At the end of a long and dispiriting week, let us have a Leon monologue (from his owner Elzbieta) to lift our spirits:
Leon: I think I see the coming weekend.
And next week is Book Week!
A Leon finale to the week
May 15, 2015 • 3:45 pm
University of Colorado institutes “bias-reporting” system to curb hate speech
May 15, 2015 • 3:11 pm
I am unaccountably distressed by the Tsarnaev verdict, for nothing is accomplished by killing him except the undesirable result of making him a martyr for jihadists. It’s likely, though, that he’ll never be executed, for there’s a moratorium for the federal death penalty, and at any rate the appeals will take years. Since it’s more expensive to execute someone than jail them for life, and evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent, what, exactly, have the jurors accomplished?
But I digress. I want to call to your attention, on this day of state-sponsored barbarism (the U.S. is the only Western country that still executes people), a less serious but still disturbing problem: the continuing effort to stamp out free speech on American campuses.
The latest transgressor is the University of Colorado at Boulder, another top-flight school. It has instituted a “bias-reporting” system where any hurtful speech can be reported to the university, along with the names and ID numbers of the transgressors. As The College Fix reports (note: I haven’t verified this from an independent source, but the official University webpage gives the protocol for reporting bias), this system was apparently instigated at the request of the “diversity commission” of the student government. These commissions now seem to be the nucleus of this kind of censorship. From the Fix report:
University of Colorado-Boulder has launched a new campaign encouraging students to report any “bias” they come across to campus authorities, who collect details including offenders’ names, birthdays, genders – even social security numbers – along with a description of the “incident.” [JAC: the link above doesn’t suggest that these details are to be collected, but the reporting form requests the names and ID numbers of all students involved.]
The “Bias Incident Reporting” effort aims to “address the impact of demeaning and hurtful statements as well as acts of intolerance directed towards protected classes,” CU Boulder’s website states.
Examples of bias, according to a corresponding poster campaign highlighting the reporting system, include calling people names or making fun of their culture.
. . . Students who perceive or witness “bias-motivated incidents” are asked to report them immediately by filing a “student of concern” report.
These reports are not confidential, suggesting that anyone who’s “reported” can be subject to public shaming.
Of course the campus suggest that this isn’t at all meant to curtail free speech:
“This in no way is meant to curtail free speech,” campus spokesman Ryan Huff told The College Fix in an email. “We support the First Amendment and want our students to challenge one another in academic ways. We don’t support, however, the use of racial slurs and other demeaning bias-motivated acts.”
What, exactly, does “challenge one another in academic ways” mean? What about if a Palestinian student calls a Jewish student, or a Jewish organization, “genocidal Zionists”? Is that bias? And what is a “demeaning bias-motivated act”? Given the sensitivities of students engaged in identity politics, you can imagine where this will lead.
Not long ago the campus put up a series of posters designed to demonstrate the kind of biased speech they decried. Here is one specimen:
Bad idea! The campaign backfired because, as you might expect, the students and some of the staff found the posters “triggering.” Given that climate, how likely is it that the new bias reports will do anything other than chill the atmosphere of free discussion at UC Boulder—if there ever was one?
In a statement [about the controversial posters], Chancellor Philip DeStefano remarked: “What ought to offend here is not the language on the posters, but the language that is used in perpetuating acts of racism, ethnic intimidation, homophobia and other acts of bias in our campus community.”
That shows that DeStefano doesn’t know diddley-squat about what offends students these days. Of course that language on the posters will offend people, for what matters is not the intent, but the language itself—even if it’s meant to demonstrate what constitutes bias! Doesn’t he realize what broad ground is covered by the terms “ethnic intimidation” and “acts of racism”? And I detest homophobia, but some religious people feel that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry. Should their arguments be reported as instances of bias?
Well, perhaps DeStefano wants a chilly atmosphere on his campus. After all, he doesn’t want to melt all those Special Snowflakes.
Jury reaches decision in Tsarnaev case. [Update: He gets death]
May 15, 2015 • 1:54 pm
Final update: As I predicted below, it’s death for Tsarnaev. So sad for our justice system:
________________________________________________________
From my CNN feed:
Jurors have reached a decision in the penalty phase of the Boston Marathon bombing trial.
The jury was tasked with deciding whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be sentenced to life in prison or death for his role in killing four people and wounding hundreds more. Court was to convene at 3 p.m. for the reading of the verdict.
The court will convene in 8 minutes. My prediction: the death sentence. I hope that won’t be the case, but the speed at which the jury pondered their decision suggests unanimity: that there weren’t just a few holdouts who wanted life in prison rather than execution. (It takes a unanimous sentence of death to impose that penalty; if the jury’s deadlocked, it’s life without parole.)
Alternatively—and this is my hope—there was either unanimity for life imprisonment or a deadlock in which the pro-execution people said they could not be moved.
Dzhokar is screwed either way, for life imprisonment in solitary confinement (he’d be killed if put in general population) is about the worst punishment you can receive. In fact, for many death may be preferable: Dzhokhar is only 21, so he’s looking at 50-60 years of spending 23 hours a day in a tiny cell.
We’ll know in five minutes.
Predictions? (The proceedings are somewhat slow—clearly this will take a while.)
UPDATE 1: The jury seems to be unanimous on nearly all the aggravating factors that prescribe execution. Here’s from the livefeed, and it doesn’t look good:
It goes on, relentlessly:
And this despite Sister Helen Prejean’s testmony that Tsarnaev was remorseful:
2:27: Jurors are now finding that Tsarnaev’s father was mentally ill and his older brother was “the dominant influence in his life.” That’s a better sign; he could be construed as having been under the sway of his brother. (This is of course irrelevant, for he was under the sway of something and had no choice about the killings.)
An atheist English professor finds Jesus because the Bible “rings true” as literature
May 15, 2015 • 10:30 am
If you’ve followed the saga of Ana Marie Cox, famous for her political blogging as “Wonkette,” and now a writer for the Guardian, you’ll know that she was once a nonbeliever but then embraced Christianity. (See my post about it here). After her conversion, though, Cox was afraid of pushback from both atheists and (especially) Christians; but she was much gratified to find instead an outpouring of support from both sides (see her video on the topic here).
This puts me in a bit of a dilemma. I mean, if Cox has found happiness in believing in a fictional story of Jesus, and was unhappy before, then fine. Cox doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who will try to impose her faith on others, or push for anti-abortion or anti-gay-marriage laws. But it still bothers me that someone as savvy and smart as she suddenly throws herself into the arms of God, and for no good reason.
But reason, it seems, had little to do with it. I wonder if people would be so warm and kind if Cox had embraced, say, Scientology, Raëlism, or the cargo cults of Melanesia. (You know they wouldn’t: they’d say she was nuts.)
But I digress. Yet another erstwhile nonbeliever has embraced Christianity, or so reports the website Thomistic Bent. In this case it’s Dr. Holly Ordway, a professor of English at Houston Baptist University. She’s written a book about her conversion, Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms.
What is interesting about Ordway’s conversion is the reason, recounted in a passage from the website Thomistic Bent (I haven’t read her book):
Ordway had carefully built up a defense, but not so careful as to protect her mind from the ideas of the great English poets. She speaks of being surprised by such writers as John Keats, John Donne, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, men who wrote of a beautiful concept: hope. A day of hope . . . was there such a day to hope for?
The rest of Ordway’s book tells of her meeting a fencing coach that she trusted, a person who she did not discover was a Christian until after she had begun working with him. He and his wife merely answered her questions, not pressing anything religious on her. She is intellectually honest enough to investigate the sources . . . When she asks for reasonable works on the resurrection of Jesus, she is given N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, 740 pages of scholarly examination. She reads Lewis’ Surprised By Joy, and Does God Exist? by Kreeft and Moreland, among others.
[JAC: Can we just admit that there is no evidence for the truth of the Jesus story save in the pages of scripture? All “scholarly” and “reasonable” work substantiating that story is just Biblical exegesis fueled by wish-thinking.]
Both Ordway and C. S. Lewis were credentialed professors of literature before becoming Christian. Both were committed atheists who had created intellectual defenses against belief in Jesus. Later in her story, Ordway writes, “I read through the Gospel narratives again, trying to take in what they said. I had to admit that — even apart from everything else I had learned — I recognized that they were fact, not story. I’d been steeped in folklore, fantasy, legend, and myth ever since I was a child, and I had studied these literary genres as an adult; I knew their cadences, their flavor, their rhythm. None of these stylistic fingerprints appeared in the New Testament books that I was reading.” (p.117)
So what brought Ordway around was her expertise as an English professor, which enabled her to see that the Bible (or at least the New Testament) looked not like fiction, but fact! I’m stunned. This is affirmed by the website writer:
So here we have a trained, experienced, atheist professor of literature, who if anything knows a myth when she sees it, declaring that it is not such, but rather “The Gospels had the ineffable texture of history, with all the odd clarity of detail that comes when the author is recounting something so huge that even as he tells it, he doesn’t see all the implications.” (p.117) Like Lewis, who was a professor of literature at Oxford and Cambridge, Ordway made the conclusion of an expert in literature, that the New Testament has all the signs of an eyewitness account.
“I know a myth when I see one, and the Bible ain’t myth!”
Now this is just bizarre, and for many reasons. First of all, the Bible as a whole, and the New Testament, are full of things that simply can’t be true. Putting aside the numerous inconsistencies between the Gospels about the crucifixion and resurrection (all the results of “eyewitness accounts”), we have the palpable falsities like the census of Caesar Augustus and the account in Matthew of Herod’s execution of children. There are no extra-Biblical historical records of the earthquakes, rending of the Temple veil, and rising of saints from their tomb at the Crucifixion. Surely that should appear somewhere outside the Bible! (For a list of Biblical contradictions and inaccuracies, see here and here).
Further, prophecies in the Bible simply haven’t come true. Perhaps the most famous is Jesus’s repeated insistence that he would come into his kingdom, as would his apostles, during the lifetimes of people who witnessed his death. That hasn’t happened.
And what about the Old Testament? That doesn’t read so differently from the New Testament, at least in terms of factual assertions. Does that, too, “ring true”? Or does it lack the cadences, rhythms, and flavor of truth? If not, then it’s even more bizarre, for the factual inaccuracies of the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis and going through the exodus of the Jews, are well known. What does Ordway say about that? And if the Old Testament is largely fictional, how can it presage the New?
And what about other religious gospels, like the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and so on? I would love for Dr. Ordway to show me why the New Testament has a “ring of truth” lacking in, say, the Book of Mormon. And does she think that all of the New Testament is true? If so, which of the accounts of the Resurrection is the right one? They can’t all be true, as they’re contradictory. Who, exactly, was in or near the tomb when it was open, and to whom did the resurrected Jesus appear?
I’m used to believers accepting Christianity because it strikes an emotional chord with them. That, after all, is the message of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. But this is the first time I’ve seen Christianity validated, and someone converted, because, compared to all other religious myths, the New Testament rings true to someone trained in English literature. (I wonder if the New Testament sounds different in Greek?) That is, a Ph.D. in English literature, and subsequent teaching of that literature, apparently gives someone the credibility to assert that the New Testament is plain fact.
The rise in secularism: 25% of “millennial” Americans are atheists, agnostics, or don’t see religion as personally important
May 15, 2015 • 8:45 am
Two days ago I wrote about the recent Pew report showing a decline in American Christianity (curiously, evangelicals aren’t declining nearly as much as mainline Protestants and Catholics), as well as a marked rise in the proportion of atheists, agnostics, and “nones,” with “nones” being those lacking formal affiliation to a church.
Over at the New York Times, David Leondhart dissected the data further, taking out, that portion of the “nones” who don’t find religion important to them, and lumping that moiety together with declared atheists and agnostics. The total gives the proportion of living Americans in different age classes who can be considered serious non-theists. And that total is impressive: it’s a quarter of the millennials—those born after 1980! Assuming that religosity doesn’t markedly increase as one gets older (and the data suggest the opposite), and further that millennials won’t turn to faith when they age, this means the country is getting more secular. As Leondhart notes, even the cross-sectional data, using all Americans, shows this trend over the last seven years:
The chart here is another way to think about the trend. Pew asks Americans what their religion is and gives several choices for people who don’t identify as belonging to one. One choice is “atheist,” another is “agnostic” and a third is “nothing in particular.” Among people who give that last answer, Pew also asks whether religion is important in their lives.
To create a larger category of the nonreligious, I’ve combined atheists, agnostics and people who said both that they didn’t belong to a religion and that religion wasn’t important to them. This group made up 15.8 percent of the United States population in 2014, up from 10.3 percent only seven years earlier, according to Pew.
The article also notes that younger people probably won’t become more religious as they age, as the trend has been in the opposite direction. Thus the bar chart likely gives us an overview of what is happening to Americans as a whole.
What’s palpably clear from both the Pew report and this data is that, bit by bit, religion is losing its hold on America. As Dan Dennett notes, this trend could be reversed if some cataclysm drives people back to religion (plenty of evidence suggests that religiosity is negatively correlated with Americans’ feeling of well-being), but let’s hope things go well. Income inequality is strongly correlated with religiosity in the U.S. (as it increases, so does religion), so there are at least two ways a Republican president in 2017 could derail this trend.
Contest winner (and runners-up)
May 15, 2015 • 8:00 am
As promised, I present the winner of the most recent Book Contest, the prize being an autographed, hardback, first-printing edition of Faith versus Fact, with a cat drawn in it to the reader’s specifications.
As you may recall, the contest question was this:
Recount the funniest or most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you. (Note: it doesn’t have to be embarrassing if it’s just funny, or it can be both.)
There were 427 responses, though not all of them were official entries. Our Super-Secret Panel of Judges™ (which did not include me) had a very difficult time choosing a winner, as there were tons of hilarious and cringe-worthy incidents in the mix. In the end, the panel chose eight finalists, and then, after long cogitation, picked from them a winner. I’m reproducing all the finalists below. That said, there were many entries that didn’t make the cut but were still a hoot; do peruse the thread if you have time.
Thanks to everyone who entered, especially those forced to dredge up old embarrassments in hopes of getting a book. But be assured that your tales provided considerable amusement!
And now, sans drum roll, we present. . .
THE WINNER! LEO GLENN, write me and claim your prize.
Leo Glenn
Posted May 6, 2015 at 7:32 pm
While living in Japan in my early twenties, I embarked on a trip with a group of friends across the rugged northern island of Hokkaido. We travelled on the cheap, camping, hosteling, and stopping daily to take full advantage of the numerous local volcanic hot springs. We especially liked the little, out-of-the-way places largely passed over by the tourist trade.
The Japanese patrons were sometimes apprehensive at first to see foreigners at their hot spring, but they quickly relaxed when they saw that we knew the proper protocol–wash first at the shower stations, rinse thoroughly, and remove all clothing before entering the hot spring. After the initial surprise at our presence, we were mostly ignored, apart from the inevitable side-long glances at our nether regions, to satisfy their curiosity about what Westerners really looked like “down there”.
One day we happened upon a glorious, family-friendly hot spring waterfall, where clothing was required. I wore a brand new pair of bright red shorts. By the end of the day I noticed with mild interest that my red shorts had faded to a dull pink. When I pulled them off, however, I was shocked to discover that the red dye had transferred to my skin, turning everything from my navel to my upper thighs an incandescent red. The overall effect, in contrast with my naturally pale skin, was quite alarming, as if that section of my body was critically inflamed, or tattooed in some bizarre sexual ritual. My shock turned to dismay, of course, when I realized that we would be visiting another hot spring that evening.
My only hope was to try to wash it off as discreetly as possible in the shower area and to slip into the hot spring without anyone noticing. Needless to say, it did not go as planned. In my determination to rub the dye off, I only succeeded in genuinely inflaming my skin, making it appear even worse, if that were possible, and my vigorous rubbing only served to attract unwanted attention. I looked up to find every head turned in my direction–not subtle, surreptitious glances, but full-on, wide-eyed, open-mouthed stares. I could not have drawn more attention to myself had I pulled my shorts down to a fanfare of trumpets. There I was, a pasty white foreigner amidst a group of 30-40 Japanese men, all of us naked, with my naughty bits the color of the lurid red barbecued pork-on-a-stick you find in Chinese restaurants. I tried my best to act nonchalant as I edged toward the pool, knowing my Japanese was not nearly good enough even to attempt an explanation. The stares diminished after I sank to my neck in the hot water, although it did seem to me that I had considerably more space around me than usual.
The dye stubbornly persisted, despite my increasingly desperate efforts to remove it, and I got to repeat the experience daily for several more days. I can only imagine the conversations that must have taken place in those hot springs after I left.
As far as I know, people with tattooes aren’t allowed in Japanese communal pools, so perhaps that complicated Leo’s situation!
*******
THE RUNNERS-UP
Jean-Marc
Posted May 3, 2015 at 1:20 pm
Hi, I am French. This is important for my story.
Some years ago, I went to California with my wife, and we spent a few days with our American friends there. One day, we went to a restaurant near a beach. While we were eating I noticed a seal a few meters from us, and I told, in French, to my wife : “Oh, regarde, le joli phoque !” ( “Oh, look at this beautiful seal” ). And she said ‘Oh, what a beautiful “phoque”‘, and then, ‘Look, there is even a baby “phoque” over there’, and so on. 1 minute after that conversation, I noticed that everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating and was looking at us. My American friend just told me : “Seals. These are seals…”. As you have already guessed, the pronunciation for “phoque” is pretty much the same as for your F word…
*******
Markie Massey
Posted May 10, 2015 at 11:49 am)
It’s not very often that my delicate female nature is rattled. I’m not often compared to a soft spoken lady, because I’m usually the one being “one of the guys”. Dates were not something I did often, and I usually decided pretty quickly into the event that I’d much rather be doing a thousand other things.
This date was different. This particular person was fantastic, funny and cute, easy to talk to, all the normal swoony things. For once I remembered to order something not messy, not a burger or ribs to which to embarrass myself, and I was on a roll with conversations and jokes. I was doing just fine.
Until my stomach betrayed me. I’ll never forget it. It was like something out of a nightmare. Sitting side by side in a car, in the small lull between conversation, a very small “poot” sounded from under me.
Ice water trickled down my spine. Was that me? No. No…of course not!
“…did you just fart?” He asked, eyebrows raised.
I wanted to calm open the moving car door and leave. Just quietly climb out to my death. My cheeks were on fire, my eyes wide and horrified. “Uuuuh….”
Great response. I’m the best at being a sultry dame.
Luckily for me, the silence was shattered by his laughter. This knight swept to my rescue by telling me how amused he was by the horror on my face, which gave me permission to laugh. The night actually was a grand success after that, though I still get nauseated from recounting it.
That knight is married to me now. He swears it’s going to be the story we tell our kids.
I disagree.
*******
vothemort
Posted May 9, 2015 at 2:03 pm
It was the beginning my last year of undergrad and it was time to start my thesis project in microbiology. I was very excited. My first actual research lab experience with my own project. Stained lab bench, the smell of media, Bunsen burners and all.
Another student and I came in one early morning before lectures and had a meet and greet with the lab’s graduate students (As they do all the actual lab work). Seeming very casual, we stood around exchanging formalities. I placed my book bag down and leaned against the bench.
Down to business, the MSc student asked if were both familiar with general lab safety.
‘Oh yes’ I said, in my most confident and authoritative voice. We had just completed our 45 min department training session.
Before the MSc student could continue with his spiel, my fellow undergrad yelled ‘Dylan, You’re on fire!’.
After a brief scuffle, the pilot light from a Bunsen burner had created a baseball sized hole in my sweater. And in my ego.
Needless to say, every weekly lab meeting that year ended with a variation on ‘please don’t set yourself on fire’.
*******
arizonajones
Posted May 10, 2015 at 10:58 am
Years ago, when I was a UPS driver, I was delivering to a house, knocking on the door when I suddenly hear the sound of little porcelain feet. The front door slowly and laboriously opens, and there, at my feet was a little pink smurf, 4 year old Melissa.
Bent over, hands on my knees, slowly and with great emphasis I said; “Now darling, I want you to go find your mommy and tell her that the ..EWE..PEA..ESS.. man is here!”. Melissa gave me a big toothless grin, scampered down the hall and disappeared into the kitchen. Suddenly,”Melissa, who’s that at the door?”. Melissa, with her feet apart, fists on her hips, in her most serious face, looked up; “Mom!” she replied, “It’s the PUS man!”.
Great. Here I am this big burly truck driver, and this little sugar cube has re-branded me “The Pus Man”.
Back at our office was a middle aged clerk, who had worked for UPS for many years, of fine character and great demeanor, named Rose. When I came back to the office, I told Rose how this little Munchkin had demoted me to “The Pus Man” and we both had a good laugh over it.
Two months later Rose retired from UPS. Being someone whom I was going to miss greatly, I got what thought to be a fairly restrained farewell card: “Yadi yadi yada; Live long and prosper”, signed – “Randy, The Pus Man
I handed her the card, she read it, and suddenly hit the floor in a state of hysterics, and I had no idea why because, quite frankly, the card wasn’t that funny.
It turned out, it was my fault. You see, I had no idea that the word “pus” was spelled with only one “S”. Yes, it’s true; I gave a married woman, I only knew through work, a farewell card signed – “Randy, the puss man”.
I offered to fix it for her, but she said no, it was “a keeper” and that she was going to take it home and show it to her husband.
*******
bobkillian
Posted May 5, 2015 at 10:09 am
I was sitting in a bank, across the desk from a loan officer as we were completing the paperwork for a loan. I saw on her desk name plate that her last name was Kekkonnen. “Is that Finnish?” I asked. She looked up and said “Yes, you can go now.”
*******
John Hamill
Posted May 4, 2015 at 10:21 am
During May of 2014, I agreed to write a piece for an Irish newspaper on the Irish blasphemy law. The copy that I submitted included the following passage:
“… the Catholic Church can tell atheists that some day an Iron Age Jew will return to earth (riding on a cloud, while blowing a trumpet) and resurrect their dead bodies, for the singular purpose of torturing them in fire for all eternity. However, if an atheist simply states what they might think about this doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and the character of Jesus Christ who preached it, they can be prosecuted for blasphemy in the civil courts.”
The sub editor that I was dealing with refused to publish the full paragraph as he believed (probably correctly) that many of his Christian readers would be offended by the idea of Jesus riding on a cloud while blowing a trumpet. I pointed out that since in Matthew 24:30-31, Jesus prophesized his own return in exactly these terms, it would in fact be blasphemous to suggest that the second coming would not occur in this manner.
As you might imagine, the sub-editor had little interest in debating the theological or legal definition of blasphemy and simply wished to avoid any prospect of litigation. As such, the easiest thing for him to do was simply to censor these words. The Irish blasphemy law therefore caused the words of Jesus to be censored as they were perceived as too ridiculous to be tolerated by Christians.
True story.
*******
rickflick
Posted May 3, 2015 at 8:51 pm
It had just stopped raining and I was eager to get outside. I was all of 8 years old at the time and already a budding naturalist. My personal collection consisted of a garter snake, 3 or 4 chubs from the local creek, and toad found in the rhubarb behind the garage, and an assortment of bugs. You could say I was animal crazy and dreamed of having a complete menagerie of all the world’s creatures.
I was out on safari, you could call it, along the unpaved road a block from home when I spotted an enormous, black bird, standing still in the ditch, and soaking wet. I got pretty close and it cawed a bit but did not fly. But, how could it? It was slicked down with rain water. Clearly in distress, a little shaky looking. My instinct for capture was alerted as was my desire to rescue the gleaming beast. I would take it home and dry its ruffled feathers and feed it back to health. Then I’d release it here on the road where I found it so it could rejoin its family who must at this very moment be perched in the trees at the other side of the field. They must be watching me now, I thought.
I’d have to make a trap to get hold of the bird for I sensed it would not let me get much closer. I raced home running, and grabbed a cardboard box and string and a few slices of bread. Back again to the road I went, hoping the sad, wet, bird was still there. It was. I propped the box on a stick and tied the string at its base ready to pull. With bread as bait, I placed the box as close as I dared to the shivering bird. I tucked myself down low in the ditch on the opposite side of the road with the string in my hand to wait. The bird must be starving I knew and would soon be tempted by the bread. I decided to just wait him out. Soon he’d see that I was his and friend and rescuer, and I’d have him in my collection, at least for a while.
I was greatly upset when I noticed a man at some distance strolling toward us along the rain soaked road. He’s going to pass right over my sting and frighten the bird away! As he drew nearer I saw he walked with a cane, had a white beard, and black coat and hat. A tramp I thought. I was going to be thwarted in my mission of mercy by this hobo. There was nothing I could do to send that fool back the way he’d come.
Just as the man reached my string, he looked down,…and at my box trap, and then at the bird. “Come on Sammy”, he said, and the bird squawked once and flew up straight to the man’s shoulder. With the black bird perched on the black coat, the man continued down the road and didn’t even look back.
Readers’ wildlife photographs
May 15, 2015 • 7:15 am
Reader John Harshman sent these photos of a kildeer and eggs on April 20:
Yesterday I went out to Charleston Slough on San Francisco Bay, and this very brave killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) began doing threat displays at me. Eventually I figured out why, but I nearly stepped on the nest before I saw it. Sorry, no nightjars in these photos, but aren’t the eggs hard enough to see even in closeup? And that little scrape in the ground is the extent of a killdeer nest.
And from the Blessed Plot, reader pyers sent two photos:
Just been out for a wlk in the local woods. . . Weather in England is glorious at the moment and the bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) are out in force.
Check out the link to see the source of the unusual species name “non-scripta”:
. . . and a Eurasian magpie (Pica pica) taking flight:
Reader Randy Schenk sent a gorgeous bird at his feeder:
Finally back from winter in Mexico or Central America the Indigo Bunting, Passerina cyanea, is one of the favorites anytime around here.
And of course what is a day without Squirrels, the Honorary Website Rodent™? These photos, including a mutant, were sent by reader Bob Lundgren:
In lieu of cats I’ve enclosed photos of some of our backyard squirrels. The first photo is of our lovely neighborhood albino squirrel. Based on its interactions with the other neighborhood squirrels we think its a female. She is petite and a bit skittish compared to the other squirrels. I’m not sure how long squirrels live but we think she’s been around for several years – successfully avoiding the neighborhood raptors. The second photo shows the albino along with one of her normally colored compatriots. The third photo is a squirrel with a nice golden tail. when the sun catches it just right it glows beautifully.
And from the Facebook page of Dr. Piotr Naskrecki, one of our Official Website Entomologists™:
One of the highlights of our recent biodiversity survey of Gorongosa National Park was the re-discovery of the Hooded praying mantis Rhomboderella thorectes. This species has not been seen since its original description in 1949.
Friday: Hili dialogue (and bonus dialogue)
May 15, 2015 • 4:43 am
It’s Friday: 6 days from Book Day! What will happen? I’m told some Canadian readers have already received their copy of FvF in the mail and that some Canadian bookstores have jumped the gun and are selling it over the conter. Well, who cares? Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Cyrus were both bad, doing their business in or around little Hania’s sandbox. Malgorzata explains:
Andrzej took this picture a moment after he chased Hili from the sandbox which she treated as a very comfortable litter box, and interrupted Cyrus who was busy making the wooden frame of the sandbox thoroughly wet.
*******
Hili: Are you peeing in the sandbox, too?
Cyrus: No, I’m peeing just outside it.
In Polish:Hili: Ty też sikasz do piaskownicy?
Cyrus: Nie, tylko obsikuję ją z wierzchu.
UPDATE: A new Hili dialogue (or rather, Andrzej monologue) was posted by Andrzej on his Facebook page, but readers here get it free! Malgorzata again explains: “Andrzej just posted it on his Facebook. Hili is outside the window and the hand is a reflection of Andrzej’s hand holding the camera.”
A: I’m sorry, I can’t talk now. The Editor is calling me.