Category: Wrongful Accusations
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Late in the Acts of the Apostles, Saul “Paul” of Tarsus, afterward St. Paul, is arrested in Jerusalem. He wisely requests a change of venue to Rome. There's a shipwreck on the way, and they are cast ashore in Malta (called Melita in Acts). The “barbarous” Maltese kindly invite the 276 castaways to warm themselves…
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According to the newspaper Daffy Duck reads, “The TASMANIAN DEVIL is a powerful, vicious, evil-tempered brute… hungry at all times… it will eat anything but is especially fond of wild duck.” In creating the character of Taz, Warner Brothers was building on precedent. The person who described the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisi) for science, in…
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My schedule is so cruel that I was able to go to only a few talks at the Wildlife Society's excellent 2009 conference, and to look at the posters. (This did however protect me from buying a coatimundi skull, a book on gibbons, and a radiocollar big enough for a bear.) Even so, it was…
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Five representatives were ranting and frothing in Congress the other day about how the economic recovery bill included a $30 million earmark for San Francisco mice. Representative Jackie Speier, who represents San Francisco and San Mateo counties, was surprised. She looked into it and wrote something on her findings for the San Francisco Chronicle, a…
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Sometimes people get impatient when you try to identify a species. White-crowned sparrow or white-throated sparrow, really, what's the difference? To a sparrow looking for love, all the difference in the world. Even for humans, it can be important. While reading Red Arctic, by John McCannon, I came across a story demonstrating the value of…
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The friends I was visiting in Massachusetts had a groundhog in their yard. They saw it regularly, usually grazing the rich growth of plants next to the gate between the driveway and the back yard. Where I live in California, we have no groundhogs, although I have seen their cousins the marmots in the Sierras.…
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