Dead Baby Penguins Wash Up in Brazil

In an exercise in terrifying imagery, more than 400 dead baby penguins have been washing ashore in Rio de Janeiro over the past couple of months.

The Associated Press reported last week that no direct cause for the penguicide has been found yet, though theories abound. Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at Brazil's Niteroi Zoo, thinks overfishing could be to blame by sending the penguins on longer hunts for fish away from their native shores in Antarctica and Patagonia. "That leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents," he told the AP.

Erli Costa, a biologist from Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University, theorizes that global warming could be the culprit. Costa claims that climate change has caused an increase in cyclones and harsher currents, which make the seas rough on the young birds.

Global warming has already taken a heavy toll on penguins. The UK's Daily Mail reported earlier this month that the Antarctic Peninsula's average temperature has risen by three degrees to an average -14.7 degrees Celsius (about six degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 50 years, which in turn has caused freezing rain to be much more common than snow. Baby penguins don't develop water-protective feathers until 40 days after their birth, leaving them susceptible to hypothermia. Estimates are that, with tens of thousands of baby birds freezing to death, Adelie penguins could be extinct within 10 years.

(Thanks, TreeHugger and NYCsceneQueen.)

Image by Aaron Jacobs, licensed under Creative Commons.

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An Electric Car for Wheelchair Users

For years, big, expensive converted minivans have been the norm in transportation for wheelchair users. Environmental responsiblity isn't always been the biggest priority. Luckily, a Hungarian company called Rehab Ltd. has developed the Kenguru, an electric car designed specifically for the disabled.

The vehicle has no side doors; instead the driver rolls in through a rear hatchback and over an automatically lowering ramp. The car is 85 inches long and 61 inches wide and has a range of about 35 miles at a top speed of 25 miles per hour.

Unfortunately, the vehicle hasn’t made it stateside yet, but it’s getting closer. Kenguru UK in England is launching this summer, and the company plans expansion to the U.S. in the near future, according to Green Car Journal.

Image courtesy of kengurucars.com.

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Wartime Men on the Silver Screen

Cinema’s response to war has changed since Vietnam, Michael Bronski postulates in Z Magazine. For instance, the war in Iraq has been immediately made into documentaries (No End in Sight and Standard Operating Procedure), independent films (Redacted and Battle for Haditha), and even Hollywood productions (In the Valley of Elah and Stop-Loss), while it took years for many films to be made about Vietnam. Mainstream movies like Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now weren’t released until the late 1970s, almost a decade after the war ended.

Bronski credits Vietnam with influencing other film genres as well: The slasher film, beginning with Halloween in 1978, was created as an avatar for the senseless killing of American youth during the Vietnam War, and testosterone-swelling action hero films like Rocky (1976), Terminator (1974), and Die Hard (1988) were used to reassert our postwar nation’s masculinity, as if to say, “We could have won in Vietnam!”

Further, Bronski claims that the stoner buddy movie genre, with a new understanding of masculinity, was invented in response to the absurd man-movies emblematic of the “unholy three” (Willis, Schwarzenegger, and Stallone). Films like Dumb and Dumber, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Dude, Where’s My Car? exhibit an apolitical, peace-and-love sense of masculinity that is a direct backlash to action hero archetypes.

Bronski’s argument is interesting, but I believe he is ignoring some important, much earlier incarnations of this same sensitive masculinity—the two most prevalent examples being Harold Ramis’ Animal House and Stripes. Both of these films, released in 1978 and 1981, respectively, put goofball, slacker men in positions where they are confronted by archetypal masculinity. Further, in both of these films this masculinity is represented by military figures (ROTC Cadet Officer Niedermeyer in Animal House and Sergeant Hulka in Stripes). The characters use disarming and nonthreatening humor to combat aggression, much like modern-day stoner comedies. But, instead of remaining apolitical, the heroes in Ramis’ films are forced to face the warlike masculinity emblematic of Vietnam militarism, proving that nonviolence can be an answer.

Reading his article made me think of how we view masculinity in our modern time of war. If cinema is any refection, then our current perceptions equate masculinity with naïveté. Films like Jarhead and Stop-Loss present characters anxious to go to war, blinded by masculinity and a sense of duty, then humbled by the true nature of the conflict. Even stoner buddy movies like Harold and Kumar have ignorant über-masculine villains blinded by testosterone. The current trend seems to be that of peace and intelligence, which is itself a critique on war in general.

It’s impossible to say what, if any, genres will come in response to the current Iraq War, but it seems safe to say that glorified violent masculinity is no longer something to be admired; rather it is a manifestation of ignorance and last resorts.

(Image by Jurek Durczak, licensed under Creative Commons.)

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