Abandoned: Plymouth and Baby.

The Abandoned Plymouth:
When I last spoke I had just embarrassed a future King of Reptiles after a trip to the ‘glades. On that same trip two very interesting events occurred. One really spooky and one amazing. Amazing first. About a half mile down one of the ditch roads we found an abandoned early 50’s Plymouth sedan. Rusted body, dented fenders, some broken glass and flat tires. The road was impassable to cars when we walked it so who knows when the sedan got dumped there. Now you need to understand something about Fred. He was a major intellect and could logically and with quiet assertiveness talk about almost everything. He was, however, despite owning a VW van, not very mechanically inclined.
I raised the hood of the car and noticed that the battery was still there. We talked for a minute about movies where some abandoned car or plane or boat gets going and gets the good guys out of trouble. I told them I would take a crack at starting the thing. Fred and the others laughed and said un-printable (here) things about my ancestry. I pulled off a few incidental wires, bared the ends, jumped the coil and the solenoid (on that car it is on the firewall) and choked it. It cranked and started with a gush of blue-black smoke and a loud noise, reminiscent of a rusted out or missing muffler. After a few manly “rum rum rum’s” I pulled off the coil wire and took a bow. Applause.

The Abandoned Baby:
That’s when we heard the baby crying. Totally unnerved all of us. A wailing cry of a baby in real trouble. We looked around and tried to find the kid, but although we could hear it perfectly and close by, we couldn’t find it. Then somebody shouted “Here it is. You won’t believe this!!!” We all went to see the baby. No baby in sight. But, a smallish leopard frog caught by a smallish water snake. The frog was caught by one hind leg and swallowed to the crotch. The other leg blocked the snake and it couldn’t be swallowed further. The frog was crying like a baby. Boy were we relieved. I have never heard or heard of another frog making sounds like that since. Just plain spooky. To my shame, I can’t remember if we let the frog go. We should have probably, but I just don’t know. Sign of the times I guess.
Image: : http://www.ctcautoranch.com/Cars/Car%20Sub-Pages/Cars%20Mopar.html

The Tale of the Dreaded Orange Krait.

The indigo snake (Drymarchon corais) hunt, or, why do you find an orange krait (Bungaris aurantiacus taeniatus) in the everglades? Good question to pose to the future Conservator of Reptiles for a major zoo.
Fred had to collect some snakes for the zoology lab and I had time to kill so we went together in his old VW van. (Recall the Ani incident). We got down past Homestead and on the left side of US 1 was a vast area of hammocks and a web of old drainage ditches. These ditches were dug in the 20s as part of a development scheme, and were never completed (economy collapsed). Each ditch had a road next to it (the contents of the ditch) and these roads were overgrown with vegetation, including an invasive called Australian pine (Casuarina equisetifolia). Great habitat for various snake species. The hammocks were easy to reach from these roads and were also great habitat for snakes. They were also home to the native vanilla orchid (Vanilla barbellata) and I wanted one of those. We rounded out the group with 2 other grad students, names forgotten long ago.
We parked and walked half a mile or so on one of the roads, picking up a few water snakes along the way. Then we headed out into the wet marsh to get to the nearest hammock. There we spotted a BIG BLACK snake and jumped on it. What a prize. The four of us all held it and it must have been 8 feet long or longer. A prize Indigo by any measure. Instead of keeping it, though, we fondled it for awhile and then released it. The right thing to do and made us all feel like real conservationists.
On the way out we passed a pile of crap dumped by one of the many orange grove owners in Homestead that included several broke crates.
When we got back to campus, we were telling the soon-to-be-curator about the trip and I casually mentioned that we also saw an “orange crate” and he went ballistic. “Must have escaped from the Serpentarium! Let’s go back now and catch it!” I said “Great. Let’s go. There were also some grapefruit crates and one lime crate as well.” Got him!! Embarrassed by and before mere grad students. This is the SOB that fed my corn snake to a king snake by “accident” the week before. Ha. The best part? I made up the snake and name. There is no “orange krait”. Even better.

Image: http://www.snakeeducation.com/Snake%20Photos%20for%20all.htm

Those we love to hate

These words are often used to demean or otherwise attack someone: “He is probably a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” And that is bad? Conservatives often rail about the constitution and how liberals are undermining the very principles our founders enshrined in it. Principles such as freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion (interestingly, no sane person wanting to be a politician or judge would ever admit to being an atheist, clearly a protected right under the constitution). The American Civil Liberties Union takes on causes that are clearly constitutional issues that affect the rights of all citizens. The cases often involve the bottom feeders of society or issues that are repugnant to most of us, but the constitutional issues are always for all of us. The next time you see the ACLU representing someone you find disgusting, or defending a practice you find repulsive, remember that the issue is not the person or practice, but the constitutional rights involved.
I wrote an essay about the Supreme Court overturning a law that limited the rights of people involved in the “crush” trade and in dog fighting. The law was a bad law. Overbroad. It is being replaced as you read this by a new law that is narrower and targets the offending trades. By overturning the existing law, the Court protected the rights of hunters, fishermen and many others to make, own and watch videos about these things. That’s right. These were illegal under the old law, although not challenged. Now we will have a law that does what the original was supposed to do.
This was a free speech issue, and the Court got it right. Put another way, here is what law professor Jeffery Rosen said on the Diane Rhem show this week: “The First Amendment is always for people we hate.”
Quotation: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2010/04/22/126199842/why-did-npr-join-a-suit-to-overturn-the-law-banning-animal-cruelty-images-?sc=nl&cc=omb--20100423
Image: 43.photobucket.com/.../0_24_aclu_081105_1.jpg

GOOD NEWS!!!!!

There must be some good news, she said. Well, there is. This is the most gorgeous spring in a long time. A riot of blooming things: trees, shrubs, bulbs, perennials and the orchids are in bloom or in spike. The weather is near perfect. The world is at peace. Well, so there may be a few issues unresolved but on balance this is a glorious spring. We are looking forward to three graduations: TU, TCC and ISU. Graduation is always a good news time for us academic types. It means closure and you get to see the joy of families as their kids complete one dream and start on another. Then there is the trip to Las Vegas followed by a visit to Portugal (grilled sardines and Vinho Verde here we come), then tear out the bathroom. Then a new term and a bunch of new students (woody) and a bunch of new faculty (sal) and the fun starts all over again.
Let’s not overlook the economy either. Yes, the rebound is slow, but it is there. Signs of recovery everywhere (if you are still unemployed this may be a hard sell). Inflation is practically nonexistent, our industries are slowly but surely increasing output, and we are buying again. General Motors paid 8 billion back to the feds 5 years early for god’s sake. If that isn’t good news I don’t know what is.
Good news? Piles of it. Make your own list and enjoy the summer.
Credit: Thanks Sal
Image: www.masternewmedia.org/news/images/playschool

Remembering the Future

A while ago I wrote an essay about something and mentioned “remembering the future” somewhere. As ‘Woody 7.0” gets close thoughts of a truncated future begin to impinge on consciousness. If you listen to news at all, you will remember hearing phrases that end obituaries: Dead at 83; dead at 76; dead at 91 etc. Well, guess what? The time between 7.0 and 8.3 is only 13 years. Remember how long it seemed to take to get to your 13th birthday? Not bloody long. We are talking 13 summers folks. 13 Decembers, 13 Easters. 13 Chanukahs.
Time is running out. Well, it always was running out, wasn’t it? But it didn’t seem like it when you were 22. There is a neat way to stretch the future a little: Remember it. How exactly do you do that? Fairly easy actually. All you have to do is conjure a scenario of the future, say a trip to Portugal, fill in the details from any source available, and then remember it. After all, when you remember a trip that you have already taken, all you really have are brain images to rely on, right? Well, when you remember the future you have already experienced in your mind, all you really have are brain images. So what’s the difference? Not much.
In this increasingly virtual world, a lot of what we “experience” will be virtual, won’t it? One day I was wandering around in the “Eiffel Tower” in Las Vegas and heard a young woman actually say “Honey, now that we have seen the Eiffel Tower we don’t have to go to Paris”, and she was serious. That is just one step away from imaging the Tower and then remembering the image. You won’t have to go to Paris either. You think this is a load of old cods wallop? Some day when “Virtual Tourism” is a reality, and “You can travel to the ancient pyramids of Egypt from your easy chair” remember you heard it from me first. Why wait? Maybe you can fire up your Wii and bowl your way around Europe.

Image: www.edupics.com/hour-glass-t13661.jpg

Alvin and Pogo Got it RIght

“Unlike most past views of tomorrow, which look hopelessly obsolete (’nothing dates like the future’), the premise of Future Shock can only get stronger since not only progress itself, but the derivative of it, its increasing rate of change, exacerbates the core phenomenon.” (1)
The core phenomenon is the RATE OF CHANGE, which for the last few centuries at lease has been increasing. I got to thinking about Future Shock (2) this morning during a muse about remembering the future (another post coming soon) and in one of those moments of clarity realized that Toffler, 39 years ago, got it so very right. Toffler was talking about the accelerating rate of change of technology and the “progress” being experienced by many societies in the world.

“The premise of Future Shock was that the pace of human progress had achieved a level which would create a pathological reaction, a metaphorical motion sickness caused by the fact that nothing seemed permanent.” (1)

As I recall he did not speculate about the very substance of the earth and climate and the way change would be manifested in the natural world. But that is the reality. THAT climate is changing is nothing new or particularly scary. What is new and scary is the RATE of change that is leading to the compounding of problems. For example: The atmosphere warms and melts snow and ice exposing more land surface which adds warmth to the atmosphere. Positive feedback in which the RATE of change accelerates with each cycle. I ask my students to reflect on the causes of the current climate crisis and after some thought they get it right: Us.
And what about the technology? Well, just consider the penetration of Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, iPhones, texting and the rest. Think push button phones quickly replaced the dial? Ha. Think the weather where you live is a bit strange? Double Ha! You ain’t seen nothing yet.

1. http://smashingtelly.com/2009/05/01/alvin-tofflers-future-shock-presented-by-orson-welles/
2. http://www.amazon.com/Alvin-Toffler/e/B000AP5YBK/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1271936114&sr=1-2-ent
Image: http://www.postkiwi.com/images/2005/12/pogo-we-have-met-the-enemy.jpg

The Supreme Court Crushed Laws Banning Nasty Videos:Warning! Graphic Image Below.

Just when you think “It can’t get any more depraved than that”, it does. The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the law making videos of dog fighting illegal is unconstitutional and that these videos are a protected form of “free speech”. The 8 to 1 ruling addressed the “overbroad” language of the law and to their credit suggested that a new, more focused law might pass First Amendment muster.
Included in the discussion were “Crush Videos”. Huh? Now I know that most of you sophisticates will know about these, but it took me by surprise. A sexual fetish where people get their rocks off watching animals of all kinds getting crushed to death. How sick it that? Pretty sick you say? I agree. There are fetishes that include feces, urine, vomit, spit and menstrual flow. There are fetishes that involve eating anything you can imagine. Who cares if someone likes to be pissed on or eat their own hair? What they do in private is their business.
But crushing a live kitten, or a puppy or snake or any other living thing so someone can watch and, well, you know, is way over the top as far as I can see. I have a generally low opinion of the human species when it comes to degrading behavior and have said in the past that I believe that if someone can think something up, someone has probably already done it. (And yes, there are lots of good folks doing good works too, so don’t get up my nose on that one.) Fortunately the depraved are a relative small sub-set of people. But they are out there and they are your neighbors.
Missing a kitten lately? Contacted your congressman about dogfighting videos and crush videos lately? If not, now is the time to write a letter or email. This is really nasty business.

Image: (There is speculation in the blogs that these images are either photoshopped or used a dead kitten. Does it really make a difference? )graphics2.snopes.com/.../graphics/crush06.jpg

Morons in Florida? Heaven Forbid.

Newt Gingrich:
NEW ORLEANS -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday that he thinks Republicans will repeal “virtually everything” the Democrats have done in the 111th Congress.
So the party of “NO” is also the party of “REPEAL”. I am not ready to give up yet, but I am getting close. Look at the latest from Florida: A bill that would remove the 125 year ban on state money being used to support religious organizations. I thought the big constitution had something to say about the separation of church and state. Am I wrong? Could there be a good reason? Can you imagine the State of Florida funding an Islamic school where the kids study the Qur’an, the girls (if girls are allowed to be there in the first place) have to wear scarves or veils or full body cover and everybody learns Arabic?
I can’t either, and then the next step is a lawsuit asking simply: “If you can fund a Christian school and a Jewish school why not an Islamic school? “ Not so easy, huh? And what about a Catholic school where pedophile priests are in charge? Why not? Indeed.
The moron Republican legislators in Florida are totally out of control and it looks like Charlie is the last hope for putting the brakes on. How’s that for irony?
I may be closer to giving up than I thought.

Image: filipinofreethinkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2

The Power of Prayer?

Photo: Adolf Ott, commander of death squads in the Einsatzgruppen (see link below for more on this) that executed (murdered) tens of thousands of Jews and gypsies for the Third Reich. Most of them were probably praying when they died. Ott died too. Eventually. His death sentence was commuted to life in prision and he was released, a free man, in 1958.

Doesn’t anybody besides me get tired of all the unanswered prayers in the world? The latest is the miners deaths in West (By God) Virginia. I don’t know how they “knew” that 4 were possibly still alive, but thousands of hours of prayer were poured out to see that the 4 got found and rescued. They were found. Dead. What happened to the prayer? One Pope or another has been praying for peace for hundreds of years and guess what? No peace. People pray that their children come back from Iraq and Afghanistan alive, but not all do. People pray for gazillions of things that never happen.
And, people pray for recovery AFTER disaster. Wouldn’t it be easier for a god to simply prevent the disaster? Look at Haiti. Two hundred thousand dead, mostly innocent of major transgression so the “god punished them” line won’t work. How about the “god wanted them with him” line? Dying in your sleep seems better to me than being crushed or dehydrated to death in a collapsed building. Couldn’t god have “taken” the trapped and crushed faster?
What is the conclusion? A loving god? I don’t think so. A caring god? I don’t think so. An absent god? Makes more sense than the first two. No god at all? Makes more sense than all the rest.
It seems to me that folks pray for bad things not to happen and then pray for deliverance when they do. They pray for good things to happen too, but when they don’t happen? You guessed it: god’s will.
When somebody gets really hurt, dangerously near death kind of hurt it’s “thank god they didn’t die”. Now pray for recovery. If recovery occurs “thank god for the recovery.” If recovery doesn’t happen it’s “gods will”. Huh? If the dude was going to die, why not quick and easy in the first place? If they are going to recover, why the near death in the first place? “God is testing us” or “god works in mysterious ways” or “we can’t know the mind of god” and other such nonsense.
Pray all you like, and if you believe in the power of prayer you may actually feel better about the world. Personally, I don’t think anyone answers the call at the other end of the line.

Einsatzgruppen link: WARNING!! GRAPHIC PHOTOS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF MURDER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

Smooth-billed Ani and perverts.

The Story:

In 1964 or so, my colleague Fred spotted a nesting colony of a recent arrival to the area called the Smooth-billed Ani. A small flock was building a nest in a large date palm on Ponce De Leon Blvd. near the University of Miami. Fred was the preparator for the Zoology department and a good field man. Tireless, long legs and a great attitude.

Anyway, we took his old VW van and parked near the palm tree. Within half an hour we documented several Anis and were watching behavior when a Coral Gables police cruiser glided up behind us, parked, and out walked a large policeman. Slowly and carefully he approached us. (We were dressed in field clothes - grubby- and looked rough.) He wanted to know who we were (please produce ID) and what we were doing. It took him some time to wrap around the idea that we were watching a very unusual bird colony. He finally got to the binoculars and agreed the he had never seen this kind of bird.

The real story:

Across South Dixie Highway was an apartment building. Living there was a very observant woman that reported two perverts with binoculars looking into her apartment (the line of sight was behind and slightly to the right of the palm tree.) Now this building was quite far away, and how she spotted us in the van is a mystery , but she did. Coral Gable's finest cleared us completely and advised that the next time we were birdwatching in the neighborhood, we let them know.

All in a days work for a birdwatcher.

Fred and I had other capers that may surface in later essays.

Photo: - www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/PHOTO/LARGE/bna_B...