Ipseom

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

The conventional assumption of our culture is still that animals do not have any of the higher feelings of which we are capable, such as compassion and love and reverence for life. It can be difficult for us to see how tainted we might be by the culturally sanctioned misunderstanding that animals are only mechanical bundles of instincts and reflexes, with no hearts or souls. Few of us have had the opportunity to learn to respect them for what they are—creatures of marvelous complexity, beauty, and mystery.
The idea of animals as machines without feeling has held sway in the collective psyche for so long that it has acquired a momentum of its own. We have gotten stuck in a very deep mental rut, a habit, from which it is not easy to uproot ourselves.
And habit, as Laurence Peter put it, is often “simply the easiest way to be wrong again.”
We have seen this mental habit given credence by the church and philosophical expression through thinkers such as Descartes. To him, the body and soul were completely separate; thinking and feeling were attributes of the soul, not the body; and the body itself was simply a machine.” Since animals could not speak, it followed for Descartes that they had no soul, and so could not feel. According to Descartes’ point of view, which still permeates the psychic atmosphere of our times, all the non-human animals, from the ants up to what he called the “ape-machines,” have no capacity for ideas, freedom of action, choice, knowledge of any kind, or feeling. They are merely robots, driven by instincts. He likened animals to watches and clocks, with wheels, springs, gears and weights. Marvelously contrived though they might be, they are, said Descartes, “mere automatons.””
Descartes would sometimes kick his dog, lust to “hear the machine creak.”

All animals—including those we have been taught to fear—can respond to love and give it. Nowhere has this been proven more profoundly than by Ralph Heifer and his wife Toni, two of Hollywood’s foremost wild animal trainers. Heifer operates an animal park and training center in Buena Vista, California, where he handles and trains the fiercest of animals. Conventional wisdom has it that training these wild animals for show business requires instilling fear in the creatures, and breaking their wills. But Heifer is successfiui with a radically different approach. He says the idea first came to him in a hospital bed:
“Violence begets violence; I mused, as I lay in my hospital bed 25 years ago after being mauled by a 500-pound lion The big cat had been ‘fear-trained,’ with whips, chairs, and screams, as animals in captivity traditionally arc and though he performed his tricks well enough, he had no love for humans. Just as a battered grows up to be a child abuser, a battered animal awaits its chance to do unto others as has been done unto him. I had been done unto royally by that lion, and I had plenty of time during a long convalescence to figure out why. That lion had attacked me, as so many other animals have attacked humans over the centuries, not because he was ‘wild,’ but because he was unloved. Your dog or cat is no dWerent, nor is your horse or fish or pig or bird.
“The idea of affection-training was born in that hospital bed Animals respond to their lives emotionally, I reasoned. If an animal could be trained by addressing its negative emotions (with threats and punishment,), he could probably also be trained by appealing to his positive emotions. Surely the results would be even better with love than with pain, for the animal would be motivated to cooperate. Where pain might get the horse to water, love could induce him to drink.
“Since that time, Pve proved my theory with almost every animal known to man. I’ve traveled from the jungles of Africa to the forests of India, working with everything from hippopotami to tarantulas.
When I first heard of training wild animals through affection, I was skeptical. But Helfer’s success record, “with everything from hippopotami to tarantulas,” is hard to discount. His animals have been used in many television shows, movies, and commercials. There is one thing, however, that affection-training cannot accomplish.
There are some circus “tricks” which animals can be forced to perform through threats and fear, but which they cannot be coaxed to perform though positive means. The reason for this is simple: the tricks we see in circus rings are often in violation of the anatomical structure and deepest instincts of the animals. Horses dancing on their hind feet, bears roller-skating, dogs walking on their back legs and pushing prams, cats firing off cannons, tigers jumping through burning hoops. These are displays, not of the magnificent natural capacities of the animals, but of their degrading obedience to the dominance of their trainers, a dominance achieved in the ugliest of ways. The quickest and least expensive method of breaking the spirits of the animals held prisoner by the circus trainers is by using whips, electric shocks, sharp hooks, loud noises, and starvation. The training is done in seclusion, and if local SPCA’s get too nosey about what is being done to the animals to force their compliance, the animals are moved to foreign countries where there are no restrictions on animal treatment.
One elephant, trained to dance and to play “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” on the harmonica, was described recently as being probably the meanest elephant in the United States. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had good reason.

The Anthropology Review Database (ARD) is intended to improve the level of access of anthropologists to anthropological literature by making them more aware of what is being published and helping them to evaluate its relevance to their own interests. Unlike the more traditional print journals, ARD is not constrained by production deadlines and has few running costs. ARD can keep abreast of the production of new materials, and do so in a much more timely fashion than the traditional media. Envision an almost continuous flow of information from publisher to reader, by way of this database. AMID has no volumes, issues, or page numbers, just the name and date of the review, and the site’s URL to reference them. They also occasionally feature multiple reviews of more controversial items as well as links to reviews published elsewhere. ARD for is a brand new resource for anthropology and a first-rate example of the new species of online publication. Unlike traditional periodicals, ARD reviews are published individually, as soon as they clear the editorial process. Documents are housed in an online database where they can be accessed at any time. This is web publishing at its best—timely, easy-to-navigate, information rich, and focused on important material. At this writing, ARD houses no less than 1287 vital reviews. Editor in Chief and Web- master is Hugh JaMs of the Department of Anthropology, University at Buffalo.

Here it is. All the anthropology news that’s fit to print. Call this The New York Times of anthro, the Chicago Tribune of all that is new in the study of human culture. Want the latest on doctors in Ghana working with traditional healers, Spokane native Americans threatening suicide unless their ancestral lands are left unspoiled, or the restoration of ancient 12th century Egyptian aqueduct? This is the type of thing you will find at this great web site, brought to you courtesy of the Anthropology Department at Texas ARM. Learn about
paleontologists unveiling the most complete “Apeman” skull ever excavated, DNA studies on the “Kennewick Man,” and the strange tale of the world’s “oldest hat.” In other words, from the vital to the absurd, it is all here in a page updated weekly without fail. In addition to core anthropology news, you also get specific reports from the frontlines of various specialties including Bioanthropology, Socio/Cultural Anthropology, Linguistics. There is, believe it or not, important and engaging news on the linguistics front. Did you know the native language of Labrador is headed for extinction, with only a few speakers left walking the world? Did you know that a baby’s first words are usually uttered in sign language, or that it isn’t just Dr. Dolittle who can talk to the animals? Find out more at the Anthropology in the News website.

This great online guide to anthropological fieldwork comes to us courtesy of Dr. Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Associate Professor Of Anthropology, Truman State University. Covering all aspects of planning (proposals, pep, field site selection), field methods, and the writing of fieldnotes and final reports, Dr. Zimmer-Tamakoshi’s Web pages are rich in beautiful photographs from her own trips as well as insightful essays on the the art, science and profession of anthropology. What is more, Dr. Zimmer-Tamakoshi makes a point of leveraging the Web’s multimedia potential by including sound-enhanced visual clips from her own fieldwork among the Gende tribe of New Guinea. Dr. Zimmer-Tamakoshi also provides an in-depth glossary of anthropological terms, an extensive bibliography of key references, and a sensitive essay on what it is like to leave the field—not to mention a culture into which one has thoroughly immersed, an original friends to which one has become attached, and ancient ways of thinking one has come to appreciate and understand—and return home to the culture shock of what some call the civilized world. But as Zimmer-Tamakoshi points out, fieldwork never really ends. In finding a distant land and people to become intimate, the good anthropologist adopts (in part, at least) a new culture, develops a new family, and wins a second home, to which he or she can and should always plan to return.

Some I-Way applications will change the world. Others won’t. For example, staff at the University of Cambridge Physics Department were wasting time walking down the hail to see if the coffee was ready. The solution? They put the coffee pot on the Net with a video camera. Their collaborators at Butler University in Indianapolis occasionally take a break to check on the status of Cambridge’s coffee.
And will we be couch potatoes watching more TV? Chances are we’ll be doing less watching and more interacting. The TV is converging with the home computer and telephone to create the information appliance that is intelligent, interactive, and multimedia. This appliance will look a lot more like a computer than a TV The number of houses with PCs is growing phenomenally every year. In 1993, 21 million households had PCs; in 1994 the number reached 30 million, a 43 per cent increase; by the end of 1995 the number reached 45 million. Networking has grown even faster. In 1994 the number of home PCs with a modem was about 5 per cent. By the end of 1995 this had doubled to 10 per cent. We can expect that the number will continue to double until 1998 when most will be connected.
Rather than enabling more MW cartoon characters like Beavis and Butthead, there is a growing consensus in business, government, community and social interest groups that the I-Way can be the key to economic and social success. Evidence is mounting that it will provide a new basis t everything from wealth creation, national competitiveness, the reinventi of the corporation, the renewal of the business of government, and the taming of social development, all the way to the saving of lives, prot of the environment, improvement of democratic processes, and building. This may sound like hyperbole. It is not. It is a conclusion on the extension of the current experience with the new technolo cinuiging the way we do business, work, learn, and live.

Simpson recommends a six-step procedure that any professional installer can do for you. Following this guide will ensure that the new wheels fit the tires and that the new wheel-tire combination fits the truck.

1. Place the truck on a lift rack and raise it off the floor. Remove one front wheel.
2. Clean the mounting surface on the hub with a wire brush and remove any retainer (spring) clips.
3. Hold the aftermarket wheel (no tire) on the hub and check for a flush mount. The mounting surface of the wheel must fit flush to the hub mounting surface. The back side of the wheel must not rest against any obstructions such as the brake caliper, suspension components, balance weights, or rivets.
4. Install three lug nuts and hand.tighten. Rotate the wheel and fully turn the steering wheel in both directions to ensure complete clearance.
5. Repeat the above steps on the rear of the vehicle. (The one exception is that you won’t need to turn the steering wheel.)
6. Finally, mount the tires to the new wheels and install all four on the truck. Lower the truck to the foot This will put the vehicle in a “true” ride position because the weight of the truck will settle on the tires, causing them to spread closer to underbody components. Make sure tires and wheels aren’t in contact with suspension or other components.