WhirledView

Tuesday Scrub Jay Blogging

by CKR

I didn't manage to get a photo during the activity, so here's someone else's.

I was weeding (weeding, weeding) one of my flower beds in preparation for planting, and I saw a whole mass of piñon seedlings pressing up through the soil. I dug at them and realized that it was a cache of piñon nuts, probably planted by a scrub jay. I removed most of them and pushed the soil back in place.

Several days later, I was weeding a nearby bed, and a scrub jay settled down near me with a very quizzical look. It seemed to be "So where are my piñon nuts?" Or perhaps "Did you eat them already?"

I noticed that the cache had been excavated, and broken shells were in the hole, along with another sprout. The jay didn't leave until I got up. We eat sprouted beans. Maybe jays like sprouted piñon nuts.

I keep modifying the environment that quite a bit of wildlife has accustomed itself to. I removed the last big grove of Chinese elms a week or two ago, and lizards were scurrying. (Click on this one to enlarge. You can see his scales really nicely.) They also have run into the shower when I've been watering. And I keep filling in that squirrel hole. The robins look carefully as I weed to see if I'm uncovering delicious bugs.

Wildflowers below the fold.

Do We Really Need the USA Patriot Act?

By PLS

The saving grace of the U.S. Senate is that it often does serve as a deliberative body, even if, at times, it is steamrolled into passing dreadful legislation.

The dreadful legislation now under re-consideration is the so-called USA Patriot Act. It was rammed through Congress after 9/11.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is finding it difficult to reach consensus on what to do about certain Patriot Act provisions that expire this year. One sticking point has to do with law enforcers’ ability to obtain citizens’ records though “administrative subpoenas,” which is to say, without judicial sanction.

Most Patriot Act provisions due to sunset on New Year’s eve involve powers so sweeping that even representatives reduced to a state of cowering panicky backbonelessness could not approve them without severely limiting their period of applicability. The Bush administration wishes to extend and make permanent those powers and characteristically prefers to do so without public debate. Civil liberties organizations have raised valid objections to the secrecy of the process as well as to provisions which ignore Bill of Rights guarantees.

Modern Medicine Hurrah!

By PLS

Note: Pix follow the order of the narrative.

Acupuncture. Homeopathy. Ayerveda. Such beautiful polysyllabics! Standing alone, they sound like mantras, and they’re intoned with reverence, in Santa Fe, where I live. In fact, any cure that’s non-allopathic has cachet these days, but I am in the mood for extolling modern western medicine. I’m talking about arthroscopy. I’m talking about refinements in anesthesia. I’m talking about MRI technology.
Once upon a time I could hardly pronounce that sublimely ugly word: ar-thrós-co-py. I still can’t make it sing, but I’ve experienced it. Two weeks post surgery the tiny knife slits in my knee were barely visible. A week after that I was walking, albeit carefully, up and down the foothills of the Sangré de Christo mountains, three miles, then four miles, then more. In short: this approach to surgery fills me with awe.

The story begins in Bhutan. I stumbled carelessly, stupidly over a rock and fell, downhill and face down, landing on teeth, elbows and knees. The good news was dental. My upper lip was cut and I could taste salty, sticky blood, but my incisors were intact. Equally encouraging, as soon as a wave of wooziness passed and I’d been helped to my feet: I could stand. Tibia and ulna were unbroken, evidently, but my right knee screamed with pain. There was this, too: a twist of my left arm produced a worrisome twinge in the elbow area. But the knee agony permitted no serious competition for attention.

The Symphony and the Sympathetic Brain

by CKR

Sunday I went to a concert of the Santa Fe Symphony. I wasn’t acquainted with Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto before I went. Marc-André Hamelin interpreted it brilliantly, and the piece itself is remarkable, beginning with a simple Russian folk melody, running all the way to jazz with stretches of trademark Rachmaninoff lushness. I’ve got to get the cd.

An orchestra or band is a remarkable thing. Learning to play an instrument begins with simple mechanical steps: you place your fingers so, blow this hard, use so much pressure with the bow as you read the notes on the page. A more practiced musician no longer thinks about what her fingers are doing and finds subtle ways to refine the tone. A virtuoso plays the music, not thinking at all about the marks on the page or finger placement, following the composer’s logic, making the phrases sing.

Brain scan studies are beginning to show that when two primates interact, the same sets of brain cells (mirror neurons) become active in both. Monkeys watching other monkeys reach for food go through similar mental motions. Further, areas involved with emotions light up when people perceive other people to feel pain or disgust.

Playing in an orchestra must involve mirroring on a grand scale. Rehearsal intensifies the mirroring. And the audience must be mirroring as well.

The US-Russia Energy Dance (with a Bolton Note)

by CKR

Now that Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s trial is drawing to a close and he is predictably being found guilty, the cleanup work begins.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman is visiting Russia to discuss Russian petroleum production and US investment in that industry. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez is expected to follow Bodman to Russia. (Ugh—The Moscow Times is going under subscripation too!) Former president George H. W. Bush has also been in Russia recently.

At the same time, Russia is cleaning up its boundaries. It has recently signed a boundary agreement with Estonia and is continuing to negotiate with Latvia, despite Latvia’s last-minute statement that it still expects reparations from Russia. The Russian Parliament has ratified a boundary agreement with China as well. Russia was holding up boundary agreements with Estonia and Latvia to delay their entry into the EU and NATO, which require well-defined boundaries for their members.

Russia is also repaying its debts to the Paris Club ahead of schedule.

All these actions should help move Russia along toward membership in the World Trade Organization and may help to get past the downsides of the Khodorkovsky affair.

Bodman’s stop in Moscow, however, was on his way to celebrate the opening of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey. The pipeline will transport oil from the Caspian Sea area to the Mediterranean, eliminating the need for tankers filling up at this pipeline to pass through the Bosphorus. Kazakhstan, too, may send its oil to the US via this pipeline.

Check Out Finland

The Washington Post is doing a series on Finland. Robert G. Kaiser and Lucian Perkins are checking out one of WhirledView's favorite countries. Some nice photos, and a new city every day. It's a great time to be there, with the dark hours down to just a few, birds singing at two in the morning, flowers everywhere...

Having a Bad Day? You’re Not Alone

by CKR

Exploding Toads
Toads are exploding in Hamburg, Germany and Aarhus, Denmark.

They crawl out of their pond, swell up, and burst, sending a stream of toad innards a meter in the air. Nobody knows why, but investigations continue.

The exploding toads are cane toads, originally a Venezuelan species that has become a pest in other places. Nobody much likes them because they breed like crazy and carry poison sacs in their shoulders.

Der Spiegel, via The Guardian, thinks it has an explanation, but I’ve got my doubts. The Times suggests that they could be the toad equivalent of suicide bombers in the ongoing war of crows against toads.

Walking Ecosystems
Did you know that you have many more bacteria in your body than your body has cells? Bacteria share your food and scrounge on your skin. Mites live in your eyelashes. Most of them are friendly most of the time and even provide you with vitamins and help to fight off bacterial invaders.

Michael Wilson has written a book, Microbial Inhabitants of Humans, that tells you all about your own personal zoo. I haven’t read it yet, but the the reviews sound fascinating.

"Captain Underpants" at the Pentagon

By PLS

Remember when you chanted this verse on the playground during recess?

I see London. I see France.
I see [insert name]’s underpants.

Well, kids still do. Scatology’s a big deal with first and second graders. They jeer and laugh until it hurts whenever they glimpse something that shouldn’t be seen—and poop would probably win a contest for funniest word in the dictionary.

Now, I’ve discovered, there is a series of “epic novels” guaranteed to turn reluctant young readers into book lovers, and the hero is.....Captain Underpants! He’s a bald, paunchy, blustery, mean principal by the name of Mr. Krupp, who transforms into a bald, paunchy, flying-through-the-air superhero who wears (only) baggy white briefs and a spiffy red bandana-cape. One of the really evil villains in the series is named–what else!--Professor Poopypants. Another threat to civilization as we know it is the Bionic Booger Boy.