Accidental Blogger

Extreme Ailurophilia

The cat obviously is enjoying the monkey business. (thanks to Namit Arora for the link)

And more about cats and how they have "tapped into human biases" to their own advantage.

Music. Smoking. Whales. Dodgy conceptions (D)

1. I imagine the average music listener has as much trouble teasing apart the different musical lines, instruments and voices in a symphony (say) as I do. Why isn't there a product category on the market where the different voices in a piece are all recorded individually? With a suitable software interface, you'd be able to hear just the first violin, or only the brass or only what the pianist is playing with his right hand, and so on. Or various toggle-able combinations of the elements. Plus of course, you could turn everything on and hear a serviceable, though hardly great, recording of the piece. The time I can imagine spending with such a CD is almost limitless; it'd be like having this for every piece I cared about. Surely the market can't be that small, and the production certainly isn't difficult. Why's no-one doing this?

2. I've often harbored a certain dim, masochistic sense that bans related to passive smoking have been less about health than about the general ickiness of the habit, the smell of the noxious weed and a certain puritanical desire to control and command. Indeed, I'd assumed the actual health risk from second hand smoke was minimal. I still assume those other factors are salient, but apparently this last isn't so. Orac at Scienceblogs has a very nice post up about secondhand smoking, that gets into the various studies performed, the mechanisms of consensus-generation and the politics in forming, disputing and proceeding from that consensus. Two takeaway numbers, in case you don't read the whole thing:
- "A person who smokes two packs a day smoker for 40-50 years will have approximately a 20% chance of dying of lung cancer."
- "In adults, numerous studies support the existence of approximately a 25% elevated risk of lung cancer from those exposed to secondhand smoke chronically."

3. This New York Times story is almost perfect for transporting a certain sort of mind into mystical ecstasies. It has all of:
- natural creatures who've suffered greatly under Man, yet absolve him of his sins
- cuddly, natural Disney creatures to boot, none of this scary, bloody competitive evolution stuff around.
- wise Natives who, with other ways of knowing, have penetrated to the core of Deep Truths White Man is only dimly coming to appreciate.
- concomitant dismissals of hard scientists, who've not truly achieved Wisdom for all their appropriation of cold, technical facts.
Actually, it's a pretty good piece for all the scorn I've heaped upon it. The stolid insistence that one not anthropomorphize the animal world is only going to be so useful, and unless one is a creationist other animals will necessarily be seen to exhibit many qualities we do in some form, including emotional ones.

4. This last I mention without further comment. Ms. Kathryn Jean Lopez finds this story amusing.

Cats Will Sleep Anywhere!

Honest. See for yourself.  

Where's the Bunny?

Beware of identity theft this Easter! (photos via my good friend Nancy)

 

Happy Holidays And A Blogging Hiatus

Season's Greetings to our readers and my co-bloggers. Hope everyone returns to A.B. refreshed and cheered after the holiday festivities are over and done with for the year. I am going on a short trip and won't be blogging for some time. Unless someone else finds the time to post, the front page will remain static for a few days. I will leave you with a potpourri of unrelated but interesting links to muse over if you find time to visit during the holiday rush.

Two thoughtful essays about the recent bombings in Mumbai and the tensions that tug at the national fabric of India - Ramachandra Guha in the WSJ and Badri Raina in ZNet.

TS Eliot on The Naming Of Cats.

An insect crime buster in Finland!

Enjoy the holidays!

Who's the Turkey? (Sujatha)

Who's the real turkey here?

The Philosopher and the Wolf

An unusual story of a man his animal companion.  (via Leiter Reports)

It's strange. I can remember all these things about Brenin and Yukon and Sitka. I can remember holding Brenin up to my face and looking in his yellow wolf eyes. I can remember the way he felt, with his soft cub fur, between my hands as I held him. I can still picture clearly Yukon standing up on his hind legs, staring down at me, big feet hanging over the stable door. I can still picture Brenin's brothers and sisters running around the pen, tumbling over each other and jumping back to their feet in glee. But of the person who sold me Brenin, I can remember virtually nothing. Something had already started; a process that would become more and more pronounced as the years rolled on. I was already starting to tune out human beings. When you have a wolf, they take over your life in a way that a dog seldom does. And human company gradually becomes less and less significant for you. I remember his story - at least I think I do - but I don't remember the man.

The "Vicktory" Dogs

Taking a bit of a break from the faintly sinister and patently ludicrous political theater surrounding the US presidential campaign, I am happy to bring you news of a different kind.

Stories that lift our spirits very often describe the triumph of the utterly vulnerable - the miserable underdog beating incredible odds. In this particular case, the underdogs happen to be real dogs and this is the heartwarming story of their rescue from debauched cruelty and certain death.

Little over a year ago, we learnt about the criminal activities of ex-NFL star Michael Vick who was caught and later sentenced to jail for the brutal torture of several pit bulls that he used in illegal dog fighting. Vick is currently in jail serving a sentence of 23 months (too lenient, in my opinion). But what about the abused dogs, some of whom were bred to be vicious killers and others as terrified bait animals? At the time of the court case, the conventional wisdom (including that of various animal welfare organizations) was that the dogs had been so severely abused that they were beyond rehabilitation and needed to be euthanized. But Best Friends, an animal rescue agency in Utah thought otherwise. Volunteers from Best Friends pleaded with the court for a chance to return Vick's dogs to normalcy through patient and humane care. Luckily for the dogs, the judge agreed to give the animals a second chance after the hell hole to which Vick and his cronies had condemned them from puppyhood. The tragic story now has a happy ending. Read about the loving rehabilitation and amazing transformation of the dogs on the Best Friend's website: (I have added Best Friends to the list of animal charities I plan to support regularly)

National Geographic filmed the progress of the vicious, suspicious or coweringly nervous dogs to trusting, playful animals some of whom have already been adopted by dog lovers. The documentary aired on September 5 on the NG channel in their series Dog Town. (Unfortunately I missed the full documentary but saw a few incredibly touching and gratifying scenes from the film on a news show. I hope to watch the episode on September 12 when it will air again.) More about Dog Town and the Best Friends Animal Society in the L.A. Times.

It has been a summer of awe-inspiring, thought-provoking spectacle on television. First the Summer Olympics, then the Democratic and Republican national conventions and now the return of "DogTown." If that sounds sarcastic or snarky, it isn't meant to. The two-hour season premiere of the popular National Geographic Channel show is titled "Saving the Michael Vick Dogs," and if there were such a thing as an Olympics for animal rescue and rehabilitation, this would be it.

Last December, the Atlanta Falcons' star quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for operating an illegal dog fighting venture on his Virginia property. Forty-seven pit bulls in various states of physical and psychological damage were found at Vick's Bad Newz Kennels; eight more corpses were discovered buried nearby.

It has been a summer of awe-inspiring, thought-provoking spectacle on television. First the Summer Olympics, then the Democratic and Republican national conventions and now the return of "DogTown." If that sounds sarcastic or snarky, it isn't meant to. The two-hour season premiere of the popular National Geographic Channel show is titled "Saving the Michael Vick Dogs," and if there were such a thing as an Olympics for animal rescue and rehabilitation, this would be it.

Last December, the Atlanta Falcons' star quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for operating an illegal dog fighting venture on his Virginia property. Forty-seven pit bulls in various states of physical and psychological damage were found at Vick's Bad Newz Kennels; eight more corpses were discovered buried nearby.

At the time, many animal rescue experts recommended that the dogs be put down; so traumatic had the abuse been, so long had been their imprisonment that rehabilitation seemed impossible.

Others, including the veterinarians and trainers at Utah's Best Friends Animal Society, argued that the dogs could be saved. A judge finally agreed, and more than half were turned over to various shelters and rescues; the 22 most troubled dogs were sent to Dogtown.

Located on 3,000 acres of canyon country in southern Utah, the Best Friends sanctuary is one of the largest and no doubt the most beautifully located no-kill animal facilities; Dogtown is its canine program. For the past two years, "DogTown" the show has chronicled the staff as it healed and trained various ill, hurt, abused, abandoned and behavior-issue-plagued dogs.

In other words, it's a hard-core dog-lovers kind of show.

But even those folks who have never adopted a dog, loved a dog, pet a dog or met a dog will sit riveted as the four toughest cases of the Vick survivors are brought back from what can be described only as the brink of torture-inflicted canine insanity.

Alaskan Akela (Sujatha)

Although the tabloid-style argument over the family shenanigans of the Palins has brought McCain's VP pick into sharp focus, there's another side to the much-vaunted abilities of Gov. Palin that you may not know of yet.

This is who McCain has nominated for VP:

"On March 27, the state House passed House Bill 256, Gov. Sarah Palin's bill, which allows for no science-based, same-day airborne hunting of wolves and bears and opens the doors to game-farming in Alaska. It also allows the lieutenant governor to remove Alaska's ballot measure to vote again on aerial hunting, thus taking Alaskans' right to vote away."

This is what Airborne hunting of wolves looks like: One of the saddest things I've seen, akin to the cow mistreatment videos that we blogged about earlier this year.

Hunting for food is one thing. Hunting wolves just for the thrill of the hunt, and that too by air, is another entirely, as is facilitating the horrendous practice.

Hello Kitty!

My friend Nancy sent me the link to this amazing video.

More about Christian the Lion here.

Zoos as old age homes

As the companion of a geriatric cat, I am acutely conscious of the changes in nutritional, psychological and medical care that must be afforded to aging animals.  With advancements in veterinary science and safer environments, just as domestic pets in affluent nations are experiencing unprecedented increase in their longevity, so are the inmates of modern, better designed zoos.  As a result, zoo animals sometimes survive much longer than they might in their natural habitats. Older animals in zoos  offer up new challenges to their care takers who must learn to adapt to the changing and sometimes unexpected needs of their aging wards.

Even as a youngster, Rollie looked older and wiser than his years. His white mustache sprouted longer by the month, until it flamed from his cheeks like a German kaiser's. In the past few years, though, the tribulations of age — not just the appearance of it — have begun catching up with Rollie. His keepers are reminded each time they get a look past the Emperor Tamarin's flowing whiskers and into his jaws. The monkey, used to crunching on raw sweet potato, has surrendered all but six of his 32 teeth to the toll of time. At 17, Rollie — a resident of Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo — is a senior citizen of his species. In the Amazon he almost certainly would never have made it this long. In captivity, he's got plenty of company.

The golden years have arrived at the nation's zoos and aquariums, taking veterinarians and keepers, along with their animals, into a zone of unknowns. 

Do female gorillas, living in to their 40s and 50s, experience menopause?

Can an aging lemur suffer from dementia?

How do you weigh the most difficult choice — between prolonging pain and ending life — when the patient is a venerable jaguar who feels like a member of the family?

All those questions hang on a larger one that, until recent years, has been left to educated guesswork.

"How old do animals really live?" says Sharon Dewar, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Park Zoo, whose keepers adjusted to Rollie's toothlessness by serving him soft-cooked veggies. "That's the million-dollar question."

Zeroing in on the answer takes years of tracking births, deaths and the age of animal populations. But zoos, which have pooled information since the 1970s, are drawing conclusions. For example, records show that the median age of Siberian tigers in zoos has reached 15 years old, up from just over 11 in the two decades ending in 1990.

Russ Williams, the executive director of the North Carolina Zoo Society ponders the same questions on his blog.

Biblio-cats

In his comment on my last post about a Japanese train company which turned its fortune around by appointing a cat as the station master, my co-blogger Dean informed me that US libraries have for long known the advantages of employing feline friends to add pizazz to their premises. 

Dean is notorious for burying nuggets of interesting and important pieces of information in the comments section of the blog rather than showcasing them in posts. (Dean, what can we do to bring you out to the main page?)  So I am taking the liberty of bringing the story to the front for our readers' enjoyment.  Note that the California cat Flyer was once our own Dean's colleague in a Whittier public library.

While I was offline

The Memorial Day weekend at the Paul household was TV and Internet free.  Early Saturday morning our cable service went out of commission and so did the two amenities dependent on it. Our cable provider Comcast blithely informed us that no technician could come out to restore connection any earlier than next Friday, the 30th of May. My extremely Internet dependent husband took matters in his own hands.  After hours on the phone setting up service with new providers and firing Comcast, he managed to get everything up and running by Monday afternoon.

By the time I turned on the TV and the computer, I discovered that some interesting events had taken place while I was cut off from 24/7 cable news and the World Wide Web. Among them:

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander touched down flawlessly on the red planet as planned and is now busy sending back photos. See the mission overview here.  The projected goals of the mission:

--Determine whether Life ever arose on Mars

--Characterize the Climate of Mars

--Characterize the Geology of Mars

--Prepare for Human Exploration

The international space station has developed plumbing problems.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The international space station's lone toilet is broken, leaving the crew with almost nowhere to go. So NASA may order an in-orbit plumbing service call when space shuttle Discovery visits next week.

Until then, the three-man crew will have to make do with a jury-rigged system when they need to urinate.

While one of the crew was using the Russian-made toilet last week, the toilet motor fan stopped working, according to NASA. Since then, the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off.

Fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally.

Russian officials don't know the cause of the problem, and the crew has been unable to fix it.

The crew has used the toilet on the Soyuz return capsule, but it has a limited capacity. They now are using a backup bag-like collection system that can be connected to the broken toilet, according to NASA public affairs officials.

"Like any home anywhere, the importance of having a working bathroom is obvious," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said.

A financially beleaguered Japanese  train company has managed to turn its profits ledger from red to black by appointing a cat as the station master.

TOKYO (AP) -- A money-losing Japanese train company has found the purr-fect pet mascot to draw crowds and bring back business - tabby Tama.

All the 9-year-old female cat does is sit by the entrance of Kishi Station in western Japan, wearing a black uniform cap and posing for photos for the tourists who are now flocking in droves from across the nation.

Tama has been doing such a good job of raising revenue for the troubled Kishikawa train line that she was recently promoted to "super-station-master."

"She never complains, even though passengers touch her all over the place. She is an amazing cat. She has patience and charisma," Wakayama Electric Railway Co. spokeswoman Yoshiko Yamaki told The Associated Press Monday. "She is the perfect station master."

Appointing a cat to turn around fortunes makes cultural sense in Japan, where cats are considered good luck and are believed to bring in business.

People are snatching up novelty goods - postcards, erasers, notebooks and pins - decorated with Tama's photos. There's even a special 1,365 yen ($13) book of photos of Tama called, "Diary of Tama, the Station Master."

Why can't we all just get along? (Sujatha)

Like these?

Home Improvement

I learnt some new facts about my co-author Sujatha in a post she wrote at her blog. Responding to an Internet game of tag among bloggers, she revealed a few hitherto unknown (to me) talents and proclivities. The two that caught my eye particularly are:

3. Languages known: English (best of all), Tamil (really well, but unfortunately I never did learn any swear words in it, even though it's my mother tongue), Hindi (enough to sing along with Bollywood songs and understand the dialog), Malayalam (enough to pass for a Tamilian speaking Malayalam badly), Sanskrit (enough to be dangerous trying to figure out when the priest at the local temple has bumbled in his rendition), French (Parisien accent, rolled 'rr's and all...) Plus, I can read Cyrillic and Urdu scripts, though I am rather rusty with the lack of practice. I'm aiming to learn Telugu, Bengali, Arabic and Chinese as well, if I can get hold of enough online material.

8.I love creepy-crawlies and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to save spiders, centipedes and the like from the attacks of the 'Bug Squad' ( M & S armed with fly-swatters and bug vacuums).

I knew that Sujatha knows several languages well.  But that she can read Cyrillic and Urdu scripts came as a complete surprise to me and I am properly impressed. The second revelation impressed me even more - her love for creepy-crawlies and the time she spends trying to save them. I am wondering if Sujatha ever goes as far as this kind woman to help a spider. See the photo below and read the post to find out the spider's reaction to her "helping hand" interventions. (link to Nina Katchadourian's website via 3QD)

Cat Quote

Seventy four adoring (and adorable) cat quotes by a mad poet - all of them apt!

My favorites:

19. For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
42. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
70. For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.

Note: Brought to the front from the comments section of a previous post. (Link: Dean)

Cat Quote

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose. - Garrison Keillor

Cat Quote

The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there-- in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat-- may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Mark Twain (from the opening page of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson)

Take Action

I am writing this as a follow up to Sujatha's post below.  Readers can leave a note of protest against such inhumane and unethical treatment of animals here.  Also, if you wish, please make a donation to the Humane Society to help with the campaign against cruelty to all animals, including factory farmed animals used for meat, milk and eggs.

The Meat of the Matter (Sujatha)

A recall of 143 million pounds of beef, one of the largest in U.S. history was made recently, affecting thousands of school districts supplied by a California plant under the National School Lunch program. This stemmed from an undercover investigation of practices at the plant, complete with a disturbing video shot of animals being forced into the chutes, even when they were sick and unable to walk in.

Wrangler isn't an ordinary slaughterhouse worker. He is an undercover investigator for the Humane Society of the United States, who got a job at the Westland plant and filmed the abuses with a hidden camera. "There wasn't a formal strategy or anything like that," he says. "You're there just doing the job, and this stuff is just happening all around you." On Jan. 30, the Humane Society broadcast excerpts of the video on its Web site. The next day, the United Stated Department of Agriculture suspended Westland Meat Co. as a supplier to the National School Lunch Program. A few days later, USDA pulled its inspectors from the plant and shut down the plant, pending further investigation. The acts of animal cruelty have led to the arrest of two meatpacking workers by Chino police.

More than two weeks after Wrangler's video caused a sensation online, the USDA issued the largest beef recall in the history of the United States: 143 million pounds of beef products, most of which has already been consumed. About 40 percent of that meat went to the National School Lunch Program and other federal nutrition programs. Amazingly, all of the abuses occurred with USDA inspectors on the premises. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said he was "dismayed at the inhumane handling of cattle" at the plant.

The school district my children attend was among the many listed as having received the recalled meat cases, and while the authorities assure us that the recalled meat has been off the lunch menus since the start of February, there are still anecdotes of some kid or the other having stomach problems after eating meat at lunch. Who knows whether the un-recalled products are any safer or more humanely harvested than the recalled batch? We will probably never find out.

A recent book that I read, "Animals in Translation" by Temple Grandin, who is autistic, brought fascinating insights into the behavior of animals, as 'autistic savants' of sorts. She is also an industry expert on the design of humane slaughter house facilities, and is even invoked in a Feb 3, 2008 Westland letter promising more investigation into the cattle abuse:

During 2007, we had 17 third party audits of our operation to confirm that we meet the statutorily mandated humane handling and food safety standards. In addition we have conducted 12 internal audits by our own personnel to ensure that such standards are met. We also, conduct weekly humane handling audits based on standards set forth in the American Meat Institute’s (AMI), Recommended Animal Handling Guidelines and Audit Guide 2007 Edition, which was authored by Dr. Temple Grandin, a world renowned expert of humane handling practices. Complete documentation of this activity has been made available to the USDA investigation team currently at our plant.

What problems have been rectified by the recall of meat that have been largely consumed by now? Will it really save unwary consumers from eating problem meat? It seems more like a case of bolting the stables after the horses have run away, similar to the situation with declaring clone-derived meat safe for human consumption after the offspring of clones had already entered the food-chain.

Cat Quote

O little emperor with no orb,

conqueror without country, .....

tiny tiger of the living room,

posing four delicate feet on the ground

sniffing, mistrustful of everything on earth,

because everything is unclean

for the cat’s immaculate foot.

The above is an excerpt from Pablo Neruda's poem Ode to the Cat (Oda al Gato) which was sent to me by Narayan Acharya.  Despite a severe allergy to cats, fortified with anti-histamines, Narayan entertains his neighbor's cat Sammy in his home. The full poem below the fold. 

Cat Quote

He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat. 

                                                       Chinese Proverb

(This is the beginning of a regular series of cat quotes that will appear here)

A Cat In An Empty Apartment

A sad, sad poem.

Dying--you wouldn't do that to a cat.
For what is a cat to do
in an empty apartment?
Climb up the walls?
Brush up against the furniture?
Nothing here seems changed,
and yet something has changed.
Nothing has been moved,
and yet there's more room.
And in the evenings the lamp is not on.

One hears footsteps on the stairs,
but they're not the same.
Neither is the hand
that puts a fish on the plate. ......

Read the rest here.

Political Animals

Monday's Democratic debate in South Carolina had more than its share of fireworks.  Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama went at each other with passion and fury. The bitter exchange continued beyond the debate stage next day when both candidates addressed reporters to harp on the weaknesses and dirty tactics of their main rival.

Yesterday morning Sujatha and I had a short e-mail exchange about a New York Times article on politics in the animal world. I asked Sujatha which animals the Democratic presidential candidates reminded her of during Monday's debate. She replied:

"I think gorillas- the matriarch (Hillary) challenging the newcomer (Obama) to the group, while Edwards was like a side-lined Silverback, trying to recapture the attention of the audience in between the slugfest between Obama and Clinton. We're not that far off from our proto-monkey ancestors!"

I agree.  But both of us forgot the other 800 pound gorilla  whose gigantic shadow looms all over this election. 

Hello Kitty!

A spectacular and heartwarming declaration of love and gratitude.