Archimedes Has His Say

I have noticed that whenever I'm having a conversation with someone at home or on Skype, Archimedes will always pipe up to put in his 10 cents worth.

I guess in Love Bird society he who squawks the loudest has the last say.

Nick, the NPR and I often watch a little television in the evenings and eat our dinner in the living room. Archimedes will start one of his loud speeches (usually during some important news report or bit of dialogue) before hopping onto his feed dish and nibbling meekly on his seeds. I guess it's his way of "having dinner with the family."

Not all his communications are loud though, I recently added a small basket tipped on its side to his cage and he converted it into a nest almost immediately.

First he sidled up to it and made a few pics at with his beak-all the while chirping happily to himself- then he moved in and made some internal modifications.

He's very house proud.

If you call his name he will stick his head out of his nest and give you a searching look. He also perches on what I suppose one could call his "front stoop" and takes little parrot naps.

I still haven't convinced him to perch on my finger but he will let me get close to him without flying away or scolding me.

Sometimes when I am typing on my laptop he will perch on it and pick at the rubber bits that protects the top half from the bottom when its closed.

He likes it when I play Youtube videos of other Love Birds singing and he loves to fly around in my room.

I have discovered that he likes lavender. When I put it in a vase in my room he will land on the vase and set about ripping the flowers and stems into small pieces.

It's kind of like having your own potpourri maker as there's a distinctive whiff of lavender when he goes swooping past me.

He seems to be adjusting well to life with us strange, peach giants.

Archimedes contemplates the song of a fellow Love Bird on Youtube.

Uncle Scott's Kea Lab

Some people have all the luck.

On Sunday my uncle had a visit from these three:

Just thought we'd say hello!

As Kea often do, these guys spent the morning tearing at the rubber around his car windshield, screaming down his chimney and clattering around his roof. 

This, of course, was after they politely flew up to his glass door and knocked on it with their beaks to let him know they were in the neighborhood.

Testing for structural integrity.

My uncle sent an email with the pictures and we exchanged phone calls and emails so I could stay updated.

What I can tell about these three from the pictures is that they are all very young (from the bright yellow around the eyes, cere and mandible and the light feathers on their heads) and they are probably siblings. 

Also, while the Kea in Arthur's pass are well studied and accounted for (relatively speaking) all three of these birds are un-banded and living in an area where their numbers and existence is probably unknown.

My uncle lives off grid in the middle of nowhere and he has his own rubbish tip where he puts his edible refuse. I told him if the Kea find his trash they may become permanent visitors through the winter. 

Also, there is a ski field just over the mountain and where there are humans and eating establishments in South Island alpine environments, there will be Kea. 

I have never been so frustrated by not having a car in my life (mine is in the shop at the moment). I was squirming and trying to think of ways to borrow a car all day. 

The Kea returned on Monday morning and I borrowed a friend's car to make the two hour drive up to see my uncle.

When I arrived the Kea were gone. 

I walked down one of the paths behind his house that runs parallel to the mountains and I listened as hard as a could. Kea are fairly riotous and will call to each other constantly to stay in touch. 

I heard the organ-like songs of Magpies and the distant honking of the Paradise Shell Ducks on my uncle's small pond. 

The lowing of cattle came from the sparse grazing herd at the boundaries of his landing strip and down in the valley floor I could hear the rushing of water over stone. 

Some wayward sheep that broke out of their fields long ago and took to grazing in the mountains made the occasional bleating cry but there was no sound of Kea.

I called out with a high-pitched "Keee-ah!" a few times but got no reply. (Don't laugh it works. Even if you don't sound like a Kea, getting their attention is all it takes to get them interested in you.)

It was midday by then and was starting to get hot out. I put my coat down on the grass and sat on it, hoping my blinding whiteness might act as a Kea beacon.

Finally, I gave up sulked back to the house. I scowled in the direction of the Manuka trees which were filled with singing Bellbirds. 

Kea usually forage in the morning and at sundown. The youngsters would have spent the rest of the time playing, exploring or resting somewhere shady.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the house opened the screened window looking out over the mountains and threw myself on the guest bed. With the cool breeze blowing in and the lazy droning buzz of the flies around the screen, I was asleep in no time.

I woke up cranky and bleary-eyed a few hours later.

To my uncle, the Kea are a potential threat to the integrity of his house and car and he hopes they don't stay around.

To me they are a wonderful discovery that I could spend endless hours studying and interacting with if I stayed out at his house for a few weeks. (Then I could legitimately claim to be a scientist!)

Alas, Monday was not a day for "the great doing of science" and I drove home feeling grumpy and disappointed. 

Maybe it's for the best the youngsters and I didn't meet. Nick says I probably would have gone all "mama Kea" with them and then they would never leave my uncle's house alone.

In my estimation, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Are All Libertarians Assholes?

The first time I ever met a Libertarian was at Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents house in Georgia.

He was the cousin of my father and while most of us brought casseroles or deserts, he brought political pamphlets and the mistaken impression that we wanted to hear his opinions on marijuana legalization and abortion while we ate.

He was extremely obnoxious but left me curious to know more about Libertarians.

There are many issues we can agree on: I too am pro choice, feel that marijuana should be legalized and was against the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan. 

But from there our opinions diverge dramatically. 

Whenever anything goes wrong anywhere at anytime, a Libertarian will blame the government. There are no nuances or finer points to be viewed in life-big government is the cause of all bad things.

Also, if you are fond of the right to unionize and fight for workers rights, don't apply for a job at Walmart or join this political group. They are all about Capitalism. Human cogs that make it go forward through their labor be damned!

I listened to a Libertarian man go on about the evils of social programs like Medicaid and Foodstamps once. He insisted that if the government just did away with those programs, the people who needed them would find another way to make ends meet.  

It was listening to this ignorant speech that drew my attention to the fact that most Libertarians were white men who belonged to a historically privileged class-one that would likely never need said social programs. 

It is also obvious that many of them have never met a "real, live poor person" and asked them for their perspective. (Someone like my 19-year old self, for example.)  

Imagine my confusion years later when Ron and Rand Paul came on the scene and professed to be Libertarians while embracing a pro-life, anti marijuana legalization stance. 

Oh, and they didn't feel that the Civil Rights Act was fair because it "forced people to associate with one another." 

This is almost as confusing as when some Christians claim that they should be able to turn gays away from their business because of "religious freedom." I guess baby Jesus commanded them to be intolerant of the gays and if other people question it they are being religiously intolerant or something.

Apparently, property rights are so inalienable to Libertarians that it's perfectly acceptable to turn away people whose skin color you do not like because you have the freedom to associate with whomever you chose. (This might work in a society where every race and both genders had equal standing in all things but since such a society is pure fantasy we cannot be sure.)

By using words like "property rights" and "freedom of association" Libertarians have found a way to make blatant racism sound legally reasonable.

Take the words of Austrian School economist and Loyola University professor Walter E. Block:

"No one should be compelled, at the point of a government gun, to associate with anyone else, against his will. Compelling Woolworths to seat blacks is thus incompatible with libertarianism. It was a violation of their private property rights over their establishment."

Walter has all sorts of interesting ideas about slavery and the struggle for civil rights. 

He argues everything from an economic standpoint and seems to live in a world completely devoid of moral and ethical implications. 

He has the added advantage of being a white dude whose ancestors were not owned by other human beings in recent history so of course, he's the ideal candidate to say things like this:

"Free association is a very important aspect of liberty. It is crucial. Indeed, its lack was the major problem with slavery. The slaves could not quit. They were forced to "associate" with their masters when they would have vastly preferred not to do so. Otherwise, slavery wasn't so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory. It violated the law of free association, and that of the slaves' private property rights in their own persons."

He continues:

"Most men of good will are inclined to reject this argument. They see racial discrimination as economically harmful to the targeted group. They are economically illiterate. They do not realize that these sorts of boycotts have very little power. When employers discriminate against a given group, they drive their wages down. But this makes hiring them, by other employers, much more profitable, ceteris paribus. If some firms will not sell lunch to blacks, others will arise to do so, and be able to earn greater profits than would otherwise be the case. If some companies force blacks to ride in the back of the bus, others with no such rules will compete for their custom, and earn extraordinary profits from doing so. In all such cases, in the free marketplace, the latter (non discriminators) will tend to drive the former (discriminators) out of business."

I like to think that most human beings of sound mind and judgment are inclined to reject this argument on the moral grounds that racial discrimination is appalling. 

But if you're a Libertarian I guess the motto is: "Eff the Golden Rule, Capitalism must prevail."

Also, I love the assertion that if someone like Rosa Parks had just waited a little longer, the Acme Bus Co. would have been founded and taken the unusual step of integrating all of its seating in the deep south because of all the profit they could make from a poor and oppressed minority.

Sure, that was just about to happen...and then Bull Conner would have said "Aw, shucks!" and packed it in.

I guess when you belong to an economic school that doesn't put a lot of emphasis on empirical evidence, this sort of thing happens. 

All you have to do is dilute life down to mere markets and so-called "rational actors" and then ignore white male privilege and its ability to historically maintain power over minorities.

Boom! Walter is now an expert on economics and race relations in the South. 

But what about having a vagina? What does the learn-ed scholar have to say about that?

I'm so glad you asked. 

Here's excerpts from a letter he wrote to the University of Loyola newspaper "The Maroon":

"Most people — how shall I say this delicately — have an IQ akin to comfortable room temperature. If they favor something — anything — it is probably immoral, fallacious and wrong-headed. In the case of feminism, this is true in spades."

So, just to set the stage, most feminists are dumb. But also, if Walter's assertions are correct then Libertarians are also mostly dumb and have immoral views as well. Hmmm.

"Let us start off with a minor annoyance foisted upon us by these harridans: their attack on the English language. It is no longer allowed in polite society to refer to a woman as "Miss" or "Mrs." Now, it would appear, we are all required to utilize the horrid word "Ms." But the first two convey important information: marital status. Why should we jettison knowledge about a woman's status in this regard just to satisfy a bunch of loud-mouthed people?"

Like, how can Block discern whether or not it's okay to hit on a woman without getting beat up by her husband if he can't tell if she's got one or not?

"Feminists are typically socialists, communists, liberals or, ugh,"progressives." This is pretty downright despicable since these attacks on economic freedom create the very poverty against which they presume to inveigh."

Whew! For a minute there I thought he was going to say that some feminists are actually Libertarians and then I was going to have a stage a intervention to deal with the serious self-loathing issues of my brothers and sisters in the movement.

"Feminists oppose arming women. When confronted with the scourge of rape and molestation, feminists respond by holding "Take Back the Night" marches, whining about how horrid these attacks are. Of course they are! But why not encourage young women to avail themselves of their Second Amendment rights to bear arms? The gun is the great equalizer. Face it: unarmed women are at a disadvantage vis-a-vis rapists, who are usually bigger, stronger and heavier than they are. With a pistol in their pocketbooks (sorry, I can't help my stereotyping; I relish it) they confront their attackers on an equal basis."

Good Lord! I need to get caught up on our latest gun toting pamphlets because I did not get the memo on this one.

And don't you hate it how rape victims and their supporters are always whining about rape when the real answer is to arm every woman with a gun? (Because rapes only take place in dark alleys with strangers and never involve drugs, alcohol and someone you trust.)

The gun might have been a "great equalizer" at one time but then Florida, "Stand Your Ground" and a certain bias against skin color all came together to eff up that beautiful fact. 

Further wisdom: 

"In the view of most feminists, capitalism is to blame for the wage gap of some 25 to 30 percent. They claim that "sexism" is responsible for the fact that men earn more than women on average. Not at all. This is due in large part, instead, to the economic doctrine of alternative costs: whenever you do anything, you do it at the cost of not being able to do something else as well as you otherwise might have been able to do. Women bear a disproportionate share of housework. Stipulating that they are otherwise equally productive to men, this alone would account for a large share of the so-called wage "gap."

I don't remember getting any time off from my journalism job to go home and clean house. Maybe I missed out? In my case I just worked the same hours doing to same job as my male coworkers and got less pay for it. 

Then I went home and started getting dinner ready and looked after my kid and cleaned the dust kittens in the corner. 

Do you think Walter has ever talked to a woman who has a job before? 

I'm beginning to think he doesn't venture out of his office or classroom much.

I also imagine that most of his classes are attended by sycophantic young white men who don't mind being told that they shall inherit the earth at the expense of those who are not like themselves (brown persons,  persons without a penis or persons who are both brown and without a penis). 

"Feminists will undoubtedly interpret the foregoing as evidence that I hate women. Nonsense. Some of my best friends are women. I admire many women. I do not at all mean to put down the distaff side; very much the opposite. I wish to rid our better halves of this virus that inflicts them: feminism."

And just so you know, Walter isn't a racist either because he also "knows some black people" and occasionally "listens to the hip hop." 

So basically, Wallyboo has just given us a classic sexist diatribe and then tied it up with a bright bow of denial. 

Are all Libertarians assholes? 

I like to think not. 

I like to think it's mainly just the ones that run for positions in the very government they want to limit.

But then we get people like Walter Block and my dad's cousin and I began to feel the creep of uncertainty.