Magpies Are Smarter Than You Think

It can be somewhat unsettling to realize that an animal you may think of as a literal birdbrain is, at least within a particular environment or framework, a little smarter than you realized or maybe even a little smarter than you. 

I wasn't surprised that an animal was able to figure out how to remove a foreign object placed upon it. 

Anyone who's ever watched a dog remove an unwanted collar or cone won't be amazed by that. I was intrigued that not only was a Magpie able to remove the tracking device but also that a Magpie was somehow able to communicate its distress to others of its kind who were interested enough to stop whatever they were doing and assist their brother or sister in precisely the method required.

The Australian magpie is one of the cleverest birds on earth. It has a beautiful song of extraordinary complexity. It can recognize and remember up to 30 different human faces. In 2019 Dominique Potvin, an animal ecologist at University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, set out to study magpie social behavior. 

She and her team spent around six months perfecting a harness that would carry miniature tracking devices in a way that was unintrusive for magpies. They believed it would be nearly impossible for magpies to remove the harnesses from their own bodies. “The first tracker was off half an hour after we put it on,” she said.

The Whistler Radio Show

The Whistler Radio Show was an old time radio show that ran from 1942 thru 1955. It was a noir radio drama that tracked closely to many of the noir films of the time. Usually a desperate man or woman or a hardened criminal would do something illegal or unethical. They might get away with it at first but would almost always get caught at the end, usually by some small detail they had overlooked or their own greed. IIRC every so often an innocent person might get in trouble or there might be a happy ending but these were rare occurrences. 

The narrator, The Whistler, would offer commentary, usually sardonic and grim, on events.  Everything would always wrap up in 24-27 minutes. Things moved fast. Many episodes can be found on youtube, on various old time radio sites, satellite radio, or in CD collections. I like the music and the Trans-Atlantic/Mid-Atlantic accents.

Opioid Deal Finalized But Victims Get Squat!

Say you're the CEO of a heroin importation and wholesale distributorship company named Junk, Smack, & White Horse Inc. Life is good. 

You have begun vertical integration with overseas suppliers and some smaller dealers, bringing them into your conglomerate. 

You still have large competitors (those disrespectful muyerfuyer SOBs at Mexican Brown & China White LLC are testing your patience) but at least when police crackdowns occur you're not the only target.  

You face the minor irritations of customers dying, prostituting themselves, robbing others to pay for your product, becoming homeless, abusing their loved ones, and becoming unproductive junkies, but as any cook will attest, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Anyway, your customers don't live in your neighborhood. Your bank account, stock portfolio, homes, yachts, cars, children's private schools, and wife's dresses and jewelry let you know it's all worth it. 

Bridgewater New Jersey Racism

Justice is supposed to be blind. If the so-called justice system is not blind then it's of no use. 

This is a truism if you happen to be Black and especially if you happen to be a Black male. 
You will be treated more harshly than anyone else for the exact same violation.

It would be comforting to think that this bias only happened in the bad old days or in certain backwards Southern states but it still happens everywhere today. 

The different standard is so obvious that in the latest example even the white (or at least non-Black) person who benefitted from this bias recognized it and called it out.

A video of police officers breaking up a fight at a New Jersey mall has sparked anger over accusations that law enforcement treated the two teenagers involved in the scuffle — one Black and one white — differently. 

Don't Mess With Bulls!!!

For a variety of reasons it's important to be able to tell the difference between a cow and a bull. Fortunately I already had that piece of information stored away somewhere in my brain. Now a California cyclist also knows that a wise man ascertains if the large bovine impeding his path is a bull or cow before he proceeds.

Female Twins Attempt to Murder Waiter

Some people like to make categorical claims that there is never any reason for violence against women, that no man should ever hit a woman, that any man who does use force against a woman is not a real man and so forth and so on. 

Although I would agree that in a domestic conflict situation no one should initiate violence against anyone else I can't agree that there is never any reason for anyone to use violence against a woman. 

There are, no matter how much both traditionalists and feminists might like to pretend otherwise, some physically aggressive, impulsively violent, and downright dangerous women in this world. 

A recent example of this came to light in a George Webb restaurant near Milwaukee where two women, apparently upset with the speed and quality of their food order, allegedly expressed their displeasure by assaulting, pistol whipping, and shooting the male waiter. 

Twin sisters are facing charges after a restaurant worker was shot in the face because their food was taking too long, Wisconsin detectives said. The twins, both 20 from Milwaukee, were charged with attempted first-degree homicide with a dangerous weapon after the Jan. 30 incident at a George Webb location in Wauwatosa.

Right-Wing Loons Force Closure of National Butterfly Center

When two people can't get along they have to stop living together. 

One underlying reason that people can't get along is that they no longer share the same reality. 

From a societal standpoint two people's personal problems don't mean very much.

But when entire swaths of society reject empiricism, embrace outlandish disproven conspiracies, and seek to harass and intimidate other people based on their distorted reality map then that is a much bigger problem than two people getting upset because they have different ideas about money, child raising, fidelity, or clothing choices. 

Society begins to fall apart when too many people no longer agree on reality.

Conservatives have been on the warpath about race (what else, I may have more to write on that later) but have recently taken a detour to attack the National Butterfly Center. Yes you read that correctly.

Email Spam and Lottery Win

In the past sometimes friends or loved ones sent me email which I didn't see either because I wasn't online or more likely because the email went to my spam folder. 

After a few unpleasant conversations that could (wrongly) end up with the person believing that I didn't think that they were important, I changed all of my personal email filters so that certain ids were automatically sorted into the appropriate non-spam folders. 

I didn't do this with my work email because there I think there are indeed many emails and senders that aren't that important. Still, from time to time, on both work and personal email accounts, occasionally stuff winds up in the spam folder that really isn't spam and really is worth my time to read and respond. So far such items have never included a notification of a $3 million lottery win but you never know right?
Jan. 21 (UPI) -- A Michigan woman checking her email spam folder for a missing message made a far more surprising discovery -- she had won a $3 million lottery jackpot. Laura Spears, 55, of Oakland County, told Michigan Lottery officials she bought a ticket for the Dec. 31 Mega Millions drawing on MichiganLottery.com.
"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," Spears said. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account."
Spears said a message from the Michigan Lottery caught her eye.
"That's when I saw an email from the lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It's all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million," she said.  LINK

Health Care Costs Continue To Rise

Because many people who supported the PPACA, both popularly and derisively known as Obamacare, did so from moral fervor and political partisanship (as did many opponents, often with the added fecal nugget of racism dropped in) they were utterly uninterested in any epistemological or evidence based evaluation for the claims that Obamacare would lower premiums, deductibles, and health care costs. 

Supporters took it as an article of faith that Obamacare would do all of those things. And if you questioned that belief or wondered if there were a better way of lowering health care costs, lemming like supporters squealed that you were a dummy, a useful idiot for Republicans, or worst of all some sort of hateful right-wing conservative cretin misogynist misandrist who just wanted people to die.

Silence heretic!!!!

Well.

Ferris State History Professor Goes On Rant

Occasionally I had some eccentric teachers throughout educational career. Some instructors had little interest in the subject matter, didn't like me or for that matter any of their students, or were clearly just playing out the string until they retired, married someone rich or won the lottery, which ever came first. 

That's life. But I don't recall any of my teachers (and most of them were indeed decent men and women) ever losing it quite like Ferris State University History Professor Barry Mehler recently did. To be fair, evidently the good professor was a little peeved by the University's insistence upon holding in person classes at a time when the Covid pandemic is not subsiding. 

I can understand this frustration. My employer is making unpleasant noises about ending working from home options. If you force people to choose between their money and their life you might get more responses like this. 
BIG RAPIDS, MI – A Ferris State University faculty member has been placed on administrative leave after he reportedly went on a profanity-laced rant about the coronavirus pandemic during a class lecture video that was posted online.

Barry Mehler, a history professor in Ferris State’s humanities department, called his students “vectors of disease” and blamed the university for holding in-person classes amid the COVID-19 crisis during an introductory video posted to his YouTube account on Jan. 9, 2022.

Non-Citizen Voting In NYC

New York City recently made it legal for non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. 

This will include legal immigrants on green cards/visas and illegal immigrants with DACA status or who can otherwise show residence in NYC. 

When I first heard about this I thought it was a joke or some deliberate conservative lie, but no in fact, this was indeed the case.

New York City became the largest city in the country to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections after the City Council on Thursday overwhelmingly approved legislation granting the right to more than 800,000 legal residents.
The move places New York City at the forefront of the debate over voting rights, serving as a stark contrast to some states that have moved to add voting restrictions, including explicitly barring noncitizens from voting.
The legislation was approved over the objections of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who questioned whether the City Council has the power to grant voting rights to noncitizens. Legal experts expect that the bill could face a legal challenge. Noncitizens would be able to begin to register to vote a year from now. They could begin voting in local elections as of Jan. 9, 2023, according to the City Council.

Not All Superheroes Wear Capes: Sixth Grade Boy Saves Two Lives On Same Day

It is important to remember that in the midst of political strife, selfish behavior, and predictions of oncoming civil war, that human beings still have an urge towards selfless behavior that will appear at just the right time. Davyon Johnson is an example of the the best that humans can be.

On December 9 sixth grader Davyon Johnson saved a fellow student from choking to death by performing the Heimlich maneuver. 

Later on the same day, while his mother was driving him to church Davyon noticed a house fire and convinced his mother to stop. Davyon helped an older woman escape to safety. Would that we could all rise to the occasion when we are met with life and death challenges on our journey through this world.

Davyon Johnson, 11, couldn’t quite understand it: the pizza party, the accolades from the mayor of Muskogee, Okla., his picture in the newspaper and on television — and the word that had been linked to his name: hero. Why, the sixth grader asked his mother, was he being rewarded for doing the right thing? “I told him, ‘You saved two people’s lives,’” said LaToya Johnson, Davyon’s mother. “‘That is special.’” 

And so began a whirlwind December for Davyon, who lives in Muskogee, Okla., who loves wrestling, basketball, remote-controlled cars and Fortnite, and who was honored by his community this month for saving the life of a fellow student who was choking and an older woman who was escaping a house fire, both on the same day, Dec. 9. The Muskogee Police Department and Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office presented Davyon with a certificate on Dec. 15, naming him an honorary member of their forces. LINK

Black Man Insulted And Detained For Trying To Cash His Paycheck

Something that is ongoing in American culture is that people from just about every walk of life think and behave as if Black people, specifically Black men, are less intelligent lower forms of life that deserve absolutely no respect and are almost certainly guilty of something.

I don't think it's possible to find a honest Black man who hasn't run across this attitude in one form or another. 
This never ending hate and contempt is something that almost certainly leads to greater hypertension, stress, and all of the health concerns that go along with that. This racism could be something like a judge mistaking a Black lawyer for a criminal defendant, Bill O'Reilly "joking" that the professor Marc Lamont Hill looks like a cocaine dealer, or co-workers constantly mistaking one Black man for the only other Black man in the department when the two look nothing alike and are far apart in age. 

It is what it is. This started long before I got here and will continue after I'm gone. But one really egregious example of this recently came to light in Minnesota.

Joe Morrow, a Minnesota man, was the victim of what many call “banking while Black” after being put in handcuffs after attempting to cash his paycheck inside a U.S. Bank branch in suburban Minneapolis last October.
Morrow told KSTP-TV reporters that despite having an account with the bank, employees at a branch in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, “were all looking at me and just staring at me and then looking at the check and then staring at me again. And I’m already knowing what they’re thinking — that the check fake.” 

Morrow, who moved to Minnesota from Mississippi last year and worked as an “order picker,” said the incident began well before the police had arrived at the bank where he attempted to cash a check for roughly $900. 

The man said he was informed by the bank’s manager, John Askwith, that the check was fraudulent and that “you people always coming in here with fake checks.” I work there, bro. And I’m going to report you too, bro, this is racial,” Morrow was heard saying calmly, without expletives, to the manager before he was cautioned about his allegations of racial profiling. When Sgt. Justin Pletcher arrived, police body camera footage showed Morrow already in Askwith’s office, leaning back in a chair, hands folded. The 23-year-old maintained that the check was indeed real.

House Censures Arizona Republican Gosar For Violent Video

I would like to think that I am a valued member of the organization at which I am currently employed. Maybe, maybe not. 

Different executives probably have had different takes on that question. 

But regardless of my actual or perceived worth to my employer I am certain that if I were posting videos depicting my assault or murder of my co-workers and/or people higher up than me in the company hierarchy, I would immediately be looking for new employment. Having a reprimand placed in my HR file wouldn't suffice as a punishment for such actions. 

The modern Republican Party doesn't understand or care about such things. For them "joking" about assaulting or murdering political opponents is a normal function of being in government--at least as long as they are the ones making such "jokes" or comments. 

WASHINGTON — A bitterly divided U.S. House of Representatives voted narrowly on Wednesday to censure Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, for posting an animated video that depicted him killing a Democratic congresswoman and assaulting President Biden. 

The formal rebuke of the far-right congressman who has allied himself with white nationalists — the first censure since 2010 and only the 24th in the history of the republic — also stripped him of his committee assignments.

Dumb Michigan Woman Hires Hitman

"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."
-Frank Zappa
After reading the following recent local story I recalled the above quote by the late musician Frank Zappa. A woman who was apparently not over a bad breakup of some kind decided that the world would be a better place without her former husband. 

And so, like every vengeful yet rational spouse who has reached that conclusion she decided to go online and rent a hitman. Yes indeed. As you might imagine subsequent events didn't pan out in the woman's favor.
A Michigan woman could spend up to nine years in prison for trying to get her ex-husband killed. Wendy Lynn Wein, 52, of South Rockford, used a fake website called "Rent-A-Hitman" to try to solicit the murder of her former husband on July 17, 2020. She used a pseudonym but entered her real information at the end of her "service request." However, the "Rent-A-Hitman" domain was created as a cyber-security test site.

Grocery Store Etiquette

At one of the grocery store chains where I used to routinely shop, despite what seems to be massive growth in the shopping population, store managers have installed more self-service kiosks. 

Store managers have reduced the number of lines staffed by clerks. And a customer can, with occasional exceptions, forget about having anyone bag his or her groceries. 

I guess this is because of price pressures from online competition as well as your typical corporate greed to reduce every penny that is paid to human beings who actually do the work. 

What is making things even worse from my perspective is that although stores have continued to increase the number of self-service kiosks, they haven't exactly gone out of their way to make them user friendly.  In one store at any given time, including the "rush hour" on weekend mornings most of the self-service kiosks are non-functional while at a different store across town the managers have altered the kiosks to not accept cash, only debit or credit cards. 

Great Blue Heron Has A Tasty Snack

For you Mr. Rat, the trip on this planet has come to an end!

It took the Great Blue Heron only a few seconds to lift the rat, once killed, out of the water and swallow it—this morning at the Central Park Pond. pic.twitter.com/E4Vx0ya8od

— Manhattan Bird Alert (@BirdCentralPark) September 5, 2021

When Women Attack

We are told that there is never any excuse for violence against women. Okay. But what about when women initiate violence against other people? Do the targets of that violence have the right to defend themselves? 

Two recent incidents made me think about women and violence in a way different than the common narrative. In the first incident a large young woman who is apparently well over 200 pounds attacked two elderly beauty shop owners who combined together probably don't weigh as much as the woman. And the attacker's apparent reason for the assault was simply that she didn't have the money to pay for the items she wanted. CLEVELAND — A woman caught on camera brutally attacking a couple on July 23 at their beauty supply store on Lorain Road has been arrested, according to a spokesperson for the Cleveland Division of Police. Ebony Afzal, 25, of Cleveland, was arrested Thursday for felonious assault, a second-degree felony, according to court documents.

Afzal is accused of beating the couple, who owns Chic Beauty Supply on Lorain Road, over what is said to be an $11.85 transaction. Their son David Jo told News 5 Cleveland that it all started when Afzal allegedly tried to pay for the items with pre-paid credit card when it got declined.

Mother Defends Children Against Racist Home Invasion

I do not think that every single person should own a firearm. And I know some people who own guns who in my opinion probably shouldn't. But I have never understood those who claim that only police or the military should own guns. 

I have zero respect for that position, not only because there are plenty of examples of government officials harming unarmed people, but also because there are even more instances of criminals seeking to harm unarmed people and/or those whom they perceive as weaker than themselves. 

Whether we like it or not, the world is full of human predators. Although most of us will likely never encounter such folks there's absolutely nothing wrong with being prepared if we do.
Three white people allegedly threatened to kill a black family — including two children — during a violent home invasion in Michigan, prosecutors said. 

The suspects — identified as Branden Odegaard, Michael Graves and Maci Pietryga – were arrested after cops responded to a 911 call on April 26 in Walled Lake, where witnesses said the trio “threatened to kill the occupants” and used a racial slur, the Detroit News reported.

SALT Deduction Cap Fight

I play chess. I hate when my opponent manipulates me into a situation with no good choices. I don't think that former President Trump and his merry band of sycophants are good chess players but they did box in the Democrats on an issue that divides people along class and regional lines. 

I am referring to the 2017 tax law which capped the individual federal tax deduction for state and local income and property taxes or SALT at $10,000. This deduction was previously unlimited. 

So before 2017 someone who owned a mansion or other expensive property as their primary residence could deduct the entire state or local property tax or income tax owed from his or her federal income tax liability. But they can't do that today.

 
Some people who pay high local income and property taxes don't like the new law. Not one bit. Many of the people most impacted are well off or wealthy Democrats in politically Democratic or "blue states".  

It's ironic because much of the Democratic messaging is that the well off should pay their fair share, which is in part what the SALT $10,000 deduction cap does, even though that's NOT why Trump and Republicans put it into place. I think the issue is probably the perceived unfairness that someone with a million dollar home in say Texas or Alabama is, all else equal, paying less in overall taxes than someone with the same priced home in California or New York.