Panda porno

As usual, I woke up to NPR and to the BBC news. This story of an experiment to encourage the dwindling population of pandas to mate, using panda porn videos, made me smile. (rare event lately) If only humans had how-to videos to show them how to treat mates with respect, what roles to take, when and when not to give up on someone of interest....


Here is the BBC story (photos above, also BBC):

Sex videos fail to engage pandas
By James Reynolds
BBC News, Chengdu, China


Pandas are only sexually active for a few days each year
The video is pretty graphic. Qing Qing and Ha Lei tangle and slither about awkwardly on the floor of their panda enclosure.

Their encounter is filmed by one of the keepers. And scientists at the Chengdu Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding now play this mating tape to other pandas in the hope that it will encourage them to do the same.

"Here you can see the female is very co-operative," says reproduction specialist Hou Rong - who is known here as the Goddess of Fertility. She watches the video closely.

The two pandas writhe about for a bit longer. Then they untangle. It may be best to stop male pandas from watching what comes next.

"The female is not co-operative," says Dr Hou laconically.

That is an understatement.

The tape shows the female, Qing Qing, attacking the male, Ha Lei. He runs off to the corner, looking sheepish.

Qing Qing looks angry. Apparently this is normal behaviour for pandas after mating.

Still at least Qing Qing and Ha Lei get their job done. That is quite something.

Crucial timing

Some species cannot seem to stop mating, but pandas cannot seem to start.


Females commonly attack males after mating
Female pandas are only interested in reproducing for two or three days a year. For males it is the same.

Luckily for the survival of the panda species, these days of interest happen to coincide.

Scientists here have to make the most of this brief mating season. There are only around 2,000 pandas left in the world - including about 250 in captivity.

So the trick for everyone here at the Chengdu reserve is to get their pandas together on the right days, and then nudge them along a bit by playing them the video of Qing Qing and Ha Lei.

No one here can remember who came up with the idea - it was possibly a behaviour specialist from abroad, they say.

And there is one problem - no one is sure whether or not the mating tapes make any difference.

"We don't know if its useful for pandas or not," says Dr Hou. "Some pandas are interested. Others are not interested. They prefer to eat or rest - and not pay attention to the video."

So the reserve lets us play the video to the pandas ourselves.

Headache?

We get together a small monitor and some loudspeakers, put some plastic bags onto our shoes and head into a small enclosure.

One panda lies on its back among piles of bamboo leaves. Another is asleep. It does not look like they have mating on their minds.

We set up a small TV screen in front of a seven-year-old female panda called Shu Qing. She is busy crunching her way through an apple.

We play her the tape of Qing Qing and Ha Lei. Shu Qing shows no interest. She is much more concerned about finishing her apple.

After a couple of minutes she glances over at the TV monitor. Then she seems lost in thought. She vaguely waves a paw, but nothing more.

So the video does not appear to work. Perhaps Shu Qing has a headache, or perhaps she just prefers apples to adult videos.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7250657.stm

Llegaste Tarde Los Amigos Invisibles

New York Mag - another brilliant move....

Govan: He's got my vote as the most nerdolicious of the bunch.



Cuno: Not only do I like what he says about museums and the detrimental role played by blockbuster inflation, but I also like how he owns his incipient baldness with confidence.




Tinterow: Here's what they DON'T say and which ups his snootieness quotient in a huge way: he has custom-made suits! And they are fabulous.




Lowry: Here's what they don't say about GL which significantly drops his snootieness level: one, he is known for leering at female employees, which is a plus since he is unlikely to recognize them by looking above their neckline, thus making quitting easier, and two, he dresses like a Mafia don




This article made my day: "Who's Snooty Enough to Replace Philippe de Montebello"
and it dovetails nicely with some of my kvetching below in "The Good Wife's Guide" (under Real News) about the sense of arrogance and entitlement some (particularly straight) men in the artworld suffer from.


The Take
1/ 9/081:20 PM
Who's Snooty Enough to Replace Philippe de Montebello?
The Met's departing director, Philippe de Montebello, who was as famous for his patrician air and his mastery of six languages as he was for his impeccable stewardship of the museum, will be a tough act to follow, and this morning the Times discusses several of the potential candidates. We don't know that much about what it takes to run the Met, other than a closet full of bespoke suits, but we'd expect that any potential candidate would need to measure up to De Montebello's aristocratic persona. That's why rather than judge the hopefuls on their qualifications or expertise, we're going to judge them on how snooty they seem based on their photo and résumé. Thankfully, Vulture has just the tool: our Snootometer™, which precisely measures the snootiness of any individual on a scale of zero (John Goodman) to 10 (the maître d' from Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

Timothy Potts. Though he's 49, he looks 22. And though he runs the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, he previously ran a museum in Fort Worth, Texas. We don't care how important the Kimbell Art Museum is, Fort Worth is not snooty enough. Also, he appears to be smiling in this photo: not snooty!
SNOOTOMETER RATING: 4.6

Michael Govan. According to the Times, he's "the dark-horse candidate," and that's certainly true according to the Snootometer as well. His experience running the Dia Art Foundation and, more recently, a museum in (gasp) Los Angeles, suggest glitz and dazzle rather than snoot. Also, while handsome, he looks like a dude you'd see outside Butter on any given night.
SNOOTOMETER RATING: 5.3

James Cuno. Plus: A doctorate in art history from Harvard. Minuses: Runs a museum in Chicago, a city known to most Met board members as a place airplanes are sometimes forced to stop on the way to Tokyo. A "talented and aggressive builder and fund-raiser," which suggests he has to work for funding rather than imperiously demand it. Also, while we appreciate that he is rocking the receding hairline-beard combo, this feels less "snooty museum director" and more "guy your younger sister dates that makes you feel sort of weird."
SNOOTOMETER RATING: 5.5

Gary Tinterow. An influential scholar in European art and the curator in charge of nineteenth century, modern, and contemporary art at the Met, Tinterow certainly has the snooty bona fides. We also love his glasses. On the other hand, we hear he's actually quite well liked inside the Met, which suggests he might not be snooty enough.
SNOOTOMETER RATING: 7.7

Glenn D. Lowry. The hugely successful director of MoMA has all the credentials to be a world-class snoot: He's the steward of a major New York museum; he has a doctorate from Harvard; and he's got a powerful nose, perfect for raising in the air and sniffing. We're a bit worried, though, about his former position before MoMA: running a museum in Toronto. Is he Canadian? If so, major deduction.
SNOOTOMETER RATING: 8.3

Neil MacGregor. While we're a little concerned about MacGregor's pronouncements that keeping art free for the masses is a priority, we're willing to overlook that flaw in light of his British Museum and National Gallery of London directorships; his experience as a university lecturer and an art-museum editor; and the Times reference to "languages," which suggests he speaks quite a few. Also, in this photo, he is pointing at a painting with his pinkie. Ladies and gentlemen, meet your new director!
SNOOTOMETER RATING: 9.8


http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/01/whos_snooty_enough_to_replace.html

The Good Wife's Guide

I am too busy now to comment. More later.

Now it is later, but way later because I have been busy at work, meetings, more meetings, evening work-related events, out dancing, dinners....my life is busy indeed. And I don't have a "wife" to cook for me, welcome me home, ask me how MY day went. Though most women I know wish they had such a creature. The article above -from 1955 has literally landed in my inbox several times in the past week, sent by several of my incredibly brilliant, well-educated and accomplished women friends! Interestingly, for various reasons lately I have had intense conversations with groups of women I am close to (and their friends) about the same subject: we have come a long way, baby. And then we have not. In more than one of these conversations, at least one woman has brought up the fact that those of us in our thirties or forties who grew up taking women's studies courses never heard about how hard this was going to be: we were told we could "have it all."

I have participated in various versions of a discussion about the reasons why women who have children still have to put their careers on hold. And the men, though they contribute far more to childcare than men of any generation ever have, still have the option of prioritizing their careers and expecting the wife/mother to pick up the slack. The women taking part in these conversations are all highly educated and at high-pressure jobs, some are married, some have children, some have neither but usually when they hear about a friend in such a situation, they all offer to have her back. When her husband or boyfriend does not.

Other recent topics of discussion relate to the sense of entitlement that men display, particularly when they are in professions where they are under-represented. In general many seem to feel they don't have to pay their dues. Yet we as women are coached to develop political tact and extreme deference to those senior to us. Men are excused when they lack such understanding or emotional intelligence. They are ambitious, the reasoning goes. They are expected to be so. However, if you are a woman and are as ambitious you are seen as a bitch or a social climber. This sense of entitlement is particularly true of straight men, who are immediately granted a leg up (ie. not considered for entry level but rather higher ranking positions at museums for example; or disproportionately act as heads of departments, directors and the like) I have been known to be more annoyed by a woman colleague I regarded as overly-ambitious than by a male colleague who was equally if not more of a ruthless competitor. I also was coerced into helping a former colleague with entry-level administrative tasks that he never had to learn because he was brought in one level higher than I was. Though we had the same qualifications and I was older than he. Well, not the same qualifications, he was white, heterosexual, and wealthy.

Related to this is the verbal sense of entitlement. You go to a panel discussion, and one of the least interesting lectures happens to be given by a man who in very condescending and pedantic terms proceeds to go way over the time allotted to him. This type of thing begins in graduate school and continues at myriad conferences, panels and the like. Yet we as women are watching the clock trying to not take up others' time. I remember recently being congratulated for being the ONLY person who kept to the time limit requested by the symposium organizer. Arrogance in men is somehow excused, viewed as natural. This is where I hit the wall with a man. I can't respect anyone who is arrogant, this detracts from my assesment of their "intelligence." Each semester I have to coach more than one female student to teach her NOT to apologize for her statements and thereby undermine her own intellectual credibility.

Apparently, I am told that the more educated and employed you are the more you "price yourself out" of the marriage market. Also, you are older and so it takes years to get the degree and pay your dues and then you are "too old" for men your own age. Who want a twentysomething bleached blond anorexic to bear their children. If you don't want children at all, you are clearly regarded as unnatural. I have discussed with friends the ways in which if you are a successful and smart woman, you have to somehow compensate for this so that potential dates don't feel "threatened" by you. Ways in which to do this vary from praising his intellect and downplaying your own, to displaying your own insecurities and/or emotional vulnerabilities.

Related to this is the often discussed advice that if you are contemplating dating a guy, you have to let him be "the man" and call the shots because they are sadly rendered confused by the post-feminist moment we live in. Men need to feel needed!! This means never asking them out, but rather passively waiting for them to make a move. I have been known to endorse this argument although this means enacting behavior that totally contradicts your view of yourself as an empowered woman. Which clearly you are if you have persevered in obtaining higher degrees and landing a good job in a highly competitive environment. How does one reconcile such contradictions? I have no idea.

All I know is that when I read that article, I wondered: how much have things changed?

And I Thought Spanish Civil War-Themed Video Games Were Tasteless

I thought I had seen the limit when I read about the Spanish Civil War-Themed video game (see earlier post under "Memory and Amnesia")

And I knew I should have logged out of the Reuters news site and sashayed over to my new sofa to watch that fascist asshole Giuliani get trounced in Florida. But no. The promise of schadenfreude wasn't enough. Curiosity got the better of me. And so I read with disbelief: "Holocaust-Themed Carnival Float Causes Strain."

According to the article, the Viradouro samba school has created a float depicting piles of dead bodies as part of their broader program related to "shock." There is a photo in the article but I find it so nauseating that I cannot upload it here. The samba school folks seem aggrieved to know that they have offended Jewish people in Brazil. (and obviously it offends any person, anywhere, who learns of this)

Here is a quote from the article:


"Viradouro's parade theme is "Shockers" and it includes floats depicting the shock of birth, the shock of horror and the shock of cold. Barros said the Holocaust float would be the only one without dancers on top. "If we had people dancing on top of dead bodies that would indeed be disrespectful," he told Reuters"


I love how the representative of the Samba school, a Mr. Barros, deems himself to be the arbiter of where to draw boundaries between good and bad taste. And so according to him women in sequin-trimmed bras and g-strings gyrating on top of the holocaust-themed float would be in poor taste. But not the float itself.


Here is the link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN2955554720080129?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

FOLLOW UP Feb. 1

A judge barred the samba school from taking out the float, and from bringing out a dancer dressed as Adolf Hitler. I just love how the guy from the samba school who claimed they were being respectful by not dancing on top of the float depicting dead bodies of holocaust victims omitted the detail that a dancer dressed as the Nazi dictator would be accompanying the float.

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN3131385820080131?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN3131385820080131?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

El Chupacabra Found on Mars?

Most Tasteless Typo of 2008

A friend alerted me to this most unfortunate typo in a Yahoo News headline from a few days ago. And for once I will refrain from all other comment:

Source YAHOO.COM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080128/wl_csm/okidnap

U.S. woman abducted in Afghanistan. A Taliban snatch?

By Jon Boone
Mon Jan 28, 3:00 AM ET
The abduction on Saturday of a female US aid worker in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous cities may signal increased risk for foreign aid workers.

Kidnappings of Americans have been rare, and some Kandahar residents say the abduction of Cyd Mizell and her Afghan driver at gunpoint is a worrying development.

Sarah Chayes, a former journalist who now runs an Afghan cooperative that exports soap, says the incident "sends a signal. It's like a new chapter in a book."

"They haven't taken an American or a Canadian on the streets like this before. I don't think this was just bandits because the operation looks like it was too sophisticated for that."

Ms. Chayes suggests that the abduction could have been payback for US policy on President Pervez Musharraf.

Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement, has been rocked by the neo-Taliban insurgency that has gained strength in the past three years. The deterioration of law and order has also made the city considerably more dangerous for foreign visitors and Afghans alike.

The most recent abduction case involved four members of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern province of Wardak in September. The two Afghans, a Macedonian, and a Burmese citizen were freed three days later. Perhaps the most notorious case of 2007 was the abduction of 23 Christian aid workers from South Korea who attempted to travel from Kabul to Kandahar by bus. Two hostages were shot to death before the rest were released. An American civilian was briefly abducted in Kabul in April 2005 but escaped by throwing himself from a moving car.

Analysts fear that terrorists and criminal gangs have been encouraged by the policy of some foreign governments to pay ransoms.

The few foreigners who still live in the city of Kandahar often use heavy security, including armed guards and armor-plated vehicles, whenever they ventured out of their offices. Afghan officials say that Mizell had been wearing a burqa, an all-encompassing body veil favoured by most Afghan women when they have to go out of their homes.

Ms. Mizell worked for Asian Life Development Foundation, a little-known nongovernmental organization . The group said she had been working in Kandahar for nearly three years with women and on income generation projects.

A speaker of Pashtu, the main language of Afghanistan's south, she taught English at Kandahar University and gave embroidery lessons at a girls' school.

In response to the abduction, local police increased their presence on the streets of Kandahar over the weekend and the Ministry of the Interior said it was doing all it could to find Ms. Mizell. Local police said that they had not been contacted by anyone claiming responsibility for the kidnapping.

The Taliban have employed kidnapping as a tactic in their battle to erode popular support for the government of President Hamid Karzai several times before.

Zabihullah Mujahed, the Taliban's main spokesman, said they did not know if anyone affiliated with the extremist Sunni group had been responsible for the abduction.

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