Just for you, Kimm-my

My good friend Kimm-my has been bothering me for a while to make a correction to something on my old webpage. Well, Kimm, I finally made the changes! I'm posting a picture of me and Kimm-my standing in front of a giant mining pit.

B.A. in Futurism

You have to respect H.G.Wells (1866-1946). Not many people have written 20+ books. And despite titles like Love and Mr. Lewisham, he managed to be world renowned without the benefit of a video weblog. He’s the father of an entire genre of fiction! The guy had “futurist” on his business card, how awesome is that? I bring all this up because I finished listening to War of the Worlds on CD in the lab the other day. The only other Wells work I’d read previously was The Time Machine, which I enjoyed but the point of which I completely missed. How was I supposed to get all that?

After reading the book I wanted to see a movie version, to see how they portrayed the book. I chose the most recent version, with Tom Cruise. Granted, the book was published in 1898 and the movie made 107 years later in 2005, so some things will be different. I could tell that the screenwriters had read the book, at some point in their life, maybe when they were kids. Some of the points were right: aliens in enormous tripods, heat rays, blood-drinking, and the eventual death-by-bacterium (sorry if I spoiled that for anyone). And I could tell that certain scenes were inspired by events from the book, and one character (just one) was the amalgamation of two characters from the book. Other than that, nothing can be attributed to Wells. Wells’ aliens didn’t have protective force-shields (lame!), they didn’t plant the tripods here centuries ago (at lease I don’t think that was in the book; I might have zoned out for that part), they didn’t come to earth in a lightning storm, they did have cool black-gas that they used on the humans. There is no analogue for the Cruise character or the aggravating Dakota Fanning character (I really wish the aliens had eaten her). But I’ve seen worse adaptations, so I won’t complain further. As an adaptation it could have been better: more suspense and less action. As a summer blockbuster popcorn flick it was just what you would expect.

Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred

I had a dream this morning. It occurred in the space of time between my alarm going off and me getting up. Since this period averages 60 minutes, it’s plenty of time for another REM cycle. In the dream I was living at my parent’s house in Grafton. I had acquired two large aquaria. One held some fish – I didn’t actually see the fish, but I knew they were there. The other was more of a terrarium and contained two miniature wallabies. I actually don’t know how large wallabies are in real life, but I assume they’re larger than what I had in the tank. At one point I went to look at them, and I saw that my cats (dream cats, I don’t have real-life cats) had eaten them. Except they hadn’t eaten everything, so there were still little wallaby corpses in the tank. It was awful. In the dream, I told my father that the cats had eaten my wallabies, and he said that cats will do that. As if there was some axiom that, given the opportunity, cats will eat wallabies.

The worst part of the dream, other than the waking-up sad part, is that I’ve had Tie Me Kangaroo Down stuck in my head all morning, particularly the part about the “wallaby's feed.”

Sharkwater

I’ve been putting off writing about this. I had so much to say, but couldn’t figure out how to say it. Anger is hard to express articulately, and rage and grief even more so. I’m talking about the movie Sharkwater I saw last week. It’s a documentary about the slaughter of sharks and their subsequent precipitous drops in abundance. The narrative thread was the story of making the movie, the things the maker (a Canadian in his early twenties) went though to get it made: 5 years, murder charges, flesh-eating bacteria, etc. Because it was told through his eyes, he featured heavily in it. The main criticism I’ve heard of this movie was that it was self-indulgent. I agree that the filmmaker did seem to love himself very much, and was not afraid to feature himself on camera in a speedo. However, the movie wasn’t really about him, it was about sharks. He simply made an error in including himself too much. It was not a vanity project by any stretch of the imagination; I truly believe this movie was made to benefit sharks, not himself.

The other criticism that I’ve heard of this movie is the lack of women that appear in it. I was really surprised when I heard this. I was so distracted by the horrific content, I barely noticed when my former Dalhousie prof Boris Worm appeared on screen, let alone the fact that women didn’t. I think the lack of women is indicative of the lack of women in fisheries in general. I know of no female fisheries biologists, and can’t think of any female marine ecologists that would give the movie clout. This lack-of-women thing is a non issue in my book.

I already knew about the population declines and I knew about the finning. What I did not know about was the scale of the finning, about the horrible mistreatment of the sharks, the appalling waste of their lives. Knowing and seeing are two different things. I’ve worked with sharks, I’ve hauled them by their eye sockets and cut them open; I’ve felt their hearts beat. I believed, when I did that work, that I was helping to make the best of a lamentable situation. I still believe that. Nothing I experienced before prepared me for what I went through watching this movie. I’ve always been sensitive to animals in pain, and to watch a shark dragged aboard a boat, to have its fins cut off, and thrown back into the water STILL ALIVE to die slowly and painfully on the ocean floor was unbearable. A lot of people know about finning (the removal of shark fins to use in shark fin soup), but they don’t really let themselves see what it is. The sharks are often alive when their fins are taken; they are thrown back into the water to die. This isn’t a few sharks we’re talking about either: it’s hundreds of thousands of sharks. Why is this acceptable to us? If hundreds of thousands kittens or polar bears were tortured and left to die every day we wouldn’t tolerate it for a minute. When it happens out in the ocean where we can’t see, it’s somehow not worth our attention.

This shark fin soup thing really bothers me. Shark fin is apparently tasteless, so the soup is flavoured with chicken or beef, and the fin is just put there for show. It’s a sign of wealth and status. What happens if they wake up tomorrow and decided that golden eagle eyes or panda infant livers are the new status symbol? But that won’t happen, as shark populations decrease even further, fins will increase even more in their worth. Remember the story of the Great Auk?

I tend not to get too personal with my blog entries. I’m not one of those people who routinely bare their soul on the internet. I will say that this movie really got to me. I cried while I watched it, and I wept when I got home and continued to think about it. My faith in humanity has decreased, after contemplation of this situation. I don’t believe that we will save the sharks, even if we are capable of somehow enforcing international law in international waters. I think that massive shark extinctions or extirpations will occur in my lifetime and when there are no shark fins left, some other absurd and arbitrary food item will become the fashion.

If you still have hope, you should see Sharkwater, and you should sign the on-line petitions to stop finning. And you should give this guy money, because even though what he’s doing is morally ambiguous, he’s actually doing something.

Shame on you, lame ass hick! Get a library card

I’ve been listening to a lot of U2 lately. I was getting very tired of my playlist, so I made an all-U2 playlist (only 255 tracks, mostly live performances) and I’ve been listening to that and remembering where my obsession comes from. I don’t care if they are billionaire hypocrites (which I don’t really believe) I just love their music. Seriously, I’ll be working and a note or lyric will strike me and I’ll just pause in my work to appreciate it – it’s that good.

I recently finished rereading (for perhaps the 4th time) A Scientific Romance. Now I’m on to a biography of Edith Wharton that I don’t really like. I haven’t read many biographies, and this one takes what Wharton wrote in her autobiography and diaries and psychoanalyzes to the point where the author is creating supernatural creatures to represent Wharton’s adolescent sexuality. I love Wharton, but I think I can do so quite well without knowing these things. And the fact that Wharton herself already wrote her biography suggests that what she wrote was all she wanted people to know. It seems almost rude for these Wharton scholars to dredge further into her personal life than she herself would wish, were she around to have any say.

If you’re thinking to yourself: “Who the hell is Edith Wharton?” To that I say: “Shame on you, lame ass hick! Get a library card.” Wharton is my Favourite Female Author (I have to separate Favourite Authors into distinct categories or my head will explode), she also makes the short-list for Favourite Author Overall. She wrote mostly about New York high society in the early 1900s. She didn’t necessarily paint a pretty picture of those times, though. What I love best about her is her ability to write endings. I have yet to be disappointed by the end of a Wharton book, when I’m so often let down by other authors. Wharton’s endings are always realistic, even if that makes them unhappy (which many authors would shy away from). For more on her awesomeness I refer you here or here (sorry about the po-ups).

The 1908 Debate

Oz "Ozzy" Loon (née Osprey) was kind enough to give me her opinions on the apparent laziness of the current cohort of undergrads at U of A, who can’t seem to get through a day without napping. Her comments can be seen in their entirety here. I agree with her on a number of points, namely the entire second paragraph. Though, I would like to add that tree planters consistently do more than 10 hours manual labour in a day. Also, and I could be mistaken, but I think certain branches of the military get more done before 6am than most people do all day.

However, I think her first point is neither here nor there. Chances are that in 1908, people who actually worked on farms and did 10 hours of manual labour a day didn’t get through high school, let alone attend University. People who worked on farms were needed to work on the farm, and didn’t generally attend schools at a higher level. I realize that Edmonton was probably very rural at that time, and I’m sure that there were exceptions to this. I think in 1908 at least it would be rare for children from working farms to attend University. In general, a post-secondary education didn’t become a common place thing until the mid-to-late 1900s; it certainly wasn’t common when my mom reached University age. I imagine that the students in 1908 were probably children of merchants or academics, from families with money where intellectual pursuits weren’t seen as a waste of time. And while they didn’t have TV, they may have had electricity. Calgary got electricity in 1889, and I certainly hope it didn’t take 19 years to make it 300km further north.

I didn't look very hard, but here's a picture from Edmonton, 1908.

Lethargy

I was in the U of A clinic this morning for my weekly hypochondriacal visit and there was a new show on the TV. Like everywhere now a days (Tim Horton’s, dentists, airport lounges), the clinic has TVs mounted from the ceiling for our viewing pleasure. Instead of showing their menu in slow motion a la Tim’s, or CTV NewsNet a la Terminal 3, it shows different slide shows of health-related facts and advice. I’ve become quite familiar with them and have my favourites. I find the one on relationship violence to be kind of weak and repetitive. However, I always look forward to the witty treatise on relaxation, “Stress Busting Rx.” Today they had a new show entitled “Nap Map.” In which they showed photographs of various benches and couches around campus and their locations (e.g., Pedway to Fine Arts) along with asterisks that I can only assume were a sleepability rating of some kind. One of the areas was a hallway in V Wing. The caption said something like, “no benches, but the hallway is plenty wide,” and I’m sure that statement had unnecessary exclamation marks. One problem with that (besides the obvious sanitation issue) is that V Wing no longer exists and I don’t think we should be encouraging students to sleep on the field of mud that stands in its stead. These images were interspersed with helpful hints, things like: only nap in well-lit and busy areas, hug your backpack while you sleep, and 15-20 minute naps are best. One of the hints was to carry an alarm with you so that you don’t sleep through classes or tests. The then hint continued with an “or” statement: or tape a note to yourself with the time you want to be woken. Seriously? If you see a note on a sleeping student are you going to read it and come back later to wake him up? Are you even going to read it? Chances are if there was some idiot sleeping on the floor of the V Wing hallway (say, 8 months ago, before it was rubble) with a note on his chest saying “Wake me up at 2:15pm,” people would kick him as they went by and he’d probably miss his class due to a concussion.

As absurd as this is, it bothers me that Health Services is encouraging students to take naps on campus during the school day. It’s great that we live in a society where students can doze off at a moment’s notice in public places with little fear of molestation or thievery. However, is this not a classic example of treating the symptom and not the illness? If people are so exhausted that they can’t get through the day without collapsing on a dirty vinyl couch in some random hallway for 20 minutes, than there are other things we need to worry about. Shouldn’t we be educating them on healthy sleep habits? (This is moot because they actually have that show at the clinic, and it teaches us that we should buy the best bed we can afford, and that beds are for sex and sleep and nothing else. It’s my second favourite show at the clinic).

There’s something else about all this that bothers me, and I can’t quite place my arthritic (or so I think) finger on it. Maybe it’s this image it gives me of the laziest fucking generation every to languidly crawl across the earth, or the fact that we’re happily encouraging this epidemic of torpor. I wasn’t alive in 1908, but I doubt the first cohort of U of A undergrads slept on the floor of hallways between classes. Or maybe they did and I’m being overly harsh because I dislike undergrads. When it comes to academia, I’m a Puritan; they should get off the floors and benches and sleep in class like the rest of us.

The remedy for such a situation

I’m drawing a blank as to what I should work on next. I know there are many, many things I could work on, but I can’t think of any of them. The only remedy for such a situation is to do nothing until the answer comes to me.

I had another invertebrate-themed dream a few nights ago. In this one, President Bartlett (the fictional President from The West Wing) was helping me out in the lab. And in my dream it wasn’t the actor, it was the President, and I called him “Sir.” I gave him an easy sample to pick, because when the Leader of the Free World volunteers to help you in the lab you don’t give him some assy 6-hour sample, you know?

I’ve read a number of books lately and haven’t felt compelled to write reviews of them like I used to. They were all very good books, and I enjoyed them immensely, which makes my way of reviewing them particularly difficult. High on the list (and I mean that everyone should read these) are: Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner and The Girls by Lori Lanses.

Freakonomics makes you look at everything from a different prospective, and it’s ridiculously interesting for a book about math. One cool experience I had while reading the book: there was one part where he used a multiple regression and had to explain it for the broad audience of the book and I skipped the explanation because I already know what that is. The cumulative 20 months of stats training I’ve had in my post-secondary career has finally paid off!

The Girls was about conjoined twins. They were joined at the head. It was an amazing work of fiction. One thing I thought about a lot while reading the book was how those girls were never alone. The most solitude they ever had was when the other was asleep. The author had the potential to make it unnecessarily sentimental, and there was a while there I was worried about how it was going to end. I hate when good books have bad endings. However, I wasn’t disappointed and it had an unexpected (in a good way) ending.

Before I go, I want to send a shout out to Monica Estevez for tomorrow is her birthday. Happy Birthday Monica! I’m posting an awesome picture of you below, you look very bad ass.

Best figure to appear in a journal article. Ever.

Sheldon and Kerr. 1972. The population density of monsters in Loch Ness. Limnology and Oceanography. 17(5): 796-798.

I mean, the Y-axis label is "Individual Monster Weight," how bitchin' is that?!

Seriously? Seriously!