Attending a talk on primates while worrying about the WI governor's attack on state employee unions
Friday evening I was torn between watching a Cinematheque showing of a documentary on the Nuremberg trials and attending a talk by a primate researcher. The film was a restoration of a US government documentary made in the 1940s that wasn't allowed to be shown in the US. I figured that I could see it in the future on DVD, so I chose the talk by Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist at Iowa State.[For more info see this article:http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-04/chimps-with-spears/roach-text.html]

The chimpanzees she studies in the savanna-woodlands of Senegal face an environment very different from the chimps in more heavily forested central Africa, such as in the Congo. She got in the news for discovering that the Senegal chimps sometimes sharpen with their teeth the ends of branches to use as spears to kill small monkeys. The chimps poke the spears into the holes of tree trunks where monkeys hide. Before this it was thought that only humans make such a tool.

For my intro soc classes, I sometimes show a Nova documentary on the first day called "The Last Great Ape," which is on bonobos but includes an interesting comparison to chimps. The main point is that bonobos are more empathetic and much less violent than chimps. Some of the proposed causes are genetics, the male dominance in chimp culture versus female dominance of bonobos, the use of sex among bonobos as a calming mechanism, and the competition over resources that chimps face with gorillas north of the Congo River. In the past comparisons of humans with primates would mainly be with chimps, but maybe we can better understand ourselves by also learning more about bonobos.

The lecture was part of an annual Darwin Day conference held at UW around his birthday. Saturday morning was an interesting lecture on how humans have some Neanderthal genes; however, I had to leave early so as to volunteer at a WPR table at the Garden Expo. I like meeting people who want to talk about the network and being able to ask some questions of talkshow host Joy Cardin, who was there for part of my two-hour shift.

The booth next to ours had an improved reel mower by Fiskar. While visiting my grandmother for one summer, I used an old reel mower borrowed from my uncle. I very much liked the lack of noise and gasoline, but sometimes it was hard to cut weeds that had shot up since the last mowing. This one costs about $200. The reviews on Amazon rate it among the best.  As a way to encourage others to replace their power mowers with reel mowers, I tried to mow when traffic was likely to be heavy on 4th Street. Maybe I should also see how well Walmart markets them.

Meanwhile, on Friday Governor Scott Walker announced plans that would greatly damage the state employee unions. (As a state employee, I belong to the part-time teachers union at Madison College.) Some wonder whether this is a bargaining ploy by the governor to get concessions on health insurance and pension contributions in exchange for maintaining our collective bargaining rights. If so, the unions might declare "victory" if his plans are whittled down to what is directly tied to the budget. My hope is that at least some Republican legislators are open to compromise, so I'll probably contact media in other parts of WI. I'm now cooled down enough to write a letter to mail to Walker's office on Monday, and I must try to empathize with his point-of-view to figure out what to say. (Both of my legislators are in our camp.) Given his refusal to consider ideas to compromise on retaining the Madison to Milwaukee passenger rail project, I think that he really does want to follow through on what he sets out to do, that he wants to take a radical course to weaken unions. But my nature generally is to think positively. [For info see NY Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/12unions.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=wisconsin&st=cse ]