Cattle on strike!

A popular children's story carries the seeds of revolt: Click, Clack, MOO by Doreen Cronin (author) and Betsy Lewin (illustrator). You can follow the video version of the story in the link above.

The cattle get a hold of an old typewriter in the barn. They begin to type demands to the farmer: give us electric blankets for cold nights. The farmer refuses and the cows bar him from the barn and refuse to give up their milk.

Besides the tale of humane treatment to animals, besides better treatment creating higher milk yields, there is a more complex story of language, animals, and revolt using technology.

Wild sheep in Iceland are captured

Thanks to Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir for calling this to my attention. As she describes it "In the north east of Iceland they found a small flock of 'wild' sheep that had become a special breed, 'mountain sheep. Sheep are not allowed to be wild so they had to be hunted, caught and killed - view the death of the wild Icelandic sheep. Apparently 5 sheep escaped but another trip is being planned to exterminate them.

The idea that humans make the final call on what is "allowed" to be wild and what must be domesticated and/or slaughtered is the hubris of humanism. Call in the commando sheep.

Wild dogs commute for food.

Scientists believe the phenomenon began after the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, and Russia's new capitalists moved industrial complexes from the city centre to the suburbs.

Following the post-Soviet ice skating bear who mauled his trainer, there is this. It seems the revolution is catching on among the animals.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2372125.ece#ixzz0VHfw34PR

Russian bear begins the non-human revolution

This is the post-soviet animal revolution. A bear on ice-skates mauls a trainer and kills a handler. He has learned well from the Stalin years that there is blood in the future to come. No doubt the bear died but it was a martyrdom of the animal revolution to come.

signs of an animal revolution

Thanks to the astute philosopher David Clark for this.

Bat Tower and Architectures to come

Nagel posses the question "What is it like to be a bat?" Heidegger claims that humans become human through their building-dwelling-thinking triad. Now, what happens when one builds for another species? Do we become more human or more animal?

These questions are posed by the monolithic and haunting Bat Tower in Sugarloaf Key (mile marker 17 in the keys). The tower was built in 1929 with the notion of using bats to eat the misquotes and other pests and so combat malaria in the area. The tower was built by Richter Clyde Perky, a fish lodge owner, according to designs from Charles Campbell, a pioneer of bat studies. Bats were bought in from Cuba and Texas to inhabit the tower but eventually flew away and disappeared. No one knows what happened to the bats and the tower stands awaiting bats of the future haunted by bats of a mysterious past.

Some great images of the tower are available online.