Norman Mailer was once asked if he thought if an atomic war would kill all mankind. Hell no, he said. We’ll smother ourselves in our own shit first. More and more, Mailer appears to have been right.

Looking on the bright side, though, small sparks of beauty may survive here and there. So take a look at this video sent along by Asher Pavel, and hope for the birds.

Jim Hightower writes:

In 2009, an interim Texas school superintendent declared that sex-education classes were unnecessary in his rural district. Most of the area’s school kids live on farms, he explained, therefore: “They get a pretty good sex education from their animals.”

It’s this kind of thinking that makes Texas so special… (To continue with Hightower, go here.)

Maybe you’ve heard the old joke about the farm boy showing a girl around the ranch when they come across a bull mounting a cow and stop to watch.

Boy: I wouldn’t mind doing that, would you?

Girl: Go ahead, she’s your cow.

Another porcelain sculpture from the incomparable Kate MacDowell:

Syrbal at Herlander-Walking just led me to the amazing and wonderful porcelain sculptures of Kate MacDowell. Thanks to both of you:

Normally I am able to resist passing along cute pet videos. Not this time, though:

I tried, God knows I tried, but I just couldn’t let this one slide by without posting it. Those of you with strong stomachs will find the full story here. For the rest of you, a taste:

“If you look at it in a real sense, they’re just invertebrates — no different than shrimp or crabs,” he said, speaking admirably of Archbold’s mental control. “If you caught them in baskets in Maryland, people would put Old Bay on them and gobble them down.”

Unaccountably I forgot to post this picture from my sister Pat’s trip to Africa this summer:

Still more from my sister Pat’s trip to Africa:

More from my sister Pat’s trip to Africa:

Here’s another (see previous post) of George W. Bush’s adornments to the federal bench:

HELENA — Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Wednesday admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers…

The subject line of the email, which Cebull sent from his official courthouse email address at 3:42 p.m. Feb. 20, reads: “A MOM’S MEMORY.”

The forwarded text reads as follows:

“Normally I don’t send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

“A little boy said to his mother; ‘Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?’

“His mother replied, ‘Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!’”

This from Mike Lofgren, a retired Republican staffer on the House and Senate budget committees:

An observer of the right-wing phenomenon must explain the paradox of followers who would escape from freedom even as they incessantly invoke the word freedom as if it were a mantra. But freedom so defined does not mean ordinary civil liberties like the prohibition of illegal government search and seizure, the right of due process, or the right not to be tortured. The hard right has never protested the de facto abrogation of much of the Bill of Rights during the last decade.

In the right-wing id, freedom is the emotional release that a hostile and psychologically repressed person feels when he is finally able to lash out at the objects of his resentment. Freedom is his prerogative to rid himself of people who are different, or who unsettle him. Freedom is merging into a like-minded herd. Right-wing alchemy transforms freedom into authoritarianism.

From Gail Sheehy’s 1995 profile in Vanity Fair comes all you need to know about Newt — semi-smart but with nutty ideas, poor follow-through, and a mess left for somebody else to clean up.

Surprisingly, the boy in the bottle-thick glasses with a plaid shirt and plastic pocket protector was only a runner-up as a National Merit Scholar. He did make the debate team, but, according to his stepfather, Bob Gingrich, “he wasn’t an A student … He wasn’t the class pride.” His mother Kit claims that Newt’s I.Q measured in the 120s…

“He always tried to be one of the boys,” says Kip Carter. “He never quite was.” To illustrate the point, Carter tells a down-home kind of story from the 1970s. Newt and Carter, who was then his campaign treasurer, used to barbecue hogs in the Gingriches’ driveway in Carrollton, Georgia. They would go to a friend’s farm and pick out a hog and shoot it.

“One day, Newt says to me, ‘I need to be the one to kill the hog. It’s only right, just morally.’”

Carter showed Newt how to use a Walther P-38, a W.W. II German pistol. “I said, ‘Put some corn in your left hand. When the pig comes over to get it, put the pistol against his head and shoot him between his eyes.’”

“So the pig comes over and he starts eating,” says Carter. “Newt flinches as the round hits the pig on the side of the head and ricochets down.” But the shot only stunned the hog and sent it fleeing back into the pen. “Newt keeps trying to get this pig to come back to him. Newt’s getting madder and madder. I said to him, ‘You just shot the son of a bitch in the head, Newt, why do you think he’s gonna come to you?’”

Carter recalls urging his comrade-in-arms, “‘You gotta get in there, in the hogpen, and go get him.’ But Newt wouldn’t do it. So I ended up going in the pen and killing the hog.”

Son Ted boils it down for us: “So coming out of Iowa, the GOP contest is Senator Man-on-Dog vs. Governor Dog-on-Car.”

Doris Potter pointed me to this, which I pass along as a model for all politicians running for national office. Actually not quite all. McCain and Romney could teach this octopus a thing or two.

How can I not run this? Slate’s David Weigel took it at a Tea Party rally yesterday in New Hampshire. Feel free to interpret.

Always a big day in a boy’s life…

Quick note on the occasionally entertaining but never enlightening Republican candidates’ debate still going on as I write this:

A few moments ago — I swear I heard it — Rick Santorum dumped all over Iran for its anti-gay policies. Rick Santorum? Man-on-Dog Rick Santorum? Could I have misunderstood somehow? Or was Rick slipping in, through the back door as it were, something he wants us to know about him? If so, what is it? Who is the real Rick Santorum? And who cares?

Addendum on the morning after:

At least one other person noticed Santorum’s newly-found solicitude for gay rights. Here’s Michael Scherer, live-blogging on Time.com:

80 minutes. This is where things start to get weird. Santorum is asked if he really thinks Attorney General Eric Holder is “perhaps smoking mushrooms” for wanting to try terrorists in civilian court. Santorum responds by saying that the Iranian regime “tramples the rights of women, gays and people throughout their society.” This is Santorum, the guy who was saying just a few minutes ago that it would be good to impose morality from the federal government. The non-sequiter is jarring. But perhaps it can only be understood by injecting marijuana or drinking cocaine.

From the New York Times:

Nazi propaganda dwelled on Hitler as a dog lover. He owned two German shepherds named Bella and Blondi. He tested a cyanide capsule on Blondi and killed her just before he committed suicide.

Below is a painted turtle on Sharon Mountain trying stubbornly (and ultimately failing) to dig a nest for her eggs in a hard-packed clay and gravel road. I post this picture not as a metaphor for Obama and the Senate, but because it gives me the opportunity to pass on to the present generation the greatest poem ever penned about turtles. It was penned, or more likely typed, by Ogden Nash in the early days of our nation. Television hadn’t been invented yet, so people were reduced to reading stuff like books and magazines and even poems.

For further information, please apply here.

Add this to your list of things you always suspected were true. It’s from Ted McLaughlin at The Rag Blog. Turns out that those amazing drug-sniffing dogs are no more amazing than Clever Hans, the Counting Horse.

The researchers took 18 drug dog teams to a church, where it is likely no drugs or explosives had ever been placed in the past. The cops were told there might be up to three target scents in any one of four rooms. If they saw a piece of red construction paper in the room, that indicated where a target scent was placed.

The first room was left untouched. The second room had a piece of red construction paper on a cabinet. The third room had two sausages and two tennis balls placed as decoys. The fourth room had the decoy scents and the red paper. However, none of the rooms had any drugs or explosives.

There shouldn’t have been any alerts, but, in fact, handlers indicated their dog had alerted in every room. There were more alerts in rooms with red paper (which piques the cop’s interest) and no corresponding increase in rooms with sausages and tennis balls (which would pique a dog’s interest).

In other words, at best, dogs are responding to the subtle non-verbal cues of their masters to find drugs or explosives where the human thinks there should be drugs or explosives. The cop suspects you have pot so his body language makes the dog alert. At worst, the cop is purposefully cuing his dog to alert when he wants a handy excuse to violate your Fourth Amendment rights.

…but Gail Collins did:

The Senate sponsor is James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who recently claimed that the supercold winter proves that theories about global warming are “an intellectual fraud.” We could blame Senator Inhofe, but he really isn’t all that satisfactory a villain. It’d sort of be like blaming nuclear proliferation on gophers.

It’s just like Boehner and all his cuddly buddies keep telling us: there’s plenty of jobs out there for anybody who really wants to work. For further information on the one below, go here. Free cabin bunk is included. Another big plus: Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul will be your senators.

The technician will assist in radio tracking Black Kingsnakes, checking drift fences and processing captured reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals, conducting vegetation transects, and data entry. Additionally, technician will assist in the deployment and collection of copper models throughout each study site. Technician should be in great physical condition and be able to hike about 8 - 15 miles a day in various weather conditions with about 10 - 20 pounds of gear.

Technician should also be tolerant of ticks, spiders, and insects. Technician should have previous radio telemetry experience. Technician should be able to navigate using a compass and topographic map, operate a GPS device, ability to identify and handle reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals (on job training will be expected, but prior knowledge would be beneficial). Venomous snakes will be encountered during this job; however, the technician will be trained in properly handling and processing venomous snakes.

The kitten is adorable but nameless.

He is a five-and-a-half-pound fuzzball with white feet, a dark brown and white face split down the middle suggesting the two-faced mask of comedy and tragedy, a white flourish at the throat, and a dark gray-brown coat like something Aunt Bea sported in the fifties. From the back he looks as it he’s wearing his big brother’s pants. He is so beguiling that he has already charmed all of the many other animals that live in our house — three dogs, a three-legged cat and a demented bird. He may have sinister plans for the bird but that’s another story.

We are so hopelessly smitten by the little cat that we now live to be graced with a sign of his affection. He lives to eat and when not eating to leap about, roll on the floor, chase his catnip mouse, and break everything in sight including our hearts. The only problem is, he has no name.

Not that we haven’t tried to give him one. By now we have exhausted hours — weeks — in the effort. Agreement eludes us. Feelings have been hurt. Epithets have been traded. Violence has been threatened, despair proclaimed. So far, we can find no name to measure up to his superior self. And slowly, unavoidably, we draw closer to the conclusion that there may be no way to name the world’s most agreeable, most enchanting, most lovable, cat.

What would you have named Mozart if not Wolfgang Amadeus? How about Aristotle? Homer? Jesus? The name becomes the man. The man becomes the name. Can the same be true of a little cat? Days go by and a hundred names suggest themselves—all wrong.

Meanwhile, Little Anonymous has taken control of the household. He fears nothing and no one, especially humans, dogs and other cats. He partakes of everything with or without invitation. He is the self-appointed inspector general of all things. He has scrutinized, analyzed, tested, and tasted every object in the house, from stuffed pillows to frozen lasagna, from bougainvillea leaves to old slippers. Small things such as pens, pencils, silverware, peanuts, chopped carrots, and pearl onions are summarily batted to the floor where he feels they belong. They may be used later in a never-ending one-cat game of soccer/hockey, known to us as socky, or they may be consigned to dusty obscurity just out of reach under the sideboard.

We have tried a categorical approach to the naming challenge and this has proved no more productive than the random method. Just because the fur around his neck stands up from the rest of his coat and suggests an Elizabethan collar, it doesn’t mean that Marlowe, Macbeth or Faustus are good names for a cat. His peculiar ruff also acts as a divide between fur of two distinctly different colors, making it look as though he is two different cats, with the head of one screwed onto the body of the other. Somehow this oddity adds to his charm.

His bottomless appetite for mischief suggests another naming category and this has been extensively explored. Pestilence, Apocalypse, Gnat, Locust, Earwig, Rash, Plague, Scab, Abscess — all these names and many more have been considered and rejected as either over the top or not fully descriptive.

Yet another category considers the cat's appearance. Names like Freak, Beaver, Mink, Badger, Hedgehog, Rodent, and Scream, while charming, seem to fall short.

And so, the search goes on. We have observed that the lack of a permanent name does not seem to have affected the cat adversely, or in any way at all. His response to all the names we have tried has been the same: he does not respond; he does whatever he wants. We had the same problem with the dogs until we came up with the inspired idea to name them all Food.

I invite — beg for, actually — comment on this story from the Miami Herald. Speculation on the author’s use of the word “fruitless” is appropriate, although obvious.

A new study of white ibises by University of Florida researchers suggests the pollutant could have a far more profound impact than imagined: It turned a good chunk of a captive flock gay.

The study, published online Wednesday in a biological journal, documented a number of changes in the mating behaviors and reproductive success of four groups of ibises fed varying levels of mercury over a three-year period.

By far the most surprising effect was on the courtship inclinations of male ibises. In the first year, 55 percent of the males given the highest doses of mercury in their feed hooked up with other males during breeding season.

“They pretty much did everything except lay eggs,’’ said Peter Frederick, a UF wildlife ecologist who led the study. “They built nests, they copulated, they sat in the nests together…’’

Some males exhibited bi-sexual interests, changing partners when male-on-male efforts proved fruitless. That’s a common response in the wild after failed efforts, Frederick said.

Many of you have written to ask how long the world’s longest cat is. The world’s longest cat is 48.5 inches long.

The question raised but not answered in this don’t-miss story from Discover Magazine is whether these overendowed squirrels experience lust while masturbating.

If so, Christine O’Donnell wants you to know that when that last nut is harvested you’ll go straight to squirrel hell.

If you have no lust in your heart, however, prospects brighten. Christine will be totally okay with your little auto-fellatio games, and you will ascend post-death to squirrel heaven.

These mighty genitals suggest that sex, and sperm in particular, is a serious business for Cape ground squirrels. To get the best odds of fathering the next generation, they need to ensure that it’s their sperm that fertilises the female’s eggs and not those of rivals. So they make a lot of it; hence, the oversized testicles.

With sperm being so important, it’s odd that some Cape ground squirrels regularly waste theirs. Yet that’s exactly what Jane Waterman saw while studying wild squirrels in Namibia. Some of them would masturbate, apparently squandering their precious sperm. What does squirrel masturbation look like? Apparently, it’s rather acrobatic…

The final explanation is that masturbation is actually a form of self-medication. By cleaning their genitals, males reduce their odds of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. It’s a new hypothesis that Waterman herself put forward, but it’s the only one that actually fits with all of her data…

Today is Chlamydia Monday in Sweden, yet another reason to keep that country on your list of emigration possibilities in case Boehner and McConnell take over this one in November. Go here to see the Official Chlamydia Day Videos (try saying that fast five times in a row). The clips are not limited to just the one sexually transmitted disease, nor to a species-specific method of transmission.

For the past 15 or 20 minutes, hummingbirds have been strafing each other over the feeder outside my window. Whenever one gets close enough to feed, another darts down and drives it away. There is plenty of sugar water and three sipping holes, each in the center of an imitation flower, but so far no bird has been allowed by the others to perch and feed. Hummingbirds are so cute. Sometimes they seem almost human, only they never actually hurt each other.

Frankly I don’t see the problem here. It’s not like he blew his nose in the clam chowder.

DAVENPORT, Iowa – An Iowa restaurant owner said he'll pay a fine after his head chef was videotaped kissing and licking toads in the kitchen … On the tape, chef Christopher Turla is seen with two small toads on the prep table. He kisses the toads a few times, licks them, then stuffs them in his mouth.

I caught a couple of new pets up on Sharon Mountain the other day. I know you’ll be as excited as I am:

…and not all of them are on octopuses (see previous post). Or on octopoi. Or octopi (see comments on previous post). The excerpt below, from Yahoo! News, suggests that the Madrid Zoo is run by suckers. Or, more probably, by showmen who figure Madrileños for suckers.

MADRID — The Madrid Zoo said Thursday that it has made an offer to buy Paul, the octopus who became a pop culture sensation by correctly predicting the outcome of as many World Cup matches as he has legs — all seven of Germany's games plus the Spain-Netherlands final.

…from the New York Times:

…As hairless torsos have become the norm for male models and actors, below-the-neck hair removal has gone mainstream. The nascent category of body shavers has surpassed $10 million in annual sales, according to Nielsen data cited by Remington. But many men who aspire to the polished trunks of the “Jersey Shore” men face a dilemma when it comes to their backs: they don’t want to undergo the expense of waxing or laser hair removal, but are embarrassed to ask others for assistance.

Enter the extendable Remington Body and Back Groomer, which came out last year and costs $39.99. It’s an update of shorter Remington Body Groomers, which have sold briskly since being introduced in 2005.

To make the next-generation model, Remington conducted studies of men as they wielded various products to trim body hair. “You haven’t lived until you’ve been in a bathroom with a man watching him shave all his body parts,” said Carl Kammer, director of new product development at Remington…

To illustrate the article excerpted above, the Times chose a truly revolting photo. Not only is it not suited for workplace viewing, it is not suited for viewing at all. I strongly advise you not to click on the words “Read on,” below. If you do, you are proceeding at your own risk. And remember — I told you so.

…from the Bellingham Herald, and don’t miss the comment from the British Columbia citizen either. Unfortunately it remains unclear even from the Herald man’s complete account why it was necessary to euthanize the mice, but let your imagination run wild.

A man accused of operating a crude compound near Sumas where people engaged in sexual acts with animals is tied to cases in four court systems in two countries.

Federal agents arrested Douglas Spink at a Whatcom County compound on Reese Hill Road on April 14. They also seized videotapes of a British man, Stephen Clarke, engaged in sexual acts with dogs Spink owned.

The Whatcom Humane Society seized seven dogs, four horses and several mice. The dogs and horses are the subject of a custody dispute currently proceeding in Whatcom County Superior and District courts; the mice had to be euthanized…

A lot of you have written in to say you don’t know what a baby wombat looks like. Here’s what:

Hear this, from the American Family Association:

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture…

What about the term “killer whale” do SeaWorld officials not understand?

If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28)

So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death. You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn’t know the animal was going to go postal on somebody.

But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

We have a new entry in the highly competitive race for the most grudging non-apology of 2010. Shown below is Rudolph Andreas “André” Bauer with an adorable Scientologist friend.

[South Carolina’s] Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said Monday he regretted comments comparing people who take public assistance to stray animals, but the incident continued to draw fire.

In a phone interview, Bauer said he regretted the remarks “because now it’s being used as an analogy, not a metaphor.

“Do I regret it? Sure I do. I wouldn’t have to be taking this heat otherwise.”

“The unpleasant habits of round-mouthed hagfish and lampreys are vividly described as ‘suctorial.’ Theirs is a mode of life made possible by having gills which open directly into the throat, so that they can continue to respire while still sucking blood…”

Below we see the famed Republican moralist, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, as he explores the subtleties of President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. A written excerpt, followed by the Full Monty on tape:

If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions…

Next thing you know, it’ll be perfectly legal to mate with anything at all, even Republican Congressmen from Texas.

Surely you didn’t expect me to keep this one all to myself:

…Greene, who lives outside Shelton, suffers from epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterized by unprovoked and reoccurring seizures. He said the snake, its reddish-brown body draped around him like a necktie when he’s out in public, senses when a seizure is imminent and gives him a light squeeze. The warning gives him enough time to take medication to head off the attack, alert someone it’s coming or move to an area where the thrashing is not disruptive.

Greene blacks out during these episodes, but his wife, Karen, said the snake’s warning has headed off about a half-dozen seizures in Redrock’s five months with Greene. This month, Greene has had four seizures at night – she refuses to let the boa constrictor share their bed – but none during the day…

Greene said he removes the snake when given a warning and hands him to his wife or another companion. Redrock has never exhibited aggressive behavior toward him or other residents, he said.

“It takes a special kind of snake to be a service animal,” he said.

This picture is of a baby milksnake found on Great Hollow Road in Cornwall, Connecticut. It’s from a photo gallery accompanying an article on local snakes I did for this month’s Cornwall Chronicle, our community newsletter. Click the “Read on…” link below to see the rest of the pictures. Bring the family.

Here’s Rush Limbaugh again, still scribbling away on the walls of America’s toilets:

They don’t like Gitmo, we have to shut it down. They don’t like what we’ve done, fine, Obama will run around and apologize. I’m telling you, folks, it is not the United States of America that serves as Barack Obama’s role model. It’s other socialist nations that have failed and the concept of socialism that is his role model. I’ll tell you what, stupid little community organizer, organize this.

From Lincoln’s Virtues: an Ethical Biography, by William Lee Miller:

When the boys in the neighborhood put hot coals on the backs of turtles to entertain themselves by watching the turtles’ reaction, there are several courses of action open to you. As a good fellow, you can go along with the fun. As one who does feel the turtle’s pain, but is intimidated, you can keep your objections to yourself. As one who has more important business elsewhere, you could ignore the whole matter. As a budding representative of the relativisms of the century to come, you could shrug your shoulders and say: “They like to put hot coals on turtles, I don’t like to put hot coals on turtles — preferences differ. Who is to choose? Don’t be judgmental.”

Or you can do what the ten-year-old Abraham Lincoln did: You can tell your companions that what they are doing is wrong, and that they should not do what they are doing. And you may even, as young Lincoln did, draw out the larger moral principle, and write a composition — cruelty to animals is wrong — and argue publicly on its behalf in your one-room school.

Or on the other hand you could…

This is from a long campaign profile in the New York Times of May 21, 2000, to which we should have paid more attention than we did:

While playing Little League baseball, running for class president, or even sobbing in the principal’s office, George W. Bush absorbed West Texas values that many old friends say are central to understanding who he is today…

‘‘We were terrible to animals,’’ recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out.

‘‘Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,’’ Mr. Throckmorton said. ‘‘Or we’d put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.’’

When he was not blowing up frogs, young George — always restless and something of a natural leader — would lead neighborhood children on daredevil expeditions around town, seeing how close they could come to breaking their necks.

Unless I’ve seriously underestimated you, you won’t want to miss this one:

NOW SHE HAS HER PIT BULL CLONED —
ONCE SHE MANACLED A MORMON FOR SEX

Beauty queen who fled UK while on bail resurfaces with her five puppies

The photo was taken from a small boat and with a small camera, but look hard enough and you will eventually see two water snakes. That they are facing away from each other doesn’t mean they’re not friends.

A lot of you have been asking why we don’t run more about turtles. Actually we had turtle items as long ago as August of 2003 and as recently as January of 2007, but here’s another:

BANGKOK, Thailand — A leatherback turtle has been tracked swimming from the coast of the Papua province in Indonesia to Oregon, researchers said, in what may be the longest trip for marine vertebrae between breeding and feeding sites.

“This is an animal perfectly suited for doing this kind of journey,” said Scott Benson, research fishery biologist for the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, who helped track the turtle and presented details of the journey at a sea turtle symposium last month.

The longest distance of nine turtles tagged in 2003, Benson said, was the leatherback that reached Oregon and then headed to Hawaii before the battery on the satellite transmitter gave out. The 12,774-mile journey took 647 days, he said.

Dear Printer Repair Man:

Please come to my house and check my printer. Every time I use the printer — and I am away while it prints — my papers are wrinkled, even shredded. Sometimes the ink is blurred . I hope that you can find the problem!!

Sincerely,

Concerned Computer Owner

***************
Dear Concerned Computer Owner:

While you were gone today, I checked your printer, and I found your problem. Please watch the YouTube video I produced for you for the answer.

Sincerely,

Your Printer Repair Man

Thanks to the Washington Post, this much we know: Bernie Kerik is one hell of a multi-tasker:

This much we know: In 2001, a Lower Manhattan apartment meant to provide a haven for rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero reportedly became Kerik and Regan's love nest. The two had come together while Kerik was writing his memoir, which ReganBooks published.

Here we learn that crickets in Utah are already living the Republican dream:

But in the deserts of Utah, Dr. Couzin and his colleagues discovered that giant swarms may actually be made up of a lot of selfish individuals.

Mormon crickets will sometimes gather by the millions and crawl in bands stretching more than five miles long. Dr. Couzin and his colleagues ran experiments to find out what caused them to form bands. They found that the forces behind cricket swarms are very different from the ones that bring locusts together. When Mormon crickets cannot find enough salt and protein, they become cannibals.

“Each cricket itself is a perfectly balanced source of nutrition,” Dr. Couzin said. “So the crickets, every 17 seconds or so, try to attack other individuals. If you don’t move, you’re likely to be eaten.”

Ever have the feeling that if you don’t blog something you’re going straight to hell when you die? Here’s Katherine Harris running for the Senate. Even though it was Florida she lost:

It has just come to my attention that “when a male mantis is decapitated, cutting off the brain from the ventral nerve cord, the body begins incessant stepping movements which carry it in a circle.

“In addition, the abdomen and genital appendages begin incessant copulatory movements and a headless male can often mate sucessfully.”

This suggests all sorts of avenues for speculation, none of which I will explore. But don’t let that stop you. Contrast and compare.

A well-known Georgia segregationist of the time once called Jimmy Carter a liar. His press aide, Jody Powell, counterattacked with, “Being called a liar by Lester Maddox is like being called ugly by a frog.”

This is not the frog Jody had in mind.

Down south they say that if you come across a turtle on a fencepost, you know three things about him for sure. He doesn’t know how he got there. He doesn’t know why he’s there. And he doesn’t know how to get off.

Hard to blame the turtle for his fix. Blame the voters who put him there. You know who you are.