Counting Fingers

[snurri]

1. Haddayr pointed me to this story about animal communications in relation to natural disasters, particularly the tsunami, and focusing on elephants and infrasound. Good stuff.

2. I am in the midst of a renaissance of the album. For a long while I've mostly listened to my music on shuffle, because I liked to pretend I had my own radio station. This week I am enjoying settling in with one artist for a while. Lots of PJ Harvey, for some reason.

3. Have you heard about Titanoboa? Is it not the most awesome thing ever? (Yes. It is.)

4. I have a sudden need to re-watch The Wild Bunch, but I don't have it on DVD and I no longer have a VCR. I believe this is what is referred to as a TECHNOLOGY FAIL.

5. Fanboys opens in selected cities this weekend; I was going to tell all of you in those cities to go see it, but early indications from RottenTomatoes are that all the fucking around has made it into a shitty movie. Shame.

Comments

[stonetable.livejournal.com]

That's really too bad about Fanboys. I'd been looking forward to it for quite a while now.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

To be clear, I haven't seen it; but last I looked it had a 26% rating over there.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

P.S. Chicago is one of the cities, so if you were thinking about a movie this weekend . . .

[stonetable.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's playing in South Barrington. We might just go and check it out.

[rnb.livejournal.com]

PJ Harvey has two or three near-perfect albums.

I could never get into The Wild Bunch for some reason.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

To Bring You My Love is the obvious one, but Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea sneaks up on me sometimes. Love that one.

[rnb.livejournal.com]

Stories from the City is my favorite, by far, but I do love To Bring You My Love. Also, Is This Desire? is great.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard Is This Desire?, actually; I need to check that out.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but as the subject of that article points out, the stories about elephants screaming at each other are anecdotal. Checking GPS records on tagged park elephants after showed no unusual movement prior to or during the tsunami. And as with all these events, *shitloads* of animals died. A lot of them were sea creatures you'd think would be first in line for special tsunami senses. The stories about animals knowing in advance and fleeing eerily persist, however, as always.

IIRC, there were also stories about elephants saving people and the usual expectable miracle stories and Deepak Chopra actually went on international TV that week and claimed *no* animals died.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

The stories related to the tsunami are anecdotal, at least as presented in the article, but infrasound communications are not. Katy Payne's book Silent Thunder talks about her research; indications are that, depending on atmospheric conditions, elephants can communicate over many miles reading subsonic vibrations through the pads of their feet.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

No, I got that - it's just that since it doesn't seem to be true that virtually no animals died or that elephants behaved unusually, no application of ideas about elephant communication is available here, really. I hope Professor Garstang has a nice vacation, at least.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

That's true; I just thought it was a charming little article. As you point out, though, the scientific content is minimal.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

I think I had my expectations set too high: I saw the link and went "Wait, it turns out there's something to that elephant/tsunami thing, after all?"

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Not to be all flakey, but I could easily believe there was; but belief is not science.