Pretty much. The stuff that drives me nuts is when such government positions are stuffed only with people from industry, and so only take the industry’s position – rather dangerous staffing for a watchdog/regulatory entity.
See the Ontario Municipal Board, the CRTC, the FCC, the EPA, and many more.
Depends what level.
Lower level staffers coming from industry can be fantastic. It’s when you have the ability to set policy that there is a problem. At the same time, having someone who knows nothing about the sector can be it’s own problem. SOPA/PIPA and the new, disastrous EU internet regs show that.
The trick is finding people who understand what they’re regulating without being beholden to the regulated parties. As opposed to hiring those who have specifically treated the regulators as the enemy to be in charge of the whole caboodle.
Seems more likely to involve overseas activities that are more indirect harms given standing through trade authorities. Country A may be China. The authority may be WIPO.
This bothers me. I mean, my inclination is that taxonomy is something we are leaving for future scholars, and so making it all about headlines seems a tad vain, but I get that’s how it works and who knows what animals will be left for them anyway. The International Committee of Zoological Nomenclature is officially neutral on selling names like this, recognizing it can provide needed funding and help people value biodiversity, but with a list of concerns about the effects of monetizing taxonomy.
But in any case, those names should conform to the rules, yeah? From article 25C, Responsibility of Authors Forming New Names:
Authors should exercise reasonable care and consideration in forming new names to ensure that they are chosen with their subsequent users in mind and that, as far as possible, they are appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence.
It doesn’t say so explicitly, but this has usually been taken as meaning you shouldn’t name species as insults. This came up not so long ago with the fungus beetles Agathidium bushi, cheneyi, and rumsfeldi, named alongside vaderi. But it turns out the names were supposedly honorary, by some accounts because scientists and conservationists had for some reason named a lot more things after Democrats than Republicans.
Is that concern passé? Honestly, this doesn’t work for me because I don’t see anything so horrible about caecilians. Caecilians are fascinating and I hope to meet one someday. Sure, they’re worm-like and blind, ha ha. Should geologist Gregory then likewise be thought of as mocked by Dermophis gregorii? How about the louse, which in my opinion is much less pleasant, Strigiphilus garylarsoni? Larson considered the name an honor; is it appropriate to then give the same thing out as a snub?
I also vaguely wonder about the image of the species in question. The beetle Anophthalmus hitleri, almost the only thing named for Hitler during the short period he was popular, has supposedly suffered for it, with poachers collecting them for his new modern fans. This is not the first species named for Trump, and his supporters don’t seem to care, so that sort of thing is probably paranoid to worry about. But still, if we think charismatic species are important for public support, does this help or not?
The ICZN concludes: “monetizing biodiversity is indeed a challenge.” I know monetizing everything is the whole point of our society, but I wish we thought a little bit more about it first.
Me, too. I’m getting a little sick of everything being for money and think some things can be for public good.
Good to see that I’m not the only one obsessed with Schmitt and Agamben.
Did they get this from the Genderbread Person project?
(…which is a bit problematic and incomplete where it comes to non-binary identities but is still better than the average Fox News cultist’s understanding)
That, or Fucker Carlson really wishes his gingerbread man had a dick.
No idea what the full context is or how it became a story for them to focus on, but here’s a (thankfully, short) clip from the actual interview…
Sometimes terrible people have to be terrible people in public, otherwise, how do they get to enjoy being terrible people? It’s physics! Or the tides. Or something. We’ll be right back after these messages.
Of course, if all gingerbread cookies are male, well…
I’d think that would make things more uncomfortable for these terrible people, rather than less…
They expect special credit for being basically decent?
ETA: (Also WTF@ “spiritual neutering”)
It’s odd. I’ve lived forty years as a man without feeling neutered in any regard. So why is it that a little gingerbread person is all it takes to neuter Fucker Carlson?
Not attached very well?
I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles. 
Personally, I would not want to dominate the search results for “spiritual neutering”…
