Readers’ wildlife photographs

November 26, 2016 • 8:00 am

Reader Mike McDowell sent us some splendid photos of dipterans—robber flies. His notes and IDs are indented.

Robber flies share some of the same microhabitats as tiger beetles, with the latter often falling prey to the former. Thus, when in the field photographing tiger beetles, I often come across a variety of robber flies. They’re equally as challenging to sneak up on, so it’s a lucky day when one can leave the field with great portraiture of both types of insects. For the uninitiated, robber flies have a spike-shaped proboscis that they jab into their prey and use it to inject saliva containing a mix of neurotoxins and enzymes that paralyze and digest the insides. The devilish fly then sucks out the liquefied meal through its proboscis. Nasty!

The last two are genus Laphria, but unsure of species — perhaps a reader can identify them.

Proctacanthus hinei:

Efferia albibarbis (copulation):

Efferia aestuans (ovipositing on Echinacea purpurea):

Proctacanthella cacopiliga:

Stichopagon trifasciatus:

Proctacanthus milbertii (with prey):

Laphria Robber Fly (with prey):

Laphria Robber Fly:

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

November 26, 2016 • 6:30 am

Well, FIDEL CASTRO DIED LAST NIGHT AT THE AGE OF 90. The New York Times has a comprehensive obituary that, given Castro’s failing health, was obviously in the works for some time. I can’t add much to that: the guy towered over his country for fifty years, was a masterful military strategist and a ruthless dictator, yet he brought free health care and education to a Cuba ruled by another dictator. What will change in Cuba now? Not much for a while: it’s already on the way to becoming another Caribbean vacation island, though it will take some time. I will mourn the coming change, as I never got to see the “real” Cuba, and can’t do so even now (there are still restrictions), but it’s better for the Cuban people to live in freedom, even amidst the throngs of camera-toting Americans sure to descend on the island. And Fidel hasn’t been in charge for several years; one rarely saw him in the past ten years.

I’ll add one bit: Castro smoked Cuban cigars until the last few years (doctors’ orders), and he favored the Cohiba Lancero, a slim vitola (shape) that is one of Cuba’s finest. I have two boxes of these in my collection, and perhaps I’ll smoke one tonight—not in his honor, but in remembrance of a man, both good and bad, who towered over the last half century.

castrocigar-300x231 — Castro with a Cohiba Lancero

Today is November 26, 2016, proclaimed as Anti Obesity Day. On that day in 1942, the movie Casablanca premiered in New York City. And, in 2000, George W. Bush was certified as having won Florida by the controversial Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, giving Bush the election (later affirmed by the Supreme Court). Now the Democrats are trying to contest Trump’s election, and while I hope she wins, I think that hope is slim.

Notables born on this day include Bat Masterson (1853), Tina Turner (1939), John McVie (1945), and Roz Chast (1954). Those who died on this day include Sojourner Truth (1883) and Tommy Dorsey (1956). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again touting her philosophical superiority on the windowsill (actually, she’s waiting to be carried inside):

Hili: You have to look on all of it from the right perspective.
A: And that means?
Hili: From above.

In Polish:

Hili: Trzeba na to wszystko patrzeć z właściwej perspektywy.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Najlepiej z góry.

And in nearby Wloclawek, tabby Leon does not welcome the onset of winter (it snowed there):

Leon: I think it’s too cold for any walks.

Pet rocks

November 25, 2016 • 2:30 pm

Because about 40% of my Facebook feed consists of complaints about Donald Trump, and because I can’t brain today, I’m proffering cats as a palliative.

Italian artist Roberto Rizzo Pittore specializes in painting animals on rocks; what’s amazing is the lifelike job he does. Here’s a video, along with a picture of the animal he’s painting.

Surprisingly, these thing are not nearly as pricey as I thought: they go for around $100 at Pittore’s Etsy shop. It’s a nice gift for an animal lover. He does foxes, ducks, and other stuff, too.

h/t: Debby

Queen’s university policing Halloween costumes

November 25, 2016 • 10:00 am

Canada is quicking joining the U.S. in its frenzy to turn colleges into Nanny States. The subject, as ever this time of year, is party costumes, rapidly become a political flashpoint, and a great excuse for Regressive Lefists to call people “racists”.

What happened last Saturday in Kingston, Ontario, as reported by the CBC, is that students held a costume party off campus. The theme was “countries,” and students dressed as Buddhist monks, Mexicans (with sombreros or as Mexican wrestlers), Turks (with fezzes), and people from other countries. Here are some of the costumes (the CBC gets some of it wrong: the fezzes don’t adorn “Middle Eastern sheiks” and the face coverings are not “Mexican prisoners”):

Mexican wrestlers:

Asians:

Mexicans:

Buddhis monks, with stocks meant to represent bald heads:

Turks and gypsies?

Daniel Woolf, Principle and Vice-Chancellor of Queens, then issued two statements on the University’s website, threatening sanctions against these students. Here’s an excerpt:

As the principal of Queen’s, I am upset and disappointed by this incident and want to learn more about it so that the university can take appropriate measures to address concerns that have arisen, including my own.

As I stated yesterday, any event that degrades, mocks, or marginalizes a group or groups of people is completely unacceptable at Queen’s.

That is why I have asked the provost to gather as much information as possible, and, based on what he learns, determine if this event falls within the scope of Queen’s Student Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct is applicable to students’ off-campus conduct in certain circumstances.

Others objected as well:

[Toronto comedian Celeste Yim] called the event “shockingly racist.”

“The costumes are indisputably and unequivocally offensive, tasteless, and should not be tolerated. Context and intentions have no bearing,” Yim wrote.

Most of the students at Queen’s University who spoke to CBC News on Wednesday said the images from the party were inappropriate.

“It’s definitely a joke in poor taste. And it’s not right in present society,” said Sutheeksan Sunthoran. “I think we can do better. We should do better — not just as members of Queen’s, but as Canadians, generally.”

Hisham Imtiaz called the party costumes “extremely inappropriate.”

“It doesn’t represent the university as a whole, but it definitely represents a small part of the uneducated group who just says it’s all in good fun — when it really isn’t.”

John Siferd said he believed issues around cultural insensitivity exist on other Canadian universities as well, and that it would be a mistake to view the weekend’s party near Queen’s as a special case.

“Other campuses probably have similar issues relating to race on their campuses. And they should be addressed.”

Well, judge for yourself, and remember that it was a costume party meant to represent “countries”. If the USA were represented, what would the costume be? Probably a Hawaiian shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts, maybe with an American flag in the hand. How about Canadians? Probably a flannel shirt with moose antlers on the head, and a Molson’s—or a Mountie costume. Are these costumes representative of bigotry and racism, or the students’ attempts to look like members of different nationalities? Do they show racism and bigotry? What about the Mexican wrestler masks? You be the judge.

What isn’t ambiguous, I think, is the University’s threats to discipline students for what they do off campus. Even if you think some of the costumes were tasteless (and I probably wouldn’t have worn many of these), one should have the freedom to show poor taste without being disciplined by one’s university for an off campus party. The costumes are simply an expression of free speech, and Queens, while it may have the right to condemn those costumes, has no right to threaten or punish their wearers.

I doubt that these students are racists; if anything, they’re probably just naive and clueless. So boo to Queens for investigating this incident. Yes, perhaps there can be a dialogue about this incident, but the dialogue should not consist of the Perpetually Offended demanding that others agree with them. That’s a monologue.

Here’s what the Advice Goddess Amy Alkon said:

I become more and more convinced: College is now nursery school with beer.

If you, back when I went to University of Michigan in 80s, told me that college students would be “investigated” for going to costumes dressed up in “bad taste,” I think I would have just stood there and gaped at you.

Isn’t that the point? Costume party…dressing up in bad taste?

When the Lunatic Fringe gets Mainstream attention

November 25, 2016 • 8:45 am

by Grania Spingies

So a guy almost nobody ever heard of before last Saturday holds a meeting where approximately 200 members show up—the size of a large-ish knitting club or a small-ish local atheist group—makes some benightedly stupid hand gestures, and scores the media coup of the century.

While one should probably not completely ignore people publicly championing a range of nasty and obsolete views that are predictably vomited by the mouths of white nationalists, a group that small certainly doesn’t merit the wall-to-wall coverage lavished on them by the media. However, if you are a white nationalist with delusions of grandeur and a modicum of intelligence and a complete lack of inhibition, you can probably work out a way to troll the world and make everybody pay attention.

Since then, there has been the predictable avalanche of op-eds in which people generally agree that Nazis (even wannabe Nazis) are bad (this is good) and other op-ed responses that complain about the tone of the first op-eds for not being condemning enough and “normalising”—normalising is the new buzzword du jour —these fools and their acolytes. The problem, however, is not the daftly headlined and faintly breathless piece in Mother Jones describing the self-appointed Leader’s dapper clothing (and there was me thinking that only women were described in terms of the clothes they wear) and skills with chopsticks. [JAC: The headline, “Meet the dapper white nationalist who wins even if Trump loses”, has now been changed.] What might normalise them though is having their faces and ideas plastered everywhere.

So what should the media do? Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has an opinion on this. The whole thread is worth a read, but pay attention to points 15 and especially 16.

Douthat’s point is that it isn’t Spencer that merits attention, but rather Trump, who courted his ilk whenever it was expedient during the election cycle, and might continue to do so in the future. It is Trump and his regime whose feet need to be held to the fire whenever they make common cause with such groups.

I’ve read a couple of pieces by conservatives who make similar points. In The New Republic, Jacob Bacharach, who had a teenage flirtation of his own with Nazi fanciers, argues that they are a distraction, but points out that Trump and Bannon have used such groups as “an instrument of media relations”.

An even more revealing piece in Slate by Ben Shapiro, formerly of Breitbart—and once a colleague of both Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos—offers an insightful analysis of white supremacist groups, the “alt-right”, and their links to Bannon and Trump.

So they’ve tried to broaden the definition so they can suck people into believing they’re alt-right, and then make themselves seem indispensable by saying, “Look at all these alt-right people. They’re all out here, and if the Republican Party pushes them to the side, then they’re going to pay an electoral price for that.” And then you have people winking and nodding at them because they think they’re an important constituency. So it’s a couple-step process, and glomming onto Trump has been part of that because Trump, I don’t think, is alt-right. I don’t think that Trump is particularly racist. I think he’s an ignoramus. I think that more than anything, Trump is willing to pay heed to and wink at anybody who provides him even a shred of good coverage. So if the alt-right, which worships at the altar of Trump—if they provide him good coverage, he’s willing to wink and nod at them and not wreck them.

Shapiro also has things to say about the partisan divide between the Left and Right and where some common middle ground can be gained by moderates from both sides.

I think that the more the left focuses on the things that are actually serious regardless of your politics—like corruption, like policies that are self-directed, that kind of stuff—that will have more of an impact than just going around shouting, “Racist, racist, racist!” I think one of the big problems here is that if you called Mitt Romney a racist in 2012—as Bill Maher said, if you turned it all the way up to 11 for Mitt Romney—it’s very difficult for people to hear you when you turn it up to 12 for Trump.

The common thread here seems to be: don’t get distracted by the antics from the monkey cage. There may be very serious issues soon that will need to be confronted and challenged. It is Trump and his official advisors and their forthcoming policies who should be scrutinised.

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 25, 2016 • 7:30 am

I request once again that readers send me their good wildlife photos. Reader Tony Eales from Australia sent some lovely bee photos; his notes are indented:

It’s been a while but the insect photography is going great. I’m particularly enamoured of native Australian bees, apparently, I’m told, there are something like 1600 species in Australia. Anyway here’s some of my faves.

These bees are members of the genus Megachile. The first bee is known as a resin bee and the second a leaf-cutter bee.

Here’s a photo of roosting males of the genus Nomia subgenus Hoplonomia. I don’t know the species yet, but after putting up images of these bees on Facebook the curator of entomology at the Museum of Victoria asked me to collect two and mail them to him and he said he’ll get back with an ID. [JAC: Does anybody know why these bees tend to cluster like this?]

These are members of my favourite group of bees, the Hylaeinae sub-family or Masked Bees. Unlike most bees, they lack the scopa: masses of branched hairs for collecting pollen.

JAC: The next four pictures are from the Internet showing that the “scopa” can involve both hairs on the leg and elongated hairs on the ventral part of the abdomen; both, as you’ll see, are useful for collecting pollen.

Friday: Hili dialogue

November 25, 2016 • 6:30 am

It’s Friday, November 25, 2016, and most Americans will have recovered from yesterday’s food coma. If you have, then take advantage of the fact that today is National Parfait Day. It’s also Black Friday, when, traditionally, Americans assail the stores hoping to snap up bargains, crushing each other in the process. Finally, it’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The date honors the murder of four siblings, the Mirabel sisters, beaten to death in 1960 on orders of the Dominican Republic strongman Rafael Trujillo for their political activism.

On this day in 1915, Albert Einstein presented the equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. On November 25, 1952, Agatha Christie’s play “The Mousetrap” opened in London’s West End—and it’s still running after 64 years, the longest continuously performed play in history. And on this day in 1999, the 5-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was rescued trying to reach the U.S. in an inner tube. As you might remember, on orders of Janet Reno he was forcibly sent back to his father in Cuba, inciting a huge protest among many Americans.

Notables born on this day include Lewis Thomas (1913; does anybody read his essays any more?), Joe DiMaggio (1914), Percy Sledge (1940), John F. Kennedy, Jr. (1960, died in a plane crash in 1999), and Jill Hennessy (1968♥). Those who died on this day include Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1944), famous for handling the Chicago Black Sox case of cheating in baseball, Upton Sinclair (1968), and footballer George Best (2005). Best (born 1946), abused his body severely with alcohol (he had a liver transplant, and, at the end, asked that a picture of him on his deathbed be published with the caption “Don’t be like me.”) Despite that, he is still considered one of the best footballers of all time, and the best Irish player in history; here are a few highlights showing his skill at dribbling:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sagaciously comments on how the interpretation of historical events changes with time:

Hili: Is history sensitive to fashion?

A: Very much so.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy historia jest wrażliwa na modę?
Ja: Bardzo.

Out in frigid Winnipeg, Gus is sleeping sweetly; his staff sent this photo titled “Polar bear muzzle”:

A cat named Fat Boy rescued after 8 days atop a telephone pole

November 24, 2016 • 2:00 pm

To end the holiday, at least on this site, we have two posts. The first is a heartwarmer (sort of): a tuxedo cat named Fat Boy was marooned on top of a high-voltage power pole in Fresno, California for six to eight days! As this video shows, Pacific Gas and Electric finally sent reinforcements, first de-activating the electric lines (cutting power to 250 homes) before sending a pro up to the top.

What I wonder about is why Fat Boy didn’t fall. Did he not sleep up there? If he did, how did he do it without falling.?

Well, he was saved, and that’s the important thing. Fat Boy used up about 7 of his nine lives!

And here’s a video of cats screaming at each other as only cats can:

h/t: Matthew Cobb, Michael F.

	Debi on Jesse Singal on the ridiculous…
	Mark Sturtevant on Bill Maher on gender apartheid
	Mike on Bill Maher on gender apartheid
	Laingholm on Jesse Singal on the ridiculous…
	Emily on Bill Maher on gender apartheid