Urgent owlet update...and other stuff

Photo credit: Sister in law Unit.

A while back I posted a picture of a baby great horned owl that was born on our hill. I'm pleased to say that he survived and has now taken to venturing forth. This isn't quite the same as fledging, according to the Spousal Unit. Apparently that is like moving out. Instead, the little critter is branching, which entails a return to the nest. You can see both in the picture above, with the nest in the upper left and the owlet in the lower right.

YOU REALLY CAN'T. I've often mentioned here my campaign to update state motto of West Virginia from "Mountaineers Are Always Free" to "You Can't Make This **** Up." This column by statehouse reporter Phil Kabler has a priceless example in it.

COAL-LAPSE. There's been a lot of coverage about the decline of coal. This AP article suggests it's happening faster than anticipated. Note that the article attributes most of this to market conditions rather than a certain Muslim socialist of questionable American birth.

SPEAKING OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE. I knew things were bad, but I didn't know things had gone this far.

Wow

The WV legislative session has been...a cross between a zombie apocalypse and a roller coaster ride. And a root canal. But there have been surprises, not all of them bad. I was amazed to learn that the WV senate voted down a "religious freedom" bill that had turned into and attempt to legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

I guess the action started last night, when some key Republican senators joined with Democrats to ensure the bill wouldn't harm nondiscrimination ordinances.It was a pretty touching story, in which some people got emotional and decided to follow their conscience.

 This evening, I'm amazed and pleased to say that the senate voted the whole thing down without debate. Here's the AP report.

It just goes to show you never know what is going to happen.

Human motivations being inherently ambiguous, some probably voted against the amended bill because it wasn't strong enough, while others took a strong anti-discrimination stand. In any case, kudos and thanks to the senate for this one.

Annals of Whack, continued

I'm kind of grateful to the state of Indiana for stepping up and not allowing West Virginia to grab all the Whack limelight. The Gentle Reader will no doubt be aware of the controversy that flared up after that state's governor signed a "Religious Freedom Restoration" bill widely viewed as a means to legally discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Not to mention the whole pizza thing...

My favorite part so far is the reaction of Matt Staver of the Liberty Council, who compared people who support non-discrimination policies to demonic, Christianity-hating terrorists. If El Cabrero had not evolved far beyond the point of engaging in snark, I might be tempted to say something like "Maybe it takes one to know one." Of course, that would never happen and I would never say something like that even in private conversation, much less in a blog post.

Stop the presses--I agree with Wal-Mart!

There is still a good bit of foaming and howling going on at the WV legislature. As I mentioned yesterday, one example of such is a bill that would make it illegal for cities and counties to pass anti-discrimination ordinances for things like sexual orientation.

It makes me wonder what's next: maybe require people suspected of homosexuality to wear pink triangles?

This legislation is similar to a bill passed in Arkansas which even Wal-Mart found to be over the top. Here's what the retail giant had to say about why this is a bad idea:

Every day, in our stores, we see firsthand the benefits diversity and inclusion have on our associates, customers and communities we serve. It all starts with the core basic belief of respect for the individual. And that means understanding and respecting differences and being inclusive of all people...We feel this legislation is counter to this core basic belief and sends the wrong message about Arkansas.

 Let the record show that I'm with them for once.

What about the Twinkie?

I ran into a friend of mine today at the state asylum  legislature and we were commenting on the rather extreme level of Whack these days.

It kind of reminds me of the Twinkie discussion in the first Ghostbusters movie that went something like this:

Well, let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning's sample, it would be a Twinkie... thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.

Substitute West Virginia for New York and Whack for psychokinetic energy and it would work pretty well.

Here's the latest example: one bill now advancing through the House, HB2881, misnamed the WV Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act, would basically make it illegal for cities and counties to pass anti-discrimination ordinances on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Twinkie just keeps getting bigger.

Foam and howl, guys.

Who'd a thunk it?

I must admit to being a bit surprised that a bill ending workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation passed the US Senate 61-30. Not sure how it will go in the Reptile Room  US House of Representatives though. WV's junior senator Joe Manchin had one of his good days.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on poverty.

URGENT PHOTOGENIC WEIRD LIFE FORM PHOTOS here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Must see TV

I have to give props again to Stephen Colbert for this hilarious "report" on an Appalachian small town in eastern Kentucky which is, so far, the smallest to adopt a Fairness ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Vicco has a population of around 334...and an openly gay mayor.

Props to the people of Vicco, too!

WHERE YOU LIVE may affect how long you live. And WV doesn't come off too good from this look.

PATRIOT COAL. Union miners are voting today on a proposed agreement with Patriot Coal (search Patriot Coal in upper left corner for more information). I'm not sure how the vote will go but if I was a gambling man I'd say it will pass. The big news is that the UMWA leadership got a better deal for its members than a federal bankruptcy judge after the judge's ruling.

MEDICAID, PRISONS, DRUG ABUSE. An audit from Oregon suggests that the former will help reduce problems with the other two. And save millions.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

An injury to one...

According to a poll taken in January, around 61 percent of West Virginians oppose discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation. The nationwide number is even higher. Each year, groups like Fairness WV tries to nudge the legislature into passing anti discriminatory measures.

Such efforts got a boost today when both the state AFLCIO and the United Mine Workers of America publicly supported anti discriminatory legislation, claiming that this was a basic matter of workplace fairness. In places where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation isn't forbidden by law, a union contract is often the only protection such workers enjoy.

Congratulations to the labor movement for standing on the principles that a worker is a worker is a worker and an injury to one is an injury to all.

This and that

It's disappointing but not surprising that the WV legislature passed a gutted version of its Marcellus Shale bill aimed a regulating the new natural gas boom at the behest of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin.

Holy "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Batman!

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, the WV Board of Education passed an anti-bullying policy that explicitly protects gay and lesbian students. That ought to give a couple religious right groups something to howl at the moon about.

WINDOWS AND MIRRORS. If you are in the Charleston area today and tomorrow (that would be Thursday Dec. 15 and Friday Dec. 16) come check out "Windows and Mirrors," a traveling art exhibit about the war in Afghanistan. It will be shown at Mountaineer Good News Garage, 221 Hale Street, from 5-8 tonight and from 10-2 on Friday. Here's coverage about it from the Gazette and the West Virginia News Service. Or you can read all about it here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The pale cast of thought

Seamus McGoogle thinks too much. Such cats are dangerous.

Lately I've been thinking about not thinking.

The related sciences of psychology and behavioral economics have pointed out that most of the time, we run on automatic pilot, without really thinking about what we're doing. We seem to have two related cognitive systems, one that doesn't require a lot of thought and another that is reflective and self-conscious.

The former is pretty fast and effortless, while the latter is slower and more deliberative.

It's probably a good thing that we have the autopilot function. It would be pretty hard to get things done if we had to consciously reflect how to tie shoes, wash dishes or mow the lawn.

The automatic system seems to have evolved to help animals (including us) deal with routine events. The reflective system may have developed to help us deal with novel situations.

It strikes me as a paradox that in education we sometimes seem to value the reflective questioning part, although the automatic one delivers most of the goods most of the time.

People nowadays, especially "progressives," tend to disparage rote learning and drill. But if you think about it, we learn some of our most important skills that way. Think of multiplication tables, spelling, reading, keyboarding, riding a bicycle, or tons of other things.

When I first tried to learn how to play the guitar, it took what seemed like ages to make a chord and even longer to change one. After a while, I could play and change basic chords without thinking about it. Martial artists and other athletes basically train so they won't have to think. So do most emergency responders--and that's a good thing most of the time.

Thinking and self-consciousness have their place but sometimes they're overrated. Think about it. Or not.

HEALTH CARE RESOURCE. Here's some useful information on the current health care reform debate from West Virginians for Affordable Health Care and the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

LOOKING BACK A VIETNAM is the theme of the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

NO CARDS. It looks like "moderates" in the US Senate have scrapped a key provision of the Employee Free Choice Act.

WV ITEMS. It was a surprise for me yesterday to see that there will be a change in leadership at the Department of Health and Human Resources, but no surprise to see that problems persist in the state's in-home Medicaid program for the elderly and disabled. On a different topic, Kanawha County schools dropped the words "sexual orientation" from policy intended to discourage bullying and harassment. Holy abject caving, Batman!

WHY DO DOGS BARK? Here's one possibility.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THOUGHTS ON DINOSAUR MANAGEMENT

Recent scientific discoveries point more and more to the evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds (search the Goat Rope archives for more). And the contemporary animal that shows up in articles about the above is the peacock.

Not long ago, there was an announcement that some dinosaurs had feathers, along with speculation that these performed the same display functions that you see in peafowl. Recent DNA tests have found that the tyrannosaurus had more genes in common with peafowl and chickens than with crocodiles and Komodo dragons.

Based on those premises, here are El Cabrero's thoughts on what you need to know about keeping dinosaurs.

1. Dinosaurs are LOUD. Especially in the summer when thoughts turn to love.

2. Dinosaurs are all about showing off. Especially the guys. (Note: they may not have a monopoly on this.) But they dress casually in the off-season.

3. Dinosaurs are kind of smart but really emotional when their hormones are ramped up. Sometimes boy dinosaurs get jealous of each other and chase each other around like a scene from the Benny Hill Show. But they can be really parental--even the dads (when the chicks are little).

4. Dinosaurs like to take dust baths.

5. Dinosaurs like to walk around and pick at things, but they usually sleep in pretty much the same places given the opportunity.

6. Dinosaurs are all about courtship, except for the chicken-related branches, for which consent is not required.

7. Dinosaurs read entirely too much sociobiology.

One final word about peacocks from the realm of religion. In a book I recently read on Buddhism, I was reminded that Prince Siddhartha grew up in a palace complete with peacocks in the garden. Now I know why he left home...

All I really wanted was a cat.

TOOL KIT for extreme inequality is here, by way of The Nation.

RISING FOOD PRICES are forcing many agencies to cut nutritional corners.

SEX ON THE BRAIN. Scientists have found a possible link between sexual orientation and brain symmetry.

URGENT ANCIENT GIANT MARSUPIAL WOMBAT UPDATE here.

IF IT SOUNDS LIKE THE MOTHER SHIP IS HOVERING OUTSIDE, must be cicadas.

ONE FOR THE ROAD. El Cabrero is about to hit the road for a while. Goat Rope, like the show, must go on, but without links about current events.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST

Caption: The consequences of our actions are sometimes distinctly uncool.

This week, in addition to links and comments about current events, Goat Rope is offering its readers a daily Nietzschean nugget from his book Beyond Good and Evil.

Admittedly, Nietzsche was kind of whacked at times, but when he was good, he was very, very good.

Today's selection highlights one of the irritating things about life:

The consequences of our actions take us by the scruff of the neck, altogether indifferent to the fact that we have 'improved' in the meantime.

I hate it when that happens. Don't you?

PEOPLE SUPPORT CHIP. A new survey shows overwhelming support for expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program (70 percent) and most (64 percent) support overriding the Bush veto.

HEALTH CARE and growing inequality is the subject of this column by WVU-Tech's John David.

YOU WOULDN'T KNOW IT given all the bashing of public education these days, but African-American students have made significant progress in closing the achievement gap according to this EPI snapshot.

OH GOOD. In yesterday's Gazette, no less than two leaders of the religious right have issued fatwas against the infidel.

One called for the banning of Pat Conroy's novels from AP English classes. Now I haven't read Conroy and no doubt would have picked something different since I'm an unapologetic member of the let-them-eat-classics school of literature. I've even tortured more than one GED class by making them read Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" aloud.

But that's not the point. It does not appear to have occurred to the people in question that vastly more harm has been done by people not reading than by reading, not to mention the harm done by censorship itself. Congratulations to the students who attended a school board meeting last night to assert their opposition to censorship.

The other one was mostly about the the "radical homosexual agenda to force their decadent lifestyle upon the citizenry at large." It also castigated some members of Congress for "normalizing and recognizing sodomy as a civil rights entitlement..." (Note to self: look up some legal definitions).

Another target was the recent action of the Charleston City Council to pass a measure opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The piece also managed to come out in favor of the death penalty.

It occurs to me that there are certain regimes around the world which share the priorities of these groups and which they might perhaps find more congenial to their felicity.

ON A RELATED NOTE. There are groups in WV, such as Create West Virginia, which have argued that if WV is going to attract creative people and investments and build a high road economy, we need to be open to diversity.

Let's imagine how the actions of the domestic Taliban might look to someone from outside considering West Virginia. They might say "Hmmmm. They like to ban books there. Maybe they'll get around to burning them soon. And they seem to hate x group there, but tomorrow it might be y or z. Thanks but no thanks."

TO CLEAR THE PALATE, it looks like the humble sea cucumber could teach us a lot about tissue regeneration. And it looks like going to the beach and eating seafood is an older tradition than we thought.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ENCIMA DEL MUNDO