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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 26, 2011 5:08:27 GMT -8
I think China is not at all on the same level as the the rest though, it's easy to point out that they have a rough history with human rights because it happened recently- revolution only about 60+ years ago. Mao's wife was an evil person for sure. Mao was an idealogue himself, comes with good and bad because it means inflexibility but not necessarily bad intent. On the one hand, the dynastic feudal system was stamped out (and let's remember what feudal system is like, you would think all of Europe had the worst humans rights ever if you extended that window of time back, including almost a millenia of human rights being non-existent) on the other it was a very rapid and violent overhaul which is where we start to get images of peasants starving to death on the roads. Definitely some issues still of course, mostly that non-information stuff. But it's not so different from the west in most respects anymore, just a different route to the same basic end.
However not so long ago while China was abusing it's own population, us western-European cultures were importing and enslaving, raping, whipping, lynching people from all over Africa and the New World and wiping out anyone who resisted including most of the native population of the Americas. At least China gave the option of assimilation, a courtesy not extended to those poor souls on the trail of tears for example. So let's make sure we don't pretend we are standing on moral high ground compared to China lest we risk calling the kettle black, it's just easier to think about Chinese atrocities because that government appeared very recently and still exists in a vague permutation of its former mid-century self while we stopped back in... oh wait, our moral transgressions were not that long ago either! So it's more moral if the people you abuse, exploit and wipe out are not your own kind?
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 26, 2011 4:54:24 GMT -8
That's just what I was thinking, lol.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 25, 2011 10:56:16 GMT -8
Oh boy, I'm not so good with Catocala but my guess is Catocala maestosa. There are a couple of things though- one is that it is faded (if you google image search maestosa you will see some other worn examples that have a strikingly similar appearance, especially the darker crescent shapes at the outer tips of the forewings). The other things is that troubling white dot visible on the left in your photo. In this picture, it looks like the dot is only on the left. Is it really a patch of white scales or is it a rubbed spot with the white styrofoam showing through? Maybe just an abberant patch?
I don't know of any Catocala locally that have white dots there but they can be fairly restricted in their range in some cases so it's completely possible that it is something that doesn't occur much farther south, I couldn't comment one way or the other on Catocala that occur outside of Florida.
I really strongly suspect otherwise that it is C. maestosa. I tried to get a link to the worn image that looks exactly right save the white dot, but Google images links to a page that has the image nested inside somewhere I can't find. Try the GI search yourself and see what you think, sorry I can't be of more assistance in this regard.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 24, 2011 6:27:10 GMT -8
Yes, the worst part of the whole story is that these animals were even allowed to be put in this position. Someone as crazy and irresponsible as that should not have access to such animals at all, let alone own a menagerie of them with such terrible care. He was clearly not a fit owner so why any of those multitudes of laws that we as insect collectors bump into don't have any bearing on his possession of these animals I will never understand. I guess tigers don't destroy citrus crops so who cares. But you would think that most of those animals are CITES, so where the heck were those guys? Too busy looking through a box of five dried, dead A. vanillae to notice Noah's Ark going to hell in a hand basket down the road?
I don't think that Law Enforcement were the correct people to handle it though, that's what I am arguing. There are plenty of other groups that tag and track mountain lions, grizzlies, even little snakes and other more discreet animals. Law enforcement should stick to human criminals and possibly direct protection of the public. If you have a wild tiger on the loose, then someone who is experienced with tigers should be called in. I realize that tranqs aren't super fast but in the case of animals this rare, unlike someone's aggressive out of control dog, they are worth tagging which can be done simultaneously. The common dog is crazy most likely because of bad care, the highly endangered tiger is crazy because, well, it's a tiger. Wrong approach and wrong people to handle this situation just made everything worse. You wouldn't call in a baker to fix your plumbing, you know what I mean? Once law enforcement becomes involved the animals were doomed before the first one was even spotted. Law enforcement should've been called to deal with the human end of it, but it seems they failed on both counts.
You would think that USFWS should've been involved with the animals long ago. I guess a butterfly is very dangerous while a lion is not.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 24, 2011 6:08:18 GMT -8
Wow, neat. Something very nice about the more subtle coloring. Was it difficult to produce?
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 24, 2011 6:06:59 GMT -8
Those snails are quite a thing, no? Was a big problem (and still is) in Barbados. Tarantulas in your neck of the woods, B. vagans I believe. I read that it was specifically paper wasps that are the biggest predators in our area though I have seen quite a few polyphemus cocoons torn open by squirrels around my yard. I'll have to find those references again for us here, I used them in a short article a couple of years ago.
I would certainly not want to be the insect equivalent of angus beef in Florida, definitely a hostile place for those that find themselves in the lower tiers of the food chain.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 9:42:20 GMT -8
Sats are the best. Does have nice coloring, sort of blush version of the A. polyphemus background. How big is it?
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 9:39:07 GMT -8
Does look different slightly, thanks for posting the pic. I've gotta take a quick road trip next year to collect myself. What is the data on yours dunc?
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 9:33:56 GMT -8
Yes, sympathy with the people of Libya and everyone else who must live in such conditions. Bob is right, Assad probably has a hard time imagining not being on the top of his ivory tower so the idea that it is his actions that incite these kinds of responses will probably not cross his mind.
Not long before Gaddafi died he gave an interview where he repeatedly discussed how much the people of Libya loved and supported him. He seemed as though he genuinely believed it. Obviously hard to believe from the outside and hard to gauge the condition of your own populations temperament when you spend your life in lavish luxury disconnected from everyone and everything around you. Probably to him it really did seem like the seas parted if he wanted them to. How short sighted most people are, and it seems especially true of people with extreme power. They're like teenagers that don't realize they aren't invincible and that mistreating the world around you will eventually catch up, no matter if your toilet is made of gold or not.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 9:26:53 GMT -8
It's very pretty. All the exotic Papilio are pretty but they look very similar to me, having a non-discerning eye for them, so they seem like a mass of black and gaudy swallowtails I can't even begin to sort out. But this one strikes me out of the myriad of colorful and metallic Papilio I have seen online. Must be P. demodocus is pretty too. I love the short tails and stippling of blue on the inner forewings, very nice. If I collected exotic Papilio this would be hard to resist for me too.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 4:56:47 GMT -8
Very sad. I think there is exactly that desire to tell your buddies over a beer that you shot a tiger. Bunch of crap in my opinion- there are so many cooky watch-dog type groups with trained biologists that are able to dart and trap a completely wild tiger in the jungles of India for study that I can't believe someone wouldn't have volunteered time and money to save these poor animals that are now the victim of cruelty from both their jackass idiot owner but also the red-neck morons that call themselves law enforcement in Zanesville. That number of tigers is about 3% of the world's total number of wild bengals. Contribute to another bottle neck like the one that will probably be the demise of Cheetahs. A real tragedy that anyone is ever even allowed to have them in such an irresponsible setting and that the responsibility for the fate of these unfortunate creatures ultimately falls in the hands of a bunch of trigger happy morons. The good folks of Ohio were on lock-down so tell me who is saving what now? Bigger question is how in the hell someone like that could have such animals and why, if it was a known problem to the law enforce there already, nothing was done about it before this happened?
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 4:42:52 GMT -8
Yes, there are still meter readers and I do know that dogs are a serious problem for service personnel in general being an owner of a large dog myself. But there are much fewer of them than there used to be even though there are much more homes to meter-read. The postal service also went this route some time ago, getting rid of almost all walking post people by requiring median-mounted boxes instead of those that used to be found on the front of the house near the door. You really only find those in historical neighborhoods anymore where coding or infrastructure make the former impossible. That was literally done to reduce the number of postal workers. I strongly suspect the remote meter readers are also along those lines, just as the "smart meters" are- after all, I have a dog but my meter is well outside the 5 foot tall fence (because I thought about that when I put my fence up) and they still put a remote signal on it a few years ago. It is more efficient for the company and therefor probably me too in a small and immediate way because I would no doubt have to pay part of the extra personnel's salary in the form of extra fees on the bill. But it also means a lot of people lost there job and in the long term it is going to cost more because the rest of us have to help compensate for the loss to the economy of working people. We all can see easily now what happens to a country when more and more people are becoming unemployed or are losing good jobs and having to take the lowest end substitute. I don't mind paying a small amount more if it contributes to the health of my local economy, I mind paying more when it contributes to the not-locally owned but locally operated business that is laying off my neighbors while extracting more and more money from us for fewer and fewer services. If smart meters are just going to be used as a tool for this mode of thinking then I don't want them.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 4:15:30 GMT -8
Here it is predators that limit them- Florida is of course an extremely habitat diverse and biologically rich state as well. But that means we have a diverse set of predators, mostly several genera of paper wasps from what I read that keep Sats somewhat limited in number. I don't know if or why there are fewer total species though, probably a number of reasons both historical and ecological.
I need to take a trip to Arizona someday to collect. Another destination on the long long list.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 4:08:41 GMT -8
Yes, glad to see another tyrant topple. I worry about a power vacuum though. It took a long time for most places to become democratic, it's not something that can be imposed on a country that isn't ready for it socially.
I agree though, it would be better for this to be handled in a more civilized manner for the reason above and for the reason Sergey mentions- the idea is that we are better than him, not equal. Do we revel in the brutalization of people we don't like or do we try to have a sense of justice and set a democratic example by at least expressing that stable, healthy nations have less dramatic and destabilizing ways of reconciling his victims feelings and his fate. An official trial would've had required some immediate calm down and organization that would've helped transitioning from dictatorship to democracy easier I think- requires getting a court together, evaluating laws, finding level headed people to administrate the legal system and so on. It makes me nervous because it's just following with more of the same, problems being solved only through violence with no apparent organization or in line with any set of laws. I don't know that it won't just encourage a new dictator, one of the militant rebel types, to take over. After all, that has pretty much been the trend in that region of the world for quite some time. Topple one regime and replace it with another.
I do think celebrating the brutal way in which he died is... not that humane... Not that he was a humane person himself, but eye for and eye is Sharia law like Iran. Isn't the idea that we can be better than that? But yes, good riddance. Celebrate that he is gone, not that he left in the way he did. He was truly an evil man and it is not surprising at all the terrible way his life ended. I hope one day there is no tolerance or space left in the world for cruel leaders such as this.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 20, 2011 10:50:25 GMT -8
Crickets die faster and do smell really bad. I also kept crickets for a while and even completely changing the tub three times a week they would smell horrible after just one day.
Yes, dirty surroundings means dirty roaches and crickets. Of course you can clean all you want but if your neighbor farms pigs or is a crack head in squalor in the apartment next door there isn't much you can do to control that.
Both will come in my house when it is the rainy season presumably to seek shelter, just like me.
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