COWBIRD, WARBLER, POLITICS, and the Labor of Labor Day

Cowbird








Warbler

Intelligence is amoral; so is deception. Everything political is personal (Gloria Steinem). Remember good old George Goebel’s refrain?—“Well, I’ll be a dirty bird.”

A recent Nova Now program included a segment on the brown-headed cowbird, which/whom we all love to hate because the female lays her eggs, one at a time, by means of 10-second sneak-deposits, in the nests of other birds.

This tricks the host birds (we’ll say “warbler” here, to stick with the Nova show, though cowbirds exploit other species, too). The foster-parent warblers hatch, feed, and nurture cowbird chicks. Often the warbler young starve, or are at least malnourished, and their numbers decline.

Maybe to prevent the corny likes of me from becoming overly anthropocentric about the antics and ethics of the bird world, Nova Now took a light–hearted approach to the subject, calling the cowbirds the mafia of the avian world, and so on. Mama Cowbird becomes Tina Soprano. After dropping off her bundle of joy at the foster home, she stands guard from about 50 feet away, checking on the warbler nest to make sure the cowbird chick receives proper attention from its surrogate parents.

Scientists performed the experiment of removing the cowbird egg from the warbler nest and making the entrance hole to the nest too small for a cowbird to enter. But Tina Soprano consistently got her head in far enough to poke the warbler eggs into runny yolks. The pattern has all the appearance of revenge and enforcement by a cowbird mafia. Raise my chicks or else.

You can watch the show here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0407/03.html

It’s feel-good Science-Lite for folks like me, though I wonder what the evolutionary advantage is for cowbirds. I’d guess the strategy means more viable chicks than any couple could raise on their own.

But Nova doesn’t go into that. It might upset the Intelligent Design folks, at least those who refuse to let their children hear their president’s encouragement to stay in school, work hard and succeed. Go figure; I thought that Work Hard and Prosper biz was a right-wing mantra. And surely it was a similar culture of parents who accepted such talks from Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Maybe they now think the president is a cowbird, coming like the Pied Piper of Berkeley to steal their golden babes away and waltz them over Engels Hill.

Or maybe it's the right-wingers who want to be sneaky cowbirds; they have cowbird-envy. But they can't pass the entrance exam. Maybe they want to be sure their children don’t get smart either. If you have enough guns, you don’t need brains. “Clean your shotgun, Ralphie. Here comes another damned cowbird.”

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SURRENDER TO POLITICS

I thought I could manage a blog that was friendly, substantive and apolitical. That was foolish because I already knew the truth in Gloria Steinem’s now famous line, “Everything personal is political, and everything political is personal.” If you think you know of a fairly important arena of social interaction (or lack of it) that is apolitical—that is, meaningfully without political motivation or consequence—please create an argument that supports your view. Give examples.

Here is a questionnaire. I hope you will actually copy and paste your answers and send them along. I’d be very interested to see them, and I’ll most likely post them here if I receive more than a couple. Otherwise, maybe this is a useful tool for self-diagnosis or talking with friends or adversaries.

Though we might like to think we are as individual (and delicate) as snowflakes, and therefore too complex to be labeled, that is more or less, in general, on the whole, almost certainly, a delusion of grandeur. So listen to your heart and identify yourself politically as:

far left, left, center, right, far right


For each sentence below, provide the number (1 is low, 4 is high) that tells how strongly you agree with the sentence.

White Liberals are motivated by white guilt. 1 2 3 4

White guilt is neurotic and illogical. 1 2 3 4

Minority liberals hope to climb
the socioeconomic ladder the easy way. 1 2 3 4

Advocates for strong unions hope to climb
the socioeconomic ladder the easy way. 1 2 3 4

Liberals have a genuine interest in social justice. 1 2 3 4

Conservatives have a genuine interest in social justice. 1 2 3 4

Compared to Liberals, Conservatives are motivated by greed. 1 2 3 4

Compared to Liberals, Conservatives are more motivated by anger. 1 2 3 4

Conservatives do not care about a level playing field 1 2 3 4
in terms of social or economic justice.

The percentage of Conservatives who were 1 2 3 4
born into the lower or lower middle class
is significantly smaller than the percentage of Liberals.

Conservatives do not try to imagine the lives of those
born into a less empowered situation. 1 2 3 4

Liberals do try to imagine that, or actually were 1 2 3 4
born into a less empowered situation.

I have two or more friends significantly more 1 2 3 4
liberal or conservative than I am.

I have two or more friends whose race or religion 1 2 3 4
is significantly different from mine.
(Methodist vs. Presbyterian is NOT significant;
Methodist vs. Muslim IS significant)

This questionnaire was more fun than not. 1 2 3 4

This questionnaire was somewhat or very useful to me. 1 2 3 4



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