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I wanted to post this over at /r/slatestarcodex but it's obviously CW material and surely someone should bring it to Scott's attention, as it wins him quite a large number of prophet points I suspect...
NPR reports that these American birds and dozens more will be renamed, to remove human monikers.
The story is... well, pretty much exactly what you think it is, I bet.
I don't really care? Except that I do care, to just this extent, as I've written before:
I am not an ornithologist. I'm not even a bird-watcher. The closest I've ever come is snapping an occasional photo of a bird that catches my attention. These changes have nothing to do with me... except, of course insofar as they represent the continued burning-down of the contributions of "my" culture to humanity's broader understanding of the world. The active removal--dare I say "erasure?"--of the past, so as not to offend the sensibilities of the present.
(But mostly, I'm once more astonished by Scott's peculiar prescience...)
This is like the third or fourth "culture war in bird-watching" story I heard about since Scott wrote his post.
At this point I'm beginning to think they like culture war topics more than Leica vs Zeiss vs Swarovski.
Never watched a bird in my life, but the Zeiss Victory SF 10x42 are a in a class of their own. I highly recommend at least viewing something far away through them at some point. They took my breath away with how clearly I could read text on an advertising billboard more than 3km away.
Wish I could justify owning a pair personally but unfortunately I'd use them like once a year or less and the price is just too high for it to be worth it.
They'd be a deductible expense for me, so I chuckled and smugly looked them up to-
Yeah, no, not a chance.
Maybe it's just because I'm an enthusiast in photography and sport shooting, with their extremely pricey optics, that I expected these to be more than $3k.
That's pretty high for binoculars. Compare Vortex cheap 10x42 at under $200 or their nice line at $1700. Camera lenses are just crazy expensive.
That's just the typical glass price/quality tier list though. China->Philippines->Japan->Alpine space magic
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