The Rage Diaries

The mysteries in our heads

After finishing the NYT's  "A Disease that Allowed Torrents of Creativity" yesterday, I immediately checked out article subject Anne Adams' work, including a book she created with her husband, An ABC Book of Invertebrates. This is the children's book that left-brain and right-brain parents can get behind -- utterly beautiful and gently informative.

Adams died last year of frontotemporal dementia. In her case, the disease allowed the rear temporal right lobe of her brain to surge and grow, tapping deep wells of artistic talent. On an abstract level, the idea of the brain rewiring itself to find and play up new strengths is riveting. On a personal level, it's frightening. My sense of self is derived in some unquantifiable part from the biological happenstance that created my particular brain; who would I be if happenstance again rewrote that terrain?

Not really a surprise for us

On Sunday, Phil and I stood in the outer bay exhibit watching the fish and speculating on how long it would be until it was time to let the great white shark go. We figured it was getting to be about that time -- you could tell where the Carcharodon carcharias was because every other fish was on the exact opposite site of the aquarium. They were all schooling together, and I swear, some of them actually looked panicky when they were not buffeted by other fish on all sides.

Anyway, guess what happened today? My favorite part of the press release:

The shark had grown from an initial length of 4-foot, 9-inches and a weight of 67 ½ pounds when it arrived on August 28, 2007 to its current size of 5-foot, 10-inches and 140 pounds. He was healthy and feeding at the time of release, but had recently been seen leaping into the air above the million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit where he was housed, said Randy Hamilton vice president of husbandry for the aquarium.

“We were concerned that he was getting a little too frisky for his own good,” Hamilton said.

Also, that he might go all Air Jaws on some poor ichthyologist.

So pretty, so cool

Got a spare hour? Click all over the 2007 Periodic Table of the Elements Printmaking Project. Some of the prints do a wonderful job of clearly conveying their elements. Others, like Niobium, draw you in and gently remind you that much scientific nomenclature comes from rich cultural source material.

P.S. The artist who did Niobium, Annette Haines, also has her own etsy store, where the print's for sale. Eeee! Exciting for art-loving science types or science-loving art types!

In defense of the zoos

Last month, Phil and I went to the Lowry Park zoo in Tampa. It was uncrowded the day we went, what with it being the Monday after Thanksgiving and all, so we had much of the place to ourselves. We were the only ones in front of the white tiger habitat. The mother padded around on paws as big as dinner plates; you could see the muscles under her coat rippling, smooth and powerful as waves under whitecaps. The cubs were gangly, but their thin limbs still contained a promise of menace.

"That poor silly magician never had a chance," I murmured appreciatively.

Last Friday, Phil and I took our younger nephew to the Oakland Zoo. We arrived not long after it opened, so the animals were still lively, relaxed in their unexamined state. We passed the tiger habitat. One tiger was bounding up and down, pouncing on branches and amusing itself; the other flopped on its back and began arching and wriggling appreciatively. It was almost like watching a cat -- except it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that the tiger could take you out with a well-aimed cuff.

This week, I have been reading all about the terrible tragedy at the San Francisco Zoo ("Tiger Kills One San Franciso Zoo Patron, Injures Two Others," SFChron, Dec 25, 07).

The terrible tragedy I refer to is the destruction of the Siberian tiger Tatiana. These animals are rare, and the emerging accounts suggest she died because she acted like what she was ("SF Zoo's Tatiana Acted Her Part As An Alpha Predator, Experts Say," SFChron, Dec 27, 07) once she had been goaded by someone or several people ("Trail of Blood Apparently Led Escaped Tiger to Victims," SFChron, Dec 27, 07).

One of the more infuriating side effects of this whole thing has been to listen to the vox populi natter on about how this proves zoos are bad things and animals are better off in the wild, yada yada. To which I say: balderash, bosh and buffaloshit.

There are bad zoos and mediocre zoos, but there are also very good zoos, and the one thing all these zoos do is sustain the possibility that someone will look upon an animal utterly unlike anything they're likely to run across in everyday life, and they'll decide, "Yes -- I think it's worth giving a damn about a living being, even when it doesn't affect me directly." Zoos impart an important truth, early on: we are not alone on this planet, and there are marvelous creatures that can live and do things we can't. But the one thing we can do is be aware of how precious every species is, how vital to others -- and to preserve what we can. Zoos reconnect us to the primitive fear and wonder our ancestors had; they reconnect us to our roots.

And zoos are often responsible for keeping animal species going when they'd die in the wild. I'm currently reading Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, and he mentions that the Korean DMZ has become an important -- albeit inadvertent -- ecological refuge for species that are losing their homes across the rest of Asia. This narrow, uninhabited slice of Korea is all some species have left.

Safer in the wild? Only when man's not around. Consider the terrible casualties that war has visited on gorilla populations. Or consider what's happening on America's rural roads: bears and people die when the former get in the way of the latters' cars ("As Cars Hit More Animals on Roads, Toll Rises," NYT, Dec 22, 07).

Zoos are keeping some species alive and thriving. If the accounts in the Amy Sutherland's Kicked, Bitten and Scratched are to be believed (and I see no reason why not), zoos don't do this because they like subjugating animals to human whim. They don't do it because they disrespect animals. They do it because they respect what different species are, and can do, and they want them -- and us -- to thrive by the virtue of their existence.

So -- go, zoos! Take time soon to go to your local zoo soon. Support it. Without it, how can we understand what else lives on this pale blue dot? Or how they make us more fully human?

Sleep? Convenience? Sleep? Convenience?

An article in this week's New York magazine examines the effects that systematic sleep deprivation has on kids. (Hint: not good) But here's the part of "Snooze or Lose" that prompted me to sit up:

Obstacles to later start times are numerous. Having high schools start earlier often allows buses to first deliver the older students, then do a second run with the younger children. This could mean doubling the size of the bus fleet. Teachers prefer driving to school before other commuters clog the roads. Coaches worry their student athletes will miss games because they’re still in class at kickoff time.

Dr. Mark Mahowald, a University of Minnesota professor who runs a sleep clinic, has been at the center of many school start-time debates, and he dismisses those claims. “Of all the arguments I’ve heard over school start-times, not one person has argued that children learn more at 7:15 a.m. than at 8:30.”

                               

In other words: we're asking kids to do crazy, overloaded schedules and then impairing their ability to function because a different timetable's not convenient for us?

Speaking on a purely anecdotal level: I learned the hard way that I do my best work when I'm getting at least seven hours of shut-eye nightly. It's too bad I was so slow to pick up the lesson -- I blame years of substandard sleep.

The sidebar to the article, "How to Get Kids to Sleep More," is helpful for grown-ups who need to fix their  sleep patterns too.

Old and canny beats young and healthy ...

Gina Kolata's column today, "See Jane Run. See Her Run Faster and Faster" (NYT, Aug 30, 07) was intriguing for its premise: once women over 30 get out of their own way, they're not bad athletes. Here's the explanation:

[W]ith average runners, [Ralph Vernacchia] said, older women may be faster because, oddly enough, they are trying harder than younger women and discovering for the first time what they are capable of.Most middle-aged women grew up when track and cross-country teams were for men only. Some of those women, who had no opportunity to race when they were young, are just learning to be athletes and are running faster than younger women who may not care as much.

I am curious to see if this effect extends across other sports. Speaking on a purely anecdotal level: last month, I participated in my first open-water race, and I did well enough that the guy who drafted behind me the whole way was surprised to learn that it was my first outing. I had been skeptical about my ability to complete an open-water race and I only swam at about 80% of what I can do. Yet I still managed to beat my own expectations for finishing, and I discovered that I'm actually not bad at this. And now, I've got a list of races I plan to compete in next year, I've boosted my workout distance by 33-50% (compared to two months ago) and I'm swimming faster.

Here's the kicker: I'm not sure it would have played this way in my teens or twenties. I would have been too self-conscious and too critical of what I hadn't managed to do. Maybe one of the factors that explains older women's racing prowess is that once you're grown-up enough to let go of that embarrassment, you're freer to push yourself without fear.

Where to draw the lines ...

So we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Sunday and wandered around for nearly three blissful hours. While we were there, we played with the "Real Cost Cafe" exhibit, which explains in painstaking detail which seafood options are good or bad for the overall health of the oceans.

We also picked up our updated Seafood Watch guides (bad news: Chilean sea bass is still on the "Avoid" list) and managed to avoid the usual perverse craving for a post-aquarium seafood dinner. Somewhere, I'm sure a conservationist is weeping: "We have signs all over the aquarium warning people of the dangers of mindless seafood consumption -- and you want a plate of calamari!"

Yes, I love the animal flesh. Yet I am increasingly uneasy with my appetites. And reading the Atlantic Monthly's review of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma does nothing to allay the growing dissonance:

[T]he idolatry of food cuts across class lines. This can be seen in the public's toleration of a level of cruelty in meat production that it would tolerate nowhere else. If someone inflicts pain on an animal for visual, aural, or sexual gratification, we consider him a monster, and the law makes at least a token effort at punishment. If someone's goal is to put the "product" in his mouth? Chacun à son goût.

As one of the people who was duly outraged by Michael Vick's actions (and DMX's), realizing anew that I'm complicit in this toleration puts a terrible taste in my mouth. It's one thing to give up pork for ethical or environmental reasons, but is reaching past it for the chicken really much better ("A View to a Kill," Gourmet, May 07)?

The rest of the review goes on to fault Pollan for justifying his own carnivorous cravings thusly:

[H]e derives the rightness of meat eating from the fact that humans are physically suited to it, they enjoy it, and they have engaged in it until modern times without feeling much "ethical heartburn." [...]  [B]y reducing man's moral nature to an extension of our instincts, Pollan is free to present his appetite as a sort of moral-o-meter, the final authority for judging the rightness of all things culinary.

It's an interesting piece because the anger is both articulate and well-supported with choice arguments.  I would also venture to say that the review is an effective article as well, because it's given at least one reader a framework for internal debate on ethical eating, and what actions are appropriate.

I am still balancing a number of competing ethical and practical considerations as I grope toward a dietary philosophy I can live with -- how the food was produced, whether we can afford it, if my enjoyment of the finished dish justifies the conditions under which the animal lived its life. Anyone else out there mulling these things too? Why do you eat like you do? And what would you change?

Bats, man ...

Oh, how I love our little friends in the order Chiroptera. And you will too after reading this sweet story in today's WaPo, "Flight of the Orphaned Bats."

(The handsome guys in the photo are the Virginia big-eared bats. Learn more about 'em here.)

If you want to know where science will go, read fiction ...

I admit, right after reading Discover magazine's Jul 07 "Aliens Among Us," with this:

At first, the idea of alternative life on Earth may sound absurd. Even if life could have begun more than once, it is generally thought that our DNA-based ancestors drove any competitors to extinction, handily explaining away the absence of non-DNA life-forms in the catalogs of biological science.

That is probably why little research has been done in the area, yet Davies and a few other scientists suspect a different reason for that absence: Their colleagues are just not looking hard enough. The common assumption is that DNA triumphed because “our form of life is seemingly so superior that we would have eaten” all other life-forms, says Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida. “That’s the sum total of the argument. But that’s just anthropocentric. These sorts of ‘we’re at the center of the universe’ arguments have always failed.”

I was very much reminded of Gerald Kersh's short story, "Men Without Bones."

I'm the comic foil of my own personal narrative

Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones.

-- "This Is Your Life (And How You Tell It)," NYT, May 22, 07

When I read this piece, my first thought was that there was a squandered opportunity here to recast the story as "Better Living Through Scrapbooking." After all, if you're choosing to document your life via that crafty outlet, wouldn't how you composed it affect how you viewed your present and future prospects? And couldn't your deliberate narrative construction ultimately affect how you remembered the story?

(And on a tangential note: y'all, Martha Stewart's new crafty stuff makes me want to throw a monkey-themed shindig. I see Pie Fight Club: Battle Banana Creme in my future.)

Anyway, the article got me thinking about how I spin my own narratives, and what story-telling styles feel more natural to me. (Hint: those styles tend to involve either self-directed jokes or snotty asides.) Anyway, the link between personal narrative styles and future behavior is only now being unearthed. Go read this story.