Readers’ wildlife photographs

December 11, 2016 • 9:00 am

I seem to have lost this batch of photos, but fortunately reader Loren Russell re-sent them the other day. His notes:

The pix were taken on a trip from Corvallis to LA along Cal 1.  This is the rookery at Piedras Blancas, just south of the Sur Coast.  A wonderous case of back from near extinction, the Northern Elephant Seal [Mirounga angustirostris] was reduced to (?a few dozen?) by whalers in the early 20th century.  This particular rookery dates only to 1990 and is estimated to have reached 15,000 Famously, one several-ton male was aggressively blocking traffic on Route 1 for several weeks a couple of years ago.

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Here’s their range. Dark blue represents breeding colonies and light blue the occurrence of non-breeding individuals:

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And, a picture from Wikipedia showing the extreme sexual dimorphism in size: males can weigh between 1500 and 2300 kg ((3,300–5,100 lb; over two tons! That’s more than a Volkswagen Beetle), while the smaller females can weigh between 400 to 900 kg (880 to 1,980 lb). The males have harems and battle for access females; this huge male is mating with a female who has a pup. (Males can easily crush the pups if they roll on them.)

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Here’s a video of battles for females between Northern Elephant Seals; such battles can result in death:

 

 

Snow in Chicago!

December 11, 2016 • 8:00 am

The weather people report that it snowed about six inches here last night, and it’s started again. We didn’t get that much in Hyde Park, being next to Lake Michigan, but it’s still enough to beautify the campus.

Before. This is the arch that connects my building with the Anatomy Building (home of Neil Shubin and others). Incoming students are told that the three gargoyles ascending the arch represent the first three years of college (freshman, sophomore, junior), while the gargoyle at the summit are successfully graduating seniors. This was taken when the sky began getting overcast yesterday afternoon.

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After: this morning. The gargoyles are cold. 

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Sunday: Hili dialogue

December 11, 2016 • 7:04 am

It’s Sunday, December 11, 2016, meaning that it’s National “Have a Bagel” Day, which sounds pretty good to me, though there’s small chance of having my favorite: an onion bagel with a schmear and a good piece of lox. If Adam Gopnik is reading this, I’d urge him (being in the right city) to celebrate appropriately. It’s also International Mountain Day and, in Argentina, National Tango Day, honoring  Julio de Caro (a conductor and composer of tango) in 1899.

On this day in 1936, Edward VIII’s abdication became effective; Wikipedia characterizes that as a “crisis”. And, on December 11, 1962, Arthur Lucas became one of the last two people executed in Canada (both on the same day). The method was hanging. Now the U.S. stands with Japan as the only First World democracies that still kill prisoners. On December 11, 1964, Che Guevara spoke to the United Nations (in Spanish). Here’s his speech with English subtitles. Within five years he was dead: captured and shot in Bolivia.

Notables born on this day include Robert Koch (1843), Max Born (1882), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918, the speaker at my graduation from Harvard), Tom Hayden (1939), John Kerry (1943), and Hailee Steinfeld (1996). Those who died on this day include Sam Cooke (1964) and Bettie Page (2008). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is discovering one of the rules of dealing with the Internet:

Hili: May just anybody write in the Internet whatever they think?
A: Basically, yes.
Hili: But you don’t have to read it?
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In Polish:
Hili: Czy w Internecie każdy może napisać co myśli?
Ja: W zasadzie tak.
Hili: Ale nie musicie tego czytać?
Lagniappe: a lovely old New Yorker cartoon sent by reader Susan H.:
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Does God answer prayers? Spectator contributors vote “yes”

December 10, 2016 • 2:30 pm

Along with 12 others, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has weighed in at the Spectator, giving examples of how their prayers were answered (there are also some Village Atheists who scoff at the idea):

The problem with this whole thing is that there’s no control group: no survey of whose prayers weren’t answered. It’s pure confirmation bias. The one scientific study of the issue, a medical report on the efficacy of intercessory prayers, showed no effect; in fact, heart patients prayed for by others were marginally but nonsignificantly worse at healing. But maybe God only answers prayers for you when you say them, in which case saying “We’re sending prayers for X and his family”, which we see so much on television, is useless.

Welby’s gloating tw**t:

Here are a few examples of answered prayers:

The Most Reverend Justin Welby:

The most recent was when I was going to see some incredible work done by a group of young women helping trafficked sex workers. I prayed that I could find, in my complete bafflement, something hopeful and good to say to the young women with whom they worked. Some words came, and for at least one woman I know much changed. That was the best Christmas gift of that year.

Well, that’s convincing! A trained speaker managed to come up with some words. Glory be to Him!

Cardinal Vincent Nichols:

Prayer comes readily when we are distressed or in danger. Agnosticism falls away. It has been so for me. Many years ago, I prayed intensely at a time of crucial decision-taking. I was puzzled and distressed. Should I really be a priest? Slowly, clarity came. I decided with a sureness and a trust beyond reason. My prayer was certainly answered. Since then, in 47 years as a priest, even in the hardest of sorrows and confusion, never — yet — have I had a sense of being abandoned by the Lord, never losing the deep stability of that decision.

Prayer never came readily to me—I’ve never prayed since I became an atheist, and don’t remember praying before that except for the “Now I lay me down to sleep. . ” which I told my Dad when he tucked me in as a child. In any case, any answer would have been an answered prayer since Nichols was just asking for an answer. If he decided to not become a priest, I doubt that he’d even have pondered the issue—or contributed to this article.

Anthony Seldon (author and headmaster):

I prayed as a young man for a wife I could love all my life and who would make me happy. I never thought anyone would want to share their life with me, so often had I been chucked by girls. In Joanna, my prayers were answered 100 times over.

Of course, there are all those people who utter the same prayers but don’t get the same answer. 50% of marriages in America end in divorce. And those can’t all be atheists!

The same goes for the next one:

Bear Grylls (chief scout [?]):

Every day I pray for my family to be safe and for us to stay close together — the Lord’s hand has been good to us and has steered me safely home through so many trials and tough moments. It isn’t always the big dramatic stuff but it is a prayer often answered and for that I am always so grateful.

Do these people ever w0nder about all the children who get cancer, and whose parents’ prayers aren’t answered? Why does the Lord’s hand smite innocent children?

James Dyson (entrepeneur):

Most of my prayers have been answered; I’ve been very lucky. When I left college, I wanted to make and design my own product and sell it all over the world which is exactly what I’ve been able to do. I’m just enormously grateful.

Some people aren’t so “lucky.”

Libby Purves (journalist):

Raised by nuns, a Catholic mother and a robustly atheist ex-Presbyterian father who said one should ask no favours, certainly not of invisible divinities, I am a bit conflicted. Prayers of thanks and for the dead are fine; but as a theological nerd, I guiltily know that demand-prayers are a debased form, not far from that loopy ‘Cosmic Ordering’ philosophy endorsed by that great thinker Noel Edmonds.

So yes, I have prayed. Usually at sea in small sailing-boats, at night, in Atlantic gales. And we have always been delivered to a safe harbour. So far.

And if she had died at sea we’d never know her story. How many prayers by sailors like that haven’t been answered? We’ll never know. Which brings us to the last one:

Frederick Forsyth (author):

I had scrounged a lift on the third-from-last plane out of the dying enclave of Biafra at the end of the Nigerian civil war. Behind us on the airstrip, the last two aircraft waited in the pitch-black night. My lift was on a clapped-out old DC-4 flown by its owner, an Afrikaner really called Van Der Merwe. The destination was Libreville, Gabon. The fuselage was overloaded with dying Biafran children and Irish nuns.

After takeoff, also in pitch darkness, somewhere over the Niger delta, the port outer coughed and gave up. We struggled on three engines towards the ocean. After turning east towards Gabon, the starboard outer began to cough and splutter. It was clear the old rust-bucket would never fly on two and was sinking towards the sea on three. Van Der Merwe began singing hymns in Afrikaans. I prayed quietly, convinced it was all over. Outside, the moon on the water came closer as we nearly skimmed the ocean.

Fortunately, the French had built Libreville airport close to the shore. The dangling wheels almost clipped the sand dunes, then we were over concrete. At that moment the coughing, spluttering engine gave up the ghost and the crippled aircraft dropped on to the tarmac. The Afrikaner stopped singing and began to thank the Almighty. It would have been churlish not to follow suit.

I wonder how many people were praying on the four planes that went down on September 11, 2001? Surely there were many!  Oh. . I forgot: the hijackers were praying for the opposite outcome. Ergo, Islam is the right faith.

Why is the Spectator publishing such piffle? All it shows is how credulous people are.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Reed College students demonize director of “Boys Don’t Cry” as transphobic

December 10, 2016 • 11:30 am

This report will be found only on right-wing websites like Reason.com, so take it with a grain of salt as usual. However, there’s an eyewitness report by blogger Jack Halberstam, who writes about LGBT issues; but Halberstam, also links to the deeply weird “Freedom to Marry our Pets Society” page, so take that into account.

This incident is reported to have happened at Reed College, a Center of Regressive Leftism in Portland, Oregon. On November 11, Kimberley Pierce, director and cowriter of the famous movie “Boys Don’t Cry,” gave the Greenberg Distinguished Scholar lecture on that film after it was screened. If you’ve seen “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999), you’ll know it was a sympathetic treatment of the tragic story of Brandon Teena, a trans male who was raped and murdered by two ex-convict associates in 1993. His transsexuality was the reason he was killed.

The movie, which I’ve seen, is deeply moving, and garnered Hillary Swank, who played Teena, an Oscar for Best Actress and a Golden Globe award; co-star Chloe Sevigny, who played Teena’s girlfriend, was nominated for theBest Supporting Actress Oscar. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that the movie depicts with loathing the transphobia that caused Teena’s death, and depicts him sympathetically. It was a powerful statement against violence against transgender people.

You can guess what happened at Reed College, for both Pierce and the movie were deemed NOT TRANS ENOUGH. As Reason.com reports:

The students hurled a litany of insults at Peirce, putting up posters that read “fuck your transphobia” and “you don’t fucking get it” among other things. Worse, when Peirce ascended to her podium, students had placed a sign there. It read “fuck this cis white bitch.” That Peirce is actually gender-fluid is quite beside the point.

The students’ unbelievable rudeness crossed the line into a kind of censorship when Peirce tried to speak: the students simply shouted over her. Eventually they let her talk, but some students continued to yell things like “fuck your respectability politics” and “fuck you scared bitch.”

. . .You’re probably still wondering why the social justice left hates Peirce so much. Well, the film was ahead of its time in 1999, but in 2016 it’s problematic. That’s because the main character, Brandon, was played by Hilary Swank, a non-trans person. Students were also incensed at the idea of Peirce having profited from violence against trans people, which isn’t a remotely accurate way to characterize things, but there it is.

Halberstam gives a list of other reasons Pierce was attacked, and then goes on to answer them in a calm and rational way. Here are the students’ objections that he recounts:

Since this incident at Reed, I have heard from other students that they too felt “uncomfortable” with the representations of transgender life and death in Boys Don’t Cry. These students raise the following objections to the film some fifteen years after its release:

  • First, younger trans oriented audiences want to know if Peirce herself is trans. And they understand her as a non-trans person who is making money from the representation of violence against transgender bodies.
  •  Second, they ask about the casting of a non-trans identified actor in the role of Brandon and wonder why a transgender man was not cast to play Brandon.
  • Third, students in particular have objected to the graphic depiction of rape in the film and feel that the scene is poorly orchestrated and the film is too mired in the pathologization and violation and punishment of transgender bodies.

There’s further evidence, as Halberstam shows a picture of some of the posters put up by protesting students:

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and added this:

These posters voiced a range of responses to the film including: “You don’t fucking get it!” and “Fuck Your Transphobia!” as well as “Trans Lives Do Not Equal $$” and to cap it all, the sign hung on the podium read: “Fuck this cis white bitch”!! The protestors waited until after the film had screened at Peirce’s request and then entered the auditorium while shouting “Fuck your respectability politics” and yelling over her commentary until Peirce left the room. After establishing some ground rules for a discussion, Peirce came back into the room but the conversation again got out of hand and finally a student yelled at Peirce: “Fuck you scared bitch.” At which point the protestors filed out and Peirce left campus.

Finally, the Reason.com article gives more evidence that this really happened, and notes a sensible response from Reed’s Dean of Students:

A spokesperson for Reed College confirmed the posters and the heckling, which he attributed to a handful of students.

“It has sparked a lot of debate on campus,” the spokesperson told Reason.

Dean of Students Nigel Nicholson, to his credit, penned a strongly-worded statement in the campus paper:

“The actions that I saw were not animated by the spirit of inquiry or the desire to learn that usually animates Reed audiences. The students had already decided what they thought, and came to the Question-and-Answer session to make their judgments known, not to listen and engage. Some brought posters bearing judgments and accusations. Others asked questions, that, while grammatically questions (that is, they ended with question marks), were not animated by a genuine desire to explore a question, but rather sought to indict the speaker. It felt like a courtroom, not a college.

Some students sought to dominate the space, and to take control of the space away from the speaker.

I was deeply embarrassed and ashamed of our conduct, and I hope that as a community we can reflect on what happened and make a determination not to repeat it.”

Now I can’t find Nicholson’s statement online (the articles in the Reed student paper aren’t accessible), so let’s again be a bit skeptical, but I’ll take this as true for the moment. (Perhaps Reed students or faculty can weigh in below or email me.)

The reported treatment of Pierce, including calling her a “bitch” (Pierce is a lesbian), is unconscionable, and the violation of her freedom of speech by the heckling students, solely on the grounds that her sympathetic film didn’t meet every single criterion for transgender purity, is reprehensible.

This is the reason the Left is tearing itself apart: unless you meet various criteria of ideological purity, you’re not only not accepted, but demonized. Christina Hoff Summers, an equity feminist, is not considered a real feminist because she’s not a gender feminist. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is demonized because she once worked for a conservative think tank and is married to a conservative. With criteria this stringent, there’s no hope for the Left to unite around various important issues.

Lost in all this is the fact that “Boys Don’t Cry,” considered a daring and shocking film at the time, was also a landmark in bringing the horrible treatment of transsexuals to the attention of the public; indeed, it was used as a rallying point for trans rights.

What is the Left coming to? And why doesn’t the mainstream media ever report on things like this?

h/t: Cindy

An evening with Linda Ronstadt

December 10, 2016 • 10:00 am

Reader Chris Bonds wrote me that he was going to attend a presentation by singer Linda Ronstadt at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Thursday. I asked him to let me know how it went, and he provided a detailed report. I asked permission to post it here, which he kindly provided; I know a lot of readers, including me, are big Rondstat fans.

It’s hard to believe, but Linda turned 70 this year. You may also know that in 2012 she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, leaving her unable to sing. That made me even more curious about how things went. Here’s Chris’s report, and I’ve added two videos of her earlier live performances.

You invited me to give my thoughts on Linda Ronstadt’s presentation last night at the Ham Concert Hall at UNLV.

There were lots more people there than I had expected to see. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of them appeared to be seniors. We were able to get front-row seats. On the stage were two easy chairs with a table in between, on which sat a laptop computer. There was no water. A large projection screen rose behind. After the usual welcoming announcement and acknowledgments of donors, Linda Ronstadt walked in, escorted by  long time friend and producer, John Boylan, who she said was there to help her remember anything she might forget (such as her mother’s name, she added, with a smile).

Her talk was basically an outline of her musical career as chronicled in her book, which came out in 2013. She talked about her parents, grandparents, and great-grandfather; growing up in the desert near Tucson; the music she heard and sang in her home as a child; forming a folk group with her brother and sister; the formation of the Stone Poneys; and much else that you either already know or can read on Wikipedia.

Notably absent from her talk was any mention of her relationships with men. She did mention Jerry Brown’s name but indicated she was not going to talk about any of that.

Even though the Parkinson’s limited her physical movement, facial expression, and her speech was often rushed, coming in little bursts, her sense of humor seemed to be intact. She talked about meeting Emmylou Harris for the first time, saying “she was doing everything I wanted to be doing, only better, and she was beautiful. [I asked  myself,] should I hate her?”

She punctuated her career highlights with photos and videos projected on the screen. The video clips were just long enough to illustrate that part of her story but not so as to slow down the presentation. Clips included “Blue Bayou,” “Pirates of Penzance,” “You’re No Good,” a duet with Aaron Neville called “Don’t Know Much,” “Different Drum,” and others.

One of the more interesting segments was her story about singing at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. As she listed some of the names of people who performed there in the 1960s and 1970s, I was astonished that I had never heard of the place. (I recommend you read the Wikipedia article about The Troubadour, if you don’t already know about it.) It must have been quite a scene to be a musician in that time, to actually be doing music and hanging out with all these people that someone like me knows only from listening to their records. Joni Mitchell, Jack Nicholson (before he was *Jack Nicholson*), Elton John, etc.

Following her oral history, she sat for a Q&A with Ray Suarez, who asked his own questions and followed them with audience questions on index cards. Mr. Suarez seemed especially interested in her stylistic changes, wanting to know why she would want, for example, to do an album of pop standards arranged by Nelson Riddle, risking her rock and roll fan base in the process. I thought at one point “he’s really pushing her to say something,” like he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. But she was firm in her conviction that doing the kinds of music she wanted to do was more important to her than living up to the expectations of her fans. I thought that was excellent. She talked a little about what she is doing these days with a “problem-solving organization”, Los Cenzontles,  in Richmond, California, near her home.  You can read about the organization at loscenzontles.com.

My dominant impression was of a person who knows her own abilities and limitations well and who has always followed her own musical inclinations, which grew out of the music she knew growing up. She was never satisfied with her own singing, saying at one point she didn’t like her phrasing on her records. It wasn’t until near the end of her singing career that she seemed to make peace with herself and feel that she was in full control of her vocal skills.

JAC: Though written and originally performed by Karla Bonoff, “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” is one of my favorite Ronstadt songs. The video isn’t great, but I like to show live performances. The original recording, from the 1976 album “Hasten Down the Wind” is here.

Caturday felid trifecta: Amsterdam’s Cat Museum; cat and pug friend hike over 900 miles; Nutmeg, possibly the world’s oldest cat

December 10, 2016 • 9:15 am

Did you know that Amsterdam has a cat museum called the Kattenkabinet? Here are a few items from its collection:

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Theophile Alexander Steinlen Compagnie Française de chocolats et des thés 1897 60 x 80 cm Grote zaal. Poster
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Heidi Damen Kat met kind 1980 – 33 x 17 x 10 cm Muziekkamer Beeld

 

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Foujita with cat 1935 56 x 46 cm Mechelse kamer 02. Photo.
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Theophile Alexander Steinlen De katten van A La Bodinière 1900 75 x 58 cm Grote zaal Schilderij

 

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Leonor Fini Château de Vascoeuil 1977 45 x 35 cm Vestibulel Poster

 

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Foujita Zittende poes 1947 40 x 30 cm Mechelse kamer 02. Drawing

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From The Dodo we hear about a d*g and cat who are good buddies and are regularly taken on hikes, now totaling over 900 miles.

Ever since the day they met, Bandito the pug and Luigi the cat have been the very best of friends.

A cat and a pug might not sound like a typical duo, but these two brothers just make sense, and are always together.

“They just clicked,” Finn Paus, the pair’s dad, told The Dodo. “Together they eat, sleep, fight, snore, dart and chase each other around constantly, every day!”

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Not only are these guys an unlikely duo, they also do some unlikely things together — like, for instance, hiking miles and miles across Spain together.

When Paus’s parents passed away, he and his partner Seb Smetham realized how short life was, and wanted to do something meaningful with their time. And so they packed up Luigi and Bandito into a dog trolley, grabbed some camping gear and set off on a trip that lasted 46 days and over 400 miles.

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“The walk across Spain was a life changer for us,” Paus said. “After the walk we never went home. We bought an old builder’s van and found a new place to live!”

Now the adorable group goes hiking and camping together all the time, and in total, they’ve hiked over 900 miles.

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There are more pictures at the site.

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From ZME Science, and many other sources, we have Nutmeg, the world’s oldest cat. He just celebrated his 31st birthday! Make no mistake about it: though he’s still ticking, he looks his age:

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Moggy Nutmeg from Gateshead, UK is believed to be the oldest cat in the world. The cat popped up at its owners’ house 26 years ago, and they immediately adopted it – obviously taking care of it well.

”He rules the house and he’s absolutely gorgeous,” Nutmeg’s humans told The Mirror.

Despite being the equivalent of about 141 human years, Nutmeg suffered from a very serious stroke last year and now seems to be thriving. Now he seems to be quite healthy, and if everything goes right then he still has a few more lives to him.

Like every cat, he’s spoilt and enjoys his morning meal – and his morning love.

From the Torygraph, which shows us that Nutmeg’s age isn’t completely certain:

Liz and Ian Finlay are looking for documentation to support their claim for the cat they adopted as a stray.

The couple say they took Nutmeg, who they found in their garden in 1990, to their local Cats Protection League, where vets told them he was at least five years old.

. . . “I sorted out [an] abscess on his neck and then we took him to the Cats Protection League to check him over. The vet there said he was an adult, around five years.”

They say the secret to Nutmeg’s long life is his love of chicken.

“He comes in every morning at 5am from his bed next door and we get up and feed him. We have no children so he is our baby.”

The Westway Veterinary Group posted photos of Nutmeg celebrating his birthday on Facebook.

Corduroy, aged 26, is officially the oldest [living] cat in the world. He lives with his owner, Ashley Reed Okura, in Sisters, Oregon, in the United States.

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h/t: Winnie F., Su, Grania, Matthew, Alexandra M.