I feel like I'm in a contest with myself to come up with the ugliest snapshot.

The view out my office window is getting better every day!

Today was the vet tech student's last day. Thanks for all the hard work, c.!

politics -- The latest ammo against Barack Obama is the charge that he is 'elitist.' This baffles me on so many different levels, but I'll keep it brief. In fact, I'll copy from merrydian, who saw Jon Stewart's take on it: If you are trying to be president, and you don't think you're better than other people on some level, what the hell are you doing? On the other hand, wasn't just a couple weeks ago that we were worried that Obama was an anti-white-church-going ignorant black racist? In what world do these two charges mesh, except that of desperate character assassination?

we've had a bumpkin pretending that he didn't think he was better than other people for the past 8 years running roughshod over the constitution and putting more and more money into the hands of the actual elite. i'm ready for an administration of people that actually sound intelligent, if elite, to change a few things.

this week i co-teach, or help teach--it's not really clear which--a keeper training class on pest control. it's not a ton of pressure, but i'm a little nervous. the person who has been teaching it is eager to pass it on, and i'm pretty sure i'll be teaching it very differently when i get the responsibility myself. i'd like to approach it from a natural history perspective--what in an animal's evolution makes it a pest? but i think the emphasis will be on policy enforcement for a reluctant staff. we'll see, it could cover a lot of ground.

spring struggles to exist in boston. according to accuweather it's 25 degrees f right now. i'd like to get back to riding my bike to work, but i'm just not as adventurous as i once was. plus it's hard to imagine waking up even earlier. or cutting into my precious lj time.

i'm reading a book called 'pit bull placebo' which is about how pitbulls are treated in the media, with a history of dog attack stories from the late 1800's to now. it's not very well written, and it's clearly preaching to the choir, but it has a lot of good factoids in it. i'll make a post just about this book when i'm done.

my obama icon is from a poster by shepard fairey, of 'andre the giant has a posse' fame.
http://obeygiant.com/

Some Sunday 'yard' work.

One of the best things about the new (8 months new) job is that I get to take (zoo)keeper training classes. This past week was an anatomy class, which, since it was only a single two hour session, was necessarily brief. Nonetheless, I learned some interesting stuff, and absorbed some cool facts, many of which are about sex:

Most male birds don't have penises. Only the 'primitive' orders do: the ratites (ostriches and emus and such), the cranes, the waterfowl, and the chickens (pheasants, turkeys, peacocks etc.) What was not discussed was why the penis was lost in more 'advanced' bird orders. I suspect it's all about minimizing weight for flight.

Most male reptiles are fitted with a pair of hemipenes, a forked appendage that mostly stays tucked in their cloaca (the single opening to the genital, urinary, and reproductive tracts). The hemipenes are not a penis in the sense we understand it: there is no internal channel; semen flows along grooves on the outside of the hemipenes. The hemipenes are simply a way for the male reptile to convey semen into the female's cloaca, rather than inject it.

Many male amphibians can be distinguished from females during the breeding season by the presence of nuptial pads, dark and rough patches of skin on the limbs which grasp the female during amplexus. Amplexus, for those who don't know, is what passes for mating in amphibians that lay eggs in the water (which is most of them). The male holds onto the female waiting for her to release her eggs in the water; when she does, he releases his semen. The nuptial pads provide much-needed traction, as anyone who has tried to hold onto a bullfrog can attest. The males only have these non-skid surfaces during breeding season. Sometimes people ask me the difference between a newt and a salamander. Newts are aquatic as adults, and the males develop nuptial pads for breeding. Males of other salamanders (it was explained to me) deposit a spermatophore, a packet of semen, and the female passes over it and draws it into her cloaca.

. . . .

Happy springtime to you!

some things haven't changed much
http://urbpan.livejournal.com/483687.html

no good deed goes unpunished. it doesn't matter what i'm talking about, it's always true.

but let it be said that workplace communication theoretically works both ways. i would be a much better employee if i were a mind reader, but i'm merely an above-average listener with--apparently useless--good intentions.

i appear to have no working shift key, due to a second coffee spill. I STILL HAVE A CAPS LOCK, but that's not the same thing. can anything be done/

i should probably say something about charleton heston, since my review column is called 'soylent screen' and he suffered from the same disease my mother does, but i don't have much to say. it's interesting that he was in a few environmental message scifi films such as planet of the apes and soylent green, but his main legacy is being a demented mouthpiece for the nra. alzheimers' disease needs a spokesvictim from the other side of the political spectrum, though it is a dark pleasure seeing the likes of nancy reagan standing up for stem cell research, when the cold hand of reality rests on one's shoulder. republicans sure have strong principles until the controversy applies to them. anyway, thanks to you chuck, for planet of the apes, omega man, soylent green, touch of evil, in the mouth of madness, and bowling for columbine. i can't vouch for ben hur and the ten commandments, but they come highly recommended.

i'm in a bad mood that started when i started reading the chapter called 'good-bye' in 'a short history of nearly everything' this morning. this chapter is about the human-caused extinction event that started a few tens of thousands of years ago and continues at a brisk pace today, extinguishing species at a rate somewhere between 1000 and 120,000 times as dire as the average rate of extinctions. i need more time and silence to write intelligently on this, but i can feel where i'm going with this, from the point of view of someone who studies urban nature. urban species are those species that are 'compatible' [i can't escape that word] with humankind. all other species, more or less, are doomed. working at a zoo, with endangered species, it becomes clear to me that zoos are museums for the doomed species. please convince me otherwise, tell me that the conservation efforts supported by zoos and other organizations will have some effect against the juggernaut of 6 billion and counting building burning consuming and polluting.

or let's talk about movies. alexis and i watched the first half of 'no country for old men' last week, shutting it off when we needed sleep, planning to finish it later. at that moment, it was clearly a five star movie, reminiscent of coen brothers masterpieces like blood simple, raising arizona, and fargo. we'd heard from others that had already seen it that the ending was disappointing. we wondered how such a great movie could possibly be sullied by an ending. i should have remembered casino royale. right about the moment that woody harrelson appears in 'no country' you can feel it collapse. the anticlimax is when our antihero, a character who's actions we've watched in excruciating detail--we watch in what is close to real time as he dismantles a hotel room to stash an atache in an airvent--we come to realize he has died. the filmmakers decided that his death need not be seen, even though it's the most anticipated moment of the whole movie. this i suppose is meaningful in some way. i found it frustrating and infuriating. my wife and my father disagree, for reasons that as yet evade me, but make me wonder if the problem is not the film but my viewing of it. at least woody gets his pretty much when you expect/want him to get it.

are any of my bay area readers planning to watch or protest the olympic torch bus tour[questionmark]

Tools of the trade.

Basin stained by zep-i-dine.

I can't tell you what this is, but the prognosis is good.

It was my job yesterday to drive the medical support staff over to a procedure, with this thing. Awesome.

Part of the library in the lab.

The new wheels.

Leave it to my brother to take a simple meme and turn it into 2000 word assignment. In addressing his suggestion, "Blog about your transition from kid fascinated with animals to art student to zookeeper," I have also answered drocera's questions about what it was like where I grew up, what I was like in high school and how I met Alexis. belen1974's questions (including the exciting one about my back hair) will have to wait for another post. Trust me, after this novella, you'll need a break.

( My life story, if you can stand it. )

The Democrats' situation is depressing. Why is the Clinton camp doing all the Republicans' work for them? How is it that I have come to dislike people I used to have distant admiration for, like Bill Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, and the nation's middle-aged white women? I'll be watching the nominating convention, not for the inspirational speeches, but just to see how they untangle this mess.

Just how much time should I devote to watching and reviewing movies other people would avoid? Don't answer that, sclerotic_rings.

I like the idea of this new meme that's going around: Ask me questions about things I don't usually blog about. But what don't I usually blog about? Once I got past sticking to the Urban Nature theme, I pretty much started blogging about anything I wanted. But if there is something I haven't blogged about, that you would like me to answer or address, go ahead. Comments will not be filtered or locked or whatever, just ask, you cowards.

Every work day feels like it should be Thursday, and then it turns out it's only Tuesday. Every weekend ends too soon. This and other unique observations will be in my new book: "Like Dave Barry, only not funny." This one is really Thursday, but I've got a feeling tomorrow will somehow be Tuesday.

I've been early-ish to work for the past several days. This post ought to finish that.

I finally went to a work related but non-work social event, and I'm still all excited about it, though that could be all the damn soda I drank during the night.

We had our AAZK trivia night!* ( Read more... )

A surprisingly woodsy view out my office window.