"An unscientific bias against 'feral' or 'invasive' animals threatens to undercut one of the great stabilizing trends making ecosystems healthier...."

"Introduced species such as feral pigs, horses, donkeys and camels represent a powerful force of 'rewilding' — the reintroduction of wild animals into ecosystems where humans had eradicated them — according to a study published Thursday in Science."

The Hill reports, in "Feral pigs and donkeys may be more salvation than scourge for ecosystems, study finds."

“One way to talk about this is: whether a visitor from outer space, who didn’t know the history, could tell what megafauna are native or introduced based solely on their effects,” said Erick Lundgren, a doctoral student in biology at Arizona State University.... In the case of big animals... if our alien visitor couldn’t tell the difference, Lundgren said, “then nativeness isn’t actually a helpful way to understand how ecosystems work.”...

"We didn't know exactly how big he is. Pot-bellied pigs are more of a common pet so we thought maybe that's what we are looking for. Turns out Fred is not a pot-bellied pig."

Said an officer with Aurora, Colorado Animal Services, quoted "Fred the pig caught after mischief rampage" (BBC).

The pig — probably bought as a "miniature" or "teacup" pig when it was really just a baby pig — is 400 pounds or so.

I've got exactly 2 TikToks to show you tonight.

1. "The Lord... maketh me to lie down in green pastures," it says in Psalm 23, but is it really a good idea to lie down in a pasture? I see a problem (or 2). But this lady lies down. She's got her idea. She wants to see what animal comes to her first.

2. Thoreau wrote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." And here is that man, God bless him.

"Justice Kagan... suggested we could be headed toward a future where blue states forbid the sale of goods produced by non-union labor..."

"... while red states respond with their own laws forbidding the sale of goods that are made by unionized workers. Justice Amy Coney Barrett worried about states prohibiting the sale of goods produced by unvaccinated workers; or by employers who won’t pay for gender-affirming surgery for transgender employees. Justice Brett Kavanaugh imagined a red state that bans the sale of fruit picked by undocumented immigrants. Their point was that, if California is allowed to effectively decide how pig farms will be run in all 50 states, that could permit... 'economic Balkanization'... Every state could start using their own laws to impose their will on their neighbors. And manufacturers might have to choose between selling their products in California (and complying with California's left-leaning rules) or selling their products in Texas (and aligning with Texas’s conservative values). But none of the justices seemed sure where to draw the line to prevent this kind of dystopia from emerging, while also permitting states to enact the kind of ordinary economic regulations that have existed for many years."

From "High-stakes case about pigs/National Pork Producers v. Ross presents difficult questions about when one state’s laws can impact life in other states" (Vox).

The case is about a California law banning the sale in California of pork from pigs not raised according to California standards. The constitutional law in question is the "dormant" Commerce Clause doctrine — the idea that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce implies a loss of power to the state to engage in regulation that would damage interstate commerce.

You can listen to the lively oral argument here.

ADDED: This is good, from Justice Gorsuch (transcript):

[W]hy isn't [the Pike balancing test] just a form of enshrining non-textual economic liberties  into the Constitution... a project this Court disavowed a long time ago? We're going to have to balance your veterinary experts against California's veterinary experts, the economic interests of Iowa farmers against California's moral concerns and their views about complicity in animal cruelty. Is that any job for a court of law? I mean, the Commerce Clause, after all, is in Article I, which would allow Congress to resolve any of these questions.

"A sign at a playground in Moraga, a 35-minute drive from San Francisco, advises parents that rattlesnakes are 'important members of the natural community' and to give the snakes 'respect.'"

"Across the Bay in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, an animal shelter has rescued a family of skunks from a construction hole, a chameleon from power lines and nursed back to health 100 baby squirrels that tumbled out of their nests after their trees got trimmed. With the exception of the occasional aggressive coyote, the animals that roam the hills and gullies of the Bay Area — turkeys, mountain lions, deer, bobcats, foxes and the rest of a veritable Noah’s Ark — find themselves on somewhat laissez-faire terms with the humans around them. Not so for the rampaging feral pigs...."

From "The Rampaging Pigs of the San Francisco Bay Area/A proposed California law would make it easier to hunt feral swine, the voracious “super invaders” that are the bane of some East Bay suburbs" (NYT).

"It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice."

Said the man with the pig's heart, quoted in "In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig/The breakthrough may lead one day to new supplies of animal organs for transplant into human patients" (NYT).

I wonder why they finally got around to doing this. I've heard about it for decades.

The doctor said: "It creates the pulse, it creates the pressure, it is his heart. It’s working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before.... The anatomy was a little squirrelly, and we had a few moments of ‘uh-oh’ and had to do some clever plastic surgery to make everything fit."

The pig anatomy was squirrelly. 

"In Italy’s rural areas, hunting wild boar is a popular sport and most Italians can offer a long list of their favorite wild boar dishes, including pappardelle pasta with boar sauce..."

"... and wild boar stew. But animal rights groups have been adamantly opposed to mass culling. Those beliefs are not shared by some urban residents. 'I am afraid of walking on the sidewalk, because on one side there are the dumpsters for the rubbish and they (the boars) jump on me,' said Grazia, a 79-year-old grandmother.... 'We have been invaded here,' lamented Pino Consolati, who runs a restaurant on a busy street corner in Rome's Monte Mario neighborhood.... One day this week, he said, his sister found 30 boars outside her shoe store when she left at 8 p.m."

 
From "Basta! Romans say enough to invasion of wild boars in city/Rome has been invaded by Gauls, Visigoths and vandals over the centuries, but the Eternal City is now grappling with a rampaging force of an entirely different sort: rubbish-seeking wild boars" (ABC News).

Are you one of the thousands of Americans who are thinking "Ningbo?!! Never heard of it!" this morning?

It's a city of almost 10 million people. Don't you think it's odd that there are cities on this earth that large that you have never heard of, whose names sound like sheer nonsense? 

The first character in the city's name ning (宁 or 寧) means "serene", while its second character bo (波) translates to "wave"... It was once named Mingzhou (明州; Míngzhōu). The first character (明) is composed of two parts, representing two lakes inside the city wall: the Sun Lake (日湖) and the Moon Lake (月湖) dating back to Tang Dynasty 636 AD. Today, only the Moon Lake remains, and the old Sun Lake dried up in 19 century...

Ningbo is one of China's oldest cities, with a history dating to the Jingtou Mountain Culture in 6300 BC and Hemudu culture in 4800 BC. Ningbo was known as a trade city on the silk road at least two thousand years ago, and then as a major port for foreign trade along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou in the Tang Dynasty, and Quanzhou and Guangzhou in the Sung dynasty.

If you don't know why Ningbo is nagging at us this morning....

"The boars snooze in people’s paddling pools. They snuffle across the lawns. They kick residents’ soccer balls and play with their dogs.

"They saunter down the sidewalks and sleep in the streets. Some eat from the hands of humans, and they all eat from the trash.... 'It became like an everyday thing,' said Eugene Notkov, 35, a chef who lets his dog play with the boars that putter around the local parks. 'They’re a part of our city'.... Bumping into one is 'like seeing a squirrel.'...'I wish we could all in Israel learn to live like they live in Haifa,' said Edna Gorney, a poet, ecologist and lecturer at the University of Haifa. 'It’s an example of coexistence — not only between Arabs and Jews, but also between humans and wildlife.'... 'They are controlling the streets now,' said Assaf Schechter, 43, a port worker confronted recently by a boar on his porch. 'It’s a very crazy situation.'... 'At night, I would go out, after a drink, and recycle the beer,' Professor Malkinson said. 'It’s two for the price of one — you fertilize the trees and you try to deter the wild boars... Essentially the conflict is between those who oppose having wild boars in the city and those who don’t... It’s not an ecological problem... It’s a social problem.'"

From "Where Boars Hog the Streets Groups of boars have become an unavoidable presence in Haifa/Some human residents are charmed, but others are annoyed or frightened and now carry sticks on walks" (NYT) 

To comment, email me here.

FROM THE EMAIL: Temujin writes: 

"Two boats are sinking and you can save only one. One holds two dogs, the other a person. Which do you save? If you’re not sure, you can say, 'I can’t decide.'"

"When I put this to my 11-year-old, his response was immediate: “Save the dogs!” In his defence, he has grown up with a pet dog, which he adores — and, according to a new study in Psychological Science, most other kids would say the same thing.... Indeed, when the team put similar questions (varying the numbers of dogs, pigs and people) to adult participants, 61% opted to save one human over 100 dogs... and 85% of people prioritised one human over one dog, while 93% opted to save a human rather than a single pig.... When the team asked 249 kids aged between five and nine about what they thought, though, they found that just over 70% opted to let a person die to save 100 dogs. When it came to one human vs one dog, only about a third of the children opted to save the person, 28% were clear on going for the dog, and the rest couldn’t decide. When pigs, rather than dogs, were pitted against people... only 57% prioritised one human over one pig, and 18% reported that they’d save the pig. The child’s age had no impact — the 9-year-olds made the same judgements as the 5-year-olds." 

From "Children Are Much Less Likely Than Adults To Prioritise Human Over Animal Lives" (Research Digest).

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland said:

Dumb survey. Try thinking just a little bit like a child. You, a 5 to 9 (maybe 11) age kid, small, unsure around people, comfortable around pets that are typically your size or smaller; have to save a person (in their head one of those bigger people like a parent or teacher) or a dog (something your used to handling) in dangerous water. Simple self-preservation says they'll pick the object they can handle.

Yes, and you might think the human being might have a chance of figuring out on his own what to do, and, after all, he did, in all likelihood, choose to go out on a boat. The dog didn't take the boat out on its own, but has been put in a confusing situation by a human being and may therefore seem to deserve human intervention. 

Object lesson.

I've always hesitated to use the phrase "object lesson." I do use it, and I want to be able to use it, but it nags at me that I might not use it correctly. This morning in a post that was to some extent about misreading, somebody misunderstood me, and I wanted to thank him for the "object lesson." 

Because I took the trouble to research the phrase, I ended up writing "Thanks for providing such a striking example of the problem." Not that I figured out it would be wrong to say "Thanks for the object lesson," but just that I wanted out of that comments thread and into a separate post about the meaning of "object lesson," which explains to me why I'd always felt uneasy about using it. That is, I'd learned it from hearing others use it, but I wasn't convinced they were using it properly. 

Here's an example of the way other people use the term. This is Paul Krugman in a NYT column from January 4th: "The past two months have... been an object lesson in the extent to which 'grass roots' anger is actually being orchestrated from the top." And here's the NYT Editorial Board, from early December: "[T]he painfully slow pace of recovery following the last recession provided an object lesson in the limits of relying on low interest rates." 

See how flabby that is?! It's an object lesson in... flabbiness! 

Now, check out the Wikipedia article "Object Lesson." Historically, "object lesson" is something crisply specific: 

"What do you do when the masses of minks that you hastily killed and buried because of covid-19 fears start rising up from the grave?..."

"The government had admitted that at least some of the minks killed improperly were also buried improperly. Two gravesites in Jutland, Denmark’s northern region and the home to most of its mink farm industry, have become points of concerns over risks that the decomposing animals could affect nearby water. Some dead minks have surfaced because the top soil above them was not heavy enough. The Danish press dubbed them 'Zombiemink.'... On Thursday, the Danish prime minister [Mette Frederikson] visited mink breeder Peter Hindbo at his now-empty mink farm near the city of Kolding. As she spoke to reporters at the farm, her voice wavered, and she fought back tears as she described the impact she had seen. Frederiksen said that the family of mink farmers had 'their life’s work shattered' in a very short period of time. 'It has been emotional for them, and … Sorry. It has for me too,' she told reporters." 

From "Danish government may exhume hundreds of thousands of dead minks and burn them" (WaPo).

Burying minks "improperly";

MEAWHILE: "Parliamentarians in Taiwan have thrown pig guts at each other before coming to blows over plans to allow US meat imports" (Guardian):

"Some farmers are injecting pregnant sows to cause abortions. Others are forced to euthanize their animals..."

"... often by gassing or shooting them. It’s gotten bad enough that Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has asked the Trump administration to provide mental health resources to hog farmers. Despite this grisly reality — and the widely reported effects of the factory-farm industry on America’s lands, communities, animals and human health long before this pandemic hit — only around half of Americans say they are trying to reduce their meat consumption. Meat is embedded in our culture and personal histories in ways that matter too much, from the Thanksgiving turkey to the ballpark hot dog. Meat comes with uniquely wonderful smells and tastes, with satisfactions that can almost feel like home itself. And what, if not the feeling of home, is essential? And yet, an increasing number of people sense the inevitability of impending change....  One of the unexpected side effects of these months of sheltering in place is that it’s hard not to think about the things that are essential to who we are.... We cannot protect against pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly. Much attention has been paid to wet markets, but factory farms, specifically poultry farms, are a more important breeding ground for pandemics. Further, the C.D.C. reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — the result of our broken relationship with animals.... As in a dream where our homes have rooms unknown to our waking selves, we can sense there is a better way of eating, a life closer to our values."

Writes the acclaimed novelist Jonathan Safran Foer in "The End of Meat Is Here/If you care about the working poor, about racial justice, and about climate change, you have to stop eating animals" (NYT). He also does non-fiction with "Eating Animals" (2009) and "We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast" (2019). From his Wikipedia article:

Foer was a "flamboyant" and sensitive child who, at the age of 8, was injured in a classroom chemical accident that resulted in "something like a nervous breakdown drawn out over about three years," during which "he wanted nothing, except to be outside his own skin."... He has been an occasional vegetarian since the age of 10... In his childhood, teen, and college years, he called himself vegetarian but still often ate meat....

I thought that meat-as-home image was interesting. Meat almost feels like home, but you know those dreams where you find other rooms in your house? In your home that smells of meat, there's another room, and it has no meat in it, you've seen it in your dreams, and you can find it in real life. Or something. It's a bit cornball, and the references to "home" are at the beginning and the end — much farther apart in the actual article that in my snippet above — so it would be easy to miss.

Something else that caught my eye: At one point, he says: "These are not my or anyone’s opinions, despite a tendency to publish this information in opinion sections. And the answers to the most common responses raised by any serious questioning of animal agriculture aren’t opinions." There's something dictatorial in that: This isn't opinion, this is truth. Ironically, that makes him sound more opinionated. It yells: I am a polemicist, an ideologue.

I can appreciate a good polemic, and Foer seems to be striving to be a first-rate polemicist. I suspect that his great success as a novelist makes him think that if he does polemics he'll trounce the other writers. This didn't work on me, though. Who exactly is supposed to be horrified by pigs getting abortions and euthanasia? People who support abortions and euthanasia for human beings? People who accept that pigs are raised for slaughter, want to eat meat, but are morally opposed to abortions and euthanasia for human beings? If it's just people who feel sorry for the farmers who won't make the money they'd planned to make from their hogs because of the pandemic, that has nothing to do with the inevitability of an impending transition to vegetarianism.

AND: Senator Grassley has been advocating for mental health resources for farmers since long before the current pandemic. See "Grassley Signs Onto Bipartisan Ernst Legislation to Provide Mental Health Support to Agricultural Communities" (press release from Grassley, May 24, 2018)("("[O]ur farmers and agricultural workers experience disproportionately high levels of suicide... 'We must do more to ensure those who work tirelessly from sunrise to sundown to feed and fuel our world have access to the mental health resources and supports they need'")).

"[Trump] has managed in this crisis to tell us both that he is all-powerful and that he takes no responsibility for anything."

"And I suspect that this creepy vaudeville act, in a worried and tense country, is beginning to wear real thin. A man who claims total power but only exercises it to protect his personal interests, a man who vaunts his own authority but tolerates no accountability for it, is impressing no one. While governors are acting, Trump is chattering. While people are dying, Trump is bragging about his own ratings, signing his name on stimulus checks, pushing quack remedies, and abetting conspiracy theories about Chinese laboratories. And although there is a rump group of supporters who will follow Trump anywhere and may launch tea party–style protests against social distancing on his behalf, I suspect this fundamental unseriousness after responding to the virus so late is finally taking its toll. The emergency I feared Trump could leverage to untrammeled power may, in fact, be the single clearest demonstration of his incompetence and irrelevance. Combine this with a calamitous depression and I’m beginning to wonder if it matters that Biden is the Abraham Simpson of American politics. Maybe Biden doesn’t need to win this thing. Maybe Trump could lose it all by himself."

That's the Andrew Sullivan perspective (from this week's NY Magazine column).

I wondered — because I'm always looking for the exit door — whether there really ever were vaudeville acts that could be called "creepy." The internet quickly served up "The Dancing Pig" (from 1907):



I laughed and even squealed at one point (toward the end, so watch the whole thing).

Here's how I summarize the story in that vaudeville video: If a male chauvinist pig would just become a woman and dance, we could all be happy — maybe too happy.

Oh, I went back in the door. I read the quoted Sullivan passage carefully. I said out loud "Who's Abraham Simpson?" I thought it was some English reference I needed to research — someone in the orbit of Wallis Simpson perhaps — familiar to Andrew Sullivan but out of the range of things I've ever been interested in. I resorted to the intent again. D'oh! It's Grampa Simpson from "The Simpsons." Sullivan seems to just be conceding that Joe Biden is a mentally impaired senior.

"It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would."

"It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology."

Tweeted Richard Dawkins at 1:26 a.m., and I think that's why "eugenics" is trending on Twitter this morning. He followed up, an hour ago, with this: "For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it."

Here's #eugenics — in case you want to see what people are saying right now. It's a slog to get through all the many people who are saying I see eugenics is trending. I'll just cherry-pick some good substantive stuff (which sounds kind of eugenics-y!):

"The thing about people who believe in eugenics is that they always believe themselves to be the superior kind of human. No-one ever thinks that it could make *people like them* obsolete..." (Joanne Harris).

"I mean, the biggest problem with Richard Dawkins take on eugenics is that he'd probably consider his own traits to be superior and then the world would be full of insufferable assholes" (Nick Jack Pappas).

"While Richard Dawkins is a noted biologist, his science on eugenics is bad. We turned magnificent wolves into pure breed dogs with severe genetic defects causing joint and heart problems and cancer. In fact, many Cavalier spaniels develop mitral valve and neurological disorders"/"Eugenics does not create superior species. We turned mighty buffalo herds roaming the plains into factory farmed cows, the independent stallion into the pony, and the wild boar into the pig. We weaken the gene pool selecting for traits desirable for us but not for the subject" (Eugene Gu MD).

"All of Dawkins’ tweets make more sense if you add '... Mr Bond' at the end of them" (Ned Hartley).

"'It was on brand in the sense that Trump allowed his inner showman to make this a spectacle rather than a solemn moment of acknowledgment and a reflection — the way President Obama did'..."

"... said Ned Price, a CIA officer at the time of bin Laden’s death who later served as a spokesman for the National Security Council under Obama.... Obama spoke of the anguish of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, emphasized the nation’s resolve in recovering, and praised the skill of the intelligence experts who tracked bin Laden down and the courage of the Special Forces who killed him. He also took a measure of credit. 'I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice,' said a president who was routinely assailed by Republicans as weak and feckless on foreign affairs. He took no questions from reporters. By contrast, the Trump show on Baghdadi started with a tweet. 'Something very big has just happened!' the president posted on social media Saturday evening, and the White House media office quickly announced that Trump would make a 'major announcement' — 11 hours later at 9 a.m. Sunday. Critics speculated that the president was eager to upstage the Sunday morning political talk shows in a bid to drown out coverage of the House Democrats’ impeachment effort against him...."

From "In creating spectacle around Baghdadi’s death, Trump departs from Obama’s more measured tone on bin Laden" (WaPo).

In so many ways, Trump is not like Obama. But I presume that each man — on the success of a raid that killed a feared terrorist enemy — made a public display that he believed would advance American military interests and his own political interests. Obama chose to be circumspect and conventionally presidential. After hearing Trump, who was vividly emotional, I relistened to Obama's announcement, and I was struck by the restraint — the blandness. There was nothing about how bin Laden looked or acted as he faced his death. Obama seemed to want to inspire confidence that everything was done with precise correctness. Trump seemed to want us to experience the righteous anger and the vengeance and contempt. These are radically different choices from 2 very different men.

Remember that the Obama administration made a point of communicating with the world about the respectful treatment of bin Laden's corpse:

"Traditional procedures for Islamic burial was followed... The deceased's body was washed (ablution) then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag. A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased's body slid into the sea.''

And remember that Trump has openly talked about treating the enemy's bodies with outrageous disrespect:

"Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!," he tweeted. That was after "The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you!"...

"They were having terrorism problems [in the Philippines], just like we do," Trump said, according to a February 2016 account in the Washington Post. "And he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem. Okay? Twenty-five years, there wasn’t a problem."

That's quoted in a blog post of mine in August 2017. I commented:

[Trump] thinks its a good idea to let radical Muslim terrorists know we might mess with their dead bodies in a way that he (presumably) thinks they think will wreck their afterlife. He might think that threat will influence the terrorists, but not necessarily. He might just think that he had a cheeky tweet to entertain his fans and confound his MSM antagonists. 

The "30-50 feral hogs" guy.

Legit question for rural Americans - How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?

— William McNabb (@WillieMcNabb) August 4, 2019

Via "The '30–50 Feral Hogs' Guy Actually Had a Point" (Slate).

The tweet was an immediate sensation. Someone made a video game (“Protect your 2 children from 30-50 feral hogs within a 3-5 mins time limit“), Slate published a feral hog–themed riff on a classic short story, and feral hogs trended on Twitter. The tweet was wonderfully specific, and the image it conjured was absurd on its face. Making feral hog jokes became a welcome respite from days of mourning mass shootings and arguing about their causes online.

But there was one question that few people thought to ask: What if feral hog guy was right?...

If you too enjoyed the "wonderfully specific" writing of William McNabb, let me recommend the subreddit r/suspiciouslyspecific.

"Why would I want to have all these hours of tattoo work put into my body for me to be buried with them?"

Said Chris Wentzel, whose tattooed skin was peeled off his body after he died and is now preserved and displayed in a frame. Photograph of the eternal artwork at "Preserving a loved one's tattoos after death" (BBC). There's a company — Save My Ink Forever — that specializes in this craft. It was started by a father and son who were already in the funeral business.

"People put urns on their mantle and to me, my tattoos are more meaningful than an urn on the mantle," says [the son]. "It's an actual piece of a person that symbolises something."...

"When my husband passed away, half of me passed away with him," [Wentzel's widow] says. "I didn't know what to do. I just knew he wanted this preservation done. I had to set aside my own emotion to get this part done."

Ms Wenzel chose the pieces to be preserved - two full sleeve tattoos including the top of Chris' hands, his throat and chest piece, his full back piece, two thigh pieces and calf piece. It was the largest tattoo preservation the Sherwoods had done....

I haven't mentioned this in a long time, but for many years, I maintained the opinion that the best blog post I ever wrote was "Tattoos remind you of death," written in 2005. It was about a Belgian artist, Wim Delvoye, who had a place in China called Art Farm, where pigs were raised and tattooed. When the pigs eventually died — we're told they got to live until they died of natural causes — their skins were removed and turned into wall art.

The quote from Delvoye was: "The Art Farm is a real enterprise and by selling, eventually, the skins, the whole thing gets financed and I can go on... Tattoos remind you of death. It's leaving something permanent on something non-permanent.... Even when tattooing flowers, there is a morbid side to the activity."

From my post:

I agree: tattoos do remind you of death. When I see someone with a tattoo, I usually think: you're going to have that as part of your body until the day you die. And then you're going to have that on your body in your grave. You and that tattoo are in a death grip....

[T]here's the question whether we're outraged about the use of pigs or about going to rural China to do the project. And if we're outraged about both, which is worse? Maybe it's kind of a positive thing, though, both for the pigs and the villagers.

Surely, the villagers must be getting some laughs -- perhaps at the expense of Westerners generally. Maybe we Westerners should be irked that some egoistic artist is making us look ridiculous.

For the pigs, it's a nice life. They get to take sedatives, so they probably enjoy the tattooing experience. Then, they are "raised carefully" until they die a natural death. Think of the pig alternatives. These pigs are living like kings!

And what of the rich folk with tattooed pig skins hanging on their walls? I think the final artwork might look quite nice, and they're not exploiting poor Chinese any more than you are when you buy cheap leather shoes made in China. In fact, it's less exploitative, and the Chinese are learning tattooing skills. Maybe they will emigrate here and tattoo your ass for you as a memento mori.

What was good for the pigs is good for the humans. Why call it a "sleeve tattoo" if you don't envision slipping it off like a shirt?

"In other words, Lillico and his fellow researchers are putting alpha male sperm into beta male balls, so the big guys don’t have to do the work."

From "The Ham-maid's Tale: Swines, Sows and Sex in the CRISPR Age" (Wired).

The method is a marked improvement on the current, human facilitated (yes, really) way of breeding pigs, which usually involves a mountable bench, female pig pheromones and a glove. They don’t call them farmhands for nothing, you know… While this technique has produced results in the past, thanks to its clumsy and time-consuming nature, desirable traits don’t manifest for decades.

[Dr Simon Lillico, Core Scientist at The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh] and his international colleagues are looking to vastly reduce that time with their more scientific method – one that depends upon one of the great genetic advancements of the last decade: CRISPR.

"Across the country, wild boars are moving in as Japan’s rapidly aging population either moves out or dies out."

"The boars come for the untended rice paddies and stay for the abandoned shelters.... Farmers are dying and there is no one to take over their land. Take Sugawa and Chiba: They both have sons but they’re salarymen in the city with no interest in a hard life tending fields and fending off animals heavier than themselves.... With reports of boars rampaging through the ghost-towns around the Fukushima plant, some people worry if the animals might now be becoming radioactive.... To cull the wild boars, farmers need to obtain not just a gun license — an exhaustive process that involves medical certificates and gun storage inspections by the local police — but also a special license to lay traps. This involves intensive study for a written test...."

From "Japanese towns struggle to deal with an influx of new arrivals: wild boars" (WaPo).

If only they had a tradition of gun rights and immigration...