Interesting times, these. Tehran, night of June 13, 2009. Photo from mousavi1388 at Flickr. More Flickr photos of the election and its aftermath here and here. [The election was held on the 22nd of Khordad 1388, according to the Persian calendar.]
The thing about the great immigrant gateway of California, especially the university towns and the high tech/geek-to-live parts of California, is that public school classrooms here are full of kids from all over the world.
This means any time you want immediate, informed comment on events elsewhere — in Iran, say, during, oh, let’s imagine a fiercely contested national election that could have a tremendous impact on life as we know it — you talk to a kid. A kid from Iran. “Did you hear anything from your cousin in Shiraz?" Pure catnip for a news junkie. Need a Farsi speaker? No problem! It just kills me that the school year ended Thursday and all my sources, er… students are on vacation.
OMG, I can’t believe I’m actually wishing the school year had been a week longer [slaps self].
On a much more serious note, my thoughts are with my students’ relatives and their compatriots. This is just unreal. Stay safe, people. Stay strong.
Looks like a former student: a voter in Iran on June 12. Photo from the Mail Online.
Hat tip to John Sibley for showcasing this terrific video on breed specific legislation. It should totally go viral, if you ask me.
Featured in the vid are Dr. Ian Dunbar, Jean Donaldson and Dr. Nicholas Dodman: experts on dog behavior and dog training, which is to say you will never hear them speak of "unpredictable" dogs that "turn on people" and must be banned. In a world where Google pundits* bring of the stupid, Dunbar, Donaldson and Dodman actually know what they're talking about.
"The biggest variable in a dog's demeanor is: how well was it socialized? How well was it trained?" [Ian Dunbar]
The video is the work of Drayton Michaels, "a 2007 graduate of the SFSPCA Academy for Dog Trainers. He has worked professionally with dogs since 2000. He owns and runs Urban Dawgs and Pit Bull Guru with his wife Vyolet, also a graduate of the Academy [source]."
*[What follows has much to do with dogs in general and BSL in particular. Seriously.] Writer and blogger Julian Sanchez took a recent look at pop philosophy and "the unhealthy illusion of knowing something":
On the one hand [...] a democracy can’t make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: “Discourse at this level can’t possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.” This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy. And I think it may contribute to the fragmentation and political polarization we see online, which are generally explained in sociological terms as an “echo chamber” effect or “groupthink.”
[T]here’s also the problem that the general glut of information and opinion makes it disconcertingly easy to kid yourself about how well you understand a particular topic. (My friend Michael Moynihan refers sarcastically to “Google pundits” who affect deep understanding after plucking a few talking points from a search—a sin I’m sure I’ve committed myself on occasion.) It’s something of a cliché, but the older I get, the more I find that learning more about an area where I once held a strong opinion will often mean realizing just how limited my own understanding is.
I like to imagine that the typical online breed-basher will wake up one morning, slap his forehead and exclaim, "What am I, nuts?! My entire experience with dogs consists of failing to housebreak that Labrador you hear barking nonstop in the backyard — and I'm telling Jean Donaldson and Ian frikkin' Dunbar they don't know what they're talking about...??!! Sheesh, I'm an idiot. I shall do penance by volunteering at the local animal shelter for the rest of my life."
From Wallace's boss Roo Yori comes word of this most excellent new report on rescue pit bull and disk dog champ Wallace. Thanks for the good work, KSTP TV!
ETA: Well, the embed was working fine last night... dunno why it disappeared.
LIFE photographer Stan Wayman took the photos above for a February 4, 1966 article called Concentration Camps for Dogs. The graphic images and the story of dog robbers selling pets to research labshelped bring about passage of the Animal Welfare Act in July of 1966.
Pepper's journey in the summer of 1965 helped start a national media sensation and a broad panic over the theft of pets for biomedical research. Her death on an operating table in the Bronx would help animal welfare advocates break a long-standing stalemate in Congress and push through the most significant animal-protection bill in American history. At the same time, she became a martyr to the cardiology revolution at a crucial moment in its development. Pepper also represents a turning point in science, from an earlier age when animals for experiment would be plucked from the road or the river, to a new era of standardized, mass-produced organisms that can be shipped right to the laboratory door. In a five-part seriesto be published over the course of this week, Slate will explore her legacy.
"Dan Engber's part-reporting, part-storytelling, part-memoir of his own experiences testing animals (don't worry, not dogs) makes for a compelling read," sez the Daily Beast. Plenty compelling, but be warned that it's also a gut-wrenching story for anyone who loves dogs. And how depressing is it that in 2009 there are puppy mills as bad as anything Stan Wayman photographed for LIFE? Very, very depressing.
"A mighty army of dolphins, sharks, whales, seals and gannets [they can change their whole body into these little daggers, says Birdchick] hunt down the billions of sardines along South Africa's east coast each winter. This is the sardine run: an underwater Armageddon, the greatest gathering of predators anywhere on the planet, and the most spectacular event in the world's oceans."
Interesting times, these. Tehran, night of June 13, 2009. Photo from mousavi1388 at Flickr. More Flickr photos of the election and its aftermath here and here. [The election was held on the 22nd of Khordad 1388, according to the Persian calendar.]
