Up and away

Remember when you were a kid and you got a ballon, a helium balloon. It was so exciting, you were going to love that balloon forever. Maybe you were warned that you should tie the balloon around your wrist. But what’s the fun of that? That’s what babies do and anyway you loved that balloon, you weren’t going to ever let go of that balloon.

But then a momentary distraction, a gust of wind, and the balloon was gone. At first you couldn’t quite believe that the balloon had escaped from your grasp. It rose up so tantalisingly slowly just barely out of reach. By the time you could get the attention of your parents it was out of their reach, too. You stood and watched as it continued to rise. And then a current caught your balloon, your now ex-balloon, and it rushed skyward and away. Maybe you shed a little tear as the balloon shrank to a spot against the clouds and then was no more to be seen.

You knew from previous balloons that eventually the helium would dissipate and the ballon would fall to earth again, a little latex Icarus. Maybe you wondered where it would come down, who would find it and if they would think about you, the little kid who lost a balloon.

Today I found a downed helium balloon in my garden. Ha ha kid, you shoulda held on tighter.

The Mandela standard

During our perusal of the papers yesterday during a break from museum going (The Guardian and The Evening Standard which we bought and a Daily Mail which I found on the Tube), Nelson Mandela featured twice in a justification for terrorism.

You know the old adage, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Well, I guess Nelson Mandela is now “universally” seen as the standard for the freedom fighter.

In an article in The Guardian, Adam Nicholson says:

No one, I think would put the attempt to liberate the Newchurch
guinea pigs on a par with the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa… But
perhaps the two struggles are not as far apart as you think.

The guinea pig farm in Newchurch is run by the Hall family and after years of harrassment by animal liberationists, they have decided to get out of the guinea pig business. They and their friends and relatives have been subject to intimidation, a pedophilia smear campaign, arson attacks, explosions and perhaps most disgustingly one of their old dead relatives was dug up from the local churchyard and her body is still missing.

But Adam Nicholson argues that if the animal rights folks had resorted to only legal, peaceful protests, the Halls would still be raising guinea pigs for scientific experiments. Unfortunately, because the Halls are phasing out their business (rather than face bankruptcy) and won’t be finished with the fluffy critters until December, there are still going to be protests outside their home. He says:

Mandela’s term for his control of [the Spear of the Nation, armed wing of the ANC] was “properly controlled violence.” Seen simply in tactical and strategic terms, that phrase would be perfectly appropriate for the things that the animal rights activists have been doing to the Halls, their friends, families, employees and neighbours. ….the campaign to close down the guinea pig sheds will surely look like a violent, necessary and ugly step on the long march to freedom.

Sick.

Even sicker is Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone’s concerns about Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s new standards for deportation. In the Evening Standard, Red Ken is reported as saying

that the new laws on banning terrorists should be rejected if they fail to pass the “Nelson Mandela test.” If some of the proposed new legislation had been in force 20 years, he pointedout, it could have led to supporters of the anti-apartheid struggle by Mr Mandela’s African National Congress being deported. Mr Livingstone also said that it would be wrong to ban from Britain controversial Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi who has said Palestinians are entitled to use suicide bombers against Israeli forces. He claimed that Al-Qaradawi was “probably the most respected progressive Muslim cleric in the world”.

Progressive toward what? Toward a global Islamic caliphate. Toward punishing gays and repressing women?

(Why in the world does Ken continue to support this guy? See Harry’s Place for more on this.)

Both Red Ken and Adam Nicholson fail to understand what really happened with apartheid. It wasn’t the violence of Nelson Mandela that brought an end to that injustice in South Africa, after all he was locked up and couldn’t commit any acts of violence. It was the whole world turning against that nation and its nasty, racist ways that brought F. W. De Klerk to the point where real changes were made. It wasn’t violence that brought about the sanctions, but literate and compelling arguments from South Africans black and white. And it wasn’t Nelson Mandela’s violence, but his statesman-like leadership (unfortunately not seen currently in South Africa) which helped forge a new nation on a new path.

No excuses for terrorism.

Attic of the nation, vacation update 5

Another day of solid rain, so a good day for museums. Yesterday the Vol-in-Law and I headed to the Natural History museum, along with every family with small children in London. The Natural History museum is behemoth, and we didn’t even bother to try to cover the whole thing. We headed straight to the dinosaur section, where they have several animatronic versions of the beasts, including a big giant, snorting, roaring, motion sensing T-rex. There were so many people there, that its motion sensing got a little confused, which is just as well, because when it stares straight at you with its beady reptile eyes, opens its giant toothy jaws and roars, it can be a little frightening and the Vol Abroad has a sensitive disposition.

We also saw Face to Face an exhibit of photographic portraits of gorillas, chimps and orangutans. All of these animals had been rescued from unfortunate circumstances. The Vol-in-Law found these quite pictures quite powerful. In the exhibit they also highlighted a book by Charles Darwin called The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.

From the Natural History website:

In Expressions, Darwin argues that emotions such as love, joy,
anger, guilt and horror are universal among humans and they share evolutionary
origins with the expressions and behaviour of other animals. The prevailing
Christian view at the time was that emotions were a special gift to humans from
God to communicate our innermost feelings. This difference of opinion fuelled a
fierce debate in science that raged through the twentieth century.

This exhibit was supposed to show that the great apes feel emotions, too, which I never really doubted. My cats have emotions. Anybody who’s ever had a pet knows animals have emotions. Some people will tell you that we’re just anthropomorphising our pets, but I don’t believe that. But of course, their emotions aren’t just like ours. My cat who died last year, showed a range of very complex emotions, often unpleasant emotions like jealousy, anger, an excessive sense of self-worth and pique. But her daughter, who is very stupid, exhibits a much more limited range of emotions, contentment or grumpiness, usually.

They were also touting the new Darwin Centre, so we followed the signs to visit that. It was a little bit of a disappointment, because it’s largely offices, labs and storage facilities. Guess what they store in there. Specimens in jars. Pickled animals. Shelf-on-shelf-on-shelf of pickled animals, and not a one of them I would eat. Some of these were on public display, they had worms and shellfish and foxes and bats. They also had a big old Rattus norwegicus (regular old rat) Locality: outside NH museum. Yep, one the way to work one day, one of the scientists stumbled across a dead rat, and thought to bring it on inside and stuff it in a big jar full of alcohol. Nice. Each square footage of storage space which is on prime real estate in central London must cost a freakin’ fortune, and somebody sees fit to fill it with a rat off the road. Who says scientists don’t have a sense of humor?

We then took a little break from museum going and sat in the pub for a while, nursing our pints and reading the paper before heading off to the Victoria & Albert museum. This has to be my favorite museum in London. It’s like the attic of the nation. It’s full of stuff. They call it ‘decorative art’, but it’s stuff. Much of it very nice stuff, art and textiles and fashion throught the ages, bits and bobs. During the age of Empire, the Brits were an acquistive lot, and they had expansive tastes, including good stuff. Marbles off the Parthenon? We’ll have that. Rosetta stone, we’ll have it. (both in the British Museum) Old door, bit of carved wood, fancy sword, nice shawl, we’ll have it and stick in the Victoria and Albert.

What they couldn’t buy or steal, they took a plaster cast of. That’s my favorite part of the Victoria and Albert, the Court of Casts. It’s fantastic. They have a plaster cast of Michelangelo’s David, Trajan’s column, entryways from the great cathedrals of Europe, carved doorways from Norwegian stavkirkes. You name it, they took a plaster cast of it and they’re all jumbled together in two great rooms. When my brother and I went to Italy and wandered around Rome on our first day, we kind of wondered why we bothered going, what with all the heat and fuss and expense, we’d already seen most of it in the Court of Casts. (We changed our minds later after seeing the Colliseum and the wonderful city of Florence). But as you wander around some of the great museums here, you do get the feeling that you can see all the world in this one great city, London.