The Panamanian Golden Frog

We do not hear much of Panama. Apart from insurance-fraudsters Anne-Darwin and her formerly-dead canoeist husband, John, incriminating themselves being photographed there, we do not hear much of Panama.

Even I, who was an avid geographer in my pre-teens and learned by rote all the capital cities of the world, would have trouble finding that slip of a country that looks as though it shoulders the responsibility of keeping the landmasses of the north and south Americas from tearing away from each other.

Thanks to David Attenborough's ever enlightening wildlife documentaries - the current run named Life In Cold Blood - I know a little more about Panama. Specifically, that it is home to a fascinating but endangered amphibian, the golden frog.

Attenborough's Life In Cold Blood explores the lives of cold-blooded animals (ectotherms, to use the accurate term) such as lizards, snakes and frogs.

The focus of the last quarter of the second episode of the series devoted itself to the Panamanian golden frog.

Not only these frogs remarkable for their aurification, but they communicate with each other with hand-gestures. They wave. The exact meaning of the wave is not know. It could be a greeting, a peace-sign, or a warning. But the wave is performed with something like a refined dignity. It is both very gentlemanly and martial at once.

As I sat watching this foray into the lives of the Panamanian golden frog, I thought to myself please don't announce that they're on the brink of extinction (as you do).

My pessimism was not unfounded. The golden frog is indigenous and exclusive to Panama and - in spite of being an ever-present feature in Panamanian folk-lore - has always been a rare species.

And now they are on the brink of extinction. I was primed to get angry with humans, anticipating logging or some other autistic (in the Greek sense of the word) human activity as responsible for their demise.

But no - and if there is a consolation - it seems that humans are (relatively) blameless for it is a fungal infection sweeping through the golden frog community and wiping them out. Attenboroughs film crew had to be disinifected before approaching the frogs so as to not distribute the fungal disease any more.

Since Attenborough and his film crew captured the frogs on film in the wild, they have been extracted from their habitat and relocated to the safety of expert care. Infected frogs are in hospital.

It is hoped that the numbers of the golden frog can be raised and that one day they will be returned to their natural habitat. Other eco-systems depend upon it.

The following website offers further information about the golden frog http://www.ranadorada.org/species-info.htm as does Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_frog

David Attenborough's Life In Cold Blood can be seen on BBC1 Mondays at 21.00.

The Summer (Cold) Of A Dormouse

There seems to be no outcry - none that I've read - that mice have been genetically modified to receive rhinovirii (which cause 3/4s of human colds) with an aim to better understanding the common cold and how to treat it.

I raise you three objections: the (1) genetic modification of (2) mice in order to (3) treat the common cold.

Damien and I once acknowledged a law that The closer a thing is to nature, the better it is with the converse also being true The further a thing is from nature, the worse it is.*

Therefore I must - and do - consider laboratory-created genetic mutations to be unwelcome interferences with nature. Dolly the sheep should not have been artificially cloned as this is an offense to nature; likewise a lab mouse should not have a human ear grown on its back. These are glimpses of a futuristic freak zoo that humans seem hell-bent on crafting.

In the same breath, or dormouse should not have its genes scrambled so that humans can inject it with virii that from which it is otherwise immune. This is an unnecessary distress to the animal.

I have always declared myself as a Darwinist, and therefore see humans as animals. An animal with a particular evolution. If humans do possess such a thing as spirit then it is mutually inclusive of all other animals.

I do not accept that humans have a divine - or any other kind of - right to hurt or imprison other animals. It is interesting that when the chimpanzee was proved to share around 96-98% of its DNA with humans, that we (humans) began to ruminate that we should not subject chimpanzees to laboratory cruelty.

It is strange that, on this evidence, instead of demoting humans to animal status, we instead elect the chimpanzee to very-almost-human status and thus privy to a piece of human sentience.

But such rationalising allows us to continue hurting non-primates, such as the poor old dormouse.

No, I am not so warped that I don't think that we test on mice for cures for cancer and other horrific diseases (although I think that the Earth has abundand natural medicines, I will leave this speculation for another time), but I mean, c'mon, the common cold. "Don't be a Jessie" as my father used to say.

As moderately inconvenient as a cold is, it's hardly worth worrying about or treating. I would suggest - though I have no medical training, so don't quote (or sue) me on the issue - that the common cold is beneficial. It's like a boxer sparring ahead of the big fight. How ill prepared the boxer would be if he didn't take a few knocks from his trainer. He'd be down in the second round for six, KO'd in the third round.

Whenever humans interfere with the harmony of nature, there is, as a consequence, some degree of disaster (splitting the atom, for example). And there will be consequences too as and when we pharmacologically medicate ourselves against the common cold.

Besides, it is one less excuse to stay off work.





*This presupposes a duality of goodness and badness, which I have always loathed, and found the recognition of such dual concepts to be childlike (e.g., a six-year olds preoccupation with goodies and baddies in cartoons), so I would rather claim that nature has - or is - a property which could be understood as goodness or betterness or harmoniousness. There are no words to describe the concept, but it is intuitively understood. As a comparison, consider Lao Tzu's Way, a concept which is easy to intuit but impossible to render into language.

From Chief Wiggum to Gene Hunt

Back in the day when British policemen wore helmets inspired by mammaries, there at least was - what you could call - uniform justice.

In spite of now donning different style caps, the police are probably even bigger mammaries than ever before.

I was talking to a colleague today and she told me about the occasion when she was stopped and checked in public by the police for evidence of terrorism. Apparently, on no grounds whatsoever, the police searched her, appropriated her bag and emptied it, found a diary and skimmed through it (in search of lines such as "Dear Diary, today I made a failed attempt at detonating a big load of semtex strapped around my waist").

In protestation, the respectable young woman asked why the police are searching her for evidence of terrorism. Without any trace of humour, charm or irony (foreign concepts to the modern bobby), they informed her that she was their young, blonde, female quotient.

As my young, blonde, female colleague, and I (and everyone else) know, there are demographics which are more likely to be terrorists than others. This is beyond argument.

However, the police-force is so worried about not upsetting particular communities, or rather upsetting all communities equally, that it wastes our money and their time searching someone who has zero probability of being a terrorist for articles relating to terrorism.

The issue of political correctness is a divisive one. To the annoyance of its apologists, I can contentiously reject it on many levels. Surely, though, their can be no debate when so-called political-correctness overrides basic common-sense (and you, dear tax-payer, pay for these common-sense bypasses from your own pocket).

Really, the British police have too much time to do nothing. Why else to they have reams of forms to fill out? Why else would the Kent police bother arresting 81 year old war veteran and school governor Mr. Gibson when he was driving home from mass, within the speed limit?

Apparently, the police were concerned that he had driven into the middle of the road (to avoid parked cars, as we all do) and signalled him to pull over. When Mr. Gibson stopped the car, the police instructed him to open his window. Probably unnerved - and already frail at 81 years of age - Mr. Gibson had trouble winding down his window. The police officers interpreted this behavior as "confrontational". As a result, these police officers, one third of Mr. Gibson's age hoisted him from his vehicle and arrested him. The long and short of it is, that Mr. Gibson ended up in court with a fine, though is offense was negligible to say the list.

(NB. The imbeciles from the Kent police force are PCs Steven Cole and Thomas McGregor).

The police should be doing real work, catching real criminals, our streets are awash with incivility and crime. However, all the time the government chain them to their office desks or inculcate a fear of "upsetting" groups of people, then they are going to occupy their time harassing elderly church goers or young, female diarists.

The police are mammaries, but it is the government who are the biggest pair of joke breasts since that episode of Blackadder where Bl'adder's puritanical aunt comes to visit.