"Slow news week—let's go with our cat-predation package!"
This is what the more mainstream of our two local "alternative weeklies", Seattle Weekly, opted to run as a cover story this week:
The Lost Cats of Poverty GulchI'll confess that I have not read the story in its entirety (still working my way through last week's Economist ("World on the edge") and just loaded up with this week's ("Saving the system"), and maybe it turns into a work of reportage that would make Joseph Mitchell and Hunter S. Thompson cry . . . but it appears to be all about how people who live in this one heavily-wooded greenbelt area tend to have a lot of cats go missing at the hands (paws? jaws?) of coyotes. With all due respect, WHO CARES?!?! It's hard to think of a more trivial story, or a week when it would seem more incongruous for it to show up on the front page of any publication.
Here's a classic bit from the story. I will let you find the authorial/editorial self indulgence that is in the finest tradition of Seattle alternative journalism, while I note a problem with the "scientific" explanation being put forward:
A 2004 paper authored by Russell Link, an urban wildlife biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), seconds Convy's notion. "In Washington," Link writes, "these intelligent and adaptable animals now manage to occupy almost every conceivable habitat type, from open ranch country to densely forested areas to downtown waterfront."
And occasionally, they like to eat pussy.
"Cats are thought of by coyotes as a competitor for prey," says Link. "A coyote is going to eliminate that competition."
Now, I could be wrong, but I doubt coyotes are picky eaters. They are not sitting around nibbling buttered scones and tut-tutting that these churlish cat-things are apt to put a dent in the population of delicious rabbits. I'm sure the coyotes are killing the cats in order to eat the cats [
cue Schwarzenegger Terminator voice: "I would."]. It's also a rather poor evolutionary strategy for predators to pick fights with other predators in order to keep them from competing. That's like getting in a knife fight with the next person in the interview line at Wal-Mart: not worth it from a risk or energy-expenditure perspective—just try to do a little better in the interview. Also, I'm confident that cats are not "thought of by coyotes as a competitor for prey." Do you really think a coyote has the slightest idea of what a cat does or doesn't do vis-à-vis the coyote's prey (besides simply being it)? It seems unlikely. Plainly, the benefit package at the Department of Fish and Wildlife is not attracting the cream of our biology graduates.
Labels: local Seattle media, mocking others, pets, things that seem stupid to MWR (abridged version)
Bottom feeding
Leave it to the
Seattle Times and its readers to miss the best fish and chips on Alki
* (and in the city, as far as I'm concerned) and in Pike Place Market.
**———
*Sunfish
**Jack's Fish Spot
Labels: local Seattle media
A little creepy, if you ask me
Here's a
kind of column that I think would never appear in a Seattle paper. Appearing on the day its missing-mother subject, Jessie Marie Davis, has been found murdered, the piece commends "people" for searching and praying for Davis instead of dwelling on the sinful side of her life. And do you know what? "This is not an endorsement of out-of-wedlock births or adultery." Congratulations too for not stoning her to death, shunning her, etc.
I'm left with the impression that I would be thoroughly creeped out to live in a place like Akron, Ohio. It doesn't help that there is a little sidebar headed "More News from Topix.net" under which the
only links are "African-American" and "Discuss African-American". There seems to be a subtext to the column, and it's not hard to see what it is when you notice that Davis is white and the father of her children (and, now, her confessed murderer) is black.
I do like the irony of a religion writer named "Terry Pluto".
Labels: local Seattle media, race, religion
What I learned from the local news
Victor Steinbrueck Park next to Pike Place Market is "the Emerald City's crown jewel," and home to "criminals—countless drug dealers." Dubious assertions from King 5, in my view. In any event, if the Seattle police can't maintain order in this little
postage stamp of a park, it's unclear what their capabilities might be.
Labels: local Seattle media
Why I don't take a local newspaper, part 2
Editorialize much?
Labels: local Seattle media
Correction
Two posts below, I mocked the authors of
Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, for an egregious construction in the second of the book's "Eight Deadly Sins of E-mail". I reproduced the list from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (journalistic pillar of our community), which had printed it above the legend "Source: 'Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home'".
Today I tracked down a copy of
Send and I found that it has the same list of commandments the P-I printed
but different illustrations. So where the P-I illustrated the Second Commandment,
The e-mail that insults you so badly, you have to get up from your desk, with the unbelievably illiterate example "From what planet do you reside?", the actual example in the book is "HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE DONE THAT THING?!!!!"
So it turns out that I should have been mocking not the authors of
Send (not for that specific thing, anyway), but P-I reporter Andrea James and her editors. My mistake was in trusting the P-I to cite a source accurately. Don't Trust Snakes regrets the error.
Labels: local Seattle media, mocking others
Dude! Party! Do a shot of veal-brain agnolotti!
With its raw-cement walls and ultralate hours, two-month-old Tavolata has become the party place in party town. - Seattle Weekly restaurant review, April 4, 2007
I guess it's my day to poke fun at local restaurant reviews. Seriously, though, in what sense is Seattle "party town"? Compared to what, other places in Washington? The
reviewer moved here from San Francisco less than a year ago. And Seattle is "party town" to him?
Full disclosure: If Seattle were in fact "party town", there is an excellent chance I would have no clue.
Labels: local Seattle media
Make it stop!
From Nancy Leson's Seattle Times
review of the Steelhead Diner:
- "a food and wine lover's paradise"
- "this tongue-in-chic diner, where the fishified furnishings extend to hand-tied flies and photo montages of local rivers"
- "those briny bivalves appear to be smiling with delight as they frolic with shiitake mushrooms, potatoes, winter squash and apple-smoked bacon in a cream-stoked broth"
- "Connoisseurs need look no further for the quintessential Seattle crab cake than his golden disc of Dungeness, held together with little more than the chef's bountiful blessing. This pan-seared dazzler is fat with lumps of sweet crab, decked out with a frizzle of fried beets and sauced with a hit of habanero hellfire."
- "Searching for a salad with diner style and a showman's substance? Have the house special: crisp baby iceberg decapitated and stuffed with diced bacon, avocado and blue cheese crumbles, thrumming with a high-falutin' version of Thousand Island."
- "Hinting of horseradish, the finely chopped beets are a bitter-sweet treat"
- "the flash-fried Beecher's cheese curds, which found their whey here from the big vat visible through Beecher's nearby storefront" [um . . . KILL ME NOW!]
- "terrific terrine . . . briny bath . . . subtly seasoned . . . Southern staple . . . native New Orleans . . . Seattle's Sazerac . . . colossal kitchen . . . able assistance . . . solicitous staff . . . divine dessert . . . a creamy canvas . . ."
Was there some kind of contest going on at the Seattle Times on Friday? If so, congratulations to Nancy Leson for walking away with it.
Labels: local Seattle media
The plot thickens
University Police and the College of Architecture failed to follow well-established procedures by not reporting Rebecca Griego's pleas for help to a high-level safety team that could have taken steps to protect her, a top University of Washington official acknowledged Wednesday. [Paragraph one] . . . .
Federal immigration authorities said Thursday that Rowan was living in the United States illegally — the British citizen overstayed a 90-day visa granted him to enter the country in 1996 — and that they had been seeking him for more than three years. [Paragraph fourteen] - Seattle Times, April 5, 2007
Contrary to the early reports in which all in authority seemed to insist that "nothing more could have been done", it appears to me that the UW stalker/murderer had been
deportable for more than ten years. I'm not sure the real story here is about how the UW College of Architecture failed to Rebecca Griego. It interests me that neither she nor any advocate she may have consulted seems to have considered exploiting Rowan's immigration status to bypass the whole restraining order process entirely. Why focus on keeping a stalker X number of yards away when he is begging to be sent across an ocean and kept from returning?
There is a reason for all that issue spotting we used to do in law school.
Labels: local Seattle media
Why I don't take a local newspaper
What potential nuclear disarmament breakthrough with North Korea?
Still, I'm captivated by the idea of deploying these smooth and gentle mammals of the deep in modern battlefield and forward-support roles and high-risk theater operations (I just made that jargon up, by the way . . . not bad, eh?). And how might the great "war room" scene from
Dr. Strangelove play out differently in an oceanic remake set in the not too distant future . . .
Turgidson: Mr. President, if I may advise, under condition red it is standard procedure that the base be sealed off, and the base be defended by base security sea lions. Any force trying to enter there would certainly encounter very heavy casualties.
Faceman: Admiral Turgidson, with all due respect for your defense team, my dolphins can brush 'em aside without too much trouble.
Labels: local Seattle media, Only in Don't Trust Snakes
