The Chupacabra Cometh...

Watch this space. All will be revealed (and No Fear of the Future will be the first blog to have it. I know, because I wrote the press release).

Steampunk goes mainstream

You know the hip factor has utterly fled a movement when Newsweek comes calling. Steampunk is the subject this time, only the literary sub-genre itself is given but a passing mention. Instead, the article focuses on steampunk as a fashion style applied to our glossy, high-tech world. The long and short of it is folks retrofitting computers and other such modern conveniences to look as if they originated in the time of Verne or Wells, or Walt Disney's Tomorrowland at the very least. Naturally, you can't bring up steampunk and design without invoking Chairman Bruce:

"I'm kind of touched to see these guys becoming pop stars," says Sterling, "The Difference Engine" co-author. "To me it's a sign of social health. People can look on the legacy of the past and grab it and use it. It's an industrial cut-and-paste aesthetic. And I think that the 20th century's love for 19th-century technology is going to be matched by the 21st century's love of corny 20th-century technology. We're going to see Atompunk."

Personally, I love the concept (zeppelin obsession notwithstanding) even if I haven't had much opportunity to retrofit the old Dell on my desktop. That's not to say I haven't given it much thought. I actually blogged about the aesthetic coolness that are wooden computers more than a year ago. It's not exactly the same thing, mind you, but the concepts are simpatico.

Hunting chimpanzees

Anyone living or passing through the Central Texas area early next week might want to check out this intriguing lecture. Discoveries like this make me wonder if Silverberg's Pope of the Chimps isn't so much science fiction as it is anthropological writing...

Primatologist Jill Pruetz, a Texas State University-San Marcos alumnus who recently recorded the first evidence of chimpanzees using tools to hunt, will speak at the university Monday, Nov. 5.

Pruetz’s speech is titled, “Redefining Chimpanzees: New Research on Savanna Chimpanzees.” The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the Alkek Library teaching theatre on campus. The free presentation is open to the public and marks the first in a new College of Liberal Arts alumni speaker series.

Pruetz, an assistant professor of anthropology at Iowa State University, obtained a bachelor’s in anthropology from Texas State in 1989 and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1999. Her research on primates in Africa, Central and South America investigates the influence of ecology on primate and early human feeding, ranging and social behavior.

A March 6 issue of Current Biology reports that Pruetz found evidence in the West African nation of Senegal that confirms tool use by female and juvenile chimpanzees when hunting vertebrates. In order to make their observations, Pruetz and her team spent four years getting the chimpanzees accustomed to a benign human presence throughout a 39-mile worksite.

Pruetz’s study, funded by the National Geographic Society, is the first record of chimpanzees hunting with tools and the first account of habitual tool use by non-humans while hunting other vertebrates. It’s also the first report of hunting by female chimpanzees.

While female chimpanzees are known to make and use tools to extract insects from mounds of earth and crack open nuts for consumption, hunting was always considered a male activity. Pruetz documented 22 cases of female and juvenile chimpanzees fashioning tools such as spears to use in hunting smaller primates in hollow branches and tree trunks.

The findings support a theory that females may have played a role in the evolution of tool technology in early humans, including a modernization of hunting and gathering techniques. The evidence comes at a time when our closest living relatives face extinction in many areas of the world.

“The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that scientists should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in the human lineage,” said Beth Erhart, assistant professor of anthropology at Texas State. “Learning more about the unique behaviors of chimpanzees in such an environment, before they disappear, can provide important clues about the challenges facing our earliest ancestors.”

Nature poem of the day #2

From the November 5 issue of The New Yorker:



Wanting Sumptuous Heavens
by Robert Bly

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

Nature poem of the day #1

From the October 29 issue of The New Yorker:



Sunlight Bets on the Come
by Charles Wright

The basic pleasures remain unchanged,
and their minor satisfactions—
Chopping wood, building a fire,
Watching the elk herd
splinter and cruise around the outcrop of spruce trees

As the deer haul ass,
their white flags like synchronized swimmers’ hands,
Sunlight sealing—stretched like Saran wrap—
The world as we know it,
keeping it fresh-flamed should tomorrow arrive.

Where Our Heads Are

Inspired by the Guardian's collected photos of writers' rooms, Australian writer Martin Livings has compiled Creative Space, a collection of photos of the workspaces of many of Australia's horror, fantasy and science fiction writers.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

West of Waco

At NYRB, a fascinating transcript of a pre-war (Feb. 2003) private confab between W. and then-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the weekend white House in Crawford, along with an insightful annotation by Mark Danner. (Note that the text is a translation back from a Spanish translation published in El Pais, so some of nuestro jefe's idiomatic edge may have gotten lost in the process.)

***

Prime Minister Aznar: Is it true that there's a possibility of Saddam Hussein going into exile?

President Bush: Yes, that possibility exists. Even that he gets assassinated.

PMA: An exile with some guarantee?

PB: No guarantee. He's a thief, a terrorist, a war criminal. Compared to Saddam, Milosevic would be a Mother Teresa. When we go in, we'll uncover many more crimes and we'll take him to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Saddam Hussein believes he's already gotten away. He thinks France and Germany have stopped holding him to his responsibilities. He also thinks that the protests of last week [Saturday, February 15] protect him. And he thinks I'm much weakened. But the people around him know that things are different. They know his future is in exile or in a coffin. That's why it's so important to keep the pressure on him. Gaddafi tells us indirectly that this is the only thing that can finish him. Saddam Hussein's sole strategy is to stall, stall, and stall.

PMA: In reality, the biggest success would be to win the game without firing a single shot while going into Baghdad.

PB: For me it would be the perfect solution. I don't want the war. I know what wars are like. I know the destruction and the death that comes with them. I am the one who has to comfort the mothers and the widows of the dead. Of course, for us that would be the best solution. Besides, it would save us $50 billion.

PMA: We need your help with our public opinion.

PB: We'll do everything we can. On Wednesday I'll talk about the situation in the Middle East, and propose a new peace framework that you know, and about the weapons of mass destruction, the benefits of a free society, and I'll place the history of Iraq in a wider context. Maybe that's of help to you.

PMA: What we are doing is a very profound change for Spain and the Spaniards. We're changing the politics that the country has followed over the last two hundred years.

PB: I am just as much guided by a historic sense of responsibility as you are. When some years from now History judges us, I don't want people to ask themselves why Bush, or Aznar, or Blair didn't face their responsibilities. In the end, what people want is to enjoy freedom. Not long ago, in Romania, I was reminded of the example of Ceaucescu: it took just one woman to call him a liar for the whole repressive system to come down. That's the unstoppable power of freedom. I am convinced that I'll get that resolution.

PMA: That would be the best.

PB: I made the decision to go to the Security Council. In spite of the disagreements within my administration, I told my people that we should work with our friends. It would be wonderful to have a second resolution.

PMA: The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism.

PB: I am an optimist, because I believe that I'm right. I'm at peace with myself. It's up to us to face a serious threat to peace. It annoys me to no end to contemplate the insensitivity of the Europeans toward the suffering Saddam Hussein inflicts on the Iraqis. Perhaps because he's dark, far away, and a Muslim, many Europeans think that everything is fine with him. I won't forget what [former NATO Secretary General, the Spaniard Javier] Solana once asked me: why we Americans think the Europeans are anti-Semites and incapable of facing their responsibilities. That defensive attitude is terrible. I have to admit that I have a splendid relationship with Kofi Annan.

PMA: He shares your ethical concerns.

PB: The more the Europeans attack me, the stronger I am in the United States.

***