Wednesday: Hili dialogue

November 1, 2017 • 6:45 am

It’s now officially November: Wednesday, November 1, 2017. To celebrate the onset of the new month, as I have done before , I’ll post Wallace Stevens’s poem on the degeneration of the seasons:

Metamorphosis

by Wallace Stevens

Yillow, yillow, yillow,
Old worm, my pretty quirk,
How the wind spells out
Sep – tem – ber….

Summer is in bones.
Cock-robin’s at Caracas.
Make o, make o, make o,
Oto – otu – bre.

And the rude leaves fall.
The rain falls. The sky
Falls and lies with worms.
The street lamps

Are those that have been hanged.
Dangling in an illogical
To and to and fro
Fro Niz – nil – imbo.

As for food, it’s National Bison Day (for eating), so we can just forget about that. It’s also National Brush Day (appropriately, the day after Halloween), emphasizing the importance of toothbrushing. As Wikipedia says, “On this day, parents are encouraged to make sure their kids brush their teeth for two minutes, twice a day.” Left to their own devices, few people realize how long two minutes is, I get around that by using a Sonicare electric toothbrush that beeps every thirty seconds (to move to a new row, inside or out), and shuts off after two minutes. I use this inexpensive one (I have one at work and at home), and it gives good results, or so my dental hygienist tells me. Get one! And floss every day, too. If you’re gonna tell me what kind of cat to get, I’ll tell you how to take care of your teeth.

On this day in 1520, Magellan’s ships entered the tumultuous straits that later bore his name. On November 1, 1604, Shakespeare’s Othello was presented for the first time (at the Palace of Whitehall); records attribute the play to “Shaxberd”. Exactly 7 years later, The Tempest was presented at the same place. On this date in 1755, Lisbon, Portugal suffered a terrible earthquake, killing about 30,000 people (if you want to see confusion, see the Wikipedia estimates for the death toll from the November 1 entry, the Lisbon entry, and the poem entry in the next sentence). It was this event that inspired Voltaire’s work Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, questioning the existence of an omnipotent and beneficent god.

According to Wikipedia, it was on this day in 1896 when “a picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.” Yes, many young men read the magazine as their only chance to see semi-naked women. On November 1, 1922, the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI, abdicated. On this day in 1938, Seabiscuit defeated War Admiral in an upset victory during “the match of the century” in horse racing. Here’s that famous race, a highlight of Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling book Seabiscuit: An American Legend (an excellent read; see this documentary).

On this day in 1941, American photographer Ansel Adams set up his tripod in the evening and photographed a moonrise over the small town of Hernandez, New Mexico; it is perhaps his most famous picture and an iconic image in photography. Here it is:

On this date in 1950, Pope Pius XII, speaking from the “chair” (as Archie Bunker said, being “inflammable”), formally proclaimed and defined the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. This event, Mary’s bodily ascent to Heaven, isn’t in the New Testament, but was simply made up as a gloss on Scripture:

By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

Finally, it was on this day in 1982 that the first car manufactured in the U.S. by an Asian motor company rolled off the assembly line. It was a Honda Accord.

Notables born on November 1 include Grantland Rice and Alfred Wegener (both 1880), Edward Said (1935), Kinky Friedman (1944), Lyle Lovett (1957; once married to Julia Roberts, but for less than two years),  and Toni Collette (1972). Those who “fell asleep” on this day include Dale Carnegie (1955), ecologist Robert MacArthur and Ezra Pound (both 1972), Phil Silvers (1985), Nobelist Severo Ochoa (1983), and Walter “Sweetness” Payton (1999).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is nosing around the place where Andrzej and Malgorzata toast sausages around a campfire:

Cyrus: Not a trace of the sausages.
Hili: But something is moving in the grass.
 In Polish:
Cyrus: Ani śladu po tych kiełbaskach.
Hili: Nie, ale coś się rusza w trawie.

It has snowed out in Winnipeg, and Gus’s thermometer-nose and muddy footprints tell the tale. His staff reports:

The season of pink nose and mud feet is upon us.

A tweet found by Matthew Cobb. This is just WRONG:

And this from Gethyn, part of the staff of the coffee-drinking moggie Theo. I’m not sure, though, that this behavior really minimizes noise, or whether there’s a fitness advantage in halving the number of pawprints.

At least six dead in truck attack in Manhattan

October 31, 2017 • 3:46 pm

Not again! It happened when a Home Depot truck drove along the bike path that was the West Side Highway, hitting people and then the driver exited, brandishing what is described as an “imitation firearm”. The suspect was shot by police but is apparently not dead. According to CNN, police haven’t ruled out terrorism, and the truck method suggests that. But an imitation gun? That doesn’t comport.

The truck:

 

Bengals!

October 31, 2017 • 3:40 pm

The eleven-minute video below tells a story of selective breeding: how Bengal cats were created by crossing a domestic cat to an Asian leopard cat (Prionailus bengalensis), and then repeatedly backcrossing the hybrids to domestic cats, instilling a placid domestic-cat temperament, ridding the hybrids of sterility, and preserving a leopard-like pattern of rosettes. One of the heroes of this story is Anthony Hutcherson, a friend I made at the Great New Yorker Dog versus Cat Debate, and who promised me a free Bengal kitten any time I want. (The only reason I haven’t gotten one is because I travel too much.) He also offered one to another team member, Joyce Carol Oates, and she got one (see here).

Anthony’s cats are not only beautiful, but sweet-tempered, as I discovered when I had one in my lap for over an hour in front of a big audience in New York. To read more about him and Bengals, see Ariel Levy’s New Yorker piece, “Living room leopards“.

More on the free speech survey: Microagressions

October 31, 2017 • 1:00 pm

Earlier today I discussed the upcoming Cato Institute/YouGov survey of Americans’ views on free speech as reported in The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf—data that I didn’t find terribly heartening. It turns out that the same survey asked questions about statements considered by many colleges as “microaggressions”. In a related Atlantic piece, “Who is competent to decide what offends?” Friedersdorf summarizes these data separately, though the final report hasn’t yet appeared.

Friedersdorf isn’t an opponent of teaching students arriving at colleges about different cultures. Rather, he objects to the teaching of “cultural competence”: that is, giving messages to students about how to behave towards members of different groups. Here’s what Friedersdorf considers acceptable teaching:

A sound approach to teaching “cultural competence” might inform by exploring the history of blackface; or why Sikhs carry a small knife; or common challenges that orthodox Christian students experience on secular campuses; or the historical experience of a Native tribe with many members enrolled; or differences in classroom culture that Chinese exchange students might exhibit; or the hijab’s meaning. Such particulars would best be shaped by the composition of the student body at a given institution.

Well, that’s already mixing behavioral modification with facts. How can you teach about “the history of blackface” without saying that it’s considered offensive by nearly everyone, black or white? Or describe the “common challenges that orthodox Christian students experience on secular campuses” without conveying a message that challenging those students is wrong? How can you describe the “hijab’s meaning” without saying that covering one’s head is considered by many Muslim women as a form of modesty to avoid exciting men’s sexual urges? After all, that is part of the meaning for many Muslim women.

I’m not so sure , then, that agree with any formal instruction in “cultural competence” along the lines given above. Can’t they just put in the student handbook a paragraph about treating other people with civility and respect? After all, if you don’t go to college you don’t get this form of indoctrination—you’re expected to learn how to get along with other people very different from you. Do we really need the endless first-year seminars and orientations to mold students’ behaviors and language?

But Friedersdorf does object to the kind of “cultural competence” instruction that tells students what others consider “microaggressions,” and he gives some examples:

But a flawed approach leaves students less culturally competent than when they began. Consider a widely circulated educational sheet, derived from an academic text, that seems to have originated in the UC system before being circulated at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin, the court system of Philadelphia, and beyond. It lists what it calls examples of “racial microaggressions” that “communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons.”

The following statements are included:

  • “You speak good English.”
  • “When I look at you I don’t see color.”
  • “America is a melting pot.”
  • “America is the land of opportunity.”
  • “Everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough.”

The UCLA professor Eugene Volokh once criticized this microaggressions sheet for going beyond “evenhandedly trying to prevent insult” to actively stigmatizing contested viewpoints, an inappropriate measure for administrators at a public university. I shared that objection at the time, but recently came upon another as powerful.

Before we get to that, I’ll add that some of those statements do seem rude or patronizing (“You speak good English”; and I’d add one that I’ve also noticed: characterizing members of a minority group as “remarkably articulate/eloquent” when they wouldn’t say that about a white person.) But some of the others are either inoffensive (“America is a melting pot”), or something that might offend a few people but not others (“America is the land of opportunity”). Others (“Indian giver” or “I jewed him down”) are pretty generally offensive.  But my preference would be to avoid telling students that any statements like these are offensive, and let them learn it on their own. Believe me–they will, and this avoids having college authorities handle the sticky task of what is offensive and what isn’t.

Which brings us to Friedersdorf’s beef, one derived from the Cato/YouGov survey. It turns out that “microaggression” statements aren’t nearly as offensive to different groups as is assumed—and of course that is assumed when the lists of microaggressions are compiled and circulated. Here are some data from the survey:

Telling a recent immigrant, “you speak good English” was deemed “not offensive” by 77 percent of Latinos; saying “I don’t notice people’s race” was deemed “not offensive” by 71 percent of African Americans and 80 percent of Latinos; saying “America is a melting pot” was deemed not offensive by 77 percent of African Americans and 70 percent of Latinos; saying “America is the land of opportunity” was deemed “not offensive” by 93 percent of African Americans and 89 percent of Latinos; and saying “everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough” was deemed “not offensive” by 89 percent of Latinos and 77 percent of African Americans.

The conclusion?

Public-opinion data cannot tell us whether a given statement is wrongheaded; and if campus progressives want to marshal substantive reasons for why any of the above statements should be eschewed, they ought to be free to articulate those arguments, and should receive a fair hearing by people who engage them on the merits. At times, I’m sure I’d agree with their analysis rather than the culture at large. I’m persuaded, for example, that “unauthorized immigrant” is the best locution.

I’m not sure, though, that there are “substantive reasons” beyond people’s reactions to argue why many terms are offensive. The word “Jewess”, for instance, is considered bigoted by some, but not by others. I can’t imagine any grounds for arguing one way or the other about its appropriateness without seeing if it’s considered offensive by people. Suppose that 65% of Jews (Sarah Silverman is one of these) see it as inoffensive, but 35% do. What do you tell the students? Just give them the data breakdown and let them decide for themselves?

I’d say forget the whole thing, because, based on the data above, giving lists of terms that colleges deem offensive, but aren’t offensive to many, has been a botch.  I want students to learn how to behave respectfully towards others, but not from a hamhanded bunch of college administrators orchestrating behavior—even if their motivations, as they usually are, are good.

In the end, then, I agree with Freidersdorf that this kind of instruction is misplaced, but I don’t think there’s any way to compile a list of “microaggressions” based on objective reasons why statements are wrongheaded—that is, reasons beyond “this term offends a lot of people”. (One exception: terms like “nigger” or “kike” or “towelhead” which have historically been both used to denigrate groups and are universally considered offensive. But students already know that.) What, for instance, do you do with the statement that “Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Catholicism are misogynistic faiths”? Surely most believers of these faiths will consider those microaggressions, because they’ll be offended. But those are topics ripe for discussion, and shouldn’t be off limits.

The “microaggressions” that are taught shouldn’t be, while the ones that are “macroaggressions” are those people have already learned not to use—or soon will after they get to college! As Friedersdorf concludes:

But even if almost everyone is on the same page when it comes to blackface, Holocaust denial, or racial slurs, it appears some powerful college administrators are incompetent at formulating a broader picture of what it is to be culturally competent, and are sometimes the ones who’d most benefit from remedial education.

I’d make an exception to Holocaust denialism here, for we still need to educate students what the evidence for the Holocaust is, and I wouldn’t be offended by someone telling me the Holocaust didn’t happen. I’d be astounded, suspect they were bigoted or ignorant, and try to educate them. As for racial slurs, we all know what they are by the time we get to college, for those who don’t go to college know exactly the same thing.

h/t: DrBrydon

A new survey on Americans’ views of free speech gives mixed results

October 31, 2017 • 10:00 am

I’ve known about this survey on free speech for a while, but was told not to divulge the details until it was published. Well, it still hasn’t come out yet, but since Conor Friedersdorf published some of its results in The Atlantic (“American’s many divides over free speech“), these are now in the public domain. There are a lot more data to come, of course, but I’ll just summarize what’s been published.

The results, which come from a Cato Institute/YouGov survey of 2300 people, are heartening but not completely so. The good news is that most Americans favor no or very limited restrictions on speech. The bad news is that a substantial fraction of Americans still want restrictions on “hate speech” (despite even more of them arguing, correctly, that defining “hate speech” is problematic), and even laws against it. Many Americans think that “hate speech” is already illegal, though it isn’t. Further, a large percentage of Americans with college experience think that some viewpoints should not be allowed to be expressed by speakers at colleges.  I’ll bulletpoint the main results reported by Friedersdorf (and will link to the survey when it appears).

While many readers have claimed that speech restrictions are largely something approved by young people rather than older ones, and that students will grow out of censoriousness as they age, there are no data on that in the article. I trust there will be data published that’s divided up by age, since there are clearly data divided up by whether students are in college or have gone to college. In the meantime, have a gander. I’ve indented and put quotation marks around Friedersdorf’s words, and placed my own comments flush left.

  • “. . . 59 percent of Americans say people should be able to express even deeply offensive views, while 40 percent said government should prevent people from engaging in hate speech, with partisan and racial divides characterizing the results.”

That’s almost 100% in total, so few people have no answer or are undecided.  But even though a majority favor the courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment, four in ten of all people surveyed still think that the government should prevent hate speech, and the only way to do that is through the law—making it illegal and punishing people. 40% is way too high. Remember, this is not just college students, but (presumably) a representative sample of all Americans.

Here’s a strange result when combined with what I’ll say shortly:

  • “An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that ‘it would be hard to ban hate speech because people can’t agree what speech is hateful,’ including 78 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Latinos, and 59 percent of African Americans. And the notion that ‘freedom of speech ensures the truth will ultimately win out’ was shared by 70 percent of Latinos, 68 percent of African Americans, and 63 percent of Democrats.

It’s surprising that minorities are more in favor of the “truth value” of  free speech than Democrats in general, since restrictions of freedom of speech are usually said to be there to protect minorities. But then get this:

  • “Yet a majority of Americans and a supermajority of African Americans believe that ‘society can prohibit hate speech and still protect free speech.’ (To complicate matters, a quarter of Americans, 38 percent of African Americans, and 45 percent of Latinos erroneously believe it is already illegal to make a racist statement in public.)”

That conflicts with the finding that a majority of Americans (including 78 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Latinos, and 59 percent of African Americans) think that it would be hard to ban hate speech because of the difficulty of defining it. Who, then, is to define it? This is a puzzling dichotomy of opinions. As for widespread ignorance of the First Amendment, well, that needs to be remedied, perhaps in school.

What kind of speech should be banned, then?

  • Forty-six percent would support a law making it illegal to say offensive things about African Americans; there is less support for banning insults against other groups (41 percent for Jews, 40 percent for immigrants and military-service members, 39 percent for Hispanics, 37 percent for Muslims, 36 percent for gays, lesbians, and transgender people, 35 percent for Christians).
    Forty-seven percent of Latinos, 41 percent of African Americans, and 26 percent of whites would favor a law making it illegal to say offensive things about white people in public.Should there be a law making it illegal to say offensive or disrespectful things in public about the police? Fifty-one percent of Latinos say yes. So do 40 percent of African Americans, 38 percent of Democrats, and 36 percent of both independents and Republicans.

Here we have nearly 4 in 10 Americans, despite their “overwhelming belief that it would be hard to ban hate speech” because it’s hard to define, clearly implying they know what hate speech is, and supporting laws against it. None of this should be illegal, for this kind of offensive speech, including anti-police speech, is protected by the First Amendment.

  • “Fifty-one percent of Democrats would favor a law “requiring people to refer to a transgender person by their preferred gender pronouns and not according to their biological sex.” Majorities of African Americans, Latinos, whites, and Republicans disagreed.”

Mere civility mandates that you call someone by the pronoun they prefer, but to enforce that with a law is ludicrous! Again, Democrats in general are more authoritarian than minorities (and Republicans!)

In other results, 72% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats think people should be punished for desecrating or burning the American flag. Sorry, but that’s legal, too! And 46% of Democrats? What is it that riles people about a scrap of cloth, whose burning merely symbolizes one’s feelings about what it stands for? That is speech. Further, “53 percent of Republicans and 49 percent of Latinos favor ‘stripping a person of their U.S. citizenship if they burn the American flag.’” (Data from Democrats or other groups aren’t given.) It’s really distressing that so many people feel that exercising one’s Constitutional rights should get them stripped of their citizenship!

You can read the article to see data on being fired for holding offensive beliefs (most people say no) and about punching Nazis (surprisingly, white people are more in favor of such punching than are Latinos or African Americans though only 56% of whites find Nazi-punching immoral). Further, a large majority of all groups “agreed that colleges and universities are not doing enough to teach young Americans about the value of free speech, and not doing enough to ensure students are exposed to a variety of viewpoints––though a small majority believes colleges ‘have an obligation to protect students from offensive speech and ideas that could create a difficult learning environment.’”  I would have been happier if both of those questions garnered large majorities in favor of free speech.

I’ll finish with this and throw it to the readers about what viewpoints should be demonized in colleges.

  • “When asked, “Suppose the following people were invited to speak at your college, should they be allowed to speak?” respondents who were college students or had college experience answered “no,” various viewpoints should not be allowed, as follows:
    • A speaker who advocates for violent protests (81 percent)
    • A speaker who plans to publicly reveal the names of illegal immigrants attending the college (65 percent)
    • A speaker who says the Holocaust did not occur (57 percent)
    • A speaker who says all white people are racist (51 percent)
    • A speaker who says Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to come to the U.S. (50 percent)
    • A speaker who advocates conversion therapy for gays and lesbians (50 percent)
    • A speaker who says transgender people have a mental disorder (50 percent)
    • A speaker who publicly criticizes and disrespects the police (49 percent)
    • A speaker who says that all Christians are backwards and brainwashed (49 percent)
    • A speaker who says the average IQ of whites and Asians is higher than African Americans and Hispanics (48 percent)
    • A speaker who says the police are justified in stopping African Americans at higher rates than other groups (48 percent)
    • A person who says all illegal immigrants should be deported (41 percent)
    • A speaker who says men on average are better at math than women (40 percent)

While all of this should be permitted if a group invites somebody to campus (the advocacy of violence is allowed so long as it doesn’t call for imminent violence on the spot), I can’t imagine that advocates of some of these views would ever be invited, even by Republicans. But even hearing odious stuff like “conversion therapy for gays and lesbians” can be instructive, if for no other reason than we need to learn the best arguments of our opponents. If you don’t want to hear that stuff, don’t go to the talk! So I would say that all of the advocates of those views, if they were invited to speak and accepted, should be allowed to speak.

“DrBrydon”, who kindly sent me this link (and the next one I’ll post on), found these results heartening, but I don’t. Clearly many Americans don’t even understand what the First Amendment says, much less why it was put into the Bill of Rights.

h/t: DrBrydon

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 31, 2017 • 7:30 am

Reader Colin Franks (website here, Facebook here, Instagram here) sent us another lovely batch of gorgeous bird photos. His IDs are indented. And keep sending in your photos, please.

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronate):

Pileated Woodpecker (Hylatomus pileatus):

Rufus Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus):

Brown Creeper (Certhia Americana):

Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus):

Common Loon (Gavia immer):

Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa):

Northern Pintail (Anas acuta):

Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica):

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus):

Tuesday: Hili dialogue, Halloween Black Cat edition

October 31, 2017 • 6:30 am

It’s the last day of October, 2017, and that means it’s Halloween, as well as National Caramel Apple Day, and, in Mexico, the beginning of the Day of the Dead, which is really three days. We’ll quickly reprise the events of this day and then onto Halloween.

On this day in 1923, a heat wave began in Oz: it was the first of 160 consecutive days of 100° Fahrenheit (38° C) heat at Marble Bar  in northwestern Australia. And people still live there—the population is 208! On this day in 1940, the Battle of Britain came to an end, with many owing a lot to very few.  Exactly a year later, Mount Rushmore’s sculpture was completed, though plans originally called for showing each President to the waist (lack of funds precluded that). Here it is (I’ve never seen it):

On October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (Nehru’s daughter, no relation to the Mahatma) was shot to death by two of her Sikh security guards, leading to riots and the death of about 3,000 Sikhs.  Finally, on this day six years ago, the UN certified that the world population of humans reached 7 billion. How they got so exact I’ll never know.

Notables born on this day include John Keats (1795), Adolf von Baeyer (1835), Vallbhbha Patel (1875; India’s first Deputy Prime Minister), Dan Rather (1931), John Candy and Jane Pauley (both 1950), and Muzzy Izzet (1974, an English-Turkish soccer player whose name I like).  Those who died on October 31 include Kitagawa Utamaro (1806), Egon Schiele (1918, only 28 years old), Harry Houdini (1926; died on Halloween!), Indira Gandhi (see above), Ring Larder, Jr. (2000), and Chicago writer Studs Terkel (2008).

Here are two Utamamaro prints of women and cats:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is asking about consciousness (she’s been doing a lot of reading lately):

Hili: What are qualia?
A: Nothing edible.
Hili: Strange. They sound as if they were.
In Polish:
Hili: Co to są qualia?
Ja: Nic do jedzenia.
Hili: Dziwne, brzmią jakby były.

On to the holiday. Here are a few readers’ black cats, but be sure to check out the Halloween Black Cat Parade from two years ago.

From reader Cicely, a photo entitled “Arabella pretending to be civilised. . . but waiting for the right moment:

From reader Rachel:

Here’s my Lloyd, age 10, meeting his doppelgänger. When I was looking to adopt a cat 7 years ago I remembered hearing that black cats were statistically the least likely to be adopted from shelters. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do think that black cats are the most beautiful of all cats, so I deliberately set out to fall in love with a black cat. I think I interviewed half the black cats in Milwaukee, where I was going to grad school at the time, before I found my boy.

From reader Andrey:

This is my cat Electron. Originally from the swamps of the south Louisiana bayou she is now a denizen of the Pacific Northwest living in West Seattle.  She is very talkative, but this is one of her contemplative moments.

Reader Tubby sends his black cat with the brief note, “Here is Orson looking pensive.”

And an extra: “Included is a picture of Orson’s licorice toebeans, which, sadly, he does not allow me to touch.”

From reader Ken, a deceased cat:

Pele was a great combination of a super loving staff owner, who loved to be held, and loved to be involved in everything I did, as you can see by his supervisory position on top of my aging PC, circa 2000.

Linda Calhoun has several black cats. This one is Billy the Kit, which, as she says, “is John’s cat. Unless John is gone, I am just the person who opens the cans.”

From reader Woody:

This is my black cat Moe (9 years old), practicing for Trick or Treaters.

From reader David:

Here’s a pic of my daughter’s newly adopted black kitten, Winter, from Tampa, FL. She likes to sit on top of the stairs and look down on her staff like Ceiling Cat.

Happy Halloween! And may you not be forced to eat candy corn (note that the cat below has rejected the corn):

Reader Roger summarizes my feelings about candy corn:

Matthew sent a link to five short Halloween horror stories, each a graphic and each in two sentences. Here’s one:

Source

Reader Simon sent some lovely carved pumpkins from here in Chicago:

Just been to the Night of a Thousand Lanterns at the Botanic Garden. Some things you don’t expect on pumpkins. So here are some with “acceptable” subjects. I know goats are not one of your normally favored species. but in this case you can make an exception!

Now you tell me what the goat means! (I know, but I want readers to guess.) By the way, these aren’t done by computers, but were created by “master carvers” (see below):

 

Here’s a master carver working on a psychotic clown pumpkin:

 

Finally, if you click on today’s Google Doodle (i.e., screenshot below), you’ll go to a YouTube video, “Jinx’s night out” with the description, ” Today’s Halloween Doodle checks in on Jinx, the lonely ghost, who embarks on a mission to find the perfect costume — and a place to belong.”  Note a case of Asian cultural appropriation in costumes at 1:35: Google screwed up!

 

But last year’s Doodle, “Magic Cat Academy”, an interactive game, was much better, and I don’t know how I missed it! You can play it by clicking on the screenshot below (draw a ghost’s symbol with your mouse to dispel the spook). There are several levels, and I got to 15,400 before my cat used up his nine lives.

Finally, a tw**t sent by Matthew (for non-Brits, Matthew explains: “Celebrations are cheap small versions of confectionary bars. A Rennie is an indigestion tablet”).