’s still a form of bigotry—a bigotry that excuses bad behavior by Muslims because they’re seen as “people of color.”

 

Cunk:”Moments of Wonder” about Christmas and the Apocalypse

December 30, 2016 • 8:45 am

Reader Michael sent me two of the BBC videos hosted by the incomparable Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan). The first, 30 minutes long, is her Christmas “Moments of Wonder” episode, while the second, six minutes long, is on the Apocalypse of 2016. I’m putting them up now because the BBC will assuredly have them taken down quickly. Watch while you can! (The first is available at the BBC site, but can’t be viewed outside the UK.) I haven’t yet seen the first one.

And here’s Philomena’s “Moments of wonder” on The Apocalypse, part of Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe. Philomena’s bit starts at 1:33, and the Science Man happens to be Brian Cox.

Spot the second frogfish!

December 30, 2016 • 7:45 am

Reader Carl sent us what I think is our first underwater “Spot the. . . ” feature. I’ll reveal the answer at noon Chicago time. First, Carl’s notes (indented), and then the photo:

It seems the “Find the —” appeals to many of us, although with well camo’d critters, I’m generally trying to demonstrate their presence in pictures, not hide them (e.g., peacock flounders, scorpionfish, etc.)

A year or two ago I had found a hidden critter that I hadn’t noted until I looked at the image, even though it was right in front of me and my lens.  This is a pair of frogfish, I assume “longlure” frogfish,  Antennarius multiocellatus, but the lures can be hard to see, and they may be a shorter lured species-–A. nummifer??

Divers love to see frogfish, as we find them beautifully ugly, as well as hard to find.  They’re a type of anglerfish, don’t move around much, mostly using their pectoral fins as a form of limb to hop about their limited area.  They’re generally very well camouflaged against the sponges they stand on, making them very hard to spot, and I assume they change color to match the sponge.  I’ve seen white, black, orange, green, yellow in the Caribbean.  They have enormous mouths, and by opening widely and swiftly, they literally suck in their prey (whole).  I haven’t seen that except in videos, but was able to time a shot of one who occasionally opened wide (don’t know why), so I’ll add that (or to another email if too large a file).

I’ve found that Bonaire dive guides spread the word among themselves, but don’t like to tell the tourists until the dive briefing,  as many dives can be made from shore without using dive boats and guides risking masses of divers possibly harassing them.  On this particular boat dive, we were told there was a yellow frogfish at a certain depth; don’t recall what landmarks, etc. they were using, but I kept my eye out for yellow sponges at that depth, and was fortunate to find this one before the guide and the other divers got there.  I think she (??-I’m told the females are larger) had moved from the yellow sponge behind her (scared off by divers earlier in the day??), so was easier to spot.  I got a few images, then pointed her out to others, so everyone could get a turn.  It wasn’t until I looked at the image that I realized there was another, smaller, and better camouflaged (at least against its background) frogfish nearby, possibly her smaller mate?  How could I have missed it?

Can you find it?

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Friday: Hili dialogue

December 30, 2016 • 7:00 am

It’s December 30, 2016, and the last day of Koynezaa, which means I’ve completed another circuit around the Sun. It’s a weird food holiday, too: National Bicarbonate of Soda Day and Baking Soda Day. What gives with that? A Bicarb Day should be right after Thanksgiving or Christmas! In Slovakia, it’s the Day of the Declaration of Slovakia as an Independent Ecclesiastic Province (Pope Paul VI’s doing).

On this day in 1896, Filipino patriot José Rizal was executed for his writings, which helped lead to the independence of his land. In 1922, the USSR was formed, and in 1965 Ferdinand Marcos became President of the Philippines.

Notables born on this day include Rudyard Kipling (1865), Bert Parks (1914), Bo Diddley (1928), Skeeter Davis (1931), Del Shannon (1934), Sandy Koufax (1935), John Hartford (1937), two Monkees (Michael Neshmith, 1942, and Davy Jones, 1945), Patti Smith (1946), Jerry Coyne (1949), Tracey Ullman (1959), and Heidi Fleiss (1965). Those who died on this day include Grigori Rasputin (1916; when I was a long-haired hippie and was a groomsman at a friend’s wedding in Texas in 1972, one of the old rich ladies whom I was escorting to her seat exclaimed in dismay, “What—I have to be taken to my seat by Rasputin?!”), Alfred North Whitehead (1947), Richard Rogers (1979), Artie Shaw (2004), Saddam Hussein (executed ten years ago today), and Carl Woese (2012). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a special Hili dialogue for my special day. I think she’s messing with me!

Hili: I think that last year Jerry’s birthday was December 30?
A: That’s right.
Hili: And this year as well?
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In Polish:

Hili: Zdaje się, że w zeszłym roku Jerry miał 30 grudnia urodziny.
Ja: Zgadza się.

Hili: Czy w tym roku też?
As a bit of solipsism, I’ll enclose today’s “Freethought of the Day” from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. (My quote is taken verbatim from a talk, which is why it’s a bit unwieldy.) Thanks to Margaret Downey for calling it to my attention:
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