Pursuing praxis

"A hundred thousand lemmings can’t be wrong." - Anonymous

Oh, and just for the record: I’m not homesick or bored or anything, but rest assured, I won’t be abandoning the first world any time in the foreseeable future (i.e. my lifetime). And it’s not even bad out here in Florisbad. I just can’t comprehend how people would prefer this (or anything worse) to an American city (or parts thereabout). Sure, there are parts of poorer America that could probably rival less developed countries, but being within US borders does make a big difference. (I don’t think I mentioned I’m locked inside grounds gates at night, even out here in the country).

I picked up a rag-popular-newspaper (not exactly the ZA Wall Street Journal), and was just appalled at the blatancy of the violence around parts, especially Joburg. I mean, people do mean, icky, revolting things back home, but both the frequency, severity, baldness, and swagger of these crimes is amazing. I’m glad I won’t be spending any time in Joburg apart from the airport and transport to Pretoria, and even then I should be staying on museum grounds almost the whole time.

I was also right about the socialist bent of the country (at least in print). You’ve got an editorial on one page saying that despite 15 years of freedom, racism is as rampant as ever (racism meaning white supremacy here). Then the cover story was about a conflict between the SPCA and an ethnic community that ritually slaughtered a bull. The SPCA was playing the civility card, with animal rights floating just under the surface of the argument, and the clan was being defended by the Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Cultural Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission). The story says the CRL Rights Commission says “the Yengeni clan had performed the ancestral ritual to cleanse [the defendant] from prison bad luck.”

The reasoning gets better: “”He [the defendant] did not slaughter the bull, his family did. Therefore, the SPCA is fighting a losing battle,” [the CRLRC spokesman said]. “They are undermining and violating other people’s rights. His family pierced the bull with a spear to allow it to burp, and if it did not produce a sound, culturally they would have left it,” she said.

“Chairman of CRLRC Dr. Mongezi Guma said the commission was concerned about the high level of ignorance among some South Africans, when it came to another’s beliefs and practices. “As a result, there is a tendency to undermine these cultures and religion, thus imposing Western ideological practices on indigenous practices. … It is ethnocentric and undermining to hide behind animal rights, and deny human beings their rights to uphold and practice their cultures and religions,” Guma said.”

Wowzers. Talk about an incomprehension of what a right actually is, and what it is not, and what it entails, and where it comes from. Bulls have rights, and cultural and religious and linguistic communities have rights… but do individuals have rights? The right to do what? To whom, and to what, and for what reasons? Whatever the hell they feel like, so long as it’s part of a recognized groups’ rights, and not Western in its origin. And what happens when one culture’s practices entails X, and another culture’s practices entails anti-X? Then what? Both are in the right, by this definition of rights. A full escalation to conflict would be the only rational thing to do, when you have no objective standard for anything surrounding the concept of “rights.”

WWR, Part III
 

I could feel the warmth of his little bat body in the palm of my hand, and his little belly was fluttering up and down – pulse or breathing, I couldn’t tell, but man he had a crankin’ metabolism. His ears are small by bat standards, and he’s dark brown, with a gray-brown underside. Know what? Bat toes are really cute. Five little ones, all lined up in a row, with a bigger one on the end. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, and it’s mostly just pink with very tiny little teeth. If I remember correctly, fruit bats have noticeably larger teeth, especially incisors. Which makes sense – he’s out at night in a bug-infested area, flying around the lights. He digs bugs.

I held the ziplock bag open by the fan for a bit, to make sure he was getting enough oxygen. Belly up, belly down, he didn’t seem to be moving much no matter how I turned him. About 10 minutes of this and I began to think about the freezer again. I mean really, I probably broke some bones somewhere in his body, and one of his wings doesn’t seem to get stretched out as far as the other. If he’s not bleeding internally, then it’ll take forever for the bones to heal, and he’ll probably never be 100% functional again. And it’s not like I know how to feed a bat in the meantime. And if I let him go, he’ll probably just die shortly, out of functional failure or an inability to feed well enough. Then he’s just another meal for the ants. Best to put him in the freezer, kill him more quickly, and have a bat skeleton to boot.

So I pushed the air out of the bag, sealed it, opened the freezer and slid him onto the bottom shelf. Apparently cold temperatures are a hell of a reviver, because just like that he was kicking like mad and stretching his wings and opening his mouth. I pulled him out and he was still again. Slid him back in, and he sprang to life. Guess the prospect of freezing to death is pretty motivating for a body. So now what? He’s obviously got some kick left in him, and on the off chance I really did just knock him silly, he deserves a shot at life before I make a specimen of him. Plus – now I have a bat!

But I also have work to do tonight. As cool as it is to hold him in my hand, I need to find another way to get oxygen to him. Aha – pasta strainer. I put the little dude on my bedside table, still in the bag, slipped the big strainer in over him, and voila – an airy little cage in a plastic bag. Not bad. I nailed a cricket hopping across the floor and popped it into the cage as well. I wondered about dissolving a few grains of vicodin in some water to help with his pain (it’s not like he’ll be flying any time soon), but I think small insectivores like him usually get all their water from the bugs they eat. So now I have a crippled bat and a half-dead cricket on my bedside table, as I sit propped up in bed blogging away.  

Realistically, he’s probably not going to make it. And I should get over my cute-fuzzy irrationalism and put him in the freezer. But I’m reminded of a news story Randy sent around the other day, about a duck who got shot in three places and survived two days in the fridge. Freaked out the hunter’s wife when she opened the fridge and the duck raised its head. (“Hey! Who turned on the light?”) And now he’s at a duck assisted living facility or somesuch.

The drive to live – 3.5 billion years of success.

(To be further continued)

The in-flight map showed pretty much a straight shot to Joburg, no detouring for… whatever. The alien brail in Libya? (Found it on Google Earth, funny stuff). Saw the sun rise in the east just in front of the wing (nuts that I had to sit over the wing on both flights) – clear, orange-yellow, and smallish, but highly positive. Did I kid myself into thinking it looked like an African sunrise? It must have been over Zimbabwe or somesuch, a bit before touching down at 6:30am.

Jo’burg was uneventful. The airport is quite new looking, and spacious. Picked up my phone no problem, dodged the offers for taxi rides to the domestic terminal (which is a five minute walk) from all the guys wearing orange. (Why orange? I think all the construction guys wore orange jumpsuits or coveralls also). I noticed that asking questions didn’t always get me correct answers, and people were quite content to give me what turned out to be blatantly wrong answers. I mean “Bloemfontein” and “domestic terminal” can in no way be mistaken for “international departures”. But there you have it.

I made my way down, got my checked bags weighed (23kg! But how did I lose 0.6kg? They must have rounded down from 23.4kg), no questions about my hand luggage. The SAA ticket guy did give me a scare, when I showed him my confirmation page on my PDA, and he said “Your flight was on Jan. 3^rd. The next isn’t till Feb. 11^th.” What!?! I had to scroll down and show him my flight reservation time (not the date I purchased the ticket), at which point he said I wasn’t in their system, then I pointed out the departure time (I was 2-3 flights early), then he processed my ticket without further care or aggravation on my part. I asked about changing my return ticket (since I no longer need it) and he pointed behind him. I found a counter for another airline, and they promptly pointed me in the opposite direction for the SAA counter. Sigh.

The dude at the security checkpoint eyeballed my backpack (though not my two other pieces of hand luggage) and asked what was in it. I said books and he waved me through. Must not have been weight concerns, since books have a density second only to gold and lead.

Went downstairs for the SAA departures, the area strongly reminding me of the United Coach (bus) departure area in O’Hare airport, back in the day of taking the bus back to school from O’Hare a few times a year. About 10 min before take-off, they collected tickets, funneled us on a bus, drove us to the plane on the tarmac. I dropped off my backpack (with laptop and everything but my purse wedged inside) at the nose of the plane. They didn’t care that I didn’t have a bagtag on it! I insisted. They insisted. I asked if I’d get my bag back. That was what deprived me of my laptop from Ottawa to SFO returning from the SVP conference in October. No tag, wrong tag, security concern, FAA policy, yadda yadda yadda, tough luck sweetheart, we’ll give you some old dot-matrix paper to write on during the flight. Here, they were like – you know which bag is yours, just pick it up when you get off the plane. Sweet!

The terrain around Joburg was surprisingly … zoned. All the residential areas were neatly (though not linearly) clustered, with red roofs and paved streets, perhaps like Florida or Vegas at home. But they abutted completely un-developed land (pastureland?), and the main roads were all buffered with extremely wide swaths of grass, making the area look very park-like. I can only imagine that people are prevented from developing these areas, given the amount of construction I saw, and knowing that there are a lot of ambitious, poor, get-ahead types in Joburg, who from the sounds of it, will do almost anything to improve their lot (often, it sounds, at the expense of others, which apparently contributes to the violent reputation of Joburg).

I kept getting the impression that the ZA government models itself strongly after the socialist European countries, and the concept of individual rights is completely alien, but not “women’s rights” “minority” or “ethnic rights” “consumer rights” “human rights” a la the UN, etc. And then the newspaper columnists ogle at the paradoxes of expected vs. realized outcomes of governmental policies. One article said all the expected benefits of globalization have yet to materialize, despite 15 solid years of globalization, 25 if you go back to the 70’s. I noticed a lot of focus, in the newspaper articles, about achieving ends (and the lack of achieved ends) without any examination of the means. Basically, rampant disregard or ignorance of the law of cause and effect. They desire all kinds of effects, but fail to inquire what genuinely and robustly causes them at the most basic level, and note only rough correlations between things, i.e. X is typically associated with Y, and since we want Y, let’s try to preserve or promote X. Yet X may be not a lineal cause of Y, but a side-consequence of the process actually producing Y, which can only be known if one pauses to genuinely investigate the causes of Y, to ask what it is and where it comes from, without a preconceived notion of what the answer must be. So, they conclude wrongly, act wrongly, and wonder why they don’t get what they’re after. A few pot-shots at the US and the Dollar help soothe the disappointment, it seems.

Getting there was the easy part. Packing turned out to be a greater challenge than I had imagined. I found out a little over 12 hours before departure that I could take (free of charge) about *half* as much stuff as I had thought I could take – 51 lbs for all my checked luggage combined. A thousand thanks to Steve for finding this out, otherwise I’d have been up a creek in baggage fees – a good $300-400 for 50lbs of stuff. And mailing it? Yeah, try $800-1300. It’s almost cheaper to buy a plane ticket and import a friend as well!

And before you scoff, remember my microscribe and related stuff weighs over 20lbs (not counting my laptop, which I took on the plane with me, and weighs a good 13lbs with its case and such), and it’s a 4.5 month trip in hot weather, wet weather, dry weather, cities, the country, the bush, meeting museum officials and asking for permits, grubbing about the collections, vacationing, swimming, going to tea, and going camping in order to collect poop samples. And that’s just clothing. I’ve got one travel guide per country, ONE field/bovid guide (perish the thought), two class books (instead of four, none of which are available digitally, and photocopies weigh more than the books; trust me, I tried), 4 months of scheduled prophylactic and what-if medication… and then find out I’ve got less than 30 lbs (including the bag) with which to make it happen? And what about a minor amount of duplication, in case one of my bags gets lost? At 51lbs, if they lost either of my bags I’d have been 100% screwed. That’s a really crappy gamble they force you to take.

But I did it. 23.6kg at the airport, with 23 allowed, and they didn’t bat an eye. Of course, my “one carry-on 13 pounds max!!!” weighed closer to 25 or 30 pounds, but so long as it *looked* light I didn’t figure they’d stop me. And they didn’t. But at Heathrow I approached the “connecting international departures” line and the guy looked at me and said “one bag.” I pointed to my backpack. He pointed to my purse, which was obviously doubling as a second carry-on. 15 minutes later, I came back with one bag. I fit a laptop (plus case) four books, two folders of papers, binoculars, my purse, all the contents of my purse, plus power-adapter supplies in my one blue (non-field) backpack. Of course, I was wearing four shirts, a hat, field boots, and two pairs of sunglasses, but what the hell, I made it past him without shoving books down the back of my pants (always have a Plan B). Ten feet later I unpacked the thing to go through security, promptly re-modularized my carry-ons, and was on my way. What a waste of time and effort.

Flying into Heathrow was fun. I guess there was really bad weather, Amsterdam calling it the worst storm in years if not decades (so I heard). I thought I heard the co-pilot say 50mph winds at the runway, and that he wasn’t man enough to bring us in, so the captain would be landing us today. On the decent to the runway, maybe a couple hundred feet up, we pulled up somewhat abruptly and banked to the left in what immediately struck me as a wussy touch-and-go. The co-pilot said something about there being squally winds and hangars in the way. We circled back around, much to the dismay of the motion-sick fellow in the seat ahead of me, who barfed several times on each decent. In all my years of flying, I think that’s the first time I’ve seen someone barf on a plane. The landing was quite smooth, and honestly the ride wasn’t very bumpy at all. I couldn’t even feel buffeting from the wind. Disembarking the plane and heading down one of the windowed corridors of Heathrow, I turned back to look at the Virgin Atlantic 747 with all it’s awesomeness and amenities and saw….. a giant Tinker Belle on the nose. Yes, that’s right, I flew a fairy plane from San Francisco to London. And their in-flight goodies are in neon green. What are they thinking?!?

Funny also how you can talk yourself into thinking that the sound of someone barfing “must have been” a really big sneeze or something. Till the stench of it drifts back to you. Such a strange sound though. I spent a bit of time thinking exactly where the sound comes from. Vocal cords? But it’s a gastro-esophageal action. Simple vibration from the forcing of liquid against the rings of the trachea? But then why do I sound awful after barfing? All groggy and stuff. I’m now thinking it must be the vocal cords, from the stomach muscles contracting so strongly that the diaphragm gets pushed up and forces air out of the lungs, and against the vocal cords. Not completely sure though. Where’s the air go?

7 hours of layover in Heathrow went quite fast. Got in around… 10 in the morning? Something like that. Left around 5:30pm for Joburg. Two red-eyes, as it were. I got little done on the plane. Mostly I slept and ate. 10 hours and 9 hours really aren’t that long, that way. Beats the 15 to Sydney which turned into 20 because of bad weather. Dude, that was almost 7 years ago.

Wow….

Quite possibly the coolest email I have been the subject of (to my knowledge). From a labmate, to all my other labmates:

Hi folks,

On Wednesday, Katie is off for a four-month slog through the
malaria-ridden, leech-infested overgrown stinking hellish man-eating
jungles of the Dark Continent. In the name of Science, bitches. In honor
of her awesome, probably lethal sacrifice, why don’t we go for a
farewell lunch Tuesday? No crying, though. If, by some freak of nature,
Katie survives her descent into savagery, madness, and probable
cannibalism, you’ll feel like a real wimp later.

In any given situation, remember to ask yourself, "What would Leonidas,
king of Sparta, do?" Shed some cowardly tears for his doomed labmate, or
cut out his own quadriceps muscle with nail clippers and smoke it into a
nutritious jerky to send along as emergency rations? I think the answer
is obvious.

—

I’m off tomorrow. Two days of travel just to get to my first destination. Although I could catnap with my leather field hat over my eyes a la Dr. Jones, or drink uber-cool martinis a la Mr. Bond, or read up on ancient Greece while calibrating my myriad gadgets a la one Croft, probably I’ll string myself out on backlogged paperwork in an effort to ignore the periodic adrenaline-spiked flashes of OhMyGodness as they wash over my body and grip my stomach with cold, steely fingers.

Hilariously to me, I day-dreamt about doing this sort of thing (biology research on big mammals in Africa) over a decade ago, as my quasi-consciousness mixed scenes from The Lion King with my recent re-discovery of Indiana Jones and my reading of Cry of the Kalahari written by two PhD students who studied lions and hyenas for several years in the ’70s. And here I am, actually doing it.

(Really?) Really.

Holy shit. 

26 - an auspicious year. For some reason, this age has always stood in my mind as a landmark, an age at which big important things would happen (for me, to me, by me), either materially, mentally, experientially, whatever. 25 was the I-have-arrived year of numerical beauty (5^2 - c’mon, it’s beautiful in so many ways), but 26 is the year for doing stuff, setting the stage for the next couple decades. I don’t know why I always thought that, and I certainly didn’t plan my trip to square with this irrational impression - but there you have it.  

Here I go.

The whole word is proairesis.

Email me or leave a comment if you want to read my password-protected posts. Chances are exceptionally good that I won’t have any problem with it - if I know you. I just don’t want any old visitor (or competitor) to have access to my ideas, especially when ideas are my main source potential income for my life. I’m sure you understand.

The aim of this blog: Forward thinking, introspective, self-evaluative, speculative, celebratory, building, dreaming, possibilities. It’s a recording of my best, of my incipient best, and of hairy problems. It’s not a diary, a newspaper, a gossip column, or a naturalistic snapshot meant to record the daily comings and goings of my life. My breakfast is not worthy of mention. Many of my ideas are. Discussing my breakfast takes me nowhere. Discussing an idea - well, that’s the beginning of every empire.

Rationale: What I call "dreaming" - my wild speculation, idealism, adventurism on par with Calvin’s Spaceman Spiff - that I have endulged in all my life, has historically proven to be a dangerously preditive and directive force. Psychologists probably would call it a self-visualization technique. I still call it dreaming. I "dream" myself very high - what if I got to do this, or was that, or created this, etc. etc. Spaceman Spiff meets Wonderwoman. And then I think, what would it take for this Spiff-craft to fly? Several humongous things way out of reach, and a whole lot of little ones within reach. So just for shits and giggles, a self-dare and private entertainment - and I love being entertained - I set out to do just one of those little things. And the dream fades away into my sub-consciousness, and I dream up another, always a variation on a theme, and do the whole process again because it’s fun, and each time, being braver, I dream a little higher, gingerly treading into new galaxies in my Spiff-craft. And then one day I stop and turn around and look at what I’ve done, and I’m floored at how far I’ve come. Because I never would have thought it real, tangible, achievable when I dreamt that first dream.

But, having recognized this process, I’m going to wrest my future’s direction and success from the whim of my subconscious and harness the process explicitly, replacing my flickering temerity with the roaring flames of certainty, of owned self-esteem and pride. Because they are there, in the palm of my hand. All it takes is for my mind to grasp that, and I’ll hold on to them like the rocks that they are. It works, I know it, and I know how. So I’ll do it, and I’ll make no apologies. Not for learning. Not for breaking new ground. I don’t care how worn that ground is. It just has to be new to me. And that’s what this is all about: Me, my life, my world.