Well, it could have been true. . . .

August 1, 2017 • 8:00 am

Satire is funny only when it hits close to home. Here’s a piece from The Onion in 2015, reproduced in its entirety (and tweeted by Steve Pinker), that gives an idea of the climate on many of today’s campuses. It’s been a years since it appeared, and things have only gotten worse.

And the text:

BOSTON—Saying that such a dialogue was essential to the college’s academic mission, Trescott University president Kevin Abrams confirmed Monday that the school encourages a lively exchange of one idea. “As an institution of higher learning, we recognize that it’s inevitable that certain contentious topics will come up from time to time, and when they do, we want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing a single homogeneous opinion,” said Abrams, adding that no matter the subject, anyone on campus is always welcome to add their support to the accepted consensus. “Whether it’s a discussion of a national political issue or a concern here on campus, an open forum in which one argument is uniformly reinforced is crucial for maintaining the exceptional learning environment we have cultivated here.” Abrams told reporters that counseling resources were available for any student made uncomfortable by the viewpoint.

This is of course aimed at the Censorious Left, but could apply equally well to religious schools like Bob Jones University.

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 1, 2017 • 7:30 am

Reader Mark Sturtevant, a crack photographer of arthropods, sends some photos he took last summer. His notes are indented:

Spiders are generally rather good parents since they guard their eggs and young for a time. The first four pictures are about the nursery web spider – so the very name of these spiders suggests their caring nature. This species is Dolomedes tenebrosus, which may be the largest spider in the U.S. that is not a tarantula. Besides being big, they are also very fast in short bursts. Females carry the egg sac under their body, gripping it with their fangs as we can see in two of the pictures. This spider was sitting on the porch of my brother’s house last summer, and my brother snuck a picture of me taking a picture of her so I also include that as well. At the time I was probably hoping that these spiders are not jumpy.

The last picture of this series was of a different spider, and here we see the next stage of their nurturing behavior. When the babies are ready to emerge from the egg sac, the mother attaches the sac near the top of a plant (frequently near water), and guards it while the babies emerge and later disperse. Although these are Spiders of Unusual Size, they are actually pretty easy to get along with. But will I pick one up? No, I will not.


Continuing with spiders for just a bit longer, the next two pictures show a lovely male jumping spider called the bronze jumper, Eris militaris. ‘Eris’ is the Greek goddess of discord and strife. The males of this species have a metallic sheen to much of their body.

Here we have of the most bizarre looking insects: the pelecinid wasp (Pelecinus polyturator). I do not consider these to be common, but in my favorite park where I have found many wondrous things, there was a period where I would see 3 or 4 of them in a day. Although rather large (they are up to 7 centimeters long), they can be surprisingly hard to see. They have a slow and languid flight that is completely silent, and in a second their spindly form simply disappears into the broken light of the forest. At rest they look to be an easy subject for photography, but no, they would always slowly lift off and disappear just before I could get in range. So I resorted to catching this one and getting its picture in a staged shot at a window indoors.

So what about their biology? This too is unusual. Some authorities consider the entire family to consist of a single species—but not everyone agrees with this. They are parasitic on beetle grubs, and their most common hosts are the larvae of ground-burrowing June beetles; the females use their extraordinary abdomens to probe into the soil to lay an egg on their victims. But the unusual thing is that the vast majority of these wasps in the U.S. are female (males are rare), and so up here [Michigan] it seems likely they reproduce mainly by parthenogenesis. Males are more common sin the southern U.S., and one supposes they reproduce the usual way down there. The link to the species name has pictures of males in case people want to see them.

I end this set of pictures with a grasshopper that would be hard to see in a Spot The ________ contest. This is the pine tree spur-throat grasshopper, Melanoplus punctulatus. I probably would not have seen this one except that I grabbed a tree trunk when I had stumbled and happened to look down. The ‘hopper remained perfectly still and let me take all the pictures I wanted, perhaps relying on its camouflage. A thing to note about this species is that its main diet is tree leaves.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

August 1, 2017 • 6:30 am

It’s August! It’s August! August 1, 2017, and I am not really excited, for it means that summer is slipping by, and even though I’m long past the age of schooling, it was on this date that I began to feel queasy when I was a child. It was to buy new clothes and notebooks, and the thought of no fun and loads of homework loomed. And just as many of us still have the dreaded “final exam” dream years after college, so the specter of August still haunts us. August 1 is also National Raspberry Cream Pie Day, but never having seen one of these strange beasts, I’ll move on to note that it’s Yorkshire Day in England. In honor of that, here’s the famous Monty Python sketch, “Four Yorkshire Men”. (Not being familiar with Yorkshire, I’ll ask for a Brit to tell us what the stereotype is being mockd.)

On this day in 1774, British researcher Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen, or rather rediscovered it, for the German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele had found it earlier but never published his findings. Exactly sixty years later, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took effect, outlawing slavery throughout the British Empire. On August 1, 1936, “Hitler’s Olympics” opened in Berlin, famously starring a black man, Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, greatly discomfiting the Führer. On this day in 1944, as Soviet troops approached Warsaw, the Polish Underground began the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans. Sadly, they were crushed, and it’s said that the Soviets held back entering the city to allow the Germans to destroy a group of Poles who might have resisted Soviet occupation. On this day in 1966, Charles Whitman, having climbed atop “The Tower” on the University of Texas campus in Austin, shot and killed 16 people before he was killed by police. And on August 1, 2008, a terrible series of mishaps on the mountain K2 killed eleven climbers.

Notables born on this day include Francis Scott Key, lyricist for the U.S. national anthem (1779), Herman Melville (1819), Eric Shipton (1907), evolutionist W. D. Hamilton (1936), Jerry Garcia (1942), and a bunch of athletes who I don’t know. Those who died on this day include Calamity Jane (1903), Francis Gary Powers (1977), Corazon Aquino (2009), and Cilla Black (2015). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess exercises her major obsession:

Hili: We have no alternative.
A: To doing what?
Hili: To retreating in the direction of the refrigerator.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie mamy alternatywy.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: W sprawie wycofania się w pobliże lodówki.

It’s been hot out in Winnipeg, and Gus spends a lot of time snoozing and sprawling outdoors:

Heather Hastie sent this tw**t, saying that “it’s better than kittens.” She might be right, but only as a photo:

https://twitter.com/planetepics/status/891949814929399809

. . .but she added a cat one, too:

https://twitter.com/planetepics/status/892170018309406720

Scuba diver visits same fish daily–for 25 years!

July 31, 2017 • 3:15 pm

If you can have your heart warmed by a fish, or rather a relationship between a man and a fish, have a look at this video and the brief notes about it (below) posted on Twisted Sifter. The fish is an Asian sheepshead wrasse, Semicossyphus reticulatus. 

These Two Have Seen Each Other Nearly Every Day for the Past 25 Years

Scuba diver Hiroyuki Arakawa and Yoriko are the unlikeliest of friends. While they both share a love for the sea, Yoriko’s gills and tail make her a little more aquatically inclined. Nearly every day for the past 25 years, Arakawa has been diving into the waters of Hasama Underwater Park in Tateyama, Japan, to visit Yoriko—an Asian sheepshead wrasse. One day, Arakawa found her looking exhausted and carrying an injury. So he did what any friend would do: he took care of Yoriko, feeding her crabs and nursing her back to health. Their decades-long friendship is proof there’s no greater bond than the one between man and fish.

The Atlas Obscura adds this:

The diver, Hiroyuki Arakawa, has long served as the de facto caretaker for an underwater Shinto shrine, and it is through these dives that he met Yoriko, an Asian sheepshead wrasse, over 25 years ago.

The pair’s relationship soon blossomed into a full-blown friendship. Now, whenever Arakawa visits the shrine, he need only knock on a piece of a metal, and Yoriko immediately speeds over. In the video, Arakawa can be seen kissing Yoriko. His Facebook page is also full of selfies of the unlikely duo.

I wouldn’t have thought such a relationship with a wild animal likely, at least for me, although of course I’ve deeply bonded with the cats I’ve had. But since I’ve been taking care of a duck family (now down to a single hen), my perspective has changed. When you spend hours with a single animal, or a family of them, you begin to bond with them in pretty strong ways. Who would have thought I’d be so deeply enmeshed in the fate of a duck family? They’re ducks, not cats!

But now I can spend a long time just sitting by the pond and staring at a single duck who floats nearby, hoping for a handout—or maybe even getting solace from my presence. I wonder what it’s thinking and can’t possibly know, but am happy to realize it regards me as a friend and not a predator. I eventually see them as creatures of great dexterity and beauty rather than as funny floating birds. I learn about their adaptations: their extreme attentiveness to the environment, the deep maternal instincts of the mother, the ducklings’ reaction to cues from mom that I can’t even discern, and their ability to “dabble”, skillfully diving and retrieving the tiniest bits of food.

We keep each other company. And sometimes she cocks her little duck head sideways, looking at me with one upturned eye as if to say, “Is it really you?” Or so I like to think.

I worry about the ducks’ fates when they fly away, and am sad knowing that I’ll never see them again. Or, if I do, I know I won’t recognize them. But as a friend said, if they do return to my little pond and I don’t know them, they’ll still remember me.

So now I can totally understand the relationship between Arakawa and Yoriko. There are rewards from befriending a nonhuman animal that you just can’t get from a member of our own species. A life without human companionship is empty, but any life is immensely enriched by friendship with a wild animal.

Scaramucci deep-sixed; can things get any worse in the White House?

July 31, 2017 • 2:26 pm

The Washington Post just reported that, after only ten days on the job, Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci has been fired—at the request of Chief of Staff John Kelly (and surely with Drumpf’s approval).

Scaramucci’s brief tenure in the role had been marked by turmoil as he feuded publicly with former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. Scaramucci’s arrival at the White House prompted former press secretary Sean Spicer to resign in protest.

The abrupt decision signals that Kelly is moving quickly to assert control over the West Wing, which has been characterized by interpersonal disputes and power struggles during Trump’s six months in office.

The retired Marine general, who was sworn in Monday morning, was brought into the White House in the hope that he will bring military-style disciple to Trump’s staff. He has been fully empowered by the president to make significant changes to the organization, White House officials and outside advisers said.

Can the chaos of the Trump administration—the kneejerk policy decisions, the ever-changing parade of officials, the unhinged tweets, and the failure to do anything substantive, much less salubrious—get any worse? I lived through the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and have seen lots of incompetence and lies in the White House, but nothing’s even come close to this. I just hope that some of those who voted for Trump are starting to see what a monster they created, or rather put into power.

Sam Shepard died

July 31, 2017 • 1:00 pm

I’m sad to report that actor and playwright Sam Shepard died Thursday at his home in Kentucky. He was just 73, but was the victim of ALS, a horribly cruel disease. (His death was, I believe, just announced today.)

Shepard wrote 44 plays (one of which, “Buried Child” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979) and appeared in numerous movies. Two of my favorite performances are his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in the movie “The Right Stuff” (he was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for that one, but didn’t win) and his portrayal of the rich farmer in the underrated but beautiful movie “Days of Heaven.” He also co-wrote another good film, “Paris, Texas”, as well the screenplay for 13 other films.

Here’s a clip of Shepard as Yeager in “The Right Stuff,” an excellent movie. In this scene, after a test pilot’s funeral, Yeager sees the Bell X-1, the ship in which he’d be the first pilot to break the sound barrier:

 

 

Banned in Boston: Activists try to shut down a show by a white artist who painted a scene of black tragedy

July 31, 2017 • 11:30 am

In April I wrote a bit about the painting below, “Open Casket”, which depicts the body of Emmett Till, a black youth who was murdered on a visit to  Mississippi in 1955. He supposedly whistled at a white woman, which turned out to be a lie, but for that he was tortured and killed by two white men, who were tried and acquitted. He was just 14.

Till’s mother had his body brought back to Chicago, where he lived, and insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see how brutally his body had been battered. You can see a link to one photo in my earlier post, which was published in the black magazine Jet. It is a sad and horrible tale that helped galvanize the Civil Rights movement.

I find the painting moving, but it turned out that the artist, Dana Schutz, made a big mistake: she was born white. She was demonized for taking on a sensitive and “iconic” black subject, for profiting from the pain of black people (she’s not selling the painting), and for being guilty of cultural appropriation and even racism. There were protests at the Whitney Biennial Exhibition when “Open Casket” was shown.

The painting stayed at the Whitney’s exhibit, and the attacks on Schutz, which included people standing in front of the painting wearing tee shirts with slogans on the back, continued. One black artist, Hannah Black, said this:

… it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time. Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist — those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.

Schutz responded civilly but forcefully:

“I don’t know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. […] It is easy for artists to self-censor. To convince yourself to not make something before you even try. There were many reasons why I could not, should not, make this painting … (but) art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection.”

As I said in my post, I have no patience with people who criticized Schutz for this painting, or for those who say that only black people can artistically depict black misery. If you follow that line of thinking, it leads to balkanization of the arts as well as politics. . . and madness.

The squabble over Schutz’s “right” to even paint this subject continued, and now have reached the boiling point again. As The Daily Beast reports (see their earlier account here, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston has planned a solo exhibition by Schutz, which includes 17 paintings and 4 drawings—but not “Open Casket” (there’s to be a placard discussing the painting). And black activists, who are still incensed, are trying to get the show canceled.

The protestors met for three hours with the exhibition’s curator, Eva Respini, and other members of the ICA, and then wrote an open letter airing their grievances against Schutz.  You can read the letter at the link, but here are a few excerpts. Its main goal is to get the ICA to cancel the show and then admit guilt, effectively punishing Schutz (and the ICA) for “transgression” (emphases from the letter):

We were hoping to hear the ICA resist the narrative that Black people can be sacrificed for the greater good. The exhibition going up as described at the meeting would continue the historical narrative that it is worth the suffering of communites most afflicted by continued state and culturally sanctioned racialized violence.

. . .While you spoke to cultural responsibility, we find the planned steps to address the painting to be lacking and in fact justifying the exhibition and thereby minimizing the implications of grave, cultural harm. We understand that the painting itself will not be shown and its exclusion is to be addressed as a wall label. We don’t find this sufficient. Indeed, it is clear the institution stands to gain by virtue of its absence. Even though the painting will not be shown, even in its absence, backing its artist without accountability nor transparency about proceeds from the exhibition, the institution will be participating in condoning the coopting of Black pain and showing the art world and beyond that people can co‐opt sacred imagery rooted in oppression and face little consequence, contributing to and perpetuating centuries‐old racist iconography that ultimately justifies state and socially sanctioned violence on Black people.

and (it’s much longer than this):

The ICA did not acknowledge how such culturally sanctioned violent iconography condones, offers impunity to, and escalates anti‐Black and racialized violence. You told us that you look at your artists as a community you serve and are accountable to. This begins to immunize the artist from accountability by institutional sanction. It tries to equate the responsibility institutions have to a (tax‐paying) public versus one to promote an artist to make mutually beneficial profit. It is a position that denies that the institution can enforce measures to have the artist be accountable. It chooses the artist over the communities the institution serves. Just as a bank would withdraw its credit when clients cannot keep to their original contract, a cultural institution has more power than the ICA is willing to concede. This denial of power and subsequent impunity from accountability sets a dangerous precedent in our contemporary world ‐ one that continues in the tradition of applying cultural power to protect offending white femmes who perpetrate violence against Black communities. [JAC: Last sentence has my emphasis.]

I find this bullying, offensive, and racist. It accuses Schutz, whose intentions were good, of being an “offending white femme who perpetrates violence against black communities”, and the painting of causing “grave cultural harm”and “coopting Black pain.”

Much as I try to see what truth lies in these accusations, I can’t find any—except that the protestors are offended that a white “femme” would portray a black subject that was a horrible tragedy and painful to African Americans. Well, Schutz has explained her reasons, and they’re convincing.  Still, the protestors would like, as Regressives are wont to do, for Schutz to be demonized, boycotted, and vilified for her entire life for making that painting.

At the end of the letter, the protestors make four demands, including a public apology by the ICA and an accusatory on-site “discussion” at which the curator and artist Schutz must be present to get yelled at. (Shades of the Cultural Revolution!) And, finally, there’s the usual claim that this isn’t about censorship, even though the censorship they really do want applies to a painting that isn’t even there:

Please pull the show. This is not about censorship. This is about institutional accountability, as the institutions working with the artist are even now not acknowledging that this nation is not an even playing field. During this violent climate, to show true accountability, we need institutions to go bold. We need them to move from side panels to action. We need them to channel the courage of the editors of Jet Magazine in publishing the photos on September 15, 1955, as Mrs. Mamey Till Mobley asked of them. We need them to go bold and not back down from fear of losing funders and enraging the fury of the current executive administration against arts funding. When institutions take action, they allow other insƟtuƟons to take action. You are not alone. The people will stand with you.

The ICA has caved in some ways to the demonstrators’ demands, and I think they were a bit cowardly in their response (see the Daily Beast article). But the show will go on, and Schutz continues to be civil. As the Daily Beast reported:

Schutz said that while she knew her depiction of Till might stir up controversy, she didn’t anticipate calls for it to be destroyed or removed from the Whitney Biennial. Asked if art should ever be censored, Schutz said no. But she encourages debate over works like hers. “People have a right to their outrage,” she said. “Public discussion and argument is important and essential for art.”

Yes, the protestors have a right to protest, though I don’t think they have a right to disrupt the ICA exhibition. But I find this fracas unbelievable—more unbelievable than the original protest, for the offending painting isn’t on view. But never mind. Schutz has proven herself ideologically impure, and for that she must suffer for the rest of her life.

I keep thinking what Martin Luther King Jr. would have to say about all this, and my feeling is he’d say that what counts is the content of the painting, not the color of the artist’s skin. But of course King’s philosophy has long ceased to be a part of civil rights activism.

h/t: BJ