cetacea

We enjoyed reflecting on this article from the Smithsonian Magazine that suggests that science and society is growing more receptive to the sensibilities of those that talk to the animals through the lens of the Inuit, Iñupiat and other aboriginal people who respected and revered their quarry and mainstay, the whale. Rather than dismissing their connection as superstition or as something totally inaccessible and inscrutable, researchers and ethnographers are taking the lore and traditions of northern people more seriously, realizing and appreciating that this “whale cult” forms a quite different paradigm than the common narrative of Western culture’s article of faith that mankind was given dominion over Nature.

froggy goes a-courting

Though taxologically distinguished from their amphibian cousins by behaviour rather than any agreed upon definition, most toads live their adult lives in dry woodlands and only return to the ponds where they hatched (a practise in the animal kingdom called natal site fidelity or philopatry) to spawn the next generation.
Their annual march down the valley goes directly through our yard but they encounter a big last-mile problem with a single lane road (read about a possible technological way to help mitigate such competition here). They’ve been managing the passage fairly well on their own but one does see a few flattened casualties but we helped out as many as we could to cross the street.

a separate peace

While Russia may have donned the public-facing mantle for meddling and media manipulation, one is puts out of mind the Trump regime’s other cosy relationships at one’s peril.
While debate rages on about the extent that Russia undermined the US presidential election or whether democratic institutions can be under siege from multiple fronts or not—some seem to have adopted the contrarian narrative that it can’t be both Russia and sophistry—other political strongmen in the Middle East have leveraged Trump’s compromising business-ties to achieve desired, measurable outcomes at the expense of alienating other regional partners and players for the appeasement and enrichment of the few whose tensions will pull the world into a fresh conflagration—not that the embers from before are not still glowing.

six-foot, seven-foot, eight-foot bunch!

A group of post-graduate students in Iceland have conferred a banana a passport so they can study not only the scope and complexity of the process and infrastructure that brought the single piece of fruit from its place of origin in Ecuador but also the reductive nature of food labelling and how no product or produce is from just one place, passing seamlessly from palette to plate.
Following the fortnight-long journey of a banana of nearly nine thousand kilometres whose handled by thirty-three individuals on each day of the travel—without deference to the growers or consumers, really, illustrates the impact of upholding global trade networks, bearing in mind that more finished- rather than harvested-goods can encircle the planet several, on ocean-going vessels (the fact that the seas are brought into this petty land-lubbing ordeal is also overlooked) times before reaching the purchaser. The same group has also examined the travels of Iceland’s chief exports—cod and aluminium