For the End of the Week Felid, we have a cartoon by Paul Noth, sent in by reader Merilee. It speaks for itself, though you may have to look up the poker term “tell”:
End of the Week Felid
October 2, 2015 • 2:30 pm
Ben Carson opens mouth, inserts metatarsals again: says it would be “very dangerous” to register guns
October 2, 2015 • 1:30 pm
If this man gets to be the Republican Presidential candidate (and I’ll bet one reader $50 he won’t: first taker accepted), I’ll be overjoyed, because there’s no way Carson could beat any of the viable Democratic candidates. In fact, I’m baffled why he’s a candidate at all.
His latest gaffe was made in conversation with radio host Hugh Hewitt, a conversation about gun control. Listen for yourself:
His solution is to examine the mentality of prospective gun owners (I think we often do that already), but NOT register the guns themselves. His statement:
“What I worry about is when we get to the point were we say we need to have every gun registered, we have to know where the people are, and where their guns are, that’s very dangerous,” he said. “And that I wouldn’t agree with at all.”
Yes, of course, because when Big Brother takes over, he’ll know where all the guns are and can come and take them away from us, preventing the American people from using their handguns and rifles to defeat the U.S. Army. And how do you vet people for “early warning clues” about mental illness without registering people and their guns?
I say we go to the British system, where guns in private hands are very strictly controlled, but of course that’s a no-go in our country. For a wonderful and cogent defense that the Second Amendment to the Constitution was truly intended to promote militias rather than allow any deranged citizen to shoot up a campus or a movie theater, read Garry Wills’s twenty-year-old piece in the New York Review of Books, “To keep and bear arms.“
Kim Davis and the Pope, Volume MCMDXXVIII of ‘I am not a homophobe’
October 2, 2015 • 8:15 am
by Grania Spingies
Regular contributor Pliny The In Between has created a new satirical poke at the strange logical contortions from the school of Special Pleading.
As Jerry noted recently, there is nothing particularly liberal about the Pope’s position on anything; not unless you apply a really low standard to what liberal is: his organization bars women from all high level management positions, in spite of his saying “women are more important than men because the church is woman” (whatever that is supposed to mean). Uttering the phrase “who am I to judge?” is on charitable interpretation only basic human decency on the question of homosexuality, it is not liberal. When put in context of the entire of the entire comment the tone takes a certain slide towards the Right:
A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will—well, who am I to judge him? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this (homosexual) orientation—we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.
That is not a liberal position. That is a I’ll tolerate you so long as you don’t ask for legal equality position. Not so liberal now, eh?
I’m still unsure if I understand exactly why the media fawns so much over religious leaders; but then they also fawn over the Kardashians (and I hate that I had to investigate who they are, thanks America) so perhaps that isn’t the right question.
Perhaps the question is: when did sounding like a mostly decent human being rather than a Westboro Baptist Church representative suddenly get re-branded as liberal?
Readers’ wildlife photographs
October 2, 2015 • 7:15 am
As I’m in a rush, we’ll have a truncated version of Reader’s Wildlife Photos today; fortunately, the stalwart Stephen Barnard sent three photos this morning:
Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss):
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula):
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias):
Friday: Hili dialogue
October 2, 2015 • 1:04 am
I must rush, as I have only fifteen minutes before I don the monkey suit and head for Torun for the Big Lecture. Unless my writing colleagues pitch in, posting will be almost nonexistent today, but indulge me as I have to go about my Father’s (Ceiling Cat’s) work. In the meantime, Hili is, as always when she’s not napping, in search of noms (that’s me photographing her):
A: Hili, where are you escaping to?
Hili: Into the valley because here people are scaring the mice away.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, gdzie uciekasz?
Hili: W dolinę, bo tu ludzie myszy płoszą.
Dobrzyn: around Retirement Day
October 1, 2015 • 1:30 pm
Here are a few holiday snaps from the last two days in Dobrzyn. It’s gotten a bit chilly and they’ve turned on the central heating.
First, as befits her status, we have the Furry Princess of Poland, who is now deigning to give me substantial Quality Cat Time on the couch:
Hili’s World #1:
Hili’s World #2:
Walkies by the Vistula:
Malgorzata is taking seriously her promise to have a cherry pie for me (or some kind of pastry) every day. I photographed the process, starting with the filling of the crust (below we have a traditional crust instead of the more laborious walnut crust):
It’s far easier to grate dough on top of the pie than to make fancy latticework, and it looks (and tastes) just as good:
Gratings spread over the top:
Baking (I’ve given Malgorzata’s recipe here):
And the completed product (I had a piece just ten minutes ago):
Dinner two nights ago: a dish of kasha (buckwheat groats) larded with both sausage and pork shoulder, cooked with mushroom sauce, and served with cucumbers in yogurt. This is traditional Polish fare:
When I woke up on retirement morning yesterday, I found an envelope in the living room. It contained two things, including this note:
And indeed, there was a watch (the pikers in my department didn’t give me anything, not even a goodbye email or fete). The watch had been ordered in advance via Amazon in advance, and a professional in Dobrzyn assigned to insert a picture of Her Highness. What a lovely gift!
We also had a special lunch: open-faced “sandwiches” (a Jewish recipe) made from a savory puff pastry covered with grapes, fresh figs, Camembert cheese, and cashews, baked until the pastry is done and the cheese melted. One can also use Roquefort cheese and pecans:
And dinner: chicken baked with soy sauce and sesame seeds, served with an olive salad and boiled potatoes, all washed down with Zubr beer.
For dessert we had a choice of cherry pie or a cheesecake purchased by Gosha, the upstairs tenant. I opted for cheesecake, and it was delicious. As always here, I am eating well but not gaining weight:
A glowing sea turtle: the world’s first biofluorescent reptile
October 1, 2015 • 12:00 pm
National Geographic reports the discovery that the hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), the most endangered of all marine turtles, is biofluorescent: it absorbs blue light from the ocean and, after that light is transformed into different light by photosensitive molecules, it’s reflected back as a panoply of different colors. This differs from bioluminescence, which is the emission of nonreflected endogenous light produced wholly by chemical reactions. Bioluminescence is found in many organisms, including fish, jellyfish, and marine microorganisms, while biofluorescence has been seen only in fish, corals, and now this turtle. Here’s what the fluorescent hawksbill looks like, filmed by the discoverer, marine biologist David Gruber. The colors are the reflection of the camera’s blue light, which matches wavelengths found in the ocean.
We have no idea why the turtle does this, or even whether it’s an adaptation. Perhaps it’s only a byproduct of some other aspect of the turtle’s metabolism or morphology. Gruber and Alexander Gaos (a researcher on turtles not involved in the discovery) speculate that the fluorescence helps camouflage the turtle at night, but of course we don’t know for sure:
“[Biofluorescence is] usually used for finding and attracting prey or defense or some kind of communication,” says Gaos. In this instance, it could be a kind of camouflage for the sea turtle. (See pictures of insects that are masters of camouflage.)
The hawksbill’s shell is very good at concealing the animal in a rocky reef habitat during the day, Gaos explains. “When we go out to catch them, sometimes they’re really hard to spot.”
The same could be true for a habitat rife with biofluorescing animals—like a coral reef.
In fact, Gruber pointed out that some of the red on the hawksbill he saw could have been because of algae on the shell that was fluorescing. The green is definitely from the turtle though, he says.
The problem I see with the “camouflage” explanation is twofold. First, as far as I know nothing preys on adult hawksbills except humans. Perhaps the camouflage is there to protect babies against predators, but that wasn’t suggested. Further, the prey of hawksbills isn’t likely to avoid them when they’re camouflaged, because their prey is largely sessile or nonvisual (the main diet of this turtle is sponges, supplemented with jellyfish). There’s not much need, then, to hide yourself from such prey. I could swell the suggestions by speculating that it’s a mate-recognition adaption, enabling males and females to find each other in the dark, but that too is pure speculation.
h/t: Hempenstein