I love dogs. I am a dog person. I love the idea of wolves. I love wolf iconography, whether it be the rock band Los Lobos, the blues giant Howlin Wolf, Stephen King's fiercely protective if somewhat dim character Wolf in The Talisman, or George R.R. Martin's Stark sigils and loyal direwolves. However it's not that easy to be a wolf person because wolves do not like or trust people. They are after all wild animals. They are literally not designed to be around people. Although the wild wolf's danger to humans and cattle is drastically overstated, it's usually a bad idea to raise a wolf or even a wolf-dog hybrid in your home. Wolves are more intelligent than dogs, stronger and more aggressive, and skittish and unpredictable. They're killers. It's who they are and what they do.
All the same dogs and wolves share so many characteristics that they are usually considered to be the same species. Humans have had dogs as pets and working animals for at least 14,000 years. Dogs are the first animal that humans domesticated. Did humans change some of the more docile wolves into dogs over time? Or are dogs and wolves descended from some common ancestor we have yet to discover? We know that dogs need a certain amount of time to learn the rules of being a dog before they are ready to leave their mother. How does this work for wolves? What makes an animal shy, skittish and potentially dangerous? Is it nature or nurture? And if we find the genes associated with fear or introversion in wolves or dogs can we find similar ones in humans? Watch the video below the fold to get some answers to these questions.
NICOLET, Quebec — I’m sitting in an outdoor pen with four puppies chewing my fingers, biting my hat and hair, peeing all over me in their excitement. At eight weeks old, they are two feet from nose to tail and must weigh seven or eight pounds. They growl and snap over possession of a much-chewed piece of deer skin. They lick my face like I’m a long-lost friend, or a newfound toy. They are just like dogs, but not quite. They are wolves. When they are full-grown at around 100 pounds, their jaws will be strong enough to crack moose bones.
Wish Upon
directed by John Leonetti
The good thing about this bland horror film is that it generally avoids jump cuts. That's unusual these days. There are deaths of course. It's hard to make a horror movie without them, but by genre standards this is not a particularly bloody or grotesque film. On the other hand it's only infrequently a scary film. The writing is pedestrian. This story is something I've seen done much better on early Supernatural or Friday the 13th episodes. You pretty much know from almost the first five minutes how the story is going to turn out. The only question is who is going to get it in the neck along the way. This movie was also a reminder that time waits for no one. People whom I am used to seeing as the hot sultry babe or young dashing rake are now playing respectable, stolid, wrinkled, greying, middle aged or older parents and neighborhood residents. And if they are still around in another fifteen years or so they'll be playing grandparents. So it goes. Anyone who has every watched any horror movie knows that if you find an antique of uncertain provenance with warnings in languages that aren't easily understood, it's usually not a good idea to bring that item home. Anyone who has watched horror movies also knows that when you get something that's too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
There's always a price to be paid. I guess that it says something about human nature that this basic lesson is one that we seem to need to learn over and over again. There are no free lunches. So maybe we use horror movies to illustrate who we are as humans.
Let's say that you are sitting down to eat at your favorite restaurant. Just as you are preparing to consume your preferred meal, the one that is only really done right at this place, you notice mice or rats running across the floor. Do you continue to eat? After all, we all have immune systems for a reason. If you look behind the scenes at almost any restaurant you'll probably discover some information that won't give you a warm fuzzy feeling about eating there. Heck maybe those raisins in the salad aren't really raisins? Or, armed with the knowledge that your food was prepared in a place shared with nasty filthy diseased little mice and their droppings, do you immediately leave the establishment, swearing by the sixty-two moons of Saturn never to set foot in there again?
This is not just a hypothetical.
LIVONIA - Customers are complaining of a rodent infestation at Fortune Buffet in Livonia. Customers took out their phones to record it, as employees ran around with brooms during a lunch buffet. Fox 2's Hilary Golston talked with the owner.
1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them..
Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world and they were meaner than anybody else and they had gunpowder...The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their ability to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were."-Kurt Vonnegut
This past Monday, October 9th was Columbus Day. It's a federal holiday but many people do not receive the day off. Increasingly Columbus Day has become a flashpoint between people who would like to bring to light that Columbus wasn't really a good man as the term is understood today or in 1492 and between those who see any attempt to revise bad history as a simplistic attack on whites, Italians, or Western Civilization. I was reminded of how the second group thinks when I was listening to a local white (supposedly liberal) radio host bemoan the city of Detroit's planned renaming of Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. The radio host and most of his callers were of the opinion that everyone (by which they meant non-whites) was just too sensitive these days. They said that well sure maybe Columbus did some bad things but Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't perfect either.
And in their view because America existed now that made everything okay. The radio host closed out with what he thought was the devastating conclusion that Columbus was good because "our European ancestors never would have made it here were it not for Columbus". Wow. How can anyone argue with that logic.
Killing Gunther
directed by Taran Killam
This film was a mixed bag. It tried to be Spinal Tap for hitmen but didn't make it.
Killing Gunther is Killam's directorial debut. Killam is a SNL veteran. At times this movie does feel like an extended SNL skit. I thought that the premise was humorous. The film's energy flags occasionally. I think that the hour and a half long Killing Gunther could have dropped about 20 minutes from its running time and done okay. It's action comedy film that mixes slapstick, Airplane like sight gags, and black comedy to decent if not great impact. The first 20 minutes I laughed out loud quite a bit, after that, not so much. If I had seen this in theaters I probably wouldn't have thought it worth the expense and trouble of going to the movie theater but it was okay as a Saturday afternoon film. Although some more squeamish people may be turned off or even offended by the premise, the movie is not all that different from any number of comedies set in corporate offices or shady bars where a bunch of lovable losers come up with their planned big score. I was reminded of Welcome to Collinwood. Blake (Killam) is a somewhat louche, highstrung world class hitman. Although he's good at what he does he's by no means the best. That appellation is reserved for the target of his ire, Gunther. Nobody knows what Gunther looks like. Some people aren't even certain that Gunther is a man.
Everyone agrees though that Gunther is the best. He's the best of the best. Maybe he's the best ever. Gunther takes on impossible hits and makes them look easy. Gunther shows off and steals all the best jobs. He makes other assassins look bad. Blake resents not being number 1 in his field. Blake decides that the way to set his own rep in stone as the man to see when you want someone murdered is to kill Gunther. He also has some more personal reasons for wanting Gunther dead. These become obvious later on in the film.
I don't have much to say about this incident. On Detroit's east side one man armed with a gun tried to rob another man. The would be victim was legally armed and defended himself, shooting the robber multiple times. The robber is still alive. The victim had no time to call the police. And since the victim is neither bulletproof nor a superhero he had no way to wrestle with the assailant and disarm him without being shot. The victim did run away but again only Superman is faster than a speeding bullet. We stop someone who is wrongfully initiating force against us by meeting that force with equal or greater force.
I do believe that violent street crime has multiple reasons for existing, some of which the government can and should address and resolve and some of which are probably beyond government solution. But that's another discussion. When someone is either shooting at or threatening to shoot you, it's too late to make his parents raise him right. It's too late to give him enough self-respect and material success so that he won't want to risk prison or death. It's too late to rewire his moral code so that he doesn't enjoy hurting other people. The only thing we can do is stop the threat. And the most effective way of doing that is to be armed. There are some areas that are more dangerous than others. People who can should avoid those areas. Most people are not criminals. Most people won't ever be attacked. But I think it is non-negotiable to insist that American citizens retain the right to defend themselves both in their homes and in the streets.
The Whistler
by John Grisham
I usually like a lot of Grisham's work. Like many other former lawyers or legal experts who have become thriller or mystery authors he is able to build excitement around oft boring judicial proceedings or explain legal esoterica to those of us who didn't go to law school. This book wasn't his among his most worthy creations though. The Whistler starts out in the familiar Grisham style. Two investigators for the Florida Board of Judicial Conduct, Lacy Stolz and Hugo Hatch, receive information regarding potential judicial corruption. They follow up on it. But they're not expecting anything big. Although they are lawyers and work for the state they have no arrest powers and don't carry weapons. They investigate judges. The most dangerous things they normally encounter in their daily labor are nasty insults from $800/hr defense attorneys or empty threats from angered judges. Lacy and Hugo don't make a lot of money in their job.
Neither of them earns much more than $60,000/year. Lacy is single and quite attractive. Hugo is married with a growing family. The two co-workers are close. Not in THAT way. Lacy babysits for her partner and his wife from time to time. But the stakes of Lacy's and Hugo's job are usually pretty small. At worst a particularly venal judge might be indicted and convicted of a crime and serve a few years. That's pretty rare. Prosecutors and judges don't like to take down fellow big shots. Usually what happens is that a judge is censured, forced to resign, reassigned, fined or perhaps disbarred. But this case is different. Their contact, a man calling himself Greg Myers, claims to know of a corrupt judge who has stolen more money than all judges, ever. And the judge is involved in worse crimes. Disbarment or fines wouldn't be appropriate for this judge. These are federal crimes.
