The Year of the Monkey

I know very little about the Chinese Zodiac sign but this I know – I was born on the Year of the Dog and 2016 is the Year of the Monkey. (They happen to be my two favorite animals).  I was at a local Chinese grocery store early this year on the eve of Super Bowl 2016, which also happened to precede the Chinese New Year.  I just had two packets of frozen banana leaves and a couple of cans of coconut milk for a cassava dessert I was going to make for the Super Bowl party we were hosting at home.  The “10 items or fewer” checkout was lined with people snaking all the way from the produce section. I am recalling this episode now because we’re halfway through 2016 and I am somewhat alarmed at what is going on around the world.

Striking up a conversation while waiting, I asked the guy in front of me, who was Chinese, about the coming Chinese New Year.  As is known, the Chinese Zodiac sign has a year’s worth of portent as opposed to the daily or monthly presages of the western horoscopy.  While I am not one to subscribe to the predestined path that is determined by an animal attached to each year of the 12-year cycle, I asked him what he thought the New Year had in store. He told me that the Year of the Monkey is often a harbinger of bad omen.  Another Chinese at the 24-Hour Fitness that I happened to chat with a few days later also said the same thing.  According to her, what came to mind was the recent earthquake that devastated Taiwan, where she’s from, and the economic travails that ail China today etc.  “What does that say about the upcoming U.S. election?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulder and that was about the extent of her response. How about the zika virus outbreak in South America and the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro?  Then, we hear the drop in oil prices that most thought was a good thing is partly to blame for much of the trouble in the global economy.  So, what is going on?

Buried in the middle section of newspapers and as an aside in a radio broadcast I noticed stories that animal rights activists have taken up recently as their current cause celeb.  It is about macaque monkeys employed as forced labor in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia as coconut gatherers.  I read that chances are 95% of the coconut milk at any grocery store comes from coconuts gathered by these hapless primates that more than having opposable thumbs like we have, they can do with their feet what we can’t with ours – they have opposable toes equally adept at grabbing things.  It got my attention because I am a regular buyer of coconut milk.  A quick search produced a good number of YouTube videos showing exactly how the monkeys are trained to do their human masters’ bidding of gathering coconuts. Below are the links to those videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gWEsNL-RJc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf8mbxR2LQM

The videos are meant to be both informative and amusing (although perhaps not to the animal rights folks) and one cannot help but be awed by how well the monkeys do the job.  In some places tourists pay good money to watch them in action. There are all kinds of statistics on their productivity as I came to find out but what is certain is that the monkeys are far more proficient by as much as ten to one better than the human gatherer for the same amount of time working the coconut groves.  Then there is the fact that the monkeys do not need very much by way of compensation; they are not known to complain or threaten to form a union; their housing accommodations are very minimal, to say the least; and they certainly cannot sue or file for grievance.  I read too that monkeys engaged as coconut gatherers live much longer than their counterparts in the wild.  It too is true though that only young macaques that exhibit traits of promise go on to become professional gatherers, so to speak, while less talented ones are sold as pets.

But there is a dark side, according to animal rights activists.

Much had already been said of the inhumane treatment of monkeys at medical and scientific laboratory test facilities.  The pharmaceutical industry is a constant target of activists.  Using them for forced labor might seem ethically benign and certainly a lot less stressful to the collective conscience of the general public but the activists feel very strongly against the whole idea of forcing an animal that has 98% of our DNA to work against its will.  The activists complain too about elephant labor and how some beasts of burden are treated: water buffalo tilling farmlands in Asia; pack animals like Mongolian yaks and reindeer, etc.  I have not heard much complaint about eagles that are trained by Mongolians to hunt prey animals and what about falconry? They all fall within the exploitation of animals for the benefit of humans.  As a side note, let me mention that the domestication of the horse is credited with advances in agriculture and transportation and more importantly the rapid exploration of the open lands and spread of civilization in pre-mechanized era. But I digressed.

The year of the monkey, is a harbinger of bad things?  The ancient Greeks used to describe the basic elements as Earth, Water, Air and Fire.  A Chicago rock band named itself, “Earth, Wind and Fire”, and they indeed played in a Greek theater sometime in 2004.  I really don’t know where I was going with that one but I thought I’d mention it, if only to say that whoever of the band members who came up with the name knew his ancient Greek history.  I digressed again.

I learned that the Chinese version of the basic elements include Metal, which makes it one more than what the Greeks had. Their five are Metal, Water, Wind, Fire and Earth.  What then does the Year of the Monkey bring to world events?

 “According to Chinese Five Elements Horoscopes, Monkey contains Metal and Water. Metal is connected to gold. Water is connected to wisdom and danger. Therefore, we will deal with more financial events in the year of the Monkey. Monkey is a smart, naughty, wily and vigilant animal. If you want to have good return for your money investment, then you need to outsmart the Monkey. Metal is also connected to the Wind. That implies the status of events will be changing very quickly. Think twice before you leap when making changes for your finance, career, business relationship and people relationship.”

So, based on my limited conversation on the subject which I mentioned earlier with the couple of folks who seemed to know, the referendum result in England to leave the EU adds to the ominous portent that can befall the world. Should we worry?

Let’s see, the last time it was the Year of the Monkey was 2004.  I already mentioned that the rock band, Earth, Wind & Fire, played in Greece that year.  Bill Clinton had a heart bypass surgery and it was a success.  A 97 year old woman was found alive in the aftermath of an earthquake in Iran and five days later a man was also found alive from the same quake.  Those were the good news. But there were a number of disasters, not the least of which was the earthquake in Indonesia that produced one of the worst tsunamis the world had witnessed in modern history.  It devastated long coastlines around the area, including the beach resort area in Thailand.  The total death toll from the affected areas around the Indian Ocean exceeded 200,000!  That happened right at the last days of the year.

244 pilgrims died from the Hajj stampede in Saudi Arabia, an earthquake in Morocco killed 300 people, over 1,000 people died when hurricane Jeanne hit Haiti, there were plane crashes and supermarket fires, etc.  2004 had its share of disasters.  We should really worry about this Year of the Monkey, shouldn’t we? 

However, we should keep in mind though that WWI, WWII and the 1929 Stock Market Crash that brought the Great Depression did not begin or occur in the years of the Monkey.  In fact, we can say that each year of the modern world has had its share of catastrophic events – natural and man-caused.

Let me digress for a bit again.  What I would like to know is what year was it when the Mount Everest-size asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico sixty seven million years ago.  Oh, but wait, there was no calendar then yet, no Chinese calendar, for certain.  But, can we extrapolate?  No, that’s too much work, of course. It was a really bad year for the dinosaurs. It had to have been the most devastating experience in climate change the world had ever seen, through the eyes of the then dominant species on earth. Their extinction began soon after that, after over 160 million years of raw dominion over all living things.  But it was great news for the tiny mammals which up to that point in time occupied a very insignificant niche in a landscape dominated by giant creatures. Those mammals subsisted mainly on insects or vegetation on forest floors and crevices and it was likely that their activities were limited at nightfall. Fast forward to many millions of years later and here we are – the most able descendants of those mammals that were no bigger than today’s squirrels.  Smaller dinosaurs did survive and we still see them today as lizards, iguanas and alligators but others even had loftier ambitions, not content with just climbing the evolutionary ladder, they flew off the ground: today’s birds! 

The Yucatan asteroid impact may have put an end to the rule of the mighty dinosaurs but you will not be reading about this had the evolutionary road remained unchanged. From those early mammal ancestors arose the general branch of species called primates – lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, apes and us, humans. Let us be clear about this.  We, humans, did not come from monkeys or apes. Consider primates as a big branch that split into prosimians (where lemurs belong) and simians; the latter is split into apes, monkeys and hominids (where modern humans developed from).  While primates are generally defined to have relatively larger brains (brain size relative to body weight) than all other mammals, humans dominate that category.  That is why, except for Antarctica, humans inhabit all corners of the world while the other primates are mostly concentrated in tropical environments.

Where am I going with this?  We share 50% of our DNA with a banana but 98 % of our DNA is shared with monkeys and apes (which, by the way, include gorillas and orangutans).  Animal testing and research are what they are.  Inhumane, we are told by animal rights groups, but should it be less inhumane if we applied the tests directly into human subjects from the get go?  In the last five years alone 10 Nobel Prizes for medicine were awarded to researchers and scientists whose contribution to medicine were formulated from laboratory testing on animals that ranged from mice, frogs, rabbits, dogs and cattle and yes, monkeys.  In the past, small pox vaccines were developed using cows, but polio and rubella vaccines, and most notably advances in AIDS medication, just to name a few, came from research and experiments using monkeys. By the way, advances in veterinary medicine were developed out of research and experiments using animals.  A couple of days ago Perdue, a huge producer of poultry meat, announced that it is reforming its animal welfare policies.  Animal rights activists were largely responsible for this and many other improvements in the treatment of animals.

Among other traits that separate humans from animals are our capacity for compassion and it is because of that unique characteristic that voices from animal rights groups and animal ethicists are being heard. This has brought about humane treatment of animals in laboratories and food production (meat and poultry), farming, hunting and entertainment.  The death of a zoo gorilla had, in fact, gotten more sustained coverage than dozens of human deaths that occur every day on the streets of Chicago, Detroit, Sao Paolo or Fallujah.

After what had gone on during the first half, should we be worrying too much about the remaining half of the year?  Even as I declare that I am not putting too much stock on the symbolic significance of the animal-related-12 year-cycle of Sheng Xiao, here I am with a discombobulated musing on the Year of the Monkey.  All we can hope for is that the world’s leaders, soon to be chosen ones here and everywhere else, pick cleverness and smarts of the Monkey and not the mischief and bad portents it is associated with.  Didn’t I just say I don’t put much stock into it?  Oh, well, I am hedging my bets. 

   

There was a Book Sale …

It had been awhile since I last visited our local library, which had been closed for renovation although I had already cut down my trips there even before the work had begun.  I still read and my use of the library has not diminished.  What changed was that I serendipitously discovered e-books.  The county library, steeped in the tradition of brick and mortar, took some time to embrace the electronic medium of acquiring and lending books.  I’m sure budgetary considerations were a factor and the median age of its users – a good number of whom, like me, couldn’t let go of the old traditional way of reading where one actually has to flip pages and use book marks.  Apparently, e-books were not a priority for the library system and its patrons, I suppose.

Earlier, kindle and tablets to me, for a very long time, meant fire starter and headache pills.  Then I heard of a much acclaimed book - “The Martian” - that was made into a movie - which the author published online for free.  So, I said to myself, “I better hitch on to this e-book reading thing”, if I wanted to read it.  Just then the local library opened their electronic bookshelves, not with too much fanfare because until I inquired at the front desk I never heard of it. So, I signed in and voila I was connected to the ether world of bibliotheca from the cloud.

What brought me to the library this time, after it had just recently re-opened, was to sort of circumvent the system.  I had checked out an e-book, “The Girl on the Train”, but failed to finish it within the 14-day period as my schedule got hectic by a short out-of-town trip and some wood working projects that needed to be finished.  It is a popular book so there was no renewal to accommodate the long waiting list.  I hedged my bet by reserving a hard copy as well several days earlier when I knew I couldn’t finish the e-book.

Last Saturday the library pinged my phone of my good fortune that the hard copy book was ready for checkout.  So I got in my car to make the four mile trip.  The parking lot was packed! There was a book sale.  I thought I’d saunter in to the hall where the book sale was humming with book mongers and bargain hunters before proceeding to the main lobby counter to pick up the book.

There they were – books past their utility to entertain, or had overstayed their welcome at their owner’s tightly packed bookshelves or for any number of other reasons.  I browsed and was surprised to see these books in excellent condition.  Some were New York bestsellers only a year ago.  A good number of them still had their glossy dust jackets.  These were books that once graced the display tables at Barnes & Noble, the toasts of critics, or were so eagerly awaited by readers across the country from any town with a Post Office or accessible by UPS or Fedex; therefore, within reach by Amazon.  Tons of books today come that way.  But now some of them were there at the book sale, discarded by their original readers, donated for free to the library and are being re-sold for pennies to the dollar.  Books are that easily discarded these days.

Each table was well labeled for every genre.  There was a complete volume set of Sherlock Holmes mysteries and there were children’s books and self-help or self-improvement books.  I was kind of surprised at the number of cook books.  Have the previous owners mastered them or have they simply gone on from Chinese and Vietnamese or country style barbecue to now experimenting with Indian or Afghan cuisine?  But get this.  There was almost an equal number of diet and exercise books. I am almost certain the cook books and diet books were not given up by the same donors.  A real surprise was the number of massive Tom Clancy novels that were there. His books average about a quarter million words per novel.  Some of the books still had tightly packed pages in them, which seem to indicate that the previous readers/owners were finicky page turners or they just simply gave up at 2/3 of the stories, not being able to deal with the convoluted plots of characters and places and techno-warfare jumping in and out of every chapter.  No, I’m sure the previous readers finished the stories.  There were a number of Sue Grafton’s “alphabet” thrillers.  I have not read any of her books and she’s down to the last two letters of the alphabet.  She just published, “W – is for wasted” and a one-letter title, “X” (no clever add-on phrase since what good is xenon or xylophone to a murder mystery).  It won’t be long before we get to, I guess, “Z – is for zero suspect”.  I’ll wait when she gets down to the Greek alphabets, with perhaps, “Alpha – is for alibi”.  How’s that for a suggestion to Ms. Grafton’s first Greek alphabet series?

It was tempting to let go of a few dollars.  For ten bucks or less I was going to have a stack for much of my summer reading.  The Sherlock Holmes volume set was going to be a good one to give to the grand kids when they get to the age when logical thinking will be something to try once video games lose their allure.  I’m not sure of it but I hope their parents will indeed keep them away from video games.  I decided against the purchase because I figured by the time the grand kids do some serious reading they will be going for e-books, or some other yet but soon to be invented medium of spreading information and reading material.  I left the hall empty handed.

I went to the counter ready with my library card in my hand – there’s a big sign that tells you to do just that because they don’t want you fumbling for it from your wallet when you get there as that would take up a few seconds of the busy schedule of the other patrons waiting behind you.  I sled my card towards the lady behind the counter announcing politely that I had a reserved book.  As practiced before, she would scan your card and without saying much she’d turn and walk towards the back room and in less than a minute she’d be back with your book/books and you’re done. 

Well, the library now had a new system for checking out reserved books. She motioned me to go somewhere first. The “back room” is now three long shelves at the center of the library behind the information desk. I was to go there and find the book myself.  Books there were on shelves not arranged according to the familiar Dewey Decimal System but alphabetically according to the last names of the borrowers. Making use of my mental acuity, I went to the section labeled with the first letter of my last name. Lo and behold, there on one of the books was my name on a piece of white paper stuck between the pages.  Those demanding the higher minimum wage should now understand that it is just a matter of time when customers at a fast food restaurant will soon be picking up their orders from the kitchen in the back.  There they will pick up the cooked patty off the hot plate into the face up buns, put the condiments on, after which they either pick up a paper plate or paper bag, depending on whether they were dining in or taking it out.  Fast food customers have for ages been serving sodas themselves so there will be no change there.

I picked up the book and went back to the counter.  Not right away because there were now about eight people ahead in line.  When my turn came I confessed to the lady about not finishing the e-book so I was borrowing the hard copy.  I did not expect her to respond to that. She didn’t but she did say this, “Well, soon if the trend goes towards e-books we will be saving a lot of trees, won’t we?” She was smiling, so I assumed she was just kidding.  Then again she may have been serious about saving trees. She looked like the environmentalist type.

How about that, we’ll save trees with e-books! Soon my idling mind revved up to a higher gear, switching quickly to the implications of e-books.  Saving trees is a distinct if not profound possibility that will potentially reverse the current trend of deforestation, flooding and the balding of mountains.  But then, what could possibly go wrong?

For one thing, Barnes & Noble will have to close shop; Amazon will need to find a good chunk of bulk sales to make up for books now being peddled through the ether; the time to retire some cargo planes at UPS and Fedex will have to come much sooner; some paper mills and printing companies will come down to a few survivors; and worst of all the rank of the unemployed will swell, and so on and on.  Are these the unintended consequences of e-books?

From the space station, or its replacement at some future time, astronauts will see a very deep green-in-blue planet earth as mountains and plains abound with trees.  We can dream, can’t we?  Because this assumes the population of people has stood still at a mere seven billion and livestock kept at minimum because vegetarianism is on the rise.  But let’s make that scenario, anyway.

For trees to flourish in that scenario there should be plenty of carbon dioxide in the air to support their needs. We may not have that much today with just the existing number of cars and fossil fuel-burning power plants, so it must be supplemented perhaps by more than the occasional volcanic eruptions to insure CO2 sufficiency in the air. We will need one Krakatoa every six months. (The last time in earth’s history when there was hardly any ice on either pole, perhaps the greenest period of time when vegetation was dense, was during the Eocene epoch – 56 to 39 million years ago.  It was also marked by frequent volcanic activity).  But here’s the thing.  As trees gulped CO2 they will expel oxygen.  With the existing population of people and other air breathing animals, there may not be enough to consume all the oxygen to keep it at the level it is today.  So the oxygen in the atmosphere could exceed 21% to maybe 30%?  That has a potential to change the atmospheric makeup of the air with hazardous consequences!  But nature will do what it needs to do.  It will cause more lightning strikes.  As oxygen level goes up, forest fires will be easy to start, burns hotter and will take longer to extinguish. But forest fires, in the aftermath, are precursors to more trees and plant growth and …

I can go on and on with these wild scenarios.  Who knows what else can happen that I haven’t worried about.  Then I realized that indeed my idle mind did rev up to high gear, or perhaps the oxygen level has come down a bit in the room.  Well, you can all rest easy. Get e-books and don’t worry about it.