It was on ABC News this Sunday morning which I didn't watch but it's on the net at this post.
First of all, finally, a pollster is adding Hillary and Michelle Obama to the slate.
I follow polling here.
So, let's look at the ABC News polling story:
- expanding the slate to include Hillary and Michelle, and asking one simple open-ended question, Biden gets 17% and BS gets 11%
- if that's even close to accurate, it is an incredible turn of events: both JB and BS were each getting upwards of 30% of the vote just a week ago
- the mayor of a little town in Indiana gets 5% -- I still think it speaks volumes that anyone seriously thinks a mayor of a little town in the midwest could be our next president; it would be interesting to see his inaugural ball partner
- Kamala the chameleon, Beto the Irishman, and Pocahontas each get about 4%
- all the rest: 1% or not mentioned at all
- most surprising: Michelle and Hillary -- neither could get to 2%; I am absolutely convinced if given the right question, Michelle would poll 50%+ among Democrats; not sure about Hillary
- if these numbers are even remotely close, President Obama is very correct: we are seeing a circular firing squad
- more than ever, I really think that supporters of BS will not budge
- supporters of the other 19 will go with anyone but BS, but unlikely they would agree to give the vote to Biden in the early rounds of a brokered DNC convention
- more and more, it's hard to imagine this won't be a brokered convention
- it really appears that BS has maxed out at 30% and he will never go higher, not even in a head-to-head, mano-a-mano with JB; his supporters won't budge, but he won't get any more
- Biden? Hubert Humphrey; George McGovern; Michael Dukakis
- whatever happened to Bloomberg, Howard Schultz, Terry McAuliffe?
- if anyone actually steps back for a moment and thinks about 80-ish year-old Biden leading the Democrat Party -- it just seems beyond the pale
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The Book Page
Anyone interested in natural history, run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore or surf over to Amazon and buy Natural Histories Innumerable Insects: The Story of the Most Diverse and Myriad Animals on Earth, Michael S. Engel, c. 2018.
The first thing that jumps out at me: anyone who uses insects as a barometer of global warming has no credibility. From page xv:
Estimates of the total current diversity of insects range from 1.5 to 30 million species. A conservative and likely realistic value is somewhere around 5 million species. At 5 million, it means we are still far short of understanding the variety of insect life surrounding us.But look at that. Biologists have identified about a million species of insects, and there could be as many as 30 million species. That's mind-boggling.
How does a million species of insects compare with other animals?
- insects:
- weevils: 60,000 species
- bees: 20,000 species
- butterflies: 18,700 species
- non-insects:
- fish: 30,000 species
- birds: 10,000 species
- mammals: 5,400 species
- But look at this:
- As presently known, weevils alone are 6 times the diversity of birds, and unlike birds, new species of weevils are discovered at such a high rate that some entomologists estimate there may be over 200,000 species of this one insect group alone.
- Termites: one of the smaller lineages, and there are 3,100 species; they come close to rivaling all mammalian diversity
- Phylum: arthorpoda
- Two sub-phyla/clades: chelicerata and mandibulata
- chelicerata: spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks
- mandibulata: mandibles
- Three sub-phya of the mandibulata:
- crustacea (memo to self: crawfish season; crawfish boil Monday night)
- myriapoda (millipedes, centipedes)
- hexapoda (six legs)
- Two sub-phyla of hexapoda:
- insecta: winged (true insects)
- entognatha: wingless (not considered true insects -- so six legs not the defining characteristic of insects)
- chelicerata: spiders, mites, ticks; includes horseshoe crabs (which are not crabs at all)
- Chelicerates have fangs, but all the rest have mandibles.
- crustacea: on the menu
- myriapoda: millipedes, centipedes
- hexapoda: winged and wingless
- 155,000 species identified so far
- this may be only a quarter or less of their global diversity
- flies are more ecologically varied than any other group of insects
- Quick: name the number one pollinator. Yup, bees.
- Quick: what is the number two pollinator? Flies.
- Quick: other pollinators? Butterflies, moths, beetles.
The holometabolous insects.
- holometabolous: full metamorphsosis
- account for 85% of all insects
- four groups of holometabolous insects account for 100,000 species each
- the other groups include 10,000 species or less in all
- the groups (orders) -- it looks like there are seven groups or eleven orders
- megaloptera, raphidioptera, neuroptera: dobsonflies, snakeflies, lacewings
- coleoptera: the beetles, order coleoptera
- the behemothsof insect diversity: 360,000 species
- strepsiptera: twisted-wings; only 600 species
- hymenoptera, the order of wasps: ants, bees, and wasps
- 155,000 species
- ants and bees are merely modified wasps
- mecoptera, siphonaptera: scorpionflies; scarcely more than 750 species
- diptera: true flies as well as midge and mosquitoes
- flies: 155,000 species
- trichoptera, lepidoptera: caddisflies, butterlies, and moths
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