Chameleon tricks

1. Republicans to Republicans: just try to be something -- anything -- besides Republicans!

2. Barack Obama's logo seems to be in the middle of a months-long morph into the presidential seal.

3. An octopus can disguise itself as 15 other animals. See a few of them in this YouTube clip. (Via this Slate article about how smart octopuses are.)

4. Albanian women in their 70s and 80s talk about living their whole adult lives as men in order to provide for their families in the absence of male heads of household.

They've never had sex-change operations, but they've played the part. And they're all virgins to this day, apparently because there would have been no socially accepted way for them to have a sex life.

One of these women says the masquerade would no longer be necessary because of the gender equality that now exists in rural Albania:

"Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing.... Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman."

Think about that: rural Albania. An incredibly remote, conservative area of the world. If even they have been transformed by gender equality, can we really doubt that feminism has basically won the argument, if not eliminated every last vestige of misogyny?

Of course, due to the pessimistic attitude of many so-called progressives, it will instead be spun the opposite way: America isn't even as good as Albania!

And you know, even the idea that women used to be worse off than men in Albania might not be so obvious. After all, why was there a big problem with absent male heads of household? Because so many men were dying -- in war, feuds, and who knows what else.

Now, maybe it's just harder to think about them because it's easier to take account of the person who's talking to you face-to-face than someone you can't see.

But doesn't the tendency of men to die through acts of violence count as yet another disadvantage of being a man (for my list)? Or should we not take that into account because ... that's just what men do?

(Chameleon photo by Jeff Kleber.)


UPDATE: In the comments: "Aw, that chameleon looks like Larry King."

Follow-up IM:

you know how i have a feed of
the latest comments in the sidebar?
the top one right now is: "Aw, that
chameleon looks like Larry King."

ha ha

just made me LOL

that's me of course you know

i know

and don't you agree?

yeah

as if Larry King is really adorable

if you think of him as an animal
he becomes cute