to veg or not to veg?

just met yet another raw vegan food chef, this time at a berlin party (dance, acrobatics, massages, annd.... alcohol free, you believe that?:). those folks are usually... interesting, this one probably the coolest and his green tea chocolate was memorable. ok so, cooking raw and vegan pushes the limits of creativity, forces you to use high quality and often exotic components. so no wonder it is original and if well done, very tasty (at least to my palate). leipzig has a vegan non-raw restaurant, also quite interesting, but then sometimes too dry and tofuesque (i am now pretty convinced that i should not eat too tofu regularly, and neither should most people especially men, but that's another topic). anyway the curious thing was that he was also an ayurvedic massage therapist, and from what he did on me a good one at that (yeah it was cool party). he was also not as sectarian and extremists as some of his colleagues although he did sound like this was the best thing to do for humankind. i am not convinced to say the least. ok it's delicious, so what? happy organic meat also is, it doesn't mean it should be my only food. first about the vegan part; for animals like us to live, something else has to die, period. whether it's a plant or an animal or a bacteria, i eat therefore i kill, and vice versa. of course killing and eating a bunny or a dog, doesn't feel the same as eating a sprouting bean or yogurt. but that's just our human mental/emotional bias. some life is dying to sustain some other life. if the dying life has a nervous system that has similar ways a fo suffering as we do, we are more sensitive to it, hence vegetarianism. conceptually pointless, but in practice of course i wouldn't eat human or even primate meat. as for bunny cooked for hours in their own blood (sounds better in french: civet de lapin) i shall not renouce to it in this life. so leave away whatever grosses you out, but thou shalt not mistreat the life to be eaten. don' t feed animal protein to cattle, don't saturate your fields with pesticides, kill the nimals as quickly and minimizing the pain, even if it' s not minimizing the cost.. be smart and balanced in your treatment of nature and of yourself. right yourself too. vegan people has another thing in common they have very little fat, and deep set eyes. parly because they eat little fat but also due to some possible vitamin or amino acid deficiency, although most take supplements, especially b12 . now, isn't that already a bad sign? a sign that such a diet is further removed from nature than a balanced diet?
and without eating meat fish or eggs, lack of vitamin D must be rampant among vegans around here especially with the little sun we get in the winter in this part of europe and since they have so little fat to store it. of course they won't notice right away.. but there are now clearly several cancers and auto-immune diseases associated with long-term vitamin D deficiency, so...

then, about raw. i didn't ask him about that but to my limited knowledge ayurvedic cuisine is mostly cooked and it's not unusual for ayurvedic doctors recommending eggs, dairy or even meat to some patients who deprived themselves of those.

one fascinating thing though, is that more and more evidence points to the fact that human evolution from pre-human ancestors was prompted by fire use and meat eating. we may artificially be able to renounce to those thanks to our mastery of energy and food engineering, but please don't make it sounds like it's more natural or better for nature.

yes, the key is to be more gentle with nature: but i don' t believe raw vegan, or vegan are better for the environment than a balanced diet including some animal products and meat without excess (no, most people actually don't need as much meat as they think they do). more important i think is to eat LOCAL (organic salmon from Chile while living in Europe doesn't make a fart of sense), SEASONAL (usually goes with local, you don't need to eat that many oranges and bananas, luxuries to be appreciated as such) and NAKED (limit generating trash: big organic supermarkets in germany compensate the absence of preservatives by over-wrapping their organic food,... yuck!). To me that's more important than saving bunnies lives, even if that's less visible; sure we live in artificially heated environments, but the climate in most european and ~subtropical regions are not meant for year-long vegans (if there is such a region) unless they rely on non-local non-seasonal and a lot of non-naked foodstuff.

long live food diversity,... including the luxury of raw vegan delicacies

with the childlike people... A precious friend reminded me of the beautiful passage of Hesse's "Siddhartha", the end of chapter 6 (link above, starting at "Once, he said to her..."). And yet Hesse seems to contradict himself, did you notice? "Others have it, who are small children with respect to their mind",  implying that Gotama (Pali spelling of Gautama), as well as Siddhartha & Kamala are "childlike". But at the end: "people of our kind can't love. The childlike people can." Incidentally, does that mean that, as a Westerner, Hesse didn't fully understand buddhism and Eastern thought in general, although he had a profound outlook on it and was much inspired by it? My own Western understanding of Gotama's message is that we ALL have a pure unalterable true divine essence, buddhism only providing a method for us to connect (take refuge) into this divine. I recently read passages of a book of aphorisms and quotes from Hesse, also peppered with contradictions. That's not necessarily bad. Contradictions might be a simple reflection of language's limits to reflect reality/truth. Such cognitive dissonances can be stimulating, as the koans of zen practice which are tools to reach enlightenment when duly meditated on. In any case, the astute reader may have noticed that the phrase "Others have it, who are small children with respect to their mind" doesn't necessarily mean they are "childlike" in the sense that dominates the chapter. Rather it ought to be a slight translation issue. Now on my way to get the German version!

Back from acroyoga teacher training in Greece (video here), now the challenge is to keep the pace, fly and fly... Actually i flew my mom & brother last week, so much fun no idea why i never did it before! And met some folks to jam in Leipzig's parks :)

Those days i attended workshops in Rolfing, aka, Structural Integration. Google it, try it, you won't regret. A related link that touched me a lot is this blog by a renowned rolfer. Wow.

Personal evolution (maybe..) "Dis, tonton Marc, pourquoi tu fumes ?" ("hey uncle Marc, why are you smoking?").. said the oldest of my little nieces Anne last summer at a family reunion. She had just turned 8, and her adult face started to emerge. What to answer? It was posed so earnestly, but also cuz it's Anne-who-will-break-many-hearts with a little "sourire en coin" (a slight ironical smile). I guess her parents must have told her how bad smoking is, blah blah.. I was also a bit tipsy, a perfect time for a smoke, especially back in those days of post-dissertation stress and post-breakup trauma. But that's too complicated to explain to an 8 year old, or rather, that's just not a good excuse. She wanted the true simple reason, and so should I. Cuz it tastes good. Well my sister (her mom) might well kill me for saying that and enticing her to try it out at such a tender age. Whatever, she will without me saying anything either way. Plus sometimes tobacco does taste good, but that cigarette didn't, sorry to whoever i bummed it. Then what? Cuz i am just stupid?.. i think i almost said that since that was the first thought that came to guilt-ridden ex-catholic mind. That's how i felt too, weak, guilty and stupid to fall into this toxic trap. I was just smoking socially and cuz i recalled that nicotine feels good and numbs pain, especially when you don't smoke that often. And it's party thing, etc.. Anyway, so much for the proximate explanations. But the what is the ultimate reason? We humans are probably unique for... many things that turned out to be shared with other species, from tools to building cities to eating medicinal and mind-altering plants. But one strange truly unique thing we do is play with fire, and inhale smoke on purpose. I challenge you to find another animal who does that. Is it that surprising considering that fire was a crucial aspect of our environment of evolutionary adaptation for hundreds of thousands of years, even before we were "sapiens"? Whoever could not stand smoke or was scared by fire, likely genetic characters, was out of the gene pool. Those who stayed and depended on fire evolved resistance to fear (leading to fascination for?), possibly DNA repair mechanism to that physiological stress, and possibly taste for smoke and smoky things. I am convinced that certain persons have better resistance to smoke and pollution than others. Smoking might actually be good to some/many people, especially the nicotine. A couple months ago in Colombia I met a Huitoto medicine man from the Amazonas who says simply that tobacco is not bad for health, but is a potent medicine to be combined with others (including coca leaves, in a mixture he ingested). Consequently, as any medicine, overdose, mis-application and prescription to the wrong patient can wreak havoc. Tobacco has just taken a very different route as its traditional users probably intended, same for many other substances (e.g. chocolate perverted with sugarv:0). But of course, disease and medicine itself may as well be seen as cultural constructs, continuously reinventing themselves. And humans keep experimenting with substances, fighting boredom or mal de vivre. All I know is I don't smoke anymore because common cigarettes are loaded with non-tobacco  carcinogenic addictive crap, and i don't need tobacco itself that much. Plus, now it usually feels harsh on my throat. But some people are amazing at taking high quantities of it. Resistance and to this kind of pollution and making the nicotine effects part of one's metabolism may be beneficial for those whose stress is efficiently relieved by smoking, and whose metabolism successfully repairs the damages to DNA (hence a potential evolutionary adaptation). Someday we may be able to predict from one's DNA, whether a person can smoke until he turns a 100, or should stay away even from second hand smoke.

In practice what did i tell lil'Anne? I can't remember but I hope it wasn't something like "you will understand when you're older", an adult answer I hated when I was her age. I think after a few seconds of embarrassed lame smile, I laughed and did a magic trick move, getting rid of the cigarette and pretended I had no idea what she was talking about. Ha ha, tontonmarc is sooo funny. Hopefully she forgot the whole thing, like I did for most of what happened when i was 8 years old.

See this from someone who knows better, that pretty much says it all, and more. One of my favorite passage:
To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,(...) is to deny them their humanity.”

After a few arguments with Chinese friends i should emphasize I am NOT for a free Tibet, again, that's not even what the Dalai Lama asks for. Only for the autonomy that they are supposed to have. It's already one country / two systems, why not give Tibet a Hong Kong style autonomy?

The irony in all that when Chinese people & government complain that Westerners just don't get the Chinese way and should stop giving misplaced advice like democracy and free speech, is that they are a communist government, now with wild capitalism, dealing with huge problems of industrial pollution, not the best of what came from the West...

My view is only from the outside despite a brief tour a few years ago. But the outside does matter, after the incidents in Greece, there are only problems in foresight for the traveling Olympic flame. This government can cause an entire nation to loose face.

One reason I am picking on China (and not Russia, Iran, Pakistan, etc.) is that I am a huge lover of Chinese culture, it has so much to offer to the world and I hate to see it under such bad management. If this government doesn't get it right in Tibet & other areas they will only create more local nationalistic resentment, and the claim to autonomy can step up to a claim for independence. One more system in the big country, that's just my 2cts..

What's the fhhell is wrong with the Chinese government? (note i said government, aka the Chinese Communist Party, not "China" or "the Chinese") Yeah they are not the only government doing screwy things, actually who isn't. And just like when Spiderman was told "With great power comes great responsibility" I kept wanting to tell that to Bush & Co back then after 911, now I really want to yell it at Hu & Co. At least when it's a democracy you can blame the population a little bit too, and there is hope for better. But what's the hope the Chinese totalitarian regime will loosen up its criminal grip on the country? Somehow we had almost forgotten how vicious they could be. After all, most people can now move around freely (except sometimes Tibet and Xinjiang, we'll get to that) and get rich if they work hard AND are lucky (fundamental Chinese concepts). They're now capitalists, more like "us". So democracy and free speech should follow suit right? Just be patient.. And hey, they got the Olympic Games and made a ton of nice promises back then (we'll get to that too), so things should normalize right? There are a few gigantic pollution problems, but hey they're not the only ones and they seem to be doing their best. They're not the among countries with the highest number of people executed on death sentence.. though that's probably because the numbers simply are not reported. All we care to know is that they are fighting corruption and are tough on crime. Good say the Texans, they're like "us". Plus they do it cow-boy style with a bullet in the head. It's not getting better. How could we forget? Now political time bombs are catching up. First the issue of freedom of speech. Movies banned, actors banned,.. but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Their support to Sudan government in the Darfur massacres was alleviated by nice promises and the fact that many other countries have dirty hands in Africa too. But the real big deal is elsewhere this year: years ago the Chinese government played its usual game of being very polite, smiling and making promises to get the Olympics, but no imprisoned journalist or "cyber-criminal" has been freed. Check out this awesome new Olympic logo and read the story before dismissing it as exaggerated. The information barely comes out of locked up zones in Tibet, in a situation eerily similar to Burma. Now the sad thing is that you might think ooh mean Chinese government, if it were a democracy they would be more laid back about Tibet getting at least autonomy. Well, every single Chinese person I have talked to in the past few years thinks Tibet should be part of China. They are more mixed about Taiwan but not by far. The fact that Tibet has a different language may not be a strong argument for more autonomy, or in fact any autonomy (only what the DL requests, btw) because there are many languages in China already, but one difference is that they also have a different script and a entire culture based on it. And, as I understand, other regions were conquered long enough ago and citizens are not so oppressed and separated culturally from the Han Chinese. Tibet on the other hand was (re)conquered militarily in a very recent past. Here is a nice simplified overview of the evolution of China's territory. The Chinese government may have done good things there, many roads have been built and a new train line opened, and some say, well see the Chinese government develops the regions, etc. I guess that's good too for all the Chinese immigrants. But, so what? Wouldn't a truly autonomous Tibetan government have done similar things without Chinese iron rule? Maybe less industrially but is that bad? So i don't know how life for Tibetans there, how bad or not-so-bad it is.. but what i can see now is tragic (lazy to put links on that, suffice to google the news). Again the sign that the Chinese have a rogue government are showing by how journalists are prevented from doing their work. So most people (and I) thought, well, there are huge problems but things are getting better. They're not. Remember Tienanmen? Well, the mothers do. It's happening again and again, in a different form, at a different scale. On the other hand Taiwan rejoices to have a new leadership friendly but firm toward the Chinese government. Let's hope that firmness, unlike the International Olympic Committee, will prevail for now. At some point things may get better, as the educated Chinese diaspora may weigh in more power. Or it may need another revolution. Alas, that's how we do things in France too.

Colombia photos Week 3 and 4.
Now back in Euroland, enjoying comfort and safety. But for how long will i miss the Colombians' natural exuberance and warmth?

Two weeks in Colombia, and despite the slow start, pollution in town, political turmoils and occasional lack of electricity & hot water, i still love it here! Photos of WEEK 1 and WEEK 2. (about the market here is a version with sound)
I keep discovering new fruits, with new tastes, the diversity of produce is incredible, how comes those never reach Europe or US? Oh and i heard someone speak Guambiano yesterday, one of the main indigenous languages, it sounds so.. strange, almost seems like there are tones like in Chinese, gotta ask about that when I meet more of them this week.
This region was inhabited for a long time, pre 10,ooo years ago, some even pre-Clovis. I keep hearing about ancient cultures i never heard about. I also learned that i am in another putative region for the origin of bamboo, as the largest number of varieties is found in the Cauca valley worldwide (haven't check on that yet, but that's what a German architect told me.. he buys the material here to build bamboo houses worldwide including in Asia). Pre-colombian (in both senses:) societies in the region had a highly developed bamboo culture, one of the many things that got mostly lost with the demographic disaster of the 16th century. Still the vitality of indigenous culture and genes have not disappeared, they can be seen everywhere, just in a different form as before.

Persepolis You (yeah, you) gotta see this movie, a rare gem. Check out the the official website to get an idea later of its powerful "stylized realism", but of course don't read the details until you see it ;). Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, drawn from her graphic novel, is not to be confused with the ancient city, far away from Teheran (where most of the action takes place) or with the eponymous soccer club. But i digress: the movie describes Marjane's childhood in Iran during and after the "Islamic" revolution. I put quotes around Islamic here cuz I still need to be explained what growing beards and veils have to do with the essence of Islam. Anyway, the movie doesn't dwell on such trivial issues. It is just riotously funny and suffused with deep sadness (sometimes at the same instant.. it's a total shock). Both sad and happy parts end up touching something universal in the human condition. Even the scenes where she hits rock bottom depression are funny. I have never seen anything quite like that on a movie screen. Strangely, i had to see it in German, even though it was part of Leipzig's French film festival (typisch Leipzig..). But past the initial surprise (and yes, a bit of grumbling) i actually enjoyed even the German voices, especially when Marjane goes to Vienna. The Austrian accents are just to die for, i am sure something gets lost in the original French version. Now here is a question to all women; after a breakup, especially when young, do you really darken and destroy the memories of you former flame? He suddenly becomes a dumb ugly foul. I thought that was just another funny eccentricity of Marjane, but at least one female friends confirmed that this is just like that in all females of our species. Wow. That's a shock. I don't know about you guys, but I just can't see former flames in a dark way, there is always this longing. Finally, one of the greatest thing about the film is to remind us of our "integrity". Sometimes we do stupid and/or bad things without thinking, hurting people in the process. But the grandmother is there to remind Marjane to be watchful for those tendencies. Remember where you come from, whether it be Iran, or just our own childhood which too often we forget as we evolve through life.

On the theme "those guys are people too" (replace "those guys" by chimpanzees, bonobos, dolphins, lawyers, talibans, .. whatever point you feel like making) here is one of the many bonobo video found on youtube.com (including some bonobo porn)

I have already discussed some of that theme here and there.
Interesting that Danny concludes "couldn't' they be apes AND people, because after all isn't that what we are?". Right we are apes too, but are they people? Are they of our people? Can we just raise them as humans and integrate them into our society as some people suggest? So to make things clear what are "people", "persons" and "humans"? First, humans are us, the genetically defined Homo sapiens species (that's a narrow definition there are broader definitions based on cognitive and spiritual qualities). A person, to me, is just a legal term translating an individual's place in a human society. People are about the same thing but with a cultural flavor, in the sense of "our people", I think that's more or less what Danny is trying to say. The logical consequence is that bonobos and other non-human apes cannot be persons, they are too different, and they certainly are not of our people, our "human race". But they are apes like us (dogs are mammal like us, etc..), and thus share many common behavioral traits.

The idea, mentioned by Danny, to raise an ape as a human he is of course not new, it's been attempted before, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is doing it here with Bonobos. Others have tried with chimps and they became cool chimps, but still.. chimps. Same with Sue's bonobos as far as I can tell. Because, really, can a human-raised bonobo hold a job and function like a socially-fit individual in human society? A person? I don't think so. Just look at the sex scene in that video for instance. No comment. We certainly can't apply most human laws to any other species. In fact, just human social and moral laws can be incompatible among themselves; wanting to merge them all in one universal human law may not be the wisest endeavor (euphemism), so why would we want to do that with bonobos and make them persons of any human human country?
This doesn't make sense, but we ought to pay those non-human folks respect and give them space on this planet to at least live in harmony with their environment and avoid suffering. In fact we should be able to to that with any life form that doesn't make us suffer (i.e. exclude damn mosquitoes;-). Of course the temptation is great to impose our moral values to any other species, especially the ones closest to us genetically (just as it is done of fellow humans of different cultures). Still we cannot simply treat them as mice. In fact lab experiments that are done on mice are unthinkable on primates, even less apes. There exist already a hierarchy among species, a differential treatment. As we try not to be racist, we are "specists". Treating cute species or those that look more like us better than ugly or evolutionarily distant ones.. is so human (and maybe too.. so animal).

So, OK, we bonobos and us are in the same "ape tribe" and maybe we can look down on monkeys. They have a tail and we don't. Boo. And together with monkeys we can look down at other mammals. Boo. Etc.

And if we humans have a soul, who else does?

Now here is a question about the previous video; which side did YOU take? were you pro-lion or pro-buffalo? (or pro-crocodile..) One of the spectators clearly made emotional pro-buffalo comments. Well nobody likes to see an infant eaten alive, in any species. And we like felines, only on the condition that they eat crunchy fish croquettes in little heart shapes (seriously, they do exist, i've seen them in Germany). I surprisingly found myself thinking sometimes pro-buffalo too as I was watching the plot unfold. We also think lions, being the hunters, usually are successful and dominant over the poor preys. Well, now i am wondering if this video was such an exception. Buffalos don't eat lions, but they do kick their ass, and the interaction resembles a war. See for instance this one (not as cool as the previous video, and quite gruesome: lion cubs are being chased and killed by bulls). Now which side do you take there? Don't you wish the oh-so-cute baby lions survive the attacks? That's what the commentator seems to be thinking. Interesting how the human mind takes the side of the weak.. at least when we have nothing at stake. If we are the ones threatened our human ancestors would probably not hesitate killing baby predators (one less that will reach adulthood), or if we are the ones hunting with a hungry stomach we think different (kill the buffalo, yumm!). In either case we probably think of ourselves (and in particular our ancestors) as the weak guys in nature, because physically we are. Is that the reason we tend to side for the weak?

You HAVE to see this video, the action is slow to start but, wow... see it before reading the rest. One reason this is so spectacular is that it is so rare in nature. As i understand, lions usually attack the weak elements of the herd, and they may only get horned if they are not careful in choosing their prey (or if themselves are weak/old/young). But it seems they were pretty wise in this case, picking a young one. So they couldn't imagine the buffaloes coming back and being so persistent. From a human perspective on may wonder, what could prevent the bulls to kick lions' asses all the time with such a strategy? One interesting thing i saw is that the bulls were, well, bullying, but direct attacks were rare (though efficient) and only by very few individuals. With such mass and horns, they could have really torn the lions to shred even more than they did. But i am thinking as a human, and my ancestors are the one who applied consistent group strategies (and fire) with the consequences we know. They had the communication skills to transmit strategies and the big brains to remember elaborate better and better ones, and adapt to new situations. But are our communications skills so unique? How did the first buffalos communicate to their fellows something like, "hey guys, they got young charlie, we weren't enough to protect him, let's all go back all together and we can kick their ass, quick he might still be alive, quick!" Really, how do you say that in buffalean? (especially noteworthy if it's a rare event) Now for the ultimate question; did the young buffalo really survive after all this??

More on our ape bro.. cousins

Before i begin to report my first Leipzig zoo visit.
1) Apes are not monkeys; in short apes are our closest cousins. Apes, just like us, have no tail, apart from a vestigial one at the base of the spine (from a taxonomic viewpoint it can be argued that humans are also apes).
2) Apes are not our ancestors! Living apes and us are as remote in time from our common ancestors. And these common ancestors were not Chimps, not Gorillas, etc... they were just "another species". (Primatologists sometimes use apes as a window in the "pre-human" human past, but they do it with great caution because only the traits we have in common are likely to be also those of our common ancestors. More on that later..)

Anyway, I just paid my first visit to the Leipzig zoo (there will be many more). This was a private visit to a select group of 30 German retirees + me + occasional rain. Ha! So I saw:
- Gorillas: from too far, in the mist.. i'll see you guys later.
- Chimps, group A: the main group was indoors, pretty chill folks, lazy adults and jumpy clumsy infants. They seemed relaxed, like at a chimp version of the Club Med, aka Chimp Med.
- Orang-Utans ("Man of the forest" in Malay, nothing to do with the color "orange" although they coincidentally do have orange hair!): wow that dominant male is quite a riot! long hair like a cloak, impressive frame... unlike in nature (where male OU are solitary), he lives with the others but seems ok with it. It's an unconventional group anyway, since it includes one female Gibbon (too old to be mated with a male of her own kind--the only strictly monogamous ape species). She grooms and gets groomed, totally accepted by the colorful Orang folks! You can imagine what other question i asked about her, well, the answer is no.
- Bonobos: only 3 males, 2 females.. and one local newborn! We only saw the 3 males who came on call, un-shy about their gigantic testicles. Now, even though I had seen pictures, it was a shock how different they are from chimps, not so much physically but those guys feel so human it's eery. The way they look at you, the way they stroll around.. the way they seem so bored and lonely. They clearly miss company, well, at least that day I saw them. More on bonobos and their potential here.
- Chimps, group B: a few females related to the dominant males of group A, were kept separately to avoid inbreeding. This group also includes a male who almost got killed in a fight with males of the main group. Godly zookeepers saved him from a grim death. This group was not in Chimp Med, but in a (large) cage and definitely more interested by our visit.

I also discovered that Chimps, Orangs and the Gibbon chick regularly walk on the ropes. Right they don't just hang and swing around (masterfully) on branches and ropes. They sometimes actually walk on rope, and stand (not squat) on branches for a while. Long arms are a perfect for balancing there. I wonder if anyone has studied that, but it seems they walk more on branches & ropes than they do on the ground. All too logic considering the environment their species adapted to..

In the end, like any zoo it's a bit depressing, though these guys have it easier than other zoos i have seen. And they are stimulated by props and toys, including primate psychology experiments. I think for their well being and development, it's very important for apes to have social interactions,.. even if with human cousins by default. As exemplified by the Gibbonette among the Orangs, there may be more room for inter-ape-species friendship than we would think.

Of course the yahoo link of the previous post is now broken..
here is the story from a (hopefully) more permanent site:

http://forums.spacebattles.com/archive/index.php/t-117788.html

Scroll down to read many dumb or superficial comments but this here is a cool and deep one:
A. Bettik -- May 5th 2007, 8:42am

This actually is a difficult question: Some chimps have been shown to have the cognitive ability of a young child... some have even learned sign language. Why should they have fewer rights than children matter?
I'm not really sure at all. This could end up turning us into some race of hippy-indian-treehuggers who get annihilated by the first passing alien race, or it could be a step in the direction of the enlightened, superior Xel-Naga who soon rule the galaxy in benevolence. I'm not sure which.

what's new in the human species? might we include other animals in our own species?

Activists want chimp declared a 'person' - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/chimp_challenge (broken link, see new post above)

- what is a "person"? if we are talking in law terms, it's different in every country, and yeah maybe the law needs to be tweaked a bit now that we (re)discover that animals are damn smart and have emotions too. But really, how much rights can you have without having responsibilities? Chimps or any other animals cannot share the same responsibilities as human persons, therefore they cannot function as such in the society. How different are they from non-autonomous mentally-impaired humans? Well, even though I cringe writing this, I have to admit that some great apes do have higher emotional and cognitive abilities than some mentally-impaired humans. Having said that, does that mean they ought to have similar rights? No. Something just feels "wrong" about the idea, but what? Well, it's about the potential; we think that ANY human, even the deepest autistic or advanced alzheimer patient have the "potential" to be human. Same issue at stake when we debate on euthanasia. So the question becomes; does a chimp have the potential to be human like me?

- More practically; why don't they just put abandoned chimps in animal shelters? dogs and cats also have personalities but that doesn't make them "persons"! (btw, some cats paint and i have seen dogs eat pastry, hm.) Can't the activist just adopt Hiasl as a pet? Maybe the best would be a zoo, they know how to take care of chimps, and they may even have chimp friends for Hiasl and Rosi.

- aren't the activists contradicting themselves when they say they want Hiasl to have "basic legal rights" but no right to vote? They want to give him the "right to own property"; but is it moral to just give that to someone who doesn't understand what that means? If these are not plain contradictions they at least send a very confusing message.

- what is an "animal rights activist"? are these the same breed as the ones who said you gotta kill Knut the baby polar bear abandoned by its mother? at least one activist mentioned in the article disagrees with the present cause and rightly fears animal rights will loose credibility with such foolish claims (though it's not a foolish debate).

- apes such as chimps do have high cognitive abilities (and human-like physiques) that makes us think twice before treating them as.. "just animals". Another way to think about this is that we are animals ourselves, highly self-domesticated, and with a propensity to domesticate other species. There is no "Us v. The Animals", but "We The Animals". And "We Humans" have the most sophisticated societies and have the power to make all animals (including ourselves) either miserable or comfortable. And as far as we can tell, we are the only ones to strive towards morality. But morality itself is a relative concept under active scientific investigation because it really is not so straightforward; would we kill (and possibly induce suffering) in a few chimp to find a cure that will save millions of humans over time? how about killing a few gorillas? macaques? dogs? cats? rabb.. bunnies? mice? rats? roaches?.. What determines our double standards on which animal can get which treatment? Is that moral?

Those damn borders... the geographical ones and the ones in our tribal minds. Let's talk about the geographical ones for a moment; it's messy but it must be simpler than the human mind. In fact borders are probably in such chaos as a result of our damn restless minds.

The fact that they are constantly changing can be a good or a bad news. The bad news is that, with a few notable exceptions (German reunification or neighboring Czecho-Slovakian split) it usually goes with a war. The good news is that this war hopefully has something just to it and it will end in peace, in situation more stable than before (e.g. Yu-go-sla-via). Not quite sure anymore if there was a "just war" component in the current Iraq mess, but it may well be best ended with a country split. Of course many hate the idea, like Turkey or Iran who would have to finally accept the existence of a Kurdish culture. But even that can be a good news for them if they know how to go with the flow. One can always dream.. of a world where we would come back to such values as "La liberte des peuples a disposer d'eux memes". What happened to that? If people aren't asked the right questions in such critical moments as in Iraq right now there can only be violence. Don't ask them who to elect, there is barely a political class or any political debate, and people are still new to democracy. Ask them real questions about their future, such as which country do you want to live in? (Iraq, Kurdistan, Shiiteland, Sunniland, Iran, etc.. start a debate!) Which political system? Get an idea what people want; once this is known, every terrorist or foreign power looses all legitimacy if they go against the will of the people. Easier said, I know.. I know..

Will borders in the US disappear or appear. Will the red-state blue-state divide increase? Right now, no good reason to see it happen, everybody would loose, but wait until some real tough issue or crisis divides them. Or it could be just very slow. And if at some point some states accept gay marriage, or ban abortion altogether, and some clearly never will do either, people will move around accordingly... toward a peaceful national split?

I may add one thing to that last post. Another option is that instead of continuing to grow in numbers the human species shrinks. Then we may become more homogeneous. In fact that's probably what happened at least one time to our ancestors way back, and that may explain why we are one of the least genetically diverse species on earth, despite obvious regional physical differences.
So as a species we are faced with two main options (status quo is not an option): either we continue expanding, eventually overflowing out of this planet and ineluctably diverging genetically, OR shrinking in numbers, possibly becoming an endangered species, either by some large scale catastrophe, or very slowly, without even noticing it. Both preserving the earth, our nest, and swarming towards the stars are necessary elements of our survival as a species--and parent of species to be.

what is this?

I am a Homo sapiens, one of a growing mass of ~6 billion, a heterogeneous bunch, a big not-so-melted pot of spiced diversity.

This rich human genetic cuisine is displayed through people's physical appearance, which our tribal minds sorts out as kinds. Let's celebrate, rather than deny, this diversity resulting from the immemorial ebb and flow of human migrations. The complex interplay of population isolation and mixture went back and forth uninterrupted since our ancestors emerged from archaic forms of human over a hundred thousand years ago. Living in small tribes or bands until the intensification of horticulture into full scale agriculture and farming after the end of the last glacial age, there we are; a few of us still rooted in the ancestral lifestyle of hunting and gathering, and most of us post-industrial humans of planetary awareness.

The human species today shines as a fuzzy kaleidoskopic landscape of admixed populations and genetic isolates. Unlike a regular kaleidoscope, the borders are rarely sharp. Geographic and cultural patterns are discernible but the complexity is mind boggling. How melted is the genetic pot? Look at a metropolis like New York City or Sao Paulo; not so melted, he.. Will it ever be? Should it be? As much as some individuals tend to mix, most still stick to people who look alike. I have sometimes heard a question going like this; are we to become, in hundreds of years, a single homogeneous mass of people? Will everybody eventually merge to the same skin color and facial features? No way. Even with an increased number of admixed individuals, there will always be a gradation of admixture levels, whether subtle or sharp. There will always be geographic and cultural distances working as isolating mechanisms. And if after all these centuries we do finally migrate outside of our planet, then these isolating mechanisms will become even stronger. And natural selection pressures in different planets or orbital stations may even add some spice and modify our species to physical types never seen before, or new human species yet to evolve.