Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I was promised a recession.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: We {Heart} Jane Goodall

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50Comments

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Jane Goodall = hero(ine). That was lovely.

    The audience clearly, and noisily, adored her. Nice. The kids are all right.

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @srv: Chimps aren’t monkeys and anyway isn’t enough poo thrown around here to meet your exacting standards?

  8. 8.

    Steeplejack

    Watching Ferguson. Minor irritation: there’s a different book on Geoff’s table each night, and the camera shot is just far enough back that it’s often hard to get the title. Looks like a Harry Potter book tonight.

    In addition to his well received memoir, Ferguson has written a novel or two. And he appears to be a reader.

  10. 10.

    Calming Influence

    That was such a treat to see how Jane Goodall* interacted with Colbert. When I heard she was going to be a guest I was worried that she wouldn’t fare well – silly me.

    *One of the big influences, along with Jacque Cousteau, in my becoming a biologist.

  13. 13.

    trollhattan

    The Turtle brings the high, hard stuff. “What issue is most important to you?”

    A: Repealing Obamacare
    B: Ending the War on Coal
    C: Protecting Life
    D: Defending the Second Amendment

    I know it’s pointless to note none of this has fvck all to do with, you know, running a government or helping the people or saving the planet, but what must it be like to live your entire life thinking in bumper sticker units?

    http://wonkette.com/546112/mitch-mcconnell-wants-you-to-tell-him-what-issues-matter-as-long-as-theyre-guns-coal-bortion-and-obamacare#UiAJrjxXYMDepG8C.99

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    No insomniacs tonight?

    Couple of stories which caught the eye.

    Headlong dash to the past in Iraq.

    Called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, it would prohibit Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, prevent women from leaving the house without their husband’s consent, automatically grant custody of children older than two to the father in divorce cases and legalize marital rape.
     
    The law, which proponents say will save women’s “rights and dignity,” would also permit boys to marry as young as 15 and girls to marry as young as nine. Girls younger than nine would be permitted to marry with a parent’s approval.
     
    Ayad Allawi, a former Iraqi prime minister, expressed outrage this week in an interview with the Telegraph. He said the law would legalize the abuse of women.
    [snip]
    The law now appears to be headed towards ratification no matter what the international community says. Source

    Sadly predictable, the same tale surfaces with every conflict. And each time, no indication anyone in a position to plan and provide is the least bit aware of nor gives the slightest notice to the repetition of history.

    As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, it is leaving behind a deadly legacy: about 800 square miles of land littered with undetonated grenades, rockets and mortar shells.
     
    The military has vacated scores of firing ranges pocked with the explosives. Dozens of children have been killed or wounded as they have stumbled upon the ordnance at the sites, which are often poorly marked. Casualties are likely to increase sharply; the U.S. military has removed the munitions from only 3 percent of the territory covered by its sprawling ranges, officials said.
     
    Clearing the rest of the contaminated land — which in total is twice as big as New York City — could take two to five years. U.S. military officials say they intend to clean up the ranges. But because of a lack of planning, officials say, funding has not yet been approved for the monumental effort, which is expected to cost $250 million. Source

  17. 17.

    MikeJ

    @NotMax: You want them to clean up Afghanistan? They still haven’t cleaned up Hanford and that’s from WWII.

    You’ll be happy to know that the onsite clinic run by the company that’s supposed to be cleaning it up says there’s nothing really wrong with the workers who were exposed to fumes and now have nosebleeds that won’t stop.

    Of course we can’t get enough funding to get it cleaned up before the massive plume of radioactive waste that’s underground hits the Columbia river, because if it got cleaned, Obama might get the credit.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    @MikeJ

    It’s not either/or (and I don’t think you meant to imply it is). Hanford, being a federal nuclear facility, is a different kettle of fish, but that’s not in any way an excuse for the procrastination and foot-dragging. what gets my goat is the sheer predictability of stories about the situations and of the total lack of preparation.

    Bombing ranges can be cleaned up. Kahoolawe, an entire uninhabited island here used as a target by the Navy for about half a century, was done in about 5 years.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Hmmmmm…

    Sandy Hook Elementary: 26 dead, 0 injured
    Franklin Regional: 0 dead, 20 injured

    Can’t wait for the gun nut spin on this one.

  25. 25.

    Keith G

    While I adamantly opposed most of his choices, I have always liked George H W Bush. Like many Houstonians, I have had a chance to meet him and Barbara and have always thought him to be a very gracious man.

    Here he is going out of his way to show the GOP how adults are supposed to act.

    “When the president comes to your hometown, you show up to meet him,” said Bush, who chatted with Obama and the first lady for about five minutes at the foot of the steps next to Air Force One at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

  26. 26.

    Botsplainer

    Oh fuck me.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/brooks-what-suffering-does.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

    Now, of course, it should be said that there is nothing intrinsically ennobling about suffering. Just as failure is sometimes just failure (and not your path to becoming the next Steve Jobs) suffering is sometimes just destructive, to be exited as quickly as possible.

    But some people are clearly ennobled by it. Think of the way Franklin Roosevelt came back deeper and more empathetic after being struck with polio. Often, physical or social suffering can give people an outsider’s perspective, an attuned awareness of what other outsiders are enduring.

    But the big thing that suffering does is it takes you outside of precisely that logic that the happiness mentality encourages. Happiness wants you to think about maximizing your benefits. Difficulty and suffering sends you on a different course.

    Thus speaketh the comfortable white guy.

  27. 27.

    Schlemizel

    I read once that Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey and their unheralded third, Mary Galdikas were all set off on their work by the same professor. Each chose a large primate (chimp, ape, orangutan) and lived their lives with them to teach us about all we know of our nearest relatives. I would love to hear the story of that guy or really how these three exceptions women chose the life they did.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @raven

    And IIRC, the ordnance clearing groups were also small – no more than a couple dozen people maximum allowed on the island at any time.

  33. 33.

    Keith G

    @Botsplainer:

    Thus speaketh the comfortable white guy

    And thus speaketh almost all spiritual belief systems – the vast majority of which were not developed by comfortable white guys (or gals).

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemizel:

    A wiki link relating to the 4 of them specifically:

    The Trimates,[1][2] sometimes called Leakey’s Angels,[3] is a name given to three women — Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey,[4] and Birutė Galdikas — sent by anthropologist Louis Leakey to study primates in their natural environments. They studied chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans respectively.

    I should note that when I was growing up, I was a National Geographic junkie, awaiting each issue with bated breath and never missing a show. Those who weren’t could well not know his name, sad but true. :-(

  35. 35.

    Schlemizel

    @OzarkHillbilly: SERIOUSLY!?!

    I read this whole story about how odd it was that this one prof could have affected these three women so deeply and how that changed the world we live in etc & the author never bothered to mention that? AAARRRRG

  36. 36.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Keith G:
    Technically true, but the moral lesson taken was almost always the opposite. Until 20th century Christianity, the lesson was usually ‘suffering has made you a better person, so you deserve better than assholes who have the easy life.’ Brooks is echoing the Republican Party line, which incidentally is the domestic abuser’s line. ‘I’m hurting you for your own good.’

    Disclaimer: The moral message of Christianity may have been the above, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anybody did anything about it.

  37. 37.

    RSA

    @Botsplainer:

    suffering is sometimes just destructive, to be exited as quickly as possible.

    Sometimes? Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more clueless (and even offensive) by Brooks.

    On Jane Goodall, a few years ago I published a paper in the animal behavior literature and cited her work. That gave me a warm feeling.

  38. 38.

    Debbie(aussie)

    @Botsplainer:
    Didn’t help that quadriplegic legislator from Alabama(?). He hasn’t found any empathy or nobility. Lack of empathy seems ,to me, to be disease that has reached almost epidemic proportions. Sadly!

  41. 41.

    RSA

    @Baud:

    It all depends on who’s doing the suffering.

    Right. and as Botsplainer observes, it’s clearly not David Brooks. “I’m suffering, but I think I’ll wait a while before bringing it to an end. I’d like to be a little more noble.”

  42. 42.

    Emily68

    @Schlemizel: You can read how Jane chose the life she did in Dale Peterson’s Jane Goodall: The Woman who Redefined Man I got at the library and read it last year.

    Among other things, I learned that when Jane was a little girl she wondered what it looked like when a hen laid an egg. So she went in the hen house and sat as motionless as she could for hours until the hens got used to her and one was ready to lay and VOILA!! she saw an egg being laid.

    I recommend the book.

  45. 45.

    Jack the Second

    @RSA: Isn’t that basically how the seven-year-old’s mind works? I BET IF I DIED RIGHT NOW MOM AND DAD WOULD FEEL BAD ABOUT NOT LETTING ME HAVE CAKE FOR BREAKFAST.

    Suffering brings parental pity brings cake, and therefore is desirable.

  46. 46.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Jack the Second: Our grown daughter, a happy and well-adjusted woman, a few years ago commented favorably on the fact that we allowed her to have chocolate cake for breakfast when she wanted to. We never viewed food as a weapon or a bribe, and our children are now healthy, omnivorous and have no weight problems, eating disorders or food phobias.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @J.Ty:

    Apparently, when that cartoon was published, the Jane Goodall Institute freaked out and started drafting a letter for their lawyers to send to Larson. Larson felt terrible that he had hurt the feelings of someone he admired.

    And then Goodall stepped forward and basically told the Institute, “Lighten up, Francis.” She thought the cartoon was hilarious. She ended up writing the foreword for one of Larson’s books and he was able to visit her in Africa and see the chimps. Happy ending!

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