Observations on boiling frogs

I've had the recent opportunity to observe a post-COVID concerted attempt by tech leadership to reduce its company's costs, and it has been quite eye-opening. A common theme in employee chat spaces when discussing the changes is the whole boiling frog meme, but I think that a lot of people miss the deeper implications of what's actually going on.

Q: Why do you boil frogs in the first place?
A: You're making frog soup.

When you make frog soup, you can add in lots of other ingredients to change / disguise the taste, but inevitably you will need to have a certain amount of frog to attract customers. Yes, these customers will probably be French, and you'll have to deal with everything that comes along with that, but that is your customer base. Frog soup eaters, who pay you for the soup, want frogs in their soup.

Ah, but how many frogs will there be? You fill the tureen with lukewarm water, drop (say) 100 frogs into it, and turn on the gas cooker. Will you get a 100-frog soup? No!

• Some frogs will jump out of the tureen, just because they're interested in the wider world - the water temperature means nothing to them.
• Some frogs are sensitive to heat, and at the first warming sensation they'll try to escape.
• Once the activity becomes noticeable to the broader frog population, there will be general concern in the tureen, and some frogs will try to jump out just because they notice other frogs jumping out. Generally, you lose the healthiest frogs at this point. The old, sick frogs are stuck.
• You might try to drop additional frogs into the tureen to replace those lost. Unfortunately, word gets around the frog community fairly quickly, and the larger frogs will squirm out of your hands. You're left with the young frogs who don't know any better.

Eventually, the soup comes to the boil, and you're left with... substandard frog soup. Bon appetit!

The Mythical Bay Area Mask Mandate

I had to buy a pair of shoes today, and so decided to use the mall visit to test the effect of the "mask mandate" that theoretically grips San Jose in its iron fist.

My selected target was an anonymous, generic, medium-quality indoor mall. I approached it in regular clothing, with no mask or other face covering in sight - I had a mask in my back pocket should things prove sticky at any point. Spoiler: they didn't.

Within the body of the mall, I passed by security guards at least four times in close proximity. No-one said anything. I was careful not to lock eyes in challenge, just looked ahead at a destination store and occasionally consult my phone.

Of the other stores:

• I avoided CVS (Pharmacy), and the pharmacy area of Target - didn't want to unnecessarily disturb sick people
• Within Target there was no reaction, even though I walked past several staff members.
• Discount clothing store #1 - nada
• Footwear store #1 - very relaxed, even when I asked them questions
• Discount clothing store #2 - no challenge, but a staff member was wearing trousers well below his underwear waistline so I'm not surprised he didn't say anything. Let he who is without sin, et cetera...
• Discount clothing store #3 - v helpful, no comment on lack of mask.
• Footwear store #2 - no problem at all, friendly even through the purchase of shoes.

Summary: no-one gives a shit on enforcement of the mask mandate. It's way too much hassle. Don't feel constrained to wear a mask. That said, everyone else in the mall I saw was wearing one, even though some were way below the nose and only being worn for the form of things.

Also note: as a highly white person with clear diction, if there were anyone expected by shop staff to be a nark, and therefore demand mask-compliant behavior, it would be me.

I'm rather disappointed that I didn't have to pull out my explanation:

"I'm feeling the spirit" -SF Mayor London Breed, explaining why she was dancing without a mask in one of her city's nightclubs , contrary to her own order

Kamala the cuckoo

I was having lunch with one of my right-wing friends today - such creatures do exist, even in the Bay Area. It was not socially distanced, of course, neither of us believes it makes a difference at this point. At some point she was commenting (of course) on the current US political situation. Specifically, Kamala Harris. "She's a cuckoo!", she remarked, disdainfully.

I misheard initially, and ventured a contrary opinion that she actually seemed pretty sane and intelligent, albeit rather lacking in morals.

"The bird, not the adjective. You must know about them, you're from the UK, you're all into birds aren't you?" I agreed that I was familiar with the avian in question. "Okay, so it sticks its egg into the nest of another unsuspecting bird, a baby cuckoo hatches and is a giant compared to the other baby birds, it progressively kicks the others out of the nest and takes over. Kamala Harris, right?"

She has a point. I don't know if I agree with her assertion that Kammie will infect Sleepy Joe with COVID-19 the first chance that she gets, but I don't give Joe that long in office. Cuck-oo. Cuck-oo.

[1] I wondered how she was acquainted with the bird in question, but it turns out that California does have some cuckoo species, though they're fairly rare and may be endangered. You learn something new every day.

Redundant quotes in the news

Man scalped by grizzly bear says he's 'lucky' to be alive

OK, in what universe is he 'lucky' to be alive? Would anyone like to propose that the expected result of being scalped by a bear is anything but death? Anyone? Bueller?

He fought back, kicking the bear and punching its face. The bear released him and he ran inside. The bear had bit his abdomen and torn away part of his scalp and his ear, and he was bleeding profusely.
"There's a lot of blood I'm sure up and down the stairs," he said.
Without cell reception or a landline to call for help, Mr Carbery ran to his car as the bear chased him and drove himself to the nearest hospital.

While full of admiration for this gentleman's tenacity and instinct for self preservation (ignoring his questionable decision to approach a pair of grizzly bears without any kind of firearm, let alone one chambered in .700 Nitro express) I don't think we can ascribe his survival to anything other than sheer luck:

...the bear caught up with him at the door, picked him up by the skull and tossed him to the ground, he says.

If an anecdote in your life includes the words "picked me up by the skull", and you're recounting it, you're clearly luckier than the average.

Ceredigion the lynx murderers

Hat tip to the inimitable JuliaM on Twitter for highlighting the case of the escaped Eurasian lynx, which Ceredigion County Council decided to have whacked without any kind of due process:

Oh dear, are you getting a backlash? Good! https://t.co/B6Az35Udj0

— JuliaM (@AmbushPredator) November 12, 2017

Heaven forfend that we have a wild lynx marauding around Ceredigion, won't someone please think of the children? Ceredigion certainly did:

Despite exhaustive multi agency efforts to recapture the class A animal, the multi-agency group responding to the incident received additional advice late on Friday afternoon, 10 November, from a specialist veterinary surgeon that the risk to public well-being had increased from moderate to severe due to the continued failure of the Wild Animal Kingdom to recapture the lynx.

Severe? Severe?

Look, the Eurasian lynx isn't a small creature - fully grown males weigh up to 30kg - but that's still only the median weight for a 9 year old girl. There have been no recorded fatal attacks on humans by lynxes since records began. In the Bay Area we have bobcats which grow to about half the size of a lynx, and they wander through gardens all the time without anyone batting an eye.

We even have 37kg mountain lions wandering the streets of San Francisco which just get tranquilized and returned to the wild. One imagines that the greatest danger in such a mountain lion attacking a San Francisco resident would be to the mountain lion. Even when a child is actually attacked by a lion, the authorities will tranq lions before checking to see if they were the actual attacker, and any innocent lion is let go.

Ceredigion County Council are a bunch of cat-murdering weasels who are more concerned about PR than about the welfare of a beautiful animal.

Oh Australia, don't ever change

When you read a news article heading like "Cairns man who binged on ice feared dead after attempting to have sex with crocodile" you just know that the journalist who picked up this particular story was down on their knees crying with gratitude.

According to the friend, the man - now naked - leapt at the crocodile and tried to have intercourse with it. [How? How!?] "We were still a fair distance back but I reckon he just about got it in," said the witness. "Of course, the croc wasn't having a bar of it [never heard that particular idiom before] and started thrashing around like crazy.

This of course has many of the hallmarks of an urban legend - unnamed victim or friends, too good to be true - but the source is a local newspaper in Cairns, and specifically names the beach, so dammit I'm going to believe. I want to believe, and so should you.

I know that Australia is famous for blunt public health warnings - "If you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot!" but this case provides the material to step it up a gear:

If you smoke ice, a croc will bite yer bollocks off!

Breaking veganism - the new hotness

Tomorrow I'm going to break my usual diet and have toast (unbuttered) with orange juice and coffee for breakfast, a nutburger with lettuce and pickles for lunch, and pasta with tomato sauce for dinner. This will officially qualify as a vegan diet, and so make me a vegan. I'll keep this up for three more days. The day after, I'm going down the diner and having brunch incorporating every animal on the menu. This will officially qualify me as an ex-vegan and thus eligible for the ex-vegan list:

Please do not post names that fall under the following categories:

• Was never vegan
• Pretended to be vegan
• Was vegan for 3 days then sold out.
• SOMEONE WHO IS STILL VEGAN.

I would have thought that last point somewhat redundant given the "ex-" prerequisite, but hey what do I know?

Why do I care? Well, I would love to be listed on exvegans.com, a site dedicated to the persecution of those who have crossed from the (skinny, pale, underfed, too-much-time-on-their-hands) righteous to the animal-eating murdering blood-dripping-from-mouth unrighteous. Extracting a random entry from their hate list:

Jack Scuncio: Once upon a time Jack completely rejected all forms of animal product and was one with nature, now he has embraced the love of murder in such a wholehearted way that he now rejects the consumption of plants almost entirely. He wears leather (and fur!) whenever he can and consumes copious amounts of burnt carcasses, even partakes in gatherings some know as BBQ, but what I would like to call "Murderocalypses"

I hope that this entry was satire - or, indeed, added by Jack himself, but I fear it may just be in earnest. For something beyond satire, I offer you the ex-vegan take on Natalie Portman:

Vegan from 2009 to 2011. Stopped when she got pregnant, and had some ignorant concerns about the health of her unborn child. Her statement on the subject was very uninformed. Having kids isn't vegan anyway.

I'm not sure where you can start on that.

The twistedness of the contributors is captured perfectly in Why People Hate Vegans. When this site publishes contributions like:

The spirits of the billions murdered have risen to deliver: The Vegan Sellout List – an online directory of those who have regressed from moral consistency to moral depravity.

even the most considerate animal-loving pacifist feels a primeval urge to bludgeon the nearest tasty animal to death and eat it. "When an Irishman drives a pig, he ties a string to the pig's rear leg - the pig reacts by running forwards." Ironically, ex-vegans may be just that pig.

Do not meddle in the affairs of cats

Technical kudos to Dave Evans for developing a GPS tracker device for his cat's collar:

Mr Evans, 41, said the weatherproof tracker, weighing just 15g, will cost £50 and can be used for cats and dogs. He said: 'My cat was getting fat even though I was feeding him less and I needed to know what was going on.
Now I know he travels a couple of miles each day, exactly where he goes every night and who's feeding him.'

Allowing owners to track where their cats go and from which houses they get additional food? I can't imagine the feline population standing for that kind of interference. I foresee Mr. Evans coming to a sticky end, mysteriously breaking his neck while walking down the stairs. Mr. Evans - move into a bungalow post-haste, and may I advise you to trade in your cat for one of the larger varieties of canine?

In defence of cats

The feline haters are getting organised: they now have an article in Nature Communications (registered media only) arguing that cats are merciless killers and should be put on a leash:

Cats are one of the top threats to US wildlife, killing billions of animals each year, a study suggests. The authors estimate they are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually.

Well, heck, let's not do any maths on this, Rebecca Morelle from the BBC. Let's just quote the press release verbatim. Heaven forfend that we actually perform any journalism.

Being less lazy than Ms. Morelle, let us assume we have one domestic cat to every household in the USA; it's not going to be exact, but the right ballpark as many cat owners have multiple cats. That's about 100 million cats, and a buttload of wrecked next-door gardens. If they averaged 1 victim a day, that's 36 billion victims. The authors therefore are complaining about cats killing at a rate of 0.1 birds per day and, say, 0.6 mammals per day. I mean, this is not extravagant - you're talking a bird every couple of weeks. Frankly, I don't think most of these cats are trying. A cat who previously owned me used to waste 2-3 mammals and 1 bird per day, and those were only the ones whose remnants I found.

I should confess an interest at this point - I am a cat person (I wash in my own saliva) and can't stand the eager-to-please dependency of dogs. I actually appreciate cats' inclination to hunt and kill mice and rats. For that, I'm fine with them taking the occasional bird or rabbit. While we're here, I'm doubtful about the cats blamed for squirrel deaths - squirrels are nimble, wary and vicious little bastards, and it would have to be a pretty hard cat to kill squirrels successfully in any great numbers. Birds have a massive advantage over cats in being able to fly - although I'm sure the cats are working on that deficiency - and so many birds caught by cats were stupid to descend to the cat's level and likely had it coming.

To give you an idea of the angle of the article, author Pete Marra appears to work in the Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. I'm guessing he quite likes birds. But, Pete, how many birds are there in the USA? Best guess is 10-20 billion. Life expectancy of songbirds in the USA is under a year so cats are by no means the primary killer of birds - maybe 20% of bird fatalities are due to cats. Presumably many of these are the incautious or stupid ones. We should also note how sparsely populated the USA is; there are vast swathes of land that have very few humans and even fewer cats, but plenty of birds. There's no danger of birds going extinct through cat predation.

So, Dr. Marra, where now?

Dr Marra said: "We hope that the large amount of wildlife mortality indicated by our research convinces some cat owners to keep their cats indoors and that it alerts policymakers, wildlife managers and scientists to the large magnitude of wildlife mortality caused by cat predation."

I wouldn't be surprised if this chap was a vegan, judging by the self-righteous aversion to creature mortality he displays. But no, Dr. Marra, we will not be putting bells on our cats. We will not be locking our cats in the house. We will let our cats do what they will, controlling pests and culling the weak and sick from the bird population.

And when the collapse of civilisation comes, as it surely must, Dr. Marra's most likely fate is to disappear under a pack of hungry cats intent on chewing his face off. No more than he deserves.

The bear necessities of life

The adult male grizzly bear weights up to 800lb, is called Ursus horriblis, can run at 30mph and is known to attack humans. You would think that any sensible person would stay as far from these animals as possible. Apparently, Richard White from San Diego was not one of those sensible people:

"He knew about camping," White's father said. "He knew about survival techniques. He knew about all this from the time he was 10 years old."

I would have thought "survival techniques" cover "not going anywhere near adult grizzlies without a high-power rifle", but apparently not.

As Pavlov's Cat acerbically notes:

...I do wonder what bear awareness training consists of, I would of thought holding up a picture of a bear and saying "This is a fucking bear, it will fucking kill you if you get too close or you piss it off" would cover it.

It continues to astound me that people treat bears so casually - witness tourists in Yellowstone photographing a grizzly as it wanders by a few feet from them, and then what has to be my all-time favourite:

I mean, what the heck? Photographing a grizzly mother with cubs from 15 feet away? There are times one wonders whether the baboons would have made a more intelligent society than the one we have today.

Time to short Rovio?

Angry Birds (yes, I know, I know) has just updated on my Android phone. Suddenly there are all these persistent icons, annoying as heck, trying to persuade me to part with cash for power-ups / instant level "solving". This follows a week of annoyingly repeated adverts extolling the virtues of owning a plush Angry Bird.

Looks to me as if Rovio is under pressure from the shareholders to "monetise the free users" in order to bring in income. Internet hype having proved less desirable than cold hard cash, my advice (do your own diligence) is to cash out now before Rovio's financial deficiencies become more obvious.

Not really intent on winning the argument

The next stage in the Great Chicken War of 2012 is planned to be a nation-wide gay kiss-in at Chick-fil-A restaurants. FFS.

The furore to date has landed Chick-fil-A with its biggest sales day ever as people lined up around the block to show support for the chain:

Chick-fil-A said it set a sales record Wednesday, but declined to release the numbers.
"We can confirm reports that it was a record-setting day," said Steve Robinson, the executive vice president of marketing.

So own goal number 1 for the Chick-fil-A opponents. Now some of them are planning for National Same Sex Kiss Day at Chick Fil A (which, if I read that event right, looks to be 8pm East Coast time today). How exactly do they expect this to turn out?

Given that Chick-fil-A is a franchise operation, it'll be up to each store's manager to determine what happens if public same-sex kissing starts. I foresee three possibilities:

1. No-one notices or really cares.
2. Kissing couples politely and/or firmly asked to leave (which the manager is entitled to do - their gaff, their rules).
3. Kissing couples told that if they want to stay and kiss then they have to buy at least a bargain bucket.

Presumably the kissers are hoping for 2. otherwise there's little point doing it. The smartest thing the managers could do would therefore be 1. or 3. Just a thought.

One of the less tasteful but amusing tweets on the subject from Iowahawk: hot chick-on-chick-on-chicken action ... Lesbians making out *and* chicken sandwiches? Is this heaven? with Blaise Miller following up acerbically: "Kissing in a restaurant in support of marriage rights? Married couples don't kiss in restaurants."

This would really tick me off

According to the Daily Mail (and if you can't trust them, whom can you trust?) some tick bites can cause the victim to become allergic to red meat. Strewth.

There's a particular irony here:

Experts traced the delayed allergic response to bites from a tick - specifically the Lone Star tick.

The Lone Star tick, presumably from the Lone Star State - Texas - famed for steaks the size of your dinnerplate. I have a horrible thought - is this the result of some fiendish genetic manipulation by the cows on whom the ticks normally prey? Mark Wadsworth, please call your office.

Demented pork prejudice

I must admit, I'm a little fond of pork products - there's nothing quite like a piece of pink protein-packed pork pie to put the pep in a pre-prandial snack. I therefore viewed with some disdain Haringey, Bradford and Luton schools, among others, who deny pork to any of their pupils. They "don't want the risk of staff or pupils coming into contact with it".

I see. Presumably the next step is to ban meat all together in order to avoid any risk that a vegetarian staff member or pupil may inadvertently be exposed?

There is a refreshing admonition from John Benjamin of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to whom pork in schools is a non-issue:

"Children at mainstream school who are bothered would probably have packed lunches," he said to the Sunday Telegraph. "Children who are comfortable with using the same cutlery and crockery as everyone else would choose their dishes from the options available. It is live and let live - we are certainly not calling for this."

He didn't actually say "what the hell is wrong with you people?" but I'd bet he was thinking it.

Various MPs are not amused at these bans, and rightly so. It's fairly clear that either these schools are either pandering to what they think Muslim pupils and staff would want, or school administrators are playing a "more Islamic than thou" game.

Personally, I'd say that you can have my pork chops, bacon and ribs when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers. One of the bright points of that article is that it reveals the existence of National Pig Association. Annual associate membership subscription is £20.42 a year and includes a copy of the industry’s leading pig magazine to your door every month (UK only). Readers, you know what to do.

[Tagged "censorship" because it's clearly censorship of food.]

Where there is small crime, there are bigger crimes

I'm with Sir Terry Pratchett on this. A man who would do this to a dog is a man to whom the police should pay attention. One has to wonder, what else is he capable of and what would set him off?

The details are instructive:

At around 3am, he struck the dog around 20 times on the head with a hammer. No explanation was given in court.

When even your defence brief is unwilling to touch one of your actions with a ten foot pole, you know you're a pretty repulsive excuse for a human being.

My inner libertarian rebels against keeping this man in jail because of what he might do; however, I fear that it is a near-inevitability that eventually a human is going to be on the wrong end of his temper.

This woman has never played with a cat

"Sure, I'll go into that enclosure with two cheetahs that are bigger than me, what could possibly go wrong?".

Mrs. Violet D'Mello is now no doubt looking up the definition of "wild animal" in a dictionary. I have to say though, kudos to husband Archie whose photos of cheetahs chewing Violet's head were quite stunning. I hope the DM paid well, because I'm fairly sure he'll be sleeping on the couch for a while.

Anyone who has been owned by a cat will recognise the situation; there you are stroking the animal's fur when suddenly it lays its ears back, wraps paws around your arm and tries to chew your hand off. This is why petting six-foot-long cats is a bad idea, m'kay?

Violet:

'We love animals and especially cats as we've had some of our own.I worried about the little children being so close to the cheetahs but I never imagined for a moment they would attack an adult.'

(facepalm) This lady needs a better imagination. Still, live and learn.

A bad case of crabs

What would be your instinctive reaction upon encountering a 15lb crab measuring 15 inches across? You would consider the future of humankind and immediately deploy a large sledgehammer on the beast's carapace, surely?

Not Weymouth Sea Life Aquarium, who happily fly these monsters halfway around the world to show them off to the British public:

Rob Hicks, head marine biologist for Sea Life, said: "They are such impressive creatures we thought that it was worth the cost and effort of flying them half-way round the world to so they can flourish in an aquarium display."

Hmm, "flourish". That sounds to me very much like "grow even larger". What's wrong with you, man? Haven't you seen the movies?

Readers of a nervous disposition are advised not to view the Daily Mail article on the crab where the perspective makes the crustacean seem over a metre across. You're going to need a bucket of melted butter to tackle that.

Word of the day - squoodle

squoodle: noun, the result of crossing a squirrel and a poodle. See for example, Hazel Blears' new hairstyle.

We've had our turn, it's time to give the animals a go

It's the perfect set-up: "Your wild animals are dangerous, you need a new licence." "No, they wouldn't hurt a fly, we'll show you." And oh boy, did they show us.

As one bystander recounted:

"The man sent in to film was looking rather uncomfortable, but we were assured the cheetahs would only go for the fluffy microphone and if it looked like he was going to get eaten, not to worry."

The least dumb of all the participants would appear to be the cheetahs. Perhaps we should appoint them to run the zoo instead.