If this isn't classic Trump, I don't know what is

As reported by the New York Times:

The regal emblem, used at President Trump’s golf courses across the United States, sports three lions and two chevrons on a shield, below a gloved hand gripping an arrow...

The British are known to take matters of heraldry seriously, and Mr. Trump’s American coat of arms belongs to another family. It was granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies, the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite who built the Mar-a-Lago resort that is now Mr. Trump’s cherished getaway...

In the United States, the Trump Organization took Mr. Davies’s coat of arms for its own, making one small adjustment — replacing the word “Integritas,” Latin for integrity, with “Trump.”...

“It couldn’t be a clearer-cut case, actually,” said Clive Cheesman, one of the college’s heralds, who oversee coats of arms, their design and their use.

“A coat of arms that was originally granted to Joseph Edward Davies in 1939 by the English heraldic authority ended up being used 10 or 15 years ago by the Trump Organization as part of its branding for its golf clubs,” said Mr. Cheesman, a lawyer by training.

More on the kerfuffle at the link.

With a tip of the blogging hat to the elves at QI for alerting me to this interesting item.

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Dolphins recognized as "non-human persons"

YouTube link.

In 2013 India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests forbade the keeping of captive dolphins for public entertainment:

“Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that the unusually high intelligence; as compared to other animals means that dolphin should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose,” the ministry said.

Via Reddit.  Props to the Indian government.

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Emma Thompson - tax protester

She and her husband are protesting not about paying taxes per se, but to the selective enforcement of the rules and the coddling of corporate entities such as HSBC:

Greg Wise, the actor married to Oscar winner Emma Thompson, has said he and his wife will refuse to pay tax until those involved in the HSBC scandal go to prison.

Wise spoke of his disgust with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the bank after the Guardian and other news organisations published leaked details of 100,000 accounts held by HSBC’s Swiss arm which showed how the bank had helped clients to move cash out of the country.

“I want to stop paying tax, until everyone pays tax,” Wise told the Evening Standard. “I have actively loved paying tax, because I am a profound fucking socialist and I believe we are all in it together. But I am disgusted with HMRC. I am disgusted with HSBC. And I’m not paying a penny more until those evil bastards go to prison.”..

“Em’s on board. She agrees. We’re going to get a load of us together. A movement. They can’t send everyone to prison. But we’ll go to prison if necessary. I mean it.

Good for them.  More details at Business Insider, with a discussion at Reddit.

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Who owns natural resources?

What rights do native people have in the control and/or harvesting/exploitation of them?  Here are some excerpts from a Salon article about a drama currently playing out in Ecuador.

“We have been coming to these sacred cascades since before the time of Christ,” said Ankuash, preparing a palm-leaf spread of melon and mango. “The government has given away land that is not theirs to give, and we have a duty to protect it. Where there is industrial mining, the rivers die and we lose our way of life. They want us to give up our traditions, work in the mines, and let them pollute our land. But we will give our lives to defend the land, because the end is the same for us either way.”..

To help him grab these shiny metals, [Ecuadorean president Rafael] Correa has invited foreign mining firms to deforest and drill much of the country’s remaining pristine forests. Not far from where Ankuash and I are sitting, a Chinese joint venture led by the China Railway Corp. is building infrastructure for an open-sky copper mine with the “Lord of the Rings”-sounding name of Mirador. To the north and east of the Chinese concession, the Canadian gold giant Kinross is prepping its 39 lots, including the envy of the industry, Fruta del Norte, believed to be Latin America’s largest deposit of high-grade gold. These projects are merely the first wave; others wait in the wings. Together they threaten more than the Shuar way of life and the sustainable agricultural and tourist economies of Ecuador’s southern provinces. The Condor is a hot spot of singular ecological wealth and a major source of water for the wider Amazon watershed to the east. What happens there is of global consequence...

“Unleashing industrial-scale mining in the region is a catastrophe equal to using the Galapagos Islands as a bombing range,” said the biologist. “Its flora has enormous potential to benefit man. So much of it, we’ve only seen from helicopters. Before we even know what’s there, they’re going to destroy it.”..

The Canadian firm announced it would build an open-pit copper mine dwarfing anything in Ecuador’s history. The mine required hollowing out one of the region’s largest mountains and clear-cutting several others. A massive tailing pond would hold the 200-plus million tons of toxic effluvia generated over the mine’s 18-year lifespan. The site designated for the waste sits half a mile from the Rio Quimi, a tributary of the Rio Zamora, whose waters support the local agricultural economy on their way into the Amazon basin. Roads and bridges are being built for 18-wheel truck traffic to carry hundreds of tons of copper concentrate on a daily nonstop loop between the mine and a port on Ecuador’s Pacific coast...

There's way lots more at the link.  See also Chief Raoni cries.

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Ginseng theft

Theft (and destruction) of wild ginseng is an increasing problem in Wisconsin and other midwestern states:

Cody Adams, a DNR warden in Crawford County, said camouflage-dressed thieves illegally ripping the root from the ground leave little chance of its long-term survival. "There’s a right way and a wrong way to harvest it — and a designated time," Adams said in a news release. "These thieves are pulling the root from the ground causing damage that could prevent the plant from surviving and regrowing."

The motive is money, and grabbing the slow-growing plants now before the ginseng season opens on Sept. 1. Ginseng, which sold for $200 per pound last year, could rise to $500 per pound this year, the DNR said...

The DNR is reminding ginseng harvesters that they need a license (cost is $15.75) and permission from the landowner. Also, harvesters must immediately bury the plant’s berries to ensure the plant grows back.

These tactics are employed by the same type of people who use machetes and chainsaws to cut the horns off living rhinos (photo below the fold) (warning: gore), and for the same reason - to treat flaccid penises around the world.

Image credit: Biju Boro /AFP/Getty Images.

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Marriage in the Bible

It's not as simple as some would suggest.  Here are some excerpts from a column at Salon written by an Anglican bishop:

Some people would have you believe that marriage began with Adam and Eve. But in the account in Genesis where Adam and Eve become one flesh (presumably through their mutual commitment and sexual intimacy), there is no mention of an “institution” of marriage nor any liturgy, vows, promises or other ritual used to solemnize their relationship. This prehistorical account can only serve as a backdrop to the meaning (not the “institution”) of marriage that developed over time.

The fact of the matter is, marriage has not been consistent or unchanging over time. Indeed, even in biblical times, we see a constant evolution in the practice of marriage. One man and one woman, united in marriage for life, mutually exclusive and “faithful” sexually, and joined because of their love for each other, is a relatively modern notion of marriage. Such was not the case in ancient times.

From the earliest Old Testament accounts, polygamy seemed to be the practice of the day. Or, to be more accurate, polygyny (the practice of polygamy by males, not females) was practiced. In the ancient Hebrew culture, having more than one wife was commonplace. In addition to multiple wives, men who were wealthy enough to have slaves or concubines had sexual relationships with them. Even Abraham — father to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — when he was unable to produce an heir with his wife, Sarah, had a son by his slave Hagar. Abraham’s grandson Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel. King Solomon was renowned not only for his wisdom and wealth but also for his 700 wives and 300 concubines! Over the years, marriage customs evolved, and by Jesus’ time divorce was discouraged and monogamy increasingly became the standard...

Jesus is quite clear that marriage is to be for a lifetime and that divorce is a serious issue, permitted to a man only in the case of “unchastity.” For either a man or a woman to marry anyone after divorce (“except on the ground of unchastity”), Jesus tells his disciples, is to commit “adultery” (Matthew 19:9; 5:31– 32; Mark 10:11– 12; Luke 16:18)...

More re biblical marriage and the subsequent evolution of the concept at the Salon link.

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Guardians of the public morals

Kaitlin Nootbaar graduated from Prague High School, the Red Devils, in May and was named valedictorian. When tasked with writing the graduation speech, her dad said she got her inspiration from the movie “Eclipse: The Twilight Saga.”

“Her quote was, ‘When she first started school she wanted to be a nurse, then a veterinarian and now that she was getting closer to graduation, people would ask her, what do you want to do and she said how the hell do I know? I’ve changed my mind so many times.’”

He said in the written script she gave to the school she wrote “heck,” but in the moment she said “hell” instead. 

Nootbaar said the audience laughed, she finished her speech to warm applause and didn’t know there was a problem.

This was a valedictory speech, given by a girl who had straight As and 4.0s all the way through school.  She is supposed to start college in a few days on a full scholarship.  The school is withholding her diploma until she issues a public apology for using the word "hell" in public.

And this from the administration of an Oklahoma institution that uses "Red Devils" as its school mascot.  Video at the link.

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"Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother"

A column by Julia Duin in the Washington Post last week documented the death of a Pentecostal pastor who died after being bitten by one of the rattlesnakes he used in his church services.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason for their practice: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983 after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not...

“Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother” he wrote on May 23...

And so they were gathered at this evangelistic hootenanny of Christian praise and worship. About 30 minutes into the service, his sister said, Wolford passed a yellow timber rattlesnake to a church member and his mother. “He laid it on the ground,” she said, “and he sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh.”

The Washington Post photographer for the story has written a thoughtful companion piece, "Why I watched a snake-handling pastor die for his faith."

As a photojournalist, what role did I have in this tragedy, and what is it now, in the aftermath? Was it right for me to remain in the background taking pictures, as I did, and not seek medical attention for the dying pastor, whose beliefs forbade it? Or should I have intervened and called paramedics earlier, which would have undermined Mack’s wishes? Finally, what was I supposed to do with the images I shot? 

The story is of additional interest to me because I lived for ten years in Kentucky, where I became familiar with the phenomenon of religion-based serpent-handling.  The knee-jerk reaction by cynics would be to observe that antivenom and hospital treatment with dialysis and life support could be viewed as the mechanism God uses to heal those bitten, but of course for the true believers it's much more complex than that.

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Is George Clooney's Use Of 'Spy Satellites' To Document War Crimes Ethical?

George Clooney And The New Ethics Of Satellite Surveillance -- IBTimes

George Clooney believes that he has found evidence of the Sudanese government murdering its own citizens. Using images from space satellites, the Hollywood actor, with help from the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), documented crimes against humanity taking place in sub-Saharan Africa.

"It is absolutely without question a war crime that we saw firsthand," the actor told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while presenting his findings on Wednesday.

While Clooney's efforts are patently good, are they ethical? No project like this has ever been done before, and so Clooney and his partners are making the rules as they go, albeit rules within the strictures of international law.

Read more ....

My Comment: What's my take .... the alternative is to directly send people to sites where atrocities are taking place .... an alternative that is extremely dangerous in the best of times, and (if successful) limited in what they will be able to document. For the moment .... George Clooney's use of images from space satellites is the best option .... and one that has so far proven to be extremely successful.

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Do "outdoor dogs" tend to be "miserable?"

That's the claim made in a post at Vet Street:

What compels people to get a dog only to keep it isolated outside, away from the family?... They are animals born to be part of a social structure, a pack or a family, yet this is denied them. They spend their lives on the outside, looking in. The experts say many of these dogs will never really bond with owners who interact with them so little...

I have always had difficulty understanding why people want to keep dogs outside. If keeping a beautiful house and yard are of the utmost importance to you, then don't get a dog. If you know someone in your family can't abide a dog in the house, for whatever reason, then don't get a dog. If you can't let a dog be part of your family, then don't get a dog.

You don't get the benefits of companionship from a dog you see so little. You don't even get much in the way of protection from the pet who has no access to the house. And don't count on outdoor dogs as an early warning system. These animals often become such indiscriminate barkers that you couldn't tell from their sound whether the dogs are barking at a prowler or at a toddler riding a tricycle down the street. Besides, people who keep outdoor dogs seem to become quite good at ignoring the noise they make, as any angry neighbor can vouch.

Outdoor dogs often become a problem to their owners. Bored and lonely, these animals develop any number of bad habits. They dig craters in the yard. They bark endlessly day and night. They become chewers of outdoor furniture, sprinkler heads and siding. And sometimes, without the socialization all dogs need, they become aggressive, ready to bite anyone who comes into their territory.

If you're considering getting a puppy or dog with the intent of keeping him exclusively outside, please reconsider -- for the animal's sake as well as your own and your neighbors'. 

When I was growing up, a small family dog (springer spaniel) was allowed indoors, but our larger dogs (retrievers, labs) had a doghouse in the garage with access to the outdoors.  Nowadays I see large dogs routinely kept indoors by neighbors and relatives. 

Is it unkind to keep them outdoors?

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Reptile trafficking

Acting on a tip-off, police intercepted the bus in a northern province bound for Buenos Aires... "A passenger came onboard with 40 snakes, plus what he had in the boxes" in the bus luggage hold, said ranger Daniel Chersich, warden of Santa Fe province... The trafficker had loaded them with 444 boas, vipers and other snakes; 186 endangered tortoises; 40 lizards, and an armadillo. The smuggler, who was arrested, boarded the bus in Santiago del Estero, where he had spent three months trapping various species in the bush with the intent of selling them.

Source, via Nothing To Do With Arbroath.

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The unappreciated tragedy of white tigers

Excerpts from an Encyclopedia Britannica story:

We respond intensely to the bold orange-and-black felines, and sometimes even more so to the almost mystical white tiger. Their ghostly white appearance and searing blue eyes are difficult to ignore. Because we are fascinated with things we consider to be rare–like gold–we value the white tiger for its rarity, and find a ready rationalization for perpetuating its existence...

But if there is any issue for which the white tiger is a poster child, it is our faulty understanding of conservation. The headlines are all too familiar: this zoo or that performer is breeding white tigers to save them from extinction and restore them to their native habitats... The truth is difficult for many people to accept. White tigers are not a species and do not have a native habitat. Tigers do not inhabit any section of the globe in which it would be advantageous for their survival to be white...

What we call the “royal” white tiger is in fact a genetic anomaly, caused by a double recessive gene occurring so rarely in nature that experts estimate that only one in every 10,000 tigers born in the wild is white. This anomaly, called “leucism,” prevents the pigment from coloring the skin and fur and, more importantly, robs the animal of a main tool for survival—camouflage... “when a deleterious recessive genetic mutation randomly occurs that is disadvantageous for the survival of the animal, such as white color in a tropical jungle environment, the animal does not survive to pass on that genetic mutation or disadvantageous characteristic to its offspring" (italics added). In other words, cruel as it may sound, nature does not provide a place for the white tiger...

If nature is designed to prevent the survival of genetic mutations that are a danger to the survival of an entire species, then why do we see white tigers in zoos and circuses across the United States? The answer is simple: they are produced by inbreeding. In an essay published on the Web site of Save the Tiger Fund, Ron Tilson, conservation director of the Minnesota Zoo, writes: “to produce white tigers or any other phenotypic curiosity, directors of zoos and facilities must continuously inbreed, father to daughter, to granddaughter, and so on.”..

And there is a price to be paid for it. White tigers endure a host of health problems about which the public is largely unaware, including immune system deficiencies that cause many to live miserable and short lives, scoliosis of the spine, hip dysplasia, neurological disorders, cleft palates, and protruding, bulging eyes. Many are stillborn and many more turn out to be too deformed to display...

The trade in white tigers is lucrative. White tiger cubs have fetched as much as $60,000 a piece. According to Tilson, “white tigers are an aberration artificially bred and proliferated by a few zoos, private breeders, and circus folks, who do this for economic rather than conservation reasons.”

More at the link, via Reddit, where "teacup dogs" are also discussed (I'll try to blog that later).  Photo credits to Big Cat Rescue.

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TSA screening

With a twist...

The only bad thing on our trip was TSA was at the Savannah train station. There were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling everyone in a roped area AFTER you got OFF THE TRAIN! This made no sense!!! Poor family in front of us! 9 year old getting patted down and wanded. They groped our people too and were very unprofessional. I am all about security, but when have you ever been harassed and felt up getting OFF a plane? Shouldn't they be doing that getting ON???

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Fake fruit in your cereal?

The nonprofit Consumer Wellness Center reported that its investigation found "blueberries" that were nothing more than a concoction of sugar, corn syrup, starch, hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors and artificial food dye blue No. 2 and red No. 40.

The offenders are well-known manufacturers such as Kellogg's, Betty Crocker and General Mills, and the fakes were found in bagels, cereals, breads and muffins. Some products contain real blueberries mixed with fakes. For example, the blueberry bagels sold at Target contain some real berries but the "blueberry bits" listed in the ingredients aren't real blueberries...

Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin variety has no blueberries but does have "blueberry flavored crunchies" made from the sugar-and-dye concoction mentioned above. Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal, from General Mills, contains no blueberries and no pomegranates...

This is all quite legal, of course, as long as the label specifies "fruit-flavored clusters," or something equivalent. But it's still intentionally deceptive, and a scummy corporate behavior, IMHO.

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A Qur'an "etched in Saddam Hussein's blood"

Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors.

The very existence of this item is creating some ethical dilemmas for Iraqi authorities, discussed at the Guardian link.

"It was wrong to do what he did, to write it in blood," says Sheikh Samarrai. "It is haraam [forbidden]."

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Bumper stickers

This photo was originally labeled "Hatred."  I agree with the comments at Reddit that...

Ignorance leads to fear, and...

"Fear leads to anger.

Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to suffering."*

*(Yoda, The Phantom Menace)

Photo source. 

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Wikileaks... "like putting the government through a body scanner"

Credit for the expression here, via Reddit, where government's ages-old argument, "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear" is discussed.

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Dutch teen sex

A 2003 survey "found that two thirds of Dutch fifteen to seventeen-year-olds with steady boy- or girlfriends are allowed to spend the night with them in their bedrooms, and that boys and girls are equally likely to get permission for a sleepover....

In 2007, births to American teens (ages fifteen to nineteen) were eight times as high as in the Netherlands," reports Schalet, and the Netherlands generally whoops on the states in terms of STD rates, too. What's more, "it also appears that having sex outside of the context of monogamous romantic relationships isn't as common among Dutch adolescents, especially older ones, as among their American counterparts."

Further discussion at Salon; additional data at Sociological Images.

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Prisons as nursing homes

"Beyrer is serving a 100-year sentence for rape and aggravated battery."

A story at the Washington Post last week highlighted the problem of elderly and chronically ill persons incarcerated by the state of Virginia.

Deerfield, Virginia's only geriatric prison, is where the state's inmates are sent to grow old. They're transferred to this facility in Capron, near the North Carolina border, when they're too weak to stand or feed themselves, when they don't have much time left.

Since the General Assembly abolished parole for the newly convicted in 1995, the number of elderly inmates in custody has soared. In 1990, there were 900 inmates over the age of 50. Now there are more than 5,000. Deerfield Correctional, which once housed 400 inmates, has become a 1,000-bed facility with a long waiting list.

"We're left trying to be both a nursing home and a prison," said Keith Davis, the warden...

It's an expensive endeavor: It costs $28,800 annually to house an inmate at Deerfield, compared with the $19,000 it costs at most of the state's medium-security prisons...

"These inmates might be old, and they might no longer pose a threat, but this is the price of committing a heinous crime," said Rick Kern, director of the Virginia Sentencing Commission...

Don't prices ever change?n  I'll bet lots of people are making a bundle of money from this situation.

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Little girls criticized for giving away "free lemonade"

Excerpts from a column by Terry Savage at the Chicago Sun-Times:

This column is a true story -- every word of it. And I think it very appropriate to consider around the Fourth of July, Independence Day spirit.

Last week, I was in a car with my brother and his fiancee, driving through their upscale neighborhood on a hot summer day. At the corner, we all noticed three little girls sitting at a homemade lemonade stand...

Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

“Oh, no,” they replied in unison, “they’re all free!”

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money...”

No wonder America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy. We all act as if the “lemonade” or benefits we’re “giving away” is free...

If we can’t teach our kids the basics of running a lemonade stand, how can we ever teach Congress the basics of economics?..

If that’s what America’s children think — that there’s a free lunch waiting — then our country has larger problems ahead. The Declaration of Independence promised “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It didn’t promise anything free. Something to think about this July 4th holiday weekend.

Via Reddit.

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