Category Archives: Environmentalism & Animal Rights

Bob & Carol Dawson’s Parrot Paradise

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Morality

An uplifting couple of hours were spent today, Sunday, at the “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary,” a magical parrot oasis, built and operated by the best of Western Washington, Bob and Carol Dawson. (Make that the best of the best.) Not since Sean and I visited Christy Hensrude’s Zazu’s House Parrot Sanctuary have we been so inspired. (We endorse both rescues unequivocally.)

In preparation for the first of many such future volunteer visits, we made toys galore from non-toxic wood Sean had cut in the garage. (Reluctantly, Oscar-Wood donated some of his colorful stash of beads.) Mounds of fresh, organic greens, assorted vegetables and fruits were washed (very thoroughly) and tossed with organic seed (pumpkin, sunflower, hemp and flax) as well as nuts, smashed in-shell with a meat pounder, so that the smaller birds could enjoy Brazil, pecan and walnut.

The food we served in Bob’s high-quality dishes, which required hardly any scrubbing. Yes, down to the smallest detail, these people are driven by devotion. So too were the toys hung. But most inspiring was taking in the totality of Bob and Carol’s creation, all 22 acres of it. Situated in beautiful rural western Washington and ranked #16 of 290 charities in the region; “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary” is a glorious, well-kept and smartly run haven—a home to hundreds upon hundreds of free-flying flocks of happy, thriving parrots.

“Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary” is truly a labor of love.

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With Bob Dawson in front of the small-bird enclosure:

Yummy:

The same enormous enclosure snapped from the outside:

This man is the real deal:

From The Parrot Archive:

“Oscar-Wood, Non-Stop Naughty”
“‘Dead Birds Flying’: Help Steve Boyes Help The Cape Parrot”
Precious Oscar-Wood Pacifies Himself

UPDATED: Lite Libertarians & Fracking: ‘Progress’ Over Private Property (The Cornerstone Of Civilization)

Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, libertarianism, Private Property, Technology

Lite libertarians—who always put “progress” above private property—just love fracking, the colloquial for “hydraulic fracturing” for natural gas. The great John Stossel has extolled the merits of fracking in his columns and broadcasts. Myself, I don’t know enough about “the drilling method that uses water, sand and other additives to expand fissures in underground rocks to free oil or natural gas trapped within them.” But I do know about the natural right to private property.

A legalistic ploy like the “split estate,” whereby “the right to develop oil or gas deposits is severed from the surface”—in other words, you own only the land surface, not the minerals below the surface—amounts to a lien on private property. Unless, of course, the “split estate” arrangement is clearly specified in the property deed of sale. Namely, “A” sells the land to “B,” under the condition, specified in a contract, that “A” retains rights to what’s underground.

Currently, some fracking operations are set up on the private land of hapless owners, who either did not know that “mineral rights had been sold off long before” their acquisition of said land. Or, could “still be forced to allow gas mining [on their land], if a majority of [their] neighbors sign leases with drillers.”

“Thin libertarians” think that generally approving of all technology makes them forward-thinking and ever-so hip. However, contra the angle mined by Mr. Stossel and his philosophical kin, the central problem with fracking is that it is done, for the most, in violation of homesteader, private-property rights.

By granting permits to allow vertical penetration of someone’s land with heavy equipment, state lawmakers are screwing the landowner out of his rightfully owned land and the privacy, peace and tranquility he is entitled to on that parcel of land.

Clearly the problem with grants of mineral rights by state or federal lawmakers is that these grants of privilege by government, local or federal, violate the landowner’s natural rights of private property.

UPDATE: In answer to the Facebook thread:

* Neighborhoods could also form a neighborhood association whereby buying into the community came with either a fracking permit or a ban on the practice.

* Reminder: The post is not about “fracking,” but about property rights, the cornerstone of libertarianism—and civilization itself.

Who Is Choreographing Mrs. Palin?

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Republicans, Sarah Palin

“Truth is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Sarah Palin to an audience at the Values Voter Summit. Mrs. Palin’s mixed metaphor (truth/species) is by far more offensive than forgetting where the seat of power is situated; who cares that the American monarch sits in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

The White House is hardly the people’s house. It’s the people’s burden.

Barely A Blog contributor Myron Pauli was right all along about Sarah Palin being political “cotton candy.” She’s a great personality as an Alaskan, a mom, a hunter, runner, oil and gas ace (expertise she has never “tapped”). For the rest, her life has taken on a reality-show flavor. And the spontaneous ability to connect with an audience has been replaced with a weird, disjointed quality.

Who on earth is choreographing poor Mrs. Palin’s public appearances? She has obviously been told to modulate her voice almost like a preacher, lending it the cadence of a crazy person’s voice.

The there’s the governor’s propensity for rambling, run-off sentences, peppered with grating gerunds. Pearls of wisdom are often lost in the prolix. (One kinda cute line in Palin’s odd address to the Values Voter Summit: “Barack’s bombs are The Bomb.”)

And please don’t attack me for Palin’s devolution. Starting with “Sensational Sarah,” I’ve written oodles in praise of the original Palin persona, recommending that she “fashion herself as an expert, not as a generalist. On energy and environmental issues Palin is indeed an ace. When it comes to the ins-and-outs of the oil and gas industry—ownership, extraction, contracts and leases—Sarah Palin is as sharp as a tack. On both the philosophical and pragmatic levels, she grasps the urgent need to commercialize America’s abundant resources.”

Parrot Smarts

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Intelligence, Science

Those of us who’re owned by a parrot know of their great intelligence and wish the general public would come to sympathize with their plight in the wild and in captivity. Scientists are slowly becoming hip to this remarkable intelligence. Hat tip to Marc Harper for “Cockatoos teach tool-making tricks”: “Cockatoos learn to make and use tools when shown by another bird, research reveals.”

And Goffin cockatoos have now shown an impressive ability to learn from one another how to use and even how to make tools.
A team of researchers has discovered that the birds emulate tool-making tricks when they are demonstrated to them by another bird.
The results are published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.
The researchers are interested in what they call “technical intelligence”, which is essentially animals’ ability to use objects to solve problems.
It confirms how innovative and how adaptable this species is to novel problems”
“Cockatoos are very interesting for this, because they’re very playful with objects,” explained lead researcher Dr Alice Auersperg, from the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna.
She and her colleagues had already noticed that one of birds in their research aviary, named Figaro, spontaneously used sticks to drag nuts under the bars.
Figaro also worked out how to make his “fishing sticks” by stripping long, thin pieces off a wooden block in his enclosure.

For me the more remarkable aspect of a Cockatoo’s fashioning of a tool to retrieve a treat is the superior intelligence of the one bird and the flock’s ability to learn advantageous behavior from this leader.

The one researcher, however, seem a little dim in his disbelief, postulating that the observed learning is but “trial and error learning,” as if the two were mutually exclusive faculties. I wonder how this skeptic thinks kids learn? Modeling, schedules of reinforcement, trial and error: has this guy heard of B. F. Skinner?

Parrots are flock animals: They watch each other, need each other and learn from one another as a matter of survival. In the absence of a flock, humans become their family. Thus nothing is crueler than isolating a parrot.