Tool Using Animals

Orangutan spearfishing.

We humans like to think we are so damn smart, you know, we make tools and such. Some claim human toolmaking is proof of God. The fact is, a whole plethora of animals are adept at making and using tools.

Building Houses

Humans make houses and even build whole cities. So do birds and prairie dogs. Weaver finches make elegantly constructed nests. Octopi will take a stone and carve out a proper den for themselves. Termites build temperature controlled highrises.

Manipulating The Environment

Beaver dam complete with spillway.

Human scientists are still trying to figure out why beavers build dams. Theories include underwater food storage, protection from predators, to create an environment for the growth of yummy tubers, and because they just hate the sound of running water. Damsel fish plant, tend, and harvest fields of a particular fungus. Ants, of course, care for herds of aphids like tiny sheep ranchers.

Weapons
We pride ourselves in thinking that nothing is more human than making and using weapons.

A lot of animals have come up with clever ways to create weapons. You've already seen the orangutan spear. The blanket octopus (above) will take the tendrils from a Portuguese Man O'War and wield them like a poisonous whip. Several birds are know to steal human bread and use bread crumbs as bait for fishing. Elephants will use their trunks to throw rocks at predators or annoying humans. The cleverest weapon user is the dolphin. He will grab a poisonous sea snake by the mid-section and swim through a school of fish swing the snake around. The angry snake bites at the fish. The paralyzed fish make an easy feast for the dolphin.

Tool Boxes

Crows and ravens have long been observed choosing and using twigs as tools to get at nutritious insects. What is less well known is that if they find a particularly useful tool they keep it and use it again and again. Some birds have collected a number of twigs and keep them together in a kind of tool box.

A fascinating blog on the subject is Animals Don't Think, kept by someone who knows animals are, in fact, very good thinkers.

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The Drone Wars

There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral. ~ Benito Mussolini

There are countless reasons to be disturbed by America's reliance on armed drones to assassinate our enemies.

These drones are inhuman robots flown by nerds with joysticks thousands of miles from the actual carnage. To these nerds it is just another video game to enjoy and the targets are nothing more than pixels to be obliterated.

One group of horsemen resembled a budding rose as bombs fell in their midst. ~ Vittorio Mussolini describing bombing villagers in Ethiopia

It is dishonorable. These are not people being killed in battle but victims ambushed in their sleep. Assassination has been a weapon of war since the dawn of civilization and it all those thousands of years it has always been considered the vile action of cowards and brigands.

Supporters claim these drones strike with laser-like efficiency but they are still blunt cudgels not sharp spears. More innocent children have been killed in the drone attacks than bad guys.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It is an act of war for a manned bombers to fly over sovereign airspace to drop bombs on people. It is, somehow, something less than war for the CIA to send unmanned drones to do precisely the same thing. Mostly this is because all sides, the US government and the foreign nations that have been violated, have a vested interest in pretending that acts of war are not acts of war.

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California In the News

Texas Poachers

If I owned both Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell. ~ Gen. Philip Sheridan, 1866

Texas Governor Rick Perry is using Texas tax money to seduce businesses to leave the Golden State and move to Baja Oklahoma. It makes sense. While California is a strong pro-union state, Texas has a massive slave (prison) labor resource. While California has a highly educated workforce, Texas schools teach creationism - a dumb worker is a happy worker.

State Budget Balanced

Now that the state has a Democratic governor and super majorities in the legislature, California was able to balance its budget easily. They did it by eliminating corporate tax breaks that paid companies to build useless structures like sports stadia. Oh, and we raised taxes on golfer Phil Mickelson.

Gaseous Prices

The price of produce is going up as the quality declines. This is because of a combination of drought and hard freezes. Gasoline is breaching $4.00 a gallon because this is California and the oil companies don't need to explain themselves to us peasants.

Black Bear Sighted in Desert

The bear on the California flag is a grizzly bear which was hunted to extinction in the state in 1922. A black bear was sighted recently in the high desert in eastern San Diego County. Don't know yet if it had migrated from the San Bernadino Mountains or was an illegal alien from Mexico.

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The Next Great Republican Purge

Joe Stalin (left) and three friends from the Russian Revolution. By 1938 all three had been purged from the Communist Party by their old friend Joe and executed on his orders.

One thing that endlessly amuses me is the habit of the Republican Party to emulate their old adversary, Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, and hold periodic party purges. Often they attack those who stray from orthodoxy in some small way and become RINOs.

Currently, the Republican Politburo has pointed its long knives at the Tea Party. Karl Rove, the Bush family's longtime executioner, has been tasked with driving Tea Party radicals from the Republican Party. There may not be show trials followed by firing squads, but with Rove you never now for sure.

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Superbowl Stats of the Day

• There are 48 minutes of commercials in the Superbowl.
• There is eleven minutes of actual action in the average NFL game. 
• There are 450 minutes of pre-game shows before Superbowl LXVII.
• They could broadcast every minute of action in every Superbowl from 1967 to 2010 in that time.
• Watching every minute of every commercial in every Superbowl game take a day and a half.

They say an actor hasn't truly made it until he has appeared on Broadway and a singer isn't truly washed-up until she performs on the Superbowl halftime show. So sorry, Beyonce.

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The NRA's "Death List"

The National Rifle Association has published a list of its enemies. A well thought out list. An extensive list. When the NRA published such a list there is certainly the implied threat that "you're dead to me" will simply be translated to "you're dead!" The NRA's death list is frighteningly extensive.

• The Elderly (the AARP, Grey Panthers)
• Jews (American Jewish Committee, B`nai B`rith, Union of American Hebrew Congregations)
• Minorities (NAACP, La Raza, Congress of National Black Churches)
• Women (National Organization for Women, General Federation of Women`s Clubs, League of Women Voters, YWCA)
• City Dwellers (Urban League, United States Conference of Mayors)

Just about every association of doctors and nurses is targeted. School and teachers groups are bulls-eyed. Religious institutions including the Catholic Conference and United Methodist Church are listed.

Scores of actors are on the hit list including tough guys like Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, Sylvester Stallone, and George Clooney. They also are targeting American sweethearts like Tara Lipinski and Mary Lou Retton. Britney Spears is on the list, which is just cruel given her troubles.

The Hallmark Greeting Card company is on the list, as are the Kansas City Chiefs and St. Louis Rams football teams. Alan Colmes is pissed he didn't make the list.

They were careful not to put any sitting government officials on their list but the NRA does target a couple of retired judges. Just a hint, you know.

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National Review Defends Hitler

Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” ~ Eliana Johnson, National Review Media Editor

If ever there was an opinion by a conservative spokesperson that deserves extensive repetition it is these words from an employee of the flagship publication of American Republicanism.

[The Nazi Party's] political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” ~ same woman, same publication

Let's see what National Review considers "sensible."

• The conquest of Germanic peoples in Austria, Sudetenland, and Poland.
• The invasion and occupation of France and Russia to obtain "lebensraum," living space.
• No German can be a Jew; no Jew can be German.

The actual text quoted by Ms. Johnson reads, "Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race."

I have read three days of National Review Online (a painful activity) and found none at the magazine willing to contradict Ms. Johnson's position although I give credit to the readers who are nearly unanimous in their condemnation.

I won't say that Ms. Johnson is anti-Semitic, although her other writings show a clear hatred of Semite Arabs. Ms. Johnson does senselessly hate President Obama to the point that when the President criticized the Holocaust she felt the need to irrationally defend Nazism.

To Ms. Johnson, if Obama condemns the Holocaust then Hitler must have been right.

A gigantic hat tip to TeamSarah4Choice at Daily Kos for discovering this.

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