Are we the last living souls?

In an amusing case of synchronicity, both NPR and the Washington Post ran articles today on creatures that are the last of their kind. NPR brings us the story of the loneliest plant in the world: encephalartos woodii, commonly known as the cycad, a South African plant whose one remaining specimen resides in the Kew Gardens of London. The Washington Post, by contrast, relates the situation of Lonesome George, the last remaining giant tortoise on the Galapagos Islands.

Both articles concern the issues surrounding mating--impossible for both species without the presence of a female--and propagation of the species, and while WP points out that it's difficult to know if George is really lonely, NPR goes so far as to draw parallels between the cycad and the ents from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

This tendency to anthropomorphize these creatures--living certainly, but not actually possessed of the same kind of emotional parameters as human beings are--is interesting. I think it says a lot about human anxieties regarding not just death in the specific sense, but in the abstract or general senses as well. It's no secret that we all agonize, either seriously or casually, over the great unknowable that is death. What these stories show, however, is that we also worry about the death of our species as a whole as well, and more tellingly about the idea of what it would be like to be the last of our kind.

Popular culture reflects this fear as well: just sit down and watch Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men or any episode of the new series of Doctor Who and you'll see. Indeed, the Doctor Who example is quite pertinent here. In the old series he was estranged from his people, yes, but not cut off from them. In the new series, the pain and loneliness of being the last of one's kind is a dominant and recurring theme of the show.

Perhaps, then, our greatest fear is not death, but rather the prospect of outliving everything that we love.

Linkland.

Liberals in Arizona have started a petition to have Pima County secede from Arizona as a new state. It's unlikely that they'll be successful, although you never know, but at least they're sending the message that Arizona isn't a total wash. I applaud their efforts to get some distance from the crazies.

Ezra Klein on how President Obama, in his recent speech on immigration reform, has approached the problem of immigration as an economic issue.

Jon Steward and the Daily Show find every last bit of footage they can that shows Bush-era politicians arguing that Bush should get the credit for the OBL kill. I've said it before, I'll say it again: if Bush wants credit for OBL he also gets credit for the economic clusterfuck (and he has to admit that said clusterfuck came on the heels of being handed a great economy by President Clinton). Can we get Seal Team Six to take out Karl Rove?

In an effort to save $21 billion, senate democrats are pushing for an end to tax breaks for oil companies. So you can expect gas prices to soar again. The oil companies have figured out how stupid and reactionary Americans are, after all. The rise in gas prices after Obama's unveiling of plans to put together a panel that would investigate fraud amongst energy companies, and the predictable whiny outcry of Americans (with no evidence that they had connected A and B together) in the aftermath, was ample proof of that.

The coming forward of Peace Corps volunteers who have been raped has led to one of the most hypocritical statements I've ever heard. Take it away representative Ted Poe (R-Texas):

"These women are alone in many cases, and they’re in rough parts of the world. We want the United States to rush in and treat them as a victim of crime like they would be treated here at home."

Seriously? I guess Representative Poe has missed all the times when we've treated rape victims like criminals, with shame or censure or further abuse, instead of like the victims they are. (Alaskan rape kits, anyone? Roman FUCKING Polanski petitions?) It's precisely because our society is so deeply permeated by the global rape culture that organizations like Slutwalk Toronto have been started: to deal with the issue of slut-shaming and victim-blaming that is part and parcel of society. Sure, we don't use rape as an instrument of war (against our own people anyway), but we're not a great bastion of fairness and equality, either.

The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at adjuncting as a form of emotional abuse. They compare working for the university system as an adjunct to being in an abusive marriage. Awesome.

Stephen Colbert and his wife have established a grant program for fine arts majors at the University of Virginia. I love Stephen Colbert a little bit more every day.

Musical Interlude: Future Legend

"And in the death,
as the last few corpses
lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare,
the shutters lifted an inch in Temperance Building
high on Poacher's Hill,
and red, mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger City.
No more big wheels.

Fleas the size of rats
sucked on rats the size of cats,
and ten-thousand peoploids split into small tribes,
like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue.
Ripping and rewraping mink and shiny silver fox,
now legwarmers.
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
--any day now.

The year of the Diamond Dogs.

This ain't rock 'n' roll;
this is genocide."

~ David Bowie