Edinburgh

As Emily said I am currently in Scotland for a conference in primatology. As always, I have had a good time at the conference, even though I usually get lots of double-takes when people see my name tag. "Graduate Theological Union..." One can see the wheels turning. Over all though, I have been received quite well.

Before I flew out to Edinburgh, I spent two days in Berlin and two days in Cambridge, where I visited my friend Bobby. Bobby is this great and wonderfully crazy psychologist I met at a conference in Denmark last year. He is whack enough to engage ideas that are quite fringe, and so we immediately started a project together. While I was there, we made good progress and hopefully will have something publishable by around next Easter. Stay tuned.

Aside from work, Bobby showed me Cambridge, introduced me to his friends - all wonderful people, including Emma, who wrote her PhD in theology on animal suffering! I also got to meet Lucy, Bobby's daughter, who is about to be married soon and is expecting a baby! In short, it was a wonderful, very enriching time.

The conference in Edinburgh turned out quite interesting. I met a few interesting people and learned a lot. Aside from all the work in primate cognition and behavior, one of the most pressing issues addressed a primatological conferences these days is species conservation. Bush meat has taken on dramatic dimensions. On markets all over sub-Saharan Africa you can buy animals hunted illegally. An independent film-maker made it over from London to show us footage from a market where traders offered heads and hands of gorillas and chimpanzees. They are used for traditional medicine, albeit in a modern context. Even high government officials buy them, and so there is no hope at this point that protective laws will be enforced.

The whole business is facilitated by Chinese logging companies that go through the rain forest like a hot knife through butter. In Gabon, where the film was shot, so far only 25% of the rain forest has been depleted. In neighbor countries however it's been decimated by 85%. Aside from global effects, the effects on the local wildlife and, in the long run, the local population is and will be horrendous.

On a more fun note, Edinburgh is drowning in rain of uncommon proportions. Like all over Europe, here too the weather is changing towards more extreme patterns. Summer storms usually now don't end in a hefty summer rain, but rather in violent storms with severe flooding. Tonight I'll take the train to St. Andrews to visit my friend Vincent - as long as the trains can travel with all the water. A big problem here in the UK, apparently...

Yesterday night the sky oppened up for a bit and I had a chance to take some pictures. Enjoy.