D:BA and dire wolves - April 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then Colossal Biosciences Company threw dire wolves at us. Pause.

Initially, I intended to discuss the penultimate S1 Daredevil episode, which had Bullseye coming back, and Murdock (Daredevil) taking a bullet for Fisk (Kingpin) because of reasons? Apparently? Does anyone care about those two anymore anyhow? Dire wolves are more interesting than MCU, these days.

…Of course, these days, at least some news outlets discuss with an authentic feeling, who makes a better jam and/or spread – king Charles III of Great Britain or Megan Markle, his younger daughter-in-law. Seriously, and compared to this sort of news, MCU’s D: BA show is cutting-edge political drama or something along those lines. Nevertheless, what about the dire wolves?

…I am a sceptic when it came to CB’s claims. See, while the RL dire wolf (let us leave Westeros out of this, the topic is already quite confusing), is a true canine, (as opposed to a bear-dog, a bear, or any other kind of mammal carnivore), it also belonged to a completely different genus than the modern wolves do. However, so what?

See, even CB admits (sort of) that their dire wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – are not exactly purebred dire wolves, more like grey wolf/dire wolf hybrids. Eh? The problem with that statement that in nature hybrids occur only between animals that share the same genus, albeit belonging to different species. Pause.

Let us try again. We are talking only about mammals here; in other animal groups, such as birds (say, songbirds), or amphibians (such as the tailed salamanders) the hybrid situation might be quite different, but along the mammals? Either it works or it does not.

See for yourselves. On one hand, we have horses and donkeys, whose hybrids are sterile and can’t really make a new species; big cats, whose hybrids aren’t sterile but can’t survive in the wild due to health-related reasons; and the two species of the gnu antelope, whose hybrid offspring also aren’t sterile but have plenty of health defects that they die quickly enough. Pause.

On other hand, we have the beluga and the narwhale whales, for example, or the better-known polar and grizzly brown bears, whose hybrid offspring are viable and are increasing in numbers. The wolf branch of the wild dog family, incidentally, is in this boat too, as the various coyote/grey wolf/domestic dog hybrids of eastern North America are growing more numerous and are establishing their own independent populations…

That said, those wild dogs are all in the Canis genus, while the extinct dire wolf is not, not anymore, at least not at the moment. In addition, if you look at the related animals that belong to different genera, they do not form hybrids – just look at rhinos or elephants, for example. African and Asian elephants do not hybridize, not even in captivity, unlike the big cats, and the black and white rhinos of Africa do not hybridize – unlike the feral domestic dogs and the Ethiopian wolf. The latter is a separate, albeit related, species to the grey wolf of the northern hemisphere – the term ‘wolf’ covers almost two dozen animal species, living and extinct, most of whom are related to each other (i.e. they’re canines), but some are not…

Where were we? Right, the DNA of the dire wolf isn’t in as a good a condition as that of the woolly mammoth is – what’s left of the dire wolf are mainly fossilized bones, teeth, and the like. Extracting DNA from them, even if the dire wolf was in the same genus as the grey wolf, doesn’t guarantee success; the fact that the surrogate mothers were domestic dogs, aka a third canine species, separate from the other two (I’m going with this theory), only complicated the situation: how did their pregnancies go? How did the births go? Did the mothers survive or not? However, no, all we get are sterilized reports of a success, and automatic reactions to those reports. Neither is a reliable source of information and so far no one outside of CB has much to go on. Still…

Remember Ms. Nicole from my last week’s entry? Or rant, whatever. As it was said, she was hired by CB, or something similar to make six videos about mass extinctions; so far, two of them were aired, but we talked about this; the point is that one would expect her to jump onto the dire wolf promotion bandwagon, because CB are her employers or something, but no. She is keeping mum about them instead and seems to have outright distanced herself from the CB. Does she know something about this that we do not? Maybe, maybe not, but I, for one, am sceptical of just what CB’s latest wolf pups are. Real life does suck, but sometimes it is less sucky and more complex and complicated instead…

This is it for now. See you all soon!

The Whale - March 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something unusual: the 2022 movie ‘The Whale’.

Where to begin? Ah yes, ‘The Whale’ is 2023’s ‘Velma’ more obtuse cousin, geometrically speaking, and I feel like I can prove it. Let us start.

MK’s ‘Velma’ was a cartoon TV show aimed to irritate everyone in general… that is it. MK felt that this is the right way to stir controversy and discussion… and she was right, to a point: for a while, ‘Velma’ was the talk about the town, until it stopped, and everyone is doing their best to forget that it’d even existed: i.e., Ms. Ming-Na Wen, who is usually trying to milk every teat – from AoS to ‘Mulan’ to SW and beyond has never mentioned that she was a voice actress in ‘Velma’: the cartoon was that bad! Where were we?

Ah yes, Ms. Wen’s presence in ‘Velma’ – I have been honestly shocked to learn that that is the case – ‘Velma’ might have been renewed for a second season, (why, for the love of God?), but Ms. Wen still is not mentioning her presence on that show. Bully! However, what about ‘The Whale’?

One of the differences between the two is in the degree of their approach to controversy and co. – whereas ‘Velma’ aimed at everyone, and so her contents were diluted… period, ‘The Whale’ tries to talk about one specific group: the overweight people. Right.

Zoom out, and you can see that the issue of weight has always been ambiguous in human history, with each of the biological sexes reacting to it differently. For a start, being overweight slash fat meant that you are successful enough, socially and financially speaking, to afford being so – a peasant and a soldier/warrior were two different social strata themselves in the past, (up to the WWII period), but both were lean; Hell, by the time of the first half of the 20^th century the human society had evolved enough to move past such social labels as ‘peasant’, ‘soldier/warrior’, ‘merchant’, but extra weight was still equated to social success, as it can be a liability, illustrated clearly by Charlie, the main character of ‘The Whale’. Regardless, extra weight is usually tolerated in human men… in human women, not so much. Indeed, most of the discourse regarding weight that arose in the 1980s and 90s up to now, (the early 2020s - and beyond?) is usually dominated by women… and men who love them, of course. As a result, a lot of such discussion is sexualized, fetishized, and so on.

…Going back in time, you can see that while a man was expected to be lean, (unless he was a successful merchant, or moneylender, or something), a woman was not. Rather, she was expected to be robust… why? Because both biology and gender politics: for a good long time, until the second half of the 20^th century, a woman’s worth was most often that of a mother and a child-bearer, which meant that a certain amount of ‘extra weight’ was the norm, actually – if a woman lost too much weight her worth as a mother and a child-bearer was jeopardized, which was bad. It was also sexist and patriarchal in the worst meaning of that word, so when in the second half of the 20^th century women finally won their equality with men officially, they began to slim down – and then the models arrived, women who slimmed themselves down to a point that they began to resembled animated trophies – you know like the ones presented at the Oscars and similar ceremonies – another case of a good enough idea taken to excess. As a result, the human society again began to discuss just what was the norm of a woman’s weight, a discourse that continues into modern times (2020s) and will probably go on beyond.

And now we got ‘The Whale’, whose main character is a notably overweight man. In addition, the issues of sexualisation and fetishisation of weight are nowhere near in sight in the film. Therefore, there was some controversy and discussion about ‘The Whale’, but very little, and the film mostly got accolades rather than criticisms, but…

…But they ring hollow and most critics seem to admit that it was BF’s acting as Charlie that kept the film together, and that is not really good news for the film. See, just as ‘Velma’ has nothing going for it beyond mockery of… everyone, ‘The Whale’ is in the same boat, only while ‘Velma’ went for everyone, ‘The Whale’ tried going for the overweight – on one hand. On the other, while ‘Velma’ didn’t hold any punches, ‘The Whale’ didn’t have any: whereas ‘Velma’ was acute and angular, ‘The Whale’ had all of its’ angles ground down. Pause.

What exactly ‘The Whale’ is about? It is about Charlie, an overweight English professor who hates himself, does not do anything about it, and lies, claiming that he has not had any money to do anything, while he actually does. He also does not appear to be leaving his apartment – in part because he is overweight, but it part because he does not want to – he has no life. The problem with that is that it is his choice. The problem with the problem is that he is overweight and some people are upset about it, i.e. how ‘The Whale’ represents the overweight people. Mr. A, the movie’s director, flat-out dismissed it, but…

…But the thing is that ‘The Whale’ is about a man, depicted actually in a bland, non-controversial and uninspiring manner, which is why most ‘social justice warriors’ (or whatever the proper term currently is) have ignored it – as have a lot of other people, both associated with the WG/WL communities and not. Yes, Charlie is overweight. Yes, his last relationship was with another man, (though he has an ex-wife and a daughter). However, both of those factors are tacitly underplayed, leaving Charlie mostly as a depressed anti-social loser who doesn’t want to leave his apartment and whose only friend is a female nurse named Liz. Next?

Here is the thing. Mr. A is not wrong when he rebuffed his critics – ‘The Whale’ is not entirely about the weight. Only in a certain way it is – the movie is named ‘The Whale’ for crissakes, therefore the excessive weight should play some sort of a critical role… otherwise, why include it? ‘Waiting for Godot’, for example, is minimalist to an extreme, but you do not have actors in fat suits in it either, because it would just distract from the rest of the movie/play/etc. Mr. A tried to play it smart regarding any controversies, (in a manner not unlike Disney/MCU post the first seasons of AoS and the CA: CW film), and he succeeded: ‘The Whale’ of his film’s title doesn’t apply just to Charlie, but to the entire film, as just like the metaphorical whale and Charlie, it is big, grey, and doesn’t go anywhere. But, hey, accolades galore! Yay, really!

…This is it for now, though. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #71 - May 31

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just look at all the excitement, (word used in a negative way), surrounding the demise of George Floyd. It is a horrible thing, an awful thing, something that gone down really wrong – and now the entire U.S. is shaking because of it. Why?

The answer, of course, is ‘why not’, deep beneath. The American society is exhausted by the lockdown/self-isolation/quarantine/etc., this process was already breaking down, when George Floyd died, and now it is being thrown out as the proverbial baby with the bathwater, in all of the- in everything. Some people, according to Associated Press, claim that it is all the ‘outsiders’ fault, but I say to them – look at the Donald. When Tayler Swift is schooling you, then you know that you are in the wrong.

No, really, Taylor Swift, who once got embroiled in a fight with the Kardashian-West clan, has a better grip on the situation than the Donald does – and meanwhile, shit is hitting the fan from Miami to Seattle. The governor of California is ordering a lockdown in L.A., (though not citywide, admittedly). Yeesh!

…And on the other hand, Elon Mask’s SpaceX program is progressing at a steady pace – the latest rocket either had a breakthrough and went to space, or had a breakdown and exploded once again. What does COVID-19 have to do with it?

Everything in the background. People were sick and tired with isolation to begin with, and were looking for a good excuse to end it, and they got one, and it is one of the worst ones ever, (no, we are not talking of the SpaceX rocket here). Therefore, now, the lockdown has effectively ended, (no really), and with a fiery explosion too. USA! USA! They are not even trying to blame the RF for this one, thank God. Maybe there is hope for the Americans yet. What next?

Well, today I wanted to talk about the hippos instead. Why? Well, why not? After elephants and rhinos, they are the biggest land mammals of the modern world…though that is a relative term, as I may’ve mentioned it: a hippo, an elephant, a rhino, and a human can all stand on the black of a blue whale, and the marine giant won’t even notice their combined weight, so there!..

…Whales, (or rather – the cetaceans), are mentioned here for a reason: the hippos are their closest relatives out of all the mammals, and share many traits with the cetaceans, including a dependency on the water to live; there are important differences too, but that brings us to taxonomy, actually.

As people do not talk very often, there are two species of hippos in the modern world – the common hippopotamus, (aka Hippopotamus amphibius), that everyone knows about, and the much more obscure pygmy hippopotamus, (aka Hexaprotodon liberiensis), which has a much smaller distribution than their larger cousin does, (the two mammals may share the biological order and family, but each belongs to its’ own genus), is much smaller than the common hippopotamus is, period, and is also – proportionally more terrestrial than the common hippopotamus is. Pause.

Let us start again. The common hippopotamus lives… in fresh water, yes, but it also comes aground, where it prefers open spaces. Of course, it is also big and heavy enough to muscle its way through most of riverside vegetation (and beyond), and combined with its’ grazing, the common hippopotamus can turn many an overgrown space into open space instead.

The pygmy hippopotamus is much shier and more retiring, and while it spends more time on land than it cousin does, the land in question is the African jungle, which is much more obscure, dark, damp and less assessable to humans than the African savannah is. As such, the pygmy hippopotamus’ effect on the landscape is much smaller too, and as a result, people became aware of it much later than of the common hippo, (and no, I’m not talking about just the Europeans and Americans, but about the other people too, such as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who became aware of the common hippo fairly early in the human history), and they began to interact, (hunt, capture, study, etc.), with this species much later than with the common hippo too. Such two superficially similar (closely related) mammals and two such different fates!..

…As for the Biblical Behemoth, which might have been inspired by the common hippo? The jury is still out on this one – it might be a hippo… or a rhino, an elephant, even an African buffalo, which we really should discuss one of those days, as we’ve discussed its’ cousins the bison, the yak and the zebu earlier.

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #35 - April 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and your family is often ensuring that you feel worse on top of anything more vague and indirect. The good news that Ford, at least, seems to be intent on thawing the U.S.-Canada border interactions in May…whatever that means; I’m being cautiously realistic, and suspecting that nothing will come out of this until the middle of the next month, (i.e. we got another couple of weeks of lockdown/quarantine left at least), but what can’t be cured must be endured… unless you’re like G.W., who did something else, and now the situation is worse… on a local level… in Nova Scotia… at least. Now what?

Here is another piece of original fiction, that is what. What do you think, anyhow?

Once upon a time, there lived a merrow in the northern sea, and she had a mermaid cousin, with whom she did not get along.

“How will I ever get myself a handsome fisherman, if you are scaring them all away?” She would ask when the two would meet... occasionally. As far as the two cousins went, the mermaid was the more feral one, and both cousins knew this. Thus, the mermaid was dismissive of her cousin, until she was not.

“You’re lonely?” She suddenly asked during one such occasion, starting them both, if truth were told - the lives of the two cousins rarely crossed and they had nothing to talk about... usually. “Fine. Go to the Whale bay tomorrow - there you’ll meet someone, I’m certain,” she muttered, and with a flick of her tail, she was gone.

The merrow thought this over: she and her cousin didn’t get along, but nothing more, so why not to follow her advice? Plus, there were no bad rumours about the Whale bay, just some odd ones, and so the merrow decided to cooperate, and swam to the Whale bay to reach it by tomorrow...

...As far as the two cousins went, the mermaid was faster, but the merrow had more endurance, and so she had no problems in reaching the Whale bay by the designated time. What she found there was a large but obscure bay, rocky and out of the way, which provided shelter from both sea storms and prying eyes. “A girl could enjoy living here,” she muttered to herself.

“Glad that you approve,” someone sarcastically muttered, and the merrow was grabbed, unceremoniously, across her waist. “Kara, I told you- wait. You’re not her.”

“...” A merrow is stronger than how they look, when compared to humans; right now, our heroine was grabbed by a very large sea troll, and wisely said nothing, she just made some vague noises, lest the troll ripped her in two.

“Crossbones.” It was Kara and her partner, a merman of her own species. “Behave. This is Kara’s estranged cousin, and we’re in a special place.”

“Fine,” the sea troll reluctantly muttered, as he left the merrow go. The latter was not done herself, (her cousin set her up with a sea troll, really?), when she felt something big move through the water and decided to cooperate. This was the right choice, for thus she got a prime spot to observe the whales arrive, for this was their birthing ground, (hence the bay’s name, you know!).

For some time the foursome observed the semi-sacred event, (except for krakens and their kin, most sea-dwellers hold the whales in high regard for their strength and wisdom), and once it was over, the whales began to sing, in gratitude, for keeping the sharks and orcas out. (We are talking killer whales here and not orcs - orcs do not like water actually).

The whales sang of the north, where it is snow and ice all year round, of the south, where it is hot constantly, and of everywhere in-between. And then they were done, they said good-bye in the whale tongue, and left for the open sea, from which they came.

The foursome were left to their own devices once more.

“Now what?” The merrow muttered to no one in particular.

“Let’s go to our place and celebrate!” Her cousin said brightly and somehow everyone complied and did just this, but that is another story.

End

…Well, this is it for now. Did you like it? Comments, criticisms are welcome! And I will see you all soon!

Phelps vs. shark - July 24

Let us talk of Michael Phelps and his race with the great white shark.

Pause.

Yes, Shark Week is upon us, but I must confess that I was never its’ biggest fan, and this race just reminded me why.

Let us review its’ most important feature – Michael Phelps did race a great white shark, but it was a virtual one, not a real one. Moreover, yes, certainly, no one in their sane mind would race a great white shark in the wild if they can help it, and this is not something that can be arranged legally and on live TV, but-

However, what was the point of this program? AP had plenty of flaws, but what it did have, until recently, was RM with JW, and that was real life interaction of man and fish. Yes, it entertained people, but it also educated them, at least to a point, especially in the first few seasons. This – ‘Phelps vs. shark’ and beyond – is just entertainment; that, and a free ad, (but more on this later).

Now, if we are talking about a face-off with a virtual shark, we might as well bring forth AFO, and its’ episodes – ‘Saltwater Crocodile vs. Great White Shark’ and ‘Bull Shark vs. Hippopotamus’. I have discussed both of these episodes separately in the past, so here I’ll just point out again that for all of its’ flaws, AFO did its best to both educate and entertain; yes, at the end of the episode CGI’d animals (reptiles, fish) fought each other, but before that happened, AFO’s cast did its’ best to dissemble the two contestants (per episode), to depict (and to figure out) their fighting strategies; they did their best to depict their weapons in cast-iron replicas and etc. They genuinely tried to integrate computer graphics and real life, and that is quite tricky, you know?

For example, just few weeks ago I was at ROM – the Royal Ontario Museum - to look at their blue whale exhibit. It was wonderful, it rocked, and it tried to be ‘interactive’ – there were plenty of mini-videos, impromptu computer games, various thing that a person could touch…such as a Halloween-like costume of a krill. The krill are relatives of the prawns and shrimp that live in the open ocean and are eaten by the baleen whales (like the blue whale or the humpback, opposed to the dolphins, porpoises and sperm whales). That is fine, but how is dressing as an extra from SpongeBob franchise educates children about whales? And on the other hand, the actual exhibits – the actual blue whale skeleton, the replica skeletons of the prehistoric whales, the exhibits from the whaling eras – i.e. historical artefacts – aren’t interactive, actually, but are quite decidedly kept away from the public, you can look, but you can’t touch.

Ditto for other exhibits of ROM, such as the historical artefacts from India, China, Japan, Korea, etc. People could vote on which pieces they wanted to see, but they could not touch them. The interactions were limited, almost one-way, and it’s reasonable – the oils in human skin are damaging to bones and historical artefacts, ROM doesn’t want to lose its’ prized exhibits, so no touching, and what the public is left with is a bunch of second-best pieces, such as the depiction of whale dung on the floor. (Yeah, I am not kidding – there was a giant bright orange blob on the floor of the exhibit to simulate whale dung). Basically, like AFO, the Royal Ontario Museum tries to integrate reality with computer simulation (and more), and it still falls short; when I was returning home, I came across some house finches feeding on a tree. They were much more real than any of ROM’s exhibits, even if they were kind of small and hard to notice in the darkening summer evening…

Back to Shark Week? As such pieces as ‘Shark Vortex’ (aired earlier today) show, Discovery, (as opposed to AP), can air educational pieces – primarily educational pieces, for there was some entertainment as well, (but this is how it works), because-

Because there were real sharks in ‘Shark Vortex’, period. The footage of the mako, the great white, and the porbeagle sharks was real, and there was no to little CGI. The focus was on real life (and real life footage, yes). In ‘Phelps vs. great white’ the focus was on Phelps and how he raced virtual sharks; there was some footage of real life sharks – the great white, the hammerhead, the Caribbean reef sharks – but the main focus was on Phelps and his prowess. It is amazing, undoubtedly – Phelps is not famous for nothing – but he is not a shark, so…

So this idea of Discovery has actually backfired on them and Phelps, when they opened Shark Week with a promotional show of Phelps. So far, fans are unhappy with Phelps’ loss and with Phelps in general. If Phelps planned to make his alliance with Discovery to make himself famous, he did not succeed so well. Ah well, he is still one of the fastest swimming humans on the planet. Good luck to him!

This is it for this time; see you next time.

PS: And no, I haven’t forgotten about ‘Killjoys’ either; it’s just that so far there’s nothing to truly congratulate or criticize them on. So again – until next time.