Ape Language Studies

Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday

50 FIRSTS #17: 1st Census Form

I'm not sure how this is possible, but I just filled out and sent in my first census form. I was in Jerusalem for the year in 2000, so must've missed doing it (maybe Yorke filled it out for me??) In 1990, my then husband must've done so. 1980 - last year of high school so I guess my parents did it.

I have to confess that although short and certainly not difficult, some of the questions did make me think "should I really be answering this??" I did it, but wish there was a more secure way to do so.

Sunbathing

We have a new contender for "favorite position" I think. I walked into the living room this afternoon (stayed home to work on our summer website) and found a giant hairy slug on my sofa. He was o-u-t cold. Really very cute. When I pet the sunny side of him, he was like a hairy heating pad.

50 FIRSTS #15: Rest in Peace Ted Kennedy

Watched the endless back and forth on the floor for several hours, in order to see this historic vote. Watched it on Fox News to see what they were saying during the process. Insightful comments like "who ever designed a graphic that uses white letters against a bright background?? The graphics people at Fox certainly wouldn't do that." When they brought on Trent Lot who said this vote represents the destruction of the country and the Constitution, I changed channels.

50 FIRSTS #9: Sunrise Balloon Ride Over the Nile's West Bank

This was not on the archaeology tour plan for Luxor, but when we checked into our hotel, we noticed a sunrise hot air balloon trip over the Valley of the Kings available for the next morning at an amazingly inexpensive price. Too good to pass up. Definitely one for the "firsts" list. Very cool. It included breakfast on the Nile, then about an hour long flight. Here are a few shots:

Stewart as Beck

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50 FIRSTS #14: Called my Congressman

I have often thought about calling my congressman at various times, but finally did it today when I read that Donnelly still hadn't made a decision about how he is going to vote on the Health Care bill. Seems a bit cowardly -- time's a ticking. So, I sent an email, posted a comment on his webpage, and called both his DC and South Bend offices. Then posted a notice on my Facebook page as well as the ND Faculty & Staff FB page. I even made this nifty little skeleton action figure just for him...

When I called, the aide took my name, occupation, and then said "so, you want him to vote "no"? He received a rather surprised, then emphatic response from me... ;-)

Come on Donnelly, you know what the right answer is!

On the off chance that you are a resident in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District, here's how to contact him:

website contact form: http://donnelly.house.gov/contact/contact-us-form.shtml
DC office phone: 202-225-3915
South Bend office phone: 574-288-2780

Dixie Chick

Yesterday Michael and Doug had to go into Chicago for a funeral, so Dixie came to stay for the night. She's a cutie pie...at least I thought so. Lemur was of a differing opinion. Wiley just looked at her, then went back to sleep, and Maz stayed in the closet for the night. Poor Dixie didn't get much sleep - so many new noises to check out (among them Lemur's fairly regular growl or hiss just for effect).

This morning when I let her outside, she ran into a giant opossum and came right back in. So when I took her for a walk a bit later, she led me (with determination) back to her house and wouldn't budge. She jumped in a chair, laid down, and essentially said "okay, you can go now." I checked back in on her later, she didn't even get up to bark at me as I came in (normally she's quite vocal). Dixie was one tired pup.

She did manage to bark at the Jehovah's Witness who came by while I was hanging out, and gave the UPS man some lip for good measure. But quickly back to the chair and back to sleep.

The pictures below -- a)Dixie responding to Lemur's threat (little foot in the air), and b) Lemur's general hiding place when not c)espousing his displeasure at her visit.

50 FIRSTS #1&2: United Arab Emirates Visit

Got to see 6 of the 7 Emirates in December/January. Lesley needed to collect samples from several collections for her dissertation, which meant visiting numerous museums around the country. The only Emirate we didn't visit was Abu Dhabi (admittedly, the largest). We visited several cool places (Arabia Wildlife Center, Blue Suk, Sharjah Cornish, etc.), but I have to confess that the highlight for me was seeing my first large sand dunes. I've been in the desert before in many places, but there were always bushes/trees n' such. Pictures from Dubai were posted earlier, I've included a few from the various other Emirates below (including some seriously flooded streets after a downpour in Fujairah):

50 FIRSTS #5: Crumby Omani Hotel

After working at several museums in the UAE, we traveled to Oman to see the beehive tombs near Ibri (that's a tale for another post). On the first night we stayed in the Marina Hotel in Muscat. We went with the recommendation in the Lonely Planet guide (which got all manner of things wrong in their UAE/Oman/Yemen book - beware), but clearly should have checked Trip Advisor first. Only one review is good (probably written by the owner), the rest tell the tale.

When we went to check out, they tried to triple the rate from that agreed to on the phone. Argued for a bit, finally got fed up, paid them the equivalent of half the price of one room (we had 2) at our agreed upon price, told the guy at the front desk he had no honor and walked out. Gotta admit, although feeling justifiably self-righteous, I was a bit nervous doing it.

We chuckled for the rest of the day that they had no way to find us since we didn't reserve on-line and didn't pay with a credit card...until we got to the hotel in Ibri and they asked the standard first request -- "passports please." Then we remembered, the Marina had indeed xeroxed our passports like every other hotel we'd stayed in on our trip. Probably to keep people from jumping their bill... So, we spent the day hunting for the tombs, assuming that we'd be thrown in chains at the border crossing ;-) Yep, we showed them all right.

50 FIRSTS #3: High Tea in Dubai

I want to link each of the "50 New Things" to a posting, so I have some backtracking to do. Here are a few picture from our visit to the Burj al Arab, Dubai's 7-star hotel. Gotta confess, while the food was amazing, I wasn't much of a fan of the opulence of Dubai. Conspicuous consumption on an unimaginable scale.

The first shot is of the outside of the hotel, a view from inside looking up, the fountain and Christmas decorations, and the Burj Dubai just before it opened (world's tallest building).

50 FIRSTS #12: Homemade Horseradish

Lately I've been cooking a lot on the weekends (for the remainder of the week), hitting the Farmer's market, using mostly organics, trying to cut out meat for the most part, etc. This has involved some experimenting with new foods along to the way to keep it interesting. For example, several stores seem to have horseradish root available now, getting ready for Pesach (Passover) I 'suppose.

I LOVE horseradish. The hotter the better. "Preparing a Horseradish Root" gave me what turned out to be, very accurate information. I thought they were exaggerating in parts, such as: Grind or grate fresh horseradish in a well-ventilated room. The fumes are potent—a whiff may be stronger than you expect! I thought, really, how strong could it be??

Nope. I think I burned my eyeballs out. The smell was great, but man are the 'volatile oils' released are silent but deadly. Man it tastes great. Painful but worth it. Yum!

NCSE's New "UpChucky Awards"

This is a pretty fun new award, in name as well as purpose.

The UpChucky Awards

As explained on the website: Enter the intelligently designed UpChucky Award, which recognizes supreme achievement in the field of persistently rejecting evolution in the most stomach-turning way imaginable. This crown of cluelessness, this diadem of density, this badge of bullpucky isn't awarded to just any Darwin doubter.

I think Ben Stein should still be on the list.

SNL Humor Worthy of Blogging Again

For some odd reason, the blogging muse is back with me. May only be temporary, I may quickly be wooed back to the instant gratification of Facebook if no comments appear after a few entries, but for now, why not? Not much of meaning to share, just like having a place to upload fund finds on the web. So let me start with this new political piece, directed by Ron Howard, that brought back all the starts of SNL who played presidents for a dream sequence with Barack Obama. Pretty fun:

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

Neuroanthropology 2009 Student Posts

The student posts for Dan Lende's class on 'Culture and Compulsion' are posted on Neuroanthropology. As usual, interesting reading that shows off the quality of our majors. Pretty interesting stuff, worth a look. Here are the individual topics, go to the Neuroanthropology link above to access them:

• Why Do They Do It? Portrayals of Alcohol on Facebook and MySpace
• Gambling and Compulsion: Neurobiology Meets Casinos
• What’s the Dope on Music and Drugs?
• Tobacco Worse Than Cocaine?
• Caught in the Net – The Internet & Compulsion
• Lights, Camera… Alcohol?
• Confessions of a Shopaholic
• Can Videogames Actually Be Good For You?
• The New Performance Enhancing Drugs

Movie Night: "Up"

Michael, Doug and I have been hitting the theaters over the past few weeks to see a variety of movies. Today was supposed to be "Terminator," but "Up" won out due to the time. And I'm glad it did - what an enjoyable movie. (I made this colorful skull balloon image in honor of the film).

Highly recommended - good story about realizing life goals, friendship, adventure, fatherhood, aging, etc. It's also a very beautiful, colorful film. Totally worth going to - with or without kids in tow.

Here's part of a critique of the film:

As a Depression-era kid, Carl thrills to the newsreel exploits of explorer Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer), who pilots his dirigible the Spirit of Adventure to exotic climes. Brought together by a mutual admiration for Muntz, young Carl bonds with tomboyish Ellie, and their make-believe adventures give way to an achingly lovely montage of their marriage and life together. Alas, real-world demands force the couple to perpetually postpone travelling until Ellie becomes too frail for such excitement.

As a stubborn widower, Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) refuses to budge from the couple's pastel Victorian home, even though it's surrounded by a mammoth urban construction site. Rather than go gently to a retirement home, Carl resolves to keep his pledge to Ellie and sets off for South America with the help of a zillion helium balloons. Carl finds an unwanted companion in the perky Boy Scout Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai). Russell wants to help the elderly man, but never expected to be shanghaied by a flying house.

Docter turns Up's whimsical notions into surprisingly potent metaphors. On arrival in South America, Carl and Russell end up on terra firma, tethered to the house like it's a parade float. Docter shows Carl tugging his home, possessions and memories almost literally on his back, as if he's both treasuring his past and shouldering a Sisyphean burden. Ironically, Carl arrives in the land of his dreams but still drags his mundane reality around with him.

Carl encounters a sinister alter ego when he discovers the fate of long-lost Muntz, but Up doesn't dwell on its heavier ideas. Instead, the film strikes a lighter-than-air balancing act, with dizzying adventure scenes inspired by pulp novels and movie serials. Docter shows his genius for spinning endless variations off a handful of clever ideas. For instance, Dug, a floppy-eared, slack-tongued mutt, has a gizmo on his collar that translates his single-minded canine concerns into words. Dug's ability to speak turns out to be the beginning of a series of uproarious, dog-based jokes that prove as inspired as anything in Pixar's canon.

As two of Pixar's rare human heroes, Carl and Russell have facial designs that wittily reflect their life experiences...The audience feels privileged to soar and drift with them. In fact, you may never want to go back down to earth.

From: "Pixar's new movie Up sweeps audiences off their feet." by Curt Holman, 5/27/09, Creative Loafing blog.

Yay ND Winner!!

Congratulations to Patrick Tucker for winning the 2009 Jeopardy College Championship. Must've been quite an end to a senior year.

He's a friend of Mary D's, who said they had a nightly viewing in his dorm - during which he told people that he really hadn't done that well, had blown simple questions, etc. Lured 'em in. Well done.

Movie Madness

I took the past week off, and in addition to lots of sleep and housecleaning, I went to see several new movies. Big fun!

On the Friday it opened, several folks from the Department went to see the new Star Trek movie. We grabbed dinner at Fiddler's Hearth -- which is going on my "firsts" list because apparently my never having been there before marks me as seriously lame -- and then to the movie (very early, thanks to my anal planning). The movie was/is AWESOME!! Whole new franchise in the making.

The next week, I returned to see the movie with Michael and Doug. The next day we took in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." Both days we went to see the movie around 5, which meant a) no crowds, and b) a feeling of being slightly naughty by playing 'hooky' from work.

Today we repeated our afternoon outing to see "Angels and Demons." Escapist fun. Followed it up by "Thai-ing one on" (meaning - dinner at Siam Thai). Nice evening.

The final unanimous ranking -- Star Trek by far eclipsed the other two. Angels & Demons comes in at #2. Wolverine - just okay.

Graduation Done Right

Great graduation service. Fr. Jenkins gave a terrific introduction for President Obama, who then directly addressed the controversy of the past few months. Nice acknowledgment of Fr. Hesburgh's role in the civil rights movement too. I was particularly proud of the graduation class who chose John Jenkins as the 2009 Senior Fellow for his tenacity in this situation, and for their unified response when hecklers interrupted the President.

Here's a link to Obama's speech: http://commencement.nd.edu/commencement-weekend/commencement-videos-recorded/commencement-address/

And to John Jenkins' charge to the class of 2009: http://commencement.nd.edu/commencement-weekend/commencement-videos-recorded/charge/

Lunacy

Things around campus have been pretty crazy with the upcoming visit of President Obama. Randall Terry brought his 3-ring circus to town over a month ago, renting homes, trucks, and planes from which to spread his message. Rather than spending the money on useful items like adoption issues, prenatal care, etc., they looked for the most radical way to get themselves on the evening news. Hubris at its finest. And a message of intolerance that does not permit room for dialogue.

I considered going on a rant about the activities of the past month, but I think I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves. By way of a quick explanation, the shots are of a plane that has been flying around campus for a month towing signs such as the one pictured saying "This is what you're honoring."

There are giant aborted fetus signs as well - while someone not wanting their children to see such images could easily take a different route and avoid campus, there are trucks that drive all around town with the same images attached (as pictured). Not pictured are the baby carriages full of bloody dolls that they wheel onto campus in order to get arrested and thus garner further attention. Nutjob Alan Keyes has now joined the fray, thus enhancing the furvor of this fundamentalist minority.

Below the pictures, I've posted an essay that discusses this issue as clearly as I've seen. The author correctly points out that the policies President Obama has put into place will do more to reduce the nation's abortion rate than anything our previous "pro-life" President did (the "pro-life" handle of course ignoring the fact that he killed more prisoners as governor than all 49 other states combined, and began an unjust war that has killed thousands. But I digress...)


These final pictures from the press capture the true nature of the situation -- Randall Terry + Alan Keyes = film crews. I confess I question the piety of such acts...



Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame
A War of Words That Folds Neatly into the New Century's War of Weapons
By James Carroll

President Obama goes to Notre Dame University this Sunday to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree, the ninth U.S. president to be so honored. The event has stirred up a hornet's nest of conservative Catholics, with more than 40 bishops objecting, and hundreds of thousands of Catholics signing petitions in protest. In the words of South Bend's Bishop John M. D'Arcy, the complaint boils down to President Obama's "long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred." Notre Dame, the bishop charged, has chosen "prestige over truth."

Not even most Catholics agree with such criticism. A recent Pew poll, for instance, shows that 50% of Catholics support Notre Dame's decision to honor Obama; little more than one-quarter oppose. It is, after all, possible to acknowledge the subtle complexities of "life" questions -- When actually does human life begin? How is stem cell research to be ethically carried out? -- and even to suggest that they are more complex than most Catholic bishops think, without thereby "refusing to hold human life as sacred."

For many outside the ranks of conservative religious belief, this dispute may seem arcane indeed. Since it's more than likely that the anti-Obama complainers were once John McCain supporters, many observers see the Notre Dame flap as little more than mischief by Republicans who still deplore the Democratic victory in November. Given the ways in which the dispute can be reduced to the merely parochial, why should Americans care?

Medievalism in Our Future?

In fact, the crucial question that underlies the flap at Notre Dame has enormous importance for the unfolding twenty-first century: Will Roman Catholicism, with its global reach, including more than a billion people crossing every boundary of race, class, education, geography, and culture, be swept into the rising tide of religious fundamentalism?

Those Catholics who regard a moderate progressive like Barack Obama as the enemy -- despite the fact that his already unfolding social and health programs, including support for impoverished women, will do more to reduce the number of abortions in America than the glibly pro-life George W. Bush ever did -- have so purged ethical thought of any capacity to draw meaningful distinctions as to reduce religious faith to blind irrationality. They have so embraced a spirit of sectarian intolerance as to undercut the Church's traditional catholicity, adding fuel to the spreading fire of religious contempt for those who depart from rigidly defined orthodoxies. They are resurrecting the lost cause of religion's war against modernity -- a war of words that folds neatly into the new century's war of weapons.

If the Catholic reactionaries succeed in dominating their church, a heretofore unfundamentalist tradition, what would follow? The triumph of a strain of contemporary Roman Catholicism that rejects pluralism, feminism, clerical reform, religious self-criticism, historically-minded theology, and the scientific method as applied to sacred texts would only exacerbate alarming trends in world Christianity as a whole, and at the worst of times. This may especially be so in the nations of the southern hemisphere where Catholicism sees its future. It's there that proselytizing evangelical belief, Protestant and Catholic both, is spreading rapidly. Between 1985 and 2001, for example, Catholic membership increased in Africa by 87%, in Europe by 1%.

In their shared determination to restore the medieval European Catholicism into which they were born, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI became inadvertent avatars of the new Catholic fundamentalism, a fact reflected in the character of the bishops they appointed to run the Church, so many of whom now find President Obama to be a threat to virtue. The great question now is whether this defensive, pre-Enlightenment view of the faith will maintain a permanent grip on the Catholic imagination. John Paul II and Benedict XVI may be self-described apostles of peace, yet if this narrow aspect of their legacy takes hold, they will have helped to undermine global peace, not through political intention, but deeply felt religious conviction.

Something to Cheer

No one can today doubt that the phenomenon of "fundamentalism" is having an extraordinary impact on our world. But what precisely is it? Some fundamentalists pursue openly political agendas in, for instance, Northern Ireland, Israel, and Iran. Some like Latin American Pentecostals are apolitical. In war zones like Sudan, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Sri Lanka, fundamentalism is energizing conflict. Most notably, after the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq in 2003, the insurgent groups there jelled around fundamentalist religion, and their co-extremists are now carrying the fight, terrifyingly, in the direction of the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan. Catholic fundamentalists in the U.S. are far from being terrorists, but an exclusionary, intolerant, militant true belief is on display this week in their rallying to denounce President Obama in Indiana.

Obviously, these manifestations are so varied as to resist being defined by one word in the singular, which is why scholars of religion prefer to speak of "fundamentalisms." But they all do have something in common, and it is dangerous. The impulse toward fundamentalism may begin with fine intentions: the wish to affirm basic values and sources of meaning which seem threatened. Rejecting any secular claims to replace the sacred as the chief source of meaning, all fundamentalisms are skeptical of Enlightenment values, even as the Enlightenment project has developed its own mechanisms of self-criticism. But the discontents of modernity are only the beginning of the problem.

Now "old time religion" of whatever stripe faces a plethora of threats: new technologies, a shaken world economy, rampant individualism, diversity, pluralism, mobility -- all that makes for twenty-first century life. The shock of the unprecedented can involve not only difficulty, but disaster. And fundamentalisms will especially thrive wherever there is violent conflict, and wherever there is stark poverty. This is so simply because these religiously absolute movements promise meaning where there is no meaning. For all these reasons, fundamentalisms are everywhere.

In contemporary Roman Catholicism, whose deep traditions include the very intellectual innovations that gave rise to modernity -- Copernicus, after all, was a priest -- Catholic fundamentalists are more likely to be called "traditionalists." They are galvanized now around the moral complexities of "life," at a time when the very meaning of human reproduction is being upended by technical innovation, and once-unthinkable medical and genetic breakthroughs are transforming the meaning of death as well.

Like other fundamentalists, they are attuned to the dark consequences of the Enlightenment assumptions implied in such developments, from the Pandora's Box opened by science unconnected to morality to the grotesque inequities that follow from industrialization and, more recently, globalization. Where others celebrate new information technologies, traditionalists, even while using those technologies, warn of the coarsening of culture, the destruction of privacy, and, especially, threats to the family. In nothing more than its emphasis on a rigorous and comprehensive sexual ethic -- anti-feminist, radically pro-life, contemptuous of homosexuality -- does this brand of Catholicism echo a broader fundamentalism.

In the immediate aftermath of the liberalizing Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Catholic traditionalists, with their attachment to the Latin Mass, fiddle-back vestments, clerical supremacy, and the entire culture of the Counter-Reformation, were rebels. That was why the anti-Council sect, the Lefebrites, including the notorious Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson, was excommunicated in 1988.

Today, as indicated by Pope Benedict's lifting of that excommunication, the Vatican is the sponsor of such anti-liberal rebels. Instead of reading the Bible uncritically, as Protestant fundamentalists do, Catholic traditionalists read Papal statements that way. To affirm the eternal validity of prior Papal statements, as in the case of the on-going Papal condemnation of "artificial birth control," traditionalists willingly sacrifice common sense and honesty.

If the Catholic Church is as opposed to abortion as it claims, why has it not embraced the single most effective means of reducing abortion rates, which is birth control? The answer, alas, is evident: the overriding issue for Catholic fundamentalists is not sexual morality, or even "life," but papal authority. As Protestant fundamentalists effectively make an idol of biblical texts, Catholic fundamentalists, in obedience to the Vatican, make an idol of the papacy.

When it comes to Notre Dame, ironically, American Catholic fundamentalists, including the bishops leading the charge against Obama's appearance, are not going to be backed up by the Vatican. In Rome, a tradition of realpolitik tempers the fundamentalist urge of the current establishment. The highest Church authorities have long been accustomed to putting issues of theological purity second to the exigencies of state power.

So, no insults of the American president will be coming from the Vatican this weekend, and its silence on the Notre Dame controversy will speak more clearly than any official statement on the subject might. Indeed, the long history of Roman Catholicism, where Puritanism has steadily lost out to robust earthiness, and doctrinal rigidity has regularly bent before the pressures of lived experience, is itself reason to think that Notre Dame University has found the truest Catholic response to the world's present moment: its brave decision to honor President Barack Obama.

James Carroll is a scholar-in-residence at Suffolk University, columnist for the Boston Globe, and author of the bestselling Constantine's Sword. His most recent book is Practicing Catholic, from which this essay draws.

Copyright 2009 James Carroll