I have landed!

September 3, 2017 • 10:03 am

It was a long trip from Chicago to Dobrzyn, beginning the grope of my nether parts (fore and aft) by the TSA, and then a 9-hour flight on LOT from Chicago to Warsaw. I chose two movies to watch out of a small and largely dire selection: “Interstellar” with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain, with John Lithgow, Michael Caine, and Ellen Burstyn in cameo roles; and “The Descendants” with George Clooney. The latter movie was definitely the better, as I’ve never been a big fan of space/science fiction movies.

After arrival, a short drive from the airport to the train station, a two-hour train journey west to Wloclawek, and then a half-hour drive to Dobrzyn, where I’m now settled.

And all the elements for a lovely stay are here, beginning with my surrogate parents Andrzej and Malgorzata (already back on their computers):

Freshly baked cherry pie was waiting, and it was plundered (and pronounced superb) within 15 minutes of my arrival:

And, of course, The Furry Princess of Poland, here asking for food:

Oddly enough, soon after I arrived Hili made a cat tunnel on my bed, where slept for a bit, and then burrowed under my blankets, where she’s now forming a cat-sized lump:

The Cat Tunnel, very neatly made!

Now she’s beneath the covers. This is heartening as Hili has never before slept on my bed, though she’s often glad to have a nap on my chest on the couch:

Note the lump in the bed (I don’t know why cats don’t get claustrophobic):

The lump, slightly dissected:

Hiroko sent to Poland a copy of her new book on embroidering cats, along with some “cat’s snacks” for Hili. Note that Hili is on the cover, too, as an exemplar of a “hard to embroider” cat. I find it delightful that a Japanese woman has sent Japanese cat snacks to a Polish cat—this must be a first.

Here’s Hiroko’s video, which I’ve posted before, about embroidering Hili.  I once said I’d make Hili the most famous cat in Poland, and I’d say that this comes pretty close:

Hiroko’s book has gotten a glowing review by Mary Corbet at Needle ‘n Thread, including this encomium:

In order to answer the questions she received over and over again about how she manages to embroider such perfect renditions of cats, Hiroko has written a fabulous book detailing her style and how she accomplishes her pet portraits.

Embroidered Cats: Hiroko’s Style is more of a visual documentary of how she creates her cats with needle and thread, rather than a strict how-to manual. It’s a fascinating little book, packed full of cat (and some dog) embroidery, each displayed in a series of developmental photos.

 

Sunday: Hili dialogue

September 3, 2017 • 6:43 am

by Grania

Good morning! I’m filling in for Jerry who is winging his way to Poland right now and will check in with us when he reaches his destination, but he still has a train journey inland ahead of him when he arrives.

Today in 1189 Richard The Lionheart was crowned in Westminster. A few centuries later things had changed forever on the monarchy front and in 1658 Richard Cromwell (son of Oliver) became Lord Protector of England. In 1783 the American Revolutionary War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1976 the American Viking 2 spacecraft landed at Utopia Planitia on Mars.

Today is also the birthday of Jamaican singer Omi, whose most famous song is smooth enough for Sunday morning listening.

On to animal affairs:

Hili: Do you see what I see?
Cyrus: Of course.
Hili: And what do you think?
Cyrus: Nothing interesting, a magpie is sitting in a tree.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy widzisz to, co ja widzę?
Cyrus: Oczywiście.
Hili: I co sądzisz?
Cyrus: Nic ciekawego, sroka usiadła na drzewie.

If you’ve been following the series of weapons capability claims from the North Korea including their claim of having a missile-ready nuclear weapon, you may find this series of tweets from Senior Research Geophysicist at NORSAR Steven J. Gibbons interesting as he explains how they monitor nuclear testing with seismic waves.

More annoying, but perhaps less worrying, Donald Trump has declared today a day of prayer. I can’t fathom why politicians still do this. I know it scores brownie points among a few people who think that displays of piety matter, but during a disaster of this magnitude surely more concrete measures would be more reassuring. Anyway, this cartoon tweeted by Heather Hastie is appropriate to the moment.

Yes, I got groped again

September 2, 2017 • 4:22 pm

It’s inevitable. When I went through the See-You-Naked Machine at O’Hare, the dreaded Yellow Patch showed up on my left wrist (a watch) and also. . . yes, you guessed it, the part of the body that Yiddish speakers call the tuchas.  The TSA man asked me if I wanted a “private screening”, and I knew this was going to be, well, intimate. I eschewed the private screening, whereupon the security guy not only groped both port and starboard of the tuchas, but also ran his hands up the inside of my thighs until he could go no further.

I have no idea what where this yellow rump patch comes from (please don’t suggest, as someone did last time, that I have a disease of the nether parts: a Dire Rear); but it always causes trouble.

And so it goes.

Yep, this is pretty much me:

New reviews of A. N. Wilson’s debunking biography of Darwin

September 2, 2017 • 12:00 pm

The reviews are starting to come in for A. N. Wilson’s new Darwin-debunking book, Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker (out on September 7 in the UK, December in the U.S.),which I mentioned here. The book not only trashes Darwin as a white supremacist, careerist, and purloiner of other people’s ideas, but also goes after evolution itself, which Wilson says is now a “religion” and that “Most of its central contentions, such as the idea that everything in nature always evolves gradually, are now disbelieved by scientists, and the science of genetics has made much of it seem merely quaint.”  Well, I’ll have more to say about this when I’ve read the whole book.

Most of the reviews, especially by those who know something about evolution and Darwin’s life, are negative, but there are at least two that are either glowing or at best neutral. The glowing one was mentioned by geneticist, author, and broadcaster Adam Rutherford in this tw**t (h/t Matthew Cobb); it quotes a review in the Times, which previously published an inflammatory excerpt from Wilson’s book:

And yes, that quote is accurate. The Times review, by Daisy Goodwin, a television producer and novelist, says things like this:

Wilson’s book has inevitably stirred up a storm of criticism. How can a man who is not a scientist claim that Darwin is wrong? I am not an evolutionary biologist so I cannot judge whether Wilson is right or whether he is simply teasing one of the last sacred cows. But as a historian trying to put Darwin in the context of his time, there is surely no better biographer than Wilson. The author of numerous books including The Victorians and a biography of Victoria, he understands the Victorian period better than most.

This is a deliberately provocative book that argues that Darwinism is not scientific fact but a belief system. “The idea that he was alone responsible for the scales falling from the eyes of the human race is a piece of mythology as implausible as many of the more ancient mythologies which his disciples believed themselves to have demolished.” While Wilson’s scientific judgments are disputable, he will have done a service if the “survival of the fittest” political credo that has attached itself to the theory of evolution goes the way of “other cranky Victorian fads — the belief in mesmerism or in phrenology”.

Why on earth would the Times choose a reviewer who “cannot judge whether Wilson is right”? At the very least we’d want a reviewer who knew something about evolutionary biology, yet much of the media has chosen reviewers who aren’t even scientists to evaluate a book that trashes the most compelling theory in biology. I’ve noticed that recently the media is turning to science journalists, or even non-scientists, to evaluate science trade books. Yet there is no dearth of scientists who write well and are qualified to produce such evaluations.

As for “a historian trying to put Darwin in the context of his times,” I’d recommend the magisterial two-volume biography of Darwin by Janet Browne, which Goodwin doesn’t seem to know. An understanding of “the Victorian period” doesn’t qualify one to judge Darwin’s personal history or, especially, his science.

On this morning’s BBC Radio 4, Stephen McGann interviews Wilson on his book (go here and start at 1:13:30; it ends at 1:24:00). Wilson imputes the terrible reviews he’s gotten to the self-interest of scientists who are sworn to push back against any Darwin criticism.

For another non-critical review by someone who doesn’t deal with Darwin’s science, see the Spectator piece by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.

More on the sleazy behavior of the SPLC

September 2, 2017 • 10:30 am

The Daily Kos is a liberal website, and a few years back it reported, as I mentioned yesterday, that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has apparently stashed millions of dollars in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.  Now this appears to be legal, as it’s reported on the SPLC’s tax returns, but legality and ethicality are two different matters. Why are they doing this?

As the Kos reported in 2010:

Unfortunately, the IRS does not require SPLC or any tax exempt charity with an account in a foreign country to disclose additional details, such as the amount, and the SPLC’s current 990 filing merely notes the existence of an account in a foreign country. The center’s site reveals neither the existence of the off-shore account nor the total it contains.

Assets for the organization are listed at $190 million [JAC: it’s now $328 million], a nice chunk of change in these economic hard times. When was the last time this group, with almost $190 million in assets, did a damn worthwhile thing about, um, poverty?

The latest 990 additionally shows founder and chief trial counsel Morris Dees had his salary raised to $350,000, and his CEO, Richard Cohen, is close behind at $345,000.

The tax filing also shows Dees traveled by air charter, and that his spouse, artist and businesswoman Susan Starr, accompanies her husband on the business trips.

My report yesterday was based on the SPLC’s 2015 tax returns.

The article’s author, M. Petrelis, also notes other criticisms of the SPLC, including its waffling on the death penalty to appease some of its donors, and its continual amassing of big bucks that don’t appear to be used for anything substantive. It does like to make lists of “hate groups”, though! Petrelis is clearly angry at what he’s found:

For Dees, the P in SPLC has nothing to do with personal poverty. That P better stands for profit or profiteering for him, and foolish donors keep sending him checks, thinking they’re helping poverty-stricken blacks or whites in Alabama move into better housing.

Petrelis also recommends an article from Harper’s in 2000 which, he says, is still relevant, “How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance.” At least at that time, the SPLC was engaged in questionable types of fund-raising, pulling in big bucks while doling out little to poor Southerners. I haven’t followed them closely, so they may still be doing this. One quote from the Harper’s piece:

The SPLC’s “other important work justice” consists mainly in spying on private citizens who belong to “hate groups,” sharing its files with law-enforcement agencies, and suing the most prominent of these groups for crimes committed independently by their members-a practice that, however seemingly justified, should give civil libertarians pause. The legal strategy employed by Dees could have put the Black Panther Party out of business or bankrupted the New England Emigrant Aid Company in retaliation for crimes committed by John Brown. What the Center’s other work for justice does not include is anything that might be considered controversial by donors. According to Millard Farmer, the Center largely stopped taking death-penalty cases for fear that too visible an opposition to capital punishment would scare off potential contributors. In 1986, the Center’s entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees’s refusal to address issues-such as homelessness, voter registration, and affirmative action-that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities, if far less marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK. Another lawyer, Gloria Browne, who resigned a few years later, told reporters that the Center’s programs were calculated to cash in on “black pain and white guilt.” Asked in 1994 if the SPLC itself, whose leadership consists almost entirely of white men, was in need of an affirmative action policy, Dees replied that “probably the most discriminated people in America today are white men when it comes to jobs.”

At the very least, the SPLC owes its donors and the public an explanation of those offshore accounts.

Caturday felid trifecta: Bringing back the Iberian lynx, rescuing cats from trees, and a Japanese cat-cafe train,

September 2, 2017 • 9:00 am

There is no doubt about it: the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), is, as the World Wildlife Fund notes, “the world’s most endangered cat species.” A native of the Iberian peninsula, it was severely reduced in size by habitat destruction, death of rabbit prey by myxomatosis (rabbits constitute 90% of the cat’s diet), and overhunting. At one point the population was down to 100 or so; but due to intensive conservation efforts it’s now up to 404, but that’s still pathetically small.  It’s listed as “endangered.” Here’s what it looks like:

M0m with kitten:

The first link above gives a brief description of the efforts by the WWF and other NGOs to rescue the cat, including introducing lynxes, restoring territories, and so on. Every known lynx has a name, and many are radio-collared.  Here’s a camera trap showing 30 seconds of rare footage: Iberian lynx cubs. (This species is, by the way, only half the size of the more common Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx).

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Many cats that get stuck in trees can’t get down. Here’s a short video about two brothers who, as arborists, have a sideline in rescuing cats, which they do for free. What nice men! Here are the YouTube notes:

As professional arborists, brothers-in-law Tom Otto and Shaun Sears are quite adept at climbing trees. The cats that they rescue are not. And with a plethora of trees—and cats—around Seattle, they decided to put their off hours to good use and return scared, stuck kitties to their worried owners. Working completely off donations, these two cat lovers are helping keep Seattle’s free-climbing felines grounded.

It’s a complicated operation, but the results, as you’ll see, are heartwarming:

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Condé Nast Traveler reports that Japan, perhaps the world’s most ailurophilic nation, is running a Cat Cafe Train, in which riders can enjoy coffee, kitties, and scenery on a long ride. The bad news is that it appears to be only a temporary offer; as the site notes:

According to Japanese news site SoraNews24, Sanctuary, a chain of cafés located in the Gifu Prefecture that are usually filled with rescue cats, is taking its kitty population on the road. On Monday, Sanctuary announced that it had teamed up with Yoro Railway to create the world’s first cat-themed train café. Riders on the Cat Café Train’s two September 10 journeys will spend the 2.5-hour ride between either Yoro and Ikeno stations or Ikeno and Ogaki stations surrounded by rescue cats.

The 3,000 yen (about $27) ticket comes with a bento box lunch, sweet treats, unlimited travel on Yoro Railways all day, and, of course, unlimited cuddles [JAC: How can you beat that?]. Additionally, some of the proceeds from ticket sales will go to the care and keeping of Sanctuary’s animal rescue operations. Only 40 tickets were available for each of the two train rides and, unfortunately, all 80 tickets sold out almost immediately after going on sale. Although Sanctuary and Yoro Railways have yet to announce plans for future Cat Café Train rides, they’ll hopefully decide to take advantage of the huge success of this trial run and start filling Japanese train cars with felines on a more permanent basis.

In fact, the tickets are already sold out, and I’m sad that I wasn’t on this epochal journey. Sadly, I have no photos of the train or its contents as it hasn’t yet been on the rails, but perhaps readers can remember and ask me later.

h/t: Rolando, William

Farewell, my duck

September 2, 2017 • 8:30 am

Well, I just went to the pond to see if perchance Honey was there for a Final Breakfast, but she was gone. I suspect that in the evenings she finds somewhere safe to sleep, as the duck islands are pretty much covered with water and don’t look too comfortable.

So off I go, and I hope she goes off too—to wherever mallards take themselves in winter. I will miss her, but hope that she’ll come back next spring.  If she returns in the next few days, she’ll miss me, too, for I am the Purveyor of Noms; but I need to exercise tough love and let her go. She belongs not to me but to Nature.

Here’s a final picture of Honey, and a lovely thing she is too:

Honey the duck