I just want to note the death of Prince. I found him quite possibly the most brilliant pop artist of the last thirty years–as a songwriter, performer, and guitarist. “Kiss” is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. I also liked his look and height. I have nothing original to say about him, but just wanted to express my appreciation.
It ended and we must go back to reality. What the show was really about, though I have never seen it mentioned, is virtue. It was about good and bad people doing good and bad things. It was about personal vice–greed, lies, envy, malice–and dealing with it. And it took a very literal and direct attitude towards virtue and vice: they are real and they are what matter. This is why I liked it so much (that and the costumes). The story of Mr Barrow struck me as the moral core of the series–and I was overjoyed when “his Lordship” offered him the job of Butler.
I was watching (as is my wont) another nature program yesterday, about penguins. Among many marvelous things I was struck by one scene in particular: after showing the remarkable parental devotion of the parents, the camera caught them feeding their chick for the last time and then waddling off to leave it to fend for itself, quite contrary to its wishes. You wondered: why so much love and then such sudden abandonment? But then you remember: those selfish genes are primarily concerned to maximize their numbers and the best way to do that is to get the parents to produce another chick, not spend more time on this one. You could almost hear the genes speaking: “That’s enough with that one, now get to work to produce another!” Evidently there are penguin genes for strong parental love but also penguin genes for turning this love off. Could anything similar be true for humans?
I bought two chrysalises a few weeks back and put them in my butterfly container. One was quite fat and housed a moth; the other was thin and dead looking and housed a delicate butterfly. I was told the moth was hibernating and would take weeks or months to emerge while the butterfly would be out and about within a week. The moth came out after about a month–a fine brown specimen–but the other chrysalis didn’t stir at all and looked pretty shriveled. I gave up on it. But last night, miraculously, it emerged apparently no worse for wear! It’s a beauty. It was in the chrysalis stage for well over a month. Now I just have to stop the cat from clawing at the container which is made of mesh.
Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin was certainly very funny, but it missed some of the less attractive parts of its target. The voice was high and almost melodious but Palin’s voice has grown guttural and aggressive. Fey’s intelligence and general niceness shone through but Palin is neither of those things. I found Palin’s endorsement speech frightening, depressing, and incredible–indicative of dangerous tendencies.
I was watching a nature program on PBS and it was observed that poisonous snakes and other poisonous animals tend to be brightly colored. This raises an interesting explanatory question: why make yourself so conspicuous, both to predators and prey? The suggestion made was that some kind of altruism is at work–kindly signaling to others that you are a dangerous character best avoided. But animals don’t engage in this kind of altruism, so why do they signal their presence so rashly? I think the reason is to deter other animals from ganging up on them: it warns other animals to keep away from them, not for their sake, but for the sake of the snake. But why, if the poison is so dangerous a weapon? Because the poison is very limited in supply: the snake cannot kill or incapacitate one attacker after another, because its poison will quickly run out. If a gang forms against it, it will eventually exhaust its arsenal of poison and then become vulnerable to attack. So it tells other animals that it is poisonous and dangerous, as if daring them to attack it. It’s a form of bluster to deter the collective attack: “Don’t even think about it!” But in fact the snake is very vulnerable to group aggression–unlike, say, the lion, which can bite over and over again. Poison is a one-off form of defense. Bright coloring is, for snakes, a complex form of arms-war trade-off.
