Science update - peas feeling pain, ferrets don't like treadmills.

The NYTimes' "Sunday Review" has always offered a weekly cocktail party primer for time-strapped folks looking to veer in unexpected directions. Very much along those lines this week was the article "If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?" Where else can you get a "neurobotany" poke in the ol' brainpan? As a result, I've got my next opener for a back-and-forth with chatty vegans. You might also find it fascinating, if you've ever wondered if vegetables might lean toward being a less-than-willing part of our food chain.

I also noticed some popular press repackaging of a scientific paper I never would have expected. Both the NYTimes (in Gretchen Reynolds' "Phys Ed" column in yesterday's "Science Times") and "The Economist" got all clever with a study focused upon running and the evolving human taste for "endocannabinoids" (science speak for that runner's buzz, oddly akin to what you'd get from toking up). Aside from the obvious switch flipped by the running angle ("Hi, my name is Eric, and I'm an addict..."), the choice of research animals for that study caught my eye. Ferrets. They put goshdarn ferrets on a treadmill - unsuccessfully, believe it or not. Aside from the mind's eye comic payoff, it was one of the few recent examples I've seen of weasels being used in research. Both takes are very much worth a looksie, especially if you get out there running and often wonder why.

Nutria Get a Makeover

A fabulous little artistic surprise showed up in my inbox this morning. A writer friend (Eric Jay Dolin - total pro historian & writer of book-length tales) forwarded the link from the NYTimes because his last book gets featured prominently in the resulting video. The animator/writer of the actual video (Drew Christie - maker of all sorts of amazing creative goodness) lives here in Seattle. The subject of the video is the often maligned nutria. They're tough furry buggers to love. Nutria decimate the vegetation along the shoreline of various bodies of water, leading to erosion and general environmental sadness. So they've had bounties placed on their fugly little heads as an unworthy "invasive species" for years. I've been intrigued for years by the various origin stories of how this South American rat with its distinctive orange teeth ended up scattered all over. The basic rundown (also described by Christie in this animated story from his own family's lore) usually ties in some overly excited agribusiness folks who couldn't handle what they bought. Nutria, as the story goes, enjoyed a period of being touted as the next big thing for furry fashion. Oddly enough, even today's fashion hasn't abandoned the idea of using nutria. In fact, some folks are astonishingly creative when it comes to using them, while trying to rebrand the "use" of nutria as good for the environment. But that's a whole other distillation of the nutria debate featured in this animation. I highly recommend y'all check out Drew Christie's fresh, fantastic video featuring a downright lovable nutria, duly educated by Eric Jay Dolin's book (Fur, Fashion, Empire - W.W. Norton 2010). Kid friendly, to boot.

The biology of stink

Since returning to Seattle, I've been thinking about what makes animals smell anything but sweet. Some recent vet science and associated folksy conversations got that thought bubbling. What really made me take notice was the paired timing of a NYTimes "Science" section piece earlier this week on that particular trait. Given that it's also Groundhog Day, I'm today pondering what makes certain animals so darn, well, funky. I'm sure Punxsatawny Phil has a wholly unnatural grooming regimen given how pristine and camera ready he always appears when hauled from the ceremonial stump in Pennsylvania (in case you missed it, America - 2012 will feature an extra six weeks of this weird year's version of winter). But run across a groundhog in the wild and it would surely give off a bit more than a cutesy pose. I think anyone who's ever crossed or even just considered in passing the skunk has the anecdotal equipment to know how certain animals can really musk it up. I grew up surrounded by - or obliviously steeped in - one such brand of powerful stench. And as any farm kid will tell you, the stink signature of certain animals can be dissected and discerned from a mile away. Much more so if you happen to be driving anywhere through farm country in the middle of summer. It's the chemistry of those individual stink signatures that I'm currently sniffing around. That's what passes for fun 'round these parts.

Keeping an eye on China's "hooligan" artists

One probably inevitable takeaway from my recent trip to China is the desire to know how artists there deal with censorship. Keeping tabs on that could become a full time job. I'm sure there are many, many others doing a much better job at it than I ever could. But as a casual observer with a newly calibrated radar when it comes to China, I'm fascinated by two stories. One ongoing, one recently brought to my attention. Both showed up in the NYTimes yesterday. The ongoing and quite famous one is the struggle of Ai Weiwei - the larger than life multiform artist who's bearing the brunt of the Chinese government's crackdown on expression that runs afoul of their official interests. Weiwei's been jailed, his studios have been raided, and now he's facing a massive tax penalty meant to scare him. Or much worse. The latest update for Weiwei showed how the public is stepping up - often anonymously - to help him pay the $2.4M tax bill that was plopped on him after being released from a murky, intimidating stint in jail. New developments seem to come every day with regard to Weiwei's plight. Reporting on him is a cottage industry for journalists and activists world wide. But the other piece on yesterday's front page really peeled back the layers on what writers confront when they try to write original work in China. If you're even slightly interested in the massive expansion of publishing in China, this piece is an introduction with more context than I've seen on this subject. The writer Murong Xuecun sounds like a old school Beat writer with huge, ultra-modern exposure. He's swimming against a current that we can't even imagine here. Utterly amazing reporting. A must read for anyone who ever hopes to sell a single copy of any book in China. Myself included.