Late Night Horror Show Open Thread: H7N9

Via Paul Constant, here’s Quartz on “What you need to know about the mounting bird flu toll in China“:

Chinese official media said today that four more people have been infected with a rare, possibly mutated, form of bird flu, bringing the total number of cases in China to seven. The cases raise alarm over whether an outbreak could be brewing in the country, which is especially vulnerable to infectious diseases moving from animals to humans, and has a troubling history of authorities trying to conceal public health crises.

The newest patients, three women aged 32-45 and one 83-year-old man from Jiangsu province along China’s eastern coast, are critically ill with H7N9, a strain of avian flu that has never infected humans before and for which there is no vaccine, according to a notice on the province’s health bureau website. On March 31, authorities said that two men (aged 87 and 27) had died from the virus in Shanghai and one woman in Anhui province is in critical condition.

The most worrying part is that authorities don’t know how these people were infected. There’s no evidence so far that any of the patients interacted with each other, a sign that the bird flu hasn’t mutated into a virus that can jump between humans rather than just from animal to human–the basis for a global pandemic. Yet, most of the patients were not in close contact with birds (one woman was a poultry butcher and the woman in Anhui had some contact with live chickens.) Moreover, the mysterious illnesses are being disclosed within six weeks of over 16,000 carcasses of mysteriously killed pigs and 1,000 ducks floating in waterways near Shanghai and Sichuan province…

Yeah, it’s nowhere near a panic situation yet, and by the grace of Murphy the Trickster God, H7N9 will be just another expensive nuisance like SARS or the hoof & mouth outbreak in England…

Cat Rescue Bleg – Arizona

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From commentor Mrs. D.Ranged:

I am asking your help with my two cats, Snow Shooz and Cry Baby (and no, I didn’t choose those names, shelter names that stuck).

Over the last 5 months my daughter’s and boyfriend’s asthma worsened until I had to ban the cats from the bedrooms in our tiny two bedroom apartment and even that hasn’t worked to lessen the problem. Even I’ve started having really bad reactions to them when they approach me for affection. At the same time my life became extremely busy with a new job and increased time with my daughter. So the cats were restricted to a very small area (they never go outside) and I just can’t give them any attention. As a result they have become very unhappy and it is affecting their behavior. You know how cats get when they are mad at someone. Well, they’ve never acted like that before and I feel horrible about it. And things aren’t going to get better in the foreseeable future. I need to find a new home for them and I can’t bear the thought of giving them back to the Humane Shelter where we adopted them as two sickly kittens.

They are both approximately 2 1/2 years old. Snow Shooz, the male, is a “tuxedo” cat, but with dark gray fur instead of black. He has beautiful eyes. He’s very playful, smart, and affectionate. Back in happier days he would talk to me, saying “Mama”.

Cry Baby, the female, is an incredibly sweet and passive calico. She is so sweet that she tolerates a lot of crap from my two year old and the worst thing she has ever done was run away from him. They’re awesome cats but they are unhappy and they deserve better.

Thanks to the generosity of some BJ April Fools, both cats have just been checked by a vet, and are up to date on their shots. Both are fixed but have their claws.

I am looking for someone in Arizona to take them, but am willing to drive them to someone in adjacent states (CA, NM, NV). Ideally, finding a home for both of them would be great. But if not, separate homes is fine too. I have a kitty condo for them that can go with one of them and a scratching post to go with the other.

If you are interested, or have a lead, contact me at annelaurie (at) verizon.net — click on my name in the right-hand column — and I’ll put you in touch with Mrs. D.

More »

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Metamophosis

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Per the Telegraph:

The German naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian is today being honoured by a Google doodle, on the 366th anniversary of her birth.

Merian is known in the world of science and nature for studying plants and insects and producing detailed paintings of them.

She was born in Frankfurt in 1647 and began painting insect specimens she had captured at the age of 13. She later worked as a botanic artist, publishing three collections of engravings of plants in 1675, 1677 and 1680.

Following this, she began to focus more on the study of insects. Her work on the life-cycle and metamorphosis of butterflies is regarded as groundbreaking, making her a significant contributor to entomology…

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Apart from longing for Spring, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Everyone Must Have a Gun, Unless You Don’t Want One

Alan Keyes is criminalizing the LGBTQ community again:

Then you’re not only derelict in your public duty, you’re abandoning your obligation as a human being. And frankly, … I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human beings is the archetype of all crimes against humanity.

On today’s #TWiBRadio, we discussed the Georgia town that requires gun ownership, homosexuals swimming with sharks and other crimes against humanity, and there’s a dolphin serial killer on the loose.

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And this morning on #amTWiB, #TheMorningCrew discussed how real men buy tampons, GZA dropping science, and the thigh gap.

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(Cross-posted)

To That Deluxe Apartment in the Sky

Zsa Zsa went to her forever home today, and I’m terrified Karen is going to think I am never going to leave her alone because I keep calling and asking how she is, but according to Karen she has already explored the space and decided the small bedroom they put her in was not good enough and moved into the master bedroom to take a little nap. Here’s a picture of her at play in her new household:

If that happy little face doesn’t convince you I have made the right decision, I don’t know what will.

The cut glass troll

There’s now a petition circulating to censure the crazy libertarian econ prof at my university who wondered why it was wrong to rape unconscious people. I won’t sign it myself, partly because I’m not a speech police, and partly because people who know him say that he would love to get censured so he can wank about how his freedom is being taken away. His whole career just a not-that-elaborate trolling operation. In fact nearly all libertarians’ careers are not-that-elaborate trolling operations. Megan McArdle may be the ultimate example, but it’s true of most of the staff of Reason magazine as well. Take something contrarian and/or offensive, say it as loudly as possible, and….profit.

It’s their prerogative, to be sure, but it’s not any way to build a political movement. Most people who hear of a political philosophy whose adherents think gang rape is ok simply conclude that they want no part of that political philosophy.

Conservatism (I’m being generous and pretending that libertarians aren’t conservatives) is starting to face that problem too. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Bill Nojay they’re all nothing more trolls. They may get teh base riled up but you reach a point when there’s a people pointing at you than pointing with you.

Tammany What the Hell

This is a really odd story:

A top New York State lawmaker was arrested early Tuesday morning for what federal prosecutors said was his central role in a brazen series of bribery and corruption schemes, including an attempt to buy a spot on the ballot in this year’s race for New York City mayor.

In outlining the charges against the lawmaker, State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, as well as five other politicians and Republican Party leaders, United States Attorney Preet Bharara said the case was but the latest evidence that corruption in New York was “pervasive.”

“Every New Yorker should be disheartened and dismayed by the sad state of affairs in this great state,” Mr. Bharara said.

Mr. Smith, a Queens Democrat who rose to become the first black president of the State Senate, was accused of conspiring with City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III, a Queens Republican, to get his name on the ballot for mayor as a Republican, which would require approval of a majority of the party’s leadership in the city.

The others arrested were Joseph J. Savino, the Bronx G.O.P. chairman; Vincent Tabone, vice chairman of the Queens Republican Party; and Noramie F. Jasmin, the mayor of the Rockland County village of Spring Valley, and her deputy, Joseph A. Desmaret, according to a criminal complaint.

The complaint details a scheme hatched in a series of clandestine meetings in hotels, with cash passing hands in parked cars and hushed conversations in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day and even in Mr. Smith’s office in Albany. The meetings, recorded by an undercover agent or a cooperating witness, were primarily among Mr. Smith, the undercover agent and the witness, and Mr. Halloran and the agent and the witness. The scheme involving the race was one of three bribery schemes charged in the case.

Does anyone know what the logic or reason behind this was? I remember a while back when the issue of gay marriage was being discussed in NY and there was all sorts of party-switching mayhem, but NY politics is so obscure to me that I can’t really grok what this was all about.

If only there were some bloggers from the NY area who could explain this.

Same-Sex Marriage Bans Violate the Equal Protection Clause. End of Story.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the sort of irrational discrimination sanctioned by Proposition 8 and other state statutes and ballot initiatives that prohibit same-sex marriage. It is an inescapable truth.

For all the bromides about pausing while the country evolves on same-sex marriage, or waiting until more “sociological information” (as Justice Kennedy so helpfully put it) is available, laws banning same-sex marriage give homophobia the force of law, and treat gays and lesbians differently than everybody else based on nothing more than an “ick” factor. It is animus at its most vulgar, and it is exactly the sort of animus that the Fourteenth Amendment, which states “No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” proscribes.

Same-sex marriage bans are not long for this world, however. Much in the way that we scoff at the notion that mixed-race couples should be prevented from marrying in order to preserve racial integrity, so, too, will we laugh at the notion that same-sex marriage somehow undermines or degrades so-called “traditional marriage.”

At the outset, “traditional marriage” is an untenable concept. The Christian historical view of the one man, one woman “traditional marriage” is a social construct based upon outdated and gendered stereotypes of the purpose of marriage, which views men as breadwinners and women as homemakers and child-rearers. Social constructs, by their very nature, are given to change. The obsession with “tradition” simply allows a majority to withhold rights from a minority simply because “that’s what we’ve always done.” But, “we’ve been doing it this way for a while” is an absurd argument for continuing to treat gay couples as if they are inferior to straight couples just because.

[Go forth and read the full post at RH Reality Check]

Crossing the Douchebag Line and Immigrating into Assholeville

This is Bill Nojay, my Republican New York State Assemblyman, former right-wing radio personality, and teabagging jackass. Bill is on the floor of the Assembly with a legitimate beef: the New York State SAFE Act, which regulates assault weapons, was jammed through the Assembly at the last minute and it has some stupid provisions. I have a couple of Democratic gun-owning friends who are pretty pissed about it, because it mandates seven-round magazines that you can’t get for a whole bunch of guns, which essentially makes them illegal. It also was poorly written and could be construed to cover cops, which it shouldn’t. All in all, it was the usual hash from one of the most dysfunctional legislative bodies in the nation, and the magazine provision in particular makes it very hard for gun owners to determine if they’ll be following the law when it goes into effect on April 15. So it needs to be clarified by amendment, or perhaps a court will strike it down.

Of course, if Nojay stood up on the Assembly floor and made those points, he wouldn’t be the subject of a post on Maddowblog. He went on to say this:

Let me state what the reaction has been to this act once the people north of the Bronx, and with the exception of the People’s Republic and certain other little hotspots of Upstate, the rest of us have demanded that our elected county clerks will not administer this law. Our sheriffs, elected by the people, will not enforce this law. Our juries, who are the people, will not convict under this law. And our citizens, being free citizens and not subjects, will not obey this law.

By “People’s Republic”, he means Tompkins County, which contains Ithaca, home of Cornell and a lot of hippies. (It don’t mean a thing if you can’t punch a hippie.) But that last part is the topper. I’ve heard some grumbling, but nobody is upset enough to make sheriffs and county clerks ignore the law. I’m sure I’m not the only voter who will be goddamed if I’ll ever vote for a clerk or sheriff who wouldn’t enforce a law passed by the Assembly and signed by the Governor. And as for the jury, judges are also elected out here, and I’ll be similarly goddammed if I vote for a judge who wouldn’t set aside a verdict by a jury that willfully ignores the law.

My presence in Bill’s district is due to an act of gerrymandering-his district is full of rural Republicans, and my Democratic suburb was added in because New York has a lot more urban and suburban Democrats than rural Republicans. Bill would be yakking on the radio without having a district with boundaries that defy reason. Instead, he’s advocating jury nullification and rebellion by elected officials who are sworn to uphold the law. That’s how low New York Republicans have fallen.

Austere-ing You In The Face

And speaking of the working poor, the Great European Austerity Bombing continues unabated, with precisely the results you would expect.

Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze.

The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.

For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.

Perhaps more deficit reduction in the UK is necessary, as an example.  Sadly, the only thing keeping us from the same situation was the stimulus the President got through.  It was only about half as large as it needed to be, but that’s why we’re dealing with 8% unemployment rather than 12%.  Republicans won’t make the mistake of allowing the economy to improve until they get the reins back, then deficits won’t matter again.

Now that we’re on the sequestration diet, I expect that 8% to start creeping back up towards 9%.  After all, the only reason those overpaid government jobs we’re shedding aren’t being replaced by shiny new awesome higher-paying private sector jobs is shut up and you’re lazy and Obama can’t shoot hoops and Google doodles of Hugo Weaving and Benghazi and food stamps and Obama took Cole’s effing mustard.

Until then, we’ll stall out for the next four years because national debt is immoral (and soon impeachable) so we must eliminate even more government jobs and put people on government safety net programs, and then cut the programs because there’s too many people on them.  Then and only then will millions of jobs suddenly poop out of The Invisible Asshole Of The Free Market.  Sure, they don’t pay enough to not require government help, but that’s why God made sure you have more than 40 hours in a week that you could work through.

Maybe if all those European Poors were working 90 hours a week at (less than) minimum wage while homeschooling their kids, volunteering for church and training for neighborhood firearms defense militias like us Puritan-streak rock-ribbed salt-of-the-earth ‘Muricans, they’d know le freedom.

T-Bones and Cadillacs

I have a neighbor, let’s call him “Fred”, who is a mid-level corporate manager who just switched back to managing part-timers on a night shift. It’s probably the worst job his (mostly unionized) company offers, and it attracts workers who aren’t that well-educated, most of whom are working poor.

Fred and I were having one of our every-so-often conversations about the world and its problems, and he was bringing up some of the problems his workers and their friends have. One of them is the loss of benefits after crossing an income threshold. If you’re one of Fred’s employees who is a high-school graduate with a couple of kids, and you’re on Medicaid, there’s a point where making a few dollars more means the loss of those programs, which is a huge hit. You’d have to make $1,000 a month more to afford private insurance, if you could get it, to replace Medicaid.

So, what tends to happen is some of these employees will reject extra hours, or they’ll have a second go-nowhere job that pays them cash under the table. Fred identifies this as a problem with “welfare”, and he’s roughly right. There are structural incentives to stay on Medicaid, because the distance from making enough money to be Medicaid-ineligible, to making enough to afford private insurance, is pretty big.

This is old ground and Fred has covered it before, but what was interesting about our conversation was that he said, out of the blue, “Maybe Obamacare will fix that”. And maybe it will–if the transition from Medicaid to premium support for a policy that has decent coverage doesn’t mean going off a $500-a-month cliff.

Fred is fairly conservative: people need to work harder, too many handouts, taxes are killing him, etc. He’s also a bit of a bigot, and a self-described asshole, but he’s not blind. He knows, from experience, what it means to be working poor. He sees the hard life and disincentives to making the jump to the middle class. He’s certainly not the poster child for empathy, since most of the pain he feels is when he has to scramble to fill a spot because an employees can’t work extra hours. But he’s not buying the welfare-mothers-in-Cadillacs fantasy about poverty that people with his political attitudes might otherwise spout. And because of that, he knows that Obamacare, if implemented correctly, will actually get people “off welfare”, meaning into the middle class.

If, instead of a trip to the salad bar at Applebees, David Brooks worked on a loading dock at 3 AM in the middle of the winter, let’s say for a week, he might have a bit of the insight that Fred has, even though Fred has never read Hayek or Burke, or attended the Aspen Institute.

Race and Gender Politics During the Zombie Apocalypse

At first, I thought this article at Salon was an April Fool’s joke:

But I guess it’s for real. Of course, every cultural product is fair game for critique — even TV shows about the zombie apocalypse — and the author makes some interesting points. On the other hand, it’s a TV show about the fucking zombie apocalypse!

Some of the comments below the article were fascinating:

mikill330399: How do people live based on seeing nothing but classes of people? I dont live that way and therefore this column offends me. I have white/black/asian/indian friends and I dont see or treat them any different. I dont even notice their ethnicity. To me it is racist to classify everyone and see them as different. Needing to be portrayed a certain way means you dont see them as equal. Im surprised the author is not fighting for the Zombies as an opressed class.

Carlos H: If you “don’t even notice their ethnicity,” how do you know you have “white/black/asian/indian friends”? Maybe, they are just all white or all black. Please. The 1970′s called, it wants its “know-nothing” rhetoric about race back.

CitizenRob: It is possible to not notice a person’s race. Oprah and Colin Powell are two people who I didn’t realize were African American until they themselves, or somebody else mentioned. It wasn’t that I didn’t SEE their ethnicity, it was that somehow their personalities never gave me a chance to actually notice their ethnicity until they themselves brought my attention to it, (or in the case of Colin Powell a newscaster mentioned it during a story.) My only wish would be that it were possible to always approach all people this way. (See the person they are before their race/ethnicity.)

I’ve heard people say this before (that they don’t notice race or ethnicity), and honestly, I’ve always found the claim difficult to believe. I suspect humans are hardwired to categorize the people they see on a number of axes, including gender, age and race — despite the fact that the categories are fluid and/or meaningless to some extent. Isn’t the important thing what you do with that information?

[X-posted at Rumproast]

Later Night Open Thread: But Is It Full of Eels?

One final Poisson d’Avril entry:
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You just know some overprivileged idiot got recorded screaming at the customer service rep about false advertising…

Late Night Open Thread

After Chavez Easter Sunday, google really missed a chance to troll wingnuts today with a doodle of Sarah Palin on April Fools Day.

How many days until the next GoT?

Open Thread- Blind Spots

Why can I not boil a god damned egg? Lemme rephrase- I boil them just fine, but every time I go to peel them, they come out some mangled looking like thing that is basically the hard boiled egg equivalent of Rocky Dennis. I’ve done every damned technique suggested or available on the intertoobs, BUT I STILL CAN NEVER GET AN EGG SHELL TO JUST FALL OFF THE GOD DAMNED EGG.

I can do lots of things in the kitchen, but this is just something I will never master. All I want is an easily peeled hard boiled egg for my salad and instead I have this misshapen mass of crap with shell orts all over the god damned place.

Blerg.

*** Update ***

Should have seen this coming. I buy my eggs from the general store a half block from my house, and they are purchased from a lady about a half mile from town. They are brown, they yolks are delicious and creamy, and I can’t eat eggs anywhere else. It’s just me fucking up the process, not the fault of the eggs.