What if it were your job to infuse the zoo with Critical Race Theory, radical feminism, and LGBTQ+ instruction and insight?

As noted in the previous post, President Trump signed an executive order that "directs the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo."

Now, maybe the zoo is thrown in there because it's run by the Smithsonian. But I had to wonder what the zoo might be doing and what it could do if it wanted to lean into the kind of ideology that the Trumpian vision sees as improper, divisive, and anti-American.

So I asked Grok to assume the job of infusing the zoo with Critical Race Theory, radical feminism, and LGBTQ+ instruction and insight. I told it to write some placards to be posted in front of particular animals and displays. If you're one of those people who won't read things written by A.I., you'd better bail out now, because what follows is 100% Grok:

"In order to create a 'snowy' atmosphere the tourist village purchased cotton for the snow. But it did not achieve the expected effect, leaving a very bad impression on tourists who came to visit."

Chengdu Snow Village confessed on its website, quoted in From "China snow village ‘cheats’ tourists with cotton wool and soap/Chengdu Snow Village, in Sichuan, was forced to apologise after visitors were left feeling ‘insulted'" (London Times).

Other cheesy tourism trickery from China:

"Calling themselves 'TikTok refugees,' [American] users paid the 'cat tax' to join RedNote by posting cat photos and videos."

"They answered so many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several big dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and many believe that Africa is a country? That most Americans have two days off every week? Americans also posed questions to their new friends. 'I heard that every Chinese has a giant panda,'” an American RedNote user wrote. 'Can you tell me how can I get it?' An answer came from someone in the eastern province of Jiangsu: 'Believe me, it’s true,' the person deadpanned, posting a photo of a panda doing the laundry. I spent hours scrolling those so-called cat tax photos and chuckled at the cute and earnest responses. This is what the internet is supposed to do: connect people...."

From "TikTok, RedNote and the Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet/China’s internet companies and their hard-working, resourceful professionals make world-class products, in spite of censorship and malign neglect by Beijing" (NYT).

"Meeting with President Biden for the first time in a year, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, reiterated his determination to unify with Taiwan..."

"... but stopped short of mentioning the potential use of force. He denounced what he called futile American efforts at containing China, but also acknowledged that U.S. tech restrictions had taken a toll. And he broadcast that China had global ambitions for its influence — while also trying to reassure the world that those ambitions did not have to lead to conflict with the United States...."

 From "In Talks With Biden, Xi Seeks to Assure and Assert at the Same Time/China’s depiction of Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit reflected his sometimes-contradictory priorities: to project both strength and a willingness to engage with Washington" (NYT).

"Mr. Xi also struck a softer tone than usual at the banquet dinner with American business leaders.... Mr. Xi spoke about the American pilots known as the Flying Tigers who aided China during World War II against Japan. He hinted at the prospect of China’s sending new pandas to the United States. And he reminisced about the time he lived with an American family in Iowa in 1985 as part of an agricultural exchange...."

"The National Zoo’s giant pandas will board a flight to China on Wednesday, ending an era that spanned half a century...."

"Soon, their compound at the zoo in Northwest Washington will be empty, and the joyous decades of pandamania will be over, at least for the time being.... China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos. The National Zoo’s current lease expires on Dec. 7.... The zoo’s giant panda story began in February 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon and first lady Pat Nixon made a historic Cold War visit to communist China. At a banquet in Beijing, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai promised Mrs. Nixon that China would give some giant pandas to the United States as a friendly gesture.... It is not clear when, or if, the zoo will get giant pandas again...."

WaPo reports, in "The National Zoo’s giant pandas leave for China today."

Just bring back that Nixon magic.

I've got 8 TikToks for you tonight. I hope something here is fun for you.

1. The bumblebee's tongue. 

2. The innocent dachshund. 

3. Jordan Peterson says: Marry young. 

4. Much more advice for guys. 

5. Cursing. Seriously, don't watch that unless you want to hear some hilarious, intense cursing.

6. The corn kid reflects on his retirement. 

7. The immigrant's point of view.

8. Vicious panda attack. 

Pandas "sniff out fresh horse droppings, lay themselves down and roll their bulky bodies in the muck, using their paws to really make sure they are covered..."

"... from the tip of their fuzzy ears to the bottom of their tails, until their black and white fur is another shade entirely.... A team of researchers led by Fuwen Wei, a biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, first noticed a panda luxuriating in a pile of horse excrement in 2007. Unsure of whether it was a fluke, they spent years tracking the bears with dozens of camera traps, eventually convincing themselves that the behavior was 'definitely frequent and typical'.... Drawn to the irresistible stink of the droppings — the fresher the better — the bears would first take a careful whiff, then initiate a gentle rubbing with a cheek. They would next immerse themselves in an unbridled full-body tussle in the dung, before meticulously slathering themselves with their paws to ensure all their exposed bits were covered... The researchers propose that this filthy act is all about tolerating low temperatures.... A chemical analysis of the dung revealed two short-lived compounds called sesquiterpenes.... When applied onto the paws and fur of laboratory mice, the sesquiterpenes rendered the rodents indifferent to frigid temperatures or a chemically induced chill. Further lab experiments showed the sesquiterpenes were gumming up a type of cold-sensing protein that adorns the cells of pandas and many other animals, including humans."

From "Why Are Pandas Covering Themselves With Horse Manure?/Researchers in China spent a decade studying this question" (NYT).

Melania walking in flats on the Great Wall of China and handing out stuffed bald eagles while looking at a real giant panda and Trump with his long hair blowing madly in the Chinese wind...

Great pics at The Daily Mail.

"The perfectly sensible reason why panda mothers and other creatures selectively abandon babies."

A piece in The Washington Post by Sarah Kaplan. The occasion seems to be the birth of twin pandas at the Washington D.C. zoo and the mother's rejection of the tinier baby, but is anything worthwhile said about human behavior?

Among bears, cats, dogs, primates and rodents, it’s common for mothers to eat a deformed or dying infant. Most of these animals are unable to hunt or forage while caring for their newborns, and like panda moms, are close to starving while their offspring nurse. A baby that is likely to die is an important source of protein and nutrients, one that can help her produce milk to feed her other young.

“They become a resource, one she can’t afford to waste,” said Tony Barthel, a mammal curator at the National Zoo’s Asia Trail....

We humans don't eat our unwanted babies, but we do sometimes regard them as "a resource" (as documented in the recent Planned Parenthood videos).

But Ms. Kaplan never says anything at all about human mothers, though clearly we are among the "other creatures" who "selectively abandon babies."

"I have come to the conclusion that unlike humans, most animals will not breed if they don’t like each other."

Said Theodore Reed, the keeper of the pandas at the National Zoo in Washington from 1958 to 1983 (who died at age 90 last week).

The problem with relying on private charity.

Criticize government spending all you want, but the right-wing preference for private citizens making decisions about where to make their altruistic expenditures has never impressed me. It's stuff like this. Of all the problems to throw $4.5 million at, this guy chooses panda fucking. Look. Deal with it. The pandas have lost the will to live. Yes, they look cute to us, because we mistake the black fur around their eyes for huge eyes. But from the inside, it's grim. They don't want babies. Don't force it on them. Keep your charitable hands off my panda body. The pandas have said no. What part of panda no don't you understand?

A message in code from Wisconsin.

ADDED: No, that wasn't it! This is it:

Maybe it's time to end this cruel neutrality... and to dress up like a panda...

... and vote for Ralph Nader.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

Distinguishing gay marriage and polygamy -- part 2.

We were just talking at great length on this topic, but William Saletan has a new piece in Slate, so let's do it again. As you may remember, I said the solid basis for distinguishing gay marriage and polygamy is economic: those seeking gay marriage only want the same set of economic advantages that is available to heterosexual couples, but polygamous groups seek more than the traditional share. Saletan takes a different approach:

The number isn't two. It's one. You commit to one person, and that person commits wholly to you. Second, the number isn't arbitrary. It's based on human nature. Specifically, on jealousy.

An obvious problem with Saletan's idea is that it relies on nature, which has long been a favorite source of argument for opponents of gay marriage. What do you say to the people who claim not to share what is the predominate characteristic that appears in nature? Most people are heterosexual, and most people are jealous if their partner isn't monogamous. Gay marriage proponents need to be able to say that the minority condition deserves respect.

***

By the way, in the third episode of "Big Love," polygamy is compared to homosexuality more than once: We're like homosexuals. Why was I able to watch Episode 3? For some reason, it was on HBO on Demand -- by mistake, I assume.

Hey, Margene -- the youngest wife on the show -- has a blog!

Thumbs Down. Was "Pirates of the Caribbean" supposed to be funny or not? It wasn't. It was annoying.

Panda bears or Koala bears? Who's cuter? A debate for the ages...

And I know this is a device to get bloggers to link and give them publicity, but I'm constantly giving them publicity anyway, and I think it's nice that HBO is speaking to us bloggers in our own language.

Cute!

Natalie Angier on cuteness, which was big this past year. It's not just pandas and penguins. It's also that ooh-look-at-my-belly fashion. What make us perceive cute? It's some primal response to baby:

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to cosegregate with homeliness.

When do we want cuteness more than beauty? Beauty's more serious and challenging. Cuteness is fun. Relaxing! Yes, let's baby ourselves and love cuteness.

(Here's a cute little blog devoted to cuteness.)

Cuteness may be easygoing and nice, but there are some serious challenges involved in understanding its uses and effects. From Angier:

Experts point out that the cuteness craze is particularly acute in Japan, where it goes by the name "kawaii" and has infiltrated the most masculine of redoubts. Truck drivers display Hello Kitty-style figurines on their dashboards. The police enliven safety billboards and wanted posters with two perky mouselike mascots, Pipo kun and Pipo chan.

Behind the kawaii phenomenon, according to Brian J. McVeigh, a scholar of East Asian studies at the University of Arizona, is the strongly hierarchical nature of Japanese culture. "Cuteness is used to soften up the vertical society," he said, "to soften power relations and present authority without being threatening."

So: watch out for cuteness!

"A panda, a carp, a Tibetan antelope, a swallow and the Olympic flame."

See, you would have thought they'd just have one mascot for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and it would be -- obvious! -- the panda. But China's having five mascots, including a carp! But it's not so bad. All but the panda seem to look like cute kids:



And remember the kooky Athens Olympics mascots?



What were they thinking?

Anyway, here's what the Chinese were thinking:

The mascots were presented as Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying and Ni Ni - which, put together reads in Chinese "Beijing welcomes you!"

"They reflect the cultural diversity of China as a multiethnic country," said Liu Qi, President of Beijing Organising Committee.

"They represent the enthusiasm and aspirations of our people, Liu Qi added.

Coloured in the five hues of the Olympic rings, the mascots also represent the sea, forests, fire, earth and air.

See, it makes plenty of sense.

IN THE COMMENTS: Starless:

"A panda, a carp, a Tibetan antelope, a swallow and the Olympic flame...What are the contents of Ed's freezer?"

"Hi-Oh!"

The panda has "increased two Tupperware sizes."

How else would you measure your panda?