How about if we just call you “Crazy, unelectable, and officially out of the race”? (The Hill) — Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman took to Twitter Thursday to offer his support for evolution. Huntsman made the tweet shortly after Texas Gov. Rick Perry offered comments that cast doubt on evolution — his comments can be interpreted as criticism of Perry. “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” tweeted Huntsman, the former ambassador to China. Perry has also raised questions about whether humans are contributing to global warming. Huntsman’s tweet will raise questions about whether he has the conservative bona fides to win the Republican presidential nomination. Huntsman has carved out a niche in the primary fight as a centrist, but it is unclear whether GOP voters are looking for that in a candidate this year. Keep reading. . .
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RINO Huntsman: “Call me crazy,” I believe in evolution, global warming
Social scientists for decades have sought to explain the dogged persistence of poverty. The received wisdom is the poor are passive victims who would like nothing better than to exchange their hoodies and droopy drawers for the Polos and plaid slacks of the middle-class. To illustrate this, sociologists have concocted numberless arcane and byzantine theories. One such theory is called ” depletable self-control .” Humans, you see, have only so much self-discipline, and then all hell breaks loose. Because everything is harder for poor people, they use up their allotment sooner. By 9 or 10 in the morning, depending on what time they crawl out of bed, the poor have gone through their entire reservoir. The same goes for their decision-making skills. The poor can make a few good decisions at breakfast, but by lunch all bets are off. In contrast, the ancient’s view was that the poor are impoverished precisely because they have less self-discipline and tend to make bad decisions. Today this is considered blaming the victim; since the 1960s this has been a major no-no. More and more I am becoming convinced that the reason many poor do not escape poverty is simply because they do not want to. No one is arguing the poor do not face substantial barriers to escaping poverty. However, the idea of depletable self-control is an insult to the hard working poor who get up every morning, get their kids off to school, take the bus to some dead-end job, and return home in the evening to prepare dinner before spending a relaxing hour at the Laundromat. These folks simply do not have time to be depleted of their reservoir of self-control. They have responsibilities to attend to. But, ultimately, it is worth it. It is their children who may someday escape the cycle of poverty. FOR SOME TIME NOW I have lived in the ghetto. For me, every day is a rich learning experience. Mostly what I am learning is that the ‘hood is not a place all people wish to escape from. Most middle class folks are unable to comprehend this. They think, “If I were them (the poor), I’d want to get the hell out of there.” But that’s not the mindset of many urban dwellers. The ghetto is home; it’s where one’s friends and family live. For some the ghetto exudes an aura of romance. It is celebrated in film and song. Moving to the suburbs would be seen as selling out. Besides, people are too uptight in the suburbs. They wouldn’t let you play your loud music all night long. And it’s easier to get by in the city. You can get away with a lot more. Drugs are plentiful. You don’t necessarily need a car. You can find cheap housing. There are free medical clinics. Hell, my neighbors’ kids are driven to school in a taxi — on the taxpayer’s dime. You don’t necessarily even need a job in the city. Most of my male neighbors never seem to work. (This includes the artists and hipsters in our neighborhood.) And no one judges you if you don’t, because there is a good chance they don’t work either. Sure, city-living has its share of problems. Murder, crime, constant gunfire. But you’d be surprised how quickly you adapt. I was. At first I was a little jumpy when a round of semiautomatic gunfire exploded down the street. But after six months you get used to it. Obviously, the middle class is beyond the reach of some of my neighbors. But for those who dropped out of high school, have no marketable skills and are functionally illiterate, they could at least decide their children are going to get out of the ghetto. Some do decide this, but many don’t. It’s not like they don’t know how to escape the cycle of poverty. Four simple rules: 1. Don’t have babies in your teens. 2. Finish high school. 3. Learn a marketable skill. 4. Keep out of prison. It’s not rocket science. As I write, I am staring out my second-floor window overlooking my neighbor’s yard. It is Friday morning and there are four young men in their twenties, shirtless, covered in tattoos, hanging out in a grassless backyard, smoking and drinking beer and listening to loud, thumping, misogynistic music. Evidently their allotment of self-control has been depleted for the day (though I’m not sure how, since all they’ve done is light cigarettes and open beers). Because of this they are obviously too worn out to look for a job. I would pity them, but there’s no time. I have to go to work.
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Ghetto Love
BETHEL, Conn. — In the early hours of Saturday, June 11, 2011, a motorist driving an SUV along Route 15 in Milford, Connecticut, struck and killed a mountain lion. That’s right. A mountain lion. In Connecticut. This event occurred a little more than a week after a moose was sighted ambling through my little of town Bethel. If anyone wants to know where the wild things are, they’re in suburban and rural and even urban Connecticut. Let me give you a few examples of what I’ve witnessed in my own backyard. One afternoon while on the phone with my Dad I saw a coyote sprint out of the woods and nail a fat groundhog that was waddling across the grass. Several times I’ve witnessed a hawk pounce on a chipmunk or a deer mouse. One night I was awoken by the awful screams of fawn being torn apart by a pack of coyotes. I have my own personal herd of deer that live in the forested back acre of my property, a place they share with coyotes and red foxes. The deer have become so used to the sight and smell of humans that I can be working at one end of the yard while the herd continues to graze at the other end. Deer are lovely. Fawns are adorable. Did you know that typically does give birth to twin fawns? Until I moved here, me neither. Yet deer have become a serious problem in Connecticut. According to the Wildlife Division of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, the population of white-tailed deer in Connecticut is “overabundant.” That’s an understatement. A single square mile can support 10 to 12 deer, yet throughout the state typically the numbers are much higher—60, 70, even 90 deer per square mile. Erring on the side of caution with 60 per square mile, that works out to 290,700 deer statewide. Such numbers are not only a problem for deer that are competing with each other for food, they present serious problems for the deer’s human neighbors. Deer spread the tick-borne Lyme disease to humans: since 1996, 29,000 cases have been diagnosed in Connecticut. On average, deer require a daily diet of 5 to 10 pounds of forage, so they treat our gardens like open-air salad bars, which is extremely expensive for gardeners. The town of Fairfield estimates that on average deer do $17 million worth of damage every year to public and private plantings in the community. Yes, there are deer resistant plants, but if deer have decided to eat something, they will. A landscaper told me that he had planted 50 lily of the valley plants in a client’s garden. Lily of valley is said to be poisonous to deer, and so a safe plant. By the next morning deer had eaten them all. And the lawn was not littered with deer corpses. In their quest for food the deer are clearing out native-born woodland plants and wildflowers, including such rare species as the lady’s slipper orchid. This groundcover is home to various species of birds and small mammals. Once their habitat is gone, they leave and the ecology of the woodlands begins to go out of whack. The trouble is, the deer no longer have natural predators such as wolves or mountain lions to keep their population in check. According to Connecticut lore, in 1743, 25-year-old Israel Putnam killed the last wolf in Connecticut. There is no comparable story for the mountain lions, although that situation appears to be self-correcting. Nonetheless, at present the deer’s only enemy (aside from hunters) is a speeding automobile. On average, 18,000 deer are killed along Connecticut roadways annually. Repairs for a deer-and-car collision costs on average $1,600; there are no figures for the cost in medical expenses for injured drivers and passengers. The primary reason for the boom in wildlife in Connecticut is the expansion of forests in the state. Today, 60 percent of the state is forest. Compare that with the state in 1900, when forests covered between 20 and 30 percent of Connecticut. The 20th century saw a trend of families moving off their farms. Once the fields and pastures were no longer being worked by man, Nature moved in. Later, part of this newly wooded land was cleared for housing, but enough of it remained to make an ideal habitat for deer. Cover in the woods; plenty to eat in the humans’ gardens; and no predators. What to do? Giving deer birth control vaccines has been a failure. Trap and relocation programs can cost up to $3,000 per deer. Even if the state had the spare cash (which, Lord knows, we do not), all the other states are suffering the same deer problem, and they don’t want ours. Some towns have hired sharpshooters to reduce deer populations, which invariably brings howls of protest from the local Bambi/anthropomorphic coalition. It doesn’t matter that the deer population is out of control, or that the deer spread Lyme disease, or that the venison is donated to the local food pantry, for some Americans, cuteness will always triumph over reason. I’ve invited a friend’s son, an experienced bow hunter, to come to my house, open a dining room window, and pull up chair — he’ll be able to bag a herd without stepping outside the house. So it comes down to this: given the lack of four legged predators in the state, we two-legged types will have to step in. I know it sounds harsh, but the problem is our responsibility — until we see a serious boost in Connecticut’s population of mountain lions.
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It’s a Jungle Out There
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sock puppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply. Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself, a lot. And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny. ———————– And for Friday frivolity, via Hot Air , we have the trailer to the new Planet of the Apes prequel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes : Of course it is really hard to understand how this is reconciled with the timeline of any of the movies (let alone any TV shows or cartoons). After all, there have sort of been two prequels to The Planet of the Apes already. First there was Escape From the Planet of the Apes : And then there was after that, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes : Now these are only “sort of” prequels because technically this is what happened. In Beneath the Planet of the Apes , it ends with the Earth being destroyed. So then Escape featured three apes going back in time to 1972. For the most part the subject is treated lightly, and funny, except in the end where all but one of the apes are killed by fearful and intolerant humans. That is why I label it the “Star Trek IV” of the series—the one that is mostly funny. And then Conquest occurs after Escape depicting the ape rebellion. I call it the Empire Strike Back of the series, because it was the dark, cool one. Indeed, its original ending was much darker, captured (poorly) in this video: That was considered too controversial so instead at the last moment Caesar convinces the apes to spare the remaining humans. Personally I like the darker ending because it’s more in character. So those two movies are not literally prequels, because 1) they only occur prior in time relative to us, but not to the characters in the movie, and 2) because it is clear by the end of the fifth movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes , that by that time travel they had changed the timeline entirely, resulting in one where the humans end up living in peace with the apes, instead of blowing up the whole planet. But still its prequel-like. Indeed, if you really want to get obsessive about the timeline issues, this guy goes very deep into the subject: And then there is the “reimagining” of the Planet of the Apes directed by Tim Burton which just pretty much stank up the theaters it showed in. But if memory serves (and really I have tried not to even think about it since I saw it), the story was that in the future, in space, they were enhancing chimp intelligence. So that seems to contradict the earth-based setting in Rise . Oh, but there is another way out of the problem, because in the horrifyingly bad twist ending they end up at a parallel Earth where the apes took over ages ago, and replaced Lincoln’s statue at the Lincoln memorial with an ape. So I suppose it could occur earlier in that timeline. But that means they would be treating the Burton film as canon, which seems unlikely because it was so awful. On the other hand, this trailer for Rise also contradicts significantly the canon in Conquest. In Conquest , it was an ape from the future leading the rebellion. The other apes were more evolved than our present apes, but not because of some science experiment. If memory serves, there was a plague that wiped out dogs and cats, leading humans to adopt more apes as pets and that somehow led to greater intelligence, leading them in turn to be used essentially as slaves. So yeah, its bunk as science and I guess I can’t completely fault them for messing with that if that is their plan with Rise. Or maybe it is supposed to be a prequel to the original Planet . Thus since Escape and Conquest were technically a different timeline it all still sort of fits. Or finally, maybe they are just trying to do what they did with Batman Begins : start a whole new series. Heck, maybe they would even make it into a musical (go here for video–it will start automatically). Okay, that’s enough nerding out for one day. But I will leave you with a classic moment in the original, from which we get the title of this post: [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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Sockpuppet Friday—The “Get Your Stinking Paws Off Me You Damn Dirty Ape!” Edition
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here .] Okay, this will really earn me my nerd card, but do you any of you remember an animated show around the late 70’s called Star Blazers? The plot was that Earth was under constant attack by aliens, but the humans take a Battleship, called the Yamato, and turn it into a space ship, and fly to a planet that promises to hold the hope for Earth’s salvation. It was different and kind of mature for a kid’s cartoon, with an Ender’s Game vibe to parts of it, and a dab of Japanese nationalism on top given that the ship was asserted to be a Japanese battleship sunk during World War II. In Japan it was called Space Battleship Yamato , but when they brought it to America they presumably wanted to play down the nationalism and perhaps make it less obvious that this was a Japanese cartoon, hence the name Star Blazers. Well, in Japan, they have turned it into a live action movie that looks like it has some real potential. For people of a certain age, there is a cool nostalgia factor there, similar to when the Transformers movie came out. You can read some about it and watch a few minutes of footage, here . Or watch an English subtitled (with a Steve Tyler song!) trailer, here . IGN sees a strong influence from the most recent Star Trek. I see an awful lot of the recent BattleStar Galactica, especially in the fighter sequences. Which is encouraging because BSG provides a good template for how to update this film: take the original and make it grow up. If only they did that with the Transformers. And here is a pretty cool looking poster, featuring the ship before they fixed it and turned it into a space ship. Yes, I know that would almost certainly be impossible, but it is still kind of cool. No word on when it is coming to the U.S. although the fact it has an English website suggests that they recognize that some Americans still fondly remember the series and it will get here sooner or later if only to cash in. Update: For the commenters with fond memories of the show, I will point out that the original movie is in Netflix, and last I checked you could stream it into your computer, or into your TV using a Wii, Xbox 360 of Playstation 3. I think it was under Star Blazers. Update (II): I have been informed that I was mispelling “Yamato.” Which means I have been officially out-nerded (which is hard to do). Update (III): In the comments Captain Ned informs us that there really was a Yamato, and, um, it doesn’t look very spaceworthy . Thanks alot of ruining my suspension of disbelief! [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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Space Battleship Yamato
