NY Times has first front-page editorial in 95 years: it’s about gun control

December 5, 2015 • 11:00 am

The last time the New York Times had an editorial on its front page was in 1920. And that 95 year old piece was a complaint that Warren Harding had become the Republican Presidential candidate (granted, he turned out to be a dreadful President).  Now the Paper of Record has done it again this morning, clearly aiming to call public attention to the epidemic of gun violence in America. As another Times piece notes, this was a decision by publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger:

In a statement, the publisher of The Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said the paper was placing an editorial on Page 1 for the first time in many decades “to deliver a strong and visible statement of frustration and anguish about our country’s inability to come to terms with the scourge of guns

“Even in this digital age, the front page remains an incredibly strong and powerful way to surface issues that demand attention,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “And, what issue is more important than our nation’s failure to protect its citizens?”

I’m fully behind Sulzberger and the editorial, called “End the gun epidemic in America,” and, after long cogitation about this issue, and seeing the bad behavior of legislators and gun proponents, have lost patience with those who either say that it’s futile to tackle this issue, or defend American’s untrammeled right to own guns. It’s not futile—not if American stood up to the National Rifle Association, and the “right” to own guns is, in my view, based on a complete misreading of the Second Amendment, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. It’s right there in the Bill of Rights:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

What part of “well regulated Militia” don’t you understand, gun aficionados? In my view, we need to go to the British system: no handguns and very strict regulation of rifles (no semiautomatic weapons, either). Is Britain rife with shootings by criminals taking advantage of unarmed citizens? Hardly: it has one of the world’s lowest rates of gun homicide. Now everybody will point out the cultural differences between the U.S. and Britain. And you know what? I don’t care. Stricter control of guns is the only way to stop the murders, suicides, and accidental killings that have become an everyday occurrence in America. We’re getting jaded about this—jaded to the point where we see gun control as a futile endeavor.

Here’s what the Times said in its front-page editorial, which I reproduce in full (my emphasis):

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

Readers’ wildlife videos

December 5, 2015 • 8:15 am

Today we have “readers’ videos” rather than photos, and the reader is Tara Tanaka, whose superb videos of a hunting red egret and wood ducks fledging were posted not long ago. Today we have two more short videos; Tara’s notes are indented. The first shows egg theft by female wood ducks:

After the Pileated [woodpecker; Dryocopus pileatus] created the cavity this past spring, Wood Duck hens started laying eggs in it.  I have video on that shows one, then another hen enter the cavity, then as soon as the first one lays her egg and leaves, the second on emerges with the egg in its bill.  I’ve observed and videoed that behavior one more than one occasion.

There was a lot of Wood Duck activity for some time, but then I saw a steady stream of fire ants entering the cavity, so I don’t think a hen could have successfully incubated eggs.   In September I saw three baby gray squirrels playing in the tree, running in and out of the cavity.  I realized that they had been born in the cavity and were just beginning to explore outside of their cozy home.  Hours of video of the three babies is some that I’ve yet to cull, but I did find this clip (I slowed some of it down) of one of them grabbing a bug out of mid-air and eating it.  This squirrel used to sleep with its head hanging out of the cavity, and I think it’s the same one I later videoed that has lost an eye.

I had no idea a squirrel, much less a baby one, could snatch insects out of the air. But here’s the evidence:

 

“Goodbye”

December 5, 2015 • 7:30 am

I came across this song while futzing around on YouTube, and realized that I hadn’t heard it in a coon’s age. Looking it up, I discovered that “Goodbye” was actually written by Paul McCartney, though it was never released by either McCartney or the Beatles, and recorded by Paul only as a demo (see below). It was a big hit for Mary Hopkin (b. 1950) in the spring of 1969—my prime rock and roll years—and was written as a followup to Hopkin’s immensely popular song, “Those were the days,” released the year before. (That song, too, had a complex history, including its melody being used in a commercial for gefilte fish. Hopkins’s version was produced by McCartney.)

One of many songs written by the Beatles and given away to others, “Goodbye” made it to #2 on the UK charts, but only #13 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. It’s a lovely song, quite catchy.

Hopskin’s version is the first below, but you’ll need to compare it to McCartney’s demo recording for her, which I think is better in several ways. First, though, listen to her own release, and read these notes from YouTube:

 For the recording, Hopkin sang and performed acoustic guitar, while McCartney played bass guitar, an acoustic guitar introduction and solo, along with lap-slapping percussion and drums. Backing vocals, horns and strings, in Hewson’s arrangement, were overdubbed. The session was filmed by Apple’s Tony Bramwell for a promotional clip. In the footage, Hopkin can be seen miming to the song inside the studio, combined with shots of her and McCartney, smoking a cigarette and finger-popping, in the control room listening to a playback.

And here’s Bramwell’s promotional clip, way cool:

Now McCartney’s demo, with these notes:

To assist Hopkin in learning the song, McCartney recorded a solo demo at his home, 7 Cavendish Road, London, in February 1969 The song [Hopkins’s version] was arranged by Richard Hewson, who had also orchestrated “Those Were the Days,”and produced, along with its flip side, “Sparrow”, by Paul McCartney on 1 March 1969 at Morgan Studios in Willesden. To better match Hopkin’s voice, the key was raised from C major to E major. The recording was Apple’s first official double-A-side, and the first Apple record to feature a full-fledged picture sleeve.

If you knew that this song was written by one of the Beatles, and you also knew the Beatles, you’d immediately realize that it was McCartney’s song because of its lightness and lack of dark undertones. The tuba reminds me of the Sergeant Pepper album (1967, the album that catalyzed my atheism), while the vocal noodling around resembles McCartney’s at the end of “Rocky Raccoon” (1968). This demo is superb, and you’ll notice a few of the words were changed in the Hopkin version:

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

December 5, 2015 • 5:03 am

It’s Saturday, and I’m learning from experience that this is the worst day to post things that people will read, though I’m not quite sure why. (Someone suggested that people trawl the internet more often when they’re at work.) I may ratchet back on serious posting on Saturdays (Sundays are better) unless I hear otherwise. On this day in history, Kirk Douglas was born in 1916, making him exactly 99 today (and he’s still with us!), while the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey died in 1996.  Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is taking it out on the sofa for the bizarre reason that it never showed her mercy (but it did, for it gives her a comfy place to sleep!). Sometimes Hili baffles me. . .

A: Hili, have mercy on this sofa.
Hili: The rule of reciprocity applies in such situations.
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In Polish:
Ja: Hili, miej litość nad tą sofą.
Hili: W takich sprawach obowiązuje reguła wzajemności.

 

Perseverance produces the perfect kingfisher photo—after six years of trying and 720,000 shots

December 4, 2015 • 2:45 pm

I like to end the work week with either a felid or another beast, and this is a nice one. Sometimes even The Daily Fail has some good stuff. This is one of them:

A photographer who used to watch kingfishers as a boy with his grandfather spent six years and took 720,000 photos trying to get the perfect shot of the bird in memory of his late relative.

Alan McFadyen, 46, was taken by his grandfather Robert Murray to see the kingfisher nesting spot at the beautiful lakeside location near Kirkcudbright, Scotland, 40 years ago.

As he grew up, Mr McFadyen never forgot his boyhood visits and so when he took up photography six years ago, he decided to make the spot the focus of his attention, taking hundreds of photos per day trying to capture a kingfisher’s flawless dive.

To me, this is the money shot, but there are other great ones below:

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Since the kingfisher nest was flooded each year by the tidal water, Mr McFadyen dug a hole in the bank and filled it with clay to make a more sustainable nest for the birds.

For six long years, Mr McFadyen returned a few times a week – averaging 100 days a year – to photograph the kingfishers as they dived into the lake.

The father-of-three clocked up more than 4,200 hours and took around 720,000 photos before he got the perfect shot of the kingfisher doing a flawless dive into the water, without even a splash.

Mr McFadyen, from the Dumfries and Galloway area of Scotland, said: ‘There are not many people in the world who have got this shot. Kingfishers dive so fast they are like bullets so taking a good photo requires a lot of luck – and a lot of patience.

‘The photo I was going for of the perfect dive, flawlessly straight, with no splash required not only me to be in the right place and get a very lucky shot but also for the bird itself to get it perfect.

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Visiting twice a day, about 100 days a year, Mr McFadyen would usually shoot around 600 pictures per session. Over the six years, he believes he accumulated around 720,000 pictures – but felt only a small fraction were any good.

Mr McFadyen said: ‘As a small boy of about six I remember my grandfather taking me to see the kingfisher nest and I just remember being completely blown away by how magnificent the birds are.

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Despite getting his ‘perfect’ picture, Mr McFadyen does not intend to stop photographing kingfishers any time soon.

Mr McFadyen said: ‘Just because I have now got this shot, I’m never going to stop going to this spot and snapping the kingfishers. It’s a very relaxing place and I just love it. But I’m not sure how I can ever beat this picture.

‘I have already started taking my eight-year-old son Leighton along with me and he spotted a kingfisher for the first time just last week so my dream is for him to take it up too.’

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h/t: Moto, Hempenstein

The San Bernardino victims and the guns that killed them

December 4, 2015 • 1:15 pm

It’s looking increasingly like the couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino were terrorists motivated by Islamic extremism, but I don’t have the heart to bang on about that. Nor do I have the will to discuss those who—without even a perfunctory show of sorrow about the 14 lives lost and the many children left without parents—worry in public that this attack will promote “Islamophobia.” All I can do right now is remind us what really was lost in California—these lives:

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. . . and to put some blame where I think it some blame lies: at lax US gun laws. According to the New York Times, these were the weapons used by the killers:Screen Shot 2015-12-04 at 11.47.07 AM

These weapons, including the two assault rifles, were obtained legally.  What is the justification for those assault weapons? How can they possibly be legal? What kind of country would allow that? Only a nation under the thumb of the National Rifle Association, which sees banning these military-style weapons as the first step (God help us) in disarming Americans, Americans who shouldn’t, under the Second Amendment, be armed anyway.

Nothing will happen about gun regulation, for we have both the NRA and the Republican Party to deal with, and they love their guns.  I don’t understand why these weapons are legal, and I don’t understand why the Republicans have just behaved so reprehensibly about gun control. Almost before the 14 bodies cooled, the Republicans voted against reasonable gun restrictions:

While the nation suffered through the shock of another bloody massacre, on Thursday every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation to prevent people on the F.B.I.’s consolidated terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives.

The measure has been introduced repeatedly since 2007. The Government Accountability Office has documented that over years of congressional blockage, hundreds of suspected terrorists on the watchlist bought guns.

Another bill that would have expanded background checks to gun show and online firearms sales to screen out convicted felons and the mentally ill also failed on Thursday. The four Republican senators running for president — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham — all turned up to vote against these common-sense measures.

“If you need proof that Congress is a hostage to the gun lobby, look no further than today’s vote,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, who sponsored the terror watchlist measure.

Read those paragraphs again. Seriously, why would you vote against keeping guns out of the hands of people who are not even permitted to fly? The Republicans are an odious and now a murderous party. Truly, this country is lost, and I am dispirited. All we can do is sigh and vote Democratic in the fall.

I’ll add this timely cartoon by reader Pliny the In Between, who notes that the American Legion (a veterans’ organization) in Washougal, Washington is auctioning off an AK-47 (e.g., a Kalashnikov) to raise money for programs for veterans and children. You couldn’t make that up.

Venns tees.004

Marco Rubio does theodicy

December 4, 2015 • 12:15 pm

I used to think that, among all the Republican candidates for President, Marco Rubio—the Conservative Kennedy—would ultimately get the nod (Trump is still leading the pack). I don’t like his views, but he doesn’t seem as much of a nutcase as Carson or Trump, and I wouldn’t have to scourge myself with whips if he was elected.  However, he’s still marinated in faith, and, as the Christian Post reports, Rubio undertook some theodicy in a talk in New Hampshire on November 30. Like all the GOP candidates, he parades his tiresome faith at every turn.

Rubio answered his rhetorical question about why God let the Paris attacks and the Twin Towers attack occur by raising one of the tired old tropes of Christianity: God’s plan is beyond our ken, but, in the end, it leads to ultimate justice (the video of his remarks is at bottom). The CP report:

The 44-year-old senator continued by saying that even when people pray to God for guidance, they are often not given the answers they want.

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This is a real book. Talk about making a virtue from necessity!

“We are ordered to have peace. The peace that you are left with is not the peace of ‘it’s going to all work out great.’ [JAC: Except that it will—see below.[ We are not promised that,” Rubio stated. “Those of us who share the Christian faith, the only thing we are promised is adversity. We are told you will be discriminated against, hated, you will be persecuted. Obviously, we are fortunate to live in a country where the persecution is relative compared to other parts of the world.”

. . . Rubio then explained that he was asked during a campaign event a few days prior, “Where was God on 9/11? Where was God in Paris?”

“I said, ‘where God always is — on the throne in Heaven.’ The question was how could God allow these bad things to happen? It always challenges us to understand that God’s ways are not our ways,” Rubio argued. “What we may interpret as bad, and most certainly is in the case of Paris or 9/11, even that is part of a broader plan for the universe and for our lives that we are just not going to know the answer to. God’s ways are not our ways.”

In other words, God Works in Mysterious Ways. How, then, does Rubio know that God is good rather than evil, or that he even takes an interest in justice?

Rubio then said that God’s master plan confuses people during challenging times just as small children are confused as to why their parents would let doctors hurt them with needles when getting a vaccine.

“All that child understood at 3 years or 4 years of age is that my father and my mother, who love me, is allowing a stranger to stick a needle in my arm, in this case, some other region of the body, and it hurts, it hurts a lot. ‘Why are they allowing me to be hurt by this stranger? I don’t understand that,'” Rubio said of his child. “But I understood. While that needle hurt for 3 or 4 seconds, that needle was going to prevent something much more dangerous and much more painful and much harder later on.”

What gets me about this is that Rubio asserts that “God’s ways are not our ways,” but then uses an example showing that God’s ways ARE our ways: like children, we’re given pain for some reason we can’t understand, but it’s given because it make things come right at the end. How does Rubio know that?

If God’s ways are truly mysterious, then how do we know anything about the nature of God? I suppose Rubio would reply that the Bible tells us about the nature of God. But then the Bible also tells us about God’s ways. The relevant example is the story of Job, whose sufferings were inflicted by God just to test whether he’d remain pious in the face of suffering. In other words, God tortured Job as a test of loyalty. And, I suppose, that’s why God killed off all those Parisians and New Yorkers—to see if the rest of us would retain our belief (and presumably our salvation) in our sorrow.

Of course, a God having such ways is empirically indistinguishable from no God at all.

h/t: Thomas