My favourite, and they were out in force today. I’m so glad to see them again. A Ternarius can repeat sting, but they aren’t aggressive. I have been warned off a few times, and taken the warning seriously. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
I decided to sit on the front deck today. It’s a small deck, but the birds don’t mind me if I’m not being an obvious nuisance. A little Black-capped Chickadee did the neck twist, and a juvenile Grackle posed for me. (The juveniles are easy to spot, because they are mostly brown. This was one was just coming into adult colours.) Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Esther van Hulsen at work on an octopus drawing using 95 million-year-old ink. Photo by Stian Steinsli
Dutch wildlife artist Esther van Hulsen was recently given an assignment unlike her typical drawings of birds and mammals from life—a chance to draw a prehistoric octopus 95 million years after its death. Paleontologist Jørn Hurum supplied Hulsen with ink extracted from a fossil found in Lebanon in 2009, received as a gift from the PalVenn Museum in 2014. After several millennia Hulson was surprised to find that the color had remained so vibrant, preserved all of this time in the cephalopod’s ink sac. “Knowing that this animal has used this ink to survive is absolutely amazing,” said van Hulsen of the prehistoric ink.
Ugh. I can’t even suppress the nausea induced by this mess of a person.
via YouTube Republican State Rep. Tila Hubrecht held a press conference Thursday to defend her views on rape pregnancies.
During an intense Tuesday floor debate on the measure, Hubrecht made the case that women should not be allowed to abort pregnancies caused by rape.
“When God gives life he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what,” she said. “Sometimes bad things happen, horrible things, but sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child.” Because, yeah, rape sucks, but there’s nothing like nine months of living with your rapist’s baby growing inside you to help you get over it!
Transgender students across Oregon should be able to use the bathrooms, names and pronouns they want, according to unprecedented guidelines released Thursday by the Oregon Department of Education.
In a sweeping 15-page document the department issued what are likely to be controversial suggestions for Oregon educators — directing them to allow transgender females to play girls sports, for example, and transgender boys to wear tuxedos to prom.
They also suggest school leaders use transgender students’ preferred names, even if that differs from a legal name, on all transcripts and diplomas. And they say the state will require no proof before changing a student’s gender in Oregon records.
“A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day should be respected and treated like any other girl,” the document reads. “So too with a student who says he is a boy.”
Full Story Here. And, YAY, Oregon!
Courtesy Yellowstone National Park
Scarface, a famous, beloved and much-photographed grizzly bear living in Yellowstone National Park, was shot dead by a hunter in a killing that is being investigated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Another wild animal with a fan base among humans has met a violent end, when Grizzly Bear No. 211—known to his human friends as Scarface—was shot dead near Gardiner, Montana. Scarface was the best known of about 750 grizzlies who call Yellowstone National Park home but who, like the Yellowstone bison, sometimes stray across the invisible lines marking the park on a map.
[…]
This was the context of Scarface becoming a rock star among the grizzly population in Yellowstone National Park. Male grizzlies fight among themselves during mating season and Scarface had sustained injuries over the years that made him easy to pick out of a bear lineup, particularly his damaged right ear. In the ongoing research into the habits of the grizzlies in Yellowstone, Scarface had been captured, collared, and released 17 times.
Scarface did survive to a ripe old age for his species, 25. In his prime, he weighed 600 pounds. He was down to 338 pounds and biologists expected this last winter to be his last. They meant a death from old age, not from gunshots. Social media were full of outrage from biologists and wildlife photographers, for whom Scarface had become a symbol of the species struggling for survival against climate change and the invasion of bear habitat by humans.
[…]
Shooting a grizzly is unlawful except in self-defense, but Scarface had a long history with people that made him an unlikely candidate to attack a photographer or a hunter. Because of the Endangered Species Act violation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has opened an investigation into the circumstances of the shooting. Several photographers, decrying the shooting, declared that Scarface was the most photographed bear in Yellowstone.
Vala and Violette.
© C. Ford
The families, represented by right-wing attorneys, claim the federal government’s policies on trans students amount to “discrimination” against cisgender students.
One transgender student. A whole lot of cisgender students. Result: lawsuit against trans*persons inclusivity, non-discrimination and protection policies.
The Obama administration is bullying Illinois families by requiring cisgender (nontrans) students to share a locker room with a transgender classmate, according to a federal lawsuit filed by 51 families in Palatine, Ill.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, claims the federal government is discriminating against students by allowing a transgender girl at William Fremd High School to use the locker room that corresponds with her gender identity.
The families are being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and Thomas More Society, both notorious right-wing, anti-LGBT legal nonprofits, which claim that the U.S. Department of Education’s inclusive stance on trans bathroom access is a “blatant violation of student privacy.”
[…]
Wilson represents the 73 parents and 63 students who are named plaintiffs in recent lawsuit. The court filing alleges that since that ruling was handed down, using the locker room with a trans student has made life difficult for the plaintiffs’ families. “Every day these girls go to school, they experience embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, fear, apprehension, stress, degradation and loss of dignity because they will have to use the locker room and restroom with a biological male,” the complaint reads.
The suit further claims that female students who weren’t comfortable undressing in the presence of a trans person were “ridiculed and harassed by other students to such an extent that the stalls are not a practical option.” The students filing the claim further stated that their peers labeled them “transphobic” and “homophobic” due to their discomfort.
ThinkProgress‘s Zack Ford notes the irony that the aggrieved families refuse to accept the same accommodation the school initially offered the trans student — that she use a private restroom and changing facility, away from all other students.
Zack Ford has an in-depth story at Think Progress. The Advocate also has this story.
From Giliell, some residents at the Dino park, doing some people watching.
© Giliell. All rights reserved.
If you click the link for the Let Them Marry Retreat, this is what you see (click image for full size):
Note: Contrary to vicious Internet rumors we do not support or In any way condone child sexual activity of any sort, child marriage, or any other illegal activity. Nor do we support or condone forced marriages. We believe that parents should NOT seek a spouse for a child where that child has not actively sought for the parents to do so.
Don’t think this has gone away, though. It’s just oozing underground. On this page, you see Note: The November Get Them Married Retreat has been cancelled. Below that though…
Let Them Marry ministries is dedicated to educating the church in regards to the Biblical path to marriage. The goal has always been that this information would transform the hearts and lives of our readers and that there would be a resurgence of young, fruitful, Godly marriages. The public persona of the ministry has always been theoretical and theological. At the same time, off the radar, dozens- even hundreds- of people, mostly one on one, have come to talk about the specifics of their case: how can they get married? How can they get their children married?
We’re hoping to be able to get people together for some ‘get to know you’ retreats, allowing families to meet, greet, and, hopefully, result in marriages, but we’re still working on the details
If you want to be notified about future Get Them Married Retreats, sign up below:
Note: We will only use the emails in this list to notify you about Let Them Marry and future Get Them Married Retreats. We won’t sell or give away your email address.
Who are you? *Check all that apply
All this shit is going to carry on, they are just going to be a bit more cautious about people finding out about it, and change some non-essentials, like ‘get to know you‘ rather than get them married, but it’s still going to be marriage farm. Looking over that little checklist, it would seem that women are good for one thing only – being auctioned married off and having those babies, babies, babies.
“The public persona of the ministry has always been theoretical and theological.” What the hell does that mean? Do they know what theoretical means? It wouldn’t seem so.
The Moldovan-born performer of Britain’s Got Talent fame appeared on Ellen to show off his acrobatic sword-swallowing routine. Magala not only swallowed two different swords—a typical Western-looking blade and a katana—but also managed backflips and pole-dancing with the swords. Inside him. Because gay men everywhere just needed to be knocked down a peg—or 20.
Ellen asks what we’re all thinking. Why—just why?
“I’m from Moldova, it’s in Eastern Europe,” Magala says. “It’s a poor country, pretty much nothing to do.”
I’d say something, but the screams are still echoing in my brain.
After big-box retailer Target made headlines by reaffirming its long-standing trans-inclusive restroom policy last month, several other national chains are promising that customers and employees can use the restroom that best matches their gender identity at stores nationwide.
Representatives with Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and Hudson’s Bay Co. — which operates high-end department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor — all confirmed to USA Today “that employees and customers in their stores are welcome to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.”
[…]
Bookseller Barnes & Noble told the national paper that as a company, it strives to treat “all employees with dignity and respect.” “For our transgender employees and customers, that means they are allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with,” spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating told USA Today.
I am so relieved. B&N is the only large bookseller in Bismarck, and I love going to the bookstore. All this actually means is that these companies aren’t interested in instituting Pee Police™. (I keep thinking about Psi Corps in B5. It’s the evil Pee Corps!) That’s a good thing, but a lot of national chains aren’t responding in the same way. They aren’t responding at all. Full Story Here.
“While we were fertile, we were both deeply convicted that one of the ways to be pro-life is to involve ourselves in adoption… Knowing that it is often more challenging to find adoptive homes in the United States for non-Caucasian children we informed the agency that we were willing to accept any child except a fully Caucasian child. We did this with the deeply held conviction that if the Lord wanted us to have a fully Caucasian child my wife would conceive naturally,” Halbert writes.
In about 1,500 words, Halbert describes why having black babies is “enriching” and “beautiful.”
“There is something beautiful and enriching being the only white face sitting and chatting with some of my African-American friends as my son gets his hair cut on a Saturday morning. There is also something wonderful in the relationship that is built as my wife asks a black friend on Facebook how to care for our little biracial daughter’s hair.”
[…]
The Halbert’s pro-life perspective calls for them to “rescue” embryos frozen by prospective parents but never used. The couple selected African-American embryos specifically so their adopted children would feel that “black” connection.
I, um, I really don’t know what to say here. These people think the scales of racism fell away from their eyes, they obviously think they are doing something wonderful and great, and…words fail.