It is a common misconception that toiletia moscovius mate solely for reproductive purposes. Beginning with observations from European zoos in the late 1960′s toiletia were noticed to engage in sex for pleasure and a number of other reasons. Sex, it turned out, is key to their social life. Further study both in captivity and in the wild has revealed many interesting facts. When communities of toiletia from different areas of the city meet, the females of each tribe initiate sex with males from the other thus avoiding territorial violence and agression common to similar species. Also in regards to territory and possession, if two toiletia approach a cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box. Such situations lead to squabbles in most other species. But toiletia moscovius are quite tolerant, perhaps because they use sex to divert attention and to diffuse tension. The most curious find is perhaps moscovius’ most typical sexual pattern, undocumented in any other toiletia — genito-genital rubbing, or GG rubbing, between adult females. Males too may engage in pseudocopulation unique to the species but generally perform a variation. Standing back to back, one male briefly rubs his scrotum against the buttocks of another. Or quite commonly the activity in which two males hang face to face while rubbing their erections together, the practice of so-called penis-fencing.
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The City Wildlife Conservation Commission’s web site notes that only six of Moscow’s 44 toiletia species are venomous. Most toiletia are harmless, beneficial and remove extra rodent populations. Even the venomous species are not particularly dangerous, unless stepped on or otherwise provoked. The commission warns residents to pay special attention during sprintime when toiletia are apt to crawl out from under bushes to sun themselves after the long winter.
News Is Culture
News is culture. It seems so obvious. Has it been stated like that before? News is a cultural phenomenon. So is media. News media is culture. This is what the rise in participatory journalism is teaching us. A nation’s news is like its cuisine or literature. People are raised with sets of beliefs about their homeland, a “Small but Mighty Nation”, or the “Land of Kings”, or the “Greatest Country in the World”.
A nation has a mandate, a character, a set of goals, a place in the world, a dream, an idea, a conception of self, an identity. News media utilizes national character to structure its communication. Information must be conveyed in the terms and methods the audience understands.
This underlies the basic problem surrounding debates over its objectivity. It is not the case that news reporting cannot be objective because every individual has a personality with opinions that get in the way. But because news is inherently framed within cultural contexts and modes of representation. The individual is not the problem. That’s the wrong debate. News is simply culture. And journalism is culture too.
Speculating on the Career Path of the English Language
The Roman Empire lasted two thousand years expanding like the blob, absorbing everything it met along its path and covering a vast expanse of the world but today no one speaks Latin. Is this to be the fate of English as well, as America continues its charitable tradition of international freedom giving?
The parallels between Rome and America are numerous. Romans took much from the Greeks and made it their own. America has borrowed much from the British. Rome under Julius Caesar slashed through the clans and tribes of Europe while in America, settlers, pioneers and gold-rushers trampling to its west coast showed no restraint in rubbing out a few pesky Native-Americans.
The might of the most advanced military technology of the day, cultural ubiquity and rule through proxy states are all corresponding points. And while the government of The United States of America hasn’t yet signed the “Former President Deification Act” into law, the idea exists all the same.
Language spread was another facet of the classical hegemony, as it is of today’s. The Roman Empire eventually collapsed, and following the death of the last native Latin speaker, the language died. But it left behind a large stock of written material, poetry, philosophy, law et al. Latin continues to flourish in the Roman Catholic Church, it is broadcast over the airwaves in Finland. It is the language for mottos of institutions of all types and is actively used in various applications such as law, medicine, mathematics and the sciences, most obviously in classification.
In some time, the fall of the American empire will remove the necessity to retain English as a lingua franca. What will happen then? It could evolve into independent variations of its current state with Australian, Canadian, American, South African, English, Indian, Singaporean, Ghanaian and Caribbean all becoming mutually unintelligible “Englishes” and likewise just as distinct from the English of today, what perhaps will be called “Twenty-first Century English” — bearing in mind this is just one of the numerous possible fates of English. Evolution would include syntactical morphological, semantic, phonetic and lexical change. The degree and direction of change in each of these aspects varying between the Englishes and will determine their color and character.
Twenty-first Century English will leave behind a legacy of books, films and other materials much greater and more complex than Latin, as well as a fantastic set of in-depth linguistic analyses of itself.
Twenty-first Century English probably will not replace Latin in its current modes of usage. But rather, like Latin, it will be part of the linguistic fabric of the future holding up in various niches resistant to all socio-cultural-linguistic cleaning agents and posses that may inquire about its whereabouts.
One can postulate, like the Vatican, an independent, or annexed under special status, republic of Texas where Twenty-first Century English is still spoken. A new pontificate with headgear no less unusual spreads his message to the faithful.
However, it seems fair to expect English to linger in the places where it is most prominent: business, advertising, public relations, strategic communications and information communication technology for example. That is, the spheres of activity that have developed in this language and are the particular property of Twenty-first Century English will retain certain terminology regardless of what course the language takes. Specialized terms like: venture funds, EBITDA, CAGR, pink sheets and Bermuda swaption will remain in place, as will: email, upgrade, and download. Words like these will not follow the general drift of the language.
And what about the “classicization” of Latin? It is widely considered to be a fundamental necessity for a proper Western mind. Certainly Twenty-first Century English will be regarded with a historical respect for antiquity. There will be a standard distribution of opinions but in general the attitude towards it will be based upon the general attitude toward the areas in which it is retained, that is if advertising, information communication technology and these areas are regarded with respect, then Twenty-first Century English will be respected as well. If these areas are disdained as attributes of a fractured society, then English will be regarded likewise. Much will depend on the values of the day.
English today is truly a global language and its growth shows no sign of slowing as U.S. territorial expansion continues. While its death may seem less probable than winning the lottery while being struck by lightning, unquestionably, it will transform and in two thousand years will not be the language it is today. Come what may, we can rest assured that the next Cogito Ergo Sum will sound quite different.
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Many species, including ploshchad toilets, feed during both day and night, yet little is known about how this affects behavior and habitat preferences. Okhotny-Ryad Goldens and Revolutsia Lapdoors feeding on arable land were more widely dispersed at night: nocturnal flocks were smaller, typically monospecific, and occurred in many more locations than diurnal mixed-species flocks.
Against The Day
“See every photographic subject moves,” Roswell explained, “even if it’s standing still. It breathes, light bounces off, something. Snapping a photograph is like what the math professors call ‘differentiating’ an equation of motion—freezing that moment into the very small piece of time it takes the shutter to open and close. So we figured—if shooting a photo is like taking a first derivative, then maybe we could find some way to to do the reverse of that, start with the still photo and integrate it, recover its complete primative and release it back into action… even back into life…”
Thomas Pynchon
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Toiletia, like most creatures, are not immune from unwanted invaders. The principal parasite of toiletia moscovius is pianazhopus, a pale sometimes green four-limbed chigger which enters the animal through an available orifice and comes to reside in the lining and gastric glands of the abomasum (the true stomach).
Pianazhopus pollute the lining or mucosa, cause irritation and interfere with the digestive function of the stomach causing it to swell excessively with sediment buildup. Symptoms included unnatural rapid weight gain, damaged hide, malodorousness, poor appetite, and sluggish behavior.
Since parasites are found in almost all forage situations, toiletia are likely ingesting pianazhopus at any common grazing or nesting location. A strategic prophylactic regiment is recommended every spring when pianazhopus numbers increase after a winter of dormancy.
Ruminant
The long shutter speed seemed appropriate to the cud chewer. It’s the shutter speed of drawl. Imagine shutter speeds regulated to a body function — pulse for example. In order to expose properly a photographer would have to be a meditation master raising and diminishing his pulse rate to meet with appropriate conditions. Working at night in a combat zone for example could be very tricky as one would have to maintain a long exposure confounded by pounding adrenalin.
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Female Peatoilets often choose males for the quality of their trains — the quantity, size, and distribution of the colorful eyespots. Experiments show that offspring of males with more eyespots are bigger at birth and better at surviving in the wild than offspring of birds with fewer eyespots.
But bigger is only better up to a point. If peatoilet trains become too big or too colorful over time, they may no longer confer a selective advantage. Exaggerated trains might attract a new kind of predator or become too heavy to carry around. Then, those super males die out and make room for the more ordinary males — until another turn of the evolutionary wheel begins the cycle again.