Thursday: Hili dialogue

February 16, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, February 16, 2023, and National Almond Day (watch out for cyanide).

It’s also Tim Tam Day, celebrating the great Australian chocolate bar, Fat Thursday, Kyoto Protocol Day (it took effect on this day in 2005), Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska, celebrating the indigenous rights activist, and of course, in North Korea it’s Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il’s Birthday).

The Shining Star liked movies (photo from BBC):

From BBC: Kim Jong-il in Pyonyang’s State Theatre, October 2009
Tam Jong-Il

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first, and this is a sad one, for it not only evokes old times, but makes me realize how old I am. What happened is this: movie star and sexpot Raquel Welch died—and she was 82! From the NYT:

Raquel Welch, the voluptuous movie actress who became the 1960s’ first major American sex symbol and maintained that image in a show business career that lasted a half-century, died on Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 82.

Her death was confirmed by her son, Damon Welch. No cause was given.

Ms. Welch’s Hollywood success began as much with a poster as with the film it publicized. Starring in “One Million Years B.C.” (1966) as a Pleistocene-era cave woman, she posed in a rocky prehistoric landscape, wearing a tattered doeskin bikini, and grabbed the spotlight by the throat with her defiant, alert-to-everything, take-no-prisoners stance and dancer’s body. She was 26. It had been three years since Marilyn Monroe’s death, and the industry needed a goddess.

Camille Paglia, the feminist critic, described the poster photograph as “the indelible image of a woman as queen of nature.” Ms. Welch, she went on, was “a lioness — fierce, passionate and dangerously physical.”

Surely you remember this poster, which to our generation was what the Betty Grable poster was to our fathers:

Page Six has some pictures of her from a year ago. She was born Jo Raquel Tejada, married three times, but kept the last name of her first husband, James Welch.

*I’m no pundit, so I don’t know how much credibility to give this story, and I still don’t think that the major nuclear superpowers (the U.S., China, and Russia) would be willing to risk an all-out war. But, according to one guy quoted in the Washington Post, that’s what may happen if Russia gets a victory in Ukraine.

A Russian military victory in Ukraine will embolden Beijing and lead to war between the United States and China over Taiwan, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon and vocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime, warned in an interview ahead of remarks that he will deliver to global leaders at a major security and defense conference in Germany this weekend.

“A lost war in Ukraine is a steppingstone to war in the Asia Pacific,” Khodorkovsky said in the interview with The Washington Post in London, where he now lives. “You need to understand that when even a big guy is hit in the face, a number of other guys will start to doubt whether that guy is really that strong, and they will want to go for his teeth. … If the U.S. wants to go to war in Asia, then the most correct path to this is to show weakness in Ukraine as well.”

Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison in Russia before being pardoned by Putin in 2013, said stepping up Western military aid to Ukraine and securing its victory was the only way for the United States to avoid such a military conflict with China.

Them’s strong words, partner! I presume he knows more about this than i do, but is he an expert on China’s military strategy. Will they risk a nuclear war over Taiwan? Or will the U.S., which has promised to defend the island? All I know is that should help Ukraine because it’s the right thing to do, and we can’t let Putin, who increasingly resembles a James Bond villain, take whatever he wants.

*The Republicans and Democrats, including Biden, have been squabbling about raising the U.S. debt limit, which is going to be necessary if the country isn’t to shut down and the financial markets go to hell. The problem is that Biden & Co. want an unlimited ability to raise the limit without restrictions, while the Republicans want to counterbalance any raises with promises in spending cuts. Now it looks like a default is imminent if the two parties don’t reach agreement.

The U.S. could become unable to pay all of its bills on time sometime between July and September, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated, giving lawmakers several months to reach an agreement on lifting the debt limit and avoiding a default.

The Treasury Department ran up against the roughly $31.4 trillion debt limit in January. It is now deploying a series of special accounting maneuvers to keep paying the government’s obligations to bondholders, Social Security recipients and others.

In its estimate on Wednesday, the CBO said the so-called extraordinary measures could also run out before July if its expectations for tax revenue are off.

“The projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from CBO’s projections,” the agency said.

. . .While lawmakers routinely spar over spending, the current debt-ceiling standoff has heightened fears among some market watchers and lawmakers over the possibility of a default. A failure by the U.S. to pay its bills on time could send financial markets into a tailspin and wreak broader havoc on the global economy.

In 2011, Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of its triple-A credit rating for the first time after the Treasury came within days of being unable to pay certain benefits.

It’s even worse because estimates of spending are higher than predicted:

The United States is on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than previously forecast, as a result of rising costs for interest payments, veterans’ health care, retiree benefits and the military, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.

The new forecasts, released Wednesday afternoon, project a $1.4 trillion gap this year between what the government spends and what it takes in from tax revenues. Over the next decade, deficits will average $2 trillion annually, as tax receipts fail to keep pace with the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits for retiring baby boomers.

This will be an interesting standoff, and a test of Biden’s promise to “reach across the aisle”—into the pockets of Republicans.

*This was big news to reader Kurt, who is a professor of religious studies. And it is a fine book, too: the oldest nearly compete Hebrew Bible in existence, and it’s up for auction. It may turn out to be the most expensive book ever sold:

One day, about 1,100 years ago, a scribe in present-day Israel or Syria sat down to begin work on a book. Copied out on roughly 400 large parchment sheets, it contained the complete text of the Hebrew Bible, written in square letters similar to those of the Torah scrolls in any synagogue today.

After changing hands a few times, it ended up in a synagogue in northeast Syria, which was destroyed around the 13th or 14th century. Then it disappeared for nearly 600 years.

Since resurfacing in 1929, the Bible has been in private collections. But one afternoon last week, there it was sitting in a cradle at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, where Sharon Liberman Mintz, the auction house’s senior Judaica consultant, was turning its rippled pages with a mixture of familiarity and awe.

She pointed out the two versions of the Ten Commandments, a beautifully calligraphic rendering of the Song of Deborah and, more prosaically, places where small tears had been stitched together with thread or sinew.

“It’s electrifying,” Mintz said. “This represents the first time the text appears in the form where we can really read and understand it.”

Have a look at this puppy!

(from NYT): The Codex Sassoon, headed for auction in May, is considered the oldest nearly complete Hebrew Bible.Credit…Eric Helgas for The New York Times

The Codex Sassoon, as it’s known, is being billed by Sotheby’s as the earliest example of a nearly complete codex containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible. (It is missing about five leaves, including the first 10 chapters of Genesis.) Set to be auctioned in May, the book carries an estimate of $30 million to $50 million, which could make it the most expensive book or historical document ever sold.

“When Sharon came to us, she said, ‘I just saw the oldest complete Hebrew Bible,’ and I kept waiting for her to say ‘in private hands’ or ‘in the last 50 years,’” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s global head of books and manuscripts, said. “But that was it, full stop.”

The book, which measures about 12 by 14 inches and weighs 26 pounds, is housed in an unprepossessing early 20th-century brown leather binding. Embossed on the spine is the number 1053 — its catalog number in the collection of David Solomon Sassoon, the British collector and scholar who purchased it in 1929, after it resurfaced. (The current owner is the Swiss financier and collector Jacqui Safra.)

The calligraphy is gorgeous, even if it is a book of fiction:

(from the NYT): The codex reflects the work of scholar-scribes known as the Masoretes, who created a system of detailed marginal notes to explain exactly how the text should be written.Credit…Eric Helgas for The New York Times

And the price? Austin said a committee began discussing it two years ago, considering the old record for the most expensive book ever sold: the Codex Leicester, a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript bought by Bill Gates in 1994 for $30.8 million. Then in November 2021 came a new benchmark: the $43.2 million paid by the investor Ken Griffin for a first printing of the U.S. Constitution.

The codex was also an expensive object in its time, Mintz said, requiring the skins of easily more than 100 animals. The biblical text, with its calligraphic flourishes, was written by a single scribe. “It’s a masterpiece of scribal art,” Mintz said.

The book of my people—a millennium old. You can bet that nobody around then is still alive.

*Want something else to make you feel old? How about this AP article headlined “Jane Fonda to attend Vienna Opera Ball with 90-year-old date“? The bold part is mine:

American actor Jane Fonda said Wednesday she accepted an Austrian building tycoon’s invitation to attend the Vienna Opera Ball because he offered to “pay me quite a bit of money.”

The 85-year-old Academy Award and Golden Globe winner said at a news conference with her date, 90-year-old Richard Lugner, that she needed the money to pay her bills and to support her grandchildren.

“I support a lot of people,” Fonda said.

The opera ball is one of the highlights of the social calendar in Austria and known for a guest list that includes many celebrities. This year’s event is on Thursday.

Lugner is known for paying undisclosed sums of money to famous women to accompany him to the ball. His past guests include Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian and model Elle MacPherson.

Fonda said her commitment would not include dancing at the ball because she has a “fake shoulder, two fake hips, two fake knees.”

“I’m old and I may fall apart,” quipped the actor, whose recent roles have included the TV series ”Grace and Frankie” and the film “80 for Brady.”

Here’s a photo of Fonda and Lugner on their expensive date:

From the AP: Actress Jane Fonda, left, and her host, businessman Richard Lugner, right, arrive for a news conference on the Vienna Opera Ball in Vienna, Austria, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Heinz-Peter Bader)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a typical cat (I think we need an evolutionary psychology explanation for why cats hate vacuum cleaners):

Hili: Are there silent vacuum cleaners?
A: Why do you ask?
Hili: Cats’ lives would be easier.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy są już bezgłośne odkurzacze?
Ja: Dlaczego pytasz?
Hili: Życie kotów byłoby łatwiejsze.

********************

From Merilee, a Dan Piraro cartoon:

From Terry, a Leigh Rubin cartoon:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih.  I have endless admiration for these brave young Iranian women. Sound up.

From Gregory, who calls this “the best response to a mass shooting I’ve seen”. I agree:

Ricky Gervais enjoying the day with his tabby Pickle:

From Barry: The Terminator at breakfast (sound up):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy gassed on arrival at eight years old:

Tweets from Matthew. Go look at the new page; I’ve put a what I think is a new photo below the tweet:

1861 Apr. 11 Half-length right profile photograph (6×4.5cm) by William Erasmus Darwin.

Have a look at the new and cool paper that Matthew coauthored: a sequence-based analysis of olfactory receptor (OR) genes, giving us an idea what our ancient relatives could smell.

Here’s a lovely thing to do:

A talk and a curriculum from New Zealand

February 15, 2023 • 12:15 pm

What is PCC(E) banging on about today? This post is about the decolonizing of government school curricula in New Zealand, especially of “early childhood curriculum.” Why do I care? I’ve explained it before: I hate to see a country I love going down the tubes, especially in science and academics. But you should also realize that there are few people in New Zealand who can publicly say the things I can, or publicly post letters opposing the ideological domination of science and academia by indigenous people.  Anybody who had a job in New Zealand would get fired for writing posts like this one. So it’s also a resource for the many disaffected kiwis who, because of pervasive “cancel culture” in their country, never get to hear those who support them. These posts may bore you, and in that case just skip them!

Yesterday I posted a letter to the new Prime Minister of New Zealand (and its new Minister of Education), signed by Elizabeth Rata and three other academics. Rata is Director of the Knowledge in Education Research Unit on the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. Although she was instrumental in helping Māori students, her refusal to equate Māori “ways of knowing” with science, or to take the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti) as a binding document that gives indigenous people the right to dominate at least half of the public school curriculum, has caused her to be canceled among “progressive” Kiwis. Plus, as noted below, she signed the (in)famous Listener letter (see it here), which caused a huge uproar despite the fact that its sentiments were rational and correct.  This is from Wikipedia:

Rata was one of the principal figures in developing the kura kaupapa schooling project. She was the secretary of the combined kōhanga reo whānau seeking to develop continuation for Māori language learners graduating from kōhanga reo and was a member of the original Kura Kaupapa Māori Working Party. However, according to Rebecca Wirihana, herself an early Kura activist, “Elizabeth has been wiped out of the history of kura kaupapa.” Her recent criticisms of the direction of Māori immersion education, and of the insertion of mātauranga Māori into New Zealand education,  have prompted some highly critical responses.

. . . In July 2021, in the context of a review of the NCEA (New Zealand’s National Curriculum), Rata, along with six other University of Auckland professors and emeritus professors published a controversial letter entitled “In Defence of Science” in the New Zealand Listener, which said indigenous knowledge (or mātauranga Māori) “falls far short of what can be defined as science itself”.

This 26-minute talk, by Rata, called “New Zealand’s descent from democracy into ethno-nationalism”, was pointed out by reader JS428 in a comment  on my post.  What it’s about is the “decolonization” of New Zealand that’s supposedly based on the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). Ti Tiriti has been subject to various interpretations, and has been used to call for the equality of Māori ideas and culture with all other ideas and cultures in the schools. Although Māori constitute only about 17% of New Zealand’s population, they claim this hegemony because they’re the descendants of indigenous Polynesians who colonized the island, and also because they interpret Te Tiriti as giving them that right. But remember that New Zealand is now a multi-ethnic society, with these proportions of groups given in Wikipedia:

As at the 2018 census, the majority of New Zealand’s population is of European descent (70 percent), with the indigenous Māori being the largest minority (16.5 percent), followed by Asians (15.3 percent), and non-Māori Pacific Islanders known collectively as Pasifika (9.0 percent).

Yet, as you’ll see below, Rata is pushing back in this talk, calling for a return from the tribalism (based on “treatyism”) between Māori on one hand and everyone else (83% of the population) on the other. What’s happening in New Zealand is that a Māori-based ideology (Rata calls it “ethnonationalism”—the equivalent of CRT in America—is demanding not just education equity, but educational equality. That is, striving for instructional equity would occupy a far smaller proportion of academic instruction than would equality.  (Of course I favor educational equality insofar as it means that all students should be given the same opportunities and treated the same. Rather, by “equality” above I mean that half of the curriculum should be devoted to studies of Māori culture, language and ways of knowing.)

Rata asserts that this ideology controls language, the media, and education in New Zealand, and she’s not far wrong. Her discussion of education starts at 15:49 in the talk.

What I’m concerned with, as was Rata in the letter she co-signed yesterday, is summarized in her quote:  “Our education system is indoctrinating children into re-tribalism.”  I will let you be the judge of that by perusing the official government “preschool curriculum” below. Her two reforms for education itself are these. First, “remove the treaty and its principles from all education” (remember, it’s the treaty which makes activists demand to make Mātauranga Māori—Māori “ways of knowing”—coequal to science in the classroom). And you’ll see how the Treaty is used on p. 3 of the preschool curriculum below. Second, Rata asks the country to “rebuild the education system to teach academic subjects—the source of the “partially loyal individual”—rather than ideological dogma.

Below, which you can access by clicking on the screenshot (the pdf is here), is the newest (2017) version of New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, required to be taught in all public pre-schools. Look through it yourself (don’t read it unless you want to wade through 70+ pages of palaver), and see if you detect what I do: an insidious attempt to take over education via the tribalism Rata mentions about above.

The title page itself, almost entirely in Māori, is echoed throughout the document. Note that already on page 3 they invoke the Treaty as justifying the extreme intrusion of ethnicity into the curriculum. They say it’s a curriculum for “all children,” but it’s really a curriculum for the Māori—certainly not for the equally numerous Asians, whose culture and language don’t permeate this document.  (Try finding some Chinese or Hindi words in there!) Now this document does contain, as did the higher-level curriculum I discussed yesterday, some good goals.  But just skim through the pages and see the pervasiveness of the treaty-based ideology.

You’ll be the judge; I haven’t the spoons for any kind of detailed analysis. You won’t be able to understand a lot of this document unless you already speak Māori, or have a dictionary in hand. Remember, look at the cover and recall that English is by far the language most widely spoken in New Zealand.

As always, I’m not at all opposed to making New Zealand students learn about Māori history and culture: they bloody well should! But ethnicity-based teaching cannot be allowed to dominate all aspects of schooling to the point that New Zealand students begin falling behind comparable countries in academic achievement. And that’s already happening. And the government doesn’t seem to mind. Many Kiwis, as David Lillis mentioned in the comments yesterday, are self-censoring on this issue because they fear for their reputations and livelihoods.

The NYT’s fashion director decries cultural appropriation

February 15, 2023 • 10:15 am

Vanessa Friedman is the fashion director and chief fashion critic of the New York Times, and she also will answer your “burning style questions” at openthread@nytimes.com

In today’s paper, she answers a question about whether it’s bad to culturally appropriate clothing, with a special focus on Asian clothing. All I can say is that I’m in trouble if that appropriation is bad, because when I’m in India, and sometimes in the U.S., I wear Indian clothing. In India it’s simply far more comfortable than “Western” clothing like heavy blue jeans, and it’s also a lot easier to get light cotton kurtas (shirts) and drawstring pants washed by the local dhobi (washer); they are cheap to clean and they dry fast. And I like the look of kurtas, too, and have several silk ones—including some given to me by Indian friends.

I have never been called out or criticized for wearing Indian clothes. Indeed, in India I think the locals appreciate my “appropriation.”

That said, I’m clearly DOING IT RONG, at least according to Vanessa Friedman, because I haven’t deeply educated myself on the clothes. I wear them because I like them and they’re comfortable. (I also have two New Zealand All Blacks rugby shirts in case a Kiwi wants to go after me.)

But I think Vanessa is deeply misguided, and sets herself up as a Pecksniffian arbiter of what’s proper.

Let me say first that yes, in some circumstances I wouldn’t wear clothes from other cultures. I wouldn’t dress up as a Mexican bandit at Halloween (though it shouldn’t be banned), nor as a Japanese samurai. This is mainly because there is no circumstance in which that would be necessary. The only time when I think it would be actually offensive to wear clothes of another culture is when you’re doing it to mock other cultures.  Dressing up as a samurai would be deeply weird, and hardly “appropriate” in any circumstance, but it’s not a mockery of Japanese culture. And I have no problem with Western women wearing Indian clothes like saris—which I consider the world’s most beautiful women’s apparel—or the two-piece salwar kameez. It’s nearly always done out of respect and admiration for the garment, so why is that wrong?

According to Pecksniff Vanessa, it’s wrong unless you wear it exactly as it’s meant to be worn (hard with a sari) and if you have educated yourself on the “specific meaning” of the item.

Click the headline to read her misguided advice, and I see the article is archived here as well:

Here’s the question from an Inquisitive Reader:

I lived in Bangkok for a few years and traveled the region extensively. I love Asian-inspired fashion, but I now feel self-conscious wearing some of my Asian pieces as I am not Asian and don’t want to be disrespectful in any way. What do I do with my ao dai, Chinese jacket, Shanghai Tang items and more? — Mary, La Jolla, Calif.

My answer would be, “You go, Mary”, but Ms. Friedman finds this “problematic”:

The question of cultural appropriation is a highly complicated, fraught issue with no simple answers. You may remember that a few years ago a white high school senior wore a cheongsam to her prom, and it set off a firestorm of criticism in the United States — though in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, many social media users saw it as a cultural victory.

Note that the Chinese weren’t offended: it was Americans (including Chinese-Americans) who wailed. That tells you already that it’s the local Pecksniffs, people looking to be offended, that make people who wear clothes from other cultures feel bad.

And remember when, in 2015, the Met Gala celebrated the exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass,” and though some guests understood the theme, others got their traditions and countries mixed up in a pretty egregious way?

There is a difference between wearing a garment as a homage and sign of cultural appreciation and wearing it as a costume or because you think it looks cute. And when it comes to Asian sartorial tradition, the stakes have only increased since the pandemic began, with its wave of despicable anti-Asian violence.

This can be especially tricky when it comes to fashion, which has long loved to dabble in what used to be termed the “exotic,” often without any regard for point of origin or meaning. See, for example, Gucci’s use of turbans that evoked Sikh dress as a runway accessory in 2019, not to mention the continued widespread use of the generic and derogatory term “Oriental” in reference to style and prints.

“Cute” is deliberately demeaning: people wear foreign clothes because they think they look good. I don’t wear kurtas because I think they’re “cute.”

People do not wear foreign clothes as a deliberate sign of homage or cultural appreciation unless they’re going to a special cultural event. They wear them because they like the way they look. If Ms. Friedman thinks that wearing Asian clothes somehow buys into anti-Asian violence or bigotry, she has no idea what she’s talking about. As for turbans, well, they’ve been worn by women for decades, and don’t especially conjure up Sikhs. But even if they did, so what? Gucci is not making fun of Sikhs, but adopting a garment out of admiration.

As for “Oriental,” well, yes, I wouldn’t use that term, but we’re talking about clothing here, not words.

Further, according to Friedman, you have to think deeply and do some sartorial study before you don your garment. Just to be sure, she asked an Asian American

I asked Jodie Chan, a fashion professional and the producer of the short film “Invisible Seams,” which tells the stories of New York’s Asian garment workers, what she would advise. First, she said, intention and understanding matters, so educate yourself as to the meaning and history of a garment to ensure you are wearing it as it is meant to be worn.

“While clothing is universal, some pieces can carry specific meaning and should be researched and treated as such,” Ms. Chan said in an email. “If you want to wear a kimono/yukata or robe piece suggestive of a kimono, for example, it is very important to consider how you wear it — always the left side over the right side, as the other way is for the deceased in Japanese culture.”

Well, yes, if you want to be accurate, but really, if it’s on the wrong side, are you mocking or making fun of Asians?  Jodie Chan, by the way, is a Vice President of Marketing at Carolina Herrera, which purveys Western clothes, and if you want to see lots of photos of Ms. Chan appropriating Western dress, go here. Apparently she has the right to culturally appropriate clothes (more on that below):

Another expert finds some stuff problematic:

Susie Lau, a fashion editor and influencer better known as Susie Bubble, said that context was also important, noting that if she saw a qipao dress worn as a sort of sexy waitress look with exaggerated cat-eye makeup, “that is immediately problematic.”

But, she added, “I believe culture should be shared, exchanged and disseminated with the most positive of intentions,” and sometimes that is done through clothing.

Does she not know that wearing foreign clothes is almost invariably done with positive intentions? Does she not know how the world works?

I have to say that qipao dresses, form-fitting and often slit way up the side, are intentionally sexy, and what’s the issue with pairing them with “cat-eye makeup”? I don’t know what Lau is talking about with the “sexy waitress look”, but quipao dresses aren’t exactly modest clothing.

Oh, and there’s one more thing that’s problematic:

Finally, consider who made the piece, and thus who is benefiting. Is it an Asian designer or a Western name profiting from another country’s culture?

Can we ditch the idea of “who’s profiting from another country’s culture”? For crying out loud, all over Asia, including Japan, people wear Western clothing, usually made locally, not in America. Japanese salarymen wear suits and ties, many women get their fashion from the West, and blue jeans (Levis), invented in America, are worldwide.  Do Friedman, Chan, and Lau decry the widespread cultural appropriation of Western clothes by Asians: indeed, by people throughout the world? No, of course not, because it’s okay when they do the appropriation.

It cannot be wrong for an American to wear a qipao if it’s not wrong for a Japanese woman to wear blue jeans, or a Japanese businessman a suit.  That’s all ye need to know.

What we have here are cowed Americans worried sick about whether they’re offending people from other cultures, and they’re made to feel that way as a power play by people who are pretending to “protect” their culture. But this is not offensive because in the case of “cultural appropriation,” as with language, intent does matter.  And I’ve never seen a case (except perhaps at Halloween, and I can’t think of an example) where the intent was mocking or malicious.

Every country is involved in cultural appropriation—of food, of dress, of hairstyles, or machinery—and so on. This is, I think, all to the good. But there are those Pecksniffs who want to put a barrier around their culture and check the Purity Passport of every person who wants entry. Frankly, I’m sick to death of those people who, in their fervent desire—indeed, sometimes a vocation—to be offended, call out things that are good or well meant. If you want to see the apogee of the Deliberately Offended, read about “Kimono Wednesdays” at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts a few years back.

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 15, 2023 • 8:15 am

Thank Ceiling Cat, for readers have responded by sending in several batches of new wildlife photos. Today’s is from regular contributor Mark Sturtevant, who loves his arthropods. Here are photos of some, along with two mushroom photos (click all to enlarge); Mark’s notes are indented:

Here are more pictures of mostly local arthropods from two summers ago. The photographs were taken from area parks where I live in eastern Michigan. Many pictures are manual focus stacks to increase depth of focus.

The spiders shown in the first pictures are different species of sac spiders. These are small wandering spiders. The first is the long-legged sac spider (Cheiracanthium sp.), a common year-long resident in houses. They are a welcome sight on our walls during the long winters here, although I have learned in preparing this that their venom can cause necrotic effects in humans:

The second species is the broad-faced sac spider, Trachelas tranquillus. I don’t see these in houses, but they commonly turn up in bushes near the house. Their bite can also result in complications:

The spiders shown in the next pictures are in the nursery web spider family, so-named because females tend to their hatchlings in a web “nursery” on top of plants. The first is pretty much our largest spider, Dolomedes tenebrosus. You can have a gander at the linked picture to learn that these are indeed spiders of impressive size:

The second species is a smaller kind of nursery web spider called Pisaurina mira. It took a lot of experimentation with camera settings to combine flash and ambient light to preserve the glow of sunlight through the leaf:

The next picture shows a handsome male Pike slender jumping spider Marpissa pikei. I can sometimes get them by using a sweep net in tall grasses. These elongate jumping spiders are a delight to work with because unlike most jumping spiders they are willing to sit still for me so long as they can align themselves on a blade of grass:

The grasshopper nymph shown next was also picked up in a sweep net. This is the northern green-striped grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata) that I posed on my straw hat for pictures:

This is a predatory robber fly. I can’t get the ID on this small one, and that will be the case for some of the other pictures below (sorry!):

Next is a rather strange caterpillar that I also have not been able to identify. It looks like an inchworm, but actually caterpillars from different families also have this look.

The cryptically shaped moth shown next is definitely known to me. This is a common looper moth, Autographa precationis, that turned up at a porch light one evening:

The last pictures are of mushrooms (species unknown), and they were taken with the inexpensive Opteka wide-angle macro lens. I always carry that lens around when I’m out with the cameras in case scenes like these turn up. The pictures are assembled from two or more pictures taken at different flash powers and shutter speeds to either expose for the foreground or the background. The different pictures were then blended together thru layer masks. A thing that is rather strange about wide angle macro lenses is that although it does not look like it, the subjects are less than an inch away from the lens:

Spot the mouse!

February 15, 2023 • 7:30 am

Reader Pradeep sent me a drawing of a gazillion felids of several species. But hidden in it is a drawing of a mouse. Can you find the rodent? (Enlarge the photo.) I couldn’t until it was pointed out to me.

Don’t give the location in the comments as it would be a spoiler, but you can say “found it” if you did.

I think this is medium hard, but on the hard side. I’ll post a reveal at noon Chicago time.