Oh so sweet

Sweet vindication:

• The Cove won Best Documentary at the Oscars!
• Homophobic state senator comes out as gay, surprising only the very naive. 
  
  
  

  Last year, Mr Ashburn opposed a bill to establish a day of recognition to honour murdered gay rights activist Harvey Milk. He has also voted in the statehouse against efforts to expand anti-discrimination laws and recognise out-of-state gay marriages. Mr Ashburn, who represents California's 18th district, said he does not plan to run for any public office after his term ends later this year.

  No, I don't imagine he does. See also:

  
  
  
  • Ted Haggard 
  • This wonderful study from 1996 in Journal of Abnormal Psychology:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?

By Adams, Henry E.; Wright, Lester W.; Lohr, Bethany A.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol 105(3), Aug 1996, 440-445.

Drip and flow

More paintings!

I went to the Met the other day, saw a huge Jackson Pollock, and was inspired. Immediately went home and started pouring shiny enamel everywhere. Ecce:

 

Complex they're not, but they were fun to make.Washing my hands with turpentine afterwards was fun too.

Yet more whales

Slate has another thoughtful, well-written meditation today on whales, humans, and our conflicted relationship over the course of history. Whales have played many roles. First they were sea monsters: Leviathans, lurking in the places on the map you didn't go. Then to some they became sustenance. Then they became the illumination, the perfume, and the corsets of the 19th century. They have been myth, food, money and light, but we still know very little about them. As the piece notes, we knew what the Earth looked like from space before we knew what a sperm whale looked like underwater.

Whales are something different now. They've always been objects of curiosity, but now they are the subjects of intense research and the darlings of an adoring public (Save The Whales!). The piece ends:

The truth is now, as it's ever been: We need whales more than they need us. Once we hunted them for their industrial resources. Now we demand to be entertained by them. What they want, most probably, is to be left alone.

In other news, one dolphin and possibly two swam up Newtown Creek in Brooklyn today. The creek is one of the most polluted industrial dead zones you can imagine, swamped with factory waste and raw sewage. No word on what's going to happen, but it doesn't look good.

More on whales

Slate has an article today on whaling... did we save the whales or what?

It's a summary of current whaling policy, new developments on same, and what they've actually done since the Save the Whales movement got going. From the article:

"...the sperm whale is considered vulnerable (the level below endangered), while five others—including that 1970s singing sensation, the humpback whale—are of least concern, meaning they're not going extinct anytime soon, even though they might not have returned to their pre-whaling levels. Most hunters nowadays pursue the common minke whale, which is also doing pretty well, all things considered. For a few other large whale species, there aren't enough data to make calls in either direction.

Things get more complicated, though, when you drill down and look at subpopulations. For example, humpback whales may doing fine as a general rule, but the ones that live in the Arabian Sea are considered endangered, as are those around Australia and the South Pacific. And then there are the humpbacks around South Georgia, which were mostly wiped out between 1904 and 1915 and have yet to come back.

What if, somehow, we could return the world's whales to some kind of pristine, pre-human state? If it could be proven that the hunts wouldn't push any populations into the danger zone, would environmentalists in countries besides Japan, Norway, and Iceland ever support sustainable, commercial whaling? The Lantern has her doubts. In America, at least, our belief in the essential dignity of these big, beautiful mammals seems just too ingrained to allow for their use as a food source. In the end, that may be the greatest legacy of the "Save the whales" movement."

The Cove has an interesting segment on what has happened to whaling since the movement began. Needless (almost) to say, it draws a slightly more pessimistic conclusion. In the film, key figures of the movement lament the passing of the enthusiasm that fired the cause, and call for a revival of the activism that brought it into public view. Things have stalled. In the 80s, there used to be marchers on the Mall, singing and holding signs, demanding an end to the slaughter. In the cloudy early reaches of my memory, I remember Save the Whales! t-shirts, posters, and shopping bags being everywhere. They were nearly as ubiquitous as those D.A.R.E t-shirts were before they were retro and ironic.
 Sure, the situation has gotten better, but it's still not great. We've left the task unfinished. Given the current pace of things, it's going to remain unfinished for a long time.

Bubble triptych

I've finished my 3-panel bubblestream, and it's climbing up my wall!

 

Each panel is 11 x 14.

That leaves one big, blank wall still to cover. I'm out of ideas for the moment, but I imagine something silly will occur to me at some point, and I'll be back to sitting hunched over on my floor with paint all over me once more. I'm working on a few more projects for friends, but those will remain mysterious until complete.

Now it's time to pretend that I am a student and start reading.

Sea World

Double post today, because I've got time on my hands.

Dawn Brancheau, a 40-year old trainer, was killed during a show at the Orlando Sea World when one of the orcas, Tilikum, attacked her. Numerous media reports focused on Tilikum, noting that he had been involved in several human deaths before, and expressing shock at the menace he posed to his human handlers. The implication is that this was a problem whale with a taste for human blood. Tilikum was simply an orca being an orca.

Not all the coverage has been that shallow, of course. The BBC has a post on the larger question that the attack raised: is it at all ok for whales and dolphins, who live in complex social groups in the wild, to be kept in captivity?

From the article:

No-one knows what triggered the latest incident, and experts agree that it is almost impossible to determine why the orca, called Tilikum, reacted as it did.


But it does highlight the tensions that occur when we choose to interact closely with these huge animals. It is also debatable what to do with those orcas, also known as killer whales, that remain in captivity.


"They are highly social animals that tend to live in cohesive groups, so it's quite an artificial environment to capture them and put them in a small area," says Dr Andrew Foote, an expert on wild orcas from the University of Aberdeen, UK

"The tragic events are a reminder that orcas are wild, strong and often unpredictable animals," says Danny Groves, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).

Once again, I'm conflicted about this. I'm involved in research on cetaceans in captivity, and much of the work that has been done has contributed enormously to our knowledge of these animals. The research is often focused on the welfare of the animals: how they live, how they interact, and how they communicate. The more we know, the more we can use that knowledge to keep them alive and healthy in the wild.

This research is heavily dependent upon profits aquariums make on their shows. In other words, the money that allows us to study them comes from exploiting them.

They are conscious and self-aware, some of the most intelligent species on the planet, and we restrict them to tiny pools and amuse them with pool toys and fish in exchange for flips and funny noises. They must be bored out of their minds.

But the data we get is so very compelling. We learn more about their cognitive capabilities all the time, and our hazy picture of their consciousness is slowly coming into focus. The more we understand them, and the way they think (they do think, and anticipate, and contemplate themselves), the more we can advocate for better treatment. But the final outcome of that better treatment, to my mind, might be to release as many captive animals as possible. 

I think we've committed a crime against our closest intellectual relatives, and I know that I am entirely complicit in it. We comfort ourselves by softening the blow - providing enrichment, plentiful food and healthcare, and a clean, if cramped, living environment - but a prison is still a prison, too narrow for their minds. 

I wouldn't advocate releasing them now (I'm just that complicit), but I think there will be a time when we come around. Maybe around the same time I become a vegetarian, and therefore morally perfect.

Healthcare!

I've been doing very little these past few days except sleep and paint. Finished a few paintings, actually: some are presents, and will remain mysterious until the recipients-to-be finally come up and visit me, but there will be picspam of the others soon.

Internet goodies have been few and far between, but this one stood out. Stewart and Oliver take on the Great Sinister Healthcare Trap of 2010. John Boehner is hilariously apprehensive (Stewart; "It's a public dialog about important legislation, not Little Bighorn!"), and there's someone you may recognize in the sequence beginning around 0:25.

Republicans are also holding a conference in Hawaii, the apparent purpose of which is to convey to Hawaiians that their outstanding, exemplary health care system (of which Rush Limbaugh recently partook) is doomed to failure. After 40 years of... well, not failing. The conference seems to consist entirely of people who are not aware of this. John Oliver is there with the story.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Apparent Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Vancouverage 2010

Whaling, torture, beer

Updates, developments, and tactical nuclear beer. Read on...
 
Whaling

A development on a previous post on whaling and the dolphin drives: an article from the BBC's Richard Black on the International Whaling Commission and its most recent proposals. The new plans aim to regulate whaling "in a way that countries still engaged in the hunt and those opposed to it could both live with."   

Politics, of course, is central. From the article:

If the proposals were adopted, then, anti-whaling governments would find themselves partaking in the setting of quotas for hunts that according to their own beliefs ought not to exist at all, and in the knowledge that they will be probably be excoriated by environment groups on an issue where public opinion in their countries is pretty firmly on the environment groups' side.

Meanwhile, governments of hunting nations would have to be prepared to accept quotas that are below levels urged by companies operating the hunts. This could be a particularly thorny problem in Iceland where the whaling industry is urging the public to see it as a creator of wealth and employment in a time of economic hardship.

The biggest issue of principle, meanwhile, is that this plan would not remove or even phase out whaling in the Southern Ocean, where Japanese harpoons are busiest.

 Torture

In an update to this post, an article in Slate does a post-mortem on the Bush years, honing in on the lawyers behind the throne. As the writer puts it, we've erased the legal lines surrounding torture and replaced them with nothing. From the article:

The rule of law requires that there be a floor. For decades most of us believed that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was such a floor. Its bar against "[o]utrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment," was clearly meant to apply not just to POWs or battlefield soldiers in uniform but to all captives. Common Article 3 was intended to be the lowest we went, as Aziz Huq has written: "the point beyond which no nation can go without losing its claim to dignity and honor." But then along came the Bush lawyers, and they managed to saw into the floorboards. A sub-basement for prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo opened beneath us, and our dignity and honor disappeared into it.

Beer

Finally, a propos of nothing, exciting developments in beermaking!

A controversial Scottish brewery has launched what it described as the world's strongest beer - with a 32% alcohol content.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh.

BrewDog was previously branded irresponsible for an 18.2% beer called Tokyo, which it then followed with a low alcohol beer called Nanny State.

I want some. Also, 10 points for calling it "Nanny State".

Painting

I've been painting up a storm instead of working. I've never really painted before, but I find it very relaxing, and it provides me with satisfyingly pretty things to put on my walls.

In the spirit of this blog's theme, here's one of my recent ones. I thought it came out particularly well.

It's going to be a present for someone.


More after the jump!

Evil

Dick Cheney, it appears, is even more of a sadistic, evil douchebag than we thought. I won't call him an arrogant bastard, because Arrogant Bastard Ale is delicious, but he is beyond arrogant, and most definitely a bastard. 

He has confessed to war crimes, without any of the shame or reticence that word usually conveys. In an interview with ABC News the other week, he made it clear that he had supported "enhanced interrogation techniques" from the beginning, and still does.

He's not making it easy to not hate him. He's even making life difficult for the people in the Obama administration who don't want him or his cronies prosecuted. From the article:

Those statements, both on Sunday and in his December 2008 interview with Karl, destroys a key line in the Bush administration's defense against war crimes charges. For years, Cheney and other Bush administration officials pinned their defense on the fact that they had received legal advice from Justice Department lawyers that the brutal interrogations of “war on terror” detainees did not constitute torture or violate other laws of war.

Cheney's statements, however, would suggest that the lawyers were colluding with administration officials in setting policy, rather than providing objective legal analysis.

Obama's not doing too great on this front. Even with Cheney spewing toxicity and lies to the media (if you'd like to consider Fox News "media"), the Obama administration has consistently resisted calls for government investigations. It has gone to court to block lawsuits that demand release of torture evidence or seek civil penalties against officials implicated in the torture (and yes, waterboarding was, and has always been, torture). A final word on this, from Rahm Emanuel:

"Emanuel worried that such investigations would alienate the intelligence community..." [...] "Emanuel couldn’t complain directly to Holder without violating strictures against political interference in prosecutorial decisions. But he conveyed his unhappiness to Holder indirectly, two sources said. Emanuel demanded, 'Didn’t he get the memo that we’re not re-litigating the past?'"

I understand the impulse to put ugliness behind you. But there are boils that need lancing, and the longer they fester, the uglier they get. I expected better.

What a mess.

More animals + Saturn

An octopus hatching and being sly with a jar!

Slow loris! Being tickled!



The slow loris is endangered, but these people live in Russia, where it's not illegal to keep one. Not sure how I feel about that, but it seems very very happy to be tickled.

And Saturn. Hubble turned its eye on Saturn the other day and captured a movie of aurorae going on both poles of the planet. Story here.

Snow madness + sexy links

It's snowing sideways outside: big tasty flakes. Little kidlings are frolicking around on the steps, all bundled up, and all classes have been canceled. The snow is still accumulating, but I think it's almost time to whip out the big boots and do a little frolicking myself. This is exciting!

In honor of the snow day, I am sledding the intertubes instead of working. Some tidbits:

• Neil Gaiman is not - I repeat - definitely not writing an upcoming episode of Doctor Who. This nonexistent episode, originally titled "The House of Nothing", will fail to air in approximately 14 months. 
• In botnet news, a new Russian Trojan has started trying to kill its password-stealing rivals. This has happened before, but it's still slightly alarming. The internet is beginning to look more and more like a petri dish, squirming with dumb-but-elegant, cannibalistic, increasingly autonomous entities, programmed to reproduce at every opportunity. If you've ever played Spore, you should be getting nervous. Still, this could be fun -  Russell Munroe tells me they they make great pets (click image to embiggen):

Octopus!

This is incredible. Bioluminescent deep sea creatures and chameleonescent cephalopodian madness. Skip to 4:21 (and full screen it) to have your mind blown.

Big Brother Down Under

This is old news, but the South Australian government recently passed a law, in force as of about a month ago, outlawing anonymous political speech on the internet. In the run-up to regional elections on March 20, the law requires anyone commenting on the election to publish their real name and postcode. In addition, according to this article:

The law, which was pushed through last year as part of a raft of amendments to the Electoral Act and supported by the Liberal Party, also requires media organisations to keep a person's real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.

Seriously? Australia?

Read on for paranoia, political slime, and ultimate Internet victory!

Creation

I saw Creation last night, and really loved it. There is love and madness and science and phosphorescent sea life and an orangutan. Also, Paul Bettany. It's no action thriller, but it is very thoughtful, beautifully shot, and almost satisfying. Almost, because some moments of it makes me despair of humanity: Hooker, Darwin's close friend, pleads with him to write the Origin. It's a battle, he says, in a war we can win within our lifetimes.

Ouch. One hundred and fifty one years later, and where are we?

• We've got a burgeoning Young Earth Creationist movement on our hands. 
• The last post has details, but the numbers on scientific literacy in the United States (specifically with regard to evolution) are pretty ugly.
• The Creation Museum offers your impressionable children a chance to ride a dinosaur, just like Adam and Eve did a few thousand years ago. You can also explore a beautiful model of Noah's Ark! 
• According to Wiki, the otherwise respectable (I think?) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave $1 million in 2000 and pledged $9.35 million over 10 years in 2003 to the goons at the Discovery Institute.  
• School boards all over the country are caving to the creationist wedge strategy: first introduce intelligent design into the curriculum, then worm in a little more, then a little more, then a little more, until students who report that the Earth was created in six days six thousand years ago are allowed to graduate. 

But there are those who are fighting back. Hope and vindication after the jump.