They Want to Kill Wolves.

The following is copied whole cloth from greygirlbeast's journal:

[This from National Resources Defense Council:

The gray wolf's extraordinary comeback from extinction in Greater Yellowstone is one of America's greatest environmental success stories. But the Bush Administration is now pushing a proposal that would authorize the killing of some 700 wolves — more than half of the current population in the northern Rockies. Speak out now for wolf protection and help shield the wolves of Wyoming and Idaho from the coming crossfire.

We must stop the Bush Administration's plan to declare open season on the wolves of Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho. Once approved, Wyoming and Idaho intend to begin exterminating up to half their gray wolves — by aerial gunning and other cruel methods — as early as this fall.

Submit your Official Citizen Comment, opposing this disastrous plan, before August 6.

Is it even necessary to justify an objection to this crazy, sick shit? Please, take a moment to read and sign the comment that's being sent Ed Bangs, Western Gray Wolf Recovery Coordinator. You may find it here.

The statement is as follows:

I strongly oppose your recent wolf management proposal — the 10J rule — that would give states a license to kill wolves in areas where big game populations are below objective, possibly leading to the extermination of up to 700 wolves in Wyoming and Idaho combined. This would reverse the welcome gains in recovery of this magnificent species in the Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho regions.

I am especially outraged that your proposal would empower states to begin slaughtering wolves as early as this fall — even before wolves are taken off the Endangered Species list. It is scandalous that you are circumventing your agency's own process for delisting a species.

Wolves once thrived in much of the lower 48 states. Today, they reside in only five percent of their former range. If there is one place in this country where they should be allowed to flourish, it is in and around Yellowstone — our nation's oldest park — and the remote Selway Bitterroot ecosystem in central Idaho.

I urge you not to decimate a wolf population that has only recently sprung back to life and is world-renowned as a symbol of the American West.

I call on you to withdraw your proposal to allow the massive killing of wolves in the northern Rockies.

'Please. And thank you.']

Do I need to ask you to save wolves? Do I need to...

Just sign it. Send it. Pass it to everyone you know.

Do it now!

Reading and Writing.

I finished Crooked Little Vein, yesterday. Two days, because I couldn't just sit and read, all day, Friday. Very good book. A bit episodic, and definitely a case of warren_ellis writing in the vein and spirit of Dante, Pirsig, and Kerouac. Travelling encounters, and a descrioption of the way the world is seen by the traveller, and an emerging understanding of that world. The episodic nature can be a little off-putting, in some of the scenarios presented, because it stands out very clearly. The structure belies Ellis' roots in comic, burst, and short fiction forms, in their framing and narrative composition, and the parts, though clearly existing as parts, create a rather nice pictoral of the limits and lminality of the mainstream/underground dichotomy, and may even go so far as to say that that dichotomy is a false one.

So, yes, worth the money. Take a look.

Now I'm continuing my reading of I Am A Strange Loop, and I'm very much enjoying his discussion of complexity and the contextual and syntactical nature of human concept formation and expression. He has not (yet) gone as far as Dan Wegner, who says that the consciouness that arises out of complexity is illusory and that that illusory nature has no reflexivity. Hm. Let me restate: Hofstadter hits the "illusory" marker and then veers off into another direction, taking into account the fact that our consciousness does have a reflexive quality. What I mean is, that which we consciously apprehend can then be turned around applied to unconscious processes. What I know can affect what I don't know that I know. What I don't know that I know can become what I know, and I can then know-- and Do-- more. Not to mention that the likelihood of natural selection developing a purely illusory sense of Selfhood is extremely low, because a sense of self seems to lead to about the same amount of conflict, killing each other, and loss of survival, as it does increased likelihood of competition and increased diversity. Which, again, requires a reflexive action in order to operate, properly.

Anyway, I've probably bored the shit out of you, I'm hungry, and I have several things to get written, today.

I'm out.