Present Imperfect

Fear the Bloop

June 26, 2003

In an article in The New York Times today about the fast food industry seeking third-party consultation on how to promote a more ethical treatment of livestock, I came across this:

According to McDonald's officials, the turning point in the company's attitudes came in 1997, when executives met for the first time with Temple Grandin, an associate professor at Colorado State University who is an expert in animal behavior and welfare issues.

"We had an interest in this stuff, but couldn't figure it out," said Bob Langert, the senior director of social responsibility at McDonald's. "We went to Colorado State and saw her, and it was magic. She pitched her program, and we thought it was perfect."

Executives found Dr. Grandin's approach "scientific" and not "emotional," Mr. Langert said. They marveled at her research techniques: how she measured animal behavior and conditions; how she paid attention to animal vocalizations; how she studied their response to electric prods; how she catalogued their adaptations to various conditions.

Indeed, Dr. Grandin often gets down on all fours to walk through a processing plant, as if she were an animal. She has autism, and she says things that bother her because of her condition, like loud noises, can bother animals, as well, McDonald's officials said.

Temple Grandin was profiled by Oliver Sacks in his An Anthropologist on Mars, which happens to be one of my favorite books. I'll have to give her chapter another read...

In semi-related news, a friend at work told me about the deep-sea "bloop." The sound, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

was repeatedly recorded during the summer of 1997 on the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. The sound rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km. It yields a general location near 50oS; 100oW (far off the west coast of southern South America). The origin of the sound is unknown.

Some people think it's the sound of a giant squid, but marine biologists say squid don't have the kind of air bladders that might produce such a sound.

Oddly, the cover of my edition of An Anthropologist on Mars features a giant squid. Or something squid-like, anyway.

Plus, He Was Totally Gay

June 18, 2003

You know, I'd like to amend my last post...without craftily editing it in Blogger so it looks as though I had this idea all along.

The theological issue in Richard II is about politics. For me, sure, I still feel the atheistic implications sprout up, but an Elizabethan audience would have felt no such thing. In relation to god, it's about whether it is god's will for one man to wield ultimate political power at the expense of the people he rules or if it is god's will for him to be just and good to the people he rules. Since Richard doesn't have the best interests of the people in mind, it's fine and dandy that his crown is usurped. (Though, again, he probably would have gotten away with it if he hadn't robbed Bolingbroke blind.)

But if Richard had stuck to his guns on the battlements, the play might not have ended the way it did. (Okay, it would have because it's a history...) Richard just talks himself out of the throne and Bolingbroke is all too happy to let him.

He Wore Stupid Outfits

June 18, 2003

I've been thinking about Richard II all week. I used to think it was my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, but upon rereading it, I think as a whole, it's not especially challenging or engaging. It does, however, feature one of my favorite characters, Richard II himself.

He's a king who believes he is a god. Or, at least, he believes that his crown is bound to him irrevocably by divine right. When he is overthrown, is god's will overthrown with him? His speech on the battlements of Flint turns your blood to ice because of what he is asking:

Because we thought ourself thy lawful king:
And if we be, how dare thy joints forget
To pay their awful duty to our presence?
If we be not, show us the hand of God
That hath dismissed us from our stewardship;
For well we know, no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.

He's literally asking Bolingbroke if he is willing to betray god to remove him from power. Of course, he collapses like a house of cards in the same scene, basically talking himself into abdication. But Richard didn't make the rules, he was just made king because of them. And really, his fatal mistake is not listening to his flatterers or robbing the populace blind, it's stealing Bolingbroke's fortune. If John of Gaunt had not died while his son was abroad or if the king hadn't taken Bolingbroke's legacy, would Richard have been overthrown?

The whole play wrestles with this huge theological conundrum: If the king is god's agent on Earth, what happens when the king betrays his people? Does that mean god has betrayed his people or that god has abandoned the king? If the latter is true, where in the tradition of divine right of kings does it say "unless the king is a big loser?" Well, nowhere. And that's Richard's point. According to the laws of the time, everyone MUST agree that god has made Richard king. So either god made a colossal blunder (for England, anyway) or god's will is now that Bolingbroke usurp the throne. For Shakespeare's purposes, god is on Bolingbroke's side. But the whole play raises the question "What if god is on no one's side?" Which leads to the question "What if there is no god?" This is not Shakespeare's intent, but I feel the presence of those questions throughout the play.

And then there's the notion that Richard II and Hamlet have a great deal in common in that they are both all talk and no action (though each uses language differently). Unlike Hamlet, however, Richard II the play is rather anticlimactic. Then again, we have Henry IV parts I and II to tie things up, followed by the everybody-loves-an-underdog Henry V, in which the victory at Agincourt basically justifies any misdeeds on Bolingbroke's part. I mean, really Richard II is just backstory for Henry V.

Still, there's just something about it...

My Ears Are Bleeding

June 10, 2003

The Guardian UK runs a topical haiku contest every week for £20 worth of Penguin Classics. I thought it would be best to test the waters with a local story about Ed Rosenthal being sentenced to one day in prison for growing medicinal marijuana, which is legal in the state of California but frowned upon by the feds, most notably the hilariously hypocritical alleged states' rights advocate and the man who lost his senate race to a corpse, our esteemed Attorney General John Ashcroft. (Allow him to lull you into a nightmare-riddled slumber! Let the Eagle Soar, motherfuckers!)

Anyway, the Rosenthal story was on the Guardian's home page under "Los Angeles dispatch," so I thought it was fair game, haiku-wise.

Behold my lameass attempt to win free books:

The "ganja guru"
uses his only phone call
to order pizza

I know, I know...after the Ashcroft song, it's a letdown. But how can I compete with the man who asked Clarence Thomas to "anoint" him with cooking oil?

Sig Alert

June 06, 2003

It's sometimes difficult to describe what it's like to live in Los Angeles. But today, I give you one telling example.

According to the radio traffic report this morning, there were delays on three freeways because two rolls of carpet, an air conditioner and a jacuzzi were blocking lanes. Usually, it's just a mattress, but the announcer didn't really sound that surprised.

Ffucking Awesome

June 05, 2003

Oh, and I finished The Eyre Affair and am almost finished with Lost in a Good Book. These are both cracking good reads and I would heartily recommend them to anyone. Well, not to someone whose favorite periodical is Juggs or something, but you know.

Next up is Watership Down because I have never read it and all I remember about it is getting really upset as a child when the rabbits started killing each other in the cartoon version on TV.

You'll Put Your Eye Out

June 05, 2003

My final fencing class is tonight. I don't think I'll be buying a sabre of my own anytime soon. It was fun, but it's clear that I can't think fast enough to determine who hit whom last and my opponent and I generally wind up just staring at each other after about one attack, a parry and a riposte. I think it would be easier if you could just wail on each other, but alas, such is not the way of this civilized sport.

So now I have to find another class to go to. I've decided that, given my limited attention span for anything that involves semi-strenuous physical activity, I should just take an endless series of introductory courses in something or other. That way I can accumulate small bits of knowledge about a wide variety of diversions without actually being proficient in any of them.

So far so good.

Is Paper a Food Group?

June 02, 2003

I'm now reading Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. When I am finished, I shall immediately purchase his second Thursday Next novel, Lost in a Good Book. I can sense a new literary fixation coming on. But I still have plenty of Murdoch to read and the Cooper edition of Plato's complete works to find.

I've decided that if I am nothing more than a good little consumer (see Thursday's post), the very least I can do is consume knowledge.