Billy Bob has already filed suit

Because I watch him poop. Telegraph:

Wildlife documentary makers are breaching the rights of animals by invading their privacy, a leading academic has claimed.

Dr Brett Mills believes programmes such as the BBC's Nature's Great Events, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, are "unethical" for capturing animals' most intimate secrets on camera without their consent.

The senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia said it was wrong for broadcasters to treat all creatures as "fair game" and to fail to consider their right to privacy before recording.

Animals just like humans have a basic right not to have their most intimate moments –such as mating, giving birth and dying – broadcast to an audience of millions, he said. . . .

(via a commenter at WUWT)

Update: Okay, one more nature story from the Telegraph:

A teacher with a phobia over rabbits is suing a 14-year-old pupil for compensation after she drew a bunny on the blackboard.

The teacher, from Vechta, Germany, says she was traumatised by the drawing, and claims the girl knew it would terrify her. . . .

School officials removed her from the class and now the teacher is seeking compensation for her terror and her loss of earnings, her lawyer Manfred Bormann told the court.

The case continues.

Australian emissions scheme booted

At least for a while:

It was once a centrepiece of the Federal Government's election strategy, but now the emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been relegated to the shelf until at least 2013. . . .

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently said climate change remained a fundamental economic, environmental and moral challenge, whether it was popular or not. . . .

Gee, that sounds familiar. Also familiar: the craziness of certain (leftie) pols:

Greens leader Bob Brown says Mr Rudd has caved in to [opposition leader Tony] Abbott's attack on the ETS.

"If it is true, it is quite irresponsible because it signifies a climate change collapse by the Government in the face of the right-wing criticism from the Opposition and others that it is a great big tax," he said.

Mr Brown says the Government could do a deal with the Greens, but lacks the political will to do so.

"Climate change is real. It is stalking Australia. It is threatening the Great Barrier Reef. It is threatening the Murray-Darling Basin," he said.

"We have seen projections of up to 90 per cent loss of productivity of the Murray-Darling Basin this century if climate change isn't tackled."

Whatever. This will give everyone time to tiptoe away from the idiot scheme. With any luck, something like that will happen here.

At last!

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book!


Foreword by Ward Churchill.

Amazon's blurb:

A powerful and historically accurate [heh] graphic portrayal of Indigenous peoples' resistance to the European colonization of the Americas, beginning with the Spanish invasion under Christopher Columbus and ending with the Six Nations land reclamation in Ontario in 2006. Gord Hill spent two years unearthing images and researching historical information to create The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, which presents the story of Aboriginal resistance in a far-reaching format.

Other events depicted include the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; the Inca insurgency in Peru from the 1500s to the 1780s; Pontiac and the 1763 Rebellion and Royal Proclamation; Geronimo and the 1860s Seminole Wars; Crazy Horse and the 1877 War on the Plains; the rise of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s; 1973's Wounded Knee; the Mohawk Oka Crisis in Quebec in 1990; and the 1995 Aazhoodena/Stoney Point resistance.

With strong, plain language and evocative illustrations, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book documents the fighting spirit and ongoing resistance of Indigenous peoples through five hundred years of genocide, massacres, torture, rape, displacement, and assimilation: a necessary antidote to the conventional history of the Americas. Includes an introduction by activist Ward Churchill, leader of the American Indian Movement in Colorado and a prolific writer on Indigenous resistance issues.

Wonder if this counts as one of the four books Wart claimed his firing and lawsuit kept him from completing.

About the author

Gord Hill: Gord Hill is a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation in British Columbia. He has been active in Indigenous resistance, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist movements since 1990. He is also the author of The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, a slim volume of history published by PM Press (and distributed by AK Press) in 2009 that is a companion to the graphic novel.

Ward Churchill: Ward Churchill is a writer, political activist, and co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado. He is the author of numerous books on political and Indigenous peoples’ resistance, including On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, Struggle for the Land, and Acts of Rebellion.

Guess he ended his "leave of absence" from AIM.

Begging the question

An event sponsored by something called "The Tavistock and Portman" ("Leaders in Mental Health Care and Education"):

Sally Weintrobe will examine the unconscious motivations behind people’s responses to climate change. She will explore some of the underlying reasons for the current level of denial of climate change and will suggest ways forward towards greater engagement.

Yeah, engagement.

The overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion is that the warming the Earth has observed over the last 50 years has been due to an increase in greenhouse gases directly caused by human activities. Predictions for the likely effects of this warming vary from the disastrous to the apocalyptic.

Where's "Meh"?

People’s reactions to potentially hazardous problems are often acute and even exaggerated. Predicted pandemics such as swine flu cause panic and induce rapid changes in people’s
behaviour. . . .

How'd that work out, anyway? And what behavior changed, besides various Asians, as they always do, wearing surgical masks in public for a while, at least long enough for the MSM to video them?

Yet faced with overwhelming evidence of a likely global catastrophe the vast majority of populations have their heads in the sand. Why is this?

Because it's an idiotic panic exactly like Swine Flu (except much, much bigger)?

Is it ambivalence and apathy? [Yes.] Or are people paralyzed by feelings of anxiety and helplessness? [No. You may reverse those answers at will.] What are the biggest barriers to individual’s [sic] taking action? We must look at the reasons people are not acting in order to understand how to get people to act.

Can't wait to pay my 75 pounds to find out, Sally, how you're going to get people to act, you stupid, self-righteous bint. Bioline:

Sally Weintrobe works as a psychoanalyst. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and Chair of its Scientific Committee. She has written on the topics of greed, entitlement and grievance and her latest paper is on climate change denial.

Couldn't find the paper. Psychoanalyst. Freud was the greatest fiction writer of the 20th century. But I did find this abstract, from Dame Sally's "Links between grievance, complaint, and different forms of entitlement":

The author argues that different kinds of object relationships underlie the phenomena of grievance and complaint. Grievance is addressed to an object held responsible for a failure of idealisation, and the object is scolded or punished for this failure. Nursing grievance can restore the ideal object in phantasy and block mourning the ideal. With pathological grievance the self is seen as ideal and awareness of dependence on the libidinal other is denied, as are the passage of time and the transience of experience. An attitude of narcissistic entitlement to be special and exempt from ordinary reality is seen as intrinsic to the more persistent and pathological forms of grievance, and this narcissistic entitlement fuels grievance. Turning to complaint, the author argues that complaint is addressed to an object that is less idealised; there is more open acknowledgement of the need for and dependence on the other to realise liveliness. Complaint is the voice of the authentic lively self and intrinsic to complaint is a sense of lively entitlement. The author presents clinical material to illustrate these themes, and to show movement between complaint and grievance. Some technical difficulties in working with grievance are discussed.

Makes sense to me.

(oops, forgot to h/t a commenter at WUWT. Who cares who it was (still no permalinks); just go to the best blog in the 'sphere and read, read, read.

Update 11/17/10: Read this post.

Ayers and Lane--together at last

AP, via CBS4:

A Denver lawyer says he'll sue the University of Wyoming unless it lets former 1960s radical William Ayers speak on campus.

David Lane sent the school a letter Monday saying he had been retained by student Meg Lanker. He contends the university violated the First Amendment when it canceled a speech Ayers was scheduled to give in March.

He gave the university until noon Wednesday to respond.

A university spokesman didn't immediately return messages left after business hours Monday seeking comment.

Lane previously represented former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who was dismissed for alleged plagiarism and research misconduct following criticism of an essay in which he compared some 9/11 victims to a Nazi.

Update: Tried to find more about why Ayers was canceled, but only came up with this April 1 AP story:

The University of Wyoming has canceled a speech by former 1960s radical William Ayers after it raised hundreds of objections from citizens and politicians over the man who became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

In a statement released by the university, UW President Tom Buchanan supported the decision to cancel Ayers.

"The University of Wyoming is one of the few institutions remaining in today's environment that garner the confidence of the public. The visit by Professor Ayers would have adversely impacted that reputation," Buchanan said. . . .

Ayers and Ann Coulter, together at last!

Update II: Westword's Wart-lavin' Michael Roberts adds a few quotes. And no, I don't support the university's decision to cancel Ayers, even if they're right that it would detract from the school's reputation (and they are). On the spot-the-idiot theory of the First Amendment, the more exposure the reprehensible Ayers gets, the better.

Update III: According to this, Lane was to file suit this morning.

Update IV: Suit filed. And a little more info on the circumstances from the Casper Star-Tribune (top local story: "Another arrest made in Gillette outhouse explosion"):

Late last month, the UW Social Justice Research Center canceled plans for Ayers to visit campus on April 5-6, after the center and university administrators received hundreds of phone calls and e-mails voicing outrage that the school would invite someone with Ayers' past to campus. Some of the messages threatened to cut off funding to the university or even violence if Ayers showed up.

Angry about the cancellation, Lanker and the Secular Student Alliance, a UW-recognized group, arranged to bring Ayers back to campus and tried to reserve a room in UW's Classroom Building for him to deliver his lecture on education theory.

But when Lanker told UW Provost Myron Allen of her plans last Thursday, he was immediately resistant to the idea, suggesting Ayers' visit would hurt the university and cause many donors to stop giving to the school, according to the lawsuit.

"You need to think about the fact that there are people higher up than me that have trump cards and that this is not a teachable moment," the lawsuit quoted Allen as telling Lanker. "This will inflame public sentiments."

The following day, the Secular Student Alliance withdrew its sponsorship of Ayers' lecture because of pressure from the university, according to the lawsuit.

With the student group out, Lanker attempted to rent the UniWyo Dome as a community member. But soon afterward, she received a phone call and e-mail from UW attorney Susan Weidel telling her that she couldn't rent any university venue for Ayers' lecture.

You'll see in the story that Ayers is going to show up anyway, in the manner of Wart and his amazingly short-lived rump classes on the CU campus after he was fired.

Why they put pics of Happy Meals on the keys of McDonald's cash registers

Just thought this was funny at WUWT, at the head of a piece on the IPCC's odd use of maf:



What the IPCC did, of course, is much less funny.

Watts Up With That. Sigh ♥.

Update: This is not to claim that your darling D-blog understands math, including making change. When he gets a job at McD's (soon, soon), he'll need those pics.

I did not know that

Alec Baldwin on TCM with Robert Osborne, introducing Judgment at Nuremberg, just said that Gobbles was a defendant at the trials. His-toe-ree.

My God, I also didn't know Shatner was in the movie. And Colonel Klink.

Update: Baldwin's almost as accurate as Wart was when he said the Nazis invaded Russia in 1940.

My Day

By Eleanor Roosevelt.

Shit fucking Christ. Fuckin' shit. Christ. Goddamnit. I'm gonna throw Frankie down the stairs. Bump bump bump. Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a day which will live in infaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I spent today cleaning up piss water. Fuck you all.

And please hit the tip jar.

Wart speaks

According to the Mining Journal (apparently a plain-old newspaper in Marquette, MI, despite its odd title), Wart appeared at Northern Michigan University the other day. Same old, but I did like this:

The author of more than 20 books, Churchill is a member of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and a founding member of the Rainbow Council of Elders. He said he's often considered a controversial figure.

Said that, did he?

"People say, 'why are you angry?' I say, 'why are you not?' " he said. "I believe in our struggle and I participate in it."

He told the crowd that he's been working for his cause for most of his adult life because absent engagement, "talk is cheap."

"We have the right to respond on our own behalf by any means necessary under conditions like these," he said. "We can't declare things in clear terms. You come for my children, I'll kill you I may not be successful, but I am obligated to try And you have more than a right, you have an obligation to hand that off to your children, and your children's children."

The vid they posted is even choppier than the article.

Update: The parrot who calls his companion-pirate a pedophile notes Wart weighing in (and you can see how much he's weighing in the vid) on the latest priest scandal.