Readers’ wildlife photos

March 10, 2015 • 7:45 am

This morning we have another batch of photos from reader Stephen Barnard in Idaho, and he snuck a d*g photo in with them! Feeling amiable, I’ll include it for the caninophiles:

Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens):

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 Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon):

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Yet another Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos):

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Yet another Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis):

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Twin goats [Capra aegagrus hircus] born yesterday, with my daughter, Hadley:

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Deets [Canis lupus familiaris], aspiring to be an honorary cat, taking a break from killing voles.

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A gustatory interlude

March 10, 2015 • 6:29 am

If you’re hungry (or want to be), read the vignettes of memorable seafood meals contributed by different writers to the New York Times: “In Asia, tastes of the sea.” The photos are fantastic, as are the meals. Here’s a Bengali fish curry, a dish with which I’m well familiar:

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A cumin-flavored fish curry at a restaurant in New Delhi. Credit Graham Crouch for The New York Times.

 

Tuesday: Hili Dialogue

March 10, 2015 • 5:08 am

The weather is warming up, the snow is melting, and the squirrels are constantly demanding food, running up the window screen in my office and banging on it to alert me to their needs (they’re like cats!). Meanwhile, we have a very cryptic Hili dialogue today, but Malgorzata provides an explanation:

Against my sage advice Andrzej posted this dialogue without any explanation. But I think that this link makes the dialogue a bit less mysterious.

A: Do you like Plato?
Hili: To be honest, I prefer a platypus.

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In Polish:
Ja: Czy lubisz Platona?
Hili: Uczciwie mówiąc, wolę dziobaka.

Philomena tells the story of Lady Godiva while drunk

March 9, 2015 • 4:20 pm

There’s a series of videos on British Comedy Central called “Drunk History,” in which various comedians tell historical or quasi-historical tales when they’ve already taken plenty of booze on board. The series was created by Derek Walters in 2013, and here’s the story:

I made these animations for Tiger Aspect and Comedy Central UK. Based on the Comedy Central US hit, Drunk History is a brand new show in which comedians get absolutely bladdered in order to tell us some of their favorite stories from history. As they narrate these stories a host of well-known actors, celebrities and other comedians act out these new, rather blurry versions of history. Each episode ends with a short story featuring my animation.

Sadly, most of the episodes aren’t available in the U.S., particularly because several of them feature our (or at least my) favorite British comedian, Diane “Cunk” Morgan. But I found one of them on Vimeo, which Morgan describes on Twi**ter like this:

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According to the video, Morgan had 7 gin and tonics and 3 Sambucas (what a mixture!) before telling this story. Be sure to watch all the way to the end, when she’s completely plastered:

Jeffrey Tayler on the salacious Bible

March 9, 2015 • 3:24 pm

Jeffrey Tayler continues his series of anti-theist pieces in Salon with an analysis of sexuality in the Bible (in particular, the King James version): “The Bible should be X-rated: The Good Book is loaded with sexy sin—someone tell Mike Huckabee.” The piece is an analysis of both the salacious and the unwholesome sexual acts detailed in the Bible: stuff that most of us, being well up on the Old and New Testaments, know about.  We hear, for instance, about how Adam may well have copulated with his mother (since there were no other women around), how Lot slept with his daughters, about the sexytimes in the Song of Solomon, and about all the prohibition of sexual activities in the Bible, including that of homosexuality.

Tayler’s point is that perhaps conservatives shouldn’t hold up the Bible as a guide to sexual behavior, or sexual morality. So, for example, while conservatives often quote scripture as a reason to deny gay marriage, Tayler argues that the Bible could be construed to favor homosexuality:

But what of gay sex? The Bible, of course, forbids it, warning (in Leviticus 22) that ”thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: [it] is abomination.” Later in the same chapter, it is declared that those who do so “shall surely be put to death.” How many preachers and pastors have cited these lines to rail against gays, no one can say. Yet possibly, a few Biblical personalities chose to ignore such strictures. In 1 Samuel 18:1, we read that “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” Then, in 2 Samuel 1:26, David informs Jonathan that “very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Just a bromance or an instance of gayness? We don’t really know.

Women, too, may have gotten it on with each other. In the Book of Ruth, Ruth and Naomi may have been lovers.

This, I submit, is a bit of a stretch; Tayler is cherry-picking verses here (of course, so do Republicans), but it’s not at all clear that this refers to homosexuality.  More important, the point about the Bible not being a good source of morality holds for far more things than sexuality. It promotes slavery, second-class status for women, genocide, death penalties for working on the Sabbath and cursing your parents, and so on. One could devote an article to every such issue, but of course Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have already done that.

Although Tayler may be telling people unsavory things they don’t know about the Bible, the piece is not as useful as his previous critiques of theism, for the points have been made often, and recently, by the New Atheists. The best thing about his piece is Tayler’s reacquainting us with the Original Strident Old Atheist, Thomas Paine. He quotes some surprisingly vicious criticism of the Bible, and then reveals that it came from Paine:

Who indited [JAC: not a typo; look it up] such flagrant blasphemy against the Holy Scriptures? Not, as one might expect, the late Christopher Hitchens or some other “New” atheist, but the revolutionary deist and enemy of organized religion, Thomas Paine – the everlasting human font from which many anti-religionists, including myself, draw inspiration. The above quotations come from his fiery treatise against Christianity, “The Age of Reason,” which he wrote more than two centuries ago. “The Age of Reason” is a book to read and treasure and reread. Paine was in places unjustly dismissive of the Bible (as I’ll explain below), but if nothing else, “The Age of Reason” gives lie to the notion, advanced by quasi-literate modern-day commentators with faith-dulled axes to grind, that “stridency” characterizes the New Atheists alone. Paine was relentlessly “strident,” and his brilliant Biblical exegesis shows how right he was to be so.

This has prompted me to make plans to reread The Age of Reason, and also to remind readers of the other strident Old Atheists, including Bertrand Russell, H. L. Mencken (Dawkins never even came close to his invective), Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. What’s “new’ about New Atheism is, I always maintain, the view that the existence of God, and other tenets of faith, can be seen as “scientific” hypotheses, and not afforded respect merely because many people accept them. And even that isn’t really new, for the Old Atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley said similar things in the early 19th century, to wit:

“God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi [burden of proof] rests on the theist.”

But maybe there’s still some value in reminding the faithful (who, after all, know less about the Bible than do atheists) of what’s really in the damned book.  As Tayler argues:

Some may object that if those as far back as Thomas Paine were pointing out such things, why is it worth our time now to examine what the Bible actually says? Well, even as nonbelief is spreading, three out of four Americans view the Bible as the Word of God. The “Good Book” continues to poison our politics and give succor to all who would halt our tentative progress and hurl us back into the Dark Ages, threatening women and their rights, our science-based education and our future in a technology-dominated world, and the flickering, almost extinguished (rationalist) spirit of the Age of Enlightenment – the Golden Era of atheism and renewal, humanism and promise. We need a re-Enlightenment, and fast. A first step in the right direction would involve scrutinizing the religious canon that still enjoys far more respect than it deserves.

I’m not sure that 3/4 of American take the Bible as the Word of God, rather than as “inspired by God” and therefore fallacious in places, but I can’t check because Tayler’s link doesn’t work. Nevertheless, I applaud his continuing emphasis on Enlightenment values.

 

 

Florida bans the terms “global warming” and “climate change” in state environmental reports

March 9, 2015 • 12:45 pm

Thank Ceiling Cat that some newspapers are still doing investigative reporting—and are good at it. Yesterday’s Miami Herald has a longish report by Tristam Korten revealing that, on orders from the governor and his minions, state officials are not permitted to use the terms “global warming” or “climate change’ in environmental reports or talks.

What we have here is 1984 arriving 31 years late: a government promoting doublespeak that “warm is cool”. It’s as if by not using the words referring to what is happening, they think it won’t happen—or at least that people won’t know about it. But there are two things that scientists do know: the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity—the emission of greenhouse gases, largely from fossil fuels—and that Florida, much of which is just above sea level, is especially susceptible to inundation when the icecaps melt. As the Herald report notes, “Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years.”

The agency responsible for monitoring the environment is Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which began policing language after Rick Scott (a Republican, of course) became governor in 2011. Like many GOP politicians, Scott is a climate-change denialist:

Among the politicians who refuse to acknowledge climate change is Gov. Scott. During his first campaign for governor in 2010, Scott told reporters who asked about his views on climate change that he had “not been convinced,” and that he would need “something more convincing than what I’ve read.”

In 2014, Scott said he “was not a scientist” when asked about his views on climate change.

That’s the usual Republican waffle on climate change. It’s like some saying, “I’m not a doctor” when asked whether an appendectomy could cure an inflamed appendix. Scott then appointed another hack, Herschel Vinyard Jr., a businessman, as head of the DEP, and the Doublespeak began:

DEP officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

The policy goes beyond semantics and has affected reports, educational efforts and public policy in a department with about 3,200 employees and $1.4 billion budget.

. . . “We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,’” said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. “That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”

Kristina Trotta, another former DEP employee who worked in Miami, said her supervisor told her not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in a 2014 staff meeting. “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,” she said.

Scott, a scientific mushbrain, ignores the scientists (there’s a description of how a group of them were given all of 30 minutes to explain the effects of climate change to the governor, and then were dismissed after they talked for only 20 minutes); and he’s created a climate (pardon the pun) in the DEP that simply uses euphemisms in an attempt to avoid the issue:

One example is the Florida Oceans and Coastal Council’s Annual Research Plan, put together by DEP and other state agencies. The 2009-2010 report, published the year before Scott was elected, contains 15 references to climate change, including a section titled “Research Priorities — Climate Change.”

In the 2014-15 edition of the report, climate change is only mentioned if it is in the title of a past report or conference. There is one standalone reference to the issue at the end of a sentence that sources say must have slipped by the censors. “It’s a distinct possibility,” said one former DEP employee.

Instead, terms like “climate drivers” and “climate-driven changes” are used.

Another example in the piece comes from Trotta, who’s blown the whistle on the language purge. She reports that besides the prohibition of the terms “global warming and “climate change,” the term “sea-level rise” was also proscribed—replaced with the euphemism “nuisance flooding.” Can you believe that? Nuisance flooding! This is a state, not a basement!

The piece gives many examples of this kind of bowdlerizing, which would be hilariously stupid if it wasn’t being done to hide an environmental problem that is looming and serious. Scott and those who follow his dictates will look like idiots when the flooding begins: like ostriches with their heads buried in a pile of thesauruses as the water begins to rise.

Fricking science-denying Republicans!

h/t: Robin

NY Times crops G. W. and Laura Bush from a photo at Selma

March 9, 2015 • 11:15 am

Maybe there were good editorial reasons to crop G. W. and Laura Bush out of Sunday’s New York Times front-page photo, a photo accompanying their story about the Selma March for civil rights. Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the original march. To commemorate it, Barack and Michelle Obama, along with numerous civil rights leaders, including members of the original march, led a procession over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of a famous confrontation between marchers and Alabama state police. The story is here, and the picture that ran on the Times‘s front page is below:

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According to today’s Torygraph, though, the original  front line of marchers looked like this:

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Where’s Walker?

According to the Torygraph, the conservative media is having a field day with this:

“For their front page, the Times curiously chose a picture that did not show the entire front line of marchers, choosing instead to leave the Bushes on the cutting room floor,” wrote Derek Hunter in the Daily Caller.

“It would be nice to contact the Times public editor Margaret Sullivan and have her ask around to see which editor thought it was a good idea to trim out the Bushes,” wrote Tim Graham for NewsBusters.org.

Twitter users also expressed their outrage at the exclusion of Mr Bush from the cover image.

“Despicable liberal media bias from NYT”, wrote one user.

“Another NYT pic of the Selma march cropped the Bushes out EXACTLY. You can see just a sliver of Laura Bush,” wrote another.

The Times story does say this, though:

Joining Mr. Obama on Saturday was former President George W. Bush, who signed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, as well as more than 100 members of Congress. About two dozen of them were Republicans, including the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. While sitting onstage, Mr. Bush made no remarks, but rose to his feet to applaud Mr. Obama, and the two men hugged afterward.

This reminds me of my post in January describing how an ultra-orthodox Jewish newspaper doctored a photo of the Charlie Hebdo march to remove the pictures of Angela Merkel and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini—simply because they were women. That was clearly deliberate, but what about this case? I can see that the entire photo is a bit messier than the cropped version, but really, Bush was a U.S. president who reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, something that current Republicans don’t like. And it was a show of solidarity between African-Americans and both liberal and conservative U.S. politicians.  Someone had to make the decision to crop the Bushes out of that picture. I’m not accusing the Times of doing it deliberately, but I wouldn’t have shown it that way.

Before you pooh-pooh this as a trivial and meaningless decision, ask yourself what you would have thought had Obama been president before a currently-reigning G. W. Bush, Obama had renewed the voting rights act some years ago, and yet the Obamas had been cropped from the photo?

h/t: pyers