Rats: Observation on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants

I've often heard the old saying (that Robert Sullivan discredits in Rats) that there is one rat for every living human being and that that rat is a lot closer to each of us than we really want to know. So I picked up a copy of Rats to learn a little about my guy and what makes him tick.

Rats is filled with rat-facts, facts about their physical makeup and prowess, about their habitats, mating habits, food preferences, mental abilities, and the like. But it is much more than that because Sullivan uses the book also to give a short history of New York City, from its founding to the present day, while interweaving the city's history with the history of the invading rats themselves and that of those men who have dedicated their lives to killing them.

Sullivan, off and on for one year, sat at the entrance to one New York City alley and patiently watched the rat activity there as a steady flow of food-filled garbage bags from nearby restaurants was deposited there each night. Although his access to the alley was interrupted by the mass murders at the World Trade Center, he spent so many hours observing that particular rat colony that he came to feel a certain fondness and admiration for them. In fact, when the colony was eventually targeted by NYC exterminators, he had mixed feelings about the pending doom of "his" rats.

That is not to say that Sullivan did not also come to admire the men who made their livings by helping to control the vermin that threatens the health of all big city dwellers. He participated with some of the best in the business in trapping live rats for study and his stories about what he learned while working with these people are included in some of the best chapters in the book.

But "rat facts" are what the book promises to deliver and Sullivan did not disappoint me. These are some of the things I learned:

Rats, unless they lose their food source, live in confined areas, generally staying within 65 feet of their nest.

Male rats are more venturesome than females and will go farther from the nesting area.

City rats are often larger their country cousins.

Up to one third of the world's food supply is destroyed by rats.

If they are not eating or sleeping, rats are usually having sex (up to 20 times per day, in fact).

A healthy female rat can deliver 8-10 new rats every 21 days, meaning that one rat pair can produce 15,000 descendants in one year if enough food is available.

The teeth of the brown rat are harder than aluminum, copper, lead or iron and are more comparable to the strength of steel.

Near 25% of electric cable breaks and almost 20% of phone disruptions are the result of rats chewing on the cables that they find so attractive.

Rats is not a book for the squeamish reader but, if you have any curiosity about what might be happening outside your door in the early hours of the morning, this is a book you will enjoy. I can't say that I'll feel any more sympathetic toward my personal rat if I ever run into him after reading the book, however. In fact, I'll probably run just as fast as I can because this is one case where "knowledge" does nothing to temper fear.

Rated at: 3.5

Poll Update

My July 27 poll asking which one writer from the selected group is most likely to still be in print in 100 years turned out almost exactly the way I thought it probably would. Maybe I should have avoided placing JK Rowling in the list of choices so close to the release of Harry Potter the 7th because so many readers were still excited by the new book.

But I can't really quarrel with the results since the two that I see as most likely to survive are leading the poll at present: JK Rowling with 20 votes and Stephen King with 13. No one else is even in the race, in fact. My hunch is that both will survive to some limited degree and that if Rowling's work does, indeed, survive for the next century that the whole series will be in print.

Anyway, I had fun with the poll and I thank you for voting.

The Rope Eater

Brendan Kane, unhappy at home, soon found himself just as unhappy with the tavern job that he found himself working at age 17. So bored was he with this new life, that when a smooth talking recruiter for the Union Army came through town, Kane found himself marching away with those newly recruited to go south to fight the rebels of the Confederate States of America.

However, he soon discovered that war was not the great adventure that every young man imagined it would be and that he was just as likely as the next man to end up dead on the battle field. This was a realization that every soldier soon reached, and it was the reason that most of them pinned their names on their clothing and carried final letters to those at home in their pockets as they headed into battle. Kane became obsessed with those letters and made sure to collect as many of them as he could find after each of the battles fought by his unit. Upon finally reaching a breaking point, and deciding he had had enough, he carried dozens of those letters with him and handed them over to the postmaster of the small whaling town to which he had managed to make his way.

When despite his having no experience as a seaman, Kane was offered a job on the Narthex, a strangely ugly boat that was due to sail the next morning for the Arctic, he eagerly accepted the offer and saw it as the beginning of the next phase of his life. He soon found himself part of a crew of misfits, all of whom speculated about the purpose of the trip north and hoped to share in its expected profits.

By the time that the trip’s purpose was revealed to the crew it was too late for any of them to opt out, and they found themselves sailing farther and farther north alone as all of the whaling ships in the area headed for home. Day after day they were faced with the same daunting task of moving ever northward in the worst of weather and with nothing before them but a gray ocean that was becoming thicker and thicker with icebergs. The captain’s goal became less and less an interest to the crew as everyone aboard the ship came to realize that their survival was suddenly more an issue than was reaching their intended destination.

Ben Jones does a good job in describing the tediously repetitive existence of the crew as they struggled to stay afloat and to survive the extreme temperatures to which they were subjected. With no sunlight to break day from night, every hour seemed like the one before it and the one to come. Their minds became as numb as their hands and feet and they stayed alive as much from habit as from any conscious effort to save themselves.

Unfortunately, as a reader, I came to understand how they must have felt. I pushed through, from page to page, wondering if I would have the strength to see it through to the end and, if so, whether or not I would find that the trip had been worth such a supreme effort. Because there is such limited character development, I found that I really did not care who lived nor died. With one or two exceptions they were all the same to me. After reading this novel of almost three hundred pages, in which so little action took place, I was exhausted and wished I had never signed on for the trip.

Rated at: 2.0

Venezuela's Mule Bookmobiles

We've all heard of Kenya's camel bookmobile library that was used by Masha Hamilton as the basis of her novel of the same name. Now, from the BBC, comes word of a similar program that is being run in Venezuela by a university there. Only, the camels have been replaced by mules.

They are known as bibliomulas (book mules) and they are helping to spread the benefits of reading to people who are isolated from much of the world around them.

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The idea of loading mules with books and taking them into the mountain villages was started by the University of Momboy, a small institution that prides itself on its community-based initiatives and on doing far more than universities in Venezuela are required to do by law.

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Anyone who was not out working the fields - tending the celery that is the main crop here - was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.

"Bibilomu-u-u-u-las," they shouted as the bags of books were unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.

"Spreading the joy of reading is our main aim," Christina Vieras told me.

"But it's more than that. We're helping educate people about other important things like the environment. All the children are planting trees. Anything to improve the quality of life and connect these communities."

As the project grows, it is using the latest technology.

Somehow there is already a limited mobile phone signal here, so the organisers are taking advantage of that and equipping the mules with laptops and projectors.

The book mules are becoming cyber mules and cine mules.

"We want to install wireless modems under the banana plants so the villagers can use the internet," says Robert Ramirez, the co-ordinator of the university's Network of Enterprising Rural Schools.

And the world gets smaller every day. You just have to love this combination of old tech and new tech and wonder what's next.

Harry Potter's Last Roundup

It's time for one last recap on how the last Harry Potter book impacted the bottom line of the various segments of the book selling world. Today's Houston Chronicle has an article that summarizes the results for Houston booksellers, and I suspect that their reaction is similar to that of booksellers around the world.

To discount, or not to discount? And did any bookseller make a profit on the hottest book of the year?

You could buy the book for $17.99 from amazon.com, and less than $20 at stores all over town. Independent bookstores offered small discounts or none at all, so maybe the question is, why did anyone pay full price?

Consider the screwy economics of publishing, where selling 150 books might be more profitable than selling millions. And where personal service occasionally trumps price.

"The retail book business is sort of unusual," explains Dan Neale of Brazos Bookstore. "If a book becomes real popular, the major retailers cut the price."

Brazos Bookstore, like many other independents, did not discount Deathly Hallows, charging the list price of $34.99.

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Unlike most retail goods, books have a finite upper price — the price printed on the cover — but no minimum. Deals vary, but retailers generally pay 50 percent or more of list price to get the book from publishers; they also pay shipping charges.

With free shipping and a $5 gift coupon, Amazon offered Deathly Hallows at less than the wholesale price paid by most retailers. (Barnes & Noble and Borders discounted 40 percent, offering it for $20.99; people with store memberships paid as little as $18.89.)

"Amazon was selling the book cheaper than we could buy it," Neale says. "I guess they chose to do that in the hope that folks will maybe buy something else. But we're not in the refrigerator business or the wide-screen TV business. We're in the book business."

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Executives at both companies (Amazon and Barnes & Noble) admitted even before the book's release that the big sales numbers would not translate into profits. Instead, the pricing was a competitive ploy and, in the case of Amazon, a chance to prove it could deliver when it promised — midafternoon July 21, within about 15 hours of the official midnight release.

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But even stores that charged full price may not have made much money after producing the Harry Potter parties customers had come to expect.

All booksellers hope to capitalize on what Tina Jordan, vice president of the Association of American Publishers, calls "the trickle effect. They come in to buy Harry Potter, but they buy Harry Potter plus one, or Harry Potter plus two."

That's real, Jordan says, although whether it can offset steep discounts isn't clear.

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Murder by the Book touts the breadth of its inventory and the knowledge of its staff, rather than price, and Thompson directs his ire not at discounts but at online sales.

"People go into Kroger, and if they can get it for 50 percent less while they buy their toothpaste and their lettuce, I say, 'More power to them,' " he says. "But if people buy from Amazon, that takes money out of Houston and sends it to Seattle. The state misses out on money (through sales taxes) for education, roads, prisons."

That's pretty much what I expected to hear from the various segments of book retailing. It was next to impossible for any of them to make much money off of Harry Potter but they could not afford, either, to just ignore the release of book seven. The big guys, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders, all evidently took losses on the big party night, and the little independents were very lucky to make a few bucks. Despite what any of them might say about the effects of Harry Potter on reading trends for children and on future books sales, I suspect that deep down inside they are all quite relieved that Harry Potter is finally gone for good.

Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror

America is in severe need of a wake up call that will allow it to focus on defeating the Islamist thought process that is a threat to our very way of life. Our politicians and our society have become so dependent on a steady flow of relatively cheap oil that we don’t want to recognize what countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are really doing with all of that American cash. But despite the way that America’s media outlets and universities try to disguise it, more and more people are coming to realize that the Saudi royal family is spending hundreds of million dollars here building mosques and staffing them with some of the most violently radical imams it can find in the Middle East. And those imams are here for only one reason: to preach the very anti-West, anti-American, anti-Semitic hate filled sermons that have brainwashed the youth of their own countries. They seek to take this country, and the West, from within.

It’s easy to discount this kind of warning when it comes from the mouth of a conservative American politician or writer. However, when someone like Egyptian Nonie Darwish in her book Now They Call Me Infidel exposes this well-funded plot to Islamize America, alarm bells should go off everywhere.

Nonie Darwish spent her first 30 years living in Egypt and Gaza. Her father, Mustafa Hafez, was hand-picked by Egypt’s President Nasser in 1955 to launch the Palestinian freedom movement from Gaza. He put together, and operated, a small army of terrorists whose task was to cause as much death and destruction inside Israel as possible. He was ultimately killed by an Israeli explosive delivered to his office, and he is still a hero to Palestinians who have named a street and a school after him. Nonie Darwish was a young girl when her father died but she has vivid memories of those days and of the doubts she already had about the failure of Arab culture to do much more than blame its own shortcomings on everyone but themselves.

Those are her credentials and we should all take her words to heart.

“I soon discovered that rabid anti-American feeling is rampant in the majority of U.S. mosques, where Muslims are encouraged to stand out as mujahadeen in America. In these mosques, America’s generosity was met with demands for more generosity and concessions from people who never lived a day under democracy in their countries of origin.” Page 140

“Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam…Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.” – Omar Ahmad, cofounder of the Council on American-Islamist Relations (CAIR) as quoted on page 140

“I truly believe that Arab men have been spoiled rotten as children by their parents; they were brought up to think of themselves as the best, of their religion as the best, and their lifestyle the best. When they finally grow up and are confronted with the confidence and competence of Western men they simply cannot stand it. Then the culture of pride, envy, and hate kicks in, and they begin to indulge in the blame game. Rather than examining their own system, culture, or religion, they say it must be colonialism, imperialism, past injustice, Israel’s existence, or a worldwide Zionist conspiracy that has caused their system to fail. Thus deep-seated feelings of inferiority create marching jihadists who have nothing else to aspire to than either claim the West for Islam or destroy it.” – Page 147-148

“Many devout Muslims hold at heart a dream of an Islamic Caliphate, a totalitarian political system encompassing the whole Muslim world – and eventually the entire world –which functions under one constitution (the Koran) and one law, Islamic sharia law. This is not some crazy notion espoused by some lunatic fringe Islamists. Conquering the world for Islam is the stated goal that emanates from powerful, ruling Islamic clerics throughout the Middle East…This is also the goal of many Islamic organizations operating under false pretences in America and financed and supported by radical Muslim states.” – Page 149

“There is nothing America or the non-Muslim West can do that will be met with gratitude and appreciation…To the contrary, good deeds on non-Muslims toward Muslims only deepen their sense of dependency and inferiority in the context of the macho and pride-driven Muslim culture. In the end, the culture of envy and shame always dominates.” – Page 175

“America’s Islamic enemies and critics – even those who love living in the United States – are nothing more than pirates…Instead of building their own society as a model of what Islam should be, they leave it in ruins and look to conquer hard-working successful lands. To do to Europe and America what they did to Muslim countries? To ruin them the same way they ruined our own culture? They cannot stand to live in a Muslim culture, and they have their eyes set on beautiful and welcoming democracies, not to blend in, but to rob those democracies of their soul and ruin the value system and culture that made them great.” - Page 185

“Why do I speak out, and what do I say? I try to help Americans face the truth about the terror threat they are up against, help them understand the mind-set of the jihadists who wish to destroy America. I realize there is fire in my heart. I do not deny it. I am angry at my culture. What arrogance and ingratitude. Who gave my people the right to destroy the world in the name of Allah? No religion should advocate that. Who gave my people the right to destroy people of other religions, cultures, and beliefs? Who gave them the right to declare a fatwa of death on Muslim critics who speak out against Islamist tyranny? Some say this is a clash of civilization. The truth is that this is an attack on civilization itself by haters of civilization.” - Page 197

Nonie Darwish is telling us things that we need to comprehend and, because she is an Arab herself, she understands exactly what we are faced with today. She knows that the Arab culture of lies and deceit is the perfect match for our own culture which so highly values freedom of speech and religious tolerance.

She knows that if we lose what is almost destined to become World War III that it will be only because our tolerance proves to be the Achilles heel that keeps us from fighting back before it is too late. She knows that the enemy is already here and that he is being supported by our own oil money returned here by the Saudi royal family and others like them who support the terrorists in our midst.

This book should be required reading at all high schools and universities but there is no chance that will happen while so many universities are openly accepting Saudi cash to build and operate campus “Islamist Study” centers. Will we wake up in time to save ourselves? Only time will tell, and that scares me to death.

Rated at: 4.0