Biologist Daniel De Granville photographing Giant anaconda (Eunectes murinus) underwater in Brazil.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.

Diving in the Patanal in Brazil, Daniel de Granville films a 23-foot long yellow anaconda (Eunectes notaeus). These are smaller anacondas which do not grow as large as the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). (!)

They are shy creatures, we are told, with more to fear from us than we from them. It is a tolerant animal (after all, it didn’t eat the photographer), but we are cautioned “that it is still important to treat them with respect.” Personally, I have plenty of respect for 23-foot long serpents.

The text is pitiful drivel, but the photographs are interesting. You don’t see one of these every day.

Tennessee has passed a measure making it a crime to transmit by telephone, in writing or by electronic communication an image that would cause “emotional distress” “without legitimate purpose.”

“Emotional distress” is a standard of practically universal application. Anything at all might cause someone emotional distress, and there is no basis to determine whether someone experiences it, beyond his own say so.

What is and what is not a “legitimate purpose” also constitutes a legal nightmare. Who wants any judge to be permitted to decide what is and what isn’t legitimate?

Volokh
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Liberals are always arguing that we need to inform the American legal system with the superior wisdom of international jurisprudence.

From Brazil, comes the story of a court decision upholding the right of one Ana Catarina Silvares Bezerra, an accountant analyst who is allegedly afflicted with a female equivalent of satyriasis, to achieve personal gratification on company time, using the company’s computer and Internet access, for 15 minutes every 2 hours.

Via Walter Olson.

Matt Drudge had fun today headlining the above photo of Barack Obama and the roguish Nicholas Sarkozy oggling the assets of 16 year old Brazilian Mayora Tavares, one of an international group of teenagers attending the G8 Summit.

Bild
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UPDATE 7/11:

Several voices on the left (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4) say, Nah! Obama was innocent.

This video provides a better view of the incident. Was President Obama really only helping another young lady descend? Or did his eyes travel a bit, too? You be the judge.

0:42 video

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Ann Althouse relishes the semiotics of girl watching.

(T)he Sarkozy ass-gawking stance says: I admire but I must not act. And Obama is caught at the moment of as-yet-unconstrained pursuit.

Sarkozy holds his arms against his chest in a closed — but not tightly closed — position. The head is turned but upright. He is smiling, but the index finger lying against his lip blocks the edge of the smile from the point of view of anyone standing in front of him, though if the woman were to turn around, she would see it easily. His hand is tipped upward at a jaunty — one is tempted to say phallic — angle. The foot closest to the woman is planted firmly on the ground in the don’t-go-that-way position, yet the other foot angles toward the object of desire. Still, the angled foot remains flat on the floor, and, at a shoulder’s distance from the other foot, it the whole figure of the man a solid immobility.

Now, swivel your eyes over to Obama’s feet. The foot closest to the woman, like Sarkozy’s, is planted and aimed forward, but the other steps off in the direction of the woman, bending the knee upward into a bit of a crotch-squeeze and forming the base of a dramatic tilt of the entire body into a flexible S-shape that leans toward the woman. Obama’s arms hang free, emphasizing the tilt, and either gravity or will causes the left arm to hang inches away from the torso. See how much lower the right hand is than the left? His neck is craned out and around so that the line of sight is directly at the ass. His mouth is open as if to say: That’s what I want.

AND: Yes, I have seen the video, and I stand by my analysis of the still photograph.

MacRanger doesn’t buy the innocent theory either.

5-meter-long (16.4-foot-long) anaconda

Washington Post:

A 66-year-old Brazilian saved his grandson from the grip of a 16-foot-long anaconda (probably Eunectes murinus),by beating the snake with rocks and a knife for half an hour, police said Thursday.

“When I saw the snake wrapped around my grandson’s neck I thought it was going to kill him,” Joaquim Pereira told the Agencia Estado news service. “It was agonizing, I pulled it from one side, but it would come back on the other.”

Pereira’s 8-year-old grandson, Mateus, was attacked by the anaconda near a creek on his grandfather’s ranch in the city of Cosmorama, about 250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.