3.31.2005

new flatmate


124_2418
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
we have a little mouse living in our apartment. we have been really careful not to leave any food out, thinking that our precautions would result in him leaving and finding another place to stay.

it's like he knows that we aren't going to set a trap. it's almost spring outside and in theory, he should be gone now and out of my life.

but now, there is no food for him so he's getting bolder. now he just comes out and starts staring at us. he must of seen us giving the dogs treats so he thought he would give it a try.

our tactic now is when he comes and sits in the middle of the living room floor, we just kind of shout at him and flail our arms. that works for a few minutes and then he just comes back.

at least he is the smallest (doesn't look like it in the picture) mouse i have ever seen and he's cute. but i am not looking for another pet (although a cat seems pretty fitting for this situation).

lost


terryoquinn
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
lost last night was awesome! i think that was one of my favorites and not just because it was another locke episode. but come on, you have to love locke. he is absolutely stubborn and determined, but he would give you a kidney at the drop of a hat.

i think that could be the worst possible situation to get yourself into. can't you call the police and report that your kidney was stolen?

anyway, a few episodes with little development, and then out of nowhere...a priest/not priest with a plane and maps and a radio...and that dream! that gave me the creeps! and then finally, after boone was sacrificed, the little light came on. but of course we will have to wait until next time...i hope boone is going to be ok.

more support for seals

National Post March 28, 2005 Monday
National Edition
ISSUES & IDEAS; Pg. A21

Canada's season of shame is upon us
By Matthew Scully, National Post

In the late 1950s, when the seal-hunting industry seemed to be dying its natural death, it fell to a prominent Newfoundlander to pronounce judgment. "A very colourful page has gone out in Newfoundland's history," said A.B. Berlin, editor of the old St. John's Daily News, in an interview you can still hear at the CBC Radio Web site. But the passing of the industry was not to be mourned:

"Seal fishery was a wasteful industry," Mr. Berlin observed. "It was, in many ways, an unpleasant industry. I've heard many a sealer talk about the small whitecoats, two or three days old, almost looking up with tears in their eyes as they killed them. And frankly it's an industry that we could do without ... And from the standpoint of humanitarianism alone, it's probably a good industry to be without."

It was the voice of a sensible man -- not presuming to condemn all that came before, but recognizing that things do change, and violent old ways need not go on forever. Any respectability there might once have been to the slaughter of young seals depended on the raw need for fur and sustenance. The men Mr. Berlin described saw the carnage as a necessary evil. And necessary evils, when the necessity has passed away, are just evils.

Listening to that 1958 radio broadcast, it's interesting as well that no one at the time thought to argue that the killing of seal pups had to go on to protect the livelihoods of fishermen. The fiction that seals are a ravenous rival, snatching up all the cod of the North Atlantic, had not yet been invented. That twisting of basic marine biology (for ages, fishermen have known that harp seals eat far more predators of cod than they do cod) would come only in our own day, when Canada's industrial fleets and fisheries ministers would need a handy scapegoat for their own reckless and craven policies.

So it is that two generations after the whole sorry business was declared dead, Canada and the world must again in the coming weeks witness the slaughter of the seal pups. Unless Prime Minister Martin himself acts to stop it -- a merciful decision still in his power to make -- hundreds of thousands of these newborn creatures will again be clubbed, butchered, drowned or skinned alive in full view of a watching world.

In America and elsewhere, millions of people will again read accounts like this from The Washington Post last year: Amid the mayhem, "a seal appears to gasp for air, blood running from its nose as it lies on an ice floe. Not far away, a sealer sharpens his knife blade. The seal seems to be thrashing as its fur is sliced from its torso."

Rebecca Aldworth, a native Newfoundlander writing for The Christian Science Monitor, gives us these images from the six seal hunts she has witnessed: "The few terrified survivors, left to crawl through the carnage. The shouted obscenities and threats from the sealers, gunfire cracking ominously in the distance. The pitiful cries of the pups; the repellent thuds of clubs raining down on soft skulls. Sealers' laughter echoing across the ice floes."

The New York Times, in an April dispatch, may have captured the spirit of the enterprise best, describing how the seal pup killers "utter a sarcastic 'welcome aboard' as they throw the skins on their 65-foot boat."

Across the world people will read of such things and they will think of Canada -- never mind that by far most Canadians oppose the hunt or that honest Canadian fishermen must pay the price for this spectacle.

When the first pup is struck, that blow will set in motion an American and European boycott of Canadian fishery products. Tens of thousands of Canadian fishery jobs will instantly be at risk. The few million dollars that sealers will make from the killing -- on top of the millions more in government subsidies to the industry -- will come at a cost of hundreds of millions in revenue to legitimate Canadian fisheries.

Yet even now the seal pup hunters appear as indifferent to the interests or wishes of Canadians as to the whimpers of the newborn creatures dying at their feet. The only pity they seem to experience is of the self-directed variety, as I discovered after writing another column on the subject a few months ago.

Among the responses were the familiar lectures on nature's harsh realities, as in a column by Joe Walsh of The St. John's Telegram. "What about other animals?" he demands to know. "Would he afford the same sympathy and caring to a young cow or pig before it enters the slaughterhouse.... They have feelings, too."

The answer is yes -- of course. Human beings have duties of kindness and decency to all animals, as many animal-welfare statutes affirm. We do not make a standard of the worst practices, and it is no defence of one form of cruelty to try diverting attention to others.

As for Mr. Walsh's own grasp of nature's realities, he insists on putting quotation marks around the "baby" in "baby seals." The creatures soon to be exterminated will be just days old; many will not even have had their first meal; some at this very moment are still inside their mothers. And like the sealers he defends, Mr. Walsh is not even man enough to admit that they are baby animals.

From a fellow named Hugh came this succinct e-mail: "Re your drivel: Too bad you're not a seal pup."

Jack, in Newfoundland, developed the thought a little further: "Heaven help us if we actually needed advice from a cretin like you. You have about as much relevance as that moron [Margaret Wente of The Globe and Mail] -- like you, the poor thing is to be pitied. How dare you! Typical mainlander living in the center of the universe where everyone who doesn't agree with you is labeled a dumb Newfie, or redneck or bigot."

I am far enough removed from Canadian journalism to have no clue who Margaret Wente is -- though I'll take Jack's hostility as a point in her favour. What's clear is that Jack and my other correspondents from the north have a lot of trouble seeing beyond their own festering and self-absorbed resentments. They speak, moreover, for no one but themselves, and all their tough talk is the posture of small and deeply insecure men. If you or I did what they do, we also would prefer the image of a proud, defiant Newfoundlander to that of a selfish, merciless low-life.

Even if there were no money in the seal hunt, you get the feeling that a few of these characters would do it anyway out of pure spite, laughing and shouting "welcome aboard" as they toss the skins aboard. Yet this year more than ever, the cameras are ready and humanity will be paying close attention to the fate of the seal pups. Only the brave intervention of Mr. Martin can spare these unoffending creatures from a cruel death, and spare Canada from learning again that the slaughter of seals is a good industry to do without.

3.30.2005

the seal hunt continues

march 26 toronto star:
THE BIG LIE ABOUT THE HARP SEAL HUNT
a challenge to the leading activist's view on the hunt, KELLY TOUGHILL

Paul Watson is an idiot.

Need proof? The famous anti-sealing activist recently compared a hunt for 320,000 harp seals to the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. "I would not have compromised with the Nazi over the fate of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and I do not believe in compromising with the thugs who kill these seals," Watson wrote a student at Newfoundland's Memorial University.The analogy is more offensive to Jews than sealers, but either way it stinks. It also reveals a lot about Watson, a man who sheds the truth like an old pair of shoes when it no longer fits his needs.

Here are the lies at the root of Watson's anti-sealing campaign:

**Sealers kill newborn seals. Watson has a picture of a "white coat" baby seal on his website, though he must know that the white coat hunt was banned decades ago.
Sealers kill young seals in front of their mothers. In fact, the mother seals are long gone from the whelping ice by the time the hunt begins.

**Seals suffer horribly because they are killed in cruel ways. Not true. Most seals are shot through the head and die instantly. Many animals raised for meat suffer more. Think about crying calves kept perpetually tied up to make tender veal, geese force-fed to fatten their livers, cattle penned in horrid feedlots.

**The seal hunt is the "largest slaughter of a mammalian species." Not even remotely close to true. In Canada alone, more than 3.2 million cows were slaughtered in the year 2000. That's just one country, one species, and a death toll 10 times greater than the seal hunt.

**The hunt is subsidized by Canada. Not true. Sealers can't even use their time at sea to qualify for unemployment insurance. The Coast Guard does patrol the ice where the hunt takes place (partly to make sure kooks like Paul Watson behave), but if that patrol is a subsidy, then so are RCMP patrols on major highways. Unlike agriculture and other industries, sealers get no direct subsidies.

**The hunt is a "threat to the survival of the species." The harp seal population has exploded in the last 20 years, even as the hunt has grown. For those who don't have a few months to independently evaluate the conflicting studies on this issue, consider this: It is the specific mandate of the World Wildlife Fund to protect endangered species, and it has endorsed the hunt.

**The seal hunt is economically wasteful. This is the lie that hurts the most. The communities that depend on the seal hunt for survival are among the poorest in Canada, tiny outports devastated by the collapse of the cod fishery. In some areas, the money brought in by sealing literally keeps the town alive.Watson recently published a memoir, Seal War!

**The title is wrong. The battle on the ice is not a seal war. It is a modern-day class war that pits city folk against country folk. Pampered urban warriors are attacking rural subsistence dwellers who have neither the political clout, money nor media savvy to fight back. The victims in this war are not just the seals, but Atlantic Canadians who face one stark option in life: abandon home or figure out a way to pull a livelihood from the sea.

**The seal hunt is gory, brutal and dangerous. Humans mistreat seals — and almost every other creature on Earth. Campaigning against the seal hunt allows urbanites to feel the satisfying thrill of righteousness and moral outrage, while risking nothing of their own. Meanwhile, most of them ignore the fact that billions of cows, ducks, chickens, lambs and geese suffer and die each year for the pleasure of their friends and neighbours.

Idiocy.

march 29 toronto star:
MORE IMPORTANT TO ME TO SAVE SEALS
the big lie about the harp seal hunt, PAUL WATSON

It was amusing to read that I am an idiot, at least according to Kelly Toughill.

The article was full of distortions, statements taken out of context, misinformation that amounted to nothing more than a parroting of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans propaganda about the seal hunt.

The fact is that the DFO grossly mismanaged the fisheries on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and now seeks to cover up its incompetence by scapegoating the seals and spewing bogus rhetoric about those of us who defend them.


What is an idiot anyhow? Usually it is a word used by someone who disagrees with you who has nothing really intelligent to say. What do you call a person who is genuinely concerned about protecting and conserving marine ecosystems, who has spent 30 years on the front lines protecting whales, seals, turtles and fish and who has endured beatings, arrests, personal attacks and assorted nastiness. An idiot I suppose. Not that I give a damn. I have more imprtant things to do like saving seals.
Captain Paul Watson,On Board the Farley Mowat,The Gulf of St. Lawrence





3.29.2005

seal hunted


richtext_648
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
today kicks off the annual seal hunt in canada and it was definitely an interesting few weeks for the opinions pages. many find it surprising that a person can become so passionate about animals - things that can't even talk - that they would try to make a difference in some small way or another...a letter, a bumpersticker...very, very offensive.

what i find so surprising is how angry and defensive some people become towards anyone willing to defend the welfare or rights of animals.

i was watching speaker's corner last night and they had some people on who looked like they just came back from the hunt protest. i just wanted to say thank you to anybody who speaks up for what they believe in. i know it sounds cheesy, but these are appropriate things to be cheesy about.

all these people are trying to do is preserve the wonderful and diverse wildlife that we have in canada. it's not like they are dropping bombs or taking hostages. animal rights activists are not public enemy number one, they do care a lot about people too (despite the popular myth) and they are not just emotional sacks and crazy cat ladies.

Peter Singer doesn't even really like animals, he just doesn't like injustice.

i guess what i am trying to say is that everyone is telling us what to do. i don't get offended if someone is handing out flyers trying to convert me to christianity. you should be more offended that there are commercials that play twenty-four hours a day telling your children what they should look like and what they should be buying and stuffing their faces with. we all have a responsibility to decide for ourselves. i know there is a lot of input flying around out there, and all we have to do is find the motive. are these people trying to get us to buy something or are they trying to inform us about something? everyone can be wrong. but you might find some truth out there. it's called the marketplace of ideas.

anyway, i'm sorry about the rant and i am very sorry about the seals.

3.28.2005

northern spotted owl

in british columbia, the northern spotted owl is about to disappear. it's habitat is being severely threatened, but instead of protecting this species and it's environment, the provincial government is planning to clear-cut trees near lillooet, bc. this is where you will find one of canada's last remaining spotted owl populations.

david suzuki's website has prewritten letters that you can send to gordon campbell, premier of bc, asking to call off bc timber's (the bc government's agency for logging operations) plan to log in the spotted owl's habitat. it take's under a minute to voice your opinion. ah, the convenience of armchair activism.

3.27.2005

page four hundred and sixty-eight

"in rare and isolated cases such a will to truth, some extravagant and adventurous courage, a metaphysician's ambition to maintain a forlorn position, may actually play a part and finally prefer a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartful of beautiful possibilities; there may even exist puritanical fanatics of conscience who would rather lie down and die on a sure nothing than on an uncertain something. but this is nihilism and the sign of a despairing, mortally weary soul, however brave the bearing of such a virtue may appear."

beyond good and evil, nietzsche. 1886.

back in a flash

there are so many things i want to tell you because i have been away for a little while. first of all, bailey is fine (we think). the vet said she was just getting too much medicine at one time and we need to split the dose in half - one in the morning, one at night. other members of the household (i won't mention names) thought that might be too inconvenient and so bailey was only sick again last night because she was given the full 4 1/2 mls.

secondly, right after the tsunami hit our video store closed down (in a completly unrelated incident) and since then we have been cursing the hair salon that opened in its place. what we didn't know and only found out a few days ago (i won't mention any names but someone was supposed to tell us. probably the same person that i didn't mention before) was that mike who owned the video store actually opened the hair salon. but because we were special customers (i don't want to brag - he was the one that said it. but we did spend one summer renting four movies a day) we could still rent movies from him and he sells new dvds for $10. so i get to keep my video store and i get a new hair salon (i don't think i have had a hair cut in at least a year).

and my other piece of big news is just that ryan and i have been playing this x-files game for ps2 that scares the hell out of me. so far, its a zombie game but i think there are more episodes. i really don't get scared playing games like this or watching zombie movies (i love zombie movies, don't get me wrong) so its a lot of fun. also, there are real voice overs so it isn't cheesy pretend mulder and scully.

wow. how many of you are dying to live my life? i will not be a crazy cat lady when i grow up.

3.23.2005

split decision

minister of fisheries and oceans geoff regan: the seal hunt is good for you. seal oil contains high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and seal oil should be marketed for human consumption. (by the way, flax seed oil and hemp seed oil are also high in omega-3 fatty acids).

director of canadian wildlife issues for the humane society of the united states rebecca aldworth: east coast fishermen make less than 5% of their annual income from the seal hunt.

robert golden: there should be a fund for fishermen if that is the only thing in the way of stopping the seal hunt.

joan forsey: with huge amounts of money so easily available when you play on people's emotions - brutal men versus cuddly "baby" seals - and when you target people who can't fight back, other "charitable" organizations were quick to jump on the bandwagon.

international fund for animal welfare: according to an international team of independant vets, last year 79% of sealers failed to check if the animal was still alive when they skinned it, 40% were not killed on the first blow and 42% had minimal or no fractures, indicating that they were skinned alive.

3.22.2005

ten songs on the current playlist...

the stooges - tight pants
beastie boys - sure shot
bjork - i miss you
beck - tropicalia
dinosaur jr - blowing it
blondie - sunday girl
bikini kill - jigsaw youth
iggy pop - repo man
ikara colt - may b 1 day
dinosaur jr - show me the way

3.21.2005

a lazy dog-dangling day


108_0900
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
(i will apologize in advance for the graphic nature of this story)

you know those nice sunday nights when you think you are just going to relax and watch the simpsons, but the dog has better ideas? the dog that was hanging around all day eating hay and grass and other wonderful things you can find in a back yard (with two dogs...if you know what i mean).

so she throws up and all over the place and this is how i find out that bailey is more of a grazer than a hunter. i am talking about twigs and sticks and big hunks of mud. now bailey has epilepsy and when she throws up all her dinner with her medicine, you have to try to give her a little more. so that results in her throwing up four or five times over the freshly mopped floor.

you would think she would relax after this, but bailey is one of those dogs where if she were hungry she wouldn't notice the house was burning down because she was too busy licking the corners of the floor. bailey tries something desperate that she has never tried before and starts licking the stairs and eating the dog hair and any pieces of thread or lint that she could find which makes her sick again (all over ryan as he is trying to make her settle down).

so i spent my night sitting with her and trying to get her to stop licking her dog bed. she eventually settled down and just kept sticking her tongue out and licking the air in defeat. this morning she awoke as good as new and dying to eat her breakfast. i'm sure this new manifestation of her obsessive compulsive disorder will amuse the vet (i swear...ocd for dogs. if i wasn't convinced before, i am now).

3.20.2005

KFC misery

thanks, jody for finding this letter. her blog is my favourite: come on pilgrim.
the beastie boys wrote a letter in support of peta's campaign against kfc.
for more info you can visit PETA or KFCruelty.

PETA is in negotiations with KFC at the moment, and they have requested that you hold off your correspondence with KFC until further notice.

February 8, 2005

Dear Mr. Novak,

It is unbelievable that KFC has done nothing to improve the worst
abuses of chickens raised for your restaurants. It comes as no surprise
that KFC’s sales have been in the toilet as more and more people find
out from PETA about your complete disregard for the well-being of these
animals.

You have the responsibility to tell your suppliers that what they are
doing is wrong. By doing nothing, you are to blame for the cruelty that
these chickens endure, which is truly sickening. You need to require
that your suppliers stop chopping the beaks off of parent birds.
Require that they stop breeding and drugging chickens to grow so big
that they can’t even walk. Require that they stop using cruel gathering
and slaughtering methods.

You have the influence to make much-needed changes to improve the lives
of these chickens and to improve your business as a result. It’s a
win-win situation for you, and I am amazed that you haven’t seen that
yet.

Please follow the recommendations of your animal welfare board and PETA
to bring your company into the 21st century.

Sincerely,

Adam Horovitz

Adam Yauch

Mike Diamond

3.16.2005

seal hunt protest: less than success

the following is an excerpt from the toronto star's coverage of the national seal hunt protest that took place yesterday:

An attempt to mobilize Canadians against the annual East Coast seal hunt was met with locked doors, catcalls and scattered indifference today in several cities across the country. Representatives from an assortment of protest groups — about 400 people in all — assembled outside federal offices in Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. They called for an end to what they say is the world's largest slaughter of marine mammals. The hunt starts later this month in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In Halifax, about 30 people unfurled banners, chanted and waved signs outside the empty constituency office of federal Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan. Letters of protest were slid under locked doors and a signed banner was left crumpled on the carpet after a security guard said the office was closed for March break.

In Toronto, about 150 placard-waving people turned out for a ``family friendly" protest in the city's downtown shopping district. In Vancouver, about 50 protesters marched in a circle outside a Fisheries Department office during the lunch hour. Today's protests were small and sedate when compared with the raucous heyday of the anti-sealing movement in the 1970s and early '80s. In 1977, the movement reached its peak when sex symbol Brigitte Bardot commanded world attention by cuddling up to young seals on the barren ice floes. A few years later, activists were arrested for spraying red dye on more than 200 seals. By the mid-1980s, the sealskin market collapsed when the European Commission banned products derived from the young harp seals known as whitecoats. Canada responded to the international pressure by banning the commercial hunt for whitecoats in 1987. Despite so many setbacks, the industry roared back to life in the mid-1990s as demand grew for seal fur in Europe's fashion houses.

Barry Crozier, spokesman for the Nova Scotia Humane Society, said ``the number doesn't indicate the interest or the sincerity of the people." He said the point of the Halifax protest was "to indicate that a large percentage of Maritimers, who live by the sea, are against the seal hunt."

3.15.2005

hitchhiker's movie


ford_art
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
click here to watch a nice long preview.

harp seals

here's a site you can visit if you want to do something (this will take literally ten seconds a day and wont cost you a penny) for our canadian harp seals. your clicks will go to support the international fund for animal welfare's (IFAW) tv advertising campaign that will get the word out to people about this brutal and unregulated hunt. the advertisers on the page pay for each click and you can go back every day to save these little babies (yes - the hunters usually target the babies because their fur hasn't developed spots yet, and j.lo don't buy coats with spots). this is the largest deliberate slaughter of marine mammals in the world and it's driven purely for commercial profit. as a canadian, i don't want that blood on my hands.

3.10.2005

disturbing news

i think i just need to get this off my chest, because i was pretty disturbed after watching that man light himself on fire yesterday on the news. then, they played it on every channel over and over and over and over from thirty-thousand different angles. it bothers me because obviously this man cared enough about something to die for it, but that's not what they want to talk about. all they can talk about is the gasoline and the witnesses who were smiling and hooting about it. the farmers were angry because they got attention taken away from their protest (which by the way was also a bit confusing...what is this about exactly? what the hell does gay marriage have anything to do with introducing green belt legislation?).

it didn't really look like anyone was actually trying to talk to this man. he even threw letters out the window and has nobody bothered to read them? i am not saying that what this man did was commendable, but i find it strange that when someone tries to kill themselves, the first thing we do is get angry and then we defend the police officers.

i'm not usually this serious on my blog but the news last night was appalling. after a man tried to kill his daughter before committing suicide on sunday and then two other public attempts in two days, you can imagine what kind of media feed trough that is. and it looks like i'm buying into it.

tibetan day of uprising

today marks the forty-sixth anniversary of a peaceful uprising in the tibetan capital, lhasa against chinese rule.

"the massive, popular and widespread uprising of march 10, 1959 ordained the tibetan freedom struggle as a national movement with the proactive resilience and revolt of common tibetans to fight for the sovereignty, identity and freedom of tibet that stirred the collective consciousness of a tibetan identity that united all tibetans" (read more)

there are many events taking place today across canada, so if you are interested in participating, you can click here for a list (which the ctc has promised they would update today so hopefully they have by the time you visit).

3.09.2005

conference: animal intelligence


pig-12
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
scores of scientists and government delegates from 43 countries will attend a london conference on march 16 to discuss whether society's attitude to animals needs re-examining.

the conference comes at a time when the food industry is being forced to address mounting consumer concern over the structure of britain's food industry and factory farming.

among those speaking are officials from mcdonald's and the world bank's private sector arm, whose responsibilities include livestock investment. leading theologians will also argue that christian and islamic faiths need to update their attitudes towards animals by bestowing an intrinsic value similar to that given to people.

Here are some findings that will be discussed:

* wood mice build their own signposts, using sticks and stones to mark sites where food is abundant or mark short-cuts back to their burrow

* parrots, when shown two different objects, use language to describe the difference in terms of colour, shape and texture. grey parrots can master 1,000 words and have an intellect comparable to a five-year-old human

* elephants make graves by breaking branches to cover their dead relatives. and they have a large hippocampus (part of the brain thought to play a part in memory storage and mental map space)

* fish are renowned for having a three-second memory; however, evidence suggests they can be highly manipulative and cultured

* sheep can carry the mental image of another sheep or person for two years, store up to ten human and fifty sheep faces at a time and respond to human facial expressions (yes they like smiles more than grimaces)

* chickens feel intention and expectation and can tell people apart, they also have a sense of space greater than human children which allows them to perform complex tasks such as opening doors and quickly navagating through mazes

* pigs may use a sophisticated form of consciousness to deceive other animals for greater personal reward

3.08.2005

i heart huckabees

i heart huckabees was really good. i finally saw it last night. even jude law, who really bothers me, fit the part. there were some jokes that were so funny i was screaming...i really wish i got to see it in theatres. if you want to watch the trailer, you can find it here
but it isn't like this movie hasn't been out forever now...sorry if you think this is old news ha ha.
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happy happy joy

do you ever notice that sometimes the strongest sense of happiness is actually a feeling of relief? i find that happiness is the strongest when you do something that you didn't want to do and it's over, or when you find out something you thought happened (that you didn't want to happen) didn't happen.

yeah, i love that feeling when you get something over with. it could be an essay, a phonecall you didn't want to make. it just kind of brings you back to the zero-zone. complete balance and everything is just normal. that makes me happy.

ten songs on the current playlist...

peaches - kick it (featuring iggy pop)
le tigre - the the empty
outkast - prototype
paco de lucia - la nina de puerta oscura
mr bungle - air conditioned nightmare
le tigre - mediocrity rules
billy idol - rebel yell
the strokes - the modern age
the jon spencer blues explosion - brenda
rancid - tenderloin

3.05.2005

captive primates

the following article is just another story that clearly illustrates the dangers of keeping primates (and all sorts of animals for that matter) in captivity.

i truly feel that the sanctuary is doing the best it can, but a sanctuary can only act to alleviate some of the side effects of this problem. almost every primate that has been brought to north america was orphaned because it's mother was the victim of a poacher. many people who buy primates because they feel they are doing a good thing for the animals are only making a market from it.

return of the jessa

ok, i'm back...

construction on the street must have taken the internet out (for two days, mind you). times like these make me realize how dependant i am upon this little machine. i didn't know what was going on with my bank, i needed to renew my library books, i need to do research for this religion essay. yup...i don't even have to go to the library, i can just pull up lovely periodicals from this very chair i am sitting in right now.

i am actually quite surprised my butt isn't very large because i spend so much of my time sitting here like this. but whatever. how bad can it be? i did go to the bank in person today. and from the fact that i need to renew my books, it logically follows that at some time or other i did make it to the library. and you're here too so i wont go on justifying myself any longer.

3.03.2005

lost


jorgegarcia
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
ok...let me see if my computer will let me finish this time...

i loved last night's episode! hurley was so brave, especially at the bridge (i screamed when charlie almost fell) and when he met with the french woman (who looks so utterly sad and depressed). they got the battery -yay- and no one got shot!

i thought that the numbers totally give the show a new dimension. now i don't have any idea what is going on anymore.

and i thought the locke and claire side story was really sweet. (when is she going to have the baby?)

so i need someone to refresh my memory - has ethan been in three or four episodes this season?

oh and i think the music thing is cool now, but only because it only comes on if hurley is on.

3.02.2005

a day

one more psych exam under my belt. one more day below freezing. one more day of construction on the street (they are changing all of the hydropoles). another $9 for parking. one less day until my doctor's appointment (such a cold and unfeeling person). another three cups of coffee. another fifteen pages of harry potter. one less day until i have to hand in my politics essay. one more day in toronto and one less day of my life.

wow. i rarely get poetic anymore. this must be a wednesday thing. i am excited because lost is going to be really really good tonight! hurley!

jody, i hope you are feeling better and you kick that cold for good. you have had more than your fair share of illness this winter.

3.01.2005

the man and the whale


Humpback whale, AP
Human-produced noise is shrinking their world
i don't normally post whole articles like this, but i found it really interesting and important. i also find that people are less likely to read something if they have to click on a link to get there. so thanks BBC news for letting me rip this off.

For nearly a decade, Cornell University researcher Christopher Clark has been eavesdropping on the ocean, hoping to decipher the enigmatic songs of whales.

Using old US Navy hydrophones once employed to track submarines, he has collected thousands of acoustical tracks of singing blue, fin, humpback and minke whales.

His bioacoustics lab is now able to pinpoint the location of individual singers, and determine the length of their song. As a result, he's had to redraw the map of whale acoustics.

"The range is enormous," explained Dr Clark. "They have voices that span an entire ocean."

Drawing on newly declassified acoustic data from the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), and using new tools that can crunch high volumes of them, Dr Clark has determined that whales' songs travel over thousands of kilometres and also that increasing noise pollution in the oceans impedes the animals' ability to communicate.

Booming voices

It is not certain whether whales thousands of kilometres apart communicate directly with each other, or what their messages contain. But the results support a 30-year theory that, before the advent of modern shipping, the animals' booming voices would have resounded from one ocean basin to another.

A whale's consciousness and sense of self is based on sound, not sight
Dr Christopher Clark
With sound that is loud and low, in other words, "beautifully designed" for long distance travel, the singing of a whale in the waters off Puerto Rico could carry 2,600km to the shores of Newfoundland, says Dr Clark.

When scientists create a digital map of the sound as it propagates in the water, it "illuminates the entire ocean", he adds.

The pan-oceanic range is fitting for massive 30-190-tonne creatures that rely on reflected sound, rather than light, to navigate.

"You are dealing with animals that are highly acoustically oriented," said Dr Clark. "Their consciousness and sense of self is based on sound, not sight."

Insect repellents and insecticides which have been spread on fields on land have now gotten out to whales in mid-ocean
Dr Roger Payne
Dr Clark and other whale researchers spoke at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC about how new technologies are revealing whale secrets at the same time that human activity continues to threaten their well-being.

He is particularly concerned with noise pollution, or "acoustic smog". Noise from shipping vessels doubled every decade, said Dr Clark, which means a whale's world decreases by a factor of two.

Over 20 years, its 1,600km acoustic radius shrinks to 400 km, and, presumably, limits the range over which animals can navigate and find food or mates.

"We are slowly, inexorably, raising the tide of ambient noise so that their worlds are shrinking just to the point where they're dysfunctional," Dr Clark believes.

Military Sonar

He distinguishes between the chronic noise from ships and the acute bursts of noise from military sonar, which recent evidence suggests startles the animals and leads to decompression sickness or stranding.

Despite the ban on commercial fishing, other menaces besides noise pollution, such as commercial fishing nets and ocean contaminants also continue to threaten the health of whale populations, according to Roger Payne, president of the conservation group Ocean Alliance.

Chris Clark and his team, Cornell University
Whale song "illuminates the entire ocean", says Clark
His team is in the final year of a five-year expedition designed to establish the first baseline levels of synthetic pollutants in the ocean. Long-lived industrial pesticides, such as DDT and PCBs, re-concentrate as they move up the marine food chain. Whales are at the top of that chain.

"Insect repellents and insecticides which have been spread on fields on land have now gotten out to whales in mid-ocean," said Dr Payne.

His ship, the Odyssey, and its crew have travelled across the Pacific Ocean taking tissue samples of sperm whales, whose longevity allow plenty of time for chemicals to accumulate in their fatty tissue. They have collected 1,100 tissue samples so far, and have run preliminary analysis on 30 of them.

"We find these substances present in every single one of those samples," explained Dr Payne, who adds he will test all the samples once the voyage is complete.

"Toxic dumps"

The study will be the first global measure of pollution in a single species at the top of aquatic food chain, although high levels of pollutants in marine animals have been detected in previous studies.

PCB toxicity is defined as 50 parts of contaminant per million parts of animal, (50 milligrams per kilo) tests have revealed up to 400 ppm in killer whales, 3,200 in beluga whales and 6,800 in bottlenose dolphins.

It makes the animals "swimming toxic dump sites," according to Dr Payne.

Contaminants such as PCBs and DDT have been shown to inhibit a mammal's immune system, its ability to function, and the development of its young.

"The young receive roughly the contaminant concentration that their mother has, add to it what they get in their food during their lifetime, and then pass that double dose to their offspring," said Dr Payne.

He is also concerned about the possibility of what he calls "double stressors," in which seemingly weak threats to an animal are combined and create a one-two punch that causes serious harm, even death.

He cited a 2003 University of Pittsburgh study in which bullfrog tadpoles had little reaction to pesticides and to the smell of predators when exposed to them in separate experiments. When the stressors were combined, mortality rose to 80-90%.

Biologists had yet to determine whether such synergistic effects apply to other vertebrates, such as whales, said Dr Payne, who suggests that a combination of acute noise, contaminants or predation, could serve as double stressors.

While some whale populations are recovering since the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, anthropogenic influence may play a decisive role with populations that are at critical levels and endangered, such as the Northern right whale.

Specialised ecosystems

When whales are threatened, so are the specialised ecosystems that depend on them - and on their carcasses.

New research into whale falls - the sinking of whale carcasses to the ocean bottom - is revealing a weird and diverse assortment of creatures; some not found anywhere else in the ocean.

A whale fall is such a rare find that scientists like University of Hawaii oceanographer Craig Smith have made a practice of towing dead beached whales to sea and sinking them themselves.

Bathykurile guaymasensis (Smith/Glover)
Tiny creatures devour the fallen whale carcasses
"It's really a community service," said Dr Smith. "A rotting beached whale is a big, stinking mess."

Then they watch to see who shows up. A whale fall provides an organic smorgasbord - up to two million grams of carbon in its blubber and oily bones - for a host of creatures, some of which may be so specialised, they rely on dead whales to complete their lifecycle.

First scavengers such as hagfish appear and eat the soft tissue. Then bacteria and invertebrates devour the skeleton. Chemoautotrophs - including bone-eating zombie worms - gather when the bones begin to emit sulphide. At this stage, whale falls provide parallels to the sulphide-loving ecosystems at hydrothermal vents.

Scientists speculate that creatures that require sulphide may use whale falls as sulphide stepping stones - to disperse to new hydrothermal vent communities - and may even have a spot in the evolutionary lineage of some of the vent species, according to Dr Smith.

"It's quite possible that the ancestors of the giant tube worms on vents were actually animals that were living on dead whales," he says.

Bone-eating zombie worms

Evidence from DNA sequencing techniques also suggests that, not only may whale falls host more species than thrive at hydrothermal vents, some have highly specialised adaptations.

The bone-eating zombie worms, for example, use internal bacteria to break down the fats in the whalebone and appear to be unique to whale falls.

Whale fall (Smith)
Whale fall events are now very rare
"It is increasingly evident that there are major kinds of habitats, major types of organisms with extreme evolutionary novelty that remain to be discovered," said Dr Smith.

But as the whales disappear, so do these exotic ecosystems.

By some estimates, large whale populations have been reduced by 75% as a consequence of whaling. Following conservation biology theory, said Dr Smith, a 75% drop in one population meant that 30-40% of the species that depend on it would go extinct.

"We are beginning to appreciate what whaling may have done to these specialised communities," explained Dr Smith. "And it's very likely that there either have been or - may be on-going - species extinctions on the deep sea floor connected with whaling."

snow day


120_2024
Originally uploaded by jessalauren.
nice blizzard you got there. oh thanks, we get all kinds.