Willem's Planet

(The heading is a play on the 1970s advertising hall-of-fame slogan from the Esso gasoline commercials that said ‘there’s a tiger in my tank’).  The stamps to save some vanishing species such as the tiger are not new; they were issued in 2011 already.  But they were the nicest ones the post office had when I sent out something in a bubble envelope, and I couldn’t resist.  (The tiger figure is part of my very limited animal figure collection).  Scientists are closing in on their ability to bring extinct species back, though – even ice age mammals like the woolly mammoth.  I fear the way it’s going now the poor creatures will have no ice, of course.

(Wednesday) I was waiting at the doctor’s office yesterday when someone came in with a cute mid-size dog in tow.  What breed of dog is he? I asked.  I couldn’t make out what the man was saying, but did not want to ask again.  And at home my on-line searches for dog breeds called cay-son or kashun produced nothing.

(Today, Thursday)  I find myself in another office building and purely by coincidence there is a dog book on the coffee table.  Alright! Let me see if I can spot the dog I saw yesterday, I thought.  And there it was : a keeshond.  What threw me completely off the scent was the Dutch pronunciation of ‘kayz-hond’.   In my native Afrikaans we say ‘keeshond’ as in ‘leery’.

This poster for a new animated movie From Up On Poppy Hill is from a lamp post here on 15th Ave in Capitol Hill. Hmm, I thought, those little faces look awfully like those of the characters in the animated series Heidi* that we had in South Africa in the 70s, I thought.  Sure enough, this is a  ‘Goro Miyazaki’ film .. and he is the son of Hayao Miyazaki that produced the original Heidi series.  The elder Miyazaki is one of Japan’s greatest animation directors.

*At the time, one of my colleagues at work told us that his daughter started crying when one of the Heidi episodes started on the TV.  Why are you sad when Heidi is so happy? he asked her. Well, she knew that episode would soon end, and then she would have to wait a whole long week for the next one.  Aww.

I’m happy that April 1 has come and gone, so that all the technical tomfoolery is now out of the way.   Google released an April Fools video announcing ‘Google Blue’, a version of Google Mail that has been ‘years in the works’ (but it turns out all it does is be blue).   Some commentators point out they are probably poking fun at a version of Windows 8 called Windows Blue that’s slated for release later this year.  Google also offered a ‘Treasure’ mode of their maps and its new odor service called ‘Google Nose Beta’, with which you could search for odors or smells which would appear through your computer so that you could smell it.  On Sunday, Twitter announced it will no longer allow the use of vowels in tweets, and that users will have to buy them. (Not true).  Check out Joan Rivers’ creative response below. 

Tuesday and Wednesday this week was a Supreme Court Superbowl of sorts with high-profile lawyers going before the highest court in the United States to makes their cases for and against ‘Prop 8’ (Tuesday) and DOMA (Wednesday). Prop 8 is short-hand for California’s Proposition 8 from the 2008 state elections there, that was approved and eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry there, leaving some 4,000 marriages already performed in legal limbo.  However, Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional by a US District court judge.  The Supreme Court agreed to hear it.  DOMA stands for the 1996 US Congress’s Defense of Marriage Act, stipulating that the federal government is not allowed by law, to recognize same-sex marriages from the States.   There are about 1,100 benefits and privileges that come with marriage, so this is not a trivial matter if you are a gay person with a partner you want to marry or are married to already, under your State laws. (Some states allow ‘civil unions’ or domestic partnerships. Most others have explicitly banned it. Go west young man! or young woman, as that classic YMCA song says).  So .. how to sort all of this out?  ‘When did same-sex marriages become ‘unconstitutional’? asked conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, expressing his sceptisicm.  But here is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg at a later point .. my answer would have been, Mr. Clement, (the lawyer arguing for upholding the Defense of Marriage Act), if we are totally for the States’ decision that there is a marriage between two people, for the federal government then to come in to say no joint return, no marital deduction, no Social Security benefits; your spouse is very sick but you can’t get leave; people—if that set of attributes, one might well ask, What kind of marriage is this?” Then Justice Ginsburg answered her own question. Under DOMA there were “two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.”   The Supreme Court should issue their ruling on both cases by June.  Most  legal pundits that hazard a guess at each of the outcomes say that first, for Prop 8, it sounds as if they will simply say that they are not going to issue a ruling. (It’s complicated and there are issues of ‘standing’ .. since the California Attorney General and Governor both declined to defend Prop 8, could the proponents of Prop 8 defend it in front of the Supreme court?).  So if the Supreme Court does not issue a ruling, then the overturn of Prop 8 stands and same-sex marriages are good to be recognized (again) in California.    As for DOMA, it appears that a majority of the nine Supreme Court judges will rule it unconstitutional .. or at least rule that the Federal government has to recognize all marriages sanctioned by the States.    That would still leave same-sex couples in those States that currently ban same-sex marriage worse off, but hopefully those bans will also be overturned in time.   The wheels of justice turn slowly.

Daffodils are popular here in my neighborhood, and most are in full spring bloom right now.  The bulb flower’s is derived from an earlier name ‘affodell’ and the probable source of the d in the front is the Dutch article ‘de’.  So ‘de affodell’ became daffodil.   Legend also has it that the plant sprang from the site where Narcissus became so obsessed with his own reflection as he knelt and gazed into a pool of water, that he fell in and drowned.   That is where the genus name of Narcissus for the plant, comes from.

I couldn’t resist buying the Sunday Wall Street Journal when I saw this elephant picture in the ‘Review’ section.  It is an Indian elephant : the African ones don’t have the speckled skins.  The article makes the point that experiments designed to test animals’ thinking should keep their physiology in mind.  Chimpanzees will readily use sticks as tools to reach food.  Elephants do not, but are not dumb, since holding the stick with its trunk closes its ‘nose’; and it cannot smell the food that way.  But they will go find crates from far away to step on, to reach food that was placed out of reach.  The article also mentions that animals can be extremely keen observers of human body language – as was the case of Kluger (Clever) Hans the German horse of a century ago, that ‘could do math’.  An audience would say ‘3 + 4!’ and Hans would tap seven times with his hoof.  The secret was that he watched his owner very closely for a signal that the correct answer was reached.

The Hobbit is out on Blu-ray and I got to see it last night.  It makes a fine prequel to the Lord of the Rings movies, with out-of-this world characters (of course : they’re from Middle Earth), and some wild battle scenes with the Orcs.  The ‘unexpected journey’ takes a lot of twists and turns.  Some of the turns take a little too long, though.  The total movie time comes to 170 minutes.  As for the characters, I liked the ogres around the fire, and afterwards I looked up the name of the foul, uncouth and bloated ‘king’ villain in the mountain (I have not read The Hobbit and I am not familiar with the Middle Earth characters at all! ).  It turns out he is named Gorkin the Goblin King.  I was shocked to learn the character is played by none other than -ready for this?- the Australian actor behind the outrageous stage show character ‘Dame Edna’, Barry Humphries (a sprightly 77).

*In March 2012, Humphries announced Dame Edna’s retirement from show business.

The link below is to one of many articles doing the rounds on-line, commenting on the 10-year anniversary this week of the USA’s invasion of Iraq.  Sure : there are neo-conservatives saying the Iraq-Afghanistan wars should not have been ended.  There is a documentary out this week by public broadcaster PBS about Pres. Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney in which he stands by his views with no apology whatsoever. He still believes a president should have virtually unlimited wartime power.  I am a pacifist.  Like someone said, wars do not determine what is right; they just determine what is left.

From the article : Ten years after the first American bombs fell on Baghdad, the United States is still paying the costs for the invasion of Iraq — monetarily, strategically, psychologically and morally. The decision to launch the war is sure to be re-debated ad nauseum over the coming days, but the simple reality is that the United States …

via 5 Reasons The U.S. Is Worse Off Because Of The Iraq War.