anthropometaphors

Ruby

That’s Ruby, or what Barbie would look like if she were a size 12/14.  There’s an interesting story behind Ruby, who is now banned from appearing in advertisements.

I wonder what it would have been like to play with Ruby dolls as a child.  Instead I had hand-me-down Barbies.  One day I discovered I could use the cement curb as a form of sand paper; I ground Barbie’s chest down to nubs.  After making significant progress toward “correcting” the small collection of Barbies we had, the post-op dolls were discovered, and  I was reprimanded for mistreating my toys.

Interacting with Barbie was a perfect introduction to the concept of “supermodel”.  While I no longer have dolls, I see Barbie everywhere.  Mostly she is a walking, size zero androgynous waif who, like Barbie, has the sole purpose of modeling how clothing should look.

A size 12 model leads the final walk-out at the Mark Fast catwalk show at London Fashion Week. The designer used size 12 and 14 girls alongside more conventional-sized models to showcase his knitted dresses

I was intrigued when I saw a post in femail about knitwear designer Mark Fast and his decision to use curvy women to model his new line of dresses.  A deliberate move, Fast intended to challenge the obsession with size zero models by showing how “fuller” women may actually look better in his slinky creations.

It’s impossible to ever be a perfect women, it seems.  I certainly can’t walk around airbrushed and flawless from every angle.  I’m glad there are voices challenging the way women are represented in society, voices like AnyBody who are anchors to help ease into accepting the body we have:

Remind yourself that the images in magazines are all digitally touched up, stretched and lit in extraordinary ways and that they are there to make us buy products rather than being pictures of real women.

(Thanks for the links, Sadie and Kat!)

Dear Vacation Fairy,

For my next holiday from work I would love to volunteer with an animal rehabilitation program.  I have been working very hard at my office job and miss feeling the breeze in my hair and seeing the sun rise and set.  My love for animals continues to grow and I feel a yearning to help large wildlife.

Gratefully yours,

Morethangray

Morethangray!  So good to hear from you.  Have you seen this website?  It may guide you toward your next holiday.

Happy tails,

VF

I’ve made the jump from eating simple veggie-matarian fare into the land of the big vee; I am only eating vegan food.  I still eat honey, which I’ve heard can be a controversial issue.

For some time now I’ve chosen non-leather products.  What was once known as vinyl is now green, and considered a vegan-friendly alternative to leather.  While I’ll purchase canvas and the occasional vinyl item, I’m not sold on the environmental aspect of using vinyl as an alternative to leather.  There are so many variables to consider when deeming something “green”, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn a graduate student was writing their PhD dissertation on the results of their analysis of the leather vs vinyl debate.

On a recent drive home from work I noticed a circus off I-880.  The advertisements featured tigers, which immediately caught my attention.  I fantasized about how to meet the tigers, partly to have a close encounter and partly to assess their conditions in circus captivity.  Needless to say, nothing came of these fantasies.

wtf

I’m not the only one interested in the health and well-being of captive animals.  A recent article in Animal Welfare describes the results of a study designed to assess the welfare of animals in circuses.  Not surprisingly, circus life is unhealthy for wild animals.  A combination of lack of space, social contact and exercise is beastly; when combined with stage performance and travel conditions, the confinement of animals to a circus is simply brutal.

Stars of the show they may be, but elephants, lions and tigers are the wild animals least suited to life in a circus, concludes the first global study of animal welfare in circuses.

“It’s no one single factor,” says Stephen Harris of the University of Bristol, UK, and lead researcher of the study. “Whether it’s lack of space and exercise, or lack of social contact, all factors combined show it’s a poor quality of life compared with the wild,” he says.

The survey concludes that on average, wild animals spend just 1 to 9 per cent of their time training, and the rest confined to cages, wagons or enclosures typically covering a quarter the area recommended for zoos.

Worst affected are elephants, lions, tigers and bears. Often they’re confined to cages where they pace up and down for hours on end.

“Even if they are in a larger, circus pen, there’s no enrichment such as logs to play with, in case they use them to break the fence and escape,” says Harris.

(from New Scientist)

Where in the world is there a home for such fierce predators?

More robots in the news! This time a robot scientist (!) is in the spotlight:

A robot scientist that can generate its own hypotheses and run experiments to test them has made its first real scientific discoveries.

Dubbed Adam, the robot is the handiwork of researchers at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge in the UK. All by itself it discovered new functions for a number of genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, aka brewer’s yeast.

In all, Adam formulated and tested 20 hypotheses about genes coding for 13 enzymes. Twelve hypotheses were confirmed. For instance, Adam correctly hypothesised that three genes it identified encode an enzyme important in producing the amino acid lysine. The researchers confirmed Adam’s work with their own experiments.

The team is now working on a new robot, called Eve, which will search for new drugs.

All of this, done without human help.  At one point in time, the design, execution and analysis of the same research — performed by a human — would have been equivalent to earning a PhD thesis.

What next?  Robots capable of self-replication?

bye bye baby

Another bored octopus in captivity wreaked havoc on the aquarium housing her tank:

The guest of honor in the aquarium’s Kids’ Corner octopus tank had swum to the top of the enclosure and disassembled the recycling system’s valve, flooding the place with some 200 gallons of seawater.

“It had grabbed the tube that pulls out the water and caused it to spray outside the tank,” said aquarium education specialist Nick Fash. Judging by the size of the flood, Fash estimated that the water flowed for about 10 hours before the first staff member, Aaron Kind, showed up for work.

I wonder if there are cases of octopuses housed in captivity with adequate exercise, stimulation and enclosure design.

To mark the Convention on Modern Liberty, the children’s author has written the following:

The new laws whisper:

You don’t know who you are

You’re mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

Tatiana, the biggest, baddest, most majestic cat in the house, turned and lay her head down. She was dead. The time was 5:27 p.m.

Today’s SF Chronicle has a piece detailing what happened during the December 2007 tiger escape at the SF Zoo, from the perspective of the police officers who shot and killed the tiger.  The interview was done in advance of tonight’s ceremony at City Hall, in which the four officers will receive the San Francisco Police Department’s highest award for bravery – the gold medal of valor – for their actions.

Zoo officials have said the three men targeted by Tatiana must have taunted or somehow bothered the tiger, provoking her to scrabble up and over the concrete retaining wall surrounding her enclosure:

Experts have surmised that the tiger Tatiana’s escape was not a random event, but that she was under great duress, most likely from being harassed. The zoo veterinarian’s necropsy revealed that her rear claws were virtually shredded, with concrete chips embedded in her paw pads presumably from clawing her way up the moat wall. This was no escape to hunt (she had been fed shortly before and the necropsy showed she had a full belly).  This was an animal agitated enough to do whatever she could to get to the source of her agitation. There has never been an occurrence such as this in the recorded history of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, according to the association.

The walk of the Shishi Gami

Who am I to say what the fate of a human should be?  My version of justice is akin to the walk of Shishi Gami; in which grass and flowers sprout and die instantly underneath its hooves.  Of the flowers involved in this story, I found the tiger to be most precious and her loss more devastating, despite it’s inevitability.

I like a good challenge.  Or maybe I like the idea of liking a good challenge.  In any case, I saw  a challenge and was inspired — a couple swore off buying new products for a year (with some minor exceptions).  Their lessons learned are:

1. Buying is a habit; giving up the habit buys time.
2. I can live with what I have.
3. Buying used doesn’t necessarily mean saving money.

Here’s the full article, from The Dallas Morning News:

Consumer dropouts swear off new products for a year

Could you give up buying new products for a year? A couple shares lessons learned the first year that they tried it, why they took a break last year and the challenges that they have set for this year.

By Nancy Visser

The first time my husband and I pledged to buy nothing new for a whole year, in 2007, we were trying to be green and to reject consumer gluttony. We figured we could rough it if we had to.

Turns out, it was fairly painless.

When you have 30 sweaters, it doesn’t hurt to skip winter clearance sales. When you have five pairs of black sandals, you don’t really have to replace one if a strap breaks. If the lawn chair collapses, you can get another out of the garage. Chip a vase? Who doesn’t have a dozen more in a cabinet?

But I never expected it would go this far: I was all set to buy a new car, a Scion XD, and settled for a used Subaru Outback instead. I hated the Subaru at first, but a tuneup gave it a lot more pep. Now, it suits my needs: It’s roomy enough to haul my 5-year-old son, Drew, his friends and their Big Wheels.

The biggest challenge for my husband, Guy, was finding men’s pants after he lost 25 pounds. You can find nearly new men’s shirts at thrift shops, but the pants typically are not in good condition. He just cinched his belt tighter until I convinced him that he looked like a bum and needed to break the pledge. So he bought new work pants and a pair of jeans.

Now, two years later, Guy and I are renewing the no-new pledge with an added recession-inspired motive: We want to save money, and we plan to track our savings.

So, in 2009, we will buy nothing new except food, toiletries and home-improvement items.

Consumer Zen

While the results of the 2007 pledge weren’t dramatic, the pledge changed some of our habits and helped define our values. It certainly made us mindful of purchases.

We found we didn’t need much, and that what we did need could be bought from thrift shops, vintage stores, consignment shops and Craigslist. We bought beautiful furniture including an armoire and a dining room table with six chairs. We bought books from Half-Price Books for kids’ birthday gifts. And we made do with what we had, somehow getting by without granite countertops and flat-screen televisions.

This is what we learned:

1. Buying is a habit; giving up the habit buys time.

Guy was the first one to blow the 2007 pledge. In fact, he blew it the first morning. He went to Albertson’s to get groceries and bought clearance Christmas lights for a dollar or two. He was stunned when I pointed out the violation. It was an early lesson on how easy it is to buy without thinking.

I had to stop reading Target ads for a year, and it hurt. The ad was the first thing I turned to in the Sunday paper, and if it lured me to the store, I hunted for things I didn’t know I needed: a colander, picture frames, T-shirts, socks, storage bins, bird feeders, extra light bulbs, a paperback book and clearance items.

But when you swear off buying new stuff, you gain time. You can read the front page of the newspaper first, and you can go to the park instead of to the store. It may sound hokey, but I gained peace.

2. I can live with what I have.

Our first no-new pledge took place when the housing market was in good shape. It seemed that everyone was upgrading something in their houses to help boost resale values. I felt great pressure to get new kitchen countertops.

After the pledge kicked in, I didn’t give the countertops a second thought. I quit worrying about window treatments and new carpet and bathroom redos. And I discovered that I feel pretty comfortable most of the time in my worn, 25-year-old house.

3. Buying used doesn’t necessarily mean saving money.

You can buy estate jewelry and used Porsches. Antiques shops in the Design District offer pricey used furniture. And you can spend hundreds of dollars on consignment clothing.

On the bright side, you don’t have to break the pledge to make nice purchases.

Take the pledge

Taking a no-new pledge is a lot like going on a diet. It works best if you build in flexibility. Clarify objectives and establish a few exceptions to help it work.

Our exceptions:

Food.

Toiletries. We may have enough to last a year since I’ve been buying Walgreens rebate items for years and we have a stockpile of hair products, shaving cream, razors, lotion, etc. And now, CVS has an even better instant-rebate program. The other day, Guy complained about our large stash of deodorant. But, honestly, when does he expect to quit using that particular product?

Home-improvement and home-maintenance products. There’s probably a way to salvage air-conditioner filters, but I’m not going to do it. And I need new tile in the entry hall. (Used tile isn’t an option.)

Free stuff.

If I can get it free with a rebate, I’m going to buy it. Sorry, but I can’t help myself.

School uniforms. We have a kindergartner. I’m not sure I can find used kindergarten attire in good condition.

Special shopping sprees. This year, we’ll try not to do this, but in 2007 I gave myself one day during our summer vacation to shop for clothes at resort boutiques. It was a treat. I also went to Kohl’s on the Friday after Thanksgiving (my first time doing Black Friday shopping) to buy bedding. (No used bedding for us!) I was amazed at the prices.

And this time around, we’re going to experiment with other challenges, just to be a little more hard-core.

• We will spend no more than $100 on food in January by consuming what’s in the freezer and pantry. We’ll start out OK since Grandma Reynolds sent us a fabulous Christmas gift from Omaha Steaks, but we’ll probably be sick of Tuna Helper and Progresso soups by the end of the month.

• We’ll pick a month to see whether each of us can get by on one tank of gasoline.

• Spring festival season will be a good time for free entertainment.

• We’ll see how long we can go without using air conditioning.

• We can make up other challenges along the way. And why not? We’ll have plenty of time since we won’t be shopping.

My confession

We didn’t stick to the no-new pledge this past year because I didn’t want to, even though Guy did.

For a good bit of 2008, the frugal habits of 2007 stayed with us. In fact, Guy came home on Earth Day with a used dog (a too-intense pound puppy that he’d recycle if he could).

But toward the end of the year, I began to covet new stuff. Plus, the sales were supposed to be so good during the holidays that I had to shop.

I bought a purse, some sweaters and socks for everyone. And, just before the year was up, I used a gift card to order flip-flops from L.L. Bean for Drew. (No used flip-flops!)

And now, we’re into our 2009 no-new pledge.

May the recession end before we have to swear off used stuff, too.

Laloo, a man with a conjoined twin attached at the thorax

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the two-headed calf, I found a book recently published by Oxford University Press called Freaks of Nature. The book is purported to be a scientific review of physical anomalies and what they teach us about biological development and evolution. A selection of images taken from the book  — ike the one of Laloo shown above — can be found in the image gallery on the New Scientist website.

References can be found describing people born with physical abnormalities as monsters or — as in the title of the book — freaks. There is a difference between having an anomaly and being anomalous; despite one’s physical condition we are all human. Which reminds me of a poem from Shel Silverstein’s book, The Light in the Attic:

When You Turn Off The Light
Small as a peanut,
Big as a giant,
We’re all the same size
When we turn off the light.

Rich as a sultan,
Poor as a mite,
We’re all worth the same
When we turn off the light.

Red, black or orange
Yellow or white,
We all look the same
When we turn off the light.

So maybe the way
To make everything right
Is for God to just reach out
And turn off the light!

– Shel Silverstein