It goes on

Reading Roland Piquepaille's blog this morning has reminded me of another item I meant to include yesterday about some clever bees who were trained to sniff out landmines. Roland's post today also includes a piece how bees are solving complicated colour puzzles which may lead to the design of sophisticated visual systems for robots. The list goes on... :-)

Dumb beasts

One of my favourite Simpsons episodes is the one where Lisa undertakes a science project to find out "Is my brother dumber than a hamster?" The second experiment in the project involves a cupcake that gives an electric shock if touched. Needless to say, the hamster learns to avoid the cupcake after the first shock whereas Bart continues to reach for the cupcake (even though there's a sign saying "Do not touch"), getting shocked repeatedly until Lisa concludes the research with the result "Hamster 2, Bart 0".

I'm reminded of that episode whenever I hear people make pronouncements about how we (homer sapiens) are supposedly the smartest banana in the evolutionary bunch. And we add insult to injury when we attribute all the awful things about ourselves to our animal cousins – “pig ignorant”, “dog ugly”, “rat cunning”. One has to wonder, who’s calling whom a dumb beast?

Consider Alex the African parrot who appears to understand the abstraction "zero". Researchers working with Alex conclude "(t)he results add to growing evidence that birds and other animals are much smarter than we thought" (just like earlier, similar “discoveries” about black people and women!) Later in the article we hear how coots can keep track of their eggs in a nest, even if they're mixed in with other birds' eggs. How many of us could (in all honesty) identify our offspring in a ward full of bald infants? No. We attach labelled wrist bands to our neonates and, in the case of twins, make them continue to wear them until the child is able to tell us which twin they are.

Further in the article we learn that black-capped chickadees are able to warn their communities about the size and threat of specific predators. “Bird-brained” humans won't be surprised to learn that crows use tools. Prairie dogs - in perhaps the most clever adaptation of all - have come up with a prairie dog version of the word "humans!" to bark to each other in alarm. Finally, at the end of the article, we leave Alex and the researchers to discover how well Alex can count and subtract.

In other recent news we learn of some dolphins at the Epscot Disney Centre in Florida who have learned to sing the theme from Batman! Now some of you won't know that the tune from Batman involves two separate competencies - pitch and rhythm. And apparently these dolphins are able to demonstrate both. (Think about that the next time you watch the Australian Idol auditions). But even that is not enough evidence for some, such as the human psychologist (not involved in the experiments) quoted in the article who tetchily responded "I think music is a human construct" … "I doubt that it has pertinence to animals, although the elements of music, such as pitch, time, timbre, rhythm, etc, may be incorporated into animal communication." Oh no, mister behaviourist quadrant brain couldn’t tie your own shoelaces pedant, no pertinence at all. Might upset your overweening ideas about human intelligence and the whole educational psychology applecart. Much better to stick your fingers in your university educated ears and hum I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK, hmmm?

But someone over in the land of the free must know a thing or two because it has also transpired that some “(a)rmed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater” (!?!) escaped into the Gulf of Mexico during the kaos of hurricane Katrina. And I do admit that my first reaction upon reading the story was to imagine Maxwell Smart haplessly trying to explain the situation to the Chief. Somewhat mysteriously, Don Adams - the actor who played Max - “died” at around the same time, so who knows – I’m beginning to think that anything’s possible nowadays. Rather troublingly, there is also some concern about civilian divers and windsurfers being mistakenly targeted by the escapee dolphins but personally I’d rather take my chances with armed dolphins than armed humans lurking underwater. I like to think that the escaped dolphins will meet up with a wild group of bottlenosed funsters, throw down their guns and start singing Batman like any creature in their right mind should.

Closer to home, Brisbane City Council employs a couple of Jack Russell terriers as rat catchers around its waterways and, in its enlightened way, pays them a proper wage and entitlements including holiday leave, meals, sick leave, long service leave and so on for their services. Though one has to wonder what will happen to the poor little fellows once they have to negotiate workplace bargains for themselves in this brave new “fairer” Australia that is being stitched up as we sleep.

And it should come as no surprise to be reminded of the incredible achievements of our closest primate cousins including

• the tres debonair Kokomo Jr who not only acted in television programs but also painted, played saxophone and violin and skied
• Nim Chimsky who, like his namesake Noam Chomsky, helped humans research the underpinning biological constructs of language and in his spare time played practical jokes on his human sisters
• Koko the gorilla who had a vocabulary of more than 1000 words, kept pet cats and cried (telling her handlers she felt “sad”) when a beloved kitten died
• Wild gorillas who, left to their own devices and without our “training” use tools to negotiate territory and survive in conditions that would have most of us crying for our mothers within minutes

Even the story of Clever Hans says more about human nature than anything else. “Ooh", said the fancypants scientist Oskar Pfungst "Clever Hans wasn't counting - he was reading the body language of his master and responding accordingly". Well derrrr, Herr Doktor. Could I respectfully suggest that that's still a tad more intelligent than a species who employ “executive life coaches” to tell them how to wipe their sorry arses? I can just imagine perfectionist Pfungst, were he alive today, exclaiming “Batman? Batman?!? Get them to do Wagner's Ring Cycle and then I’ll call it singing!”

Now if, at this point, you’re thinking “ah well – yes, but that’s because she’s talking about mammals and they’re just like us” consider this: For years researchers dismissed the so-called "waggle dance" of the honeybee as the mindless gyrations of an excitable being (which I suppose is forgivable considering that human behaviour was the only thing they had to go on at that stage). Instead, years later, we find that these tiny, perfectly formed, disciplined and gorgeous creatures are displaying “the most sophisticated example of non- primate communication that we know of" (and it really is satisfying to finally see the words “that we know of” included at the end of a scientific sentence acknowledging that perhaps it is “we” who need to learn more rather than “they” who need to prove something to us).

So next time you’re tempted to say something patronising about an animal, bird, insect or reptile, or inclined to insult an animal by comparing them unfavourably to a person, think twice. Otherwise you might just end up sounding like a big ignoramus erectus.


(Luvly photos by kms, stefan and www.koko.org)

PS: Tonight I learned that mice are the troubadours of the animal world, composing individual songs for their beloved. View this article to listen to some mp3s!

Religion 5.0

One thing you may not know about me is that deep down I'm quite "religious". As a small child I'd sneak into empty churches to talk to God. It just wasn't the same when services were on - all those dour adults, all that droning and standing up and down and kneeling. I also was never able to fully accommodate the idea of men in strange costumes and Fred Flinstonesque "grand pooh bah" hats. To this day I cannot see a bishop without feeling startled and a bit sheepish. No, as a child I much preferred it when it was just God and me alone together. And at the time I really thought I was talking with the big guy. I never got into the Sunday School stuff about lambs frolicking with lions in heaven but I did feel enormously motivated to discover meaning, acknowledge mystery, seek comfort. Other times I'd go there to look at the amazing windows and artefacts. And what I've always remembered is how palpably and genuinely humans can feel these things, even as children.

From what I can gather (and I'm showing my ignorant western bias here in not specifically drawing on religious traditions from places like China, India, South America, Africa, indigenous Australia and in fact most of the world - my purpose here isn't to start a career as a religious scholar, my purpose is to express something on this traditional day of spirit in a way that marks my reverence and recognises something about the culture in which I have marinated) so... from what I can gather in my typically skewed human way, we're in Religion 4.0 at the moment.

The way I see it, Religion 1.0 was the original Gaia orientation of prehistory, where everything was Mother and crude statues of Venus of Willendorf were some of the first artforms that articulated a human appreciation of these mysteries.

Religion 2.0 came after the discovery of agriculture and the shift towards settlement. By then humans had worked out how babies were concieved and how plants were grown. So this led to a polytheistic view of the universe that finally gave males a place in the pantheon. The gods of Olympus would have been Religion 2.6 or so, the gods of Rome 2.7 - essentially what I'm clustering here is a period where man (meaning humans) explored the idea of a range of gods to accommodate an increasingly complex epistemology.

Religion 3.0 started about 4,000 years ago when somehow it transpired that there was only one god and it happened to be male. I include Judaism, Christianity and Islam in this family because even though they cover everything from "an eye for an eye" to "turn the other cheek", it still points (in my mind) to religious forms that have enough in common to be considered a group (and I'm not going to elaborate here 'cos the last thing I want is to get into an argument about religion or attract a whopping great fatwa).

Religion 4.0 in my opinion has been the post-war grab bag of the secular age where anything goes and we're seeing all sorts of DIY approaches to the sacred. This includes neo-pagans, the "recovery" movement, the cults of consumerism and celebrity idol worship, new agers, neo-conservatives and so on. And it's only now that I'm typing this that I'm realising what it is that I don't like about all the current manifestations of human religion - they're all "neo" something, like we're Moses' lost tribes stuck between one religion and the next, clinging to versions of what has gone before, lacking the faith and imagination to go forward and discover what might come. (And yes, I think the great god Science belongs in this cluster too after succumbing to the hubris that in some ways has encouraged the rising tide of anti-intellectualism that's lapping at our ankles as we speak...)

But what this all points to, in my opinion, is a seemingly universal religious instinct (or whatever you want to call it in your politically correct, culturally preferred versions) which appears to be shared across cultures and all times. And the reason I'm not using the word "spiritual" instead of "religious" in any part of this post is because the words don't matter to me as much as what they're attempting to say. Religions 1.0 to 4.0 have all been versions of the same thing - the human need to make sense of the universe, find meaning, overcome fear, learn how to live. Just like the "F" word (ie feminism), I refuse to give it up just because other people have given it a bad name.

So while I'm waiting for Religion 5.0 to emerge out of the cosmic soup, I'd like to take the opportunity today to observe a Religion 3.0 ritual that honours those who have died but are not forgotten. One version of this observance is called All Saints Day on November 1, followed by All Souls Day on November 2. Most of us don't know about it because death is the last taboo (which reminds me - the so called "wellness" movement is approaching level 4.0 religion status bigtime if you ask me...). But like it or not, death is the only certainty (taxes being optional for some, in the US at least...).

So on this suitably grey November day, with every beat of my fragile human heart, I celebrate the Mexican Day of the Dead and light a candle of love and rememberance for those I have lost as well as those I have never known. May all souls be remembered today.

Amen.

Thanks to LeoL30, dharma and selva respectively (and respectfully) for the beautiful photos.

Go figure

I've just come across an article in the Sydney Morning Herald saying that the US Congress is in the process of cutting $574 million from the food stamp budget, potentially depriving 300,000 people from this basic level of support. I also learned that 12% of households (almost 1 in 8) in the States are currently on the food stamps program - many of them the "working poor" that we'll soon be emulating here in this supposed land of milk and honey.

So I looked up the financial costs of the war on Iraq. $204.37 billion and counting. More than 350 times the amount they're cutting from the food stamps budget. Or, conversely, enough to add almost 106 million more people to the food stamps program. And if it's true that the rich have been given more than their fair share of tax breaks in recent years, then whose money are they using anyway?

I'd really prefer to blog about stupid things that people do. Or the meaninglessness of life. Or even the goosebumpy sacredness of the universe. Hell, I don't care - it's all just material to weave into some kind of shape that might amuse. But like a moth I just cannot seem to turn my face away from the blinding heat of the obvious, the shameful, the elephant in the room. So I'm going to start writing more about these sorts of things. I hope you do too.

Photo courtesy thedak

4 God so luvd da world

Now call me old fashioned but is there something fundamentally (ha ha..) wrong with translating the Bible into SMS language? Or is it just me? Until now I've been pretty sanguine about the suggestion that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, measured in my assessment of Piss Christ, bemused by the intelligent design contortionists (sorry - no link - don't want to encourage them...) and moved by The Last Temptation of Christ. I thought I was fairly balanced. Neutral. Open minded. But this?

I can just imagine Bible scholars all over the world stopped mid-air in their endless debates about the subtle and major differences between Greek and Hebrew, the transcendent and the immanent, the cup and the lip.

Is the power of the Bible in the poetry of the language and richness of metaphors, or is it really just the story - the telling of the literal, the gist, the synopsis? Is there a pierced modern day St Pauline surfing the information superhighway, ripe for her SMS to Damascus?

I then started to wonder whether there are any sacred cows that can't be milked for their SMS goodness. Why stop at the Bible? For instance, would Elizabeth Barrett Browning have snagged her man if she'd texted this?

how spunky r u?
jeez - whr do i stRt?
Im rly rly stoked
my fElnz 4 u cud fil da entrtainmNt cNta
or mAbE evN da melburn crickt grnd!
but ur pritE hot in frnt of da TV 2, evN in yr tracky daks
& Im not stuffin u round here or tryin 2 mAk myslf look big
itz jst Im so Xited i cud spit
ur da best thng since da teenaj mutnt ninja turtls & dey wer KEWL
thinkN bout u mAkz my hed spin
fair dinkm if NEthing hapnd 2 me i reckn i'd stil dig u heaps

Jesus...

(thx 2 hankerific 4 da photo)

The nature of things

Sitting in a doctors surgery nursing my black mood, listening to a podcast on bio terrorism, scowling at the wall. Out the window there's a fruit tree bouncing in the breeze, heavy with blossom, scent blaring. Blah. Piss off. Spring, schming.

A little old lady wanders in carefully holding a plant cutting - a delicate orchidy looking thing or something. "Ooh!" the girls at the desk squeal in unison. Some discussion about how someone's aunt took a cutting the other day and how well it's doing. I'm in little Italy - they're always swapping plants'n'things. The excited squeals descend into a sonatina of murmurs and clucks, lulling me into snooze mode. And then all of a sudden I feel really alert (but not alarmed).

Nature is open source.

THE UNIVERSE IS OPEN SOURCE.

There's plenty more where those cuttings came from. The more clippings they take, the better it'll grow. Everything we need or will ever need already exists in some form - we live within an unimaginable abundance of elements, raw materials, scripts and stand-alone environments. That old lady is a goddam hacker. The secretaries are pirates. That tree outside is an API in the hands of a good gardener. Even that red-faced squalling baby on the floor is open source, launched a matter of months ago. Some members of that baby's species know how to hack enough code to make another one. But fortunately most people prefer using the original program.

The operating system and all peripherals are totally interoperable. Everything within infinite coo-ee is except for a bunch of materials created by a few generations of intelligent hacks (enough to trigger a mass extinction in some cases, but even nature generates those from time to time). And another bunch of opportunistic bully boys think they can licence and control things like food and medicine just because they've learned how to spell its genetic code and have lodged a form. But hey, that's hardly bothering me now because something really obvious and important is revealing its beauty to me in this otherwise very bland and ordinary day.

Wow, eh? No wonder so many people are sharing things, creating collaboratively, fighting the introduction of arbitrary and repressive laws, contributing to the greater good and so on. It's in our code. It's natural. (It's bloody obvious once you start thinking about it!)

Go, you good thing.

Photo by josef stuefer

Weapons of face construction

What is it with staff who work in the cosmetic counters of major department stores? I've visited three in the last two days and feel positively terrorised.

[you have been spared a long, LONG description of me eventually buying something - trust me - you have been SPAAAAAAAAAARED - UGH! ]

In the end, feeling like a total disgrace as a woman and ignoring the misgivings of the rational part of my brain ("you spent how much?!?") I pathetically explained that I'm "just not that into cosmetics" to the woman processing my credit card. She stared at me with total shock said "Really?! They're my LIFE!!"

That helped. Until then I honestly had started to believe there was something fundamentally wrong with me that I needed to work on.

Even if you're not buying cosmetics or planning to stop to look at anything, be prepared. The staff strategically place themselves at the intersections of the various islands of glass and panelling so that they can aggressively lunge at unsuspecting customers with bottles of perfume, aftershave and other stuff to slime you with. Don't be taken in by the quasi-nurse uniform starched dresses and nice smiles. They're bloody ruthless.

You have been warned.

photo by peppermintrock