What a blow; Jonathan Gruber is not all bad. In one sense, he’s actually very good and quite unusual. As the New York Times reported, he has eight parrots which he obviously adores. “And his wife, Andrea, volunteers at a bird rescue center.”
Just like your host, who is owned by one little green gremlin and recognizes the need to look after others like him.
Gruber takes his kid to Van Halen concerts, which shows he is quite discerning on the musical front too.
Complexity …
Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Human Accomplishment, Journalism, Morality
“We love them for being like us. … But then we find ourselves unprepared for the challenges.” So wrote Chuck Bergman on the plight and paradox of parrots. The article quoted is “No-Fly Zone: Denied Their Natural Habits, Millions of Pet Parrots Lead Bleak, Lonely Lives.” It appeared in All Animals magazine, published by the Humane Society of the United States.
An academic, writer, photographer and conservationist, Chuck’s pieces about parrots are, well, achingly beautiful. (Next, read “The World’s Smartest Birds, Set Free,” at Slate.com.)
Here is hoping that Chuck puts that epistolary passion for parrots to work in the cause of Bob and Carol Dawson’s parrot paradise: “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary.” I’ve written a short blog post about the sanctuary that Bob and Carol Dawson built. A feature about this haven—where it is well and truly about the birds—would be wonderful.
Africa, Barack Obama, Foreign Aid, Government, Healthcare, Morality
IT’S TRUE. What I reported earlier today, tentatively, has come to pass. The traitors who art in DC are considering using American taxpayer dollars to bring Ebola-afflicted foreigners to the US for treatment. Treason, theft and fraud have been rolled into one “Sensitive But Unclassified, Predecisional” memo, exposed by Fox News, denied and ignored by the malfunctioning mainstream media. (I’ve captures a section; the rest will have to be read on Fox News):
The scandal: “State Department memo on Ebola policies.”
Contrast the Australian response of “No thanks.”
“Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced ‘strong controls’ on arrivals from West African countries affected by cases of the deadly disease.”
Ethics, Morality, Pop-Culture, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist
It’s time for the pop-psychology explanations of how an essentially tender soul, Jaylen Fryberg, was pushed to murder classmates at Washington State’s Marysville-Pilchuck High School. First, the carnage, via CNN:
Two girls are in the intensive care unit at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, and two boys are in ICU at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Providence spokeswoman Erin Al-Wazan said.
Three are “very critically ill” with “very serious” injuries, she said. One is in serious condition. One of the boys, age 14, suffered a jaw injury. The other, age 15, was critically injured in the head.
“When the mental health mavens appear on the scene, the narrative expands some, but generally retains its idiotic thrust. Having been played for all it’s worth, the-culture-of-violence causal factor has given way to the more in-vogue bullying theory.
Skin-deep qualities have always determined the pecking order in schools. Still, Janis Ian’s haunting 1975 song, “Seventeen,” would not have been written today. Angry teenagers nowadays are simply less inclined to ruminate about their angst, and more likely to act on it. Social justice, they are taught, pivots on redistribution. And redistribution is achieved by making some pay for the lesser fortunes of others. When taught to reject the harsh reality of inequality, of not having everything one covets—the anger of entitlement easily bubbles to the fore. Be it popularity or pulchritude, there is a sense that someone ought to pay for the pain of being without.
Furthermore, where once kids might have seen dignity in a brave and stoic face, now, the cultural cognoscenti have declared these to be pathologies, symptoms of repression and denial. Is it any wonder that some kids—the bad ones, at least—feel that the culture of share-your-feelings-with-the-group gives them permission to take the rage of entitlement to its deadly conclusion?”
From “Three-Step Program To Moral Unaccountability” ©2000 By Ilana Mercer
Some of this creature’s tweets:
It breaks me… It actually does… I know it seems like I'm sweating it off… But I'm not.. And I never will be able to…????????????
— Jaylen Fryberg (@frybergj) October 21, 2014
Alright. You fuckin got me…. That broke me????????????
— Jaylen Fryberg (@frybergj) October 21, 2014
Fuuuucccckkkkkk you????
— Jaylen Fryberg (@frybergj) October 14, 2014