Saturday Science: Lotsa Goodies, Cambrian Variety

Paleontologist have struck it rich. I don't know if you've heard of the Burgess Shale, but it's legendary as one of the richest find of Csmbrian fossils ever. Now there's a find that may be even richer:

"Nowhere do we have a better view of exactly what the Cambrian looked like and its relationship to the environment than in the Burgess Shale," [Robert} Gaines told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

The new site is also in the Burgess Shale formation, and seems to rival the 1909 original in fossil diversity and preservation, researchers report today (Feb. 11) in the journal Nature Communications. In just two weeks, the research team collected more than 3,000 fossils representing 55 species. Fifteen of these species are new to science. [Gallery: Amazing Cambrian Fossils from Canada's Marble Canyon]

"The rate at which we are finding animals — many of which are new — is astonishing, and there is a high possibility that we'll eventually find more species here than at the original Yoho National Park site, and potentially more than from anywhere else in the world," said Jean-Bernard Caron, lead study author and an invertebrate paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Just one of the cuties they've found:

 A new arthropod species discovered at the Marble Canyon outcrop.
Credit: Jean-Bernard Caron

That's from the gallery -- click through and take a look -- the landscape is as impressive as the specimens.

Today's Grab a Hankie Video

It pretty much speaks for itself. Stay with it through the final minute.

What gets me is the homeless guy's reaction -- he wants to share. Like I keep saying, people are basically good.

Via Crooks and Liars. The post is worth reading.

(Yes, I've been largely absent this week. Under the weather. Hopefully better in a day or two.)

Backbiting

I don't really know any other way to title this post. It's something I've noticed a lot lately in the comments threads on gay blogs, maybe more lately than before. I guess it's true of just about any group, but frankly, it gets on my nerves. Think back, those of you who follow particular gay blogs, to, for example, the reaction to Tom Daley's coming out video, and then the news that the relationship that was making him so happy was with Dustin Lance Black, a man twenty years his senior. Black caught most of the flak, but the pattern is there -- I don't understand what it is with some people who can't seem to refrain from criticizing people they don't know for things that have nothing to do with them. I'm afraid my reaction is fairly simple: Congratulations. Now you sound just like any other bigot. Of course, in their minds they're not bigots -- they're just criticizing people for doing something they don't approve of.

Now it's Jared Leto's turn. His big error? He won an Oscar for his portrayal of a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club. The reaction from some quarters is just about what you'd expect:

Several trans people reacted to Leto winning the Oscar.

‘If you thought Jared Leto's performance was anything other than an exaggerated, stereotyped, cliché damaging to trans people, f off,’ one said on Twitter.

‘One small step for Jared Leto One giant blow for the trans movement,’ another added.

Another Twitter user said: ‘The fact that every trans person on my [timeline] found Jared Leto's portrayal of a trans person offensive makes me not really want to see that film.’

British trans activist Paris Lees, writing in The Independent, said it was not an Oscar-worthy performance as she did not recognize in Rayon any trans woman she knows.

‘For truly accurate portrayals of trans people, cast trans actors, I say,’ she said.

Paris Lees' reaction is probably the most brainless. Excuse me? They're actors. Do you know what that means? They make their living pretending to be other people.

It's not just the trans community, of course. (Although I will say that, having had my own run-ins with trans activists in comment threads, they can be just as rigid and judgmental as anyone else. That was the same site where someone insinuated that I'm a racist, which anyone who actually knows me would find more than ludicrous.) I've noticed it most in what we'll call the LGBT community (which is a term I hate and avoid whenever possible), but if you read the comments on news articles or opinion pieces in "mainstream" publications, you realize that it's a phenomenon you can find anywhere.

But whoever you are who's doing it, rest assured you've earned by contempt.

I haven't seen the film -- it's been on my "maybe"list, but I haven't been to the movies lately. I may this week if it's still playing anywhere local.

Here's Leto's acceptance, which I found quite affecting:

Marriage News Watch, March 3, 2014

And the beat goes on:

Misunderstood? I don't think so.

David Delmar has some pushback at AmericaBlog against the claim that Arizona's SB1062 was "misrepresented" by critics:

In fact, critics of SB 1062 cut through the facade and exposed its black and beating bigoted heart. In so doing, they captured precisely its essence. The law was an attempt to amend Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to make it apply unambiguously in cases involving private entities (including businesses) who complain that the government has violated their right to free exercise of religion. By making clear that the RFRA applied in this way, SB 1062 would thus have bestowed social and legal legitimacy for, among other things, the “right” to refuse service to gays and lesbians (and, probably, to resist the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate), among others.

The law as written is much worse than that paragraph might lead you to believe. Read the whole post.

And David Neiwert has a deeper analysis of that bill and others at Crooks and Liars:

The legislation universally features language referring to the “substantial burden” imposed on businesses by anti-discrimination laws. That in turn indicates that legislators are tying their hopes to its ultimate success to other cases involving similar principles — in this case, efforts to overturn the mandate on businesses imposed by the Affordable Care Act’s provisions to provide contraception to women. Notably, Hobby Lobby is seeking to overturn that rule on the basis of the claim that it imposes a “substantial burden” on its religious beliefs. . . .

Most of this legislation originates with the same source: the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Scottsdale-based religious-right organization formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund, which is ostensibly dedicated to advocating for Christians’ right to “freely live out their faith.” ADF is also active in working to criminalize gay sex in other countries, and played a key role in the recent passage of Uganda’s new laws outlawing homosexuality. It is also active in supporting a number of lawsuits involving conservative Christians’ rights to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

The most problematic aspect of the “religious freedom” legislation that has been proposed so far is how vague its language is and how broadly it can be applied. Indeed, each of the bills so far applies “religious freedom” not just to the issue of providing services to gays and lesbians, but conceivably to every kind of prejudice under the sun. People could refuse to serve interracial couples, for instance, or for that matter anyone of another religion or ethnicity or who has disability.

Neiwert echoes what I've been saying about this phenomenon -- this isn't the end of it, by any means. And it's not just an assault on equal rights for LGBTs -- it's an attempt to roll back anti-discrimination laws in general and enshrine "deeply held religious beiefs" as paramount -- as long as those religious beliefs are evangelical Christian.

One of the laws’ main defenders — paleo-conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan — essentially admitted as much in his column on the debate over Arizona’s law. He offered a simple proposal: “Suppose we repealed the civil rights laws and fired all the bureaucrats enforcing these laws.”

“Does anyone think hotels, motels and restaurants across Dixie, from D.C. to Texas, would stop serving black customers? Does anyone think there would again be signs sprouting up reading ‘whites’ and ‘colored’ on drinking foundations and restrooms?”

Buchanan claimed the civil rights laws of the 1960s have already done their work, saying “the conditions that called for the laws of the 1960s have ceased to exist.” He is not clear how those laws would have ever worked in the first place if they had not been enforced on a broad basis.

I'm reminded that Mississippi abolished slavery in 2012. Virginia is still trying to reinstate its sodomy law ("Save the Children!"). And it's not all that long ago that a justice of the peace -- a government official -- refused to marry an interracial couple in Louisiana ("Save the Children!" again).

So in response to Buchanan, you betcha!

Saturday Science: A Genius-Level Crow?

Or is it just that animals are smarter than we give them credit for?

Think about it.

Is This a Blooper? (Update)

I get e-mails from Amazon with "local deals," which I generally ignore, but the subject heading on this one stopped me for a minute:

Tea Party/Party Planning

I had to think about that for a minute.

On that note, two posts of note this morning:

Via Digby, this article from Ian Millhiser:

The most remarkable thing about Arizona’s “License To Discriminate” bill is how quickly it became anathema, even among Republicans. Both 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called upon Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto this effort to protect businesses that want to discriminate against gay people. So did Arizona’s other senator, Jeff Flake. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Indeed, three state senators who voted for this very bill urged Brewer to veto it before she finally did so on Wednesday, confessing that they “made a mistake” when they voted for it to become law.

The premise of the bill is that discrimination becomes acceptable so long as it is packaged inside a religious wrapper. As Arizona state Rep. Eddie Farnsworth (R) explained, lawmakers introduced it in response to instances where anti-gay business owners in other states were “punished for their religious beliefs” after they denied service to gay customers in violation of a state anti-discrimination law.

Yet, while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, “our Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.”

How does that relate to the Tea Party? Just look:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has vetoed SB1062, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Arizona. No one has ever accused Governor Brewer of being the most courageous Republican around. Come to think of it, the word courageous and Jan Brewer have probably never been uttered in the same sentence.

The left and the homosexual lobby in America went into overdrive to kill this bill. Conservatives rallied for this bill and Governor Brewer opted for cowardice instead of courage.

Why is this bill so important and what did it mean for not only Arizona but America?

The issue can be boiled down to one word: Freedom.

A free man or woman controls their labor. A slave has no control over their labor. A free man or woman decides who they will work for and under what conditions. The slave cannot.

The left and the homosexual lobby are both pushing slavery using the Orwellian concepts of “tolerance” and “inclusiveness.”

It gets worse. And aside from this screed being fact-free, it's worth noting that the whole post is in a large, bold-face font. Does that tell you something?

And some of the comments are so far out there that they're actually funny.

This one via Joe.My.God.

Update: This post on the subject of "religious freedom" at Mahablog, is worth a read.

I’m sure I’ve said before that conservatives like to pretend the establishment clause isn’t there, or is somehow lesser to the free exercise clause, although in fact without the establishment clause the free exercise clause isn’t worth much. Certainly, the child being coerced into expressing belief in God by a government employee is not having his free exercise rights respected, is he?

And from TPM, this analysis of the present-day "religious freedom" movement and its prospects.

Arizona Veto

Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed Arizona's "Christians are above the law" bill last evening. From the press conference:

Senate Bill 1062 does not address a specific and present concern related to religious liberty in Arizona. I have not heard of one example in Arizona where a business owner’s religious liberty has been violated.

The bill is broadly worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences. After weighing all of the arguments, I vetoed Senate Bill 1062 moments ago.

Her full remarks are here.

Given the reaction not only from civil rights activists and Democrats, but prominent Republicans (including three state senators who voted for the bill and now call their votes "a mistake") and, most important, I suspect, business leaders, what else could she do?

Just as an example of the verbal contortions (not to mention logical gymnastics) proponents of this sort of hate legislation engage in, here's none other than Michele Bachmann (R-Loony Tunes) on how we need to tolerate bigots.

See, it's not about discriminating against people you don't approve of, it's about people tolerating your attempts to intrude your religious beliefs into areas they don't belong.

It seems as though most of the similar bills in other state legislatures have died, for some reason.

Jeremy Hooper has a good analysis of the whole phenomenon at GLAAD.