Jabberwocky - the podcast

As part of the class I'm taking, I need to experience podcast production. I couldn't think of anything inspiring or interesting to say (that I didn't think could be said better in blog form, anyway) so I decided to take someone else's words. Lewis Carroll's, to be exact.

Michael graciously agreed to employ his vocal pyrotechnics for me, and he recited Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky." I like that poem because it is fun to say; it is pleasant to shape your mouth around the gibberish words. Try it - you'll see.

What I hadn't noticed, however, is that Lewis Carroll manages to paint an incredibly vivid - and entirely comprehensible - picture using words that don't actually exist. What does brillig mean? What is a vorpal sword, and how does one outgrabe? Individually, the words are nonsense, but put them together, and you know exactly what they mean. Not only that, but once you have the picture in mind, words like brillig and vorpal do a better job at describing the scene than any other word would. This poem is a masterpiece of construction.

I really think you need to hear it to truly understand it, though. So, here you go. Let me know what you think of it. Could you understand the poem? Do the words seem real to you, or are they still just a collection of sounds? How does the music impact your reaction to the poetry? Just for comparison, here is the poem read again, but with no background music. Which do you like better?

UW-Madison News Release--Study: Monkeys Show Self-Awareness

I'm not even going to comment on the following article. I think you all know me well enough to guess my reaction to it. Here it is:

FOR FIRST TIME, MONKEYS RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR, INDICATING SELF-AWARENESS

MADISON - Typically, monkeys don't know what to make of a mirror. They may ignore it or interpret their reflection as another, invading monkey, but they don't recognize the reflection as their own image. Chimpanzees and people pass this "mark" test - they obviously recognize their own reflection and make funny faces, look at a temporary mark that the scientists have placed on their face or wonder how they got so old and grey.

For 40 years, scientists have concluded from this type of behavior that a few species are self-aware - they recognize the boundaries between themselves and the physical world.

Because chimps, our closest relatives, pass the test, while almost all other primate species fail it, scientists began to discuss a "cognitive divide" between the highest primates and the rest.

But a study published today (Sept. 29) by Luis Populin, a professor of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that under specific conditions, a rhesus macaque monkey that normally would fail the mark test can still recognize itself in the mirror and perform actions that scientists would expect from animals that are self-aware.

The finding casts doubt on both the relevance of the mark test and on the existence of a definitive cognitive divide between higher and lower primates.

Populin, who studies the neural basis of perception and behavior, had placed head implants on two rhesus macaque monkeys, while preparing to study attention deficit disorder. Then Abigail Rajala, an experienced animal technician who is in the university's Neuroscience Training Program, mentioned that one of the monkeys could recognize himself in a small mirror. "I told her the scientific literature says they can't do this," says Populin, "so we decided to do a simple study."

Much to his delight, it turned out that the graduate student was right.

In the standard mark test, a harmless mark is put on the animal's face, where it can only be seen in a mirror. If the animal stares at the mirror and touches the mark, it is said to be self-aware: It knows that the mirror shows its own reflection, not that of another animal. (Animals that lack self-awareness may, for example, search for the "invading" animal behind the mirror.)

Rhesus macaques, a mainstay of medical and psychological research, have long failed the mark test.

But in Populin's lab, the monkeys that got the implants were clearly looking in the mirror while examining and grooming their foreheads, near the implant. Tellingly, they were also examining areas on their body, particularly the genitals, that they had never seen before. In some cases, the monkeys even turned themselves upside down during these examinations. In other cases, they grasped and adjusted the mirror to get a better view of themselves.

When the researchers covered the mirror glass with black plastic, these behaviors disappeared, and the monkeys ignored what had been a subject of fascination.

Furthermore, although a macaque will often interpret its reflection as representing an intruding monkey and adopt either an aggressive or submissive response, the implanted monkeys showed dramatically fewer of those "social" behaviors compared to the behaviors, such as exploring hidden body parts, that indicate self-awareness, Populin says.

"This report makes a unique contribution to our views about primate self-awareness because the 'mirror test' has been the traditional gold standard for determining if a person and/or animal met a criterion for having a sense of self," says Christopher Coe, a primatologist and professor of psychology at UW-Madison. "If a young child, brain-damaged adult or animal was able to recognize and appreciate that the image in the reflection was really them, then it was interpreted as proof of being aware."

Thus, Coe says, "If we follow that logic through with the belief that mirror recognition is proof of a sense of self, then we need to extend that attribute at least to rhesus monkeys."

Scientists who have used the mark test to explore self-awareness have found the quality in one species of bird, in one individual elephant, and in dolphins and orangutans. And so instead of asking how self-awareness evolved only among primates, they face the larger question of how it evolved multiple times in distantly related species.

The study may refine how the mark test is used, Populin says. "We clearly have data showing that these animals recognize themselves in the mirror, but fail the mark test."

The mounting data on self-awareness has undermined the concept of a cognitive divide in the primate lineage, Populin says. "There is another idea in primatology, and Charles Snowdon of UW-Madison has contributed to this, that instead of a divide, self-awareness has evolved along a continuum, so we will find it in different forms in different locations on the tree of evolution. I think the mark test may not be sensitive enough to detect self-awareness in the lower species; they may have it, but in a different form, and it may show up in different situations, using different tests."

Power

Here are how two rap songs contemplate power. The first is "No Handlebars" by the Flobots.



In addition to just really cool orchestration, I like this song because I get two different messages from it, depending on if I'm watching the video or just listening to the song. Listen to the song, and you feel there is just one person talking. I feel like the song is contemplating what happens when emotionally immature people come into great power, be it economic, social, or political. If all our politicians are playing a game of one-upmanship ("oh, yeah? Well, I can ride my bike with no handlebars! Beat THAT!") then we'll never end up with meaningful compromise or social discourse. To get anything done, politics requires a level of maturity that seems to be sorely lacking.

Watching the video, however, gives me a second message. This time, the song is sung between two friends who both start out at the same place. One boy takes a job in a big company, where the culture of his business, the media, and everything around him twists him into a hateful, frightened, friendless beast. In this view of the song, it is actually society and/or the giant corporation that is the villain. The boy would've been just fine, had he been in a better environment.

In our political world, I do think this happens all the time. People may enter into politics for noble reasons, but the reality of campaigning will twist them. How can it not? We expect these people to perform all day, every day, for years if they are going into national office. We scrutinize them. Have they ever made any mistake, ever? We will broadcast it, blowing it out of proportion. In an effort to win votes, candidates will promise the world to everyone they meet - by intimation, if nothing else. Then we become disappointed when the impossible fails to happen after they get into office. It is near to impossible for a candidate who is not a lying, egocentric ass to get into office.

It doesn't happen all the time, of course. And some people who get into office are still honest people who are trying to serve their country well. But it does happen sometimes. Just like, sometimes, our leaders are children in 45 year old bodies.

I think the song also cautions against letting corporations have too much influence in politics. Large corporations have lives of their own, but they are unencumbered by such things as morality, empathy, and looking towards the greater good. They really shouldn't be in charge.

If the Flobots have something to say about the corrupting influence of power as seen from the outside, Kanye West speaks about power from the inside, as one who has it in abundance.



From the Sword of Damocles to the assassins to the gaggle of women who aren't even looking at him, Kanye West sits on a precarious perch, and knows it. Power is a fleeting thing, the song says. As soon as you get to the top, there are people surrounding you to tear you down. To be successful in power, you need to revel in their angry cries and accept that your time in the spotlight will end (probably sooner rather than later.) Live it up while you can, and let it go when your time is done.

I don't think this song is quite as meaningful (powerful, if you will) as the Flobots song, simply because Kanye celebrates his ascension over those who would keep him down a bit too angrily for me. But it is still a great song, and the video is a-freaking-mazing. The movement, the symbolism, and flashes of color...stunning. I just love it.

So, that's my review of power, cats and kittens. Now I'm going to go watch that Kanye video again.

Podcasts

The next section in the class I'm taking is about podcasts. I already listen to the podcasts of my favorite NPR shows: Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Radio Lab, and This American Life. Those podcasts are just the normal radio show in podcast form. It's like TiVo for radio.

Recently, I've started listening to a few shows that are made specifically for a podcast audience. These shows are shorter, and perhaps they don't have as exhaustive of a review of a subject, but their very brevity is what makes them interesting. If I've got a 15 minute car ride, I can listen to a story on The Moth instead of trying to remember what was happening on This American Life the last time I listened to it, a couple of weeks ago. I also started listening to Planet Money, which is a fabulous little podcast about the economy. It's a spin-off of This American Life, so it has a similar feel, and they do a very good job explaining specific parts of the economy.

I did a review of some different podcasts for this class, and my new favorite is called Grammar Girl. I just love it. Each episode talks about a different grammar rule - what the rule is, exactly; why the rule is, perhaps the history of the rule... Stupdendous. Oh, and Dad? It IS okay to frivolously split infinitives. HA!

I also watched the beginning of a few different podcasts offered by Stanford University on iTunes. This is a really cool idea, and I wish Colby did it. They have podcasts of guest speakers, podcasts of university performances, podcasts interviewing various academic departments (they feel like little documentaries), and podcasts that are made by and/or for students. I would be very interested if my alma mater posted dance performances online. (Although, that might run afoul of some very tricky music copyright rules...the bane of all podcast producers!) And I remember nights at Colby when a very popular speaker was coming. They televised the speech, and I'm sure the college still has the video in storage somewhere, but a VHS kept in a library box is nowhere near as accessible as a podcast!

So, what makes a good podcast? Well, an interesting subject matter surely helps, of course. More subtly, though, a good podcast involves people who are comfortable in front of a camera (or microphone, for those audio-only podcasts.) It can't sound stilted and scripted. The voice has to have natural pitch, and can be neither too fast nor too slow. Podcasts, no matter how easy or low-tech to produce, are performances. If you are uncomfortable performing for an audience, podcasting is not for you.

Try blogging.

Craigslist Intrigues

I don't have much time to write a blog post right now, as I'm really behind on homework. But it has been an awfully long time since my last post, and I felt the need to post SOMETHING.

So, here is an interesting article I found. I'm not very involved in Craigslist, but apparently some people use this version of the Classifieds to post ads for prostitutes. Or, I guess, advertising themselves as prostitutes. Fancy that, someone used the Internet to find sex.

Well, the plot thickened significantly last month when 17 state attorneys general demanded Craigslist drop all its adult ads. It's pretty clearly a political stunt, but it does open up a whole crazy host of questions.

Is Craigslist responsible for everything that is posted on their enormous site? If they are, where does the line of responsibility end? Are newspapers responsible for everything that shows up in their classifieds? Is eBay responsible for everything that is auctioned? Is Google responsible for all the sites its search engines find?

If you spend more than half a minute contemplating the attorneys general self-righteous letter to Craigslist, you might also feel more than a little annoyed at them. The letter written talks about the victims of prostitution, the women and the children. Can't you just see them? Just praying for that day when prostitution is finally eradicated because Craigslist doesn't advertise for it anymore. On that day, there will truly be no more violence against women and children. This letter is what infuriates me about politics - politicians surround themselves with rhetorical bullshit that doesn't actually accomplish anything at all, but gives them something to point at with pompous pride: look at how I have made you safer! As the blogger pointed out, "It's a heckuvalot easier to write a strongly worded letter (followed by a press release) to grab headlines for being tough on prostitution without having to getting your hands dirty by, say, actually being tough on prostitution."

Discuss amongst yourselves. I must return to my homework.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation...

...or my weekend. Whatever.

I have been playing on Flickr like a maniac, and I just have to show off my stuff.

To get my feet wet, I created a "set." I uploaded a bunch of pictures around a theme (in this case, fun things to do in the summertime). Sets are basically personal photo albums. You don't have to have photos in a set, but I thought it would be nice. I played around with tags and geotagging. I couldn't get the map function to work - this would allow there to be a map showing exactly where the photo was taken just to the right of that photo. Maybe it doesn't agree with Firefox. Here is a link to my set, The Joys of Summer.

After that, I created a gallery. If sets are personal photo albums, galleries are the albums you make with other people's photos. Galleries are my absolute favorite part of Flickr. I think the galleries are where this overwhelming mass of mostly mediocre pictures becomes a place for art. My gallery isn't the most amazing out there, but I like it anyway. I did a sort of pictograph version of the lullabye poem "Wynkin, Blynkin, and Nod" by Eugene Field. It was definitely fun to do, although it took a really long time. Here it is.

Finally, I played around with annotations. If galleries draw the artists, annotating draws the educators. Annotations allow you to place a little box around one specific spot in the photograph and then place a note about the thing in the box. I used a couple of photos we took in San Francisco from the Coit Tower, a huge tower set on top of Telegraph Hill. I tried to identify some of the sights, and maybe add a little interesting fact about them. The end result is pretty cool, although it took FOREVER to do. I was hampered by the fact that I don't actually know San Francisco, so I was trying to figure out the names of the buildings using Google Earth and Google Maps. Here is the first picture and here is the second.

I could think of a bunch of educational applications. You could identify plants in a picture of a garden or forest. Or parts of a plant (or animal). In the zoo field, you could identify good (or bad) aspects of an exhibit. Or particular traits of an animal which help it to adapt to its environment. Annotations would really only be useful, however, if you wanted to investigate parts of a whole.

Setting up these Flickr "exhibits" is really work-intensive, though. I spent hours on the gallery and the annotating. I'm not really sure how useful Flickr really is in terms of educating. But it is cool. I'll give it that.

Bats

I was walking down to the mailbox this evening, right as twilight was deepening. The sky was still a fairly light blue, but the landscape had faded into shades of gray. That's when I saw the bat, flitting back and forth above me. It was just light enough so that when he made a sharp turn, I could just make out a line of light along the "finger" bones in his wing. I watched and silently cheered each turn. It was probably a little brown bat, Pennsylvania's most common bat, and just one of these fabulous little hunters can catch up to 1,200 insects in an hour. Watching bats fly always makes me smile. The sight brings back memories of summer nights at camp, watching the sunlight fade before going to eat my S'more at the campfire, surrounded by friends.

Bats in the northeast are in serious trouble, though. In 2006, a New York State wildlife biologist named Alan Hicks found a large number of dead bats in four caves around Albany. Some of them had a white fungus around their noses. In the time since then, the fungus Geomyces destructans has spread - as have over a million bat deaths. White-nose syndrome is prevalent in New Hampshire, Vermont, NewYork, Massachusetts, Connecticut, NewJersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia in the US, and in Quebec and Ontario in Canada. Slowly, however, the disease is spreading.

Scientists have no idea where this disease came from. They don't even know if the white fungus causes the death, or is an opportunistic infection which comes when the bats are hit by something else entirely. All they know is that something wakes up a hibernating bat, causing it to use up precious fat reserves. The bats then freeze or starve. No bat (as far as we know) has survived this disease. In some places, entire colonies of thousands of bats have died - their thin bodies piled on the floor of the cave for helpless bat scientists to find in the spring. Little brown bats seem particularly susceptible, but no bat species has proven immune. So far, there is no cure.

If current trends continue, the little brown bat will be nearly extinct by 2020.

So tonight, as I watched my neighborhood bat, I said a little prayer that his hibernation spot stays clean this year. Then I went to Bat Conservation International, and donated some money for research to combat this disease. Anybody who is reading this, please donate as well! Bats are not only wonderful creatures, but they are extremely important for the ecosystem. They are such effective predators of insects, no one really knows what might happen if they are suddenly taken out of the picture.

If nothing else, we are an ingenious species. We are clever. If anyone can figure this thing out, it will be us - but only if we have the will to do it. The white-nose fungus has been found on a bat in France...a totally healthy bat. Hopefully, this bat isn't the exception to the rule. Hopefully, we won't watch the destruction of European bats, too. Hopefully, this bat is actually immune to white-nose disease. If he is, maybe we can figure out a way to help our bats combat the disease.

I want my kids to watch bats in the summertime, too. Don't you?

For more information on white-nose syndrome, check out the U.S Fish& Wildlife FAQs and Bat Conservation International's FAQs. After you read up, here is where you can help the fight.