Ecotourism in Peru

"Approximately 100 small business owners, non-profit leaders and national park directors, most of whom are women, have collaborated to make birding in Central Perú available and affordable to North Americans. They call their group Eco-tourism Perú. Please come to Perú, see bird species and support local business. 

Birding in Perú makes sense. Perú is either #1 or #2 in the world in bird species, and two Andean states, Junín and Pasco, are two of the top five birding regions in Perú. There will be four organized tours between April and October in 2025. It is possible to identify some 600 species on a 15-day trip, of which 35 species are either endemic to the region or seen only in Perú. 

Most of these Peruvian entrepreneurs believe that their country is not well organized to fight climate change. The guide, hotelier or restaurant owner would like to meet you, learn how Flathead Audubon group is organized and share strategies to protect the environment. 

Importantly, these businesses are local, and your money stays in the community. Even your food is grown locally, purchased in a local market and is prepared by the hostess and her staff. Your in-country transportation is overland, meaning a closer look at the countryside and a smaller carbon footprint. 

There is also the affordable in-country cost: approximately $100/person/day for a group of 6-8, $1500/person for a two-week vacation. The costs are substantially less than other tours, in part because they employ NO intermediate travel company. We have found nothing comparable."

The above message was originally directed toward Audubon members, but should have a broader appeal.

Ecotourism Peru homepage, with links about birds, hiking, trekking, cycling, lodging, meals, and transportation.

"L'Etat, c'est moi" - updated

"In 1609, James I lectured the English people on his rights and responsibilities as king. It was his duty to “make and unmake” them, he said. Kings have the “power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all causes.”

Not even the “general laws” of Parliament constrained him. The king stands “above” all human-made law. Indeed, it is his prerogative to “interpret” and to suspend such laws “upon causes only known to him.” He could also create new laws to whatever end he desired. The king, as James declared, is “accountable to none but God only.” He is the law speaking.

To enforce his personal rule of law, James could censor speech, the press, legal treatises, and the theater. He could imprison anyone, at any time, for any reason. And though the common law prohibited torture, James could use the rack, dungeon, and Skevington’s irons to get his way.

James also controlled a vast system of favoritism. Earldoms and knighthoods, positions in the state and church and universities, licenses to collect taxes or live in a particular house: all were his to grant. James could create offices as he saw fit. To win a vote in Parliament, James sometimes simply established new peerages. He minted licenses to do business and bestowed monopolies to manufacture or import cloth, tin, wine, even playing cards.

The quid pro quo was simple. In exchange for any such “patent” of “power or profit,” the beneficiary was to return funds and favors. After all, what the king could grant he could take away. In 1603, James imprisoned Sir Walter Raleigh and stripped him of most of his titles and properties. Some he gave to his own favorite, Robert Carr. Later, James gave many of Carr’s titles to a newer favorite, George Villiers, whom he named Duke of Buckingham.

Thus James sat on his throne, the center of a solar system in which every individual orbited around him, or as satellites of his satellites, a vast Cartesian mechanism propelled by venality and obsequiousness, reaching from the most magnificent of courtiers and intellectuals to the poorest of tenants in the remotest of shires.

Most historians do not believe that Louis XIV ever said, “L’État, c’est moi.” But even if apocryphal, this saying distills the idea of absolute monarchy in the days of James and France’s Sun King. Not that we need look four centuries back to understand how such absolutism works. Hitler, Stalin, Mao—each shaped the perception, thoughts, and truths of an entire people. So too Putin and Xi today.

For the first time since the founding, Americans find themselves debating much this same threat, of unfettered prerogative in the hands of a single man. It was Donald Trump’s success in teaching the Republican Party to scrape and grovel that first raised the specter of an authoritarian presidency. But it was the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision granting Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for most of his official actions as president that put flesh to the fear. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up in her dissent: “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

These are the opening paragraphs of an article in the current issue of Harper's.  The longread continues at the link.  Even if Harris wins the election, the American people need to consider how to put more constraints on the powers of the executive (and the federal government).  I may add a few more excerpts after I watch today's football games, but I don't want to infringe on intellectual propery rights too much.  The embedded image is my own composite created from various found images.

Addendum:  One difficulty in excerpting from longreads is that the excerpt may not fully represent the content of the article in toto.  As I read further yesterday, I noticed the emphasis changing from the power of the executive to the power of the megacorporations:

It is Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple that today enjoy the power to create and destroy, to censor and punish, to “make and unmake” who they will. It is these corporations that—even as we fear consolidation of power in the public state—have erected a private state over us. They who have disrupted almost every economic and political balance in the Republic. They who have amassed the power to shape and determine how we speak to one another and share news and information. Even how we think, dream, and perceive our place in the world.

These are the absolute sovereigns of our age, the masters in the middle of us all...

Most maddening is that so many people who clearly view themselves as liberal champions—ranging from Kagan to former president Barack Obama—remain under the sway of an antidemocratic, pro-monopoly ideology dating to 1981, in the early days of the Reagan presidency. In America today, we face the most wide-ranging set of threats to liberal democracy since the founding. Gravest of all: liberals’ apparent ignorance of our own history. Hence our blindness both to the full nature of the threat posed by Google and its peers—and to the tools at hand to master it...

The issue is not mainly that these corporations surveil you, not mainly that they intrude on your privacy. Not mainly even that they wield great political power.

Rather, it is precisely the issue that came before the court in Moody v. NetChoice: these corporations’ unique capacities to manipulate every person and company that depends on them, individually...

But starting in 2004, coffers full of cash and tradable stock after the company’s IPO, Google’s executives went on a takeover binge. They bought YouTube, Android, DeepMind, ITA Software, Boston Dynamics, Waze, Nest, Looker, and Fitbit, as well as the foundational components of Google Docs, Google Cloud, and Waymo, along with more than two hundred and fifty other companies to date. Of all these purchases, perhaps the smartest was the 2007 deal to acquire DoubleClick, which gave Google direct control over one of the internet’s dominant ad platforms and its networks.

Google executives present their corporation as a great innovator. But their genius has rarely consisted of much more than buying other people’s ideas and assembling them into a vast maze of online corridors designed to enclose as much of our digital lives as possible. ..

Thanks to this spree, one or another of Google’s platforms today stands between you and your parents, between you and your children, and between you and your friends. Between you and your doctor, your druggist, and your therapist. Between you and your mayor and your representative in Congress and your president. You and your co-workers and professors. You and your car, electricity, and airlines. You and your movies and sports. ..

This gives the corporation arbitrary power over almost every small business. Google can steer customers toward, or away from, any particular author, photographer, or musician. Any restaurant, hair salon, bike shop, or plumber...

The Constitution, in this light, is the greatest anti-monopoly document in history, a blueprint for an intricate structure of walls and dikes designed to enable people to prevent any ultimate concentration of power in any one office, corporation, church, clique, or person...

And there's more content to follow.  I have a suspicion that before I reach the end I will detect the odor of musk.

As always, I encourage readers to go to the source article entitled The Antitrust Revolution: Liberal democracy's last stand against Big Tech.  If my previous link was behind a paywall for you, to to this new, archived version.

"The jungle revels in debauched lewdness"

Somewhere earlier this summer I encountered a review of Conquest of the Useless; Reflections on the Making of Fitzcarraldo, a new book by Werner Herzog (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2009). It's a curious book, created apparently by transcribing his notebooks from 30 years ago. It's not what one might expect in a "making of the film" book - it's almost stream-of-consciousness style, with disconnected thoughts and contents of dreams.

What was interesting to me was to discover that Herzog didn't live the life of a pampered director; he was on-site near the headwaters of the Amazon, living in squalor and coping with the incredible incompetence of local workers. Here are some of my jotted notes from the book to give the flavor of the contents:

 12 – At the Indians’ request, we bring chain saws, machetes, and shotguns to the Rio Cenepa, as well as a large canister of poison for arrow tips. They no longer know how to make it themselves. Vivanco says they will pay for a spoonful with a gold nugget.

79 – The family who had given us a pot of hot water crowded around, and we fixed tuna for them and gave them tea; that is how it is done here – food is always shared, Cesar says, which is why there is no word for “thank you” in their language.

100 – Upon returning to Iquitos, I found the little bookshelf in my cabin encased in a termite mound; I had to peel the few books, the radio, letters, and journals out of the hard coating, and the most recent journal, which was on top, has been devoured, except for the cover, which is covered in plastic.

165 – One time I had grasped hold of a smooth sapling without noticing that a multilane highway of fire ants led up and down it. Then I made the mistake of trying to cut down the tree with my machete to protect those following behind me, but my blow was not strong enough and merely shook the sapling, sending fire ants raining down on me, getting under my shirt and in my hair, and for two days I was climbing the walls.

169 – The helicopter of the Bolivian president, Barrientos, flew into a power line and crashed from a low altitude. He had suitcases full of money with him, presumably from drug deals. The helicopter immediately caught fire, but although people were there and tried to rescue him from the blaze, no one could get close, because the heat made the submachine guns carried by the president and his entourage start firing wildly, and in the hail of bullets no one dared approach.

226 – Across from our headquarters overlooking the Nanay there was a huge explosion in a boiler, fortunately after the work day in the factory there as over. The one night watchman was blown to pieces and sent flying. A smallish bloody piece of him landed with a splat on our porch.

233 – Water is dripping from the roof, but the rain does not refresh anything. The cat has thrown up on the porch. The chickens are standing in the rain getting soaked. My suit is hanging from the rafters of my palm-frond roof, covered with mildew. There is mildew on my shoes and my notebook. you hang up laundry, but it does not dry. My shirts disappear without a trace… this morning a tarantula the size of my fist was sitting in front of me on the table, and for the first time in my life I was only half-afraid.

I've listed this in the category of recommended books, but it does tend to be repetitious and occasionally tedious, so most readers will be satisfied with a quick perusal; probably only film enthusiasts will read it cover-to-cover.

Addendum: Those who like the movie or read the book will also appreciate the movie "Burden of Dreams," the 1981 documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo.

Reposted from 2009 because I kept misremembering Herzog's quote as being about "fecundity" rather than "lewdness." 

Wisconsin butterflies, 2024

An informative and professionally executed presentation.  Kudos to the members of the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association for assembling the data, and to Doug Buege for formatting the video.

SWBA homepage, with a list of field trips, info on field guides, camera, places to visit, archives of newsletters, and relevant videos.

Van Gogh torc

I think this is properly termed a torc rather than a necklace.  Clever.

The artist is not identified at the via, where the discussion is about taste (or lack of same).

Reposted from 2018 for the Halloween season.

Bugs Bunny was originally spelled with an apostrophe ("Bugs' Bunny")

In 1938, Warner Brothers writer Ben Hardaway directed a short film featuring a very sneaky rabbit. The cartoon was called Porky’s Hare Hunt, but the bunny that starred in it didn’t have a name. So, the best creative minds in the business got together and dubbed the up-and-coming star “Happy Rabbit.”

Ben Hardaway, whose nickname was Bugs, also directed he next short starring Happy Rabbit. As the animators drew up early image for the film, one of them labeled a sketch of the rabbit “Bugs’ Bunny,” to make it clear that the drawing was part of Hardaway’s project. The label was mistaken for the name of the character, and soon enough, all the animators were calling Happy Rabbit “Bugs Bunny."

From a post at Neatorama about interesting moments in the history of editing, where you will also discover that Catch-22 was originally entitled Catch-18.

Reposted from 2011 because I had already forgotten this.

"The rich are different from you and me"

As reported by Bloomberg:

Airlines are reinvigorating first class as deep-pocketed customers embrace travel again, taking luxury to new heights up in the sky. 

First-class cabins are increasingly resembling mini hotel rooms, with sofas, double beds, televisions, desks, wardrobes, minibars and in some cases, walk-in showers. The more creative, the better. You can even book a chef...

Even with first class fares going for more than 10 times as much as standard economy seats, demand is there - either for bookings with cash or the rare opportunity to use up miles accumulated on credit cards during the pandemic...

A return Sydney-Los Angeles flight in Qantas first class costs almost $18,000, while Frankfurt-Tokyo on Lufthansa is about $15,000. That’s still significantly less that what some ultra-wealthy travelers fork out for private jets, a segment that experienced a boost during the pandemic as people looked to avoid crowds and virus-related restrictions...

Individual cabins currently feature armchairs and a 212-centimeter (83 inches) flat bed with memory foam mattress, as well as cotton throws, a duvet and pillow menu. 

Details and pix at the link.  

Reposted from 2023 to add this.  The video is lengthy but refreshingly devoid of needless chatter (mostly ambient sounds with text subtitles).  You can browse it by clicking the timeline.

It's true that there's no prize when you die... (updated)

... but I do keep track of all the books I've read.   I rate them on a scale of 0-4+, so that when I get old(er) and (more) demented, I'll know which ones to re-read.

For the past 25 years, here are the 92 books I've rated 4+ (to be honest, it also includes a fair number of 3.5s), out of a total of 700+.

Year	Author	Title
1990 ( of 26)	Ludlum	The Bourne Identity
	Ludlum	The Parsifal Mosaic
1991 (52)	Colin Watson	Hopjoy was Here
	Gerrold	The Man Who Folded Himself
	Marquez	One Hundred Years of Solitude
1992 (63)	Boyer&Nissenbaum	Salem Possessed
	Weisman	Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th century Massachusetts.
	Frederic	The Damnation of Theron Ware
	LeCarre	The Secret Pilgrim
	Warren	Brother to Dragons
	Clarke	Childhood's End
1993 (39)	None
1994 (44)	None
1995 (38)	Dickson	And So To Murder
	Paulson	Winterdance
	Kersten	The Jesus Conspiracy
	Huyghe	Columbus Was Last
	Holand	Norse Discoveries & Explorations in America 982-1362
1996 (28)	Bester	The Stars My Destination
	Fowles	A Maggot
	Guthrie	The Big Sky
1997 (8)	None
1998 (13)	Krakauer	Into Thin Air
	Wahlgren	The Vikings and America
1999 (16)	Jewett	The country of the Pointed Firs
	Faulkner	Absalom Absalom (turgid and gloomy)
	Hardy and Shaffer	The Wicker Man
2000 (4)	Teale, Edwin Way	A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm
2001 (8)	Ryan & Pittman	Noah's Flood
	Lansing	Endurance
	Mowat	The Alban Quest
2002 (19)	None
2003 (36)	Brown	Angels and Demons
	Hosseini	The Kite Runner
	Warren	All the Kings Men
2004 (49)	Menzies	1421 The Year China Discovered America
	Wodehouse	Bertie Wooster Sees It Through
	Brown	Da Vinci Code
	Hoffer	The True Believer
2005 (45)	Whitaker	The Mapmaker’s Wife
	Woodham-Smith	The Reason Why [Crimea, Light Brigade]
	Ferguson	Naked to Mine Enemies, Volumes 1 and 2
	Lapham	Gag Rule.  On the suppression of dissent
	Powell	Bring Out Your Dead
2006 (35)	Grogan	Marley and Me
	Hanson	Confident Hope of a Miracle
	Bamford	A Pretext for War
	Needham	Science and Civilisation in China, Vol IV: 3
	Wright	The Looming Tower; Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
	Ryan	The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
2007 (29)	Harris	Letter to a Christian Nation
	Setterfield	The Thirteenth Tale
	Kinzer	Overthrow. America’s Century of Regime Change (skimmed)
	Fothergill	Planet Earth
	Shorto	The Island at the Center of the World [Manhattan]
	McCarthy	The Road
	Smith	When the Cheering Stopped
	McCarthy	No Country for Old Men
2008 (30)	Hitchens	God is Not Great
	Nouvian	The Deep
	Ballesta & Deschamp	Planet Ocean
	Corrie	Let Me Stand Alone
	Marent	Butterfly
	McCarthy	Blood Meridian
	Weiner	Legacy of Ashes
	Winchester	Krakatoa; the Day the World Exploded
	Schooler	Last Shot
2009 (31)	Wilson	How Jesus Became Christian
	Ehrman	Misquoting Jesus
	Keys	Catastrophe
	Zuckerman	Society without God
	Nasrecki	The Smaller Majority (nature photos)
2010 (49)	Pears	An Instance of the Fingerpost
	Nicholls	Paradise Found: Nature in America at the time of discovery
	Van Allsburg	The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
	Ludlum	The Bourne Identity
	Lester	The Fourth Part of the World
	Gilder	Heavenly Intrigue [Kepler and Brahe]
	Grann	The Lost City of Z
	Holmes	The Age of Wonder
	Bergreen	Over the Edge of the World [Magellan]
2011 (21)	Meldahl	Hard Road West
	Gaiman	Coraline
	Winchester, Simon	The Alice Behind Wonderland
	Severin	The Brendan Voyage
	Seuss	The Bippolo Seed and Other Stories
	Bryson	The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way
	Cohen	The Tree Army; a pictorial history of the CCC, 1933-1942
2012 (18)	Mann	1491
	Millard	Destiny of the Republic [bio James Garfield]
	Menzies	1434; The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy…
	Moon	Blue Highways
	Feldman	When the Mississippi Ran Backwards
2013 (21)	Peskov	Lost in the Taiga
	Mitchell	Cloud Atlas
	Mitchell	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet
2014 (21)	Faulkner	As I Lay Dying

Sometimes I post reviews in the recommended books category of this blog.

Please feel free to chime in with a comment about your favorite books.

Addendum 2015 - 2020:

(can't remember how I created a table in the post 7 years ago, so I'll just copy/paste the updated info)

Addendum 2021 - 2024: