Chuckle-chuckle

Share the joy with Simon Rich’s “Ant Farm & other desperate situation”. This makes me feel like having my stuff in presented in a light-hearted way too. Then again, makes me think twice about having an ant farm.

Ant Farm (pg76)
– All right men, listen up. As you know, we’ve built seven tunnels and we still haven’t found a way through the glass. I can tell you’re discouraged and I don’t blame you. Tunnel 7 was our most ambitious project to date and you all risked your lives to make it happen. But rest assured we’ll be out of this hellish wasteland soon enough. I have a plan.
– What is it? What’s the plan?
– An eighth tunnel. Through the sand.
– I don’t know, sir… we’ve been digging tunnels ever since we got here. We always end up hitting glass. We lost ten men on the last tunnel: Brian, Jack, Lawrence…
– I know their names
– Why don’t we just give up? I mean seriously, what’s the point?
– The point? The point is we have no food or water. The point is we’re trapped in this crazy desert, and if we don’t find an exit soon, we’re going to suffocate.
– What kind of God would put us here, just to torture us? Sand to the left… sand to the right…
– It’s a test, William. He’s testing us.
– You’re right. We can do this. We just have to work ten times harder than we’ve ever worked before! (starts digging)
– You want to know something? I’ve got a good feeling about this one. A really good feeling.

Hansell’s book

So Lucky Plaza do not have that ant farm shop anymore. It became an employment agency.

Anyhows, I focused my attention my ant’s nest architecture for now, since that was what that first caught my interest in them. Lecturers also commented that that area might be interesting to look at.

Reading on this book called “Built by Animals” written by Mike Hansell. He gave a overview on all kinds of animals’ home and their ingenuity. However, he was also quick to highlight about ‘anthropomorphism’.

Dictionary.com says in its Cultural Dictionary
Anthropomorphism : The attributing of human characteristics and purposes to inanimate objects, animals, plants, or other natural phenomena, or to God. To describe a rushing river as “angry” is to anthropomorphize it.

Hence, what we have described for, say ants, is our constant tendency to compare it with us, compare their nest building ingenuity with our sky-high buildings, and have comments like ”ants are so smart like us”.

Notes he mentioned:
Factors that distort our understanding of animal builders:
1) Emotional attachment to living world
2) Anthropomorphism

Later, he presents the question of ‘how animals through their building behavior physically alter the environment?’ An example was a termite home to birds. Also mentioned about our own home architecture altered the environment, and it also provided home to other bugs. Great example was MRTs, those metal pillars in the roof became the home of pigeons and sparrows.

Paused at huge terms: Ecosystem enginnering vs Niche construction.

Lament

Just finished doing up the 1st presentation slides not too long ago.

The whole problem of picking a topic, instead of starting with a grander, holier idea, is that I got stuck trying to decipher which should be my research direction. I can say that ants this-that-this-that are interesting. But to tug it purposely in some way, isn’t that too deliberate?

May the light shine on me soon. Come to mama!

Movies

The current uncanny resemblances:

1) Just caught GI Joe yesterday. “Nanomites” are microscopic robots that eats any metallic thing in its path. Reminds me of army ants.
“At the pinnacle of social cooperation, army ants overwhelm their prey through their sheer force of numbers.” http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/08/army-ants/moffett-text

2) Another movie coming up, District-9, where the non-humans looked like insects (ants?), with antennae and hard-cased exterior body.

Gordon & Sleigh

Finished downing Ants At Work by Gordon some time ago. Stuck in the midway with Ants by Sleigh. Didn’t take notes as I read them, start to kick myself over smooth-reading VS pausing-every-now-and-then. Bits and pieces of info remains in my mind.

“Ants At Work” tells of detailed procedures into Gordon’s experiments, and her ultimate findings. Ants foraging distance/pattern mapped out on a grid (which ended up looking like a flower); how a young colony is seemingly more bring-it-on attitude than an older colony; how roles and tasks are switchable but an ant never downgrades once its earned its badges.

“Ants” talks about the different aspects we have on ants. Often influenced by the periods we are in. A lot of examples on old dudes writing on fables based on ants, drawing on ants positive qualitites. Then in the later centuries, people started to magnify on ants destructive characteristics, showing how terrible they are – mainly referrenced in talks during war times. Yet to finish it.

Read/hear some bits about ants. Mainly revolves around the main headings of:
1. Duties – colony without leader always pops up.
2. Communication – antennae’s the way to go!
3. Social life (insects)?

A check in library shows up quite a few of children books on ants, mostly about the characteristics of ants that serve some good learning points.

We could learn from ants too. We can draw meaningful lessons from ants.

Or maybe, if there arent these characteristics in humans, what would happen? A world (colony) without leaders, will DEFINITELY be chaos. So it seems. We have been so dictated(or used to) by someone/anyone up-there, might be kind of lost if there arent a boss anymore.

What if we all go about daily with the same/equal status just with different work duties, like ants? Shit, but ants have a queen. But she don’t talk much. So she’s a silent shareholder with just lots of cash(eggs)?

Ants

Glanced some points at Deborah Gordon’s ants summarised facts. Interesting to note that “colony live for 15-20 years. Colony development alters the chemistry of the soil near the nest”.

Beings invading a heartland. The kind of us that alters how the heartland is like. Aljunied, an old estate. The ‘chemistry’ of that area vs a young urban area with the type of peeps living there, sterotype the type and culture of life there?

Dilemma in progress

Ants took over the world. At least for this coming year.

Cos asking a few friends on their family history, seems like most of them has the “huh” reaction if they were to ask their parents about their life. One mentioned that it’s prolly due to the older generation that they are too conservative to want to share ’intimate’ stuff, such as “how I met your mother” (chasing that sitcom right now). I thought it was just that parents thought we are not interested, so they kept it all in.

A mind block on family matters.

 Ants.  A common description came into my mind – like how we look like ants from an aerial view. Hmm… So we have been compared to ants for quite some time. We’re similar?
Ants and humans. A possible route?

Dilemma

Mixed feelings about 2 topics - family or ants.

Family would be something about the distance between us as kids and our parents and relatives. Don’t really know them though they’re my family. Kind of strangers in some ways. How much of their life do I know? Not much to say, to my future by-products if they asked me about their grandparents.

Ants, a topic that fascinated me when my collegue showed me a clip on them. These tiny beings are so smart, they built themselves a palace, more like a city. A hidden empire underground. Crib located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozkBd2p2piU

Family vs ants. FIGHT!