Sometimes…It’s Better to See It

Rather than think about it. 

This morning, Fakesister sent me a link to a website called “Artful Home”, which has the following serigraph print for sale: 

 

She found it disturbing.  Me too.

Famous People In History: Ivan Pavlov

There’s a certain logic to why I’ve chosen this particular person to highlight, but I would not recommend you try to follow that logic since it exposes you to the danger of thinking like Fakename does.

However, it started with my thinking about eating dogs, which I posted about yesterday, and progressed to thinking about dog behavior, particularly my own, whom I will never eat.  Well, unless I find myself in some post-apocalyptic situation, then all bets are off.  I was thinking about the concept of what I call “accidental learning”, where dogs learn stuff you wish they hadn’t. 

In my case, the dogs have learned to associate my shutting down the computer with food.  First, the computer makes that Windows sound…”Dah dah dah…dah dah” (fade….).  This means that I will likely be standing up, and if I’m standing up, there is a greater chance that I will be somewhere near the food container, and that some of that food will end up in their bowls.  Thus, when they hear the Windows sound, they start dancing.  Very, very annoying. 

This led me to think about Pavlov and his bell.  See?  I warned you not to try to follow this. 

I admit that the only thing I could remember about Pavlov had to do with bells and dogs, but there is so much more to him, as I learned from the Wikipedia entry about Pavlov’s life.

First, it seems there was some controversy about whether or not he actually ever used a bell.  (And you thought Fakename spends too much time contemplating subjects from the Who Cares? category.) 

So the judgement of history is this:  Yes, he did use a bell, but he also used a variety of stimuli including “electric shocks, whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and a variety of visual stimuli”.  If only Pavlov had had Windows.  It would have saved him a lot of time. 

Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1904 for his work on how the digestive system functions.  This came from his observation that dogs begin to salivate before they actually have access to food.  This “reflexive” response led him to further experiments, such as an investigation into the response to stress and pain.  I guess I don’t have to tell you how you study that.  The answer is, you have to induce it. 

Which brings us at last to the larger philosophical question, which is, Is this something we really needed to know?  And was it worth causing suffering to helpless creatures to find it out?  Fakename says no, because we already knew it.  Even in Pavlov’s lifetime, anybody with a dog could have told you about that reflexive response thing, even without Windows.  But there was (and possibly still is) a mindset among certain scientists, who believe that a phenomenon isn’t “true” unless it’s described under “controlled conditions”.

There was a time when cosmetics were routinely tested on rabbits, followed by a time when cosmetic companies prominently noted that their products were never tested on animals.  Now you never see those disclaimers, because it’s understood that it doesn’t happen.  If there is a value to inducing pain and stress in other animals, what would that value be? 

Fakename thinks that Pavlov would be perfectly comfortable in today’s world, where we can have an apparently serious national debate about the effectivenes of waterboarding, without regard to its moral implications.

Eating Dogs

Consider this the third in a trilogy of today’s posts about animals.  This week, Roger Cohen of the New York Times did an op-ed post about the practice of eating dogs in China.  They eat cats too, but he confined his comments to dogs. 

I once saw a TV documentary which showed a restaurant in Asia that specialized in cats;  it wasn’t China–maybe Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam.  In any case, the restaurant had a cage out front full of cats where you could select your own personal cat to eat.  Once you made your choice, they would dip the cat into boiling water (while still alive) in order to more easily remove the skin and fur.  Barbaric?  What, I ask, is the difference between that and lobster tanks?  Answer:  No difference, except for the animal involved. 

Cohen’s oped was very surprising…usually he does strictly political stuff and seems to be the Times’ expert on Iran and Europe. 

But he tells a story of going to a dog restaurant in China with his interpreter, who assured him that dog was very good.  He had a sort of dog soup, and bypassed the other items on the menu which included dishes containing dog paws, tail, brain, intestines, or penis.  Are you gagging yet?  Yes.  Me too.  But, as Cohen points out, that’s illogical. 

Why is it okay to eat a pig/cow/goat/lobster, but not a dog/cat?  Why is it okay to kill and/or eat some animals, but not others?  Good question.  Thought of in that way, it’s a little hard to define “barbaric”.

That of course brings me to another NPR snippet.  An interview with Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who claims to have a special ability to identify with and understand animals, which would make sense given the non-verbal nature of their communications (hers and theirs).  Her big claim to fame is redesigning stockyards so as to calm cows before they go to slaughter. 

In interviews, and I’ve heard another one before now, she’s treated as if she’s an amazing person, which, in a sense she is.  But I find her creepy and repellent.  She admits she feels no emotion.  She invented for herself a “hugging machine”.  She can’t bear to be touched, but noticed that the cattle on her aunt’s farm while she was growing up seemed to be calmer while restrained in pens awaiting vaccination.  So with her aunt’s permission, she placed herself in those restraints and felt calmer.  Then she invented a smaller one for herself.  It’s the pressure of the restraints, minus the human component of an actual “hug”, that calms her and makes her feel safer.  She noted that she doesn’t get to use her device any more as much as she would like, because she travels so much. 

But when your claim to fame is calming cows before slaughter, and other people treat you as if you are an amazing rather than an aberrant human being, then may I suggest you go into the dog/cat/lobster calming business as well.  Also, use your creative skills to come up with a battery-powered substitute for your hugging machine that will fit into your suitcase and won’t scare Homeland Security.

The Lord Howe Island Phasmid

More from Jane Goodall’s book “Hope for Animals and Their World”.    I’ve deliberately chosen here to highlight a non-warm and fuzzy example of why we should care about whether or not species become extinct.  Just about everyone cares about pandas–I say just about everyone, because there are people who say that pandas are doomed, and the time and resources put into them would be better spent on species with a greater chance of survival. 

And speaking of pandas, who wouldn’t become a bit teary-eyed over the relocation of the young pandas Mei Lan and Tai Shan from the U.S. back to China…via Federal Express.

Meet the Lord Howe Island Phasmid, aka the Land Lobster: 

Okay, it’s a little creepy looking, but its story is phenomenal.  It was thought to be extinct some time in the 1920’s.  Then in 2001, scientists came upon a few live ones clinging to one single melaleuca bush on nearby Ball’s Pyramid: 

Who can imagine a more inhospitable place to live?  And yet there they were.  It illustrates Jane Goodall’s point about the resilience of life.  To paraphrase Shakespeare, life will out.  Anyone who has ever climbed over a barren rock and seen some tiny sprig of something green knows the truth of this. 

So why we should care is this:  without creatures such as this, we would not be reminded so often of the fierce determination and ultimate mystery of life itself.  We would think our struggle to survive is ours alone, and it is not.

On Jane Goodall’s Book

I have at long last finished Jane Goodall’s book Hope for Animals and Their World.  To start, I’ll quote the dedication in its entirety:

“This book is dedicated to the memory of Martha, the last passsenger pigeon–and to the last Miss Waldron’s colobus and the last Yangtze River dolphin.  As we think of their lonely end, may we be inspired to work harder to prevent others suffering a similar fate.”

The  book is subtitled “How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued From the Brink”.  It tells the stories of many different animal species, and the remarkable people who have devoted their lives to saving them.  In some cases, the animals became extinct in the wild when scientists captured the last known living examples of the species in order to create a captive breeding program.  The goal, ideally, being to repopulate the species in the wild, or at the very least, to preserve the species even if it has to be in a zoo or a small nature preserve. 

Dr. Goodall’s take on it is always overwhelmingly positive, but the stories are heartbreaking nonetheless.  Time and again, the primary reason for the loss or near loss of a species is loss of habitat.  And loss of habitat is due to human overpopulation.  There are more immediate causes of animal extinction such as the accidental (or sometimes deliberate) introduction of non-native species which either outeat or outright prey on the native animals.  Dogs, cats, and rats are most common.  There are introduced poisons, such as lead and various pesticides.  But these too go back to the issue of human overpopulation.    I have no solution to that.  I’m just stating the fact. 

At the moment, I’ll confine myself to why Jane has hope.  I personally don’t see much.  I fear that one day all the magnificent animals on our planet will be confined in zoos.  But not Jane.  The last section of the book is called “The Nature of Hope”.  She says she has four reasons for hope: our extraordinary intellect, the resilience of nature, the energy and commitment of young people, and the indomitable human spirit.  In that section she also addresses the issue of why we should save endangered species anyway.  And she says, we do it for love. 

In that regard, I heard an oddly related snippet of an interview yesterday on NPR with Jeremy Rifkin, who has a new book called The Empathic Civilization.  Rifkin is an economist and senior lecturer at the Wharton School of Business.  His point is that our ability to connect with one another globally is broadening our identification with others beyond family, tribe, religion, and nation, making us the empathic civilization.  And we increasingly embrace not only each other but the other species on our planet.  I truly hope he is right.

Dot’s Peppermint Lounge

One of my friends recently posted a couple of pictures of me from my New Orleans days on Facebook. 

Here I am, sitting on the steps of my “double” (“duplex” is not in the New Orleans dictionary) with my dog Troy Russell. 

Here I am again, on the same day, with Troy Russell and my beloved Saturn SC2, with the sunroof, the leather seats, and the killer stereo.  The same SC2 which drowned in the May 9th, 1995 flood, which happened on May 8th.  Go figure. 

My house was at 941 Touro Street, on the corner of Touro and N. Rampart, which we called “Little Rampart”, as opposed to “Big Rampart”.  It was the first house I ever owned (my present house is only the second one).

Across the street on the opposite corner was a bar called Dot’s Peppermint Lounge.  They would keep their front door open, and in the lazy, hazy days of spring, the sounds of Motown would drift out.  There was nothing to compare to it.  It was like living a dream.  I am living right here in the essence of New Orleans, I said to myself. 

Then, the bar either changed owners or management, or both (although they continued to use the name Dot’s Peppermint Lounge), and the music completely changed.  I’m not sure what genre you would call it, but it was loud and abrasive.  And they continued to leave the door open, especially during the not-so lazy, hazy days of summer, because their air-conditioning did not work well. 

I didn’t want to interfere with their patrons having a good time, or with their right to be there.  So I would call them and say, “Please close your door.  I’m trying to sleep.”  The first time I did it, the bartender who answered the phone said “F*** You!”  And hung up.  So I called the police, who came and…made them close the door.  Even in NOLA, there is a noise law, which takes effect at 10:00 P.M. 

I can’t tell you how many times this scenario was repeated.  I literally had both Dot’s and the 7th Precinct on speed-dial.  We all got to be on a first-name basis.  I’m sure that every time the phone rang at the Precinct at 10:00 P.M., someone said, “Oh…that must be Fakename.”  Eventually even the people at Dot’s got the picture.  So I would call, and they would say, “Oh Shit!  It’s HER again!  Close the door!  Quick!”

Then came the final straw.  Fakename returned home one evening at 10-ish after having drinks at the House of Blues with some co-workers after work.  (You may be tempted, as they say about accidents, to suspect that alcohol was a factor in Fakename’s subsequent behavior.)  Just in time to see two women park on the street right in front of her house. 

Apparently something big was happening at Dot’s that night.  Maybe they had live music, or maybe they were having an orgy…who cares.  So Fakename initially was like, okay, I’ll park somewhere else.  So I made the block, and there were no spaces.  As I pulled back up to the corner where Dot’s was, the two women were just walking into the bar.  And let me mention, these women were hulks.  They were wearing uniforms with blue shirts and black pants, and those elastic waistband things you wear when you make a living unloading trucks. 

I stopped the SC2 in the middle of the street, rolled down my window, and politely said, “Excuse me, but could you move your car?  You’re parked right in front of my house.”  Predictably, the largest hulk said,  “F*** You!”

I tried again (actually, this is how you know alcohol was involved, that I was trying to reason with these people).  I said, “Well, here’s the deal.  You are only visiting the bar and could afford to park further away for a short period of time, whereas…I live here.”  This sounded eminently logical to me.  Hulk Woman said, “F*** You!”

Apparently two F*** Yous in the span of 5 minutes exceed Fakename’s limit.  I got out of the car, leaving the driver’s side door open and marched up to the door of the bar.  Let me add that I was blocking traffic, since my car was in the middle of Little Rampart Street, which is one-way and just about wide enough for a horse and buggy.  About the time I reached the door, the two guys in the car behind me (that I was blocking) got out of their car and followed me.  Cool…Rumble on Rampart lol. 

In the cold light of day, Fakename asks:  What the hell was I thinking?  All approximately 125 pounds of me (at the time) against two giant women?  How, you may wonder, did this get defused?  What happened was that the bouncer said to the two women, Move your car.  They were spitting mad.  “This is a public street!  She doesn’t own it!  We can park anywhere we want!”

The bouncer replied, “True.  However, if you don’t move your car, I’m not letting you in the bar.”  They did.  Ah–the power of networking.  The Dot’s people knew that I was That Woman. If any harm had come to me, Dot’s would have been closed down faster than you can say “Noise Law”.  Not that any of that was foremost in my mind at the time.

I was the very definition of “out of control”.  I was literally thinking, you may kill me, but I’m going to do some damage on my way out.  In other words, “F*** You!”  And the POS Cadillac you rode in on and parked in front of my house. 

Fakename is happy to report that she has calmed way down since those days, which has no doubt contributed largely to her continuing survival

Political Schizophenia

Fakename is having a hard time these days.  Oddly enough she is on the Board of two local organizations–one devoted to local business, one devoted to local environmental issues.  Apparently, never the twain shall meet (except in Fakename’s brain). 

The business organization is publicly taking a stand against Amendment 4 to the Florida Constitution, which will be voted on this year.  The amendment is more familiarly known as the ”Hometown Democracy” amendment.

We interrupt this blog for an important announcement:  Steve just posted a response on my “I Am Sad” post.  Steve:  Fakename is pro-Amendment 4.  Stop stealing my thunder

Fakename was the lone dissenter in the business organization, but has been asked to explain in detail why at the next Board meeting, next week.  Actually, Fakename thinks another of her fellow Board members is also pro-4, but quietly so. 

First let’s talk about the process by which the state Constitution can be amended in Florida.  An amendment can either be proposed by the Legislature, or by citizen intiative.  This requires a certain number of signatures on a petition.  The amendment language must be clear, and it must be “single issue”.  You can’t, for example, say that pregnant pigs cannot be confined inhumanely AND that piglets must be confined in the same space as their mothers.  You think I’m kidding with this example.  But the prohibition against inhumane confinement of pregnant pigs is now enshrined in the Florida Constitution. 

The judge of clarity, single-issueness, and whether or not there truly are a sufficient number of valid signatures on the petition is:  the Florida Supreme Court.  Which shot down the Hometown Democracy petition the last time it almost got on the ballot, on the clarity and single-issue front.  Back to the drawing board for the Hometown Democracy movement.  During the interim, the anti-HD people ramped up their fight, and managed to get something through the legislature which would allow people who signed the petition in favor of HD to “revoke” their signatures.  HD sued, and won. 

Now then, what is all this fuss about?  As previously mentioned, Florida has a so-called Smart Growth policy.  All 67 counties are required to have what is called a Comprehensive Plan.  All land-use regulations are subservient to the Plan, and the concept is to guide growth in a responsible way, while preserving natural resources.  And it is a miserable failure.  The evidence of that is all around us.  Given a free hand, developers will pave over every inch of Florida until it all looks like Miami Beach.  (If that doesn’t give you nightmares, you’ve never been to Miami Beach.)

The HD amendment says simply this:  any change to the Comp Plan must be voted on by the citizens.  The absurdity of the arguments against that idea are laughable.  Argument 1:  It will break the bank.  Counties will go broke having special elections every time someone wants to change the Comp Plan.  Reality:  the amendment doesn’t say that a special election has to be held.  It can be done during the next regularly scheduled election.  In addition, changes to the Comp Plan are somewhat rare in the present broken system, and they should be rarer still. 

Argument 2.  Opinions one way or another would be swayed by advertising on one side or the other, so that reasoned, expert opinion would not prevail.  The side with the most money would win.  Oh please!  Fakename is about to develop hiccups from laughing so hard.  Like that isn’t exactly what is happening right now?  Except the money, in one form or another, is going to the officials who make the decisions rather than to expensive ad campaigns.  Implicit in this argument is also that you, the citizen, are not smart enough to make these decisions, and you should leave it to your elected officials.  Let’s hear it for representative government! 

There actually already is a process in place for citizens to “comment” on proposed Comp Plan changes, except nobody ever does.  Why, say the antis, would we expect HD to change that? Fakename says:  a comment is different from a vote.  She also says:  bring on the advertising!  She bets more people will pay attention then.  Usually they don’t, until they end up with a Wal-Mart in the back yard.  (Ahem, this actually happened, more or less, to Fakename, although she fought tooth and nail against it.)

In closing, let’s talk about developers, who have been stereotyped and demonized during this fight.  Fakename says:  rightfully so.  Some of Fakename’s readership may characterize developers as “producers”, which would be true in a sense.  Building things creates jobs, at least temporarily.  But in order to stay in business, and to keep those jobs going, they have to keep building things.  It’s like a giant Ponzi scheme. 

Even Tallahassee caught the condo fever that has consumed the rest of the state.  Fakename can point out a recently completed 24-story condo building near her office, which has some 300 units.  At last count, they’ve sold around 10.  It’s in foreclosure.  But do the developers care?  Nope.  They got their money.  They’ve now moved on to plans to pave over the Appalachicola National Forest.

I Am Sad

Fakename has had a bad week, for many reasons, but it started Monday morning while driving to work.  The BP station I pass daily about halfway between my house and my office was empty and shuttered.  The sign which normally says something like “Mechanic On Duty” read “Closed”.  I had a bad feeling about this, because I was pretty sure that station was owned by the same people who own the BP station downtown where Jeff the Mechanic works.  Sure enough, my worst fears were confirmed. 

Plastic bags covered the hose nozzles.  No lights in the tiny “store”, and all the shelves were empty.  Doors into the repair bays closed and padlocked. 

I most recently mentioned Jeff the Mechanic in my post Worm Grunting Part 2, Dilbert, and PSI.  I took the Baby Toyota by to introduce him to it (and to get air in the tires).  This is the guy who kept my dying Camaro alive for at least a year past its expiration date.  Who said when pronouncing its death sentence…I could fix your latest problem, but I don’t want to.  It would be like stealing your money.  You need a new car. 

He’s the guy who oohed and aahed over the vvti (variable valve timing with intelligence ) engine technology in the Baby Toyota, and tried mightily to explain it to me.  It has something to do with cams.  He probably didn’t notice my eyes rolling back in my head.  As I finally understood it, vvti has something to do with the car’s ability to exert power when needed and to save power when it isn’t needed.  Ergo, the gas mileage thing.  At least he never treated me like an idiot. even though he should have.  He did yell at me a time or two, but we got past that. 

He was also a blue-collar philosopher.  He had an opinion about everything.  He, like me, was an Obama supporter before it was cool.  One day he said, “What this country needs is protectionism!”  I refer you to the State of the Union address, where now President Obama said, “We need to reward companies who keep jobs here, rather than giving tax breaks to companies which ship jobs overseas.”  I don’t claim to know if that would work or not.  It’s a complex issue.   What I’m lauding is the fact that Jeff the Mechanic gave it some thought.

I don’t really know Jeff the Mechanic personally.  The sum total of what I know about him personally is that he’s married and his wife drives a Volvo.  I think, but don’t know, that he was an independent contractor in his position as the mechanic for this BP station.  I believe that his future is safe, since in light of the economy, people are keeping their cars longer.  Perhaps the BP station will even reopen under new ownership and he will be back.  But I’m not counting on it. 

Operating a service station, at least in Florida, is one of the riskiest things you can do besides operating a restaurant. 

The important thing is, I was seriously pained by seeing that Jeff the Mechanic was gone.  Despite not knowing him personally, he was one of those people who brightened my workday world, just knowing he was out there.  I spent many hours in his company, back in the Camaro days.  He worked, and I sat in a greasy canvas chair in the repair bay reading a book.  Occasionally it would be over lunch, which would consist for me of peanut butter and cheese crackers and a Yoohoo from the store attached.  Now and then one of us would raise our heads and say, “Did you ever think about….?”

My suspicion is that I will never see him again.  It’s not like I’m living in a city teeming with millions of people, but the odds remain great.  Tallahassee has about 190,000 people in the city proper and 250,000 or so with the city and county population combined.  Plus, I don’t need to frequent mechanics anymore.  I won’t be dropping in to some other service station where I will accidentally run into him. 

My feelings about this are a serious window into my emotional life, and reveal a lot more about me than I usually care to share.  Connections, in my opinion, are both rare and fragile.  Once I make one, I can’t bear to give it up, as the people who know me best and for the longest time can attest. 

So, Jeff the Mechanic is a broken connection.  I’m highly unlikely to run into him again unless he shops at Publix.

How Your Brain Works

Frankly, I don’t know how your brain works, nor do you.  I don’t know how my brain works either (assuming it does).  And the bad news–or the good news, depending on how you look at it–is that no one else does either.  Bad news if you’re trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s; good news if you get a little queasy about telepathy and “mind-control” stuff.  Not that mind-c0ntrol (behavioral conditioning) can’t be accomplished without actually knowing how it works inside the brain. 

I think a little mystery is a good thing. While there is a certain loneliness inherent in the human condition, expressed in the simple saying, “You can never really know another person”, if you could, would you?  I personally am not ready to be Borg…but I digress.

Today we will discuss two important concepts relative to brain function:  phobias, and chocolate cake. 

First let us define phobia:  it’s something YOU are scared of.  If I’m scared of something, it’s an endearing quirk.  If you’re scared of something, you’re irrational.  Let’s take two examples. 

First ailurophobia, or fear of cats.  Fakename has never understood this, but she has a theory as to why it might develop.  Cats apparently don’t have the facial muscles to be particularly expressive.  They can move their ears, and open and close their mouths (very useful for eating), and they can twitch their noses, but the eyes are the problem.  They don’t blink often, and so appear to be staring, which we humans interpret as aggression.  Not to mention all the times they’ve sucked the breath out of our sleeping babies. 

Second, gephyrophobia, fear of bridges.  This is not as uncommon as you might think.  Let’s pause for a moment to say that an anxiety doesn’t reach the level of phobia unless it affects your behavior.  Such as–I will never again travel from Tallahassee to Jacksonville without going however many miles out of the way I have to go to reach it from the south.  Never again will I do that I-10, I-95 Junction thing with the elevated roadways.  But mostly, it’s bridges over water that are scary. 

This is a relatively new development for me, because I have driven over some monster bridges.  The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway.  Not to mention the Huey P. Long bridge.  The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  The Confederation Bridge between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island in Canada–actually, I was a passenger for that one, but still.  However, nothing compares bridge-wise to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay.  I date my personal bridge phobia to having to cross it.  I had never experienced anything like it. 

It’s described as “one of the world’s longest bridges with a cable-stayed main span”.   The cables are painted yellow, and here’s the deal:  when you hit the section of road where the cables are, it sets up a sort of optical illusion which is disorienting.  Behold: 

Curiously, Fakesister shares this fear of bridges.  Last year she took a trip to northern California and we had some discussion about how and if she would make it over the Golden Gate.  Somewhere out there is a scientist who would like to study us. 

Finally, some scientists did an experiment that went like this:  A group of people were asked to memorize either two-digit numbers or seven-digit numbers, then all they had to do was walk down the hall, go into another room, and repeat the numbers.  But they were interrupted by being asked to choose a snack:  a refreshing bowl of healthy fruit, or chocolate cake.  It turns out that the people who had to remember seven digits were twice as likely to choose the chocolate cake.  This proves, or suggests…something or the other.  There was no word on whether either group remembered their numbers.  You can see the story, which aired on NPR,  here.

Fighting for Water

Disclaimer:  There will be no references cited here, since, as I’m fond of saying, I’m writing a blog, not a term paper.  So you will have to take my word for it that I’m telling the truth, or else you will have to look it up yourself.  Disclaimer #2:  I’m telling the truth, but some inaccuracies or fuzzy details may seep in unintentionally.

The subject of this blog is the war between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida over the water in what is known as the Chattahoochee/Flint/Appalachicola river system.  This war has been going on for umpty-jillion years (in the South, this means “several” or sometimes, “a few”).  I think in fact that it’s been about 12 years (see:  fuzzy details).  The gist of it is this:  Georgia built a giant dam (Buford Dam) on their end (the Chattahoochee part) which formed Lake Lanier.  This reduced the water flow into the Flint River in Alabama, which flows into the Appalachicola River in Florida, and ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico.  The amount of water allowed to flow into the Flint and therefore, the Appalachicola, is controlled by the Corps of Engineers. 

So the states involved have spent years alternately suing each other or the Corps.  It hasn’t reached the Supreme Court yet, but it will.  We have, here in the Southeast, not reached the level of water wars so common in the West, but we are getting there. 

Now we will pause for a moment to consider the following topic, which will tie in later:  Smart Growth.  An oxymoron if there ever was one.  But as online friend Jeff Watson says, he’s a conservative because he has something to conserve.  Ditto Florida.  Beautiful white sand beaches, the Everglades, wildlife of an astonishing variety, terrain which ranges from near-desert to tropical lushness.  So Florida enacted laws to protect all that, which it regularly ignores.  But at least it tried. 

In Georgia, there are apparently no such laws.  The once lovely area my sister lives in (a stone’s throw from Buford Dam), north-northeast of Atlanta, used to be rolling pastures filled with horse barns.  Now it’s filled with Toyota dealerships, Hampton Inns, and Wal-Marts.  And it happened lightning-fast.  (Translation:  About five years, way less than umpty-jillion.)

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming involving water wars.  The real fight is between Georgia and Florida.  Alabama is just kind of stuck in the middle, and generally sides with Florida. (If we don’t get any, they don’t either.)  Georgia’s argument is that it needs the water in Lake Lanier to supply drinking water to Atlanta.  Plus, they say, it’s our water.  It starts here.  Florida says, it’s not your water, it’s our water too.  Florida needs it for the oyster industry, since the fresh water from the Appalachicola flowing into the Gulf creates the perfect breeding ground for oysters. 

The latest in a surprising ruling by some Federal court or another is this:  Georgia may not keep as much water as it wants (needs), because Lake Lanier was not originally created for the purpose of supplying drinking water to Atlanta.  Temporarily, Florida wins.  I’m pretty sure Georgia is suing somebody about it. 

Long ago, Fakename came up with a solution to this problem.  It involves building a very large, electrified fence around Atlanta and its suburbs, which is patrolled by border guards.  No one is allowed inside the fence unless someone already inside dies.  That way, Atlanta can make do with the water it already has.  Fakesister commented that it’s a good thing Fakename is not an elected official.  But in milder form, my solution would work.  Stop development.  If you can’t get water, you can’t build.  As crazy as I may sound, this will in fact be the ultimate resolution.  Georgia will be forced to curb its appetite.  It can either do it on its own terms, or be forced into it by the federal government.  (All you libertarians out there, read and weep.)

This brings me to the concept of urban planning.  My friend Judith has a degree in it, and taught me that in order to get anything done which benefits wildlife or the environment, you have to somehow make the argument that it benefits people.  Thus with the infamous “turtle tunnel” here in Tallahassee.  The argument had to be made that turtles crossing a major highway were hazardous, which is in fact true.  Drivers either swerve to avoid them, or hit them.  Then the turtles in some cases become hard-shelled missiles capable of breaking your windshield (and there were pictures to prove it).

The deal is that most people are not capable of thinking beyond their noses.  They are not capable of grasping how the survival of turtles benefits them.  And they are not capable of understanding how important water is.  Possibly until the day they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out.    Do I sound elitist?  Guilty as charged…because those people have to be protected from themselves. 

Presently I’m reading Jane Goodall’s latest book, “Hope for Animals and Their World”.  Subtitled “How Endangered Species are Being Rescued from the Brink”.  The very first section is about animals who already, in our lifetimes, have become extinct in the wild.  And why should we care? 

Well, most of us will not notice until we go out on the patio and no birds are singing in the back yard (see: Rachel Carson).  Or until we turn on the water faucet and nothing comes out.