I went shopping at our local No-Frills grocery store. It used to be an Extra-Foods before we left 2 1/2 months ago. Both stores have the same parent company – Loblaws. The difference being No-Frills concentrates on food, while Extra Foods had extra merchandise. I was surprised at what a depressing experience it was.

The entire store is yellow. It is an bright yellow and white with pretension of happiness, but it is ugly. The food rises on taller shelves and is more tightly packed together. I feel like I am in an institution that just wants to service me but not serve me.

The bakery and deli section have disappeared. So has the bread. There is a label for it. Apparently it now comes from Superstore and the shipment is not all that regular. True the French crusty bread was cheaper – 97 cents rather than 1.49. But, it is irrelevant if the bread is not in the store at 10 AM.

The tellers are fewer and older. They seemed a little sad, being quieter than before No Frills. There was one teller who was from the Extra Food days. She always used to smile and joke. It was her day off and she was just talking to her co-workers. Maybe there was simply a problem with her schedule. She never smiled.

The food prices are a bit cheaper. I’ll probably go again looking for some bread. In the long run it will save me more time . I would just want to buy what I need and fast – then get out because there really is no shopping experience, I only there to get stuff.

Lucy was examined by a third party veterinarian.

Dr. James Oosterhuis, a lead researcher with the Colyer Institute in San Diego, examined Lucy on Thursday along with zoo veterinarian Milton Ness.

“Her [Lucy’s] current respiratory problems preclude any thought of moving her, and, in fact, it would [be] life threatening for her to be placed under that kind of stress,” Oosterhuis said in a letter to the zoo.

An endoscope was used during the examination to look at the elephant’s trunk. It showed Lucy had severe swelling around the trunk and nose, making it hard for her to breathe through her trunk. While she can take in air through the mouth, stressful situations make it harder for her to breathe, according to a news release issued by the city.

On Monday, Zoocheck’s Julie Woodyer said Oosterhuis’ assessment does not settle the issue for them. She points to the case of Maggie, the elephant from the Alaska Zoo, who was moved from Anchorage to a sanctuary in California in 2007.

The zoo consulted 11 experts in making its decision to move Maggie. Oosterhuis was the only expert who said she shouldn’t be moved, Woodyer said.

I think this re-examination stresses the importance of dealing with Lucy’s medical conditions before moving her. The fact that Dr.Oesterhuis did not think that Maggie should have been moved does not negate the seriousness of Lucy sinus infection.

I purchased the iPod touch 3.1 update yesterday. One feature I wanted was notes syncing that was not server dependent. Notes syncing requires Leopard and I am still using Tiger. I wish Apple had mentioned that in the documentation.

Title: Lucy:Freeing an Edmonton Elephant

There has been a lot of recent controversy regarding Lucy, the elephant at the Edmonton valley zoo. Lucy, was brought to the zoo as a one year old orphan in 1976. She had been kept with Samantha, an african elephant from 1989 till 2007. Samatha was then sent to a breeding program leaving Lucy alone.
Elephants are extremely social animals

Paul Rees, an animal welfare specialist based in Salford, says they thrive in large groups which mimic their natural family herd.

Keeping elephants alone or in smaller groups could deprive them of the company they need to develop normally, he warned.

The Salford University expert looked at the records of 200 zoos worldwide and found that the animals should ideally be kept in groups of seven or more.

The Coalition for Captive Elephant Well Being is a group of independent welfare-minded zoo professionals, scientists,
academics, veterinarians, animal behaviorists, animal law specialists, and animal
welfare advocates united in their efforts to articulate science-based best practices to
improve the care and well being of captive elephants.

Elephants shall enjoy self-directed social access to each other a majority of the
time, in the absence of health, safety or behavioral constraints or training
sessions (Rees 2001; AZA EMS 2003). Self-directed social access means
unrestricted (e.g. no chains and no barriers) physical contact for socially
integrated animals. Enrichment and environmental features should be
provided to encourage social behavior (Schulte 2000) that is cooperative as
well as competitive, such as feeding devices that require two animals
working together to access food, play devices that allow tug-of-war types of
interactions, and the like.
Cross-reference: “Optimal Care” 4.7, 4.19 and 4.20.
Note: Elephants are socially gregarious, intelligent animals, whose herd life is marked
by routine periods of intense socializing apparently aimed at herd cohesion.
“Elephants are very much contact animals. Family members often stand touching
while resting or drinking. They lean and rub their bodies together, and often touch
one another with their trunks in various contexts” (Estes 1991, 262). Herd members
engage in greeting ceremonies, play, play fighting, and synchronized moving,
bathing and resting (Moss 1988; Douglas-Hamilton 1975; Sukumar 2003).
Accordingly, it is important that elephant managers maximize opportunities for
elephants, particularly females, to engage freely in natural social behaviors in order
to promote socially competent animals (Rees 2001; Coe 2003).

Further health problems are created by inadequate exercise. Currently, Lucy gets walked around the zoo during good weather. She is allowed to graze on grass and tree branches. The Coalition recommends:

Outdoor exhibit space must be of sufficient size and complexity to achieve
the following performance goals:
a. Healthy elephants shall have sufficient space to travel a minimum of 10
km (7 miles) on a daily basis while engaged in natural behaviors like
foraging, feeding, exploring, socializing and the like (Seidensticker and
Doherty 1996; Hancocks 1996, 2002; Coe 2003). All elephants shall have
access to useable pasture year round and grassy pasture 6 months out of
every 12.
Note: Elephants are physically vigorous, non -territorial animals that move almost
continuously for 20 out of every 24 hours (Moss 1988). Sukumar (2003) calculates
that elephants range 10 to 20 km (7 to 13 miles) per day without regard to species
type. It follows that elephants must be given a space sufficient to meet their exercise
needs, minimize competition for resources, maximize opportunities for socializing or
refuge from socializing and maximize flexibility for caregivers to provide enrichment.

Clearly, the conditions that Lucy are kept in Edmonton is not ideal– there is not enough social interaction or perhaps enough environmental stimulation, especially during the cold winter months. Several [celebrities](CTV.ca | Lucy the elephant faces death in Edmonton: Barker) and authors have chimed in on trying to get Lucy moved to an elephant sanctuary. To date the [Valley Zoo has turned down the offer.}(http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/12/11/edm-zoo-elephant.html)

Dr. Milton Ness gave the Edmonton Association of Small Animal Veterinarians a tour of the Valley Zoo. He gave the other side of the story.

1. Lucy is walked twice daily in the zoo, if the weather permits. Lucy also gets physiotherapy.
2. Lucy is very bonded to her human handlers. However, the handlers are not there 24 hours a day. Dr.Ness thought that Lucy seemed more oriented towards people than other elephants.
3. Lucy has an impacted molar causing sinusitis. She often mouth breathes because of the phlegm. . For an animal as large as Lucy this is not good if she is stressed. The critics calling for Lucy’s relocation have not adequately addressed this concern. It is either of no consequence or the condition needs to be evaluated by an independent veterinarian. A stressed elephant will only get more stressed during a move, which will worsen the breathing and potentially be fatal.
4. Lucy has a tendency to get stressed. Lucy had been involved with a breeding program at the Calgary Zoo.

Lucy was sent to the Calgary zoo on a 6 month breeding loan. She was sent back to Edmonton on April 23, 1987. Lucy was not impregnated. Then on September 16, 1987, Lucy was sent to Calgary on another breeding loan for 7 months. She was sent back to Edmonton on April 20, 1988, still not pregnant.
During the transport, Lucy had diarrhea. There was so much diarrhea that the chase vehicles had to have their wipers going constantly. This is an elephant that is prone to stress. Sedation is not the best option, because she mouth breathes and sedation will make breathing even more difficult.

I do not think that it will be a simple matter for the zoo to move Lucy. I think the best thing would be to improve her health first by extracting the impacted molar. This is not an easy thing to accomplish. Dr.Ness talked about being involved in a elephant molar extraction - there were 30 people involved in the surgery.
As for Lucy not being as social towards other elephants. I don’t know. Certainty it is possible. There are lots of people who don’t like interacting, so I don’t know if elephants would be any different. But, I wonder how this judgement was made. Was determined by how Lucy reacted with Samantha (an African elephant) or during her time in Calgary ?
Maggie, an elephant from the Alaskan zoo was sent to the PAWS sanctuary:

Before she moved to California, Maggie’s Alaska Zoo keepers worried about her aggressive personality, that she might not adjust well to other elephants. She had not seen another elephant since the 1997 death of her zoo companion, Annabelle.
The facility, 50 miles southeast of Sacramento, offers Maggie three companions and 75 acres to roam. It’s a stark contrast to what the Anchorage zoo could give her – cold weather, no companions and a concrete enclosure most of the winter.
A year into her new life roaming a California sanctuary with other elephants, Alaska’s favorite expat shows every sign of enjoying it. She trumpets, knocks down trees and calls for her companions when they wander too far, say her new keepers.

Lucy is an intelligent and highly social animal, kept in species isolation and in relatively small confines, especially in winter. It would only be right to send her to a home where she could interact and roam. Certainly, a zoo environment may potentially reduce and elephant’s longevity .

We analyzed data from over 4500 elephants to show that animals in European zoos have about half the median life span of conspecifics in protected populations in range countries. This discrepancy is clearest in Asian elephants; unlike African elephants in zoos, this species’ infant mortality is very high (for example, twice that seen in Burmese timber camps), and its adult survivorship in zoos has not improved significantly in recent years. One risk factor for Asian zoo elephants is being moved between institutions, with early removal from the mother tending to have additional adverse effects. Another risk factor is being born into a zoo rather than being imported from the wild, with poor adult survivorship in zoo-born Asians apparently being conferred prenatally or in early infancy. We suggest stress and/or obesity as likely causes of zoo elephants’ compromised survivorship.

Elephants in captivity just do not do as well

We analyzed data from over 4500 elephants to show that animals in European zoos have about half the median life span of conspecifics in protected populations in range countries. This discrepancy is clearest in Asian elephants; unlike African elephants in zoos, this species’ infant mortality is very high (for example, twice that seen in Burmese timber camps), and its adult survivorship in zoos has not improved significantly in recent years. One risk factor for Asian zoo elephants is being moved between institutions, with early removal from the mother tending to have additional adverse effects. Another risk factor is being born into a zoo rather than being imported from the wild, with poor adult survivorship in zoo-born Asians apparently being conferred prenatally or in early infancy. We suggest stress and/or obesity as likely causes of zoo elephants’ compromised survivorship.
I am not sure what the longevity is for elephants living in sanctuary conditions. But, clearly something is missing in our understanding of elephant management if survival is compromised in a “protected” environment. If our current understanding about the care of elephants is flawed, I think it would be best to try and recreate as much of their natural social structure and landscape as possible.

The great controversy about Lucy’s condition illustrates the arbitrariness of our sense of justice. It is a common practice in this society to severely restrict and socially isolate intelligent herd animals. Pigs are raised in deplorable conditions, especially the gestating sows.

…Gestation stalls [are] where where a sow is kept confined during her entire pregnancy. The sow can lie down and stand up, but she cannot turn around. Most commercial pigs are bored and lack stimulation, but sows locked up in sow stalls are in the worst condition….Possibly the worst aspect of sow stalls is that they starve the pig’s seeking system. A sow locked up inside a sow stall has nothing to do with her mind or her snout… . Seeking deficits also increase fear. Sows in stalls don’t have their social needs met…Pigs are social animals that don’t like being alone. In the wild pigs live in small groups and probably survive by hiding from predators. Pigs need to interact with other pigs and lying beside another sow in the next stall probably dose not satisfy stocila needs…When animals are kept in a box, breeders forget about breeding for important things such as strong feet and legs.

“Animals Make Us Human” Temple Grandin p 177-178

Society has designated pigs as food and elephants as intelligent wildlife and so the difference in treatment. But, this is about as arbitrary as the difference in skin color. A few decades ago, this was not so arbitrary difference, but it shows that society has the capacity to change, if only we erase the ignorance.

The news out of Sri Lanka has been dire for weeks and I had been deliberately ignoring it. But, a few days ago, my wife and I watched the news of the protest marches in Toronto. We saw footage of a hospital that had been shelled 4 times.

Artillery shells slammed into the hospital in the northern district of Mullaittivu on Monday evening. Strikes on the hospital on Sunday — including one that hit the pediatric ward — left 11 people dead, including some children, according to an aid worker who spoke to witnesses.
Government forces and Tamil rebels are locked in a battle for the remaining rebel strongholds in northern Sri Lanka, where the the country’s ethnic Tamil minority has been fighting for an independent homeland since 1983.
Humanitarian groups say as many as 250,000 unprotected civilians are trapped in the area. The civil war has left more than 70,000 people dead.

It was disturbing to see the footage of the dead and injured, lying on the sand, with blood staining their faces and clothes. The camera captured some hands and arms before fading away. Only later I realized that there was no body to go with those appendages.

Doctors, nurses and medical administrators working out of a single room in their makeshift hospital in the school have become the eyes and ears of the world in this conflict. The government in Colombo has sought to dismiss them, to claim that they are pawns of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or even to claim that some do not exist.

Yet the medics continue to provide a running commentary on the slaughter. Today their number was reduced by one more, as a government-appointed administrator joined the toll of the dead. He and two volunteer workers were among at least 47 people killed when a shell struck the hospital at about 7.30am.

The Sri Lankan government first claimed that the shelling was from the Tamil Tigers. Once it was established that the hospital had been shelled by government forces, then the amount of dead was disputed.

Government officials have accused aid organizations and foreign media of sensationalizing civilian casualties.
“It looks as if it’s convenient for certain agencies to exaggerate the numbers so that this can be converted to a humanitarian crisis in the public eye, ” Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dr. Palitha Kohona told CNN.

Conveniently, the government has banned reporters from the area and censors the BBC in Sri Lanka. Independent verification of the casualties was not possible.

A young tamil woman was also interviewed on the same news story. She was asked about the support of the marchers for the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). A field of red flags floated behind her as she vehemently, and unreservedly support the Tigers as the voice of the Sri Lankan Tamils and skirted issues of the group’s use of child soldiers.
Talk of the Tamil Tigers is what has politicized this whole issue and taken the focus away from the innocents getting slaughtered. The news, politicians and even some of the protesters are confused about the real issue. It does not matter if you label the Tigers freedom fighters or terrorists, because the issue is giving civilians a chance of safe passage between these warring factions.
Steven Harper declared the Tigers a terrorist group — by extension it seems that he is willing to lump the dying innocents along with real fighters. So in the political climate of Canada, Liberal support for the protests vanished because of the possibility of being of being called terrorist supporters. Playing politics with lives is what gave the world Rwanda, and it just keeps happening. 


The act of calling a group , terrorists does not negate the reasons why that group was created. It does little to foster an understanding of the situations and creates solutions of the “cowboys of Indians” mentality. Iraq and Afghanistan are unfortunate examples of this type of “thinking”.

The Tamil Tigers were born after the 1983 riots in Colombo.

In Colombo, there were troubles in the the fifties and the seventies. The worst was in 1983 when the city went mad and there was wholesale destruction and murder of Tamils.

The official version was it was extremists responsible for such violence. But, my wife was there during the riots. She witnessed people being dragged out of cars and burned and Tamil houses being the specific target of burning. Curiously she witnessed the the looters using electoral lists to accomplish their task. I wonder how they could have gotten such lists ? In spite of the madness there were people who took care of their friends and neighbors and endangered themselves to help my wife and her family.

My mother was in her teens during the 1958 riots in Colombo. Two weeks before looting and burning of Tamil houses were marked. No one knew the meaning of the marks, until the looting began.

Organization and government collusion was necessary for the pogrom. How else do you get election rosters and know which houses to mark ? The roots of the ethnic conflict began after the British left the country in a power vacuum, with the minority Tamils holding most of the high posts and the majority Singhalese wanting to redress the balance. Misunderstandings, counterattacks and a political system bent on creating more strife (not unlike Rwanda) have been making it worse ever since.

In a weird way the two fighting groups have morphed into each other. Both have subscribed to extreme violence, torture, and extortion. I once asked my late Grandmother why no one criticized the Sri Lanka government — she told me that you just don’t. There was no questions or discussion, one just did not question the government and remain healthy. When the Tigers were created, there was hope in Tamil communities outside of Sri Lanka, that maybe Tamils could have a voice in their own country. But, years later as their fundraising efforts expanded to Canada, there was some fear of refusing to give “donations”.

Caught in the middle of the fighting are just people trying to live their lives. It is these people that remain invisible as the battle rages on. Intervention means giving these people a chance to get out of the conflict zone with their lives, because neither side really cares about them. The latest news is the the Tigers have called for a ceasefire

“In the past 24 hours, over 3,000 civilians lie dead on the streets while another 25,000 are critically injured with no medical attention,” said the statement.
In contrast, Sri Lanka military officials said earlier that all the civilians who had been trapped in Sri Lanka’s northern war zone had escaped.
The government rejected the ceasefire calls, saying that as all trapped civilians had now fled from the area of conflict, there was no reason to stop its offensive.
Like all accounts from the war zone, neither claim can be independently verified.

This would be the time and the place for UN observers. Given the fact that the Sri Lankan government and army did not “know” about the bombing of the hospital, independent verification of the safety of the remaining civilians is critical to ensure the entire problem is not bombed out of relevance.

I found something new at our local grocery store – green almonds. They were fuzzy, green-grey oval shaped nuts. Nuts came in fuzzy coats ? Apparently a lot of nuts “Nut (fruit) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”) do come with an outer shell. Technically these fruits are called drupes.

In botany, a drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside.

Drupes, with their sweet, fleshy outer layer, attract the attention of animals as a food, and the plant population benefits from the resulting dispersal of its seeds. The endocarp (pit or stone) is often swallowed, passing through the digestive tract, and returned to the soil in feces with the seed inside unharmed; sometimes it is dropped after the fleshy part is eaten.

I opened the surprisingly thick shell to find a moist, tender unripe almond inside. The nut was quite soft and fluid filled. It had a subtle, slightly grassy flavour, very unlike the strongly flavoured ripe almonds.

I have been eating almonds for years, but I had no idea what they actually looked like on the tree. If I had been stranded in a grove of almonds I would have starved or at least gone hungry for a long time.

I simply do not have a great idea of what my food really looks like, where it comes from and how it is grown. I consider myself fairly well educated and informed, but the thing about ignorance, is that you are unaware of the depth of it. This is the great illusion of the modern food economy and modern life. As food is made a commodity for our convenience, we lose a visceral connection to the land, and believe in the god-like powers of human ingenuity, forgetting that it all depends on sun, rain and soil.

This is why talk of global warming does not seem to capture the imagination of most people. We are simply ignorant of the consequences of creating desserts of our farmlands. Food comes from the grocery store not farmland. The modern, city dwelling human living in the industrialzied world is so far removed from food production, that the concept of not getting enough food, seems as ureal as entertainment television.

We were watching “India Remade”, last night. There were two scenes that really made a connection. The first was the corpulent but incredibly wealthy owner of Kingfisher beer sitting in luxurious office sweet on his private jet. Dr.Vijay Mallyais also a member of Parliament. He was explaining how Indian farmers will eat a meal of ground peanut with some water, onions and a chilli for their meal. “They love it. But not one person in India starves to death.”

The next scene was of a thin, Indian farmer. He had had a surgery for a tumor and was now $700 in debt. He, his wife and mother were trying their best to raise enough crops on 3 acres of land to pay off the money. He felt ashamed that he had this debt over him. Farmers in India were committing suicide because they could not meet their financial commitments. So I suppose technically they did not starve to death, but they were dead none the less.

Dr.Vijay Mallya and the farmer lived in two different “realities”. The farmer lived in the real world of sun, crops and life and death by the arrival of rains. Vijay Mallya lived in a bubble of prosperity, shielded by money and power from the real harshness of the world. I think we in the west are stuck in the bubble of unreality, never really connecting with what it means to stay alive. That is why talk of global warming affecting rain fall patterns makes no dent on the public. Food is grown in magical places where the weather makes no difference; food just appears on the supermarket shelves.

The executives receiving bonuses at AIG are living in a further world of disconnect. They are receiving “bonuses” from the public purse for destroying their company. What a different attitude from the India farmer who was trying to do his best to recover from debt. It reminds me of a scene in “Animal Farm” where the pigs are in the house, living like the farmer and lives for the rest of the animals had not changed.

“Some animals are more equal than others”

I’ve been working on a paper and needed references. My tool of choice for writing is LaTex; there is a steep learning curve but once the text markup is working, it stays working. Unlike the precarious state of WYSIWYG wordprocessors (MS word in particular). But, finding out how bibliographies worked seem like an excursion through byzantine instructions.

My eventual solution was:

1. Write references in BibTex using BibDesk or JabRef
2. Save the BibTex file in the same directory as the source LaTex file

3. Include in the Latex file:

   \bibliographystyle{plain}

   \bibliography{name of bibtex file without extension}

   \end{document}

4. Using TeXShop:
   1) compile the Latex file using the Latex option
   2) compile the Latex file using BibTex(option in TexShop)
   3) compile the Latex file again using Latex option

That’s it.

I was watching CBC news yesterday and saws a clip about investing in RRSPs. Apparently 40 % of Canadians will not be investing in RRSPs because of the economic climate.

The bank spokeswoman went on to say that this would be a good time to buy because the cost per unit is down. Then the reported talked about how not investing $2500 at 20, 30 and 40 years old could result in thousands of lost dollars at the time of retirement **assuming an 8 % rate of return**.

That was the kicker **”assuming an 8% rate of return”. Where am I going to get an 8 % rate of return ? Currently my RRSPs have had a negative rate of return, but I have gained slightly (not at 8 %) since starting. I don’t really understand this as I actually have less money in the account than I originally put in.

But, this is the funny math of the financial sector. This is the sector filled with Enrons and World Banks. A system rife with accounting fraud and collapsing in on itself because of outright greed. Yet, their best advice is to invest more.

I feel as if I have been sold an illusion of modernity. The numbers of finance and trade all seem to be smoke and mirrors, cooked up in many board rooms and designed to disguise and steal. It is a system built on greed and services only that end – the making of money. Respecting the social good, and the environment do not seem to be of concern.

Now as the cancer economy slows down, the immediate response is to keep the fires burning. Very little thought has been given as to why we have gotten here in the first place. I do not just mean the financial sector, but the whole of it. We are awash in pollution(chemical, plastic, and advertising), straining the earth’s ability to produce food, drinking up the last of cheap oil, sitting in cities that make us unhappy, and destroying the very foundations that feed, clothe and shelter us.

I wonder if we can actually make an 8% return of investments when the true costs of the modern system are paid. Of course the news story did not cover the wider concerns -they never do.

Last Thursday I was flicking channels and caught a segment on Entertainment Tonight about Flight US Air 1549 crash into the Hudson River. ET had its own take on the event by interviewing some celebrities who had been in air crashes, and apparently interviewing others just because they were celebrities.

It seemed inane to have all this celebrity talk on the news – most of it amounted to “The people must have been scared. I was really scared when…”. The program went to speculate which leading man would then play pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger.

In this instance I was not sure why the opinions of “celebrity” were of any value. They were the opinions of people who could sing, dance or memorize some lines in front of the camera.

Why not solicit some more valuable commentary – from pilots, or from the actual people involved in the crash, or perhaps even from witnesses. I suppose this is not the job of an entertainment show, but it typifies our culture’s fixation on “celebrity” for its own sake. I wonder how much closer we would be to zero carbon emissions, or eliminating world hunger, exploitation, or polution if the same amount of coverage would be given to real news.