Bird Names for Birds

"Bird Names for Birds" is an initiative launched in 2020 to change names of birds named after people "because birds don't need eponymous or honorific common names". The initiative knows that it "will not end racism" but sees itself as "one step" to raise awareness. Some examples...

 

Long-tailed Duck

The prior name of this bird was “Oldsquaw” – a derogatory and offensive name that references a certain sound made by a group of elderly Indigenous groups chattering. A proposal outlining this issue and reasons supporting a new name for the bird was accepted, however the reasoning for the name change was due to conservation implications and explicitly stated that inclusion reasons were not the motivating principle. (literally via)

McCown's Longspur (rejected proposal)

John P. McCown accidentally collected the longspur while out shooting birds. He was not an ornithologist and is given the note of being the first to collect a specimen due to known dates of notes. It was George N. Lawrence who formally named the bird after McCown. While Lawrence named this bird intentionally for the first person to collect a specimen, he also unintentionally named this bird “…after a man who fought for years to maintain the right to keep slaves, and also fought against multiple Native tribes.” As stated in the proposal, “John P. McCown, previously of the U.S. Army, joined the Confederacy and fought for the right of states to preserve slavery. He was not a minor participant in the war, but a mainstay; he participated in an array of campaigns and led men into battle. Although John P. McCown did not join the Confederacy until after his name was attached to the longspur, he likely held views of slavery consistent with his decision to join the Confederacy. With the United States general public increasingly embracing our diversity and confronting public displays of the Confederacy, such as flying Confederate flags, using Confederate general street names, and maintaining statues to Confederate soldiers, it is appropriate for the AOS to address its own piece of Confederate history, John P. McCown of McCown’s Longspur.” (literally via)

Bachmann's Sparow

At first read, the life of the Reverend John Bachman (1790-1874) seems quite admirable. An ordained minister who spent 56 years serving his flock at St. John’s Lutheran in Charleston, South Carolina, he had a passion for science and natural history. He was regarded by some in the South as radical for ministering to enslaved people, and for his argument that all humans were the same, unified species, rather than separate. He was elected as an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1845, and corresponded with many of the other leading naturalists and scientists of his day.

But this seemingly progressive outlook is only surface level. The reverend may have been a proponent of the unity of humanity in a single species; he was certainly, however, not a proponent of equality among it. A slave-owner himself, he saw no issue with holding fellow humans in bondage, even as he acknowledged their humanity. He vigorously denied that a belief in the oneness of humanity necessitated becoming an abolitionist, and sought to provide both scientific and religious reasoning for slavery within his framework:

“We are induced yet to offer a few remarks on the bearing of the doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race on the domestic institutions and vital interest of the South…those who have supported the doctrine of Unity, have sometimes been stigmatized as Abolitionists and enemies of the South…[t]he following are our views: That all the races of men, including the negro, are of one species and of one origin. That the negro is a striking and now permanent variety, like the numerous permanent varieties in domesticated animals. That varieties having become permanent, possess an organization that prevents them from returning to the original species, although other varieties may spring up among them. Thus the many breeds of domesticated animals that have arisen, some only within a few years, would never return to the form of the wild species, without an intermixture. That the negro will remain as he is, unless his form is changed by an amalgamation, which latter is revolting to us. That his intellect, although underrated, is greatly inferior to that of the Caucasian, and that he is, therefore, as far as our experience goes, incapable of self-government. That he is thrown to our protection. That our defense of slavery is contained within the Holy Scriptures. That the Scriptures teach the rights and duties of masters to rule their servants with justice and kindness, and enjoin the obedience of servants.” (literally via)

- - - - - - - - - -

photograph of Audrey Hepburn by Terry o'Neill via and via

Long Hair, Short Hair... Associations and Stereotypes

According to research findings, women with long and medium-length hair are rated more attractive than those with short hair. Hair has an impact on the perception of attraction but is less decisive than facial traits. In other words, beautiful women with short hair are rated more attractive than less beautiful women with long hair. In addition, attractive faces are connected with more desirable traits than hairdressing but hair is also used to make personality judgments: Long hair is associated with dominant, intelligent, feminine, healthy women, short hair is associated with honest, caring, emotional women (Bereczkei & Meskó, 2006).



- Bereczkei, T. & Meskó, N. (2006). Hair length, facial attractiveness, personality attribution: A multiple fitness model of hairdressing. Review of Psychology, 13, 35-42.
- photograph (Audrey Hepburn, 1953) via

Applying Anthropomorphic Gender Stereotypes to Dogs

"Based on interviews with twenty‐six dog owners in northeast Georgia, this article examines how people rely on gender norms to organize their relationships with their dogs. Owners use gender norms to (1) select what they consider to be suitable dogs, (2) describe their dogs' behaviors and personalities, and (3) use their dogs as props to display their own gender identities. Although these findings are specific to dog owners, they suggest ways individuals may attempt to display gender in other relationships characterized by a power imbalance."
Ramirez, 2006



- Ramirez, M. (2006). "My Dog's Just Like Me": Dog Ownership as a Gender Display. Symbolic Interaction, 29(3), 373-391.
- photograph of Audrey Hepburn in Rome via

One Eye, Two Eyes, the Needy Other, the Better-Off Other, Envy, a Genie, and the Logic of Voting Decisions

A genie says to a peasant, "I will grant you any wish, but remember that I will give your neighbour twice what I give you." The peasant thinks for a while and responds, "Poke out one of my eyes." (via)

Encouraging resentment of taxpayer-funded benefits flowing to people down the ladder of life's fortune can deliver political dividends (...).
Lewis & Woods, 2014

Here are a few thought-provoking excerpts that shed a light on aspects of voting decisions following the logic of "I don't have health insurance now and can't afford the medicine I need but at least Mexicans can't immigrate." 

Economists have long speculated that envy and malice play important roles in economic decisions. (...) Envy and malice turn out to be powerful motivations with strong differential impacts across countries and relative positions.
Beckman et al, 2002

Why do people support economic redistribution? Hypotheses include inequity aversion, a moral sense that inequality is intrinsically unfair, and cultural explanations such as exposure to and assimilation of culturally transmitted ideologies. However, humans have been interacting with worse-off and better-off individuals over evolutionary time, and our motivational systems may have been naturally selected to navigate the opportunities and challenges posed by such recurrent interactions. We hypothesize that modern redistribution is perceived as an ancestral scene involving three notional players: the needy other, the better-off other, and the actor herself. We explore how three motivational systems—compassion, self-interest, and envy—guide responses to the needy other and the better-off other, and how they pattern responses to redistribution. Data from the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel support this model. Endorsement of redistribution is independently predicted by dispositional compassion, dispositional envy, and the expectation of personal gain from redistribution. By contrast, a taste for fairness, in the sense of (i) universality in the application of laws and standards, or (ii) low variance in group-level payoffs, fails to predict attitudes about redistribution. (...)
By economic redistribution, we mean the modification of a distribution of resources across a population as the result of a political process. (...)
We conducted 13 studies with 6,024 participants in four countries to test the hypothesis that compassion, envy, and self-interest jointly predict support for redistribution. (...) If the mind sees modern redistribution as a three-player game eliciting compassion, envy, and self-interest , then the intensities of those emotions and motives will independently predict support for redistribution. (...) As predicted, the three motives have positive, significant, and independent effects on support for redistribution. (...)
Participants in the United States also reported the political party they most identify with. Consistent with historical survey data, self-described Democrats endorsed redistribution to a greater extent than Republicans and Libertarians did. Democrats also reported more compassion and more expected personal gain from redistribution than Republicans and Libertarians did; envy did not differ by party (...). Thus, compassion and self-interest predict identification with political parties, which are themselves associated with attitudes toward redistribution. In isolation, the emotion/motivation triplet accounts for 28% of the variance in support for redistribution, whereas party identification accounts for 34%; when entered together, they have unique effects of similar magnitude (...). This suggests that emotions and party ideology shape attitudes toward redistribution to a similar extent. (...)
Participants in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom (studies 1a–c) were given two hypothetical scenarios and asked to indicate their preferred one. In one scenario, the wealthy pay an additional 10% in taxes, and the poor receive an additional sum of money. In the other scenario, the wealthy pay an additional 50% in taxes (i.e., a tax increment five times greater than in the first scenario), and the poor receive (only) one-half the additional amount that they receive in the first scenario. (...) Fourteen percent to 18% of the American, Indian, and British participants indicated a preference for the scenario featuring a higher tax rate for the wealthy even though it produced less money to help the poor. (...) Compassion and envy motivate the attainment of different ends. Compassion, but not envy, predicts personally helping the poor. Envy, but not compassion, predicts a desire to tax the wealthy even when that costs the poor. (...)
A taste for fairness had little or no effect on support for redistribution. This is striking, because fairness is invoked in many arguments for redistribution. Notions of fairness are intuitive and compelling—they seem to inspire charity, courageous acts, outrages, wars, and moral crusades. (...)
Sznycer et al., 2017

Envy-freeness (EF) is a criterion of fair division. In an envy-free division, every agent feels that their share is at least as good as the share of any other agent, and thus no agent feels envy. (via)

- - - - - - - -
- Beckman, S. R., Formby, J. P., Smith, W. J. & Zheng, B. (2002). Envy, malice and Pareto efficiency: An experimental examination. Social Choice and Welfare, 19, 349-367.
- Sznycer, D., Lopez Seal, M. F., Sell, A., Lim, J., Porat, R., Shalvi, S., Halperin, E., Cosmides, L, & Tooby, J. (2017). Support for redistribution is shaped by compassion, envy, and self-interest, but not a taste for fairness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, link
- photographs of Audrey Hepburn by Douglas Kirkland (1965) via and via
- interesting read: Two eminent political scientists: The problem with democracy is voters

Quoting Stanley Donen

"My childhood wasn't very happy. It's a long, grim story about being a Jew in a small southern town." 
Stanley Donen



photograph of Audrey Hepburn and Stanley Donen - director of my all-time favourite movie "Charade" - working on a dance for Funny Face, Paris 1957 via

The Evils of Novel-Reading

In the 19th century, there used to be medical objections to women reading novels. "Experts" were concerned that "reading diverted needed energy from a woman's reproductive organs as well as her nervous system". Novel-reading was linked to fertility issues, a woman's reproductive cycle, headaches, hysteria, and insanity. Some suggested that women should read novels only in the morning after first waking or following any meal as the female brain needed to rest while the body was digesting. As woman's physiology made her prone to shock, excited feelings caused by novels could stun her heart.



Feeding the female brain with the same intellectual fare as the male brain was dangerous. According to Dr. Edward H. Clarke (a retired professor from the Harvard Medical School), these women graduated from school with undeveloped ovaries and were sterile when they married. Women were supposed to stop reading to ensure the future good of society.

"(...) the girl who sits for hours poring over a novel to the damage of her eyes, her brain, and her general nervous system, is guilty of a lesser fault of the nature of suicide." Charlotte Mason

Novel-reading is "one of the most pernicious habits to which a young lady can become devoted. When the habit is once thoroughly fixed, it becomes as inveterate as the use of liquor or opium. The novel-devotee is as much a slave as the opium-eater or the inebriate." Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

In addition, sensation fiction could lead the young woman into flirtation or conduct that "later in life may make her blush to remember".

"(...) the descriptions of love-scenes, of thrilling, romantic episodes, find an echo in the girl's physical system and tend to create an abnormal excitement of her organs of sex, which she recognizes only as a pleasurable mental emotion, with no comprehension of the physical origin or the evil effects. Romance-reading by young girls will, by this excitement of the bodiliy organs, tend to create their premature development, and the child becomes physically a woman months, or even years, before she should." Dr. Mary Wood-Allen

Women were not supposed to be educated and certainly not to study during their menses, if they did not want to suffer "menorrhagia, dysmenorrhea, hemorrhage, amenorrhea, headache, dyspepsia, invalidism, neuralgia, hysteria, intense insanity, and premature death" (Golden, 2003).

Here an excerpt from "Novel Reading A Cause Of Female Depravity" (1797):

"Be not staggered, moral reader, at the recital! such (sic) serpents are really in existence; such daemons in the form of women are now too often to be found! (...) I have seen two poor disconsolate parents drop into premature graves, miserable victims to their daughters' dishonour, and the peace of several relative families wounded, never to be healed again in this world.  

'And was novel-reading the cause of this?' inquires some gentle fair one, who, deprived of such an amusement, could hardly exist; 'was novel reading the foundation of such frail conduct?' I answer yes!"

- Golden, C. J. (2003). Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction. University Press of Florida
- The Monthly Mirror: Reflecting Men And Manners (1797) Novel Reading A Cause Of Female Depravity. Vol. IV (online)
- photographs of Audrey Hepburn (Mark Shaw, 1953) via and via and via and via

"In a way we are all kind of cousins."

"Travelling is breaking boundaries. To travel is to fuel that inner spark of natural curiosity that leads us to explore. Leads us to pursue new ways, and see the world in a different light every day. Discover new places. People. Faces. Gestures. A world of unexpected opportunities."
momondo



Together with DNA testing service AncestryDNA, ad agency &Co and production house Bacon, Danish flight comparison site momondo launched "The DNA Journey", an ongoing contest that encourages people to send in their DNA samples and win a trip to countries of their unknown origin (via). With this journey, momondo aims to make people understand that there are more things uniting us, than dividing us (via).




"Let's open our world.

We only have one world, but it’s divided. We tend to think that there are more things dividing us than uniting us.
momondo was founded on the belief that everybody should be able to travel the world, to meet other people, and experience other cultures and religions. Travel opens our minds: when we experience something different, we begin to see things differently.
To celebrate the colourful diversity of the world, we invite you to join The DNA Journey. We hope it will inspire you to explore your own diversity and discover how you are connected to the rest of the world."
momondo

And here the beautiful clip (although actors are said to be participating) with partly patriotic and nationalistic participants showing their reactions to finding out that they are part Turkish or 5% German:



photographs of Romy Schneider and Audrey Hepburn via and via and via

Paris has a good idea

"Paris is always a good idea."
Audrey Hepburn



Paris does not just seem to be a good idea but to have a good idea. The city recently announced a plan to stop housing displacement in central neighbourhoods and the creation of "ghettos for the rich". The Council of Paris published a list of 257 addresses, i.e. over 8.000 flats, that the city would have the "right of first-refusal" to buy. These flats are located in areas that are gentrified and the city aims to increase subsidised rental options and to ensure that at least some remain affordable to middle-income Parisians, the "great forgotten ones".



"Choosing diversity and solidarity, against exclusion, social determinism and the centrifugal logic of the market. It also aims to reduce inequalities between the east and the west of Paris in particular, developing social supply where it is insufficient."
Ian Brossat, mayor's aide



In other words, when a flat on the list comes of for sale it must first be offered to the city at the market price; the price is decided by the city. If the landlord or landlady does not wish to accept the offer, they can appeal to an independent judge in order to have it repriced. The plan is certainly not cheap but worth it as it "is essentially to give Paris the ability to act as a social-mix monitor, steeping in to prevent social segregation in the public interest if they feel it is under threat." No matter if it is going to be a success, it "deserves credit for really trying." (via)



photographs: of Christian Bérard and Rénee (suit by Dior, Le Marais, Paris in August 1947) by Richard Avedon via, of Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and Richard Avedon for Harper's Bazaar (by Henry Wolf, 1959) via and via, of Richard Avedon and Audrey Hepburn via, of Audrey Hepburn with William Holden (set of "Paris When it Sizzles", 1964) via and via, of Dovima dressed in Dior by Richard Avedon (1955) via

Audrey, Givenchy and Diversity in Fashion

For about forty years, Audrey Hepburn (anim. gif via) was the muse and a close friend of the French aristocrat and fashion designer Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy. 



Hubert founded The House of Givenchy in 1952, since 2005 Givenchy has been headed by the Italian creative director Riccardo Tisci. Tisci caused a media stir in 2010 when he cast his transgender assistant Lea T. for an ad campaign (via). For the Givenchy 2011 spring campaign he chose albino model Stephen Thompson (via) and presented an "All Asian Models" cast.



Audrey and her dog Mr. Famous photgraphed by Inge Morath (1959) via and via



These might seem rather modest steps. At the same time, however, they are not that insignificant considering the "diversity standards" of the fashion industry. This year, for instance, Prada made headlines by casting Malaika Firth for a campaign - the first non-white model after almost twenty years (via). Naomi Campbell was the last black model chosen by Prada. That was back in 1994, the very year Firth was born (via).

Fashion and diversity ... to continue click here