{"id":1786,"date":"2017-11-29T09:56:50","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T05:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2017-11-29T09:56:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T05:56:50","slug":"shocking-news-in-the-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1786","title":{"rendered":"Shocking news in the Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Outlook section of Sunday&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em> (that&#8217;s my local paper) contained an article headlined &#8220;Species die. Get over it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t need much coffee after\u00a0<em>that<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It was not April Fool&#8217;s Day. I hadn&#8217;t picked up\u00a0<em>The Washington Times<\/em> by mistake. I was not reading <em>The Onion<\/em> by mistake, and I was not actually watching\u00a0<em>Saturday Night Live<\/em>. This was a real article by a real biologist (a Mr. R Alexander Pyron) suggesting that yes, species disappear from the planet all the time. We don&#8217;t need to go to the ends of the earth (literally) to save them. The species we need to worry about saving is\u00a0<em>us.<\/em> You know&#8230; da humans.<\/p>\n<p>Hidden gem in the Outlook section. Yeah, there&#8217;s the usual drivel about climate change and consuming less and all that. But there are some great zingers too about the silly efforts to save some bizarre animal you&#8217;ve never heard of.<\/p>\n<p>I mention this all because I actually <em>met<\/em> Mr. Pyron yesterday afternoon. He seemed very knowledgeable even though his nametag read &#8220;trainee.&#8221; He said he had just started working at Wendy&#8217;s after a long career in academia ended Monday, after the publishing of said article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Outlook section of Sunday&#8217;s\u00a0Washington Post (that&#8217;s my local paper) contained an article headlined &#8220;Species die. Get over it.&#8221; Don&#8217;t need much coffee after\u00a0that. It was not April Fool&#8217;s Day. I hadn&#8217;t picked up\u00a0The Washington Times by mistake. I was &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1786\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1787,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}