Archive for June, 2011
23 Jun 2011

Tibetan Sky Burial

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Eurasian Griffon aka Griffon Vulture aka Old World Vulture, Gyps fulvus

Wikipedia article on Tibetan Sky Burial.

These pictures are just lurid images of vultures consuming a human corpse and some Tibetan funerary practices which are actually rather worse. Looking at these will give you nightmares, so do not click on either link.

I did warn you.

Hat tip to Fred Lapides.

23 Jun 2011

Bernard Levine, Harvard ’69 (!)

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Levine’s Guide to Knives & Their Values is a key reference in any collector’s library and Bernard Levine’s earlier Knifemakers Of Old San Francisco is a classic book on a very special subject.

Who would have imagined that Knife Collecting guru Bernard Levine is a Harvard ’69 dropout, who became an expert on knives as a way of surviving in the city on the Bay back in the era of the Summer of Love?

Harvard Magazine reveals all:

In February 1969, Levine headed west, looking to connect with a love interest in San Francisco—who promptly returned east to enroll in college. He knocked about the city for a couple of years, working as a stevedore and in construction. His first job, hanging sheetrock, had five other Harvard students on the site. “I realized that I wasn’t strong enough to do this kind of work,” he says, “and that it wasn’t getting me far enough away from Harvard!”

He tried a small business gathering wild yarrow stalks in the hills near San Francisco, which natural food stores sold in bundles of 50 because dividing piles of yarrow is a classical method of consulting the I Ching. “Then they found a lower-priced source,” Levine says. “That was my first lesson in business.”

In September 1971, a couple at the house Levine lived in invited him to come to a flea market; they were moving and had some items to sell. He went to a Goodwill store to find something he might sell at the flea market, and purchased a box of old knives for $3.00—30 knives, as it turned out, at a dime each. “I knew less than nothing about knives,” he says. “The little I knew was wrong. But I spread my knives out on a cloth and was overwhelmed by people.”

Levine learned that there were knife collectors, and the brand names that were collectible. “It was a revelation,” he admits. He continued selling knives at flea markets on weekends. “It turned out to be much longer hours than any job,” he says. “I’d spend all week scrounging up knives and on Friday bring them to a cutlery shop in North Beach where they’d restore them for me. The grandfather there—born in Romania in 1885—taught me a lot about the European cutlery business in the early twentieth century.

“My great love in school had been history,” he says. “Old knives are a good window into history, and a window that looks out in every direction.” From the very first day, Levine recorded every knife he sold, including brand markings and a description, eventually logging 13,000 entries.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

22 Jun 2011

Huntsman Enters Presidential Race

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One of the correspondents on a Fox Hunters’ email list commented today:

“When I saw the headline in my email ‘Huntsman announces run for president,’ my first thought was ‘Why would a huntsman want to run for president? He will never get to hunt with all the security details!'”

22 Jun 2011

2011 Bryn Mawr Hound Show, Part 2

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Three Bassets Bleu de Gascogne from the Ashland Bassets of Warrenton, Virginia: Vitamine, Veloce, Verdict (photo: Karen L. Myers)

Karen’s photo essay (771 photos!) of the Second Day of the Bryn Mawr Hound Show was uploaded yesterday. Day 2, Saturday, is the show itself, the hound classes and the pack trials.

The Friday Night, Day 1, preliminaries are here.

22 Jun 2011

Iceman’s Last Meal: Ibex

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South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology photo

Science quotes, from a lecture given at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies, the latest findings concerning Europe’s oldest natural human mummy, found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy and usually referred to as Ötzi or the Iceman.

Less than 2 hours before he hiked his last steps in the Tyrolean Alps 5000 years ago, Ötzi the Iceman fueled up on a last meal of ibex meat. That was the conclusion of a talk here last week at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies, during which researchers—armed with Ötzi’s newly sequenced genome and a detailed dental analysis—also concluded that the Iceman had brown eyes and probably wasn’t much of a tooth brusher.

The Iceman, discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 some 5200 years after his death, has been a gold mine of information about Neolithic life, as researchers have extensively studied his gear—copper ax, hide and leather clothing, and accessories—and his body. Previous research on the Iceman’s meals focused on fecal material removed from his bowels. The contents showed that he dined on red deer meat and possibly cereal some 4 hours before his death.

But a team led by microbiologist Frank Maixner of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, recently reexamined computed tomography scans taken in 2005 and spotted, for the first time, the Iceman’s stomach. As the researchers reported at the meeting, the organ had moved upward to an unusual position, and it looked full. When they took a sample of the stomach contents and sequenced the DNA of the animal fibers they found, they discovered that Ötzi, just 30 to 120 minutes before his death, had dined on the meat of an Alpine ibex, an animal that frequents high elevations and whose body parts were once thought to possess medicinal qualities.

The new findings are “cutting edge” says Niels Lynnerup, a specialist in forensic medicine at the University of Copenhagen. “We are now inching our way to the last minutes of the Iceman.”

In a separate presentation, dentist Roger Seiler and anatomist Frank Rühli of the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zürich, examined the dental health of the Iceman, who probably died between the age of 35 and 40. Previously, researchers examining radiological images of his teeth discerned no trace of cavities or other dental problems. But the Swiss team created new three-dimensional images of the ancient traveler’s dentition. These showed that the Iceman suffered a blunt force trauma to two teeth—possibly a blow to the mouth—at least several days before his death and was plagued by both periodontal disease and cavities. The cavities, Seiler said in his talk, confirm that the Iceman ate a diet abounding in carbohydrates, such as bread or cereal, and reveal that he possessed a “heavy bacterial dose on these teeth.”

22 Jun 2011

Emperor Penguin Visits New Zealand Beach

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Local man admires visiting Emperor Penguin on Peka Peka Beach on the North(!) Island of New Zealand

For the first time in 44 years, an estimated-to-be 10-months-old Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) waddled ashore on Peka Peka Beach near the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand yesterday, approximately 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from its native Antarctic waters.

The immature Penguin is roughly 31″ tall. Emperor Penguins are the largest Penguin species and can reach 48″.

News reports are indulging in the usual kinds of empty speculation. Reports of the Penguin’s possible thirst (it has been observed to be eating wet sand) are probably not well-founded. Penguins can drink salt water.

The only other confirmed sighting of a wild Emperor in New Zealand was in 1967 at the southern Oreti Beach.

Daily Mail story (good pictures)

ABC story (better information)

1:13 video

21 Jun 2011

Correction of the Day

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Political Wire:

June 21, 2011

“Over the last 15 months we’ve created over 2.1 million private sector jobs. (Laughter.)”

— President Obama, in an official transcript of a fundraising speech this week. The transcript was later corrected by replacing “Laughter” with “Applause”.

21 Jun 2011

Captain Incompetence

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21 Jun 2011

A Case For Rick Perry

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Katie Thompson, blogging at Cornell Law Prof Bill Jacobson’s site, makes the case for Rick Perry.

I think myself that Perry seems to be acceptably conservative, and he strikes me as a potentially stronger candidate than Romney, Pawlenty, and the others currently in the race. Perry has available as a powerful argument the fact of Texas enjoying spectacular growth in jobs, at a time when the only other place in the country that is in the same situation is Washington, D.C.

My first choice for GOP nominee would be Paul Ryan. Ryan has done more to address the key economic issues which are going to be the focus of the 2012 race than anyone else. But Ryan (so far) isn’t running. The governor of the state excelling the rest of the country, by a wide margin, in economic growth is a very plausible second choice.

Katie Thompson makes also the telling point: Rick Perry is everything Barack Obama is not. And that’s exactly what voters want.

And that’s a good argument.

Read the whole thing.

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Ruger .380 Coyote Special

On the symbolic front, Thompson points out that Governor Perry stands out among GOP possible contenders in having a handgun named in his honor.

Apparently, while jogging in February of 2010, Perry drew a .380 Ruger he carries and dropped with one shot a coyote that was menacing the labrador retriever that accompanied him on his run.

Sturm, Ruger & Co. gleefully responded with a special commemorative edition:

On the box it comes in it says “For Sale to Texans Only.” It says “Coyote Special” on one side of the barrel and “A True Texan” on the other side of the barrel. The top of the barrel has a Texas star and a Coyote howling to a full moon.

Not bad at all. I like Perry better and better.

21 Jun 2011

Peter John Kingsley-Heath, December 4, 1926 – May 12, 2011

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Kingsley-Heath with lioness shot in Ethiopia for killing livestock.

John Kingsley-Heath was educated at Monkton Combe School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards at age 18. He was wounded during service in both France and Palestine during WWII. After the war, he joined the Colonial Administration in East Africa. His passionate interest in wildlife and travel led him to hunt extensively in nearly all the countries of the African Continent. He became an Honorary Game Warden and Park Warden in several countries and played a major part in opening Botswana to tourism. He accompanied many famous people on safari and was a director of Ker & Downey Safaris and Safari South. He was closely involved in securing some of the extraordinary photography in the films ‘Hatari’ and ‘Sammy Going South’. He was a licensed professional hunter for 45 years and a bush pilot for 30 with some 5,000 flying hours, and continued to lead safaris at the age of 80. He was Director of Field Operations of the East African Wildlife Heritage Fund and donated to that organization the proceeds of the sale of his rifles at Christie’s on April 24, 1996.

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The Telegraph‘s obituary recalls Kingsley-Heath’s hand-to-hand encounter with a lion:

[I]n August 1961, when Kingsley-Heath was leading a private safari along the Kisigo river in Tanganyika[, f]rom inside a blind (a shelter for hunters), he turned to see a huge, maned lion crouching behind him not 15ft away. As it gathered itself to spring, Kingsley-Heath shot it, and the lion fled. He and his gunbearers gave chase and found the wounded creature lying on its side, breathing heavily.

It was down, but not out. When Kingsley-Heath’s client opened fire, the lion made a single bound of 22ft towards the two men. Kingsley-Heath dropped to the ground and smashed the barrel of his .470 rifle over the animal’s head, breaking the stock at the pistol grip; the lion staggered. As his gunbearers and client ran for cover Kingsley-Heath struggled on to his elbows to get clear.

“Too late,” he recalled, “the lion was upon me, I smelt his foul breath as, doubling my legs up to protect my stomach, I hit him in the mouth with my right fist as hard as I could. His mouth must have been partly open as my fist went straight in.”
With a single jerk of its head, the lion broke Kingsley-Heath’s right arm; as he punched it with his left fist, the lion bit clean through his left wrist, breaking the left arm and leaving the hand hanging by its sinews. Next it clamped his foot in its jaws, crushing the bones in it by twisting his ankle.

One of the gunbearers arrived, threw himself on the animal’s back and stabbed it repeatedly with a hunting knife. With Kingsley-Heath’s foot still locked in its mouth, the lion was finally shot dead. The client reappeared, and with his rifle blew the creature’s jaws apart so that Kingsley-Heath’s foot could be removed.

“I was bleeding heavily … shaking uncontrollably, felt cold, and was likely to lose consciousness,” he wrote later. “I knew that if I did so, I might die.” Instead, after an agonising and protracted medical evacuation, followed by surgery and a bout of malaria, he eventually recovered.

20 Jun 2011

Huntsman Day

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Jon Huntsman

There are all those other Republican candidates, whose names are vaguely familiar, but about whom one knows next to nothing. Looking over the news this morning, I noticed omens and portents pertaining to the candidacy of Jon Huntsman, so let’s start with him.

Mark Halperin, for instance, blogging at the New York Times, says that prominent movement conservative C. Boyden Gray has signed on board the Huntsman campaign in an influential role. Halperin draws from Gray’s affiliation the reasonable conclusion that GOP conservatives may be preparing to back Huntsman as the more conservative alternative to “moderate” front-runner Milt Romney.

Less positive from my own perspective, is a basically typical New York Times magazine puff piece by Matt Bai, treating Huntsman surprisingly sympathetically.

So, I turned to Google and spun up the Wikipedia article on Huntsman. Aha! Governor of Utah, that’s who he is.

He’s a Mormon, just like Mitt Romney. (Basically good. Mormons are crazy, of course, for subscribing to a 19th century Sci Fi religion but, hey! Mormons are also rock-ribbed tribal Republicans, gun-owning, capitalism-defending, fiscal conservatives, respectable and hard-working people, typically a lot more clean living than I am.)

He’s from Palo Alto, California. (We can look on the bright side, and recognize that he must therefore be well acquainted with how nice it is to have lots of money, the economic significance of technology, and the left coast dystopian future American needs to make every effort to avoid.)

He speaks Mandarin and became ambassador to China for Barack Obama, whom he (perhaps, in consequence) makes some effort to avoid attacking.

He supports same sex civil unions, but not Gay Marriage.

He has a good record of governing as a fiscal conservative, and he apparently does not demagogue on immigration.

He does, however, believe in Global Warming, and he signed one of those bogus initiatives to curb “greenhouse gases.” (So much for being such a great technocrat. In my view, Global Warming is a litmus test demonstrating both scientific literacy and real conservative principles, or the lack of both. I would not be happy voting for any Republican with a record of support for AGW superstition. This one is a big deal in my book.)

If you believe the Times’ story, he is under the influence of one of John McCain’s less-reliably-Republican advisors, a guy named John Weaver, a political pro and rival to Karl Rove, who has a hankering to move beyond all the tedium of political principles and ideology and on to mass market appeal via “bigness.”

By bigness, Mr. Weaver evidently means something resembling Ronald Reagan’s ability to attract the support of moderates and to occupy an effective leadership position that could get the country as a whole behind him. In my view, Reagan’s success was achieved by explaining what he meant to do, and why, and winning the argument. The alternative view, which the Times likes, means simply dropping all the theory and the principles off the sled and running as a pragmatic technocrat who solves problems. Amazing, isn’t it, the way the establishment intelligentsia always goes running to the shelter of good old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism and pragmatism, when it finds that it is losing the theoretical argument?

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So, on looking closely at Jon Huntsman, I see that some good people whom I seriously respect are in the process of joining his team. He looks like a decent guy in most respects, but his record features strong support for the leading pseudo-scientific stupidity of our time, indicating that he is either a fool or an opportunist. (On which same basis, we know what Newt Gingrich is, for instance.)

He has hired a political strategist who is the personal embodiment of all the worst features of McCain-ism, a guy so bad that McCain evidently got rid of him during the 2008 campaign.

The stories are contradictory. Mark Halperin suggests that back-room forces of movement conservatism are planning to support Huntsman to prevent the too-moderate Romney becoming the nominee. Yet, we also have evidence that he is planning to run explicitly as the non-conservative in the race for the GOP nomination.

There is a bit more reason, judging by the volume of mainstream media sympathetic coverage, to suspect that the latter theory is the more likely. The strategy of running as a non-conservative will make the New York Times respect him, but I rather doubt myself that it will succeed in delivering the GOP nomination.

19 Jun 2011

Leftism: Dumb People Trying to Look Smart

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Sci Fi author John C. Wright shares the same view of the bona fides and qualifications of members of the contemporary Left as I do myself.

There is a pattern in leftist thinking I have seen often enough to disturb me, but not often enough to declare it by any means universal.

They act like dumb people who desperately want to be thought bright; they act like immoral people looking for some easy way to clothe themselves in the mantle of morality, but not a morality that makes any demands or imposes any duties.

One way a dumb person makes himself look smart, is by talking about pseudo-science as if it were real science: hence they read Rachel Carson and Paul Erlich and Margaret Mead, notorious frauds, and consider it scientific to conclude that banning DDT preserves birds. Either they do not know about or do not care about deaths from malaria in Africa. They consider it scientific to conclude that the world will enter a period of mass starvation and death by 1980, with England and India perishing. That this date passed twenty years ago with no sign of the Malthusian chaos makes no dent in their credulity. …

Bright people who are actually bright exhibit two characteristics: their thoughts are unconventional, and they react with curiosity to ideas that offer legitimate challenge to their own. Dim people who are pretending to be bright impersonate the behavior without understanding it. Instead of being unconventional, they adopt a pre-written script of the shopworn fashionable ideas, which they praise for being a bold and controversial challenge to the dullness of Bourgeoisie parochialism and hypocrisy. That this is itself hypocrisy of the most transparent stripe escapes their notice. …

The reason, friends, why the Left reacts with such blinding malice when challenged, is, of course, deep down they know they are putting on an act. They are no more qualified to teach, to lecture, to preach, to pontificate, than a Jerry Lewis character who stumbles into a lectern by mistake. They are not qualified to hold an intellectually serious conversation, because the core of their world is based on a presumption of intellectual superiority—a profoundly unserious pose. They know its fragility, and hence the vehemence of their reactions.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.

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