Anthropomorphism

It is human to see human responses around us, and we have the ability for abstraction. So we apply human patterns to animals and objects. “An evil wind blows..”

Computers are “thinking”, when that little spinny beachball or hourglass pops up. I assure you, computers do not think, they compute. And crash. And they do not have malicious thoughts by themselves, try to trip you up or attempts to confuse you originating from any inherited intelligence. It may seem that way at times though; “it is doing it again” is a classic line often heard on computer support. It insinuates that the machinery have a mind of its own, and therefore the user does not have any influence, responsibility or impact. This is what supportpeople call pebkac. Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Most people would not see human traits in a cockroach, say, a frog or a shark. But we all do it, particularly to big-eyed, furry mammals. Large heads, big eyes and mammarian glands seems to be a prerequisite. Of course, primates tops the list. It seems we have to see our abilities in them to have empathy. It has been argued for many years that for example fish does not feel. A preposterous argument based on no evidence whatsoever. Just a convenient conclusion.

Sometimes the interpretation can be correct, but do not take it for granted. Sometimes it is wishful thinking. Let snoozing lion lie.

People read expressions in animals and get very very surprised when the animal does not react accordingly or do not understand that we are “the good guys”. There have been incidents where seemingly happy and domesticated animals have killed or mauled their owners. To much surprise, “Buster was such a happy, caring tiger”. Right.

This is the – at times – very misguided idea that animals understands us, and we them. The obvious examples would of course be people like TImothy Treadwell that lived with grizzly bears, played with their cubs, and argued that he “communicated” with them and protected them. Until they ate him. A Darwin Award for eco-warrior Mr. Treadwell. And various people who have kept wild animals, believe to have them under control, and then being killed by them. It is not because the cat is malicious. It is because we interpret the behavioural patterns as similar to ours.

Dressing up animals in human clothes we remove their species identity and apply our own. It is fun in myths and stories, and can work as metaphors, but it is not doing us or their species any favours.

Cats and dogs, in particular, of course, as they have been domesticated for many many years are usually victims of this. We “know” each other. And we give them  toys in multiple colours looking like human-baby toys. Many animals have poor colour vision, so this is not for their benefit, but for ours. It is cute. Funnily, animals often are in that respect like human children: often they prefer to play with the box the gift came in, an old sock, a post-it or a twig. Any old rubbish lying around, and the expensive “pet furniture” stands untouched.

I am not opposed to pet toys or brightly coloured things. But I am opposed to humans  applying our wishes and preferences on animals. Such as giving a cat a nightlight. I mean, really. Cats are predators, they hunt at night, their night vision and sense of smell and hearing leaves us in the dust. In fact, studies shows that cats see better at night than in daylight. Which means, that for the cats sake, turn the light off.

cat mummy, national museum of natural history, DC

For thousands of years, we kept cats to get rid of vermin. They had a job, to catch mice. Still there are famous mousers in the distilleries in Scotland that do a very important job. I love whisky, and I do not want any mouse poo in my barley, thankyou. I do not think those cats are cuddled much. I do not think they lie in front of a fire or on a lap (I have met a couple). Yet I do believe they are taken good care of (good mousers being hard to find), and I believe they have fine lives. A cat does not, from some mythical primordial state, natively belong in a human lap.

Now, cats are pets, and the catching of mice is a nuisance. Our expectations of cats have changed. Over time, the cats with less ability to drag headless rodents home and dump them on the carpet might be the ones that win out. Certainly, cats that get along with humans, fulfil our expectations and wishes, will have better lives and better chances of survival and possibly reproduction. There is no such thing as the primeval original, when there is constant adaptation. A good life for a cat does not mean spoonfeeding or a loopy lady calling herself “mammy”, nattering on with babytalk. Just because they have soft fur, does not mean they appreciate or need being petted all day long.

Our expectations of animals determine their quality of life and chances of survival. As these expectations change over time, so the animals will try to adapt as well as they can. Humans should not underestimate species other than our own, nor try to make them more like us. After all. A lot of us are not really all that nice.

I worked briefly at the National Archives as an apprentice bookbinder yonder, and I remember the genealogists that came trundling up the path from the metro every day, carrying heavy bags of notes. They would request church registres, dusty tomes, old newspapers and microfilm from the six floors below ground. A systematic, gargantuan, taxonomic task. I always thought I would never bother with it, because: back then you needed serious discipline and a keen sense of priority. You would only have a few sources of information available at one time, and flitting to and fro by fancy was not a good idea. Enter scene: the internet!

I started out with the names of my great grandmother, for the simple reason that they are unusual, and therefore easy to follow. The first name, Schjoldager, goes to Trondheim, and I find a small street there named after my great-great-great-grandfather or so. I thought that was rather swell, actually. He was a chimney- and chimney sweeper-inspector. Trondheim burned several times, so I guess this was a reasonably important job. At least not one they would give to the town drunk. Then Schjoldager morphs into Wolner/Wølner, and goes to about 1590, to Jacob Wølner who came to Norway from Freiberg, Germany to work as Overstiger at Kongsberg Silver Mines. Schjoldager stops there – or at least, I have not tried to find the rest of the Wølmers of Freiberg.

So, back to great grand-mamas second name, Figenschou. It goes to northern Norway, then to Bergen. There, a fellow by the name Elias Fiigenschow (b. ab. 1599, in Copenhagen), was apparently one of the best portrait painters in the country. His grandfather, Mathias Fugenshuh (1540) was a royal saddlemaker from Hindelang, Germany, and he had a coat of arms. I was chuffed. Hurrah, I thought. A proper, swirly family crest complete with animals, acantus and shields.

Elias married a Bloch, and to make a long story short, she hails from the old Norwegian noble families. Apart from having hilarious names such as Benkestokk, Smør (Butter), Smørhatt (Butterhat), Krukow, Bratt til Tomb, Ku til Tomb, Stangjarfylja, the crowning beauty is a governor on Iceland, Tore Bjørnsson Tinghatt (Tinghatt = thing (as in assembly) & hat). The source considers that the name Þinghottr may be because he “came to a thing (assembly) wearing a peculiar hat“. This strikes me as wild speculation, but hey – I love the thought, so I am sticking with the story:

Some time in the early 1200, one of my ancestors came to the assembly meeting wearing something amusing on his head. 

From another path of the Figenschou line, I find the unassuming name Hage. The line goes to Danefær, to not-so-unassuming Holstein, to von Reventlow, to Rantzau, Buchwald, Breide, and further to the positively pompous von Ahlefeldt, Limbek, Gyllenstierne, von Rugen. This may not say very much, but they are all nobility, knights, members of Council of the Realm. Wherever that may be. I was at this point swimming in more crests and coat of arms than I cared to, and it was clearly steering towards Scandinavian royalty. And if you get mixed into that, there is no way out. To cut a very very long story very short, I end up at various kings and queens of Sweden, Denmark; princesses from England, Poland, Italy and Russia. Some saints too. This is around year 1000, and if things are a little shady after the black death, it certainly gets foggy around 1000.

Of course, genealogy is not an exact science, and I am no professional. I am good at digging around on the internet though. Of course I may have gotten something wrong, but I would be in good company, among those hobby genealogists that came to the National Archives. I have tried to find at least two sources and confirmation of the lines, particularly the high royalty. They often had multiple wives, husbands, children out of wedlock left right and centre. The men might die early in war, the women in childbirth. I am learning much about “NN”, and the politics of marrying off your daughters for political reasons. And after all, we are all related, more or less. At least in Scandinavia it was not uncommon to send a child to a neighbouring lord or a relative to be brought up there. This was to ensure connections and peace, but it might also leave the origin of the child uncertain. At some point in history, the idea of “parent” may be biological, or may be whoever raised the child. See the confusion?

From Figenschou, I find three distinct lines that I have not followed through. One point to the old kings of Norway, and the two others both point to Charlemagne. I mean, what do you do then? Behind him is the Byzantine empire.

Once you have hitched your family tree to a royal line, there is little point in following it through: others have done that. The royal connections are amusing, but I do not feel any relation to them. My initial interest was to find amusing anecdotes such as the guy with the peculiar headgear, and the guy that “in a fit of anger did away with himself with a rope” (Johan Reinertsen Wormhuus, 1686, Bergen).

I have three more family lines to look at. They will not be so easy, but they might have good stories. And yes, I made a family tree. A work in progress.

Someone mailed the shelter, asking them to take a kitty back or have it put down, as it was catching mice.

A large portions of people suddenly develops allergies, particularly around holidays.

One guy had a kitty with a smashed paw around for six days, before calling. And then the reason for him calling was not the missing paw, but that the landlord would not let him have the cat anymore. He insisted the wee thing was fine. He said it was not his cat, but then in another sentence said he mentioned they thought he was a she when they got him. Just one of several contradictions. The poor thing came in with the untreated mangled paw, stinking, black and decaying flesh hanging in strips, and bone sticking out. Yea, he was fine.

I wish these people could at least lie a little more convincingly. It would prevent me from hating mankind. If the guy had kept the story simple, he could have been a hero, instead I now want to defecate in his mailbox. He could have just said he had found this poor thing outside, and thought of the shelter. End of story. He would have been a saviour. Now, he is the model of a disgusting human being.

Someone left their house for over four months. Just poured cat food over the floor and left. A caretaker or plumber found the cats. They had been drinking out of the loo, and there was cat poo everywhere. One of the cats darted out the door as helpers came in, and have not been seen since. One male, a mere kitten when abandoned, was scared and shy for a few days, and then turned out to be the most loveable creature.

A box with two rabbits was found in the parking garage of the local shopping centre. Another in a cardboard box among rubbish at a motorway rest stop. A kitten thrown out of the window of a car. Some people apparently throw kittens through the gate of the shelter. Which is at least not directly cruel, and has a mildly comical side, as there is no actual fence. Just forest. Try to shepherd cats.

see the homeless ones.

Kurt Vonnegut

A carpenter was commissioned to build some boxes for a SPCA cat shelter. This is what he did. He did not even bother to pretend to do a half decent job.

This guy have a three-year apprenticeship, cutting pieces of wood, using a drill, sandpaper and a saw. Screws juts out on the inside of the cages, the doors do not close. Distressed animals will injure themselves on these. I could have done a better job! It would have taken me ages, but I would have done a better job.

I was a teaching assistant at the university college, and one of my students came whining one day, that he had to read. That there was books with words in them. That he was expected to read. He actually said, and I quote, “I canna do it! I try! I open the first page and there are all these words!”

I smiled sweetly and said, “well maybe you should do something else. Maybe you should become a bus driver or a carpenter instead”. He was deeply offended, his classmates rekindled their hatred of me.

I regret that comment now. It turns out you can be as incompetent as a carpenter, as you could be unfit for anything vaguely academic, such as reading. The difference between rubbish carpentry and shoddy academic work is depressingly obvious. A bad house will fall down. A bad thesis will have no impact on anything. You can set fire to both, though, and you probably should.

Art can be made out of any old rubbish. Craft cannot. If you are not in fine art, you are in craft, and there is a quality gauge. If you cannot sign your work with excellence, at least do not inflict injury on homeless kittys.

After the second world war, the law was changed for the legal purges in Norway, so as to execute Quislings, the Nazi sympathisers. Technically, Norway had the death penalty for high treason until 1979, but the last execution was in 1948.

Obviously, there will be no death penalty for Behring Breivik, and because of a police computer-system cock-up, he cannot be sentenced to 31 years, the upcoming limit for “acts of terrorism”. So the maximum ordinary sentence he can receive is 21 years, a “life” sentence. Norway do not do that weird thing of multiple life sentences. But he can be sentenced to a complicated melange based on his mental health/capacity, that might keep him locked up for as long as he lives. They then have to prove he is just the right amount of bonkers.

Today, as I write this, he is present at the first public hearing in court, and he introduced himself as a knight and a military commander of the Norwegian resistance. He sees himself as a freedom fighter that had to do terrible things for the common good. So in his mind, he is related to those who was interned at Grini during the war. He fights for freedom against Goliath-odds.

He questioned the judges ability to give him a fair trial, as they are “representatives of multiculturalism”. The guy is obviously deluded, but he is not mad. We should not give him the benefit of the mad lable.

Norway’s justice system, unlike some other countries, are based on the premise that people can change, they can learn, they can repay. Repent and be free. Statistically, this works, as the percentage of re-convictions are low compared to other European countries. So this case is a large problem for the justice system, and for the prevailing sense of justice. Fact is, there are few people in this country that would not like to see him boil and burn.

A friend set up this scenario; if you are out driving, and accidentally hit someone with your car, and then discovered it was Behring Breivik, would your reaction pattern be different? I would say yes. I would think a lot of people would, if not directly celebrate, then at least take their time in calling an ambulance; a sense of guilt greatly diminished. Some people would get back in the car and back up over him again.

We are uncomfortable with these feelings. Other people do terrible things too, and victims of other crimes may suffer just as much, but the sheer scale of this guys actions makes it a very public problem. He has committed atrocities, we want him to suffer. That is the point of prison, that is the point of punishment. We have the justice system so that the punishments do not get out of proportions. We want criminals to see what we see, and we want them to suffer in new-found understanding, then we want them to become clear-eyed, honest, upstanding pillars of society.

But deep down, I do not think we want this for Behring Breivik. Norway will uphold the justice system. And we will all quietly hate it for this one man.

EDIT.

As His Loopyness is unfolding – should I say unravelling – it becomes more clear he has a severe mental illness. Paranoid schizophrenic, they say. Quite possibly. But here is the curious thing: people seem to be outraged by that. Why? They want him punished. They want him in prison, even though a mental hospital would take away more of his freedoms and rights, would control and monitor him closer, would even possibly medicate and cure him, would keep him locked up for longer. Then maybe he will see what we see. If so, who could live with that? How could prison be more punishment?

We have all seen a gorgeous film, A Beautiful Mind. This is the Terrible Mind.

If he is sick, he can be medicated, he can be cured, more or less. That would probably be the greatest punishment of all.

I do not take this site immensely serious, but when I come to think of it, loosing everything would actually be a himalayan annoyance. Really really inconvenient. I have deleted, copied, put in storage, quarantined, exported, scrubbed, scrutinised and bleached.

The residue of black hacks are persistent. And I am uncertain what this one actually accomplishes, apart from a proof of concept. No, I am not furious, it is part of the risk, I just wish I had been a little ahead. It did not seem to last long before my site gave that ugly warning page, and then it does not last long before google blacklists me. Hassle.

Still some little hiccups to fix and some research to do, but the cracks should be well stuffed with oakum and I am sailing on, although cautiously.

I woke up yesterday, to a flood of warnings on facebook, telling me about this deeply disturbed individual, and that several dogs had already died. Even in my grumpy pre-coffee morning haze, something smelled a little off.

A few hours later the media backtracked, and the mystery was solved. It turned out it was the commendable tradition of Oslo Hash House Harriers, beer-drinkers with a running problem. A very british ex-pat invention, the Hash House Harriers have a hare that leaves a trail, the hounds follow, and beer is consumed at the end. This, incidentaly, is maybe the only kind of fitness group I could see myself join and enjoy. The trail is environmentally friendly sawdust or flour. Figures.

But here is the mystery… how, HOW does this happen? How does the connection of “my dog sniffed some sawdust” go to “my dog sniffed some sawdust and then got diarrhea”, and then to “dogs sniffed sawdust and diiiiied!” then further to “INSANE MAN poisons dogs!” HOW does this happen? Who add that crucial sentence, “man (because that was what it said) poisons dogs, dogs have died”?!

Apparently a pet-shop had a sign up, saying this. But where did it start?! There must be a single human that added drama to the “dog sniffs stuff”, and others who escalates.

The papers contacted the local humane-societies, the veterinary institute, the food safety authority and the police. The society for prevention of cruelty to animals says they have had several reports of sick dogs. The canines are apparently listless, have diarrhea and do not eat well. A far cry from being dead, and certainly not an uncommon malady, partics with the gunky weather here now.

A dog sniffs and licks a million things outside, and some of them enjoy rolling around in dog poo. But how, oh, mystery, hooow did this canard happen?

Facebook is practically untrackable. The information there is nearly impossible to source, and one feather turns into five hens, as the saying goes. People are sentimental, they see a status warning of this terribly disturbed man, and dare not not share it. It is about social conscience. The thing is, if you do not share it, it does not mean that you want dogs killed, but it plays on our love for animals, our conscience, a social responsibility to warn others of possible misfortune. And so it generates, escalates and goes haywire. And viral.

And then the newspapers pick it up, and parrots random facebookers who cannot even spell instead of doing a little research.

Use your heads, people. If you wanted to poison dogs. Would sawdust be the first thing that springs to mind? If dogs have died, do you not think the teary face of the owner of some mutt would be all over the media within 30 seconds of said mutts demise? Dead cats? Birds? Rats? And not the least. Facebook updates with a million exclamation marks after it does not inspire confidence.

I would really like to know how this works: the gears of this process is not easily figured out; the “social media” is a messy tangle with  lots of dead ends. A curious similarity to the aim of the hares of the Hash House Harriers.

Will someone please do some solid research on this?

Note. I said solid.

..and the top pic is of highly-alive Grainne (look up the irish pronounciation), my Aussie dog-friend.

The quality drink their champagne and mockingly toasts the great unwashed people below. Do you not know what a large group of ticked off people can do? You do not even have to read history. You do not even have to leave the timespan of this week. The snowball does not care about what is fair, correct or who is or was responsible. I believe you call it critical mass.

I heard an “expert” say that the protest would never achieve anything, because it is too vague, there is no clear message, they are not united under a common banner. The expert went on to say that the protesters could not achieve anything, because it is like the messy anti-war protest in the sixties.

Come again?! ..and what happened in the sixties, children? Yes, the anti-war protests and the hippies were not exactly homogenous. But things changed.

BBC radio 4 friday night comedy; one of my favourite podcasts. Last fridays NewsQuiz edition was brilliant. Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton and Fred MacAulay are my best friends on fridays. Pointing out that usually when there is a protest, experts say “this is a few, extremists people”. Except that this time that is not the case. Jeremy Hardy quotes various media having nothing else to say that these are “well educated reasonable people”. How to you deal with that? Funny man.

One of my favourite pictures from Wall St. is one of librarians. Yes, you know things are messed up when librarians starts marching  (I will add the image here later, if the photographer gives me permission). There are guerilla libraries. How can you not love that?

The world is off its trolley, undoubtedly. Winter is coming though, and New York gets cold. Who will continue, and who does not have a choice anymore?

Many of them say they are proud to be Americans. They should not be. They should rant, rave and create change. And then be proud.

These are well behaved people. Maybe they shouldn’t be.

edit:

I will let someone more eloquent than me sketch out some very valid points. Smile or die, from Barbara Ehrenreich, courtesy of th RSA.

 “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth..

Encyclopedia of life is an amazing, insane undertaking. E. O. Wilson did a delightful, rambling TED-talk, and things actually happened. A lot of people apparently got together, large sums of money was involved, an awful lot of meetings, I presume, and a website was born. With a whole bunch of impressive collaborators, they started building a page for every living thing. Every living named thing, I should say. We do not really know how may species there is on earth.

Personally, I thought the site was awful. Then – Hurrah! – they rebuilt and redesigned recently. It got much better, I certainly approve. It is made by scientists and the public; we can all contribute, and the information is moderated by scientists. I love the idea, I love the insane ambition of it, I love living things, and I think it is both scientifically and individually important. This is a good start for having a positive dander through a website. Through lifeforms, actually. I excitedly open the brand new EOL. Not unreasonably, I am met with a large search box.

And there I sat. What to search for? Pathetically, I typed in “cat”. I messed around with felidae. You and me can contribute to EOL, so I amused myself looking for pics of peoples pets. I imagine a lot of people would think it wonderous to have their tabby put in encyclopedic context for all the world to see. Then I did “elephant shrew”. Because they are the funniest little things. I fiddle about with the taxonomy for a bit, but my latin is not good enough, my understanding of taxonomy a little shaky, their tree a little unclear (Taxonomy, by the way, is a scary, scary thing, but that is a different chapter). So, as is so often the case, finding something specific, the known-item-search is wonderfully easy. It is the discovering that is a problem.

UI & UX. Unknown terms to many. It stands for usability and user interface; we all know when these things do not work. It is a bit like only noticing the surface you are driving on when it is full of potholes.

I have to say, EOL is not full of potholes. They are doing a lot of things right. But here is what I would have liked to play with, what I would like to discover. If I was the president of the universe, EOL would have these things for me to explore… find living things that have the colour green. All things with fur that lives in Marocco. What creatures are parasites, what have symbiotic relations? (The disturbing Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating louse springs to mind) Who eats who? What species overlap where? What is the food chain for a deepwater anglerfish, a bobcat, a tapir? What do humans make and eat of various species? Why are there no green mammals? What species have their closest relation on another contient? Show me all creatures with wings. How many species of dragonflies? What species are directly dependent on each other, and which species are mutually beneficial? I can go on and on and on. I am a little Napoleonic here maybe, EOL is a massive undertaking as it is.

And maybe it is a good thing they do not have this. If EOL ever get these things, I would never leave the site, and get nothing done.

Of course, making this would be either the nightmare of a lifetime, or the most fun you could possibly have. A million potholes, and a million things that can go wrong, I see piles of technical problems, itches and conundrums. But I mean; imagine… dream…