on eating animals, being animals, and taunting animals with consumer electronics

The other day, my aunt emailed this great little video out to me and a bunch of my family.

Responses varied, but not that much:

"If God didn’t want you to eat animals he wouldn’t have made them out of meat."

"Oh my goodness Luiz is sooooo cute!!! I would never eat an animal in front of him."

"I always thought chickens were vegetables -- just based on their intellect."

…

a) This is why I’m not on facebook. (One reason, anyway.)

b) It’s hard to know how to respond here. Where to begin?

Reasons for not eating other animals (especially factory-farmed animals) range from the practical/economic and environmental, to questions of human health, to serious ethical considerations, including meat prohibitions and restrictions in many religious traditions.

On the other hand, justifications for eating other animals basically fall into two categories: “It tastes good.” & “It’s what we’ve always done.” While totally subjective, the taste argument is sound enough on its own terms. But the second argument is way more problematic in its sloppy historical determinism. It’s what we’ve always done. And nearly every word here (it’s, we, always) is loaded with some pretty reckless assumptions and generalizations.

Incidentally, I’m not telling anyone how to eat, here. Trying hard not to, anyway.

But if we have the access, time, and leisure to, say, read blogs like this, we probably also enjoy the privilege of making some choices about what we eat. And we should be able to honestly and reasonably explain why we choose to eat what we do. (OK, I guess I did use the “should” word there.)

I guess the reason I’m getting so bossy here is to illustrate our larger schizophrenia about how we relate to other animals. Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin note, for example, "an implicit irony … evident in the practices of medicine and behavioural sciences: because animals are not humans, we may subject them to pain, loss of freedom, destruction of their environments, or the cruelties of contemporary agribusiness. Yet it is only because we ourselves are animals that we can gain material, physical or psychological knowledge and rewards from their ill treatment." (2010)

That is, to the degree that other animals are like us, we’ve found ways to benefit materially from their exploitation and abuse. As animals ourselves, these practices have, in turn, required us to strain our rationale for their continuation, their accelerating rate and severity, and their expanding scale.

For example, over the last several centuries, in order to limit human rights and other moral considerability to just our own species, we’ve had to patrol the boundaries of human exceptionalism with increasing vigilance, coming up with more and more contrived standards for what makes us human.

These criteria have slid from possessing a soul, to possessing reason, and then on to using tools. When we noticed other animals using tools, we moved the goal posts to making tools, and then to altruism, and on to language. Again, when other animals (whales, birds, apes, prairie dogs, molluscs, etc.) were shown to be fully demonstrating all of these in many ways, the lines have since been redrawn around even more subjective, abstract things like linguistic novelty, grief, remembered identity and consciousness, aesthetics, poetics, and so it goes.

Now, with most of this conversation decades behind us, it’s sort of adorable to see how surprised we are when other animals take an interest in things like smartphones. Consider, for example, how pets themselves have become a kind of technology to us, and we, ourselves, a sort technology to them.

Tons of people have posted youtube videos of their cats playing games on ipads and even more of gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees, who are now using tablets at over a dozen zoos in Toronto, Edinburgh, Mexico City, Miami, Milwaukee, Kentucky, Washington DC, and so on. As you might guess, most of these clips open by lobbing up awful puns about "monkeying around with ipads" and "going ape (or "bananas") for idpads," echoing the consumerist language of novelty-gadget marketing: "It turns out that tablets aren't just for humans, but for orangutans too!" and "It’s not just humans who can’t wait to get their hands on an ipad." This is followed by a lot of footage of hands reaching out through cages and bars to diddle on screens, "keeping bored apes amused" with music and painting apps, watching videos, and skyping with other apes at other zoos.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean to hate on all of this. Most of these projects are part of Orangutan Outreach’s "apps for apes" program, that gets tablets out to zoos to help keep apes stimulated, and to enable them to become "ambassadors for their critically endangered cousins in the wild." And, for all the anthropocentric talk about apes being “trapped in those bodies,” without the “equipment to communicate (with us),” there’s even a case of an orangutan without arms using the program. This is definitely very good work.

But if it takes an orangutan using an ipad to choose her own lunch, for us to exclaim “they can finally show us they are feeling, thinking creatures,” what does this say about the rest of us?

related: corvids, goats who stare at men, the obliging cephalopod, the immense journey

swarm behavior(s):

1. a murmuration of starlings over the River Shannon in Ireland

  Murmuration from Islands & Rivers on Vimeo.

2. the cicadas currently emerging across North America
Return of the Cicadas from motionkicker on Vimeo.
 
To hear David Rothenberg play his clarinet with a cicada “sex orchestra,” you should definitely listen to this radiolab from last month!

And, contrary to what the EastCoastlibrulmedia would have you believe, there’s a brood singing out here in central Utah, too. Last weekend we collected ~50, sautéed them with olive oil, shallots, basil, and had them in tacos.
 

 

There are other recipes all over internets. If you’re curious, you might start here.

If you’re curiouser, check out Chapul bars! and this little article by David Madsen in Natural History.

3. the totally redonkulous media coverage of this season’s cicada emergence

ex: 26,000 google hits for “cicadapocolypse,” 12,000 for “cicadapocalypse,” and 6,000 for “cicadageddon.”

(I refuse to even search “cicadagate” or “cicadapalooza.”)

In the zombie-epic-superhero-media-saturated wake of “snowzilla,” “snowpocalypse,” “obamacare,” “beghazigate,” “snowbamapocalypse,” and so on, it seems we have run clear out of material for silly, overdramatized portmanteaus.

4. and public assembly, evidently

“When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the protesters in the streets of Istanbul plunderers (çapulcu in Turkish) on June 2, he contributed a new verb to the English language.… And the new English verb was born: to chapul.”

Socialist Worker

“When a defiant Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the protestors as ‘Capulcu’ (pronounced ‘CHA-pul-dju’ and roughly translated to ‘riffraff’), instead of taking it as an insult, the protestors embraced their newfound labels with pride. Overnight, the word morphed from an insult to a compliment. … The root of the Turkish noun (Capul) was then converted into a verb by adding the English suffix ‘ng,’ creating a neologism (Capulling) that now means ‘standing up for your rights.’”

Huffington Post

“What began as a local protest to save a park in Istanbul has turned into a national resistance against the government’s authoritarian rule.”
Washington Post

related: pedestrian days, tortillas, the nazar

roundup: 5th annual 4.01k suit run!

board meeting, review of minutes & quasi-legal melodrama!

trust falls & hearty self-congratulation!

















coming in robust, & with plenty of bandwidth!





maximizing ROI





so beautiful! what does it mean?!

related: business time!, roundup 1

business time!

Greetings sports fans,

Whether you're a veteran of the event or a first-time participant, it's time to shine your shoes and preen your portfolios for the annual 4.01k suit run.

When: next Saturday, May 25, starting at 9 AM

Where: Meeting at the Utah State Capitol, running down Wall Street, and ending up, eventually, at the Gateway Mall

The 4.01 k suit run is:
free
a "formal" event--business attire and collegiality encouraged
also sweaty
very roughly 4.01 kilometers
open to anyone interested
a blast!

The 4.01 k suit run is not:
an organized "race" with numbers, swag, and porta-potties
at all associated with Ragnar or KSL 1160
ever that predictable
officially registered with the City of Salt Lake
going to involve any motorcades, roadblocks, or or aid stations
a sound investment

Here are some examples of what previous events have looked like.

Also, because 2013 marks the 5-year anniversary of the 4.01k suit run, this year's event will begin with a brief commemoration of our corporate legacy (including juicy quasi-legal melodrama!), shortly after which the run will begin.

If you're in town, please join us! Invite friends and esteemed associates!

And if you have any questions, feel free to post them below or email horselongitudes at gmail dot com.

vibrant matter & the low cunning of the potato

 
Even a potato in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent stead. He knows perfectly well what he wants and how to get it. He sees the light coming from the cellar window and sends his shoots crawling straight thereto: they will crawl along the floor and up the wall and out the cellar window; if there be a little earth anywhere on the journey he will find it and use it for his own ends. What deliberation he may exercise in the manner of his roots when he is planted in the earth is a thing unknown to us, but we can imagine him saying, ‘I will have a tuber here and a tuber there, and I will suck whatsoever advantage I can from all my surroundings. This neighbor I will overshadow, and that I will undermine; and what I can do shall be the limit of what I will do. He that is stronger and better placed than I shall overcome me, and him that is weaker I will overcome.’ The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages. What is consciousness if this is not consciousness?

—Samuel Butler, Erewhon

 

related: sentient root gnarls, the mandrake, eyes

meadow hot springs

The Resurrection of Hunahpu and Xbalanque

On the fifth day they appeared again. People saw them in the river, for the two of them appeared like people-fish. Now when their faces were seen by the Xibalbans, they made a search for them in the rivers.

And on the very next day, they appeared again as two poor orphans. They wore rags in front and rags on their backs. Rags were thus all they had to cover themselves. But they did not act according to their appearance when they were seen by the Xibalbans. For they did the Dance of the Whippoorwill and the Dance of the Weasel. They danced the Armadillo and the Centipede. They danced the Injury, for many marvels they did then. They set fire to a house as if it were truly burning, then immediately recreated it again as the Xibalbans watched with admiration.

— Popol Vuh

The Head of Hunahpu is Restored

So the ball was again dropped into play. The head of Hunahpu was first placed atop the ballcourt.

“We have already triumphed. You are finished. You gave in, so give it up,” they were told.

But Hunahpu just called out: “Strike the head as if it were a rubber ball,” they were told. “No harm will come to us now, for we are holding our own.”

Thus the lords of Xibalba threw down the ball where it was met by Xbalanque. The ball landed before his yoke and bounced away. It sailed clear over the ballcourt. It just bounced once, then twice, landing in the tomatoes. Then the rabbit came out, hopping along. All the Xibalbans thus went after him. The Xibalbans all went after the rabbit, shouting and rushing about.

Thus the twins were able to retrieve the head of Hunahpu, replacing it where the chilacayote squash had been. They then placed the chilacayote squash on the ballcourt, while the true head of Hunahpu was his once more. Therefore they both rejoiced again. While the Xibalbans were out searching for their rubber ball, the twins retrieved it from the tomato patch.

And when they had done so, they called out: “Come on! We found our rubber ball!” they said. Thus they were carrying the round ball when the Xibalbans returned.

“What was it that we saw?” they asked.

And so they began again to play ball, both teams making equal plays until at last Xbalanque struck the chilacayote squash, strewing it all over the ballcourt. Thus its seeds were scattered before them.

“What is this that has been brought here? Where is he that brought it?” asked the Xibalbans.

Thus the lords of Xibalba were defeated by Hunahpu and Xbalanque. They had passed through great affliction, but despite everything that had been done to them, they did not die.

— Popol Vuh

march madness

The Deeds of One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu above Xibalba

… As for One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, they would merely play dice and ball every day. The four of them would pair off to oppose each other.

When they gathered together to play in the ballcourt, the Falcon would arrive to watch over them. …

Now it was on the path leading to Xibalba where they played ball. Thus the lords of Xibalba, One Death and Seven Death, heard them:

“What is happening on the surface of the earth? They are just stomping about and shouting. May they be summoned here therefore. They shall come to play ball, and we shall defeat them. They have simply failed to honor us. They have neither honor nor respect. Certainly they act arrogantly here over our heads,” said therefore all those of Xibalba....

Now we shall tell of their journey to Xibalba. …

The Summons of One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu to Xibalba

Then was the arrival of the messengers of One Death and Seven Death:

“Go you war councilors to summon One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu. Tell them when you arrive, ‘Thus say the lords: They must come, say the lords to you. They must come here to play ball with us that we may be invigorated by them. Truly we are amazed greatly at them. Thus they must come, say the lords. May they bring hither their implements—their yokes, their arm protectors, and their rubber ball as well. Thus say the lords,’ tell them when you arrive there,” the messengers were told.

These messengers were the owls—Arrow Owl, One Leg Owl, Macaw Owl, and Skull Owl—for so the messengers of Xibalba were called.

This Arrow Owl was like the arrow, piercing.

This One Leg Owl merely had one leg, but there were his wings.

This Macaw Owl had a red back, and there were also his wings.

Now this Skull Owl only had a skull with no legs; there were merely wings.

The burden of these four messengers was to be the war councilors. Thus they arrived there from Xibalba. They arrived suddenly, perching atop the ballcourt....

The owls, therefore, alighted atop the ballcourt, where they delivered in order the words of One Death and Seven Death, Pus Demon and Jaundice Demon, Bone Staff and Skull Staff, Flying Scab and Gathered Blood, Sweepings Demon and Stabbings Demon, Wing, and Packstrap. For these are the names of all the lords. Thus the owls repeated their words.

“Are these not the words of the lords One Death and Seven Death?”

“Those are the words that they said,” replied the owls. “We shall surely be your companions. ‘You shall bring all the gaming things,’ say the lords.”…

— Popol Vuh

Reclaiming Reclamation

I

The Alternator:

Is about the size of a large fist

and so, as we’re told, is also the size of the human heart.

Is a tight case of coiled wire, of rolling magnets.

Is a translation from kinetic quickness to alternating currents.

Is where the serpentine belt spins out golden strands of voltage.

This is what the alternator is. This is what it does.

This is what it stopped doing one October evening on Highway 191.

Waiting for a tow in the fading light, we collected seeds from the hesperaloe,

from the dried, brittle head of what had been a brilliant red flower.

The seeds, small black wedges, like slices of carbon

or misshapen tokens for some infernal ferryman.

II

Parts and Labor

The following evening, having reached the place,

We walked out the length of an old road cut,

Which led from the highway to a water tank and some microwave towers.

The roadbed eroded, unmade, its reclamation reclaimed

Littered with rabbit droppings, deer bones, and snake skins

grown over in dry, golden grasses, in juniper and yucca.

Scraping through the fallen leaves and standing tangles of scrub oak

Tom asks, “Dad, what comes after people?”

Tom, who four years ago was, himself, not yet the size of my fist,

Who was barely his own heartbeat, who was, himself, before people.

“What comes after people?”

“I think worms! Mom, I think beetles! I think—look! A potsherd!”

He reaches, and from amid the clumps of tar-fixed gravel and road base,

Plucks it up, a grey one, corrugated on one side, about the size of a sunglass lens.

He holds it in the air, then sets it down, finding others,

Left by the ones whose lives passed between the plateau and cliffside,

The ones who dressed themselves in black, iridescent wool spun from turkey feathers.

The ones who had left the valley now named for dead warrior kings. Montezuma. Cortez.

III

Home

A few days stalking their quiet memory. A few nights of fires,

And we trace our way back,

Stopping to take on a sack of dried beans from the red fields.

Some melons from the Green River.

And, at the pullout with the cinderblock toilets, piñon nuts,

Where millions litter the ground amid the spat gum and idling semis.

adobe photo shop

adobe photo shop from g e brooks on Vimeo.

lions in winter

Earlier this week Kelly noticed the mountain lion tracks through our back yard. Large, clawless paws with long, bounding spaces between prints. He had probably been chasing the deer, whose tracks also crossed the two-foot deep snow through the yard. It must have been a couple nights before, but not too long, because the lion’s path crossed over the top of the tracks I’d made out to the shed and back around the first of the year.

I say “he” mainly because, as some friends here have told us, it’s often the young male lions, recently separated from their mothers, still without a territory of their own, who sometimes end up wandering hungry into and around town. Especially when the temperature drops below zero and just sits there for week after week, as it is now.

This is what happened last month, when Charlie Stevens was shoveling snow out of his driveway and accidentally scared a young lion out of his front window well. (We used to live right across the street from Charlie, when we first moved to town years ago.) Anyway, that lion climbed a tree on the other side of the block and spent most of the day up there, drawing a big crowd of dogs, neighborhood kids, police and DNR trucks, and a TV crew, until someone came and shot him down.

related: lion hunt, school lions, tracks

Costa Rica bird list: Dec 10-23, 2012

Costa Rica relief map (shells, nuts, megalodon shark tooth fossil, palm leaf quetzal)

Laughing Falcon

Crested Caracara

Osprey

Black Vulture

Turkey Vulture

Groove-billed Ani

Great-tailed Grackle

Baltimore Oriole

Melodious Blackbird

Montezuma Oropendola

Brown Jay

Blue Jay*

Loggerhead Shrike*

Common Bush Tanager

Blue-gray Tanager

Passerinni’s Tanager

Bay-headed Tanager

Clay-colored Robin (yigüirro)

Sooty Robin

Buff-throated Saltator

Blue Black Swallow

Black Swift

Kiskadee

Blue-black Grassquit

Yellow-faced Grassquit

Bananaquit

White-collared Seedeater

Buff-rumped Warbler

Golden-Browed Chlorophonia

Rufous-collared Sparrow

Black-striped Sparrow

Carolina Chickadee*

Masked Tityra

Pale-billed Woodpecker

Back-cheeked Woodpecker

Hoffman’s Woodpecker

Red-crowned Woodpecker (Hoffman’s hybrid)

Keel-billed Toucan

Chestnut-mandibled Toucan

Emerald Toucanet

Collared Araçari

Fiery-billed Araçari

Squirrel Cuckoo

Mangrove Cuckoo

Rufous Motmot

Blue-crowned Motmot

Mocking Bird*

Green Hermit

Violet Sabrewing

Coppery-headed Emerald

Purple-throated Mountain-gem
Green-crowned Brilliant

Green Thorntail

Muscovy Duck

Wood Duck*

Great Currasow

Black Guan

Crimson-fronted Parakeet

White-crowned Parrot

Resplendant QUETZAL!

Slate Throated Redstart

Cardinal*

Magnificent Frigatebird

Brown Pelican

Ringed Kingfisher

Green Kingfisher

House Wren

Rufous-naped Wren

Gray-breasted Wood Wren

Inca Dove

Ruddy Ground Dove

White-winged Dove

Rock Pigeon

White Ibis

Tricolored Heron

Little Blue Heron

Green Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Great Blue Heron

Bare-throated Tiger Heron

Spotted Sandpiper

Wilson’s Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Killdeer*

Whimbrel

Willet

Ruddy Turnstone

Sanderling

Red Knot

Cattle Egret

Snowy Egret

Great Egret

Neotropic Cormorant

Anhinga

*actually, a few of these seen between the forests and the sprawl surrounding the George Bush International Airport in Houston (layover)

related: 2008 list 

people like these. places like this.

Skulls. Unlimited. International.

Maybe you’ve seen these guys on TV. They’re based out in the middle of Oklahoma and their catalogue reads like the opening scene of Macbeth.

Puppy skulls and stingray barbs

Wing of parakeet and feather of macaw

Fossil hominids and fetus skull

An alphabet of skulls!

Skull of shrew and python ribs

A “bago-armadillo helmets”…

There are economy skeletons for the cheapskate bone articulator in your life. Custom skull cleaning. Mice and mice. Bigfoot footprints. An emu.

Also, raccoon bacula! (Curious? Yes, definitely check out the raccoon bacula.)

For more details, here's a good article Outside Magazine ran a few years ago.

And for more skeleton collections, here's a nice one on pinterest. (And no hot glue!)

related: endless pools, pompions past, calaveras, muertos, plein air taxidermy, of ranids  

"faceless" fish

"faceless fish discovered"
the amphioxus song
lancet, 1911

things fall apART; the CENTER cannot hold

CUAC evicted -- Salt Lake Tribune
HuffPo

Washoe to Sanpete

Oh, right. I still have this blog. Also, we moved.
Here’s a little update.

Seeing all our stuff boxed up, carried across the front yard, and packed into a 9'x8'x12' space reminded me of this photo series by Peter Menzel: MaterialWorld: A Global Family Portrait. 

I think we first came across these a few years ago when they were showing at an airport somewhere (Chicago? Atlanta?). Then, a couple years ago, I saw his Hungry Planet: What the World Eats series when it was making the rounds as an email forward. They're photos of families with their typical weekly groceries, details here.

I guess these aren’t new. Maybe you’ve seen them. Whatever. I’m all like “I saw this way back when it was at the airport. You should have been there. What a layover. Such a layover!” 

Anyway, speaking of hipsters, Sannah Kvist’s project is worth a look too.


Also, we live in Utah now.