Americans in Mexico

Translations:

1 Would you like to buy some chewing gum, sir?

2 I need work so that I can buy food for my family. Please, can you help me, sir?

3 Take a good look, my daughter. All Americans are idiots.

4 It's true, Daddy.

Revenge of the Tigers

Like everyone, I was shocked by the bizarre mauling of the 17 year old kid, who found himself being clawed and chewed to death by the world’s meanest predator, on Christmas Day, in the middle of the most cosmopolitan and progressive city in the western world.

From the online reactions I came across as I researched the event, the Bay Area public seemed to be split between militant vegans who already believed all zoos are inherently evil and should be closed down immediately, and others who simply believed that the San Francisco Zoo, as a substandard, poorly managed facility, was to blame.

However, as the story’s facts leaked out bit by bit a far more interesting angle emerged. No print reporter employed within five thousand miles of California would come out and say it explicitly, but, every account released suggested the same thing in between the lines: perhaps the victims were to blame.

The first few stories, on December 26th (the day after the attack) had quotes from celebrity zookeeper Jack Hanna, speculating that someone had taunted the tiger into making the improbable leap out of the cage. On December 27th, a few more clues were added to the stories: a footprint on the railing, a bloody shoe inside the enclosure (a report that has since been denied), concrete stuck in the back claws of the tiger as it pushed its way up the wall of the enclosure.

It isn’t politically correct to point the finger at three young people. Not when one is dead and the other two are in the hospital. Not when the parents of the victim are still on the center stage, mourning their loss and preparing for a massive lawsuit. And, as we have recently learned, perhaps the wall wasn’t as high as it should have been. But the fact is the enclosure was built during the Depression and had held tigers at bay for 67 years.

The image of three brats mocking the caged beast only to have the tables turned in the most real and violent way possible is too good to ignore. If tigers made movies, Tatiana would be a hero along the lines of a Rambo or Cool Hand Luke. Against all odds she righted the injustice of the world she was trapped in.

Of course, in our litigious and overly polite society, the focus from here on out will be on the low wall and the organizations that deemed the enclosure safe. The parents of the boys will all receive fat checks and a thousand apologies. But behind closed doors, away from the public ear, people will talk about the real story: how three young men got what they were asking for, and how all of our lawyers and walls can’t remove us from the dangers of the physical world.

Planet of the Dolphins

The Inevitability of Extinction

I think it's cute when the bleeding hearts among us get all misty eyed over a dwindling species. God forbid our grandchildren’s grandchildren (who, realistically, are as obscure to us as the contemporary semi-strangers we exchange forced nods with as we pass on the sidewalk) might not experience firsthand the unique and precious characteristics of the spotted owl or polar bear.

The fact is 99.9% of all the fantastic creatures that have ever existed, from the microscopic to the gigantic, have already gone extinct. Over the past 500 million years, since the dawn of complex life known as the Cambrian Explosion, the earth has produced untold billions of distinct species. Virtually all of them have already past into the annals of natural history.

And the present-day animals we feel so responsible for preserving (mostly to teach our kids the alphabet and admire together in zoos), they owe their very existences to the opportunities created by the departure of their predecessors.

We are overly obsessed with preserving the status quo, freezing the Earth as we know it into a snapshot we can show a thousand years down the line. The problem with that notion is that there are far bigger processes than our aerosol cans and gas-guzzling traffic jams at work.

Every million years or so the Earth undergoes a cataclysmic event: volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions that muck up the atmosphere for long enough to destroy pretty much everything at the zoo (including the visitors), ice ages that would make you trade in your car for a snowmobile and your house for a cave under a thousand feet of ice, and even (as its been theorized) massive solar flares that would cook you and everyone you know faster than a bag of microwave popcorn.

Whether we pull the trigger on our demise, or Mother Nature does it first, is probably a 50/50 proposition at this point. Either way, as far as most species go, we’ve had a hell of a run.

So maybe we have sped things up a bit. Maybe there would still be schools of cod in the Atlantic without the invention of fish sticks. Whatever the case, let’s not blame ourselves too much.

When we worry that we’re the ones ruining the party, we’re giving ourselves way too much credit. The Earth will renew itself, probably without us, or at least the vast majority of us.

The things that we think of as “manmade”, (plastic, plutonium, Hot Pockets™, the exhaust of one hundred million, four thousand pound SUVs) are as much a part of nature as a rotting piece of fruit. Sure they might take a few thousand more years to break down—the Earth has nothing but time.

As highly as we like to think of ourselves, we aren’t nearly consequential enough to kill a 500 billion year old planet. We’re just starting to see the end of the line for us, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. The only positive spin is to appreciate how far we’ve come.

As for my grandchildrens’ grandchildren? I don’t even know their names.

Don’t get me wrong. I am sorry about how things seem to be shaping up for future generations. But, as we all continually remind the younger ones, whoever said life was fair?

Kindergarten Catwalk

Why Me?

I know its difficult, even painful to think about, but the next time you are stuck in traffic, or can't find anything good on TV, take a few minutes to ponder the imponderable.

You are an improbable collection of atoms, bound together for some unknowable reason, spinning at an inconceivably fast pace on a dense ball of remarkably similar matter (atomically speaking). No one knows why you think, why you feel, or why you breathe.

The gods that brought inner peace to your ancestors—tucked them in at night—are relics. The modern day equivalent, the all-too-human scientist, will freely admit he doesn’t have any real answers.

Sure, he can tell you a bunch of neat things about the world around you.

He’ll blow your mind about the size of the universe, while his feet are planted firmly on the ground. He’ll tell you what’s in the center of the Earth, without ever traveling there. He’ll tell you fantastic tales of giant creatures who lived millions of years before, and about the intricate, microscopic processes that govern matter on the atomic ( and even sub-atomic) level.

But ask him “WHY ME?” and he’ll come up short. There is no bridge between the what and the why. Ask him to explain consciousness and its origins, and get ready for silence.

The processes that science says makes you tick: atoms combining to form molecules, specialized molecules called amino acids joining forces to create proteins, which in turn perform essential life functions in our cells, and the DNA that keeps the process replicating over and over; none of it comes close to explaining what we really need to know.

To tell a story, we were told in school, you cover five essential elements: who, what, where, when, and why. Science has convincingly answered the first four. Unfortunately, I think that’s as far as we’ll ever get.

Wish You Were Here (Celebrity Water-Skiing)