'The little dog lost at sea'

Author Shankar Vedantam explains why the saga of a shipwrecked pet tugs our hearts more than a distressed nation of millions.

On MARCH 13, 2002, a fire broke out in the engine room of an oil tanker about 800 miles south of Hawaii. The fire moved so fast that the Taiwanese crew did not have time to radio for help. Eleven survivors and the captain’s dog, a terrier named Hokget, retreated to the tanker’s forward quarters with supplies of food and water.

The Insiko 1907 was supposed to be an Indonesian ship, but its owner had not registered it. In terms of international law, the Insiko was stateless, a 260-foot microscopic speck on the largest ocean on Earth.

Now it was adrift. Drawn by wind and currents, the Insiko got within 220 miles of Hawaii. It was spotted by a cruise ship, which rescued the crew. But as the cruise ship pulled away, a few passengers heard the sound of barking.

The captain’s dog had been left behind on the tanker.

A passenger who heard the barking dog called the Hawaiian Humane Society in Honolulu. The animal-welfare group routinely rescued abandoned animals—675 the previous year—but recovering one on a tanker in the Pacific Ocean was something new. The Society alerted fishing boats about the lost tanker and soon media reports began appearing about Hokget.

Something about a lost dog on an abandoned ship in the Pacific gripped people’s imaginations. Money poured in to fund a rescue. Donations eventually arrived from 39 states and four foreign countries. One check was for $5,000. “It was just about a dog,” Pamela Burns, president of the Hawaiian Humane Society, told me. “This was an opportunity for people to feel good about rescuing a dog. People poured out their support. A handful of people were incensed. These people said, ‘You should be giving money to the homeless.’” But Burns thought the great thing about America was that people were free to give money to whatever cause they cared about, and people cared about Hokget.

The problem with a rescue was that no one knew where the Insiko was. The U.S. Coast Guard estimated it could be anywhere in an area measuring 360,000 square miles. Two Humane Society officers set off into the Pacific on a tugboat called the American Quest. The Society paid $48,000 to a private company called American Marine to look for the ship. Air, sea, and high-tech surveillance equipment were all pressed into service. With each passing day, the calls from around the world intensified: Had Hokget been found?

The U.S. Coast Guard had said it could not use taxpayer money to save the dog, but under the guise of training exercises, the U.S. Navy began quietly hunting for the Insiko. Letters and checks to the Humane Society continued to pour in: “This check is in memory of the little dog lost at sea.” “Thank you for pulling my heartstrings and for reminding me of all the hope there is left in this world.”

On April 9, a window of hope opened when the crew on a Japanese fishing boat reported seeing something that looked like the Insiko drifting in the direction of Johnston Atoll, an uninhabited U.S. territory. Two fishing vessels eventually reached the ship. But when the fishermen tried to rescue Hokget, the dog fled below decks in the direction of the engine room. The rescuers couldn’t follow. The fire had rendered much of the Insiko too dangerous.

Rusty Nall, vice president of American Marine Corp., wasn’t ready to drop the chase. Nall felt like giving up, but when he went home each night, his 9-year-old daughter would ask, “Did you find the doggie, Daddy?” Nall would come back to work the next day and press on.

THE STORY OF Hokget is touching. Human beings from around the world came together to try to save a dog. The vast majority of people who sent in money would never personally see Hokget. It was, as Pamela Burns suggested to me, an act of pure altruism and a marker of the remarkable capacity human beings have to empathize with the plight of others.

There are a series of disturbing questions, however: Eight years before the Hokget saga began, the same world that showed extraordinary compassion for a dog sat on its hands as hundreds of thousands of human beings were killed in the Rwandan genocide. The 20th century reveals a shockingly long list of similar horrors that have been ignored by the world as they unfolded. Why have successive generations done so little to halt suffering on such a large scale?

The philosopher Peter Singer once devised a dilemma that highlights a central contradiction in our moral reasoning. If you see a child drowning in a pond—and you would ruin a fine pair of shoes worth $200 if you jumped into the water—would you save the child or save your shoes? Most people react incredulously to the question; obviously, a child’s life is worth more than a pair of shoes. But if this is the case, Singer asked, why do large numbers of people hesitate to write checks for $200 to a reputable charity that could save the life of a child halfway around the world—when there are millions of children who need our help?

The answer is that our moral responsibilities feel different in these situations; one situation feels visceral, the other abstract. We feel personally responsible for one child, whereas the other is one of millions who need help. Our responsibility feels diffused when it comes to children in distant places—there are many people who could write that check.

But distance and diffusion of responsibility do not explain why we step forward in some cases. Why did so many people feel an abandoned dog on a stateless ship in international waters was their problem?

I want to offer a disturbing idea. The reason human beings seem to care so little about mass suffering and death is precisely because the suffering is happening on a mass scale. The brain is simply not very good at grasping the implications of mass suffering. Americans would be far more likely to step forward if only a few people were suffering or a single person were in pain. Hokget did not draw our sympathies because we care more about dogs than people; she drew our sympathies because she was a single dog lost on the biggest ocean in the world. Our hidden brain—my term for a host of unconscious mental processes that subtly bias our judgment—shapes our compassion into a telescope. We are best able to respond when we are focused on a single victim.

We don’t feel 20 times sadder when we hear that 20 people have died in a disaster than when we hear that one person has died, even though the magnitude of the tragedy is 20 times as large. We can reach such a conclusion abstractly, in our conscious minds, but we cannot feel it viscerally, because the hidden brain is simply not calibrated to deal with the difference between a single death and 20 deaths. But the paradox does not end there. Even if 10 deaths do not make us feel 10 times as sad as a single death, shouldn’t we feel at least twice as sad? There is disturbing evidence that shows we may actually care less. I suspect that if the Insiko had been carrying 100 dogs, many people would have cared less about their fate than they did about Hokget. One hundred dogs do not have a single face, a single name, a single life story around which we can wrap our imaginations and our compassion.

The evidence for what I am going to call the telescope effect comes from a series of experiments. Psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon asked two groups of volunteers shortly after the Rwandan genocide to imagine they were officials in charge of a humanitarian rescue effort. Both groups were told their money could save 4,500 lives at a refugee camp, but one group was told the refugee camp had 11,000 people, whereas the other group was told the refugee camp had 250,000 people. Slovic found that people were much more reluctant to spend the money on the large camp than they were to spend the money on the small camp.

Intrigued, Slovic pressed further. He asked different groups of volunteers to imagine they were running a philanthropic foundation. Would they rather spend $10 million to save 10,000 lives from a disease that caused 15,000 deaths a year, or save 20,000 lives from a disease that killed 290,000 people a year? Overwhelmingly, volunteers preferred to spend money saving the 10,000 lives rather than the 20,000 lives. Rather than tailor their investments to saving the largest number of lives, people sought to save the largest proportion of lives among the different groups of victims.

We respond to mass suffering in much the same way that we respond to most things in our lives. We fall back on rules of thumb, on feelings, on intuitions. Our empathic telescopes are activated when we hear a single cry for help—the child drowning in the pond, the dog abandoned on an ocean. When we think of human suffering on a mass scale, our telescope does not work, because it has not been designed to work in such situations. Humans are the only species that is even aware of large-scale suffering taking place in distant lands; the moral telescope in our brain has not had a chance to evolve and catch up with our technological advances. Our conscious minds can tell us that it is absurd to spend a boatload of money to save one life when the same money could be used to save 10. But in moral decision-making, it is the hidden brain that usually carries the day.

AFTER WOULD-BE rescuers from two fishing vessels frightened Hokget below decks, the effort to save the dog continued. There was talk of dispatching the U.S. Navy to sink the Insiko as a way of ensuring that any release of hazardous materials would occur hundreds of miles from shore. This, of course, would kill the dog—assuming it was still alive. Facing intense public pressure to save Hokget, government officials concluded that asking the Navy to sink the tanker—750 miles from Hawaii and drifting away from the distant U.S. mainland—posed unacceptable environmental risks. The Coast Guard finally agreed to access $250,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds to recover the Insiko. It wasn’t officially called an animal-rescue effort. Instead it was authorized under the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, based on the argument that if the aimless Insiko managed to drift westward for 250 straight miles, it might run aground on Johnston Atoll and harm marine life.

Ohe American Quest was called up again—this time funded by taxpayers—to rescue Hokget. On April 26, nearly a month and a half after the dog’s ordeal began, the tugboat’s crew found the Insiko and boarded the tanker. Hokget was still alive, hiding in a pile of tires. Brian Murray, the American Quest’s salvage supervisor, simply walked up and grabbed the terrier by the scruff of her neck. The dog, terrified, shook for two hours. Her rescuers fed her, bathed her, and applied lotion to her sunburned nose.

Hokget arrived in Honolulu on May 2 and was greeted by crowds of spectators, a news conference, banners welcoming her to America, and a red Hawaiian lei. After a period in quarantine, Hokget was adopted by a family that lives outside Honolulu. When last heard from, she had put on weight and was signed up for dog classes.

From the book The Hidden Brain ©2010 by Shankar Vedantam. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House Inc. All rights reserved.

http://theweek.com/article/index/106310/The_little_dog_lost_at_sea


A little comment about:

In our lives we meet many people who are suffering for some reason. When we see that, we can feel something that we can call compassion. When we feel compassion our want is that suffering of others stop. It doesn’t matter if it is about people or animals.


About the story of the little dog lost at sea, this article, which was published 2/10 in the week, it’s too sad. When you compare this situation to many people who are dying or losing their families all the time, you can think that the cost to save that dog was too high. But in this case when people rescued the survivors on the ship, they made a mistake. They were supposed to save every life, but they forgot one life. His bad luck! It isn’t fair. But the question is; why did people spend so much money? Just because they were compassionate for that poor life?

What I think is, even though our life and the world don’t transform with the intensity and velocity of our desires, we should know that our actions can transform or change not only our lives but the way that our world is evolving.

ROBERT FROST

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco, California. His father William Frost, a journalist and an ardent Democrat, died when Frost was about eleven years old. His Scottish mother, the former Isabelle Moody, resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost's paternal grandfather, William Prescott Frost, who gave his grandson a good schooling. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Darthmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs. Frost worked among others in a textile mill and taught Latin at his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts. In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem 'My Butterfly' and he had five poems privately printed. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children.


From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied at Harvard, but left without receiving a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmer, and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school in Plymouth. When he sent his poems to The Atlantic Monthly they were returned with this note: "We regret that The Atlantic has no place for your vigorous verse."

At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was considered a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the US. "I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world," Frost once said. In his poems Frost depicted the fields and farms of his surroundings, observing the details of rural life, which hide universal meaning. His independent, elusive, half humorous view of the world produced such remarks as "I never take my side in a quarrel", or "I'm never serious except when I'm fooling."
Frogs's Biography

Cesare Lombroso

Cesare Lombroso was born in November 6, 1835, in Verona, Italy. He was an University professor and an Italian criminologist who studied medicine in Paiva University and got his degree in 1858 when he was 23 years old. His specialization was in mental diseases and his life was take care people with mental disturbs.


Lombroso wrote many books. His revolutionary ideas founded the Positive School of Penal Rights. One part of his studies showed about criminals behavior. According Lombroso some criminals have same characteristics like insensibly pain, cynicism, vanity, without moral sense, laziness, impulsive character.

Other scientific research that he did was about Legal Medicine. He studied the physical and mental criminal characters and concluded his theories about character logia. Lombroso tried to relate some physical characteristics with the criminal psychopathology that is the inactive tendency of sociopath individual with criminal behavior. Lombroso had in mind to take attention for the importance of Scientifics studies of criminal mind that after was known like criminal anthropology.

In his research he used to study the size of the criminal’s jaw, the brain form, the bone’s structure and the biological hereditary that enclosed anatomic , physiologic and mental factors. The theory base was the “atavism” it is a kind of retrocession to the primitive human. “The criminal genetically is determinate for the evil by congeners reasons. It’s an innate trend for the crime.”(LOMBROSO, 2007 p.7)

According Lombroso, the criminals aren’t totality victims from social and educational circumstances. They suffer with hereditary tendency, they are sick, the delinquency is a sickness.

The Lombroso’s theory is based in more than 400 necropsies and 6 thousand analysis in criminals living. And the atavism he used in his hard studies 25 thousand prisoners in Europe. The native criminal according his theory have some body’s characteristics: in the criminal livings, occipital lump, run away forehead, salient extreme arcs, twisted nose, thick lips, excessively long arms, great hands, polydactyl dental arches. (Calhau, 2003)

Many people don’t agree with Lombrosians theories. After many studies some scientists concluded with many medical verifications that kind of classifications is not effective. But, Lombroso’s theories help the modern Science. Because Lombroso Scientists could studied more and get another conclusions. Lombroso’s observations were very important to the rights in that time. He started the criminal observation.

Naps! Why?

Take naps in middle day is important for heath. Our body need energies and it can take with relax. But, the most of modern community can’t agree with this practical. It’s the capitalism in our life. The world works based in finances. Money is the leader of the world. People sleeping during productive time can result no money. But, some studies show that it is not true. I know about one strong country in Europe, Spain, there, people take nap and it is part of Spain culture. Some psychologists and doctor say that kind of practical can help people to be more productive and healthier.

" By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail" Benjamin Franklin

There is a miracle in your mind. If you want to win you should think like a winner. If you don’t you probably will be a loser. How do you think, how do you speech the words, how do you react the things that occur during your life these are pieces to make you grow up or not. To be preparing to fail is not been careful with your thinking, reactions and words. Look around and you can choose the best way!

TAPE

Tape Airport


Characteres

Paul and Maria

By Janalice and Paulina



Airport in Munich. There are a lot of people waiting in the room to get on the plane. The plane is late because it was cancelad because of the storm. Maria is being asked by Paul how long have to they wait for the plane to arrive.



Paul: Excuse-me. Do you know how long we have to wait here?

Maria: I don’t know exactly how long. But what I’m told probably a few hours.

Paul: A few hours? Did you say hours?

Maria: Yes, and we have to be pacient.

Paul: Oh Christ! I can’t be pacient. I have very important apointment in a few hours.

Maria: What kind of apointment?

Paul: My father’s funeral.

Maria: I’m very, very sorry.

Paul: Thank you. I’m so sad. Unfortunatly I haven’t good memories of him.

Maria: I don’t want to be rude. But, can I ask why?

Paul: My father was a playboy and he didn’t know how to enjoy family life. We have been suffering since my father started gambling and neglecting whole family.

(maria looks at Paul)

Maria: that reminds me of my husband. He’s a selfish bastard and I don’t know how to be free from him. I love him, but I ask myself over and over again: how can I love such a man.

(soft smile)

Paul: I can see my mom in you now!

Maria: How old is your mother?

Paul: She died few months ago. But she was 75 years old.

Maria: My mother is dieing from breast cancer, and I can’t help her.

(Maria is crying)

Paul: I’m so very sorry.

Maria: You can’t do anything about that either. That’s life!

(Paul looks sadly at Maria and Maria looks sadly at Paul, too)

Paul: Ok! Life is the best teacher. I need a drink. Would you like have a drink with me?

(soft smile)

Maria: That would be great. I would Love to have a conhaque with you.

(Then they go into the bar and order the drinks).

Maria: Did your father stop gambling?

Paul: No, he didn’t!

Maria: But why?

Paul: (soft smile) He was addicted.

Maria: Oh. Like my husband. He can’t stop. He always looses Money, and I can’t take it any more. I’m the only one who work’s and he is the only one who spends looses.

Paul: I can understand you. My father died like a beggar.

Maria: I wouldn’t be surprised if my husband became beggar too. Because I am not able to stand this situation any more.

Paul: You should think about your life. Your life is the most important thing for you. (little pause) My mom didn’t! She ended up in bed for 10 years because of my father. She hopped he would change. But he became worse and worse.

Maria: After hearing your story, I’m not surprised about your mom. Because so many women have put up with such situations in their life. I know a lot of women like that including myself!

Paul: I’m relieved you are a person with whom I could speak openly.

Maria: I feel the same way. So, I think it’s time to go. Nice to meet you.

Paul: It was my pleasure.

HOW MUCH ARE DENTISTS HONEST?

I didn’t have good experiences with dentists in my life. Talk about honesty by dentists is a little complicated for me. In my opinion it depends what kind of professional are you going to visit and where are you. What I can talk about my bad experiences was too bad that I couldn’t go to a dentist for many years. My scare was terrible and I always took care my teeth. After that years I finally visit a dentist, scaring… He exanimate my teeth and I had no tooth to fix. Thanks Good! After this experience, I leaned that if you take care your teeth, you can just visit a dentist, but you have to be smart. Even you take care your teeth and dentist say a lot of problems for you, go to another clinical. It is your life!

Why are you beauty?

While I was reading the tape “Beauty”, I thought about: what is to be beauty? This tape is about two girls who change their body. One girl very smart but not too much beauty and other girl very beautiful but not too much smart. Each one could to see good things in other but when they were looking for themselves they couldn’t to see their beauty. What is beauty?


To be beauty is to stay in harmony, and when the extern beauty expresses the interior of human you can see who are this person. Sometime what show beauty for our eyes can be not really beauty.

We are conditional to think that is beautiful what the world considers beautiful. Because the standard modern beauty people classify other people like beauty or ugly. But my question is: What is to be beauty? What is to be ugly?

Beauty’s standard that we can see everywhere are forms to awake people’s consumption. People spend a lot of money to be beautiful. Maybe that occur because these people want to be same others considerate beauty. We copy to stay fashion.

But in my opinion beautiful people are these who are authentic. Are people that don’t live a paranoiac life trying to be perfect. Each person has a different essence. God did us same. The differences show what we have the best. We are attracted by different.

Ugly people dissimulate to be what they don’t are just to impress others. The ugly people know that.

They are like a leaf leaving by wind. It is that because the beauty is not only the face form, the body structure. People are beauty when they have the capacity to show to others their best, but it without competition. Beauty people don’t worry in to be fashion, because they know that the fashion is for a moment, everything change, all time. Beauty people expend their energy in simple things. Only by people who know that world is formed by different people. Who is beauty for you maybe won’t beauty for me. About beauty, depend who see.

When Environment Win Machines

Scientists are calculating how much oil is going to spill from British Petroleum platform that exploded in April last in Gulf of Mexico. The estimative are between 1,9 million and 3,8 million liters of petroleum per day.


The petroleum company BP has being working hard to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which started to happen after a big explosion in the platform. Eleven workers died in that explosion. The oil spill has duration by months. Scientists are been consideration that it is one of the worse ecological disaster in the United States. Before that other big disaster occurred in 1979. Thirty years ago and population feel the consequences until today.

To try to stop the spill, the BP Company tried to inject heavy mud in the oil well that has 1500 meters depth, but that didn’t work. The British Petroleum’s engineers are working to stop the spill that is destroying the Gulf of Mexico, but many engineers fear that it doesn’t stop until August.

Evolution of oil spot in the Gulf of Mexico

After recognize the failure in to stop the spill with chemical products and mud, the BP’s leaders announced that they will put a cover on the broken tubing. According engineers, the operation will be in a depth of 1.500 meters with robots, for this operation is necessary to be very cautions.


Below the video showing the procedure:

CHE GUEVARA

Something about him

Name: Ernesto Guevara de La Serna.

Place of Birth: Rosario City, Argentina Country.
Date of birth and death: June 14, 1928 to October 9, 1967 (aged 39).
Place of death: La Higuera, Bolivia.
Occupation: photographer, doctor and guerrilla.

He is known also as Che Guevara or El Che. He is the most famous Revolutionary Communist of History, according Time Magazine, a North American magazine, and he is considerate one between a hundred personalities more important by 20th century.

Ernesto is from rich Argentine family. He was two years old when suffered his first asthma attack. It was very difficult for his family, because the attack was strong and he did not appear improvement in his health. Then, the most of his alphabetization was with his mother at home. His mother had a big library at home with about three thousands books. Between his favorites authors were Marx, Engels and Lenin. When he was twelve or thirteen years old, he used to read often. He read Julio Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Baudelaire, Neruda and Freud until fifteen years old.

In 1944, Che’s family lost a lot of money and he needed to work to help his family. But, he never to stop to study. In December 1946, Che Guevara started a Medicine course in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In that year Che Guevara was been failed in a military program because his sensible health. In 1951, six months before to finish his Medicine Course, he decided to stop the course and with Alberto Granado to travel to Buenos Aires to Caracas’s Continents by an old motorcycle, nicknamed La Poderosa II. In this travel, Che could see the Latino America like an unique economic and cultural entity. He visited the poor population and saw the miserable population and their bad life conditions. He regressed to Argentina in 1953 and finished his Medicine studies. Soon after he started his dedication to politics jobs. In this same year, he worked like photographer reporter in the Pan Americans Games in Mexico and in July this year he went to his second travel by Latina America. There he was visited Bolivia, Peru, Equador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Because he had seen a lot of misery, people suffering and impotence from these poor people, he concluded that the unique form to finish that social inequalities was to change the political administrate in the world. After that, he knew Fidel Castro and together they started a plan for their goal that was “The Social Equality”. Guevara wanted to give the communism system to all Latina America and he really believed that the guerilla was the right way for this. From Cuba’s Revolution until his death, Che Guevara had three loses. The first was in Argentina in 1964. The second was one year after in the actual Republic Democratic of the Congo. And de last one was in Bolivia, where he was been executed in October 9, 1967, with nine shots in a school addressed in La Higuerra. His death interrupted his dream, it was to extend the Cuban Revolution to Latina America. But, his ideas stilled popular between some groups of people whose objectives are same of Che Guevara.

Guevara’s body disappeared after his execution. And he was been founded in 1997, when the world remembered the 30 years of his death. The body was without hands that were amputated few days after his death. In October 17, 1997, Che was been buried with honor in Santa Clara, a city of Cuba. His family and Fidel Castro were there. Although his ideas were romantics to the global world, Che Guevara was transformed in a Revolution’s icon of History by 20th century and an example of political coherence by part of humanity. His death determined a hero’s born and still been the symbol of resistance to some countries from Latino America.

For him to arrive in his target, Che Guevara executed many people. We cannot forget that it was a guerilla. And because Guevara’s executions these opinions from people are divided. Some agree others don’t. The questions are: Was Guevara’s philosophy of life correct? Could he to get another way to resolve that cause without deaths? Why to talk about him still dividing opinions? Why a group of people love him and why other groups hate him?

It is too honorable to exterminate the misery of the world. To help people whose these they are suffering a lot. There are in the world many people suffering a log in our time. Everything changed today. People can think free in the most of the countries of the world. Who know if Che Guevara was right or wrong? Some people will answer: the families that he killed the relatives. But other will answer: the families that helped a lot. It is a big contradictory when opinions are very different. Or people love him or people hate him. It depends of ignorance or intelligence from every one.

The big curiosity is about Che Guevara’s photography. In March 5, 1960, 50 years ago, Alberto Días, the Korda, toke Che Guevara’s photo. That image is the most famous photography of the time. The picture shows Che Guevara looking many people that went to the funeral of 136 victims from an attack to one French ship that transported a lot of arms. Korda, was a photographer from a newspaper named Revolución. He was there to photograph French writers as Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, that was listening Fidel Castro’s discourse.

The newspaper Revolución didn’t publication about Guevara’s picture in the next day. But, with the time, the image from Guevara using a beret, looking serious and petrified to the population was transformed in an era icon. This picture was reproduced by political objectives or commercials. The picture can have many signified or just being popular in common t-shirts, painted in walls, tattooed, parodied, idolatrized and repudiated. The Korda’s picture about Che Guevara is one of the most famous picture in the world. The photographer Korda never got money from it.

Resource:

http://www.cheguevara.com/

Wikipedia

google image

The historic photography

Korda looking his photo