Saturday, March 01, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
GIVING HUMANS THE BIRD
I have a horrible feeling that somehow we’ve gotten this whole endangered species thing backward. Yes, we continue to carelessly destroy habitats, introduce alien species, and randomly dump industrial waste, and that’s all bad and we should stop it. But I’ve been eating dolphin safe tuna for almost forty years now and the darn dolphins are still not safe. I thought these guys were supposed to be so smart! Meanwhile, nobody is trying to protect the Northern Pike of Lake Davis, California: Quite the opposite.
Some idiot released a couple of Esox Lucius Linaeus – Northern Pike - into the small and now very un-placid Lake Davis back in 1991 because they thought Pike would be fun to catch. Unfortunately the lake already had a stocked population of game fish, Onocorhynchus clarki – Rainbow Trout - which are not only a popular game fish amongst tourists but are also an easy meal for the voracious Northern Pike.
To the California Fish and Game Department the worry was that once these piscatorial carnivores had finished off the Trout they would swim downstream on the Feather River, into the Sacramento and then upstream to devour the Delta Salmon fry populations, which Fish and Game had just spent tens of millions of dollars re-introducing. So, since 1997 the California Fish and Game Department has spent something in excess of $24 million trying to kill off these finned invaders, and that effort hasn’t proven to be fun for anybody, except possibly the Pike.
To the California Fish and Game Department the worry was that once these piscatorial carnivores had finished off the Trout they would swim downstream on the Feather River, into the Sacramento and then upstream to devour the Delta Salmon fry populations, which Fish and Game had just spent tens of millions of dollars re-introducing. So, since 1997 the California Fish and Game Department has spent something in excess of $24 million trying to kill off these finned invaders, and that effort hasn’t proven to be fun for anybody, except possibly the Pike.
The Northern Pike of Lake Davis have been poisoned. They have been electrocuted. They have been shot, netted, hooked, cornered, dynamited, starved and suffocated. The state even drained the lake. For over a year the nearby human population couldn’t drink the water, it was so full of piperonyl butoxide. The pike barely noticed the stuff.
Sometimes it seemed that the "experts" were hunting down the pike individually, one at a time, to beat them to death with sticks and clubs. It was like trying to control flys with a fly swatter. It seems to have just ticked them off.
These Franken-Pike refused to die. They weren't on any endangered species list, they’re on the ten most wanted list. They’ve had more people gunning for them than Osama bin Laden, and with about as much luck. 
When nothing else worked Fish and Game tried stocking Lake Davis with oversized Trout fry, thinking they would be too big for the young Pike fry to eat and the Pike would then starve to death or be eaten by the giganto-trout. But in response the Pike began growing nine to fourteen times faster than normal. They became super-pike fry-enators: big nasty Pike that had no trouble swallowing the Trout of unusual size.
Six hundred Pike were caught in Fish and Game sample nets the year after the lake was poisoned. In 2004 the catch was 17,635. In all, something over 65,000 Pike have been pulled from Lake Davis since humans began trying to eradicating them, and God knows how many sacrificial Trout. But however many it was, it wasn't enough.
In May of 2005 the Pike Fry were caught trying to find a way around the Pike screens on the spillway. And in 2006, after a winter of heavy snow pack and spring rains, Lake Davis came within inches of overflowing the spillway entirely, releasing the Pike directly into the Sacramento River system. Still, not willing to admit he has been beaten by a mere fish, Steve Martarano of California Fish and Game gamely insisted, “We’ve gotten better at knowing where the Pike are.” Yeah, Steve: they’re in the water.
Well, in January, 2007, Fish and Game announced plans to try it one more time. In the fall of 2007, as part of yet another $12 million "new" program, about 48,000 acre feet of “rotenone”, a commonly used and “safe” pesticide, were dumped into the lake and, this time, upstream in the lake's tributaries. And this, The Department of Fish and Game assured everyone, would finally kill off "the-Pike-that- wouldn't-die" without killing the people or the local economy...again. We wouldn't know for certain if it worked this time until spring. The ice over Lake Davis was still 12 to 24 inches thick, but under the ice 31,ooo new Eagle Lake Trout have been re-stocked, ranging in size from 8 oz.to 3 lbs. And down there, in the dark water, unseen by human eyes, the battles are occuring that will decide the fate of many a naturalist at Fish & Game. As spring approached they poured in another 1 million Trout. And everybody in California had their fingers crossed. But I've got to tell you, that to me the tale of Lake Davis reads more like Mary Shelly's monster story.
Meanwhile biologists raising endangered California condor chicks use hand puppets to feed the baby vultures, so they have no positive human interaction before they are released. But despite these efforts about a half dozen of the first juvenile Condors freed in the wild chose to hang out at the Pine Mountain Club, a condo resort village down the road from Fraser Park, at the Western end of the Tehachapi mountain range between Central and Southern California, where it seems the birds figured out on their own that their razor sharp beaks and talons designed to rip open animal carcasses worked even better on plastic trash bags and kitchen window screens.
The “naturalist” studying the Condor-condo interaction returned home after a hard day of remote Condor observing via powerful binoculars to discover three of the 30 pound birds and their 10’ wingspans, gallivanting about his bedroom, using it as a sort of playroom and free toilet. They had entered via a slit they made in his window screen. One was in his underwear drawer shredding his shorts while the other two were slowly dissecting his mattress with all the abandon of adolescences free from parental oversight. Still, it almost looked as if the birds had picked out this guy personally to deliver a message, and maybe they had; "Stop watching us, you eco-papparazi!" And the average citizen, like say maybe Russel Crowe, would have gone into that room with a broom and defended his privacy, and he would driven those feathered gangbangers out the way they had come in!
But this guy was a “naturalist”; to avoid human interaction with the feathered truants he retreated until the birds got bored and left on their own. The “naturalists” then convinced local politicians to require all trash to be held inside until the morning of collection, and then placed only in locking containers. And at the landfill the garbage bags would be immediately covered with dirt.
The thinking was that without an easy food supply the condors would leave. Instead the Condor youth gangs’ response was to loom about on the roof of a local restaurant, depressing the hell out of potential customers. The condors were actually waiting for the trash trucks to arrive. They would then use their extraordinary skills at gliding to follow behind the trucks all way to the dump, where they quickly descended on the leftover meat and soup cans and macaroni and cheese containers if they were a dieing wooly mammoth. The front loaders couldn’t cover the trash bags without the risk of burying a condor at the same time, so the meals could now be eaten at leisure in a sort of Condor olfactory buffet. Game, set, and match to the Condors.
The biologists and naturalists were horrified because it didn’t fit their image of noble Condors sailing in an empty sky above an untouched wilderness - which is where the Condors almost became extinct in the first place. Need I point out that not a single condor died at the Pine Mountain Club? They ate too many french fries but none of them died!
The happy ending to this story of rebellious Condors is that once they matured and mated the adult condors didn’t want their offspring growing up in an urban environment anymore than Republicans do. Today, the Pine Mountain Club is condor free, except for a few weeks every summer when the newly adolescent vultures fly in for a sort of avian spring break, a condor rumsringa. They eat spicy food, taunt the humans and stage panty raids on the naturalists. And then they leave.
Now, I’m not suggesting we try protecting endangered species with dynamite or by raising their cholesterol levels, but it does seem that the animals we’re protecting are all in trouble while the ones we’re trying to exterminate are experiencing population booms. What can we learn from this? Well, that there are six billion humans on this planet at present and baring a natural disaster or WMD we are not going anywhere. And if we do, so are the Condors and most of the Pike and Trout. Modern Condors, searching for dinner while soaring above the wilderness are going to see a lot more humans than dead deer. And Pike and Trout are going to meet a lot of little fish with hooks in them. So why not “humanize” them, teach them what every mentally retarded pigeon already knows; the fries are better at Burger King, don’t drink the yellow water, never trust a politician in an election year and don’t go swimming in Lake Davis unless you want your talons bitten off.
-30 -
Monday, February 25, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Und der weiner sprecken, nien, du ist ein campfire girl.
I get the feeling that Germany is trying to refine their Teutonic sense of humor. Perhaps they hope to replace England as having the best sense of humor in Europe. And its going about as well as you would think. As an example, a waitress at a hamburger joint in Mainz was about to hand a bag of cheeseburgers to a customer at the drive-up window when a man suddenly appeared and grabbed the bag out of her hand “slightly injuring her” in the process, and then fled from the scene. Based on her statement the cops released the following description of the villain; a male, 1.7 to 1.8 meters tall, wearing a full-body ape costume and mask.” So far there are no arrests, but it seems to me the would-be practical joker missed the point. He shouldn’t have stolen the cheeseburgers from the lady’s hand while wearing an ape costume. That’s so 1970’s. He should have handed her a bag of cheeseburgers. A deliver to a drive-up window: now that would have been funny.
*
Some Germans understand the basic rules of joke construction. A couple of weeks ago special overnight train from Leverkusen was jammed with cheerful (i.e. drunk) football (i.e. soccer) fans, headed to a match with Hamburg (i.e. an excuse to get plastered) when some swinehund broke the tap on one of the beer kegs. Ach du Leiber! Ein booze ist kaput. Gotterdam! Swinging into action with typical German efficiency the rail company, Deutsche Bahn, halted the train at the very next station. Fans piled out of the suddenly dry conveyance. Would there be a riot? That wouldn’t be funny. Instead, puzzled commuters (it was 9:30 in the morning) were treated to twenty-five minutes of loud and enthusiastic and drunken football songs and chants until a special taxi arrived from a local beer hall with a replacement spigot. The fans then happily re-boarded the train and resumed their jovial journey with all kegs working. God only knows if the fans would have been so complacent had the handle on one of the toilets broken.
*
Of course the true test of a nation’s sense of humor is not how they tell a joke but how they take a joke, and Poland has recently been playing some ‘pranks’ on their neighbor, almost as if to test this experiment in funny krauts. The cover of the Polish magazine “Wprost” recently featured a photo of the German Chancellor, Ms. Merkel, naked above the waist, breast feeding a pair of Polish politicians, President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kacyznski. The magazine’s editor explained, “We thought of it as a little joke,” or “…skromny m figiel” in Polish. In German this translated as, “Fuck you, you strong German rolling in shit pig (ficken Ihinen, Sie starke deutsche sich uberfressen). The Germans are still unsure how to react to this, although some of the nationalistic and conservative parties have made a few suggestions. And, of course, the neo-Nazi’s would love to respond but in Germany, they are still illegal.
*
But the true test of the new humor spirit in Germany may be what the United Nations has done at the memorial site, officially labeled the “Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration and extermination camp.” You see, at the urging of the Poles, this year, 62 years after the war ended, the U.N. agreed to change the name of the memorial by inserting the word “German” right before the word “Nazi”: just in case anybody forgot who started the Nazis. And it seems the Poles were a little concerned that some people might think that anti-Semitic Poles had helped the Nazis murder the one million victims of the camp. Whereas, anyone familiar with Polish Church history would know the Poles never chased the Jews out of Poland, or burned any at the stake, or officially blamed them for murdering Jesus. The Polish Church has often spoken out against anti-Semitism, often. Not always, but often. As a church spokesman, Father Jozef Kloch, explained, “…you can’t expect us to take a stance (against anti-Semitism) on every occasion.”
*
Good, point, Father. And how do you feel about anti-Catholicism? How about abortion and divorce, Satanism and secular humanism? And do you feel that way on every occasion you hear about them? Because, I was just wondering.
- 30 -
Leaping Leap Years
I think we can all agree that there are 
365 days in a year, except for those years evenly divisible by four, which have 366 days: unless that year can also be evenly divided by 100, in which case they have 365 days again; unless they can also be evenly divided by 400, in which case they still have 366 days. The key to this convoluted system of leap years 
is Christopher Schlussel, better known by his adopted name Christoph Clavius, and that is actually a little linguistic humor since the German word for key is a “schlussel”, while in Latin a key is called a “clavius”. Ah, German jokes are so much better when told in Latin, aren’t they? “Duo flaccus homo abbulo accedo caupona”. But if you think figuring leap years are complicated you can thank your lucky stars that we no longer use the Roman calendar, because those people would have made the French seem logical.
*
See, the Roman calendar was based on the phases of the moon with a 1
9 year cycle because…it’s not important, trust me. Their calendar began with ab urbe condita, or the founding of the city of Rome (our 753 B.C.) and began with the year “1” because the “0” had not yet been invented. Their year was 355 days long and had just ten regular months - Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sexitilis, September, October, November and December - but they didn’t begin their year with the first of Martius because they didn’t have a first of anything. The Romans only had three actual dates every month – the kalendae (the new moon), two Nodes (the waxing and the waning moon) and the Ides (the full moon). This is why Julius Caesar was warned to ‘beware the Ideas of March’, 
because a full moon allowed plenty of light for all that conspiratorial running around in the dark. Individual days each month were only noted as so many days before the kalendae (or whatever) of the month. This is how you keep your calendar if your checks have to be dated the X-V-I of Quintlis. (And, yes, the word calendar came from the word kalendae.).
*
But the primary drawback to the old Roman calendar was that to make it
all come out right every year they had to insert an 11th month, Mensis Intercalaris, right after Martius. But whether it was 23 or 24 days long depended on certain mystical astronomical calculations regulated by the “Pontifex Maximus”, who was an elected official. It was as if George Bush had ten months left in office but how many days were in each month was to be determined by Florida election officials. And since Julius Caesar was the 
Pontifex Maximus in 44 BC, he might still be in office today if the special senate select committee on term limits hadn’t stabbed him to death. But before he was term limited out, Julius had ordered a fix to the old calendar. The new Julian calendar had 12 equal months. January was added at the end of the year, in the winter, when nobody would notice, and a leap year was introduced every four years.
*
But the Julian Calendar was still a little long – by over 9 days by the 100 years later, leading to confused robins and tax collectors, and big fights
within the church about how to determine the start of a full moon and when Easter was and what day of the week Easter was on, etc., etc. And that was why Ugo Boncompagni, aka Pope Gregory XIII, was thrilled when he was handed a rather obscure volume entitled “Compendium of the New Plan for the Restitution of the Calendar”, which was written by a doctor and math nerd named Luigi Giglio, whose non deplume was Aloysius Lilius.
*
Just a quick note about poor old Ugo Boncompagni; this guy was the George Bush of Popes. Everything he touched blew up
in his face. He encouraged the King of Spain to build the Armada, and offered him a bonus for the first Catholic soldier to land in England. Needless to say, Phillip never collected. Ugo expanded the inquisition, determined to reconvert all those Lutherans in Switzerland by force, and thus brought an end to the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. Nobody has even tried to invade Switzerland since, not even Hitler. And Ugo was probably the last Pope to die flat broke. He did more through sheer incompetence to destroy the power of the church than did Luther and Calvin together. In fact, about the only thing poor old Ugo did right was to recognize the genius in Luigi Giglio.
*
Unfortunately Luigi had died 6 years before Ugo read his book, so Ugo
turned the book over to his favorite Catholic overachievers, the Jesuits, and asked their best mathematical brain, Christopher Clavius, to check Luigi’s math. And Christopher knew the Catholic world needed three things; to lock in the date of the spring equinox as March 21st or 22nd, because that would keep Easter anchored securely in the spring; solve the problem of the wandering seasons, and please bring sanity to the length of the year. Not unexpectedly, the mathematician Clavius and his team of mathematicians saw the whole thing as a giant math problem.
*
What the Jesuits couldn’t know, because they didn’t have a decent atomic clock, is that a year is actually longer than 365 days by
11 minutes and 14 seconds - approximately. Now the simplest thing would have been to ignore those extra minutes, and let them pile up for 128 years until they equaled a complete 366th day. But Clavius didn’t even have the luxury of knowing that the earth revolves around the sun, because he hadn’t accepted that idea just yet. But he had invented the decimal point, and he did encourage the use of the “0”, which made his intricate calculations much easier. And he confirmed Luigi's numbers, which boiled down to was this; thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, except February, which has 28, except in a leap year when it has 29. See how simple that is?
*
So thanks to Luigi Giglio, Christopher Schlussel and poor old Ugo Boncompagni we now have a calendar that repeats every 400 years, February 29, 2008 and February 29, 2408 are both Fridays, and our calendar is good for the next 3,000 years. But there is a minor hick up in this magnificent system. It was recently discovered that the year 4000 ought not to be a leap year. Panic should follow shortly.
365 days in a year, except for those years evenly divisible by four, which have 366 days: unless that year can also be evenly divided by 100, in which case they have 365 days again; unless they can also be evenly divided by 400, in which case they still have 366 days. The key to this convoluted system of leap years 
is Christopher Schlussel, better known by his adopted name Christoph Clavius, and that is actually a little linguistic humor since the German word for key is a “schlussel”, while in Latin a key is called a “clavius”. Ah, German jokes are so much better when told in Latin, aren’t they? “Duo flaccus homo abbulo accedo caupona”. But if you think figuring leap years are complicated you can thank your lucky stars that we no longer use the Roman calendar, because those people would have made the French seem logical.*
See, the Roman calendar was based on the phases of the moon with a 1
9 year cycle because…it’s not important, trust me. Their calendar began with ab urbe condita, or the founding of the city of Rome (our 753 B.C.) and began with the year “1” because the “0” had not yet been invented. Their year was 355 days long and had just ten regular months - Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sexitilis, September, October, November and December - but they didn’t begin their year with the first of Martius because they didn’t have a first of anything. The Romans only had three actual dates every month – the kalendae (the new moon), two Nodes (the waxing and the waning moon) and the Ides (the full moon). This is why Julius Caesar was warned to ‘beware the Ideas of March’, 
because a full moon allowed plenty of light for all that conspiratorial running around in the dark. Individual days each month were only noted as so many days before the kalendae (or whatever) of the month. This is how you keep your calendar if your checks have to be dated the X-V-I of Quintlis. (And, yes, the word calendar came from the word kalendae.).*
But the primary drawback to the old Roman calendar was that to make it
all come out right every year they had to insert an 11th month, Mensis Intercalaris, right after Martius. But whether it was 23 or 24 days long depended on certain mystical astronomical calculations regulated by the “Pontifex Maximus”, who was an elected official. It was as if George Bush had ten months left in office but how many days were in each month was to be determined by Florida election officials. And since Julius Caesar was the 
Pontifex Maximus in 44 BC, he might still be in office today if the special senate select committee on term limits hadn’t stabbed him to death. But before he was term limited out, Julius had ordered a fix to the old calendar. The new Julian calendar had 12 equal months. January was added at the end of the year, in the winter, when nobody would notice, and a leap year was introduced every four years.*
But the Julian Calendar was still a little long – by over 9 days by the 100 years later, leading to confused robins and tax collectors, and big fights
within the church about how to determine the start of a full moon and when Easter was and what day of the week Easter was on, etc., etc. And that was why Ugo Boncompagni, aka Pope Gregory XIII, was thrilled when he was handed a rather obscure volume entitled “Compendium of the New Plan for the Restitution of the Calendar”, which was written by a doctor and math nerd named Luigi Giglio, whose non deplume was Aloysius Lilius.*
Just a quick note about poor old Ugo Boncompagni; this guy was the George Bush of Popes. Everything he touched blew up
in his face. He encouraged the King of Spain to build the Armada, and offered him a bonus for the first Catholic soldier to land in England. Needless to say, Phillip never collected. Ugo expanded the inquisition, determined to reconvert all those Lutherans in Switzerland by force, and thus brought an end to the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. Nobody has even tried to invade Switzerland since, not even Hitler. And Ugo was probably the last Pope to die flat broke. He did more through sheer incompetence to destroy the power of the church than did Luther and Calvin together. In fact, about the only thing poor old Ugo did right was to recognize the genius in Luigi Giglio.*
Unfortunately Luigi had died 6 years before Ugo read his book, so Ugo
turned the book over to his favorite Catholic overachievers, the Jesuits, and asked their best mathematical brain, Christopher Clavius, to check Luigi’s math. And Christopher knew the Catholic world needed three things; to lock in the date of the spring equinox as March 21st or 22nd, because that would keep Easter anchored securely in the spring; solve the problem of the wandering seasons, and please bring sanity to the length of the year. Not unexpectedly, the mathematician Clavius and his team of mathematicians saw the whole thing as a giant math problem.*
What the Jesuits couldn’t know, because they didn’t have a decent atomic clock, is that a year is actually longer than 365 days by
11 minutes and 14 seconds - approximately. Now the simplest thing would have been to ignore those extra minutes, and let them pile up for 128 years until they equaled a complete 366th day. But Clavius didn’t even have the luxury of knowing that the earth revolves around the sun, because he hadn’t accepted that idea just yet. But he had invented the decimal point, and he did encourage the use of the “0”, which made his intricate calculations much easier. And he confirmed Luigi's numbers, which boiled down to was this; thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, except February, which has 28, except in a leap year when it has 29. See how simple that is?*
So thanks to Luigi Giglio, Christopher Schlussel and poor old Ugo Boncompagni we now have a calendar that repeats every 400 years, February 29, 2008 and February 29, 2408 are both Fridays, and our calendar is good for the next 3,000 years. But there is a minor hick up in this magnificent system. It was recently discovered that the year 4000 ought not to be a leap year. Panic should follow shortly. 
- 30 -
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