Following last night's bear interview I somehow have a stack of grizzly bear links.
We learned today that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer has run out of things to shoot and kill and recommends we wipe out grizzly bears. Or maybe he's just attended too many moustache parades...
Anyway, not even Sarah Palin advocates shooting animals for the sake of wiping them off the face of the earth - and especially not grizzlies. Of course, in light of Friday's Gail Collins column that position could soften.
The Collins money-quote and more after the jump...
Collins cites Gloria Steinem with this set of bear facts:
In real life, they are famous for their reproductive freedom.
...
Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears. They have two cubs instead of four. They wait four years — about twice as long as other bears — between having cubs. And after they're pregnant, if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain, they re-absorb the embryo into their body.
Ok, ew, but also, neat! But lest I go rushing to pixel with facts I only read on the internet, some quick checking: It's likely Steinem learned these facts from her own magazine, which draws heavily for its reporting from MountainNature.com, a site run by a Canadian naturist. Wikipedia essentially backs up the bullet points on the reproductive process but does so with such an emphasis on how much the odds are stacked against the grizzly prospering that it makes for a pretty depressing read. More authoritative is this page from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (pdf). The grizzly details are smoothed a little here as well, using "the embryos may not implant (develop)" versus Wikipedia's "abortion can occur" and Steinem's "re-absorb the embryo."
All of that is an awful lot of research when all I really wanted to say was that last night's segment reminded me of Clark's Trading Post up in the White Mountains in New Hampsire, the web site of which includes a photo of a bear on a scooter. I'm sure that's offensive and cruel in the eyes of some of you but in the abstract, a bear on a scooter is pretty funny.
Also, in the course of writing this I learned that Grizzly Bear is also a band. Their web site is very pretty and their music has been played a lot on MySpace, though it's not really my cup of tea.
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Lord, now I know how much of a geek I am. The clip Will gave above is from The Simpsons season 7, episode "Much Apu About Nothing." This clip takes place within I believe (if I'm recollecting correctly) the first 3 minutes of the episode. The episode itself has to do with Apu and the other immigrants being threatened with deportation via prop 24. It's a good episode for many reasons. At the beginning of the episode a bear wonders around Evergreen Terrace in Springfield (where the Simpsons live) and Homer, in his reactionary outrage, puts together the protest Will attached above. After they protest, the mayor agrees to instigate a bear patrol which includes helicopters and b2 bomber surveillance (remind you of an over-exaggeration to another problem we have?) Homer steps outside accompanied by his daughter Lisa and the two have an exchange that marks one of my favorites in Simpson history:
Homer- Ah not a bear in sight. The bear patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa- That's specious reasoning dad.
Homer, misunderstanding the phrase "specious" assumes it's a compliment and makes a gesture in thanks towards Lisa
Lisa, interrupting her father's 'thank you'- By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer- Hmm, how does it work?
Lisa- It doesn't work; it's just a stupid rock.
Homer- Uh huh
Lisa- But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer looks around. Homer- Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock
So awesome :-P Also if anyone else would like another awesome grizzly link, here you go (this time from the cartoon Family Guy):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgCceg042w&feature=related
That episode is full of relevancies to Today.
To continue discussion of that episode, Homer gets mad that his taxes went up, calling it 'the largest tax increase in history!"
Lisa: It's the smallest tax increase in history.
Homer: Let the bear pay the bear-tax. I pay the Homer tax.
Lisa: That's the home-owner tax.
to which Homer instigates another mob to bug the mayor about the tax but doesn't want to get rid of the patrol. (taxed enough already, they are) to which the Mayor, on the fly, blames illegal immigrants for their high taxes.
The episode ends with only one illegal immigrant being deported. lol
And about extinction of species, here in Wisconsin there is no law against private, individual homes from owning tigers or other big cats, even endangered species. http://www.wisconsinbigcats.org/ has been working with $0.00 from the government to facilitate the rescue and rehabilitation of Big Cats. When they tried to talk to law-makers in Madison about it, the response was: "It's not a high priority".
How can, not only the protection of the species, but the safety of the individuals, be of "not a high priority"? It would take almost no effort to get something similar to what Iowa has for the protection and safety of everyone.
Yesterday we had cuteness, today Simpsons. Awesome.
Grizzly Bear are amazing! Listen to their song "Two Weeks" so good!
"Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears. They have two cubs instead of four. They wait four years — about twice as long as other bears — between having cubs. And after they're pregnant, if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain, they re-absorb the embryo into their body." - Gloria Steinem