Hospice

Here is a picture of my mother [standing] and her twin sister last month on their 94th birthday.

On the morning of June 2nd she suffered a stroke.  After a week in the hospital, where she declined severely, it became clear that there would be no recovery.  On the advice of several doctors, we moved her into a hospice facility for comfort care.

As of now, she is still there, totally unaware and unresponsive.   There are supposed to be 7 stages of grief, but I must have leapfrogged a few.  I got to acceptance very quickly.  But this is still sad and very painful.

This is a beautiful location, and that helps a little bit.

The last three pics are of a great blue heron.  I was very lucky to get him in flight.

What the Hell?!? Friday - "It's What's for Dinner" Edition

A different sort of Big Gulp

Alas, not eye of newt, but if you're up for bat wings and toad skins, you can get them both here in one swell foop.

Toads and bats seem to have a mutually destructive relationship.

I had no idea they were that human.

Goldfish

Goldfish

source

 

Tasty snack

 ~~~

Silverfish

 source

Not so much

The White Swan of Black Lake

This majestic bird visited - or perhaps invaded - us a few times during our week at the lake.  

Always looking for a handout.  

Yeah - we fed him/her.

But wait - there's more.

Here, at no extra charge -- DUCK BUTTS!

What the Hell?!? Friday - Alfred Hitchcock Edition

After mowing the grass this afternoon, I was on the patio, with my shoes off, brushing the clippings from my socks, when this guy swooped down and landed about 4 feet in front of me.

I retreated, and he perched himself on one of my now-empty shoes.  Then he gave me a you-wanna-make-something-of-it look.  Since he was equipped with beak and talons and all I had was a whisk broom, I beat a hasty retreat into the house.

When I re-emerged, camera in hand, he took a strategically superior position on the roof.

At that point, we called a truce.

Can anybody identify him?

What The Hell?!? Friday - Testy, Swagering Rodent Edition

I have an optical mouse with my lap top, but the old relic desk top in the office has a mechanical mouse with that essential tracking item commonly called a "mouse ball."  That is not what this is about.

On measuring the males, they found that the testicles of the yogurt consumers were about 5 percent heavier than those of mice fed typical diets alone and around 15 percent heavier than those of junk-eating males.

If you ever needed a reason to eat yogurt - well, here you have it.

 Now - what are you - a man or a mouse?

H/T to Tux.

Quote and/or Q and A of the Day

From an "insanely long view" perspective, by Char Weise at Creative Destruction.

 Q: Fifty million people don't have health insurance in this country. What can we do to give them better health care?
A: Humans are merely collections of cells through which life flows in many forms, sometimes as a happy child and sometimes as a flesh-eating virus. Who is to say that a human child has a stronger claim to life and health than a flesh-eating virus? What you call "health care" is merely the rearrangement of morbidity across life forms.

In all honesty, it never occurred to me to look at it this way.  The opinion seems to be uninformed by the concept of Homo Sapiens as god's chosen species.

H/T (somewhat indirectly) to Art

Quotes of the day - Markets

Actual markets in the American economy are extremely rare and unusual beasts. An economics of markets ought to be regarded as generally useful as a biology of cephalopods, amid the living world of bones and shells. But, somehow the idealized, metaphoric market is substituted as an analytic mask, laid across a vast variety of economic relations and relationships, obscuring every important feature of what actually is. And, then we wonder why the “thinking” and policy debates that result are stupid and corrupt.
---  Bruce Wilder

Emphasis added.   This is in the context of a critique of neoloberalism, here described by Henry Farrell:

In fact, it is not free markets with vigorous competition among producers, but instead, a mixture of big firm oligopoly and cosy and frequently corrupt relationships between state officials, who have been told to subcontract out parts of government, and the businesses which supply these new services, in what is at best a murky approximation to a real marketplace. You can read this as a statement that classical liberalism has some good points as well as some bad ones. You can equally well read it as saying (and this is the more fundamental point), that regardless of whether or not classical realism had some good arguments, these don’t have anything much to do with actually-existing-neoliberalism which is a crony capitalist fantasy.

This lays bare the greed, dishonesty, corruption and manipulation inherent to neoliberalism, and simultaneously exposes the concept of "the market" as an absurd quirk of the typical economist's imagination.

Each of these meaty comments is highly worthy of  QoD recognition.  The cephalopod reference made the first one utterly irresistible, and prompted this post.

The bad news is that there doesn't seem to be any way out.

H/T to Unlearningecon

Update:  Here, John Quiggan provides a good functional definition of neolibealism - the first I've ever seen - and a very thoughtful critique of neoliberalism as a political cum economic ideology.

The core of the neoliberal program is
(i) to remove the state altogether from ‘non-core’ functions such as the provision of infrastructure services
(ii) to minimise the state role in core functions (health, education, income security) through contracting out, voucher schemes and so on
(iii) to reject redistribution of income except insofar as it is implied by the provision of a basic ‘safety net’.

Quiggan judges neoliberaism to be a failure, for different reasons in different places.  I'm going to quibble with his definition of failure, type iii, though: a failure to deliver the promised outcomes.  With a focus in the inherent dishonesty and corruption inherent to neoliberalism, I can only view it as highly successful in the U.S.  This is because there is a real hidden agenda lurking behind the false public agenda.
 
Wilder describes how it works in a follow-up comment: (Be sure to read the whole thing.)

Neoliberalism, it seems to me, uses the myth of the market, to rationalize rule-making, which serves the rentiers (is dynamically inefficient) and which promotes authoritarian, and therefore unfair, resolution of conflict.

Quiggan describes the type iii failure in the U.S:  "The basic problem is that, given high levels of inequality, very strong economic performance is required to match the levels of economic security and social services delivered under social democracy even with mediocre growth outcomes."  Of course, no such strong economic performance is forthcoming.

However, the real agenda is not general economic security.  Quite to the contrary, it is to maximize and maintain a high level of inequality, such that the small, elite minority has absolute control over the impoverished majority, precisely because their economic security is severely limited.  I cite as evidence the extreme form of 21st CenturyRepublican party neoliberalism, which even attacks the existence of a basic safety net.  Note also their ongoing attacks against labor unions, health care reform, and education at all levels.

The job is not yet complete, but I have to view the record of neoliberalism in the U.S.,to date, as a smashing success.

Cross-Posted at Angry Bear.

Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes, or - The Life of a Coleoidean

Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of Teuthidan beings and the passions, one may postulate, Hobbes-like what life would be deep in the ocean, a condition which we might call "the state of saline-aquatic nature." In that state, each Decapodiform would have a right, or license, to everything in the ocean.

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the ocean; only navigation, but no use, other than the immediately culinary for the commodities that may be comported by sea; no commodious building, save coral reefs; no non-tentacular instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth beyond the edges of the sea; no account of time in the dark depths; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of squids, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

References.

Ref 1

Ref 2

Holy Coleoidea!

I had a beautiful cephalopodian Bumpa-grandduaghter moment on Christmas (aka Cephalo-Festivus*) eve.  Nine-year-old Samantha had requested a fish from Santa Claus.  Her mom was adamant that no such fish would be forth-coming.  (As an aside, it was revealed that Santa will only deliver animals of any kind with prior parental approval.)  Sam was equally adamant the she was going to get her fish, and went around singing "I Want A Fish For Christmas," providing her own original lyrics to this tune.

Big sister Amanda (age 14) piped in, saying, "How could Santa deliver a fish?"  Evidently, his sleigh is not properly equipped for transporting them. 

"Well", I suggested, "think about how Santa gets from Scotland to Nova Scotia."

"He crosses the sea," Amanda replied, warily.

It was then generally - albeit reluctantly - agreed that he could at any random moment just swoop down and scoop a fish out from the drink.  "Actually," I said, "I was thinking more of a squid."

The look of disdain on Samantha's face was worth the price of admission, all by itself.

Pressing on, I asked, "If you got a squid, what would you name it?"

After a moments thought, Sam replied, "Squidward."   I thought that was quite good; but her dad interjected, "What about Squidney?"

On that cue, I started riffing about the squid's long, flexible tentacles.  Middle sister Rebekka (age 11) was sitting next to me on the couch, and from the corner of my eye, I saw the light bulb go on over her head.  We looked at each other and said, in perfect unison: "Squid don't have any knees."  The infamous Bumba-Bekka mind meld was in full force.

Then we high-fived amidst the groans.   It was fabulous.

After all that quieted down, I told Sam to call me on Christmas morning (but not too early) and tell me if she got her fish.  (In my exalted position of bumpahood, I had some inside information.)

When the call came she was one excited little girl.  Santa brought her an aquarium, and all the required accessories, along with a gift card to a pet shop, where she could choose her own fish.

That Santa - what a guy!

______________________________

* Find the explanation in comments here.

What The Hell?!? Friday - Sustainable Living Architecture Edition

This is pretty amazing.




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Shadow Shot Sunday - 11/06

Orb Weaver Builds her 

Home in the shadow of mine.

I guess I can share.

Shadow Shot Sunday - 10/09

Taken this summer at the Knoxville Zoo.

Great grey simian,

Do you not like people? Why

Turn your back on me?

Shadow Shot Sunday - 9/12

Knotty weathered wood

Holds a skink with blue tail,

Not a blue-tailed skink!

Per Wikipedia, blue-tailed skinks are native to Australia's Christmas Island, and are not closely related to the Plestiodon skinks found in North America - like this one who would skamper around on the deck of our Vacation Cottage near the Smokey Mountains.  They do look very similar, though.

Here is the view looking from the deck, rather than at it.

Shadow Shot Sunday - 9/05

Taken a few weeks ago at the Knoxville Zoo.

Great white pachyderms:

You huddled masses with your

Backs against the wall

Mellow Yellow Monday

In the Butterfly house at the Knoxville Zoo.

This little coquette:

To flirt, does she flutter wings

Or make eyes at me?






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So, How Bad Is It?

Krugman provides the answers, with graphs.

It's bad.  Really, really bad.

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Mellow Yellow Monday

Busy little bee

In the heart of the flower

Petaling her wares

Shadow Shot Sunday

Stripey animals

Built to hide in dappled light

Lurk in shadow here

Taken at the Virginia Zoo, Nov 16, 2009.

Update:  H/T to Step-son Doug, for identifying these critters as Bongos.  I forgot.

Be sure to check the left side of the picture.  And the lower right.




Bobbie, we hardly knew ye.  RIP.

Shadow Shot sunday - 6/06

A brown spotted toad who lives in my yard.

This Amphibian,

Moved from grass to patio,

Saved from lawn-mower's bite.