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Monday August 01, 2016
Kaieteur News
BEETLE MANIA
First there was President Barack Obama. According to the Washington Post (April 26, 2014), “Obama is a parasite. He’s also a fungus, a spider and an extinct lizard.” Sounds like Donald Trump? But The Donald would not have been delighted unless he was a candle-fly. The Post explained, “But before President Obama’s critics rejoice, having unappealing species named after you is apparently a good thing.” Jason Bond, an Auburn University profession, said, “Honestly, it’s difficult for me to envision a higher honor. It’s permanent. In science, there are few things that we do as scientists that have the permanency that taxonomy does.” Bond, a spider expert at the university’s Department of Biological Sciences and its Museum of Natural History, discovered several new species of trapdoor spiders in late 2012, and named one of his favorites, “Aptostichus barackobamai” after the president. Bond said that like
Obama, the spider had unique characteristics. According to LiveScience, the spider builds a protective shield and hides behind it before attacking prey. In April 2009, a researcher at the University of California Riverside found a new lichen species, which is a kind of fungi, and named it “Caloplaca obamae.” Actually, as one friend explained, Obama can be a really fun guy. But how do you explain a bright orange fish speckled with blue marks named “Etheostoma obama”? Is it that there is something fishy about his birthplace? Actually, the story is that in November 2012 new fish species were named after Democratic presidents who were committed to environmental protection. The other partisan fish are named for former Presidents Clinton, Carter and Roosevelt. A fifth fish is named for former Vice President Al Gore. It does not end there. It was reported that in April
2012, a new parasite was discovered near Obama’s father’s birthplace in Kenya. The hairworm, unique because it can reproduce without a male, is named “Paragordius obamai” in honor of the president. In December 2012, just after Obama won re-election, Yale scientists named an ancient extinct lizard species “Obamadon.” The Boston Globe reported that the scientists waited until after the election because if Obama lost they didn’t want him to think they were calling him extinct. Some political analysts are already saying that support for The Donald, who claims his favourite meal at McDonald’s is the fish delight, will “tank”. As one critic quipped, “That is because he looks like a Blob fish.” President Obama is not alone. Nelson Mandela had not just a sea slug named after him, but its whole genus and family. Calling the slug the Mandelia mirocornata was a huge honour, bigger than a .45 Magnum.
Among the beetles, there is the Aegomorphus wojtylai named for Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), and Agathidium bushi for President George W. Bush. In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler got a blind beetle that lives in caves in Slovenia, the Anophthalmus hitleri. There are also the Marxella and Marxiana wasps, named after Karl Marx, the Mirina Confucius moth, named after Confucius, the Orontobia Dalailama moth, named after the Dalai Lama and the Cheguevaria beetle, named after Che Guevara. Publicly, neither the creatures nor the celebrities ever made a fuss about their taxonomic fame or tried to bury it. Now that has changed. A patriotic Chinese scientist named a newly-discovered beetle species after Chinese President Xi Jinping (known also as Big Daddy or Daddy Xi). The taxonomist responsible, Cheng-Bin Wang, named the beetle as a ‘tremendous honour’ for the president.
Writing in the taxonomy journal Zootaxa, he said, “The specific epithet is dedicated to Dr Xi Jin-Ping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, for his leadership making our motherland stronger and stronger.” Mr. Wang told the AFP news agency he greatly admired the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and saw the beetle as a symbol of Mr Xi’s achievements. He said: ‘The Rhyzodiastes (Temoana) is very rare – you might not encounter a single one even after 10 field collection sessions – and it also eats rotten wood for food. So it’s a metaphor for Xi Jinping, a rare person you only encounter once a century, and specifically his controls on corruption, which will allow Chinese corruption to gradually disappear.” Mr. Wang’s eight-page paper, published last month, went into great detail about
the magnificent creature, especially the “lustrous” sheen of its body and its “ g e n i t a l segment...moderately long and narrowly rounded at tip”. Whether it is Wang’s revelation about the size of his wang, or the fact that the beetle feeds on decaying matter, the President was not amused and, in fact, it really bugged him. Wang tried to reason with him, “Hello! Beloved President Xi! This is a rare beetle! The name of the species will exist for ever! A tremendous honour!” The President clearly does not agree and posts about the beetle have been removed from Chinese social media sites. As one newspaper says, “Chinese censors fumigate the internet yet again.” *Tony Deyal was last seen asking how does every Chinese joke start. By looking over your shoulder.
Guyana to have National Cultural Policy before year end By: Kiana Wilburg Due to the complex nature of a National Cultural policy, completion and implementation can take approximately five to 10 years. Therefore, what will be in place in the interim to ensure that some amount of meaningful changes take place in the Culture and Arts sector? According, to Cultural Advisor, Ruel Johnson, there are a series of planned interventions. In an exclusive interview, Johnson said that the most concrete of these is Copyright legislation which will precede an actual policy tabled in National Assembly. Johnson said that he has put together a stakeholder working group to guide the process over the next three months. Johnson said that he hopes to have the National Cultural
- Advisor promises Policy tabled in the National Assembly around the end of November, but certainly before the end of the year. To bring context to the history and importance of a National Cultural Policy, Johnson shared that Guyana has only ever published one such policy. He said that one came out of a process supervised by AJ Seymour via support by UNESCO. He noted that there have been two subsequent drafts, one put together by then Education and Culture Minister Dale Bisnauth, which he has not seen and one put together in 2009 by then Chairman on the National Trust and now Director of Culture, Dr. James Rose.
Johnson said that there are those who insist that the latter document, which has never been published and which was produced without any significant consultation, constitutes the de facto National Cultural Policy. He said that no explanation has been offered for why it is not in the public domain. The Cultural Advisor said, “The answer of course is that it is primarily inadequate as a modern cultural policy and those areas that it did get right, the then Ministry of Culture under Dr. Frank Anthony, who commissioned the policy, did nothing to advance it…”
Johnson said that his Caribbean counterparts involved in cultural policy planning have spoken about processes that indeed have lasted several years, and even ones with existing policies are in the process of being redesigned. The Cultural Advisor said that now is actually the best time to begin the creation of national cultural policies since there is greater global support for cultural policy formulation both in terms of financing and technical support. Because of the absence of a proper policy and the general lack of competence in the Department of Culture, Johnson said that Guyana in 2013 missed its first statutory Quadrennial Periodic Report under the 2005 Convention. Given the new thrust in policy development in accordance with contemporary international policy direction and best practices, Johnson said that he was able to give a preliminary report on the new government’s progress. He said that the comment from the UNESCO Secretary to the Convention, Danielle Cliche was that Guyana’s presentation was the only one structured in the format that is necessary for the next actual report scheduled for 2017. As for strategy being put in place for meaningful change, Johnson said it goes to how he has structured the policy process. He said that the first level is
Cultural Advisor, Ruel Johnson the abstractions and in a month or so he can finish refining those since what he has been doing is matching local priorities with international frameworks, such as UNESCO CELAC’s 2016-2021 Work Plan on Culture. The next level he said is a 10year plan made up of two five year cycles which speaks to more specifics, particularly when it comes to mainstreaming culture in development. The third level he said is five two year action plans that set out concrete projects in keeping with set indicators coming out of the two other levels. “For example, within the 20162017 cycle, there will be the ICA infrastructural development and accreditation project which will fall into priorities established under the first five years of the 10 year process.” “My original work plan as of
September of last year saw the general policy at levels one and two plus a level three action plan for 2016-2017 being tabled, after about four months of consultation and two months of review, to the NationalAssembly, which would have been around this time.” Johnson said what he failed to take into account was the size and scope of the Jubilee celebrations that not only took up the attention of the Ministry of Education but also other ministries that are necessary for collaboration. He said that planned engagements with Ministers Cathy Hughes and Dominic Gaskin to develop functional cooperation ties were only possible in the past month. He still has to engage about nine other government agencies to inform of what his general plans are and their roles in these plans. In keeping with integrating plans into a larger government framework, Johnson said that the greatest progress has been with the Ministry of Social Cohesion. He said that this Ministry will be the Culture Department’s key partner in crafting government’s programme under the ‘Mainstreaming Culture in Development, Citizenship agenda’ of the policy. The Cultural Advisor said that he initially met with Social Cohesion Minister Amna Ally earlier in the year and currently sits on the Ministry’s InterMinisterial Steering Committee on Social Cohesion.