Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has begun to burn the houses of thousands of urban poor people and drive them into the already-starving countryside. One of Africa’s rare food exporters has been turned into something resembling a subtropical North Korea. I was in Zimbabwe shortly before the current troubles began and fell in love with it. Even …
Am I in the wrong trade?
Jonathan Hanson of Alpha Environmentalist and I have a long history of trying to one- up each other with the worst and always hilarious excesses of postmodern academic– i. e., art school– “art”. This is not actually the worst, but will do as a contender. “In May, at the annual spring auction at Christie’s in …
Fashion Week in Almaty
Sometimes it is very hard to convey the realities of Central Asia. People can just about get the idea of what remote parts of Mongolia are like– they like the idea of “primitive”. But what about Almaty? It is a huge modern city with tree- lined boulevards and excellent restaurants and cyber- cafes, situated in …
Parrot Reality Check
Parrot trainer, falconer, and writer Rebecca O’Connor of Operation Desert Dove gently rebukes me for the “crap” implied in the bbc article below: “Please please remind all to refrain from calling what parrots do language. They are excellent labelers, excelling at using learned noises at appropriate moments. They cannot however, understand the abstract concepts involved …
Bird Brains?
I have always been fairly unimpessed with the “linguistic” exploits of our closest genetic relatives, the great apes– the communications chasm seems wider than that between us and our dogs, despite their having been trained to manipulate some symbols. Which is why recent developments in bird speech and cognition are so mind-boggling, especially as the …
Yup!
A good line from contrarian blogger- evolutionist- film critic Steve Sailer: “One conservative element I like about “Lord of the Rings” is Tolkien’s arch-Tory / proto-hippie conservationism. Here in the U.S., conservatives tend to assume that the essence of conservatism is to bulldoze a forest and build a Costco. Tolkien would have shuddered.”
Panther Purity
A cougar, probably of the so- called “Florida panther” race, was hit and killed by a car in northern Florida, far from the usual southern haunts of the subspecies. A story in the St Augustine Record by Peter Guinta– it requires registration so I’ll just quote– records the good news that the cat’s range is …
Decline and Fall
I have a feeling that the decline and fall of Britain may end up a constant theme here. This just in from Jonathan Hanson– emphasis mine: “Official guidelines issued in May by Britain’s Joint Council on Qualifications, directed to agencies that administer high school and junior high standardized tests, call for students to receive extra …
First post…
First mistake! The url for the cave bear DNA is http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8682314
At Last!
After long planning and infinite patience from web designer Matt Mullenix, my website and blog are up and running. Please look around and, I hope, enjoy. Eventually– like perhaps later this week– I will post longer and even coherent posts, but it has been a long weekend. For now, let me give you a few …