Untouchable

Anathema - Untouchable (part one) (from Weather Systems) from Kscope on Vimeo.

Sand bubbler

A sand bubbler crab (Scopimera inflata) at Taylor Point

I've often seen the small balls of sand created by sand bubbler crabs on the beach, and seen the small crabs scurrying amongst them. Not until today, however, when I lay down on the sand to photograph them, did I appreciate how well camouflaged they are against the background they create.

Look over there! (Links)

Some stuff that has caught my eye:

• Far North Queensland's torrent frogs
• a US Christian college wants its female students to dress appropriately before evacuating their dorms in cases of emergency
• US political "scandals" (Benghazi, IRS targetting, spying on the Associated Press) falling apart
• a dog or just a blob of disconnected, alternating smaller blobs

And finally:

A note about some stuff over on the right - Cairns blogs

My mother dropped me an email after she followed one of the links in the sidebar. She was surprised that I would recommend something with the content she found there. I have two dynamic feeds over there. The first, Better reads, are blogs I recommend and that I visit regularly (if not daily). A little further down is Other Cairns blogs. Some of the Cairns blogs listed I do recommend - there are some beautiful local wildlife photos on some (Tyto Tony and Garden Guests for example), some provide some amusing or interesting miscellany, and some provide some local news that one otherwise may miss. Others listed regularly spout absolute drivel. No prizes will be given for guessing which one my mother ended up at.

That list of Cairns blogs will only have one criterion for inclusion - they're blogs by someone in Cairns or the larger region. If there's a Cairns region blog not listed there, no matter how idiotic and half-witted I might find it, let me know and I'll include it.

Dogs welcome

As I often do on weekends, I crashed at Fratelli on Trinity this morning and tucked into the eggs benedict with prosciutto (the best eggs benedict I've tasted, in part due to the perfect hollandaise sauce). I overheard the owner letting the staff know of a new booking for "two people and two dogs". The waiter immediately wandered over to a front row table and put out the reserved sign. The table has an umbrella extending shade onto the grass, and I've noticed dogs there before with bowls of water.

It's the first time I have heard bookings explicitly for dogs at a cafe. While I'm not a dog person, it's nice to hear our pets being included. If you're walking your dogs at Trinity Beach and want a nice breakfast, it's probably best to book ahead and specify that your pooches will be with you.

Not being a dog person, so I'm not 100% sure why I'm drawing attention to this. Please make sure your dogs are well trained and will be quiet when you're there.

At least we're not the USA

The US Congress has two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate is controlled by Democrats while the House is under the control of the Republicans. Bills need to get through both houses to become law, as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) did in in 2010.

Republicans regained the House in 2012, and they decided to express their hatred of Obamacare by holding a vote to repeal the Act, despite the fact it was never going to pass the Senate. It was a purely symbolic vote to appeal to their base. Needless to say, they won the vote.

Grandstanding complete and pleased with their success, the Republicans soon decided that what they needed was to hold a vote to repeal Obamacare! So they held the vote again and once again the House voted in favour of repeal. Brimming with confidence after this success, and an anti-abortion vote or two, the Republicans thought long and hard about their next priority. After much deliberation, they decided that what they really needed was a vote to appeal Obamacare! Giddy with joy at their win in that vote to repeal Obamacare, they turned their attention to repealing Obamacare. And on it went.

Today (our time), for the 37th time, the House of Representatives voted by a 229-195 margin to repeal Obamacare! It is estimated that the 37 symbolic votes to repeal Obamacare have cost the US more than $50 million.

The House Speaker, John Boehner:

We’ve got 70 new members who have not had the opportunity to vote on the president’s health care law. Frankly, they’ve been asking for an opportunity to vote on it, and we’re going to give it to them.

And you thought our parliamentarians are bad?

In case I missed it...

One of the many reasons I stopped buying the Cairns Post was its decision to include Andrew Bolt's columns. Since then the Cairns Post is something I briefly peruse in cafes or in the lunch room at work.

Apparently Andrew Bolt has been given a some extra space in some newspapers to continue his quest to misinform the public about climate change. It's pretty much just a compressed version of his many past lies. Bolt's continued use of Rose's "warming stopped 16 years ago" meme is one reason why I think Bolt is dishonest rather than deluded, and he trots it again in his latest screed.

I haven't seen the Cairns Post republish Bolt's piece, though it's possible I missed it. It is, of course, possible that the Cairns Post's editor has done the right thing and passed it over.

If you want information on Bolt's claims, Climate Wars has a brief rebuttal and Watching the Deniers is wading through the disinformation in a series of posts (1, 2, 3, and more to come).

Is Skywhale a Jackass?

So Robyn Archer, the creative director of the Centenary of Canberra, has defended Skywhale - the whale-shaped balloon which makes Eccentrica Gallumbits look mammary-challenged:

There have been a few reactive suggestions that the balloon might have taken the form of the Canberra Bluebell, a gang-gang cockatoo or Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin holding hands. Had we gone that way, there would have been little new conversation and our media reach would not have extended to dozens of countries, hundreds of media outlets and thousands of tweets in Australia and worldwide. Many have applauded the risk-taking as an indicator of signs that cultural sophistication is on the rise in the national capital.

All those things may indeed be signs of cultural sophistication on the rise. Or it may just be mean Skywhale has drawn attention by being stupid. After all, Jackass: The Movie, also generated conversation, publicity, attention and tweets, but few would regard it as culturally sophisticated.

I'm sorry, but we won't be able to help you today...

Centrelink in Cairns received a visit from vandals over the weekend:

 

The graffiti was still there today, but I suspect it will be cleaned off soon. Part of me thinks that Centrelink should try a different tactic, at least in the short term:

Eyecatching (Links)

My eye was captured by:

• I can assure you that already in the Pavlovian swamps of the nutso right, the glands are swelling.
• Death Cult Criticizes Other Death Cult as ‘Degeneration of Religion’
• Freediving champ Kimi Werner swims with great white shark, grabs its dorsal fin
• How do you like your fish? Phylogenised!
• Taliban renounces war on anti-polio workers

What is a bird?

XKCD illustrates a thought I often have when I'm sitting watching birds:

Canberra rents a whale with boobs for $300,000

What? Why?

I grew up in chilly Canberra. For a while my parents owned a house on a hill in Calwell, with great views out over the Tuggeranong Valley. Sometimes, particularly in winter, we would see several ballons floating past. It always seemed quite special to be able to sit and watch them from inside.

As part of Canberra's centenary celebrations the ACT government has decided to spend $300,000 to host the above balloon for as little as one flight. The "Skywhale" apparently has a shelf life of 100 flights, and some of them are to be in Tasmania and Melbourne.

So, Canberra, does a whale with boobs balloon say "Happy Centenary" to you?

Like asking Charlie Sheen how many women he dated

Slate.com is publishing extracts from the memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. A court ordered him released in 2010, but he remains imprisoned pending a government appeal.

At times the account is amusing, such as the title of this post which is how Slahi described a request to write down everything he told his interrogators over all his questioning. Of course it also gives a different perspective into the treatment being inflicted upon prisoners in US custody.

The nonpartisan Constitution Project's Detainee Treatment Report recently concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture”. The abridged report is on my reading list.

Perhaps in the future the United States will attempt to salvage some moral authority by prosecuting those responsible. It is, unfortunately, unlikely.

True facts about the sea pig

Clever fish - Interspecies cooperation and communication in hunting

A lot of people underestimate how clever fish can be. A new study has given me more ammunition to try to fight this errant belief:

A study led by Alexander Vail, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, found that groupers and coral trout perform a pointing signal to indicate the location of hidden prey to cooperative hunting partners including moray eels, octopuses and Napoleon wrasses.

They go on to say:

The grouper's signalling shows what are considered key hallmarks of being carried out with intent - that is, the fish has a goal in mind and uses communication to try and achieve it - rather than being an inflexible gesture.  Key evidence is that the grouper elaborates on its headstand signal when the moray eel does not react appropriately to its signal and swims over to the eel, tries a different signal and in some cases even tries to push the moray in the prey's direction. The researchers also observed groupers waiting above a hidden prey for up to 25 minutes before signalling to a passing predatory partner. They say this suggests groupers may perform at an ape-like level in a memory task commonly used to assess cognitive ability.

Read more at the University of Cambridge's website. The research has been published in Nature Communications.

I'll add this to Tool-like behavior in the sixbar wrasse, Thalassoma hardwicke, which detailed the use of rock anvils to smash food into manageable pieces (a behaviour I see regularly in my moon wrasse, Thalassoma lunare). Another nice example I use is my old archerfish, Toxotes jaculatrix, who realised that if it shot a drop of water at me sitting at my computer I would likely feed it.

Don't underestimate our piscine pals.