Tea at Trianon: Parrots Are Taking Over the World

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Parrots Are Taking Over the World

From Scientific American:

Today at least 60 of the world's 380 or so parrot species have a breeding population in a country outside their natural geographical range. Each successful transplant has its own story: some are benign, others a threat to the local wildlife; some are abundant in their home ranges, whereas others rely on cities as a refuge from extinction. All are by-products of the pet trade and animal trafficking around the world. Because they're parrots, they're smart, adaptable, creative and loud. “They're animals that are really social, and they live in cognitively complex social environments,” says Grace Smith-Vidaurre, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University and the University of Cincinnati, who studies the birds. “They're like humans in a lot of ways.” (Read more.)