Lobster Debacles

I just saw the movie Julie and Julia this weekend, and watching Julie agonize over steaming the live lobster reminded me of a disastrous experience I once had with a lobster. I had decided to try a recipe where you broil it, but to do this you must kill it first.

I read instructions directing me to insert a knife into the head between the eyes to kill it quickly. I steeled myself and stabbed accordingly. The lobster went limp, so I flipped it over and started to slice the tail lengthwise. Just as I inserted the knife into the tail, the tail curled up vigorously and rhythmically. This was no mere twitching. That tail fought hard to escape. And it startled the heck out of me because I thought I had already succeeded in killing it, and there it was writhing and flapping about like the creature in the horror movie 'The Tingler'.



I felt horrible that I had not managed to dispatch the poor thing with a minimum of suffering. But it turns out I am not alone in having trouble killing lobsters swiftly. A quick scan of u-tube entries shows that in most cases, the lobster keeps moving significantly after the "fatal" blow. I suppose the 'nerve center' (a few paired ganglia) of a lobster is quite miniscule, so it is easy to miss. Also, since their nervous systems are so simple, they seem to keep functioning even after taking major damage. They are arthropods after all; just think how insects can keep moving after dismemberment.

There is disagreement in the scientific community over whether or not lobsters experience pain. None of their nerve cells appear to be 'pain receptors', but at the very least, the nerves in the tail I tangled with were saying, "Get me out of here!"

Bravo!

I came across this video at The Daily Dish.

I just wish an American had had the.....um,....guts to do this.

Good With Numbers

Chris Jordan creates images that help us to experience in a different way the collective impact our civilization is having in different dimensions. He depicts our consumption habits, (bottles, plastic bags, cars etc.) as well as our society's soaring prison populations among other things. Check here to see more of his works.

A Detail


A Partial Zoom

Complete Picture Depicting 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds


The images can be overwhelming, but perhaps the way we should look at it is that if we each just make small changes, collectively we can start to make things much better. No nagging here, just feel good whenever you find yourself doing one of many small things that can make a difference like: keeping your tires full, eating vegetarian food every now and then, reusing your own plastic bottle for water rather than buying bottled water all the time, turning the thermostat a little bit down.....


You can also hear him discuss some of his works in the short feature below.

Condi Rice Questioned by Law Students (They Are Better At Asking Questions Than Most Journalists!)

Condi Rice justified cooperating with the authorization of waterboarding because by definition "...if the President orders it it is not illegal..." (close paraphrase)
Listen for yourself! So much for no one being above the law. But yet she was quite emphatic that she had herself authorized nothing; she merely conveyed the Presidential authorization to other departments. I always thought she would have been a better tap dancer than this.

So Much For The Bad Apple Theory Of Torture In The Military

You may want to skip over about the first part of this report, but you should perk up your ears at around t=1:40. Rachel Maddow does a brilliant job laying out geometrically the involvement of the administration in the development of the torture programs. Then examining the timeline with Ron Suskind, an alternative motivation for the program emerges.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Jason Linkins reported on the interview Rachel Maddow conducted with Ron Suskind.

Suskind noted that the "impetus was not to foil potential al Qaeda attacks. The impetus here was largely political and diplomatic. The White House had a political/diplomatic problem. It wanted it solved in the run up to the war."

People were tortured, FOR THE SAKE OF "SPIN."

So much for ticking bombs and bad apples!