The Hard Realities of Raising Humane Food

By: | May 9, 2014

IMG_4383

This is a story that begins, like so many local controversies, with a post on my local Facebook message board. Last summer, someone posted a photo of a bunch of chickens, perhaps as many as 100, that had been dumped on a road outside town. The hens had obviously been well-cared for, and some of them had even laid eggs in the time between when they’d been dumped and when this local had discovered them.

The inevitable flame war roiled. What kind of bastard abandons helpless animals like that? Residents rallied to rescue the chickens. Accusations flew, and soon a local organic farmer confessed to the dumping. The hens were layers, past their prime, and because our valley lacks any animal carcass recycling facility that could kill and compost 100 chickens, he decided that the best course of action was to release them into the wild where they’d admittedly become bear, hawk and coyote food in a matter of hours or days.

In his words, “So we have these chickens who are noble creatures deserving a noble death and what is more noble than giving them their freedom so they can fend for themselves and often times provide food for the other animals in the wild? Is it not better than being shot and buried in a landfill of human garbage? It all depends on whether you understand the complexity of these issues.” Continue reading →

What Dust Does

By: | May 7, 2014
Approaching dust storm, March, 2014, Western Colorado Photo: Craig Childs
Approaching dust storm, March, 2014, Western Colorado
Photo: Craig Childs

 

Unusual dust storms have been rolling out of the Southwest and flying across where I live in Colorado, a state that doesn’t appreciate brown or red in its snow. These storms are vectors of change, fingers of desertification creeping up into better-watered country.

I’ve lived near the upper ends of the Gunnison River in Western Colorado since 1990, a brief and anecdotal period, but long enough to notice the last several years bringing dust storms in frequency and intensity I’d never before witnessed. I used to see them a time or two every few years, red-boiling clouds and gusting winds, but now these powerful, apocalyptic-looking storms are coming from 4 to 8 times every spring, blanketing the state, riding each other’s tails like horsemen out of Utah. Continue reading →

TGIPF: The Weird World of Banana Slug Sex: Redux

By: | May 6, 2014

Ed. note: this was the first in a long and distinguished line of posts about, ahem, well, you’ll see.  It was published June 22, 2012. Some things are better the second time.

Today I have the honor of kicking off a new series on LWON, a series all about  . . . (wait for it) . . . penises! Are you excited? I know I am.

There’s only so much penis talk one can tolerate, of course, so this will be an occasional column. Don’t expect to get a penis every Friday, because you won’t. And I don’t want to hear any bellyaching. Without further ado, welcome to the first installment of Thank God It’s Penis Friday (TGIPF).

Two banana slugs

In the early 1900s, Harold Heath, a zoology professor at Stanford University, noticed something odd about the banana slugs his students were dissecting. Some of them lacked a penis. Others had stumpy penises that seemed “abnormally underdeveloped.” Banana slugs, like earthworms, are hermaphrodites, so every sexually mature adult should have had one. Yet some — about five percent — didn’t. How odd.

The penis of a full-grown banana slug is hard to miss. First, it’s enormous. Banana slugs grow to be 6 to 8 inches, and the slug’s erect penis can be the same length. These slugs are so well known for their massive genitals that one species, Ariolimax dolichophallus, carries a name that literally means long penis (dolichophallus). Here’s another fun fact. A banana slug’s penis emerges from its genital pore, which is on its head. (I’m not going to make a joke about dickheads here because I am not a fan of lowbrow humor).

Perhaps, Heath speculated, the slugs’ penises had been “cast off” and the stumpy bits he and his students observed were the first stages of penis regeneration. Heath wasn’t the first one to notice that some banana slugs were penisless, but he was hellbent to figure out why. He collected about 200 slugs and brought them to the lab. On a couple of occasions, the slugs seemed frisky, but “evidently complete union never took place since no young were produced,” he wrote. So he took to the field to observe slug love firsthand. (Warning: This post contains a photo of a slug penis. Proceed at your own risk.) Continue reading →

Guest Post: The Art (& Science) of Lefty Portraits

By: | May 5, 2014

504179143_1b6093ad22_bIf neuroscientists could pick one idea to pack into a wormhole and expel to the outer reaches of the galaxy, there would be several worthy candidates. Some would probably pick the notion that you can “read” people’s tastes and preferences and even political ideologies on brain scans. Others might banish all talk of “neuroplasticity” and “mirror neurons.” Still others would rejoice to never hear another person ramble on about the “logical” left brain versus the “artistic” right brain, and how you can fulfill your creative potential only by thinking with both halves of your brain at once. Who knew!

All that said, backlashes can go too far sometimes. And in the last case especially, it’s a shame that hippie-dippy pseudopsychology has turned a lot of people off to the fascinating world of left brain/right brain differences. The two hemispheres really do have distinct talents, and while it’s easy to make too much of those differences, they do offer a fascinating peek at how the brain evolved and how it works in certain situations. Take the ability to read emotions on other people’s faces. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 3, 2014

Charles-Darwin-portrait-standing-photo-1881 (2)April 28 – May 2, 2014

This week the people of LWON congregated loosely and coincidentally around the theme of truth.

A guest post by Jennifer S. Holland finds a myriad of health benefits to yoga, but evidence for its power to trigger emotional release eludes her search.

Michelle introduces an excellent Bullshit Prevention Protocol, with a compelling case study. Fact checking is time consuming, she demonstrates, but a prerequisite for hitting the “Share” button.

Ann argues that artistic license should be limited in non-fiction, no matter how literary one’s aspirations. “The writer can’t go haring off,” she writes.

I, of course, immediately go “haring off” and discomfiting sensible people with my excitement around space settlement, of which you have not heard the last.

Helen rediscovers drawing as a way to sharpen the skills of observation, particularly while traveling. In drawing and non-fiction writing, one must first reject ones preconceptions of a subject, then portray objective reality.

Image: Photo of Charles Darwin taken in 1881 by Messers. Elliot and Fry, via Wikimedia Commons.  

Drawing What I See

By: | May 2, 2014

artLast year I started drawing again after about a 16-year break. I say “again” like I ever really drew in the first place—really, I took a few classes, produced a few things that bore some resemblance to the thing they’d been based on, and quit.

Then, one day toward the tail of last winter, I was walking down a street in northern Sweden. I was spending three months in a tiny town and going slowly crazy.

I spotted a store that sold art supplies. It occurred to me that maybe drawing was what my brain needed to keep it from constantly refreshing the social networking sites. And I’d been so careful with money for so long that having a legitimate reason to shop for something that wasn’t food seemed exciting. I picked out a set of pencils (with sharpener and eraser) and a sketchpad. Continue reading →