Non-birders are always surprised to learn there is a large raptor whose primary prey is . . . snails. It somehow doesn’t fit the image of a raptor: a fast-flying, fierce predator that subsists primarily on famously slow-moving mollusks. But that long, hooked upper mandible has evolved to hook the snail out of its shell.…
Commentary / Law / Trump
While WC was off the grid, soaking in hot springs in the Snake River Gorge, Donald Trump managed to lose five important court cases in a single day. That’s a personal best for the President, WC believes, and likely the worst day in the federal judiciary for a sitting president since Franklin Roosevelt was trying…
As recently as this week, WC has been criticized because “conservationists won’t compromise.” WC admits he is loath to compromise, because it never seems to end well. An example: WC is just one of hundreds of other conservationists who have fought to preserve the remaining old growth trees in the Tongass National Forest. For decades, trying…
Poor, poor pitiful me Poor, poor pitiful me These boys won’t let me be Lord have mercy on me Woe is me – Warren Zevon, “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” via Linda Ronstadt Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy complains we aren’t treating him fairly. So he gave an interview to the right wing Briebart News,1 where he…
There are half a dozen streams that drain the southerly edge of the Idaho Batholith, running out onto the Snake River Plain, where the streamflows sink into the shattered basalt that is the Snake River Plain. The Big Lost River, the Little Lost River, the Wood River and more; they simply run a short distance…
From time to time, WC will get in a debate with some faceless person over the internet. It usually starts when the other person makes a foolish or outlandish statement. If WC is sufficiently dyspeptic at the moment, WC will take the fool to task. This happened recently. A climate change denier annoyed WC enough…
Lithium is dangerous stuff. The nucleus of lithium, consisting of three protons and three or four neutrons, verges on instability; it has the lowest binding energies holding the nucleus together of all the stable elements. That’s why lithium deuteride is the fusion fuel in some thermonuclear bombs. Lithium salts are used to treat bipolat disorder.…
As promised, WC will take a break from Tanagers for a while, and spend some time with bigger birds instead. Specifically, with Accipitridae, the world-wide family of birds sometimes called raptors, and at least to start, with Kites. When WC was just getting started in birding, it was a shock to learn that “kite” isn’t…
Here at Wickersham’s Conscience we are swamped with potential candidates for Hypocrite of the Year. Last year’s HOtY, the despicable and appalling Mitch McConnell (R, 17th Century) is ineligible.1 As is his puppet master, the clown in the White House.2 But otherwise, WC will consider any suggestion. The first nominee was Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey,…
The Washington Post, the newspaper that won a Pulitzer Prize itself for its Watergate reporting, self-censored Trudeau’s cartoon of Mark Slackmeyer’s screed. And, of course, Trudeau (and Slackmeyer) were absolutely correct. Nixon’s attorney general and campaign manager was found guilty in 1977 of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to two and a half…
It seems increasingly likely that humanity’s inaction in the face of the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change means we are going to have more than than the 2° Celsius of global temperature increase that climatologists regarded as manageable. So, without in any way conceding that humanity’s CO2 emissions must be reduced, it’s time to…
It has been instructive to watch Republican responses to Trump’s behavior and the empowered impeachment effort. The few Republicans who still put their principles over politics – you can count them on one hand with digits left over – have made their positions clear. Senators Romney (R, Utah) and Sasse (R, Nebraska) have been clear…
