Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Anyone who thinks "Darwinism" is "just a theory" can read this and weep.
This NYT article "DNA Offers New Insight Concerning Cat Evolution" uses that old "E" word - evolution -- without a blink or a demur.
And the story is such a fascinating one -- it would be a pretty dull story to attribute the cat to so-called "intelligent design", AKA "creationism", compared to what really happened:

About nine million years ago - two million years after the cat family first appeared in Asia - these successful predators invaded North America by crossing the Beringian land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska . . . Later, several American cat lineages returned to Asia. With each migration, evolutionary forces morphed the pantherlike patriarch of all cats into a rainbow of species, from ocelots and lynxes to leopards, lions and the lineage that led to the most successful cat of all, even though it has mostly forsaken its predatory heritage: the cat that has induced people to pay for its board and lodging in return for frugal displays of affection.
This new history of the family, known as Felidae, is based on DNA analyses of the 37 living species . . . Before DNA, taxonomists had considerable difficulty in classifying the cat family. The fossil record was sparse and many of the skulls lacked distinctiveness . . . [the research team]has been able to reconstruct a series of at least 10 intercontinental migrations by which cats colonized the world. The cheetah, for instance, now found in Africa, belongs to a lineage that originated in North America and some three million years ago migrated back across the Bering land bridge to Asia and then Africa. Dr. O'Brien said the cats were very successful predators, second only to humans, and quickly explored new territories as opportunity arose. Sea levels were low from 11 million to 6 million years ago, enabling the first modern cats, in paleontologists' perspective (saber-tooth tigers are ancient cats), to spread from Asia west into Africa, creating the caracal lineage, and east into North America, generating the ocelot, lynx and puma lineages.
The leopard lineage appeared around 6.5 million years ago in Asia. The youngest of the eight lineages, which led eventually to the domestic cat, emerged some 6.2 million years ago in Asia and Africa, either from ancestors that had never left Asia or more probably from North American cats that had trekked back across the Bering land bridge.
Sea levels then rose, confining each cat species to its own continent, but sank again some three million years ago, allowing a second round of cat migrations. It was at this time that the ancestors of the cheetah and the Eurasian lynxes colonized the Old World from the New . . .

Even the most deeply religious person should be able to see the hand of God in such a fascinating history.
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
(Thanks to Americablog for highlighting this story.)

Another great cat story

Meet "Miracle"

who clung under an SUV for 60 miles (100 KM) down the New Jersey Turnpike, until another driver spotted her and got the SUV stopped.

I would have supported this anyway

Even if my son were not running for the Greens, I would have endorsed this: CBC News: Greens launch formal complaint over debate exclusion But now, of course, I am even more supportive.

In a letter to the broadcasting regulator, lawyer Peter Rosenthal calls for a revision of the debates policy, charging it is not consistent with the Charter principles of free and democratic elections. "To deny the Green party participation, it perverts the democratic process," Rosenthal told CBC News Online . . . "By restricting participation in the debate to the leader of the four "major" parties does truly drown out the voices of Green party candidates and is thus unconstitutional," Rosenthal writes . . . the party is running candidates in all 308 ridings, and received 4.3 per cent of the vote in the last election . . . Although the Green party has little chance of forming a government, amendments to the Canada Elections Act makes every vote count. A party that now obtains two per cent of the vote, will receive $1.75 for each vote for each year until the next election. Rosenthal . . . suggests a drawing line be made at those parties who have obtained at least two per cent of the vote, the same threshold needed to receive per-vote financing.

I myself would be much more interested in listening to Jim Harris rather than Gilles Duceppe.

5-0

Our Golden Boys win it all:

And coach Brent Sutter "is 12-0 in his two years at the helm of the national team. He's now the winningest Canadian coach in the history of this tournament."

Great lines of the day

At Hullabaloo. Glenn Greenwald writes about cowardice and fear -- how the one-note Bush administration still wants Americans to be afraid, be very afraid:

There is no more important goal than exposing and undermining the cowardly and exaggerated fear which lies at the core of the Bush agenda . . . if it really were the case that Islamic terrorism constituted the sort of imminent, civilization-ending threat which the Administration has spent the last four years drumming into everyone’s head, then it would be extremely difficult to gin up much outrage over an eavesdropping program, warrants or not . . . one can protect against the threat of terrorism with courage, calm and resolve – the attributes which have always defined our nation as it has confronted other threats. Hysteria and fear-mongering are the opposite of strength. The strong remain rational and unafraid.

Emphasis mine. It has been my contention for three years that just about everyone in the government in Washington was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- and its time to get over it, folks.

Advertising

Well, this could be fun.
When I was going through the template page on Blogger the other day, I noticed that they now have a button where you can click to have Google advertising on the site. So I thought about it and did some reading about it, too.
The downside, I guess, is if I start "editing" myself just to get ads -- like, running stories about Garden Equipment I Really Really Like just to attract an ad from the XYZ Fertilizer Company.
So let me know if you think I am doing that.
Or maybe you really do want to know about Restaurants I Really Really Like?
But on the upside, I have sometimes wondered what this is actually "worth" as far as this blogging thing goes. I keep seeing other bloggers who ask for donations and have these PayPal clicker buttons on their site -- I think its sort of like buying a newspaper subscription, I guess. Going with ads on a blog is more like radio or TV, where they make their money based on the ads they sell rather than on subscriptions. The way these Google ads work is that every time someone clicks on an ad on my site, I would get some percentage of that ad's revenue (with some protections in place to catch me if I do all the clicking myself!)
But if there really are readers who like what I am saying -- and who therefore start clicking on the ads for the Craft Supplies I Really Really Like -- well, its one way of establishing value, I think.
So we'll see how it goes. The first ad on the site was for a Katrina relief fund, so that's something I can support, actually.
Let me know what you think, folks.

Rove of the North

He's around here somewhere, I just know it.
Karl Rove is famous for turning the tables, accusing his opponent of what his own candidate is actually guilty of. Thus, for example, we had Gore accused of stretching the truth, when it was Bush who actually told the whoppers about his presidential plans. And we had war-hero Kerry portrayed as a coward, while draft-dodger Bush escaped criticism. And then the opponent's responses to such bizarre lies end up sounding like sour grapes - "I know you are but what am I?"
You have to remember one thing -- Rove lies. All the time. About just about everything, because he thinks people are too stupid to handle the truth -- and its bullshit, isn't it?
Well, I don't know who is advising the Harper campaign, but it seems to me that Rove of the North is around somewhere.
On Monday, Harper announces to great fanfare that the Liberals are going to "go negative" and the news media dutifully report it.
But while Martin takes the high road with a new speech talking about his vision for Canada, it is Harper who actually goes negative -- yesterday releasing a vile ad campaign and today accusing Martin of dodging taxes on his shipping company.
I guess he hopes that by attacking first, he will prevent the media from pointing out that Harper cannot defend his own management record because he doesn't have one -- according to his biography, he hasn't founded a company or even worked for one. He hasn't ever worked at anything outside of politics, as far as I can tell. In a sane world, you know, voters might think this is a negative, but here is Harper trying to turn Martin's actual business experience into something suspicious.
And the Conservative ad campaign? Well, again, it strikes me that they are trying to keep everyone focused on Martin, and hoping no one notices their own complete lack of governing experience -- except, that is, for the Conservative candidates who used to be members of the discredited Harris government in Ontario.
Winnipeg Free Press columnist Frances Russell sums up exactly what is wrong with the Conservative campaign -- the hollow core at its centre -- in her column today - Canadians terrified of Harper's real plans:

With the wind at their backs from NDP leader Jack Layton's calls for a change in government and a cheerleading national media, Stephen Harper's Conservatives are cruising at 54 per cent in the polls, just as Brian Mulroney was in April 1984.
Well, no.
After almost two years of all-scandal, all-the-time, the Free Press headline Monday summed it up best: "It's Tories by a nose in new poll." All other surveys still show the Liberals tied or with a slim lead.
How can this be? How can the Liberals even be close after the gaffes, the insensitivity, the dithering, the lack of focus, the culture of entitlement, the arrogance and yes, the scandals? Not to mention the 22 months of the most relentlessly negative campaign in Canadian history, staged by Harper's Conservatives.
Part of it may be public turnoff from the daily battering of words like "corrupt," "corruption," "organized crime," "criminal conspiracy" and worse, spilling daily from the Conservatives, amplified by most of the media. Like battery acid, it's corroded the civility of our political culture and is driving voters away from the ballot box in droves. But mostly it's because, furious as all Canadians are at Liberal sins, they remain terrified of Stephen Harper and the direction he would take the country.
Like the Bush Republicans, the Harper Conservatives set groups in society against each other. Like Bush Republicans, they govern for the secure and affluent, for the "have mores," as President George W. Bush once memorably described them. And like Margaret Thatcher, they don't believe in society, only in individuals.
Their idea of public policy, as a prominent New Democrat once put it, is to give everybody a bucket of gravel and tell them to go out and build a highway.
It sounds so democratic to give individuals money to "choose." But Conservative promises of taxable allowances and credits, for day care, for public transit passes, for private but not public pensions and for children's amateur sports, don't create public services available to all. They just help individuals with above average incomes. Taxable allowances and credits do nothing for people who don't pay taxes and little for people who earn a modest living.
The single mother working at Wal-Mart on minimum wage can't benefit from a taxable allowance for child care. She needs a subsidized child- care space, a space that won't be available. A tax credit for a bus or subway pass isn't any use to her either if she can't afford all that money at once or if there is no public transit to use. As for the tax credit for sports equipment, she needs it for food and rent.
Harper's $400 million for individual transit tax credits would be better used assisting municipalities to improve their public transit systems. His $1,200 per child taxable allowance is of no use if there is no quality child care to be bought at any price. And his $250 million for new child care spaces is conditional on those spaces being provided by business through tax credits, hardly comparable to the Liberals' universal national childcare program, modelled after universal public education.
The senior relying on the Canada Pension, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement is by definition worse off than the senior with a private pension. But the worse-off senior gets nothing from the Harper Conservative plan for tax credits for private pensions only. . . .
As the gun violence currently plaguing Toronto illustrates, there is blowback from government policies designed to punish certain groups in society simply because they are disadvantaged. Toronto today is reaping the whirlwind that the former Conservative government of Mike Harris sowed when it slashed welfare rates by 22 per cent and terminated social housing. And Torontonians should take note that several former Harris cabinet ministers are running on the Harper ticket . . . Vancouver entrepreneur Jayson Kaplan . . . says Harper is using Bush's 2000 election strategy, allaying voter fears by promising to be a "compassionate" conservative, not to intrude the state into matters like abortion and only to spend "projected surpluses." Once in office, Bush did the exact opposite.
"Voting for Stephen Harper is like voting for George Bush," Kaplan writes. "The two are just too similar in their campaigns and their beliefs for it to be a coincidence."

A chilling scenario

The Poor Man sets up a "how to look like you could be a terrorist" scenario:

One day, you’re sitting at your desk eating Cheetos when the phone rings.
It’s your old college buddy, calling to check in from his exciting new job overseas! He’s working for an important multinational corporation . . . he gives the number of the phone he’s calling you from. By a funny coincidence, that phone number, three years ago, was connected to a cell phone that was stolen by a . . . Pakistani kid who rang up a lot of calls to rural Kashmir. You don’t know that, of course.
A few months later, you take a trip to lovely Mexico. While there, you buy a calling card, so you can check in on the homefront without running up huge roaming charges on your cell phone. You also take some pictures of picturesque Mexican buildings, and post them . . . on the internet for friends and family to see.
When you get home, catching up on your news, you are shocked and horrified to learn that the islamofascists have decapitated another hostage. Intrigued in spite of yourself, and eager to stay informed about the depths to which those murderous bastards will sink, you find the video of the killing on the internet, and watch it on your computer.
Soon, in a festive all-black building in surbuban Maryland, a pock-faced jr. espionagateer gets a message from the big computers with the all the wires and antennas. The message has your name!

I wonder about is this -- that while the alphabet soup agencies are spending tens of millions tracking people like our token Mr. Cheetos here, wouldn't any actual terrorists manage to keep such a low profile that they would get lost in this crowd.
And one other point -- instead of calling this everyman Mr. Cheetos, perhaps we should call him Mr. Arar. The 'evidence' which raised all the suspicion against Maher Arar seems just about as flimsy as what the Poorman posted.

We're progressives. Hear us roar!

We're progressives. Hear us roar in numbers too great to ignore . . .
Shakespeare's Sister writes about what progressives have done:

Thanks to progressives, we have Social Security, a minimum wage, welfare, a 40-hour work week, overtime pay, job protections, equal opportunity, and labor unions—all of which are resoundingly supported by a plurality of Americans, and all of which are also perpetually under attack from conservatives.
Thanks to progressives, we have legalized birth control and safe and legal abortions . . . strides made toward full equality for all . . . voting rights and civil rights protections . . . rural America has electricity, schools are desegregated, we have a National Endowment for the Arts, we have Public Broadcasting . . .
Wanting drinkable water, breathable air, a functioning safety net, universal healthcare, alternative energies, true equality, fair elections, fair taxation, improved public education, and increased workers’ rights isn’t radical. It’s a worthy and achievable agenda, and, perhaps more importantly, it’s what America wants . . .
the Dems need to stop being ashamed of progressives. We are the history of much of what is right with America, and I’m sick and bloody tired of the compulsion to categorize us as anything less. You, and everyone else who looks down their noses at progressives, can shove your contempt for us straight up your arses, you ungrateful pricks.

And I feel the same way about progressives in Canada -- who, as well as all the stuff listed above, also brought in medicare for Canadians.
Now, to be fair, I know conservatives here have done their bit for the country too -- what springs immediately to my mind is the GST and NAFTA.

Again, the CP platform of sentence fragments

Well, I found it surprising. Because the 36-page Green Party platform was released today, I thought I would also check out what the other party platforms were saying.
So first I looked at the Liberal website, not expecting much because Martin hasn't done very many policy announcements. But I did find fairly detailed coverage of six primary issue areas, with each link leading to additional proposals for five or six or more initiatives relating to each policy.
On the NDP website, there are 16 "issue" areas listed. The links mainly seem to focus more on critiques of what they think the Liberals have failed to do rather than details about what the NDP would do instead. Still, at least there is some detail to this site, too, even though the detail is mostly criticism.
And finally I checked the Conservative website. Now, one of my main complaints during the 2004 election about the Conservatives was about how very shallow their platform was then. So now, after a policy convention a year ago, as well as a month of announcement after announcement, I had expected some depth on the Conservative website.
But theirs was actually the worst. I found this page listing six "stand up for . . . " issues. But when you click on the links, you get virtually no detail at all. Once again the Conservatives give us a platform of sentence fragments -- in the "Communities" section, for example, the Conservatives make vague promises like "Action to ensure clean air, land, and water" and "New or rebuilt municipal roads, bridges and other infrastructure", while the Liberals provide specific commitments and dollar details about the Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund, the gas tax transfer, and the GST rebate to municipalities.
So in the last 18 months, I cannot see that the Conservatives have fleshed out their policies very much at all.

Slavery -- can't live without it!

The Chicago Tribune provides an update on how things are going on the slavery front. For the last three years -- that's right, THREE YEARS! -- the Pentagon has been kicking around how to implement President Bush's order that US military contractors not use slaves. And its just so very, very difficult. As one lawyer for the contractors intones "We don't want to do anything that conveys the idea that we are sanctioning or tolerating trafficking". But, of course, they don't want the Pentagon to actually pass or enforce any rules against it either. After all, how could the military contractors function without being able to use women for sex slaves, and men as labour slaves?

Great lines of the day

In a post titled 2005, Atrios sums it up:

2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative . . . By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn't (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability.
It's a mystery why Russert and the gang can giggle over their little roundtables, essentially ignoring what amounts to a military coup by our own president. He's asserted the authority of commander in chief over the entire country, and not just the military to which the constitution grants him such authority. Yes, we hope and generally assume that this temper tantrum by our boy king will pass in 3 years, that his overreach will not have long lasting effects, that the crisis will pass.
2005 was the year the president declared he was the law, and few of our elite opinion makers and shapers bothered to notice, or care.

Well, at some point the journalists will likely notice, I think. Whether it will be too late by then to do anything about it, I wonder.
And just how restless is the US military getting over at the Pentagon these days, by the way, if Bush had to change the "doomsday" line of succession to downgrade the status of the military leadership?

Green platform

The Green party platform was released today -- here it is in pdf file. I haven't read it all yet, but here is the executive summary:

In this election, our message is simple.
- We can have a government that is truly accountable to Canadians, by renewing our democratic institutions to bring integrity back to public office.
- We can have a Canada that protects our air, soil and water while developing a strong, sustainable economy.
- We can move beyond our basic Kyoto commitments to make Canada a world leader in combating climate change.
- We can have a Canada that works for all communities, by honouring First Nation rights to self-government, Québec's rightful place in our federation, and the promise that new Canadians bring to our communities from coast to coast to coast. The Green Party's Canada is inclusive and progressive, where our values of diversity, tolerance and compassion ensure that no one is left behind.
Together, we can meet these challenges. Unlike other political parties who are more concerned with
short-term political survival, the Green Party's first priority is the world we will leave for our children and grandchildren.

Great line of the day

From Suburban Guerrilla: It Was A Very Good Year:

I finally realized why, with each new revelation of BushCo's immorality, instead of falling into the pit of despair, I only feel lighter and stronger. Here's why: These are tactics used by losers. They are people who can only rise to power by lying, manipulating and distorting their agenda. They know full well they can't rally supporters on the basis of their true motives. That's why these tactics inevitably fail. People will only give them the benefit of the doubt for so long.
This year, the battle is joined in the open and like the vampires they are, they will run from the sun. Shine on.

Emphasis mine. And I've noticed several "the battle is joined" posts over the last couple of days. Here's a particularly inspirational one: The Battle for America.

Dying of thirst

Paul Celluci doesn't get it and neither apparently does Maclean's magazine (though I didn't read their article).
The reason why Canada cannot sell water to the US is that, once we started, we could never stop.
It would be the end of Canadian sovereignty.
Because if we started selling our water to the US, then US population and industries would increase to match the new supply. But, 20 or 30 years hence, we could never turn around and say "sorry, folks, you'll just have to die of thirst and your industries will have to dry up, because we've changed our minds and we need the water for ourselves" nor could we ever say "sorry, folks, but we just have to increase the price now; tough titties if you can't afford it ..."
Nope, couldn't be done. We would have no choice but to continue to sell our water, year after year, decade after decade, at the price the US was willing to pay.
Remember what happened to the West economy because of Trudeau's National Energy Program? Where the Canadian west took the hit so that Ontario and Quebec wouldn't have to worry anymore about freezing in the dark?
Well, that would be nothing compared to what would happen to Canada from what the US would call the Inter-Continetal Water Program, where the US would dictate to Canada its water requirements.
We'd better not start down this road.