Caturday felid trifecta: Dog chases “Cats” actor offstage, hilarious cat book from 1911, and Simon’s kittens

May 5, 2018 • 9:00 am

From last December’s Metro (click on screenshot):

A service dog forgot he was at work and charged towards one of the characters during a recent performance of Cats. The Broadway performance of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical – which sees actors and actresses dress up as cats – was halted when the service dog leapt up from beside its owner and sprinted towards the stage. Nasa launches spacecraft bound for Mars Spies at the Neil Simon Theatre told Page Six the dog ‘got away from its owner and ran after [the character] Bombalurina, performed by actress Mackenzie Warren, during the opening number’ Jellicle Cat. Luckily a fast-moving usher intervened and ‘returned the wayward canine to its mortified owner’.

. . . A spokesperson confirmed that the incident took place but added: ‘In the storied history of Cats, this is the first time one of the actual cats was involved in an incident with a dog. ‘We’re pleased to report that no animals or humans were harmed in the dust-up, and the performance continued without a hitch.’

The beleaguered Catwoman:

Mackenzie Warren in her Cats costume (Picture: Mackenzie Warren/Instagram)

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A cat book in the public domain deserves your attention, and if you have kids you’ll want to read all of it to them and show them the photos. Here’s the book (click on screenshot to go to the entire work), which contains 40 photos and hilarious descriptions of the cats. It may be the first series of LOLcat memes:

The site’s description:

Before LOLCat, Grumpy Cat, Longcat, Nyan Cat, before all the famed kitties of the internet age, before the modern computer was but a glint in Mother Turing’s eye, there were the felines featured in Kittens and Cats: A First Reader (1911). If this delightful, yet also slightly creepy, book is anything to go by then taking photos of cats and brandishing them with an amusing caption was far from being a phenomenon born with the internet. Within its pages we meet “Queen Cat”, “Dunce Cat”, “Party Cat”, and perhaps our favourite “Hero Cat”, amongst others. The book is attributed to the American children’s author Eulalie Osgood Grover, who weaves about the pictures the tale of the Queen’s party and all the kitty characters attending. As for the photographs themselves, the book states them to be courtesy of the Rotograph Company, a popular postcard manufacturers, which implies they are almost certainly an early example of the work of Harry Whittier Frees, their staff animal photographer. A few years later Frees would become associated with a whole host of similar pictures under his own name, with the publication in 1915 of his The Little Folks of Animal Land, which was followed by the publication of a number of further such collections until he ended his own life in 1953. How did Frees get his cats to pose for such photographs, even more remarkable before the days of super quick shutter speeds? Although he denied the use of dead or taxidermied animals, and insisted only humane methods were used, one can’t help but wonder if this is really true, especially in the case of his later work which involved more elaborate tableaus than displayed in this book.

I show below a few pages. The theme is a party given by The Queen Cat, but there are digressions. And be sure to read “A word to the teacher” at the end!

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Finally, if you haven’t been following “Simon’s Cat”, Simon Tofield has collected eleven minutes’ worth of animation featuring the new kitten: the “Tiny Terror”:

Lagniappe: Reader Winnie in Paris says she saw a woman wearing these stockings under knee-high boots. It must have looked as if cats were peeking over the tops!

h/t: Grania, Ronaldo

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 5, 2018 • 7:45 am

Reader Tony Eales from Australia sent us some local birds; his notes are indented:

One thing that was very obvious on my recent outback trip is the transformation brought about by 2-3 years of good rains. What is normally a very yellow-brown landscape was covered in green growth, and there was standing water in the shallow dams even after about a month since the last good rain.

This meant lots of birds.

Budgie (Melopsittacus undulates). Lots of small flocks around which are quite difficult to approach; hoewever, in the heat of the midday they are reluctant to fly and stick to small trees and the shade of bushes. This female kept a wary eye on me but didn’t flush.

Australian Pranticole (Stiltia Isabella) This is a montypic genus inside the Courser/Pranticole family Glareolidae. The first Australian Pranticole I ever saw was back in 1995 at the Ayrshire Hills north of Winton, and on this recent trip I saw one in almost the exact same location. They’re one of my favourite birds and fly in way similar to that of small terns.

Diamond Dove (Geopelia cuneata) a very small dove that was very common in the area and indeed when I was out spotlighting at night. I had to be very careful as they have a habit of sleeping on the dirt roads. That’s where I photographed this one.

The bird highlight of my spotlighting was this Little Buttonquail (Turnix velox). Buttonquails are a great example of convergence as they look very similar to Old World Quails but are more closely related to waders and gulls (quails are related to pheasants). In Buttonquails it is the females who are more colourful, and this is a female in breeding plumage.

As Shakespearean comic relief, here are two freeloading raccoons photographed by reader Robert Jase (see his skunk photos here):

The first two pics are of Rackets: she has been coming by since she was a kit two years ago.  I make it a point to always talk around her (as with all other wild visitors) in a calm but natural tone so they can learn my sound and smell. BUT only mine rather than people in general.  Rackets sort of knows her name, will come when I call her and will not only nuzzle my hand but will also let me rub her nose with my fingers .  Also she will reach out and touch my hand with her paw.  The second pic shows Rackets and my cat Tippie checking each other out in passing.

The next two pics are of Bebbiz.  She(?) is a year old and one of Rackets’ three kits from last year.  She isn’t as friendly yet as her mom nor does she know her name.  They used to travel together regularly until about two months ago, which makes me think Rackets is carrying a new litter.

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 5, 2018 • 6:45 am

It’s Saturday, May 5, 2018, and tomorrow I leave for the world’s most beautiful city, Paris (Prague runs second). But today is National Enchilada Day (I’ve just had many in New Mexico), and, famously, Cinco de Mayo, celebrating the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The holiday also celebrates Mexican culture, which of course includes enchiladas and other wonderful food. You’re allowed to eat them today without being accused of cultural appropriation.

On this day in 1260, Kublai Khan became head of the Mongol Empire, and decreed the construction of a stately pleasure dome.  In the U.S. on this day in 1809,  Mary Kies became the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, involving a method for weaving straw together with silk and thread.  On May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on St. Helena, one of the most remote spots on Earth. And, on cinco de Mayo, 1862, Ignacio Zaragoza’s Mexican troops defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla.  On this day in 1891, Carnegie Hall in New York City formally opened with a big public music performance; Tchaikovsky was the guest conductor.  On May 5, 1904, the very first perfect game in modern baseball was pitched—by the immortal Cy Young. (In a “perfect” game, nobody reaches first base) On this day in 1912, the newspaper Pravda, the organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, began publishing in St. Petersburg.

A historic day in evolutionary biology: it was on May 5, 1925, that teacher John T. Scopes was given his arrest warrant for teaching human evolution in a public school, violating Tennessee’s Butler Act.  In 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepherd became the first American in space, going up and down without orbiting. If you read The Right Stuff, you’ll see that he was neglected in favor of the first American to actually orbit the Earth: John Glenn.  On this day in 1973, the horse Secretariat won the 1973 Kentucky Derby with a time of 1:59.4, a record that still stands. And exactly 8 years later, Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands died in Long Kesh Prison hospital; he’d been starving for 66 days and was 27 years old.

Here’s Secretariat’s marvelous victory, coming from sixth place to win by two lengths. He went on to win the Triple Crown that year. What a horse! Here’s the sad last footage of the horse before he was euthanized.

Notables born on this day include  Søren Kierkegaard (1813), Karl Marx (1818), geneticist Helen Redfield (1900), Tyrone Power (1914), Tamy Wynette (1942), and Michael Palin (1943). Those who died on May 5 include Napoleon Bonaparte (1821; see above) and Bobby Sands (1981; see above).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is engaged in her usual solipsism:

Hili: It’s a pity that my fur is not black.
A: Why?
Hili: I would look like a panther.
In Polish:
Hili: Szkoda, że nie mam czarnego futra.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Wyglądałabym jak pantera.

Reader Barry sent a punny tweet:

From Grania:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/992471194422013952

From Grania: listen to those tiny meows? I think this is one of those short-legged mutant cats:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/992475294102630401

And a HUGE mutant cat!

https://twitter.com/gin211005/status/992276510470885376

From Matthew, a sad commentary on the increase in incarcerated Americans:

https://twitter.com/KhaledBeydoun/status/992278022358056960

What a graceful lizard!

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/992082983208169472

. . . and a fish I didn’t know existed: the pineapplefish (Cleidopus gloriamaris) from waters off Australia:

The volcano Kilauea erupted on the Big Island (Hawaii) yesterday, driving many people from their homes. This picture tells the tale:

From Matthew: two leaf-mimicking crickets in flagrante delicto:

From Grania and Matthew: a list of people’s screwups. Go read the thread connected with the second one below:

Paper wasps + clever biologist = rainbow nests

May 4, 2018 • 3:15 pm

Paper wasps, in the family Vespidae in the order Hymenoptera (you should know the order), are likely familiar to you from their gray nests, which look and feel as if they were made out of stiff paper.

In fact, they are made of paper, but paper manufactured by the wasp long before humans hit on the method. The female wasps macerate wood fibers that, mixed with their saliva, break down the wood down into paper, which is then shaped by workers into lovely hexagonal cells, like these:

But what if you actually gave them paper, and then gave them colored paper? One clever biologist asked those questions. Here’s the answer from This Is Colossal:

It’s unnerving to discover a wasp’s nest dangling outside your house, but perhaps it would be a tad less so with the help of biology student Mattia Menchetti who cleverly realized he could give colored construction paper to a colony of European paper wasps. By gradually providing different paper shades, the wasps turned their homes into a functional rainbow of different colors. This isn’t the first time scientists have encountered insects producing colorful materials with the aid of artificial coloring. In 2012, residue from an M&M plant caused local bees to make blue and green honey, and a similar—though admittedly more tragic—incident involving bees and the dye used in Maraschino cherries occured recently in New York. You can see more of Menchetti’s experiment on his website. (via Booooooom)

This is what you get:

 

h/t: Kurt Helf

Templeton continues its futile effort to harmonize science and faith

May 4, 2018 • 1:00 pm

The John Templeton Foundation, in collaboration with Arizona State University (shame on them!) has a “Think Write Publish” (TWP) program in which young people are taught how to write “nonfiction” narratives that show the harmony between science and religion.  The shame also extends to the National Academies of Science (97% of whose members are outright atheists), who hosted one of their events in October of last year. Templeton also appears to contribute financially to the magazine Issues in Science and Technology, whose page lists as sponsors just these three entities, two of whom are public universities.

The magazine’s editor, Daniel Sarewitz, is not only known for his strenuous attempts to reconcile science and faith (see here and here, for instance), but admits in his Editor’s Journal that he publishes several of the TWP pieces in the magazine. I doubt that many of the National Academies’ members know how Templeton is subtly undermining their science by sneaking in religion. Sarewitz adds this:

Science and religion have become opposing pawns in the divisive and ugly political game that mars the United States today. It is only a small oversimplification to suggest that science is increasingly claimed by liberals as their rightful domain, the rational basis for policy making and the foundation of progress, whereas for conservatives, religion provides the moral precepts of a good society and a bulwark against the promiscuous change that can be thrust upon families and communities by scientific and technological advance.

But in a culture—Western culture, today—where science and religion are so often cast as irreconcilable combatants, is it simply too obvious an irony to point out that many of the founding thinkers of the Enlightenment (including Newton and Kepler) were highly devout men? And although it is certainly the case that a much higher proportion of nonscientists (something over 80%) in the United States believe in God than do scientists (something over 30%), don’t the many thousands of scientists who nonetheless are believers falsify the idea that there is a state of inherent conflict between science and religion?

I’ve refuted this argument for “compatibility” (he’s really arguing for compartmentalization) too often to do it again here.  A scientist who is a believer is in a state of cognitive disassociation, if not cognitive dissonance. And who the hell cares if Newton and Kepler were devout? Everybody was devout then! You might as well use this to argue for the compatibility between religion and the steam engine. Sometimes I think these people realize the weaknesses of their arguments, but trot them out anyway. After all, the terms of Sir John Templeton’s will stipulate that his dosh has to go to ends like this.

At any rate, here’s one of the activities that the TWP program is putting on. It’s free, so you can go!

The Mansion on O Street
2020 O Street NW
Washington, DC 20036

A celebration of the ways that science and religion interact and harmonize to create more meaning, understanding, and purpose in our world.  This day-long festival offers guests the opportunity to explore compelling new stories and thought provoking ideas presented by writers, thinkers, skeptics, and believers from various disciplines and denominations in a series of events that will challenge and inspire. Come for an hour, come for the day.  The Festival–set in the magical Mansion on O St., near Dupont Circle—will present new ways to understand and appreciate our complicated world.

 

More about the TWP and the shameful participation of Arizona State University in this religion-mongering. I guess ASU needs the dosh:

TWP Science & Religion is a project of Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, in collaboration with Creative Nonfiction and Issues in Science and Technology. TWP Science & Religion is made possible through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

And here’s what their fellows—12 a year receiving more than $10,000 each—do:

Science and religion, despite their rich, interwoven history, are too often portrayed as opposites in nearly every way, irreconcilable by definition. Indeed, our increasingly polarized societies seem to encourage the proposition that these two ways of knowing the world cannot productively co-exist, that they encounter each other through conflict and contradiction.

. . . Proposals for personal stories were welcome–from scientists, religious figures, or (just as importantly) everyday people seeking to explore or reconcile their own spiritual and scientific beliefs. But so were research-based narratives about historical moments in scientific and religious discovery, or contemporary scientists wrestling with the ethical quandaries their work entails, or religious, legal, humanistic, or other experts who have encountered interesting and revealing instances of science-religion dialogue and harmonies. Above all, we were looking for narratives—true stories, rich with scene, character, and detail—that provide a nuanced, thoughtful consideration of the complex interplay and unexplored interdependencies and synergies between science and religion.

Some of the fellows and what they’re paid for:

The stories may be true (“I thought about God when I was counting my flies”) but the tenets of religions are not true. Somehow they appear to be conflated in this program. And there’s that word “nuanced” again, which is a sure sign you should run for the hills. Anybody who thinks that Templeton is moving away from Sir John’s intentions (i.e., to show that science proves God), should realize that it hasn’t: it’s just gotten sneakier. That’s evident in their “true stories” logo, which, while technically accurate, also implies that there’s some truth in religion, and by that I mean that God exists—part of the Templeton program:

Finally, here’s Templeton’s press release announcing their program and how it will help science and religion reinforce each other.  I’ve put their ultimate aim in bold:

Science and religion, despite their rich, interwoven history, are too often portrayed as opposites in nearly every way, irreconcilable by definition. Indeed, our increasingly polarized societies seem to encourage the proposition that these two ways of knowing the world cannot productively co-exist, that they encounter each other through conflict and contradiction.

Our project—Think Write Publish—advances a different proposition: that science and religion can reinforce each other to allow a more nuanced, profound, and rewarding experience of our world and our place in it. We will use creative nonfiction writing to explore and advance this proposition. We are building a new community of storytellers who will write, publish, and disseminate engaging and inspiring nonfiction narratives of harmonies, reconciliation, and even productive interaction between science and religion.

We will award twelve $10,000 two-year TWP Science & Religion Fellowships. Open to novice and experienced writers, anyone who has a compelling true story or true stories illustrating or exploring harmonies between science and religion is encouraged to apply. Over a two-year period, Fellows will develop, write, and market their creative nonfiction stories. They will be mentored throughout the project by experienced writers, editors and teachers. They and their stories will be featured in a series of regional and national events.

One of the best ways to foster collective understanding is with a good story. Creative nonfiction– true stories, well told–allows for complexity, novelty, and revelation, and through compelling voice, suspense, character development, and well-chosen details has the potential to engage the widest audiences and change the way they know the world.

What they are doing is using public-relations techniques and experienced editors to try to persuade the public that science and religion are the very best of friends. Templeton is of course allowed to do that, and some of them may even believe it. But it’s a waste of money, especially in a Western world becoming ever more secular. It also serves to give credibility to the tenets of religion. For Arizona State University (a public university) and the National Academies of Science (an institution that advises the U.S. government) to engage in such nonsense is a step backward in a world that’s shedding its shackles of faith.

The pretense of “diverse viewpoints” in the academic study of literature

May 4, 2018 • 10:45 am

Quillette, a website of classical liberalism that eschews (and criticizes) identity politics and authoritarian Leftism, seems to be doing well, and deserves your attention. The articles aren’t clickbait, but intellectual, yet are full of stuff to make you think. Here’s one from about three weeks ago on the intellectual uniformity of literary theory. The author, Neema Parvini, is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Surrey, a Shakespeare scholar, and author of five books, including Shakespeare and New Historicism Theory (2017) and Shakespeare’s Moral Compass (publishing this year), as well as presenter of a podcast called Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory. You can read his stimulating essay by clicking on the screenshot:Parvini describes several authors who suffered demonization and even professional damage from scrutinizing left-wing thought, including Roger Scruton and especially Richard Levin, who criticized feminist treatments of Shakespeare because “they all seemed to reach similar conclusions.”

If you have any acquaintance with literary theory, gender studies, and the like, you’ll know that the disciplines are largely ideological, pushing one Leftist point of view and shutting out others. Question these viewpoints and you’re in trouble, either as student or professor.  Now this may simply reflect the hegemony of the Left in American universities, but it’s unwise to shut out alternative voices at a time when college students should be thinking for themselves and weighing conflicting ideas, not sopping up indoctrination by their professors.

Indeed, one of my friends, an English professor at a very famous university, retired early because he simply couldn’t stand the transformation of literature from an exercise in getting the most out of reading (and learning to appreciate books) into a discipline inculcating ideology and sucking the life out of literature. I thank Ceiling Cat that I went to college and studied literature when we were simply educated in how to navigate “difficult” books like Faulkner without having a veneer of ideology slapped onto our studies. If I hadn’t had that, I may have been forever put off reading literature.

What interests me most about Parvini’s essay is how beneath the supposedly diverse methods of literary analysis in universities lies, as he says, “a stifling uniformity.” Here’s how he puts it:

Many universities and colleges currently advertise literary theory courses which purport to introduce students to a range of different approaches to literary texts. On paper, it looks like as many as ten or fifteen different approaches. The labels proliferate: new historicism, cultural materialism, materialist feminism, ecofeminism, postcolonialism, deconstruction, structuralism, poststructuralism, race theory, gender theory, queer theory, postmodernism … the list might go on. This extensive list of labels seems to signal genuine range and diversity; however, in terms of their ideas, these approaches are somewhat narrower in scope and focus than one might expect. Virtually every approach listed here lays claim to be ‘radical’, which is to say politically of the left or even hard left – with roots in Marxist theory – hostile to capitalism, the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, liberal humanism, and even to the West itself. Virtually all are also committed to ‘social justice’. It must be noted that, since about 1980, these labels accurately register the genesis of literary studies as a discipline, but what they do not register is that, as they were rising, dissenting voices were systemically hounded out of the academy.

After describing some “dissenting voices” like Scruton and Levin, he shows the uniformity of literary schools like those in the second sentence above by making a list of their similarities:

Despite significant differences, all the approaches I listed above assume that:

  1. There is no universal human nature.
  2. Human beings are primarily a product of their time and place.
  3. Therefore, power, culture, ideologies, and the social institutions that promulgate them have an extraordinary capacity to shape and condition individuals.
  4. In Western societies, since these institutions have been dominated by people who were predominantly rich, straight, white, and male it has tended towards pushing the particular interests of rich straight white men to the detriment of all other groups.
  5. Furthermore, these rich straight white men have done this by acting as if their sectional interests were universal and natural – a flagrant lie.
  6. Importantly, however, few if any of these rich white straight men were consciously aware of doing this, because they were themselves caught in the matrices of power, culture, ideologies and so on.
  7. Where subordinated groups have gone along with these power structures, they have been exploited and the victims of ‘false consciousness’.
  8. Now is the time to redress this balance by exposing the ways in which old texts have promoted the sectional interests of the rich straight white men and by promoting the voices of the historically marginalised groups.

Parvini then makes a table showing that the similarities are the oppressor vs. oppressed narrative, with only the names of the parties changed among approaches:

He criticizes this hegemony because “it is not a scientific hypothesis that can be falsified or a philosophical argument that can be countered with other philosophical arguments”, but “more of a theological proposition.” That’s true, but seems besides the point, because this kind of analysis—or any form of literary analysis beyond testable statements about how a work was constructed (author’s intention, checkable facts, etc.)—can never enter the realm of empirical testability. Yes, you can point to instances in the real world of oppression, but what a book “means” is not in general a testable hypothesis.

All you can do, and what Parvini recommends, is to teach diverse and conflicting views and let the students sort it out for themselves. As he says, “universities are places to learn how to think not what to think.”

Frank comes to breakfast

May 4, 2018 • 9:30 am

The Canada geese haven’t been in the pond since yesterday morning, and I have no idea where they went. The nearest body of water is at least a mile away, and I doubt the goslings can walk that far. So, while I don’t regret that the geese are gone, for they might interfere with ducklings in statu nascendi, I hope they made it to a larger and safer body of water.

In the meantime, here’s a video I just made of Frank swimming toward me at my whistle, and then exiting the pond for breakfast. Excuse the shaky camera as I was walking backwards to his feeding spot while trying to film. Yesterday he ran down the sidewalk to me at top speed, which made me laugh as ducks are ungainly when they run, and he lurched from side to side during the rapid waddle.

You can hear his little quacks at the beginning.

Some pictures of my handsome boy:

Note the serrated edge of his bill, which filters out food while allowing the water to escape. It’s the duck equivalent of baleen: