Redtracker: LA Catholic Cardinal Barred from Public Ministry | Gun Control Reduces Violence Against Women

1. Bonobo empathy innate.  “Our findings suggest that for bonobos, sensitivity to the emotions of others emerges early and does not require advanced thought processes that develop only in adults,” say researchers observing bonobo behavior in the Congo.

Science Daily reports that researchers also found that the minority of bonobos in the sanctuary — raised by their mothers rather than as orphans — were more likely to comfort other members of their group than orphan bonobos.

2. Vermont Senator and Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy effectively tied the Violence Against Women Act to a hearing on gun violence today. Promising to bring the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act to the floor soon, Leahy confirmed that 38 percent fewer women are shot by their partners partners in states that have background checks. 

Baltimore Police Chief Jim Johnson testified that when females are killed, more than 50 percent of the time, it’s by a spouse or household member. A gun in a home with a history of domestic violence increases the change that a person will be victimized by gun violence by 500 percent. via Huff Po

Politico reports that ex-NRA president Sandy Froman said that the NRA has “changed its position” on universal background checks, because it “doesn’t work”.

Rowan Barnes-Murphy for NYTimes3. As Fall 2013 fashion shows ready for launch beginning Feb. 7 with New York Fashion Week, the global flue epidemic has struck fear into the industry, reports yesterday’s New York Times Style section.

” … with this season’s flu panic, the fear is approaching hysteria. Stressed-out designers recoil in horror if someone coughs within earshot. Frail models shiver their way between fittings, terrified someone will spy their runny noses. And frenemies everywhere are reconsidering the wisdom of the double-cheek kiss, the standard greeting of the global fashion tribe. Air kissing seems safe for now.”

Cardinal Mahony removed from public church duties. 

4. Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony — now retired — has been banned from performing any public duties in the church, while Santa Barbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry has stepped down. The announcement was made by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez Thursday afternoon, in response to the priest abuse scandal, writes the LA Times

Gomez’s statement follows a recent release of internal Catholic church records. The records showed an unflinching look at 15 years of Mahony and Curry discussing ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement. Those records are a tip of the iceberg in terms of what is to come in a public release.

5. Women & IQ. It’s only six months now that IQ tests have come down on the feminine side of the argument, finding that women now score higher on IQ tests than men. New Zealand researcher and IQ testing expert James Flynn has tracked the evolution of the rise of female test scores against those of men, the closing of what was once a five-point gap and now the move ahead by women in IQ testing.

“Over the last 100 years, everyone in the developing world has been gaining about three IQ points, but women have been gaining faster,” Flynn told ABC News. “This is the result of modernity. In every country where women have an equal chance of modernity, women have caught men [in IQ testing].”

Business Insider shares 5 Easy Ways To Feel More Intelligent. There’s much good advice in this article, although I’ve taken comment exception to the argument that smoking increases IQ. 

Shop Valentine’s Day online at GlamTribale Freja collection and in Philadlephia at Giant Steps Gallery; 229 S 20th Street, one block off Rittenhouse Square park. Read more about Giant Steps here.  

In Taiji, Dolphin Slaughter Continues As Scientists & Activists Seek Personhood Status

Loris Gréaud: The Snorks on Nowness.com.

Actress Charlotte Rampling and director David Lynch weave together the threads of Loris Gréaud’s expansive project in the Parisian-art star’s new film The Snorks: A Concert for Creatures. Thirty-six months in the making, the film takes in everything from hip hop-avantists Antipop Consortium’s concert for deep-ocean dwellers, to a pyrotechnic sculpture of fireworks in Abu Dhabi, and traces Gréaud’s voyages exploring the possibility for communication between species. Inspired by bioluminescence––or biological production of light––used by deep-sea creatures to communicate with each other, the aesthetic adventurer broadcast specially commissioned music by Antipop Consortium at a depth of 4,000 meters and elicited vibrant bursts of light from the audience of plankton, unicellular creatures and jellyfish in response. “I gave them carte blanche,” says Gréaud of working with Antipop Consortium. “The only direction really was to play the game, to imagine they playing in front of aliens.” Ahead of the 28-minute film’s premiere at MK2 Bibliothèque next week and a forthcoming world tour combining screenings with Antipop Consortium performing the concert live, Gréaud unpicks the threads making up The Snorks.

Read on about The Snorks project at NOWNESS and The Snorks A Concert for Creatures website

French Roast News

Anne is reading …

We are late in reporting about the annual slaughter of dolphins and whales in Taiji, Japan. Basically, nothing has changed in this barbaric cruelty against some of nature’s smartest creatures — all in the name of nationalism and man’s God-given right to control nature. We add controlling women for context, believing that Taiji’s patriarchal principles represent the ultra-orthodox values of male domination that are worldwide.

In spite of massive international protests against the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, and the Academy Award winning documentary ‘The Cove’, little has changed for these splendid creatures.

First, some recent thoughts about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji and today’s news that at least one special white whale can imitate the voices of humans. Dolphins are known for trying to communicate with their captors.

A Whale With a Distinctly Human-Like Voice Science Daily

“Our observations suggest that the whale had to modify its vocal mechanics in order to make the speech-like sounds,” said Sam Ridgway of the National Marine Mammal Foundation. “Such obvious effort suggests motivation for contact.”

Taiji Dolphins: Marineland’s Cruelest Attraction Global Animal

Op-Ed: Sea World’s Convoluted Logic on Taiji’s Dolphin Slaughter Take Part

Dolphins Can Remain Alert for Up to 15 Days at a Time With No Sign of Fatigue Science Daily

Do Dophins Think Nonlinearly? Science Daily

Strong Opposition to Aquarium’s Plan to Import Beluga Whales NYTimes

Whales and dolphins are so intelligent they deserve same rights as humans, say experts The Independent

Anne Enke’s Dolphin Writing

Blood-soaked cove of dolphin blood in Taiji, JapanFemale, Dolphin-Loving Principles Can Win in Blood-Thirsty, Male-Dominated Taiji, Japan

My maiden writing into the topic of whales was When the Subject is Women’s and Whale Rights, the Japanese Fall Far From Grace, if we don’t count my high school senior paper on the meaning of the great white whale in Moby Dick.

Whaling is a very patriarchal tradition, and the subject of their hunt — whales and dolphins — are gorgeous animals that represent female principles.

When I wrote Let’s Hope Smart Sensuality Pink Dolphins are Smart Enough to Stay Out of Japanese Waters, I was unconsciously or semi-consciously making the same point. Now I understand why folklore has it that putting a pregnant woman in the boat attracts dolphins, and also why Dave sent a video of a dolphin attending the birth of a baby.

The real challenges in getting the Japanese to change their patriarchal whaling ways, is akin to convincing the Sudanese Islamists to stop flogging women.

Returning Ancient Greek ‘Person’ Status to Dolphins

The clues to dolphins as ‘female’ are prolific in Greek and Roman art, and also in earlier Minoan artifacts.

Joining the Dolphin Family

Dolphins leap above the waves off Alabama’s Orange Beach. Photo: Cal Britton, My ShotWriting as a guest blogger for National Geographic, Maddalena Bearzi of the Ocean Conservation Society has been in the company of dolphins — mothers and their calves — for 20 years. 

All around me, I see other dolphins. I feel I am part of a family, but it’s somehow different from my terrestrial one. We are a grand and flexible family, yet I have a strong sense that our underlying bonds remain constant. I reach a huddle of mothers and calves. Seven females are clustered, forming a protective screen of bodies around a pregnant female. They swim beside and below her, waiting for the moment to arrive.

Dolphin Brains Rival Human’s | The Japanese Slaughter Disgrace Continues

“Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma,” says Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino, a leading expert in the neuroanatomy of dolphins and whales

The patriarchal reality of the Taiji’s fishermen’s killing of the whales involves banging on metal poles to herd panicked dolphins into a cove, then spearing them to death in what protesters describe as a gory bloodbath. For animals with brains as large as humans and an established level of cognitive ability, this method of slaughtering dolphins is abhorrent to many.

‘The Cove’ Academy Award documentary director Ric O’Barry explains how he became a dolphin activist.

Elephants Are Matriarchal and Kind to Females in the Animal World | Stop the Republican Disgrace of Elephants

Anne here, wanting to share a few Daily French Roast thoughts on the history of America’s party animals. We all agree that Democrats can be genuine jackasses, but what Republicans have done to besmirch the matriarchal pedigree and social organizations of elephants demands a new party animal.

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper cartoons and made the symbol famous.

Nast invented another famous symbol—the Republican elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion’s skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican Vote.” That’s all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.

Democrats today say the donkey is smart and brave, while Republicans say the elephant is strong and dignified. via FactMonster.com

Elephants for Real

Real life elephants are matriarchal and hardly a boys club with males making all the rules.  All young elephants live with the females until the male elephants reach adolescence. Until this age, he is completely in the care of females — not males, who are not even part of his social organization and have no say in how he is reared.

Truthfully, males and females don’t even live together.  Males aren’t out hunting, bringing home dinner for the little lady and kids. Males roam in bachelor herds until they grow older, leaving their boys club to travel alone, except for mating.

Unlike males, the female generations of elephants are known to be very close, grieving for each other when one dies. Elephants are considered to be compassionate, self-aware, and highly intelligent unlike the current Republican crowd.

I’m thinking that GoDaddy.com founder Bob Parsons must be a Republican. A quick Google search confirms that he is. Last September, I posted a link to Bob Parsons taking pleasure in shooting an elephant in Africa — just like Sarah Palin loved gunning down her caribou, in an act of “ethical hunting” she calls it. Presumably, Sarah knows what she’s talking about.

Protest was major against Parsons, who responded in typical Republican fashion that he was doing African farmers a favor in killing the endangered species. It is true that there is a collision between farmers and elephants in Africa.

I argued Parsons’ arrogance over shooting the elephants reflected both his belief in dominionism — that man is in charge of women, animals and all of nature , a cornerstone of Rick Santorum’s philosophy — and his stupidity in not understanding less violent, more female-centric ways of solving the elephant-African farmer problem.

A female mind — in this case Lucy King of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology is busy building bee fences in Africa.

Just placing a beehive on land can scare the wits out of most elephants. Scientists speculate that result — after all, there were no bees in the hives — is linked to the fact that the elephants remember painful past encounters with African honeybees and avoid the sights and smells associated with them.

On the one hand we have Republican guy, master of the universe Bob Parsons killing the elephant. On the other we have more progressive, female mind Lucy King scaring the elephants away with empty beehives.

It is exactly this kind of intelligence that today’s Republicans detest — and especially in a woman. Guns and vaginal ultrasounds are their best weapons for keeping herds in line. I beg Republicans to find a new animal to represent the insantity they are perpetuating on America and American women in particular. Elephants don’t deserve this dishonor.  Anne