So far, so good. It looks real ‘purdy and I have a WYSIWYG html editor again (I had been doing all the posts for the last little while by hand-coding them–yeah, I know, poor me). C’est tout.
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Boto bling
A recent article (hyperlink below) suggests that the male freshwater dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) that Heather and I got a chance to see in Peru this year (photographic evidence above) hold and thrash objects at the surface to “impress” females. What’s particularly interesting is this quote from the researcher:
“It’s particularly interesting that the complexity of this behavior in these dolphins is considerably greater than that in chimps,” Martin said. “Chimp males break off branches, thrash them around and make a lot of noise to show off how macho they are — bit like blokes with big motorbikes and Ferraris, I guess. Botos, however, are much more subtle, and often use their objects in what appears to be a ritualistic way.”
The complexity of the act sounds intruding.
Perhaps this will be the next wildlife videographer
Right after I posted on filming tigers with elephant-deployed cameras, this comes along:
I, for one, welcome our four-legged wildlife-filming overlords.
via
Elephants, tusk cams & nature films
Popping up on all sorts of blogs this morning is the news that the BBC natural history unit has been using elephants to film their latest documentary. The tone of most posts is in the “How cool is this?” vein, and while it’s certainly ingenious, I can’t help but be intrigued by it for different reasons.
Why? Well, if you read the original article, there is some interesting language used to describe the act:
Series producer John Downer, from John Downer Productions, said: “Tigers are so secretive and they live in such dense jungle that it is very difficult for a human film crew to get close to them.
“But elephants are the ultimate four-by-four camera vehicle – and have allowed us to film these animals closer than we have ever been able to film them before.”
So, in some senses this footage is being passed on as more authentic–something that humans wouldn’t get to access ((Due to our separation from the more-than-human world; check out this article by Dr. Matt Brower for more on that)). Elephants get to enter this authentic world and capture images that are only accessible to them. The language used to support this is quite blunt–the show is called Tiger – Spy in the Jungle. Spying, then, is key. We’re using these elephants to collect the clandestine acts of these tigers. If the acts were available to us, the show wouldn’t cast the nature of the relationship in these terms. So, from that point, the way the narrative of the documentary is set-up (access to hidden acts), it does nothing to move away from typical natural history story arcs and tropes.
I’m also fascinated by the language surrounding the use of the elephants. Downer goes on to say:
“The elephants were remarkably stable – almost like a steady-cam, and they only needed a little bit of training to carry and set down the cameras.
The way they’re spoken about–acting as steady-cams and 4×4 vehicles–I can’t help but think that they’re actually considered to be an extension of the technical apparatuses involved in the filming. Different, but still integral to the technical success of the film. As integral as the camera lenses and fake rock enclosures. Elephants act, in a sense, as our prosthesis. Since we can’t go out and get the footage, we’ll get trained elephants to do so for us ((This isn’t really a ground-breaking thought as “domesticated” Asian Elephants have been acting as our prosthesis for centuries–witness the relationship between logging and Asian Elephant labour)).
This brings me back to the initial assumption that we’re separate from the more-than-human world. In fact, the actions taken to make this film suggests that we’re entangled in these boundaries. Acknowledging that scholars are dubious to our typical, Western understanding of nature ((Which boils down to our problematic assumption that we’re separate from it)), I see an enacted network here where we’re not distinct from the filming of these tigers, but bounded up in it. For example, these Elephants would have needed to be trained to carry the electronics; training that was done by members of the production. The article is concluded with this Dower quote:
“It is a bit of a bonkers idea, and in my wildest dreams, when I thought about the challenges of filming tigers, I never thought we would suceed in doing what we did in this way, but now it seems the most natural thing in the world.”
Who knows. Perhaps it is.
Noticed: March 11, 2008
My first Robins of 2008. I saw one male on my walk this morning eating crab-apples and another, from the apartment, in the crown of our Mulberry tree. I wonder how the snow effects them–since they’re frutivores, I would imagine less than some ground-feeding birds.
House Sparrows collecting nesting material. In this case it was a male House Sparrow, on the sidewalk in front of Trinity College, flying off with a feather.
Snow melting. The solar switch has been flipped and the sun has enough energy to melt snow, even when the temperature is below freezing.
I think we’ll still be getting snow this winter, but we’re certainly on the downward (upward?) slope to Spring.
An open post to Mr. Jack Towers
Mr. Towers,
Thanks for your comment concerning my use of three pairs of underwear–oops, I mean unmentionables–while on vacation in Peru. This is a personal blog with little or no audience, so I was pleased that you took the time to comment. I do have to say though, that I was slightly hurt with the tone you took. Insinuating that I don’t shower, that I’m cheap and that I’m dumb isn’t the best way to ingratiate yourself with someone you’ve never met before.
And while I might be, in your opinion, dumb about my choice of underwear unmentionables, I do have good skills of observation. For example: I did notice that you left an IP address with your comment: 66.146.150.239. An IP address, Mr. Towers, in case you didn’t know, is kind of like a mailing address. It’s the address you were using to connect to the internet when you left the comment. Luckily, I’m a bit more savvy about IP addresses than my choice of skivvies. I could see, among other things, that you were writing me from somewhere in Richmond Hill using the ISP Futureway Communications, owned by Rogers.
I don’t know if you read any more posts on my blog Mr. Towers, but if you did, you would have probably figure out that I’m a PhD student at York University. I also teach courses. Indulge me a moment to tell you about my teaching–one of the courses that I teach right now has a website. It’s pretty boring and has no photographs of me cleaning underwear. Students can log-in, download lecture notes and upload assignments. You know what else the course website does Mr. Towers? I hope you’ve managed to follow my foreshadowing: it tracks IP addresses.
So here’s where it gets interesting, Jack. A student in this course, on the same day you posted your comment, accessed the course website with this IP address: 66.146.151.29. You know what’s neat about it? Again, I hope you’ve followed the foreshadowing: it belongs to Futureway Communications of Richmond Hill, too!
That’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?
So here’s my suggestion, Jack. I have a good idea who you are. I found the comment juvenile, but still insulting. Why don’t you come by during my course consultation hours so we can talk about this? I would like to hear how this happened. If you wrote it, an apology would be nice too. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
¿ Que pasa?
We spent our last day in Lima at the Lima Zoo.
Generally speaking, I don’t like visiting zoos, but I was curious to see what a zoo in Peru would look like, how the animals were kept and if there was any great difference between the hemispheres.
Beginning with the implicit assumption that non-domesticated captive animals are a bad thing, the zoo was pretty middle-of-the-road. Some habitats were better than others, but its nothing like a roadside-attraction zoo. I’m sure there are many examples here in Canada of animals kept in worse conditions.
They did have some domestic animals on display (Peruvian hairless dogs for one–I wonder if it is the only zoo that has Canis lupus familiaris on display) including some Water Buffalo.
Being in my thirties
I was reading about this guy’s “biggest Star Wars Collection in the galaxy” when I came across this gem in the Q&A:
- JD: What’s the oldest [Star Wars toy in your collection]?
RF: The oldest ones are the first series of vintage toys that came out with the movie in 1977.
Flashing across my brain: “I played with the original Star Wars toys. Am I considered vintage now?”
Updated Slugs
I’ve changed the permalink structure of this blog so that the URLs for each post make more sense to humans rather than machines. The only problem with this update is that any old hyperlinks to material on the blog are now b0rked. Given that I have a readership of me, it shouldn’t be too big a deal. Lets hope the search engine spider visit the site soon, though.
Up the Yangtze, tourism & a new indentured class
Heather and I went yesterday and saw the documentary Up the Yangtze. I thoroughly enjoyed it (and you can find out more about the film, if you’re interested) and was equally disturbed by it–not the movie itself, but the subtext. Thumbnail sketch: China has opened up to Western Tourism, and Western Tourists are interested in visiting China. The set-up for the documentary is that tourists are traveling up the Yangtze River to see it before the Three Gorges Dam swallows up all the scenery (which has to be a weird kind of ecological and cultural rubbernecking). They travel on cruise ships–which are floating islands of North America.
The subtext that I took away from the movie was the impact–and in my opinion, an exceedingly negative one–of North American tourism on the global south. The film has scene after scene of cringe-worthy training for those Chinese working on the ships. All employees of the cruise line get new names (for example, the protagonist, Yu Shui’s tourism-friendly name is Cindy), are told what topics to avoid with paying customers (Canadians don’t want to talk about Quebec independence) and how to act (not to be too apologetic because it will come off as insincere to North Americans).
All of this points to the underlying power-imbalance that seems to be at the heart of this kind of travel. And I can’t help but think that those working “for” North Americans, be they on Chinese Cruise Ships or at Mexican All-Inclusive Resorts, are a new class of indentured workers. Rather than being under contract to a North American tourist, as in a classic understanding of an indentured worker, they are under “contract” to this particular system of tourism. The system and the network has such power that it is reified and seemingly, has the ability to interess those with less power in the system–in this case, power seems to center on money. It really hit home because of my recent trip to Peru–Heather leaned over to me at one point in the film, as some white North Americans are excitingly “visiting” a Three River’s Gorge Dam relocatee’s home and asked “Was this us?” I couldn’t help but wonder how I was implicated in the film’s subtext, too.
A key question in one’s own travel practices seems to be “How does one travel without creating this indentured class?” I’m going to reflect on and try and answer that.