Open thread 9/26/22
Now, this is devotion. It’s a devotion I don’t quite understand, but it’s devotion nevertheless:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Now, this is devotion. It’s a devotion I don’t quite understand, but it’s devotion nevertheless:
I’m feather phobic, so I would never adopt a bird. It’s OK seeing them on screen or in a picture. They are pretty,just so long as idon’t have to touch their feathers.
The purpose of birds is to amuse cats.
If you look on Youtube there are lots of videos of people who have pets–many of them more exotic ones like like pigs, monkeys, etc.–who are kissing these pets on the mouth, rearranging their lives around them, dressing them up in costumes, very likely spending thousands of dollars per year on many of them.
I wonder, is this intense devotion to pets more intense than in previous times–perhaps a substitution for not having kids, or a lot of them?
Or, are we just more aware of it because of things like Youtube, where people can showcase this love and devotion, not to say obsession with their pets?
Second question, what about all of the diseases which can be spread by close contact between animals and humans and vice versa?
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/25/remembering-hate-speech/
VDH gets it.
This is memorable, if for nothing else, for the evisceration of Joe Biden. Whoa. https://the-pipeline.org/the-column-not-worth-the-bones-of-a-single-grenadier/
“Biden and his noxious family have long used the Ukraine—the most corrupt country in Europe—as their personal piggybank and money laundromat, and in the recent past he has openly boasted about his ability to legally blackmail Ukrainian officials into doing his bidding. His word as a Biden!
But then, why wouldn’t he? As a bloviating senator of nearly half a century, Biden is thoroughly accustomed to never being held responsible for a single thing he says. He’s dined out on the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident for 50 years, blithely accusing the other driver of being drunk, which he wasn’t, among the many, many other malicious lies he’s told. He casually slandered good men like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas and never lost a moment of sleep over his scurrilous remarks. Biden is emblematic of our parlous politics, the worm in the rotten apple who has finally made his journey from the calyx to the pedicel and emerged into the sunlight, a doddering old fool, vacant-eyed (except when animated by hatred), slack-jawed, wandering aimlessly in search of another hand to shake or another pocket to pick, which as a lifelong politician is all he knows how to do.”
It continues.
“Has the FBI gone too far? For the Left, if the enemy is the right, it cannot go far enough.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/did_the_fbi_finally_go_too_far.html
I’ve been reading a series of novels, mostly about the Navy, by an author who obviously likes parrots. Two of them feature parrots. He has some other books so it will be interesting to see if they include parrots, as well. Is that bird in the video a cockatoo? It looks like it. I did not know they were so long lived.
Is this a harbinger of the next pandemic- Parrotpox?
If you want to see devotion to a bird, look to falconers. Just to get a permit takes a lot of study and often an apprenticeship. I’ve loved the idea of having a hawk or falcon, but after spending time with some falconers I realized there was no way I had the time for it.
I came up with a simple metric to see if ANY politician is corrupt. Is there a large jump in their personal wealth or the personal wealth of their family that can’t be explained by their jobs? Extend this five years past their terms. Using this, there are A LOT of corrupt politicians. It’s always fun to ask an Obama fan how he can afford a mansion on Martha’s Vineyard and another in Hawaii. Both on a shore. So much for believing in the seas rising. Also, I found out a year ago that the book deals politicians get are unlike other author deals in that if the book doesn’t sell they get to keep their advance. Sorry for the long post.
Alan Colbo– There already is a disease spread by parrots and other birds belonging to the Psittacidae family called psittacosis. It is caused by a bacterium called Chlamydia psittaci. The disease is sometimes called ornithosis when it occurs in birds that are not classified as psittacines– like pigeons, gulls, ducks, and hens. There actually was a psittacosis pandemic in 1929 and 1930, caused by infected macaws, budgerigars, and parrots shipped in crowded containers from South America. There were about 800 cases of psittacosis in humans worldwide, and about 15% of those infected died. Before the United States suspended its biological weapons research program, Chlamydia psittaci was one of the pathogens considered for weaponization.
Fortunately for humans, psittacosis can be treated with oral doxycycline or chloramphenicol. People can contract psittacosis not only by mouth-to-beak contact with an infected bird but also by breathing dust from the dried droppings of infected birds. There are a few cases reported of human-to-human transmission of psittacosis, but those are a lot less common than human-to-human transmission of monkeypox!
Alan & PA+Cat: There’s also Bird Lover’s Pneumonia. My wife had a parakeet for a while, and every year, she would come down with Bird Lover’s Pneumonia.
JFM– If you like falcons, you might enjoy this short video about the falconry program at the Air Force Academy– it does show that the cadets have to put a lot of time and effort into working with the birds– but the falcons certainly are magnificent creatures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ADcsN63K0&ab_channel=USAFAWebGuy
Liz Cheney says she will leave the GOP if Trump is the nominee in 2024.
I find this fascinating. Try to imagine the mindset that produces this statement.
1. She already left.
2. Is there even one Republican voter anywhere in America who still cares what she does?
3. She just got absolutely wrecked, as the incumbent, in a primary in a congressional district (state) that is as reliably Republican as any in the country. As bad as she got waxed, the results were skewed in her favor by large numbers of Democrats voting for her. The numbers understate how bad she lost.
4. Btw — did she set a record? I never heard if her margin was the worst in history for an incumbent in a party primary.
5. How big does the hole need to be to get a sense that further digging isn’t productive?
6. Apparently, she thinks her opinion matters. Why? I don’t think this is normal. Politicians are admittedly not normal, healthy people. But even a politician has to be able to figure out that she should probably stay out of the spotlight for a while.
7. Who is giving her advice? Does she not have anyone in her circle who can get her the help she needs? Don’t they care about her? Even her dad?
we just got a puppy.
does that count?
she’s darn cute…typing with 1 hand because she’s in my lap.
stan:
Cheney is tremendously admired by some liberal women I know. Tremendously.
That doesn’t mean they’d ever vote for her over a Democrat, nor does it mean she has a political future. But she does have an admiring following, and they would admire her even more if she left the terrible terrible GOP.
The numbers understate how bad she lost.
The number who participate in the Democratic primary for U.S. House in Wyoming bounces around a set point of about 19,000. This year it was just north of 7,000. Cheney won 49,000 votes, so it’s a reasonable wager about 1/4 of those were Democrats crossing over. She was rejected by > 3/4 of Wyoming’s Republican electorate.
Given her lack of any history of Wyoming residency, it’s sort of puzzling that Wyoming Republicans ever accepted her in the first place. Greater Washington is her home town. Unlike other politicians from around Washington, she and her husband have no personal history of ever having been part of mundane Washington – i.e. that part of the community who earn a living at the same sorts of trades people do anywhere in the country. Mundane Washington encompasses the vast majority of the population.
Cheney is tremendously admired by some liberal women I know.
She’s managed to stay married for > 25 years and has five kids. Can’t take that away from her. That’s it, however.
Apparently, she thinks her opinion matters.
Not necessarily. May have been an off the cuff response to a question she was asked.
NeverTrumpers do reveal, in a vague sort of way, the things that they value. And it isn’t what they claimed to have valued.
Julie Kelly has signalled early in this September 22nd interview that Trump will be indicted by the DOJ, likely before the election on something like obstruction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2qxsNcexzo
One time R Congressman from Virginia, who used to work for the NSA after the Air Force — one Denver Riggleman —- is interviewed at length on “60 Minutes Overtime” about working for the Pelosi’s Committee. He gives us a roadmap to where it leads, using Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows texts and phone data: you’ve heard it implied many times. But words like “idiotic” and “coup” or “criminal” or “attempted coup” comes easily out of his mouth.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/denver-riggleman-white-house-switchboard-capitol-rioter-january-6-60-minutes-2022-09-23/
He also makes a sweeping claim that there was no 2020 election fraud. Perhaps it is a CBS News edit, but this jump from “Trump coup” to defending that clustermuck “election” is hideously jarring. No doubt he could fill it out – but we do not hear it.
Riggleman was recommended to staff Pelosi’s answer to the McCarthy Committee by none other than Liz Chaney.
the guy who said storm the capitol, oh sure,
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1574486424207777792
Liz Cheney’s future is very, very secure. Among other things, she is the co-heiress to her parents’ fortune and her dad has a bad ticker.
Just watched live footage of the DART NASA mission smashing a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos to test our ability to deflect detritus we may discover on a path towards Earth.
Really incredible! The images were surprisingly detailed for that distance and rate of speed. One could easily make out boulders on Dimporphos and Didymos (the larger asteroid it orbits).
Well done, NASA!
but i don’t get the point of the mission, a high speed trajectory of a small object won’t do very much,
miguel cervantes,
You don’t need to do much if you get it when it’s far enough away. A baseball can be a degree off when it leaves the pitcher’s hand and still hit the strike zone. But if it’s a degree off when the centerfielder tries to throw a runner out at home it it could be off by many yards.
However, I think the purpose is to test the theory, the targeting software, etc. If it was a larger and/or closer asteroid that was a valid threat they might put nuclear bombs on it and slam into the asteroid to increase the force. Or detonate bomb(s) near the asteroid to divert its path with shock waves. Or land a vehicle on it and fire rockets to change its orbital path. There are even plans that involve unfurling a reflective tarp on the sun facing side increasing its surface temperature, or using solar radiation to alter the orbit.
The good news is there are several, seemingly viable methods that can push something enough off orbit to miss the Earth if done far enough away (from centerfield rather than the pitcher’s mound). This is why detection of near earth objects is so important. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs is thought to have only been about 10 miles wide! It doesn’t take anything too large to do immense harm. F=MA. With an A of 20 miles per second it doesn’t take too much Mass to equal a large F. And, when millions of miles from Earth that’s like finding a needle in a haystack. The diameter of Pluto is about 1,500 miles and it is barely visible with our best optical telescopes. 10 miles is tiny.
Dimorphos, the object we just hit, is about 1/10th of a mile and about 7 million miles away, so it’s nice to prove out hitting something that tiny at that distance.
I stumbled onto the Why Files youtube channel about a month ago and have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it. I think a lot of the readers here will also like it:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheWhyFiles
A.J. is the presenter and he does shallow and deep dives into weird events; odd history, strange coincidences, UFOs (paging snow on pine), conspiracy theories… I enjoy his presentation style so much that I even watch his coverage of stories I am familiar with. He generally tries to get to the truth of the matter. For example his Nostradamus episode is very fair. And he has an animated goldfish, Hecklefish, as foil and comic relief.
If you’re looking for something new to watch give his channel a look.
When we were overseas and in the tropics, the native parrots would make a racket coming off the roost in the morning, and returning to their trees at night. I always looked forward to it. My wife kept a couple of parakeets while we were there, and they were pretty tame – she’d let them fly around the house and perch on her, every so often. I was worried about the poop but it didn’t turn out to be much of a problem.
Before the Internet we got all our news from carrier pigeons.
It’s only fun until Grumpy tears somebody’s face off.
Or someone gets parrot pox.
Aggie,
I’ve always wanted to have a pet/feral owl. An owl that roosts (do owls roost?) on my property, but has free range to do whatever it is owls do when they are free. I need to see if that’s even feasible. Thought about it for years, but I’ve never acted on it.
I also think falconry would be cool, but as several have written, it would be a big commitment. I worked with a guy who used to compete in falconry. Used to. I also worked with a guy who bred and raced carrier pigeons. I accompanied him on a training exercise. It was very interesting. I don’t think that hobby requires as much time or money as falconry, but it requires either a spouse who is very accomodating or a good divorce attorney. 😉
After following more of the evolution debate, I’m returning to my hippie animistic belief: “Everything is conscious.”*
Including cockatoos.
_____________________________
* I mention evolution because as I read evolution, mere random chance and whatever survival of the fittest means, just won’t get us viable new species given the limited amount of time available.
Therefore it seems to me that there is some creative intelligent force guiding the process.
Call it God; call it consciousness.
_____________________________
We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other.
— Thaddeus Golas, “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment” (1972)
https://0ducks.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/the-lazy-mans-guide-to-enlightenment-by-thaddeus-golas.pdf
I’m rewatching the Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle” based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name.
It holds up and then some.
The writers went beyond Dick’s vision, because they were writing a multi-season TV series, so they had to add material.
But they did so carefully and tastefully.
Then they managed to convince this viewer of an entirely believable alternate future in which most Americans in eastern or western states go along with Nazi and Japanese totalitarian style governments.
Totally unrealistic, I know.
Hey! Wait a minute….
@ huxley > sometimes, when you get philosophical like this, I miss Zaphod and his contrarianism.
Not always correct, but always entertaining.
Rufus T. Firefly–
I once thought the idea of having an owl as a pet might be nice but, then, I saw a picture of an owl roosting in a barn, and the trail of white excrement from the owl’s perch trailing all the way down a support beam.
Your liberal women love Liz Cheney for hating Trump just as deeply and comprehensively as they hate him. Admiring someone for the intensity of their shared hatred isn’t the same as valuing their opinion.
I don’t value any opinion by George Stephanopoulos. He recently said Trump would beat Biden in 2024. I agree with him. But that doesn’t mean his opinion is valued. If Liz says something, anything that liberal women disagree with, the fact of her having said it will not be valued by them in the slightest.
There aren’t that many people whose opinion I value. They are people I have come to respect for their demonstrated intellect and values. Thus, I will consider seriously their reasons should they offer an opinion that differs from mine.
Liz Cheney’s future is very, very secure. Among other things, she is the co-heiress to her parents’ fortune and her dad has a bad ticker.
Her husband is a BigLaw partner in a firm with a ‘government relations’ practice. They are already wealthy rent-extractors. They’ve been using a pricy vacation property in Wilson, Wyoming as a voting address. (They actually live in NoVa).
Her father had his first heart attack at age 37. He’s had excellent medical care and improvements in cardiology have kept one step ahead of his heart’s deterioration. A generic woman her mother’s age has a life expectancy of about nine years.
The elder Cheneys were not known to be wealthy (above and beyond their federal pension rights and their home equity) until his employment by Halliburton. (I seem to recall he received $20 million in deferred compensation on his departure). He was 59 when he left Halliburton. His son-in-law is now 58.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the elder Cheneys hadn’t consulted an actuary and an estate planner and elected to distribute some assets to their daughters already.
Art Deco,
It’s almost certain the daughters have already gotten a very nice trickle down from mom and dad and they almost certainly share some very nice assets in family trusts to skirt tax and inheritance law. And, as you write, her husband earns a comfortable living as a partner in a law practice trading on his wife’s name. Even without the income from the contract she will soon sign with MSNBC, ABC or NBC, Liz will be just fine.