Dear Kitty. Some blog

From the BBC:

US forces in Iraq have killed two women in an air attack on a house in Baquba, a day after five girls were killed by US tank fire in Ramadi.

David Hare play on Iraq: here.

Robert Fisk: Bush in denial on Iraq.

Death of British Marine in Iraq: here.

Today in the nature reserve.

A blue tit just past the entrance.

A jay.

Many fungi.

On the meadow to the east, a buzzard.

Migratory geese flying overhead.

Great crested grebes and moorhens in the water.

Someone saw a kingfisher, and shows me the photograph he just made.

The bat research is going on, with one person at the bottom, and one on top, of a ladder next to a hollow tree where bats winter.

The person on top curses, as he dropped the flashlight inside the tree.

The prawn species Palaemon longirostris is usually found in The Netherlands in brackish waters near the coast.

So, it was a surprise, as daily Leidsch Dagblad of 30 November reports, to find hundreds of this species in the Zegerplas lake near Alphen, inland.

Today, I made the post about Tony Blair now declared officially to be George W Bush’s poodle.

It was post #1,000 on this web log here at Blogsome, as I noted later today.

I hope there will be still many more here.

I made many more than 1,000 blog posts.

However, mainly on ModBlog, which is probably gone forever.

This is a video about fish in Venezuela.

Reuters reports:

Piranha among 13 new species of Venezuelan fish

OSLO - Scientists have found a new type of piranha and a ray among 13 new species of freshwater fish in an area of Venezuela where pollution from gold mines is emerging as a threat, a conservationist said on Thursday.

“There was a very high diversity of life,” said Leeanne Alonso, a director of Washington-based Conservation International, of a three-week survey of wildlife at the confluence of the Orinoco and Ventuari rivers.

Among 13 species of fish believed to be new to science were a ray, a miniature catfish and a type of meat-eating piranha.

The scientists also found a small type of shrimp, also previously undocumented.

“The region is still very pristine but we want to ensure protection before its too late,” Alonso told Reuters.

Conservation International is a non-profit group seeking to protect the diversity of life on the planet.

“The main threat is the illegal gold mining,” she said.

Gold mining uses polluting mercury to help flush out gold, and some fish studied had higher than normal amounts of mercury in their flesh.

Alonso said many men from local villages had gone to work in mining gold. “There’s more potential for them to be doing ecotourism for fishing, or wildlife viewing,” she said. Some of the fish could be used for the aquarium trade.

During the trip, scientists from Conservation International, Fundacion La Salle and Fundacion Cisneros documented a total of 357 plant species, 157 bird species and 245 fish species, including the new ones.

The region also includes a well-known river resort — both former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush have visited the area for fishing

Belgian workers die from mercury poisoning: here.

Glass knifefish of South America: here.

White-necked thrush of Venezuela: here.

Great thrush in Venezuela: here.

From the Middle East Times:

NEW YORK, NY, USA — The initial 6,000 print run of a 112-page book of 86 shocking color illustrations by Colombian artist Fernando Botero depicting the torture of Iraqi prisoners titled Abu Ghraib is selling well in the United States and will be reprinted, a spokesman for Prestel Publishing here said.

“Considering this is not the kind of book you would give to your Aunt May for the holidays, we are encouraged that a book on a difficult subject is selling well,” said Stephen Hulburt, the North American marketing director for Prestel. The book went on sale last month. …

Hulburt said Abu Ghraib fits in with the historic tradition of protest art such as Goya’s Disasters of War about the Napoleonic occupation of Spain, Picasso’s Guernica about the Spanish bombed by Hitler, and Botero’s own 1990s paintings about Colombian drug war violence.

He said Prestel is not a political publishing house and “we present our books as art.”

Asked why he departed from his usually humorous subject matter, Botero told the Associated Press, “I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity [of Abu Ghraib], especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion.”

Abu Ghraib prison is located roughly 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) west of Baghdad and held about 5,000 Iraqis.

According to David Ebony, “Guards regarded the detainees as terrorists rather than as prisoners of war” and ignored their rights under the Geneva Convention. …

“Botero’s cry of outrage expressed in the Abu Ghraib series,” Ebony continued, “is an attempt to help shift the attention of the public toward the timely and timeless issues of peace and humanity.

“Coming from an artist known for images of pleasure during a time of war and terror, the gruesome and violent scenes he depicts are exceptionally disturbing and moving,” he wrote.

“He joins a long list of artists who have passionately responded to tumultuous current events outside the rarefied ambiance of a successful artist’s studio.”

Eduardo Galeano on torture: here.

From the Daily Mail in Britain:

Yo Blair, we don’t have any special relationship

by KIRSTY WALKER

Last updated at 08:14am on 30th November 2006

Poodle: Tony Blair has been criticised for his slavish support of Bush

Tony Blair faced fresh humiliation over his ’special relationship’ with George Bush last night after a U.S. official admitted it is ‘totally one-sided’.

Kendall Myers, a State Department analyst, said the Iraq war had been a ‘done deal’ and gave a damning verdict on the Prime Minister’s attempts to influence the U.S.

He said: “We typically ignore them and take no notice - it is a sad business.”

The comments will fuel criticism that Mr Blair has acted as Mr Bush’s “poodle” and has had little, or no, influence.

Yesterday, I went to the natural history museum.

The museum basically consists of two buildings: a seventeenth century building, originally built for plague patients (however, since that building arose, there were no plague epidemics in the city any more).

The other building is a high late twentieth century tower.

They are connected by a pedestrians’ bridge.

Usually, on that bridge, there are plastic life size models of two adult rhinoceroses and one baby rhino.

However, for the moment, only the baby rhino is left.

Its plastic ‘parents’ were moved because of an exhibition.

That exhibition is by nature photographer Frans Lanting.

It is called LIFE.

Look here for slideshow and more.

Lanting’s idea is to make photographs now about life as it evolved through billions of years.

For instance, one can today still photograph horseshoe crabs, very similar to horseshoe crabs of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Frans Lanting went to photograph in various continents, including Patriot Hills in Antarctica.

The Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

Volcanoes of Hawaii and elsewhere.

He took pictures of billions of years old stromatolites [see also here] (cyanobacteria fossils) in Australia.

Theories on origins of life: here.

Through a microscope, he took photographs of diatoms, a next step in the evolution of life.

The photographs looked strangely like abstract paintings by Kandinsky.

Also, a photograph of snub-nosed darts.

Of a cheetah pursuing an impala.

Of the sub-Antarctic Snares archipelago just south of New Zealand, with kelp and Snares crested penguins.

There was also another, small, special exhibition in the museum, on recent research into fossils of Flores island in Indonesia, including the ‘hobbit’ Homo floresiensis, the miniature Stegodon elephant, etc.

The museum cinema had a film on polar bears in the Arctic (see also here).

There was a strong smell in the museum, as there is work in progress on a recently beached fin whale.

Diatom fossils of the Antarctic: here.

Using multi-coloured spray paint, researchers have shown how rock-structures similar to the ’stromatolites’ that scientists think are among the earliest fossils on Earth can form in the absence of life: here.

From Maia Szalavitz’ blog in the USA:

Nearly a year after 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson was killed by guards at a Florida sheriff’s juvenile boot camp, eight people– including the nurse who stood by and watched indifferently as the others kicked, beat and ultimately suffocated the boy– have been charged with aggravated manslaughter.

But the real culprits in the case– just as in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal– have avoided indictment.

Guy Tunnell, the man who set up the boot camp and as head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement defended it even as he was charged with investigating it and Frank McKeithen, a sheriff who was suspected of trying to cover up the abuse that led to the death– were both cleared.

From the Portsmouth Herald:

Tropical bird makes way to Rye

By Beth LaMontagne
blamontagne@seacoastonline.com

RYE — Bird enthusiasts across the Seacoast have been flocking to Odiorne Point to catch a rare glimpse of the recently spotted fork-tailed flycatcher.

Native to South and Central America, the flycatcher doesn’t usually appear as far north as New England.

The last time a fork-tailed flycatcher was seen in the area was around 10 years ago at Fort Foster in Kittery, Maine, said Becky Suomala of the New Hampshire Audubon Society.

The recent sighting is particularly exciting, she said, because it is the first documented record of the bird in New Hampshire.

The fork-tailed flycatcher is pale gray with a black head and a white belly.

It is distinguished by its wide wingspan and long, deeply forked tail.

Birders first saw the flycatcher on Saturday, and its arrival was immediately announced on the online state bird watching list serve NH.birds.

The flycatcher has been spotted perched in shrubs and feeding on bittersweet and glossy buckthorn berries.

Birders also have reported observing the bird’s dramatic flight pattern of swooping turns.

Although the fork-tailed flycatcher rarely comes this far north, it occasionally makes appearances in other areas along the Eastern Seaboard.

This bird likely came to New England by way of a recent storm track that ran up the East Coast from the South, said Suomala.

The flycatcher was likely flying its migratory path and was “blown off course,” she said.

Scientists attribute most rare bird sightings to the birds getting lost on the migratory path, including the west reef heron that was seen in New Castle and Kittery this August.

That long-legged water bird is indigenous to Africa, but bird experts guess it, too, was caught in a storm and carried — either by its own flight or on a ship — to the north Atlantic.