Wild animals are just that

It does matter if it's a tiger act, a zoo, a prairie dog, or bears in the wild. Wild animals are unpredictable. You can never really call them tame. They may seem so, but they are not domesticated. For that matter, have you ever been attacked by sheep, or a hamster, or geese? I have. Animals have individual personalities, they have instincts, and they have emotions, but they do not have reason in the sense that we do, no matter how much we anthropomorphise them. They do not necessarily react with consequences in mind. Their logick is based on pack, herd, or predator instincts.

I can remember our family cat biting through my mom's hand when I was in high school. It was hard not to feel betrayal. How could he do something like that? He'd always been so loving. My mom had been holding him when a man came to the door. Tiger had developed a fear of strangers after getting out and falling off a tyre of a moving vehicle, breaking his hip, dislocating the other, and cracking his tail. He spent a month in an animal hospital, only eating when my mom came in and fed him by hand. He became very sensitive to strange smells or if someone touched him the wrong way. For whatever reason, the man at the door scared him, and in his fear, he reacted to being constrained by taking the most direct method to get away--by biting my mom so she'd let him go. Even though she realises this, at the time she cried not because of the pain or the fact that her hand blew up to three times its size, but because she felt like her 'baby had bitten her'.

We do that with pets. Sometimes in our arrogance, I think we do that with animals in nature, too, with disastrous results. Even people who have worked with animals for decades are at risk, and most will admit it. It says a lot that from what I've heard, Roy Horn asked that the tiger who attacked him not be killed.

I have mixed feelings about performance animals. They can be educational, but there's also a lot of room for abuse. Sure, some animals are rescued and probably can't be rehabilitated--I'm thinking things like raptors who have damaged wings, for example. But generally, why would anyone keep a lion as a pet? I also don't get why people think it's great to have, say, a chimpanzee as a pet. Do they not realise that those chimps you see on TV are generally juveniles, who then grow up to be stronger than a man with hormones? Or that, like humans, they're social animals and if not socialised with others of their kind can develop behavioural issues, mental illness, etc.?

Don't get me wrong, I love my pets. But I also know that the life expectancy for an outside cat is 2 to 3 years compared to the 15-20 inside. Or that dogs, when left to become feral, become quite dangerous, especially in the country, as my friend Brenda can testify, having recently lost yet another lamb to the local pack. I'm not saying we shouldn't keep animals as companions. Domesticated animals have a symbiotic relationship with humans. Most people with cats will tell you they domesticated us. But a housecat and a tiger, although related, are a far cry from one another, and there are plenty of domestic animals in need of a home and attention. I just don't see the need to invade an animal's territory, muck with its habitat, or bring it back and put it in a cage because of a human need for flash or status. There are plenty of domesticated animals out there who need a home. Just check out your local rescue or pound. And be sure to spay or neuter your pets if you are not specifically trying to become a breeder. Some people are reluctant because they see it as putting constraints on their pet. You know what? Leashes are constraints, too, and I've known idiots who would let their dog run out into the street rather than put one on. That's real cruelty, letting a dog die because of some sort of misplaced idea of letting animals 'run free'. Leashes do not equal slavery. If you can't stand to leash a dog, don't have one. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you live in the city and can't stand to have a cat inside, you probably shouldn't have one, either. Out on a farm is one thing. In the city, it's just asking for trouble. I've killed a cat before. He was a black, unneutered tom who had just moved to the area and was out looking for love. He didn't have a reflective collar. I hit him at midnight on a Friday 13th. It was the perfect scenario for bad luck on all sides. I never saw him until it was too late, then carried him to a friend's house hoping to save him, only to have him shudder and die in my arms. I will never forget that feeling. I wound up falling apart in the friend's house instead. We located the owner, but I don't know if they had kids or not. I'd hate to explain that to my child. Better to keep the beloved cat inside. It's not a guarantee, but it ups the odds of a long, healthy life.

I think in an era where people tend to tramp all over in an effort to experience 'extreme nature', there's an even more important need to respect the animals that live in it. I sigh every time I see a commercial for some rugged SUV (no doubt guzzling gas) climbing a mountain, nevermind the erosion and other damage to what even 10 years ago were fairly pristine habitats. There are times I think the traditional conservationists (nature-loving hunters, like Roosevelt and Audubon) had a better respect for the environment than supposedly with-it modern tree huggers who are streaming into the wilds for that experience of a lifetime and nevermind the consequences.

Scientists take on the publishers in an experiment to make research free to all

More on the PLoS and other ways scientists are trying to make research more open in access: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Scientists take on the publishers in an experiment to make research free to all

Remembering Matthew Shepard

Wyoming More Tolerant on Shepard Anniversary

It pains me that there are still people out there who would rather focus on some perceived evil in the fact that Matthew Shepard was gay rather than the fact that he was killed in a barbaric, torturous manner. But I think those voices, even the vocal ones I'd rather not link to from here, are sounding more extreme to the majority of people. And it sounds like Laramie has changed in the time that has passed.

Matthew Shepard's mother recently came here to UK to talk to students. The fact is, no mother should have to talk about such a painful experience--the brutal murder of a son. But I'm glad she's chosen to. Maybe it will make people think and feel. Maybe it will make people aware that no one would choose to put themselves into harm's way by being gay. Maybe it will make people realise that no one deserves to die for what they are, for things that they can't change.

I can take anything short of a one-winged hunting horror--

...but my brain hurt this morning when I saw a commercial for Hokey Pokey Elmo. Go ahead. Play the demo. Press the hand. Brain hurt.

LISNews.com | Herodotus: A Peer-to-Peer Web Archival System

Check out LISNews.com | Herodotus: A Peer-to-Peer Web Archival System for an idea to use a P2P (peer-to-peer) service and cooperative computing (think the Seti@home project) to archive the web. I'm not sure what you would do about losing individual computer systems occasionally, but at least it would have the advantage of having no centralised location. Dissemination of information tends to ensure that it survives the disasters that can otherwise befall it (you can burn a library, or have one system crash, but somewhere it survives, like the 'books' in Fahrenheit 451 who memorised the written word so it would not be lost to censorship.

Burn a Country's Past and You Torch Its Future (washingtonpost.com)

Here's a very good commentary from the Washington Post: Burn a Country's Past and You Torch Its Future via LISNews.

It's been a six spider day...

: 'Enjoy the Silence' by Depeche Mode; 'Silent Running' by Mike & the Mechanics
: Inquisitive

In my faith, spiders are seen as messengers. This morning I passed 3 orb spiders with their webs strung between small evergreens in a row. They looked like they were running a contest for best web. 1-2-3. I was waiting to see 'some pig' on a web. A fourth sought her fortune lower than the others, near the ground.

Tonight I had another orb spider about a half inch around in body alone spinning across the entryway to our laundry, and gently pulled her web over to the evergreen so she wouldn't get caught as people went in and out. Just now a much smaller spider walked across my screen.

That's a little unusual, even for me. So, I've taken the hint and checked in with various people tonight, either talking to them or leaving messages. Hope everyone's okay out there.

Well, dang it

For those of you wondering why I haven't talked about hitting the smoke-free bars promised by the city's smoking ban, well, there's been an injunction, and apparently the smoking ban is still in limbo. Which is annoying, because Dwana was telling me that O'Neil's across the street (place of great pub food) has been having Irish music on Sunday nights and I'm pining for live Irish bands, since Bill moved back to New Jersey, Carl went out to Nevada, and the Fianna Rua bunch went their separate ways.

Well, better late than never

• Laundry
  
• Call my mom
  
• Set up a vet run
  

I don't procrastinate; I just rearrange my to do list to a more reasonable pace. :)

Worker blogs raise some company concerns

Yahoo! News - Worker blogs raise some company concerns

Sometimes, I think, people believe that because they cannot see the readers of their blogs, that it's somehow anonymous. Ludicrous, I know, but think about all the people who send out e-mails and then are surprised when they come back to bite them.

There's a balance to personal diary blogging and making sure you don't overstep into the realm of heated accusations or libel. I try to walk that, because I know that people can connect the dots in terms of my web presence between diary and professional remarks and where I work. Granted, I don't announce where I work, but that's just a Google search away. And I hope by now you've figured out that this blog is a collection of personal commentary, as mentioned at the bottom of the screen. On the other hand, I don't think that means people shouldn't blog at all, just try to keep some common sense

I try not to say anything about anyone I wouldn't say to his or her face, for one. And not that I work for a company with a product but letting product secrets out of the bag would, well, be extremely stupid, especially if there was something in a person's contract otherwise. It would be like me announcing the name and personal information of a patient on this blog--not only could that get me fired (especially since I signed a confidentiality clause) but I could be criminally prosecuted or sued in civil court for doing so.

Blogging is an excellent tool for all sorts of things. I hope companies won't fear the power of blogging so much that they micromanage their workers' expressions. I'm not sure, for example, how appropriate it is for the paper mentioned to limit a writer's political comments on a personal blog. That depends very much on what the writer's contract with the paper says. If political commentary is not covered and there is no exclusive contract for services, then I think it becomes a free speech matter.