The power of fact-based fiction

I've just made a connection. Bear with me. It was a total ah-ha moment for me.

You know how when The Da Vinci Code was published, and the movie released, everyone was abuzz over the questions and theories raised by Dan Brown's story? These theories were mostly not new: many had been around a long time but were brought together, interconnected into a compelling and suspenseful story alternately enjoyed and decried by much of the world. Historians who had been quietly researching these things for years knew the ins and outs enough to tease apart the fact and the speculation, recognizing when a theory is feasible and when one is disproven or a long shot at best. By now, most of us know that his theories make fun stories but aren't exactly provable, and are in some cases quite debunked (according, admittedly, to other human beings with flawed knowledge but who are far more knowledgeable in that particular field than he). But for most of the world who hadn't bothered to study most of the themes and theories in his story, the ideas seemed new, shocking, eye-opening, and illustrative of plausible conspiracies and connections they'd never thought of, except for people in smaller circles where some of these lesser-known ideas were promulgated, such as LDS people having no problem with the possibility that Jesus had a wife and being rather surprised at what a stink so much of Christendom was making over that specific notion.

But I was a bit flabbergasted as I heard conversations on various media and in person which discussed this work of fiction by a novelist (a bright one who researches, but a novelist nonetheless) who, by definition, doesn't have time to painstakingly research every nuance of every implication of his (or, more accurately, other people's) findings. They were discussing it as if he were a religious historian and anthropologist who had just written an exposé detailing his life's work. I kept thinking, "Folks, it's a novel with facts, theories, and historical tidbits (sometimes speculative) woven in, not a research dissertation!"

He raises fascinating questions and thought-provoking theories within engaging stories which could be perceived by some as plausible but which are, nonetheless, creative efforts to put the pieces together, nothing more. He brought to popular culture ideas which previously were known mostly to those with enough interest to dig them up and research them, themselves. He doesn't have time to research every detail, or he'd never publish anything, but he raises the ideas, lets people chew on them and enjoy the story, and leaves the sorting out of the rest to those who are well-positioned in the respective fields to do so. He might consult experts, having them review his story for any glaring errors, as I expect any good writer would do, but his point, I think, is not to present a completely balanced exploration of theories but to tell a compelling story which will entertain people while making them think critically about certain things. Many of the details and connections are subject to artistic license, which he openly acknowledges.

In Deception Point, for example, an incidental detail in the story includes a bit of blood trickling down into the sea from someone's cut (it might have even been a single drop, if I remember right), resulting in a nearly immediate roiling frenzy of hammerhead sharks and the eventual demise of a character due to their awakened, ravenous appetites. He used language specific to shark physiology, which would lead most people to believe he knew what he was talking about, and since it's clear he has researched his novels, most people would probably assume details such as this are factually accurate. This gave me pause as I thought, "Hey, first of all, the blood particles have to dissipate enough to even be detected, so even though they can detect small amounts of blood, it would not be instantaneous, and secondly, as far as I've studied, sharks may respond visibly but wouldn't frenzy over a few drops of blood without any other stimuli to indicate prey is present." Nevermind the part about someone getting torn apart bite by bite: maybe these sharks were so hungry they'd eat anything and skipped the whole first strike being a test bite, going right to tear-a-chunk-of-flesh-off-nom-nom-nom bites. It seemed to me he hadn't read the book I read by one of the world's leading hammerhead shark researchers or seen the same documentaries or articles about shark behavior. But that's what authors do: know enough to maintain credibility and plausibility, and fabricate or intensify reality to create an engaging story. If I wrote a novel, even with great attention to detail, could I possibly get everything exactly right and spit out a new novel every year or two? I certainly doubt it.

So what I'm saying is: Dan Brown has a knack for taking researched facts and little-known tidbits of history and extrapolating interpretations and connections to create fantastically interwoven conspiracy theories and seemingly plausible cover-ups and plots, and even though he publicly states his works are fiction, many people still read him as a historian rather than a novelist. What, then, of someone who is similarly skilled at weaving stories from interconnected facts which, though technically accurate, are laced with exaggerated interpretation and extrapolation and then never even attempting to claim they're "fiction" but calling them "commentary" rather than "journalism"? Uh-huh...you've caught on by now. This, my friends, is how I see Glenn Beck. Fascinating theories which incite critical thought. Totally relevant questions to be asking. Interesting connections found. Often factually accurate if you don't bring in too much context except for the supposedly interconnected context on which he wants you to focus your attention: the supposedly secret codes and plots he is bringing to light. But often off-base in the interpretation of facts, the imputed motives, and the overall theories.

I'll admit the idea for this post was sparked by reading an article on NPR, which we all know is a pseudointellectual arm of the radical left-wing media machine... *yawn*




Incidentally, I just looked up a couple of resources and found this fun video from MythBusters which seems to suggest there may be a difference in reactions of sharks to human versus fish blood/fluids, a distinction I don't remember reading about. Hey, I didn't claim to be an expert... :-)

Conflict Between Animal Protection and Invasive Government

Note: For those of you not familiar with the ugliness of puppy mills, please do a little research and refrain from buying cats and dogs from pet stores without readily offered and clearly documented origins, and where possible, buy from local breeders you can personally check out:

• Humane Society frequently asked questions about Puppy Mills
  
• Puppy Mill on Wikipedia
  
• Stop Puppy Mills

A friend linked to an article, Council Votes on Pet Shop Ban, regarding new action soon to be voted on that would make it illegal for pet stores in West Hollywood to sell cats or dogs unless they're abandoned or rescued. Any pet shop selling any other dogs or cats would be shut down. I think one of the main hopes is that this will start a movement to shut down puppy mills and other places which abuse animals on a mass level. Many are excited about this measure and the positive consequences it may have for animal welfare. But I was immediately wary, and I commented on why:

I'm thrilled that there are enough people concerned about the hideous practices of puppy mills and others who basically abuse animals to make a buck, but I'm also really concerned about the limitations of this kind of legal action and what it means for actual freedom. Having lived in Cali for a very short time, I know this kind of thing is nothing new there, but it always makes me wary.

My friend asked what freedoms I was talking about, so I elaborated:

Whose legally granted rights are being protected here while they're moving to shut down businesses? What about pet stores who exercise responsibility and conscience by selling dogs and cats from local breeders who raise their animals well? They're probably in the minority, but they exist.

It makes little moral sense to me to go after puppy mills by shutting down businesses indiscriminately. The end does not justify the means here. Only allowing abandoned or rescued animals to be sold? How will that be documented and enforced? Why not provide an exemption for breeders who meet certain standards for the treatment of their animals?

How much can we justly legislate human freedom based on animals' supposed rights? I love animals, and it pains me deeply to see them abused and mistreated, and I believe education on what's going on is seriously needed, but this kind of action just doesn't make sense to me.

But, as the article states, this is from "the city that pioneered a ban on cat-declawing", a practice I believe should be avoided, but the feel-good criminalization of which I think is an unnerving encroachment of government into my life.

Those of you who know me well know I've always had a tender place in my heart for animals and concern for their well-being. I'm so glad people are becoming aware of the issue, but I'm also concerned about the reach of government and about possible public backlash in defense of puppy mills and against animal protection groups as a result of potentially draconian efforts.

Save Dolphins...And Sharks

I love dolphins. I find them amazing and inspiring. I want to help preserve them. This has all been brought to my mind again by the recently released movie, The Cove, which I have yet to see but really want to if I can find someone to go with me. Otherwise, I'll wait for the DVD.



The Cove exposes the practice of drive hunting by filming what they weren't supposed to: a drive hunt into a cove at Taiji, Japan. This is one of many such sites of similar hunts worldwide, but none so large as this, the exposition of which has led to controversy and outcries worldwide against the practice.

I see this practice, based on what I've read, as a money-making scheme under the guise of cultural tradition or food supply needs. After all, dolphin meat has been deemed by some researchers to be unsafe for consumption by children and pregnant women and unsafe for frequent consumption by anyone due to high levels of mercury, cadmium, DDT, and PCBs in their meat and blubber. So needing them as a food source doesn't make much sense. Why capture and kill them then? They're captured for sale to aquariums or "dolphinariums" around the world. AZA-accredited institutions are required, as far as I know from working with them, to collect animals only by humane means and from reputable sources (though some marine mammal specialists believe dolphins should never be kept in captivity), but most of the places these dolphins are going to likely put them in terribly sub-par living conditions, where they're likely to die prematurely in captivity while making a buck for their caretakers. They're also killed for various reasons, including meat for Japanese school children, despite the health warnings.

Still, with clear reasons to decry the brutal and inhumane round-ups and massacres, I have the lingering question: why save the dolphins? I think enough of us have seen dolphin shows and cute dolphin movies to have a sort of cute-and-cuddly love for them. We've also read the reports of dolphins surrounding and rescuing surfers from shark attacks, making them our literal heroes of the ocean. And many of us just "feel" an inexplicable kinship or connection with dolphins. They're special, and to kill a dolphin feels somewhat like killing a unicorn: it removes some purity and virtue from the world.

Yet I can't shake such questions as the following:

• If dolphins were spiny and ugly and weren't named Flipper, would we care? If we didn't care, would the need to protect them be any less?
  
• If we watched an expose portraying the humane slaughtering process of cows, how many of us would clap our hands in delight and run out to eagerly eat a nice, juicy steak?
  
• If dolphin populations weren't controlled by such hunts, would their increased numbers lead to overconsumption of fish populations, resulting in severely negative economic and/or environmental impact?
  
• Since none of the species being hunted in Taiji, except one, is considered endangered, is there really an environmental or ecological reason to oppose the hunting, or is this feel-good activism because we just "love" dolphins more than, say, sharks (which, by the way, are severely impacted by hunting practices [particularly finning], especially in Asia, but have far fewer affectionate friends to join their cause)?
  
• If their methods were more humane, would we be satisfied and say, "OK, continue killing hundreds of dolphins humanely every year." In other words, is it the killing or the method of killing we're supposed to oppose, here? Sometimes that doesn't seem clear.
  

My conclusion so far is that dolphins should be protected from extinction or overhunting, and hunting practices should be humane, and The Cove seems to expose some significantly problematic and inhumane practices that need to change. I believe most trafficking of live dolphins is outrageous and terrible and should not be supported. Please, before you go pay to swim with dolphins, investigate the establishment to make sure the animals are either resident wild dolphins or very well cared-for and ethically caught and purchased. Many or most are none of the above.

And I guess it's not dolphins' fault if they're cute and lovable and therefore get more attention from us to "save" them, but please consider offering equal support for threatened shark populations, a phenomenon which truly does have undeniable environmental impact, especially considering how extremely slowly shark populations regrow.

Watch these videos as an intro to the truth about sharks and their rapidly dwindling numbers:






For more information on the need to support shark conservation efforts, see the following web sites:

National Aquarium in Baltimore blog - S.O.S. - Save Our Sharks

Washington Post - Shark attack survivors join fight to save sharks

Facebook Cause to Save the Sharks

Shark Research Institute

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Pride and Parks in Seattle

Pride at the Seattle Center

A huge crowd gathered at the International Fountain for much dancing and sunning and talking and people-watching during Seattle's annual Pride Festival. Incidentally, nudity is quite legal in Seattle's parks, and a few people took advantage of that fact to reduce tan lines. Whether or not it's your cup of tea, it sure is interesting (and maybe occasionally trainwreckish) people-watching.







Seattle Center




Green Lake

Justin, Matt, and I ran a 2.8-mile-ish lap around Green Lake on a beautifully sunny day. I've always liked Green Lake Park. It's in a cool neighborhood and is always full of people on the many sunny days during Seattle's mostly beautiful summers. I went back the next day with my camera to get a few shots and read a book and soak up some sun. Good times.






Lake Washington from the UW Arboretum

I love UW's arboretum, and I especially like the edge of it where there are great paths for canoeing. You can rent canoes from just next to Husky Stadium. Canoeing on Lake Washington is one of my favorite summer pastimes in Seattle, though I generally only did it a couple of times a year. In one of these shots, you can see a blue heron in the background, which I had absolutely no idea was there when I took the shot. Blue heron are pretty common around there; it's a great place to spot them, and they're more used to people than in some places, like the Oregon Coast.









Lake Union

I was driving down I-15 one night and noticed that the moon was beautifully positioned behind the Space Needle from certain angles, so I pulled off and drove around looking for a place where they were aligned the way I wanted. As it turned out, I had to be standing on Lake Union to get the right angle, so I settled on an angle slightly off from what I wanted, but I discovered that if the Space Needle was properly exposed, the moon was a bright white blob, and if the moon was properly exposed, the Space Needle was a faint hint of lines, so I had to splice two photos together, and since I was already having to cheat a bit, I dropped the moon down to where I wanted it in the process. Sue me. Oh, and I also took a pic of a bench by the water, with a view across the tip of the lake.

Owls and More in Moscow

Screech owls in the Moscow City Cemetery.

First, the noble pose.


Then the sassy diva.


The watchful guardian.


Beautiful eyes.


Gothic scene.


Palouse hills as seen from the south side of Moscow.



Moscow Farmer's Market - goat and sheep cheeses from Monteillet Fromagerie in Walla Walla, WA


Radishes at the farmer's market


South-facing view from the La Quinta Inn on the west border of Moscow

A Butterfly in Ellensburg

Birdbrain Statistics

I'm reading Alex & Me by Irene Pepperberg, which I originally blogged about here, chronicling her research with Alex, the African Grey Parrot who won the hearts of many bird- and research-lovers worldwide over the years. I love reading about her research methods and Alex's antics. He was smart but a difficult student at times.

One recent passage amused and interested me:

I found myself having to prove over and over that Alex had more going on in his bird brain than some mechanical trickery or other. One such challenge was, "Oh, he can produce labels all right, and he sounds convincing, but does he really understand what he's saying? Does he comprehend the noises coming from his beak?"

It seemed quite clear to me from my hundreds and hundreds of hours watching and listening to Alex that he did indeed know what he was saying. A simple example: if Alex said "Want grape" and you gave him a banana, he'd spit it right back at you and repeat insistently, "Want grape." He wouldn't stop until you gave him a grape. If you were dealing with a child, you would accept without question that he or she really wanted a grape, and that banana simply wouldn't do. But that's not science. Science needs numbers. Science needs tests to be done over and over again--actually, sometimes sixty times or more--before the answer has statistical legitimacy, and before scientists will take you seriously. Poor Alex.

On a sidenote, earlier in the book, she talked about how she was trying to teach Alex to say "apple", but after two weeks of training and struggling to make the "puh" sound in "apple", he had other plans in mind. She describes it:

...he looked at the apple quite intently, looked at me, and said, "Banerry...I want banerry." He snatched a bite of the apple and ate it happily. He looked as if he had suddenly achieved something he had been searching for.

I had no idea what he was talking about. So I said, "No, Alex, apple."

"Banerry," Alex replied, quickly but quite patiently.

"Apple," I said again."

"Banerry," Alex said again.

OK, buddy, I thought. I'll make it a bit easier for you. "Ap-ple," I said, emphasizing the second syllable.

Alex paused a second or two, looked at me more intently, and said, "Ban-erry," exactly mimicking my cadence.

We went through this double act several times: "Ap-ple." "Ban-erry." "Ap-ple." "Ban-erry." I was a little ticked off. I thought Alex was being deliberately obtuse. In retrospect, it was quite hysterical. When I told one of my students, Jennifer Newton, about it later, she literally fell off her chair laughing. But Alex hadn't quite finished with me just yet. At the end of that session he said, very slowly and deliberately, "Ban-err-eeee," just as I might do with him when I was trying to teach him a new label. Maybe he was thinking, Listen carefully, lady. I'm trying to make this easy for you.

...No matter how hard we worked to get him to say "apple," he stuck with his label. As far as Alex was concerned, "banerry" it was and "banerry" it was going to stay.

A few days later I was talking to a linguist friend about all this. He said, "It sounds like lexical elision." It's a fancy term for putting parts of two different words together to form a new word. Alex might have thought the apple tasted a bit like a banana. Certainly it looked like a very large cherry (it was a red apple). "Banana" + "cherry" = "banerry."

That passage had me laughing so much my eyes were watering. I've experienced the personality of greys, so I could easily picture the interaction, and it brings me joy.

This relates to the first section I quoted because it illustrates Alex's stubbornness and their general relationship. When it came to repeating the tests enough to gather the statistics necessary for scientific reporting, there were other challenges:

The tests involved putting various of his "toys" on a tray and asking questions such as "What object is green?" "What matter is blue and three-corner?" "What shape is purple?" "How many four-corner wood?" At first, Alex answered correctly most of the time: "key" or "wood" or "wool" or "three," et cetera. But before too long, he started to act up. He would say "green" and then pull at the green felt lining of the tray, hard enough that all the objects would fall off. Or he would say "tray" and bite the tray. Sometimes he'd say nothing and suddenly start preening. Or he'd turn around and lift his butt in my direction, a gesture too obvious to need translation. Once he grabbed the tray out of my hand and flund it on the floor, saying, "Wanna go back," which meant, I'm done with this. Take me back to my cage.

Who can blame him? None of the objects were new to him. He'd answered these kinds of questions dozens of times, and yet we still kept asking them, because we needed our statistical sample. You could imagine him thinking, I've already told you that, stupid, or simply, This is getting very boring. He was like the bright little kid at school who finds none of the work challenging and so passes the time by making trouble.

Sometimes, however, Alex chose to show his opinion of the boring task at hand by playing with our heads. For instance, we would ask him, "What color key?" and he would give every color in his repertoire, skipping only the correct color. Eventually, he became quite ingenious with this game, having more fun getting us agitated rather than giving us the answers we wanted and he surely knew. We were pretty certain he wasn't making mistakes, because it was statistically near to impossible that he could list all but the correct answer. These observations are not science, but they tell you a lot about how sophisticated his cognitive processes really were. Whether you would describe what he did as something to amuse himself or as making a joke at our expense, I cannot say. But he was definitely doing something other than routinely answering questions.

This, of course, led me to wonder how you report, statistically, the responses of an animal which seems to be deliberately refusing to give you the responses you need to support your research. Obstinate little cuss. I love it. I'm enjoying the book muchly.





Alex showing Alan Alda what he can do:


ABC News report when Alex passed away:


A longer video on Dr. Pepperberg's research with Alex and other parrots: