Man vs Nature vs Lunch

There is a breaking wildlife emergency at City Park.

New Orleans City Park Police worked by boat and from shore Saturday morning (April 22) to remove a husky, 5-foot alligator from a lagoon just outside the New Orleans Museum of Art.

City Park Policeman Greg Joerger said when the agency encounters alligators roaming the park or swimming in the lagoon, they try to relocate the reptiles because of how populated the area is, especially around the springtime.

Joerger said small children often congregate near the lagoon, and park patrons don't realize the small water body is sometimes home to alligators.

"People go there thinking it's just turtles and fish, and it's not," Joerger said. "That's lake water."

"Husky"? Good looking out there and not fat shaming the gator, y'all.  Stay woke.

It's the time of year when nature attacks from all angles. Must have something to do with Earth Day. There are huge black crows nesting on our street right now. They are extremely territorial and given to swoop down at perceived intruders. The caterpillar activity is reaching a critical mass. This morning two of them tried to knock me off my bike. And now the gators, who we should have known were up to something, frankly, are making their move.

Well the standard procedure in this monster movie scenario is we convene a panel of scientists who can figure out how to... oh wait... they're busy today.

Meanwhile, the situation continues to deteriorate.

Breaking news from gator chase: There are now 2 alligators 🐊🐊.   Police calling in flatboat, media retreating because it is lunchtime.

— Michael DeMocker (@MichaelDeMocker) April 22, 2017

God bless our first responders. They are bravely enduring quite a taunting at the moment.

"Right now he's showing off," Joerger on Saturday said of the elusive gator. "He's hungry."

Just before 12:30 p.m., Joerger said, City Park police abandoned a previous strategy involving a kayak and were working to get a bigger boat.

Witch Doctors

In Bobby Jindal's Louisiana, biology students don't just have to dissect small animals.  They learn to read the entrails as well.

Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could "lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures."

"Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man -- in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed -- if I had closed him off and just said, 'That's not science. I'm not going to see this doctor,' I would have shut off a very good experience for myself," Guillory said.

But don't slam your head against the desk too quickly.  At least your legislators are consistent in their endorsement of shamanism and all its accoutrements.

A Louisiana House committee debated for more than an hour Wednesday before advancing legislation that would soften the penalties for marijuana possession.

As for the non-magical thinkers still running loose in the Gret Stet, the gradual decriminalization of an intoxicant should at least soften the blow since the steady march away from modernity shows little sign of slowing.

Nearly 8,000 vouchers have been offered to students, up from about 5,000 last year, state officials said Wednesday.

Yes, the vouchers have been declared unconstitutional, but that's being appealed to the witch doctors on the state supreme court where the signs portend a more favorable ruling. 

Much more from Lamar here.

Bonus:

I couldn't decide which version of this to go with. Do you prefer Chipmunks or Muppets?

Big lizard in my back yard

Bobby Jindal, the biology major who doesn't believe in evolution, presents your 21st Century Louisiana educational curriculum.

One of the schools cleared to receive substantial new funding through LA governor Bobby Jindal’s voucher program is Eternity Christian Academy, in Westlake, LA, which according to Independent Weekly writer Walter Pierce,

…has been approved to accept 135 new students. That’s a considerable uptick in enrollment, which at the end of this school year stood at 38 — a more than 300 percent increase. Talk about buttressing the budget; $1 million in tax dollars will be diverted from the public school system to Eternity Christian, a school that, according to its mission statement, offers “a quality faith-based curriculum that is soley [sic] based on principles from the Bible …

According to the Eternity Christian Academy website, the school uses the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum. So, what’s in the ACE curriculum?

An August 29, 2009 story in the Times Educational Supplement, a British publication for teachers, provides an excerpt from an Accelerated Christian Education science textbook:

Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence.

Have you heard of the `Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? `Nessie,’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

Below is a sample photo of "Nessie" taken from one of Jindal's approved and state funded science textbooks.



Ooops! Wait, no, sorry that image is actually from a completely different Bobby Jindal academic publication.

Now we'll have to raise the retirement age

Scientists use modified virus to make mice live longer

Known to crush and crumble schools

Back in the dark ages* when I attended a New Orleans Catholic high school** the math and science curriculum there was pretty high quality. I went off to college with enough grounding to test out of several hours of basic physics and biology requirements. I also had the benefit of pre-calculus instruction from a very strange but PhD qualified teacher. Of all the complaints I could offer you about my high school education, the quality of the science instruction is not among them. (Actually, and this seems odd for a supposedly "religious" education, it was the humanities that suffered with lots of English and history classes taught by people we addressed as "coach".)

Anyway, I'm wondering if Louisiana's religious high schools are still teaching science so well these days when the public schools are so insistent upon teaching religion.


*Tomorrow is my birthday, actually. I will be turning 75 which they're now saying makes me eligible for medicare in fifty years.

** One of the non-beating ones

Cause celebe

Look, I'm as upset as the next post-medieval person that the State of Louisiana insists on teaching magic in science class, but I didn't agree to make the whole story about a political player's type-A kid's extra-curricular project. Stop enabling these people.

6:00 PM Link Dump

It was pointed out to me sort of by accident that I spend a lot of time posting links on Facebook and Twitter where they kind of go to die if I don't put them somewhere I can find them later. So I'm going to try to start collecting the mess on the blog more frequently. Here's the first shot at it.

Today in links:

Greenwald: Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda - from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more

Gulf Oil Spill: Why Size Mattered From the Very Beginning, Especially for BP

BP faces billions in fines for the oil that spewed from its damaged Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. So, it was hardly shocking to hear that BP disagrees with the government’s estimates of how much oil flowed into the Gulf. Here’s where it get wacky: BP believes the government was off by as much as 50 percent.

N.O. inspector says hotels aren't paying fair share

The cash-strapped New Orleans city government is likely losing millions of dollars each year from hotels that either do not pay sales taxes or under-report their revenue, according to an analysis released today by the city's inspector general.

Borders trying to buy out or merge with Barnes & Noble:

Revulsion of the Day: Here's an edition of Pat Robertson's 700 Club from Sept 7, 2010 featuring Drew Brees talking about his book and his faith and keeping your chin up and positivity and other such crap.



Here is an otherwise mediocre interview between Stephen Colbert and new Hornets "owner" NBA Commissioner David Stern from Nov 15 where Stern makes a very telling slip in describing himself as an "internationalist" which he defines as different from "American".

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
David Stern
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

It's a revelatory comment in that Stern cannot nor can anybody in his above-the-law class identify in any meaningful way with sports fans whose passion derives from pride in their sense of place. Not only does someone like Stern not care about franchise relocation, he's fundamentally incapable of even empathizing with the fans who lose out as a result.

After the NBA assumed ownership of the Hornets, Stern estimates the franchise's value jumped by $50 million. Obviously he's looking to shop the team to an "internationalist" pool of potential buyers.

Meanwhile, Deadspin: The New Orleans Hornets' Sad Financial Documents

Speaking of selling out, read this impassioned speech by Hillary Clinton back in January about "Internet Freedom" just for laughs.

Pro-science textbooks win this time around in Louisiana

The Lens: Gusman won’t be charged in woman’s restraining death

Gambit: Some clueless Mormon tourists think "Katrina did New Orleans a World of Good" Which is... idiotic of course, but it's an occasion to remind ourselves that it makes more sense to worry about the people who actually live here and hold positions of power and influence who frequently display the same attitude. And I'm not just talking about Erroll Laborde. Katrina gave a lot of plutocratic New Orleanians the opportunities they thought they'd never have to break the teachers' union, to privatize school management, to reduce access to affordable housing.

There was a time when the perceptions of outsiders mattered but that media war has already been lost. Time to focus on the real problem.

Watch Cornell West say it. Barack Obama doesn't care about jobless people.



And finally, The Lens: Don’t plan on recycling bottles from New Year’s Eve bash

The much-touted recycling program for most of the city, announced as a sweetener in the recent contract negotiations with Metro Disposal and Richard’s Disposal, will not start with the new year, an attorney for the companies said, and it’s unclear just how soon residents will be putting out their paper, plastic and glass.

The textbook committee decided to leave it all out... for now.

No mandatory "alternative theories to evolution" for Louisiana students. Not yet, anyway.

A state advisory panel Friday voted 8-4 to endorse a variety of high school science textbooks that have come under fire for how they describe evolution. The vote was followed more than three hours of discussion.

Two of the “no” votes were cast by Senate Education Committee Chairman Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, and House Education Committee Vice-Chairman Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe. The decision likely paves the way for the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve the textbooks when it meets Dec. 7-9.

The textbooks that triggered criticism were approved earlier this year by a review committee that spent months studying them. But final action on the biology I and biology II, and environmental science textbooks was delayed by BESE last month amid criticism that they put too much credence in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Oprah = Pure Evil

Yes, of course, but did you know specifically why?

Via Athenae who I could pretty much link and quote all day long BTW, and who adds this observation about the a key tendency of Oprah's audience.

Bad things don't happen to good people, and I am a good person. That's the assumption. You hear it every time someone is featured in the news as being poor or unfortunate, the subtext (or, increasingly, text) that "she should have done this, that, the other thing," that "I would never make that mistake." You'd evacuate before the hurricane, you'd sell some bling to buy health insurance, you'd refuse a cheap mortgage if someone dangled it in front of your face and told you to take it, etc, etc, etc. Nothing bad would ever happen to YOU, because you're smarter, more virtuous, you're destined to be okay.

And there you have the more-or-less permanent core values of the American political center laid right in front of you. Anyone asking why I seem to be such a pessimist can always refer back to this point.