Perhaps you are all wondering what I am up to, what new adventures I’m having in Spain. Since coming to Altea, my parents and I have settled into a regular routine. We all wake up about the same time as one another, between 8 and 9 o’clock, do some quick stretches, and head down the many stairs to run along the shore. We do a mixture of jogging and walking, actually, but my mom is such a fast walker that my dad and I have to jog to keep up. Our neighbor, David, calls us crazy, and yesterday I would have to agree with him — we must have been mad to go running in the pouring rain, and this time I do mean “running,” as it was the only way to keep warm.

Then we walk up all those stairs again, take showers, and eat some breakfast of fresh squeezed orange juice, fruit muesli and oatly (a brand of oat milk), or bananas sliced up with cinnamon on top. The rest of the day is a mixture of reading, working on the computer (or sewing tiny bears if you are my mom), chatting with neighbors that wander past, and walking up and down all those stairs several times to explore the town. The old town is by far the best, situated on top of the hill surrounding the blue-domed church, a mix of terrace restaurants and art galleries set in white buildings and narrow streets. The rest of town is more modern, with cars and clothing shops and “Consum” and “Masymas” supermercados. The beach is lovely, with a long sidewalk or boardwalk extending almost uninterrupted from Altea to Albir, and English-speaking cafes arranged along the entire stretch.

Dinner is a casual affair, something simple and light like chickpea salad and plum tomatoes on pan multicereal, or a broccoli stir-fry with brown rice. And it is always accompanied by Star Trek. Somehow dinner and a show manages to remain special no matter how many times we do it. In fact, this whole routine may sound boring to some, but it is truly not. The daily rituals frame continuing conversations with my parents and the gradual soaking in of the Altean atmosphere. Instead of violently inflicting culture upon myself (and perhaps myself upon a culture), I think I prefer this sponge method of travel. I can sit still, watching and listening, and for a time at least, figure out how to live here.

Lest life get altogether too formulaic, however, we have done several day trips. In addition to the fabulous local Tuesday market, there is a flea-market on Saturdays quite a drive out of town. Last week David took us with him, and we spent at least a hour taking in the booth after table after carpet displaying everything from nudibranch-like polyester dresses to antique bronze braziers. Yesterday it cancelled due to the downpour, but next week I hope Anna, our other eccentric British neighbor, will join us.

We hiked out to the lighthouse in the Serra Gelada one day, and another we spent getting our train tickets refunded and exploring the hilltop castle at Alicante, and just last Friday we walked the painted town and floral bayou of La Vila Joiosa, ending the expedition with a mancerina of dark drinking chocolate at the Xocolateria.

And really, every adventure should end in chocolate.

The world is both incredibly limited — how many times must we repeat mistakes, replay history, watch reruns? — but also incredibly unlimited. Every time I get dragged down by the muck of ignorance (e.g. abstinence-only education), pettiness (e.g. bodysnarking, via Feministing), or hostility (e.g. the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act), I then find something really cool to life my spirits again.

I can never have enough Malcolm Gladwell, and in his New York Times article In the Air, he describes the phenomenon known to every math and science student: people are constantly re-discovering and re-inventing the same things… at approximately the same time. Ideas, he exclaims happily, are hardly rare at all. Well of course not! But as the author of The Tipping Point, Gladwell knows quite well that it takes more than an idea to get something off the ground. One needs the resources and connections, and sometimes a new perspective. He talks about the Intellectual Ventures’ 32 inventions over a single casual dinner, and their hundreds of patents, which are all perfectly stimulating; but the really exciting part is hearing about those that are actually happening!

For example, in Technology Review I read about a garbage-fueled power plant with no harmful byproducts. Very cool — let’s build one! Maybe the reason genius seems so rare is that the big ideas are so rarely put into action. Thankfully, the simple and the small ones are often just as thrilling. Like the turbid tale of vegan marshmallows (don’t forget part 2).

You can’t trust good ideas will get follow-up, and you can bet bad ones will. Obviously that’s not actually the case — plenty of bad ideas are forgot during the hang-over. But you never remember the rain when you have an umbrella, now, do you?

Arguing about fantastical politics is more satisfying than arguing about real ones. The situation is timeless, an object to played with as long or as little as you like, and the philosophical gains are applicable as far as you care to extend analogy. Take the Prime Directive, for instance. Though I’ve never attended a sci-fi convention, I was a raised a Trekkie, and will always carry with me that interminable optimism instilled in me by Gene Roddenberry.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the Prime Directive formulated as the commandment it’s treated as, but the literal wording is hardly important. Picard has to wrestle with it practically every other episode, and when he does, he drags a whole lot of other philosophy into the ring. In “Who Watches the Watchers?”, some primitive proto-Vulcans appear to be on a development path similar to humans. They once lived in caves, now in huts, and someday they will build spaceships, too. Because that’s what humanoid life-forms do (obviously).

But what about super-advanced aliens that built spaceships and then decided to settle down into a nice “primitive” lifestyle like the Mintakans? The Prime Directive prevents the Federation from making contact with pre-warp civilizations, lest they interfere with their “natural progression.” They treat planet-bound cultures like impressionable children. Yet the Mintakan culture hardly seems permanently damaged when the “more advanced” crew of the Enterprise finally comes clean. In fact, it’s only then that they fix the problems they created by trying out little white lies (for their own good) and reach mutual understanding.

What about the people of Rubicun III from “Justice”? You know, those blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white-toga’ed folk who run around and kill you if you step on the grass. Why were they deemed ready for contact, but not the Mintakans? And at what point is a civilization ready for first contact? Even without a warp drive, if they reach out first it might be a sign that they’re “advanced enough” or “mature enough” or whatever.

So in “Pen Pals”, Data receives a distress call from a little girl named Sarjenka. Her planet is dying, and her people with it, so she uses her radio to attempt communication with the stars. It’s Sarjenka who makes first contact; Data is not contaminating her mind with far-advanced technology, simply engaging in a cross-cultural exchange. But when this communication is revealed, Picard claims it violates the Prime Directive and proceeds to wonder about the ethics of saving the planet at all. Valuing other cultures is one thing, but here the Prime Directive seems to imply a belief in fate: if it is the planet’s destiny to blow to kingdom come, so it is the destiny of that culture to die out. Thankfully the value their culture places on life leads them to save the day.

Except that they wipe Sarjenka’s mind so that no one’s the wiser. WTF.

No doubt the Prime Directive is generally a good idea, in that the alternative to a non-interference policy is rampant colonialism and evangelicalism. But at what point are they calling on notions fate and a fixed line of progress to make difficult ethical decisions? How should they act when other cultures have conflicting values: should the Federation tolerate slavery, genocide, and oppression in the name of the Prime Directive? Is contacting the nanomites that were consuming the Enterprise in “Evolution” a violation of the Prime Directive? Beyond different values, what about species with different intelligences? Should intelligence be quantified right along with technological advancement — with a threshold for Federation membership?

Thankfully Star Trek never assumes there are simple, or even right, answers to these questions. Which is why they struggle with them so often. Nor was it frivolous to have a long discussion with Papa about the laws and values of a fictional universe: we can turn our minds to the our own universe and see foreign policy from a new perspective. Theory guides pragmatic action, but the messy details of the real world force us into compromises before we even get a chance to look at the big picture.

Play in fiction, and never abandon your toys.

I am in Altea, Spain. In fact, this is my second full day in Altea. And guess what? No stress, thanks to the mere presence of my friend Becki and my wonderful parents! Even though the transportation systems seemed hell-bent on keeping us from getting here, we persevered.

Becki and I flew to Barcelona through Rome, where we spent five hours for our connecting flight, since our original flight was delayed three hours and it caused a huge ripple effect. My parents had no way of contacting me, and in their efforts to figure out why I had not arrived, they were thwarted by evil airport minions.

We then lugged our stuff on the bus to our little hostel, a pleasant enough place with painted walls and a shared bathroom. Except miscommunication landed us with two beds the first night, and we slept family-style (Becki had her own hostel, thank goodness). I felt a bit out of place, the place being geared toward gay travelers, but I got a giggle out of the hulking men in their brochure collection.

Barcelona is a clean city, with beautiful architecture and wide sidewalks, narrow pedestrian alley-ways that wend past unexpected cathedrals. On La Rambla you can find hordes of tourists, cages of birds and reptiles and small furry mammals, the scents of a hundred different flowers, and every sort of living statue imaginable. Including a devilish gargoyle who grabbed you if you got too close, flashing the whites of his eyes and the red of his tongue.

The city was ultimately just a city, however. I missed the green pouring out of the Athenian balconies, and coexistence with dogs and cats, that diversity of dominant species. I missed the ability to find vegan food in any taverna. But Athens is also just a city, and I am not a city person.

We left Becki to do further sight-seeing beyond the tour buses, and fled by train to Alicante. Well, almost. We were delayed for five hours — on the train — a mere half an hour from our destination. Too much rain! The electricity was out, and we were as stuck as the train. I am astounded at our patience: my feathers, at least, were hardly ruffled, and when we finally made it to Altea, I conked out in my own room.

Altea is touristy, it’s true. But there are little stair-studded streets everywhere, and our town-house is big and bright, and our neighbor is a gregarious older British man with a cat named Cassandra. We went jogging on the beach this morning, and in the early afternoon we were overwhelmed by the smells and colors and potential tastes of the outdoor market. There is fast and reliable internet, delicious tap water, chirping birds, passing clouds, and no traffic. I use the church bells to keep track of time.

Breathing is nice.

I have struggling with veganism, but not in the way you might think. It has been so simple to give up meat, then eggs and milk, and even being at the mercy of the CYA cafeteria I have found it more difficult to eat conveniently than to stick to my guns.

Much more problematic is how I am to deal with the omnivores around me. They are my family and friends, and as much as I want to believe that veganism is simply “my personal choice,” that is statement is not consistent with my values. At first I went about seeking ways to defend those values in the most reductionist terms, something akin to Peter Singer’s utilitarianism: it’s good for the environment (you know, the planet we must live upon), it’s good for one’s health (taken with a grain of salt), and it’s good for ensuring a full range of empathy and compassion (arguably keeping up more a harmonious society).

But it comes down to this. As a society, we should decide what we want to value rather than defending or pushing the values we already have. We can not hope to reduce ourselves to purely-rational robots, since we require points of view and frames of reference to think within. We need deuterotruths, and however flexible our brains may be, we can only trade one set for another. Because we occupy an intellectual and social space as well as a physical one, we need a common ground for negotiating that space. And genetically or culturally, we are all given a starting point: we all value life and abhor suffering.

I like those values. Unadulterated, compassion leads to the urge to preserve ourselves, our companions, and the environment that sustains us. The compassionate person is open-minded and tolerant, hoping to understand and connect with the world around them. The compassionate person seeks out the beautiful things in life, because those things reinforce their values. And as much as I hesitate to define the value of living things by their capacity to suffer, it is surely a great measure of how much compassion we feel. Where we share suffering, we should extend our empathy.

But we quickly start watering down our values in an attempt to paint to world in bold strokes of black and white. We want situations to be Right or Wrong, completely justified or not at all, so we start qualifying where and when to apply our compassion. Why not accept the inconsistencies of the world, and struggle instead with juggling the full weight of our values? When people share values, they can communicate effectively and productively debate over what to do with them.

For example, does veganism naturally lead to an anti-abortion stance? I have wrestled with this issue on my own, but other vegans have done the same in concert: on one Australian forum I found, vegans with differing opinions managed to have a sane and thought-provoking discussion (at least on the first page). Unlike the Christian fundamentalists and heart-bleeding Liberals, who become so entrenched in defending their own values that they fail to communicate with each other at all, the people in that forum share a simple unadulterated compassion. They are seeking how best to be compassionate when the world offers so many factors to consider. No matter what anyone says, abortion is a difficult moral issue that deserves this kind of moral questioning.

I once thought women would only abort their pregnancies in extenuating circumstances, but I have heard that in Greece and some social circles in the US, affluent young women use abortions as a form of birth control. I find that upsetting, like crushing bugs on a window ledge, and rather excessive when they made the decision ahead of time to forgo preventative measures like condoms, pills, and IUD’s. But I am certainly capable of being saddened by an abortion at the same time that I object to forcing a reluctant mother and an unwanted child upon the world. That is surely the greater source of suffering.

From Jackqueline on the Human Abortion and Veganism forum:

Rights inevitably clash.  Hate speech is a clash of the freedom of speech can clash with the right to equality.  [What] they do each claim has to be weighed against the other.

But back to my problem of living and loving omnivores.

There seem to be two types of meat-eater: the one who eats meat because of its cultural pervasiveness and for its convenience, who would rather turn a blind eye to the hundreds of animals who suffer and die for their sake than suffer social awkwardness or diet change; and the other one who eats meat and accepts, even rejoices, in cold hard reality of animal butchery. I cannot respect the hypocrisy of the first, and I cannot respect the values of the second.

Some object the use of disturbing images of animal cruelty to turn people into vegetarians. Yet if you find them so disturbing, should you really be supporting those practices by reaping the results? How can you be a whole person if you reject your own compassionate impulses? Do you really believe that those animals aren’t suffering, that they are so inferior as to deserve it? Do you really value the simple pleasures of intelligent beings over the entire lives of less intelligent beings? Is that really what you want to believe?

I can challenge omnivores all I want in the safety of my head or the company of vegetarians or the lofty words of this article (which are not meant to be passive aggressive, but a hard-edged formulation of my thoughts, without the careful hedging I might do in the presence of a loved one). But I don’t want to come off as judgmental — I do that all too easily — and I don’t want to antagonize those around me and isolate myself in a fortress of moral superiority. I am hardly perfect, but I try to do better. I may not be able to prove that veganism is undeniably Right, or construct the perfect definition or defense of compassion, but I can certainly ask people to reflect on their choices based on their own feelings. Feelings at least, unlike morals, ethics, or values, are real.

If you consume animal products of any kind, you have the responsibility to know where they come from. There are gentler ways to inform yourself, but soft words do not always do justice. Watch Meet Your Meat or Earthlings if you can, though it feels like getting shot in the gut. I could only get through a few minutes of each before wanting to vomit and cry, and I would be concerned if they don’t make you want to do the same. Yet how could it be a dirty tactic to show you these videos, however shocking, when they show you a reality that you are otherwise unwilling to accept? We find it necessary to be saddened by war movies and holocaust exhibits because it reminds us of the human capacity for cruelty, that we might better avoid great harm and indifference ourselves.

Somehow, no matter what comes along to crush my faith in humanity, there is some part within me refuses to become jaded. My deepest belief — or perhaps my greatest hope — is that every human on this planet has a seed of compassion buried deep within their minds. It is as powerful as apathy and as world-shaking as hate, if only we would let it grow unhindered.

But perhaps it is too painful. My own is often left untended. For there are too many horrors in this world for one little girl to handle.

I keep running into this “aquatic ape” theory. First from one of my dad’s ham-radio friends, then in Real Food, and now from Seth Roberts. I just finished Freakonomics (which, by the way, was rather lackluster compared to Malcolm Gladwell’s works of similar style) and decided to investigate this guy up in a fit of procrastination. The book mentions his self-experimentation and his discovery of the Shangri-La “diet” (it’s not technically a way of eating), a little fishy, but his blog is dedicated to the pursuit of amateur science. The discussion in the comments of the aquatic ape post is intelligent and surprisingly civil, considering the debate is about whether or not humans evolved from water-dwelling primates. It’s less wacky than it sounds, but the theory doesn’t exactly — excuse me — hold water.

On the other hand, one of his commenters suggests that boys do better than girls in interactive classrooms: “Boys do best in classes where they can move around and don’t have to be quiet. Girls do better in the traditional format– sit at your desk and listen quietly to the teacher.” I feel like I need to find a phone booth and a Feminist Superhero costume… all I need is research to back up my visceral objections. There’s just no way boys are genetically predisposed to have more fun!

I’ll console myself with wishful thinking.

Fact of the day: Dumbledore is an Old English word for bumblebee.

I’ve been partaking of a lot of cooking shows recently. Well, mostly just Good Eats. I skip most of the meat-heavy episodes, and then spend the rest automatically making substitutions and thinking of ways to veganize, designing my kitchen and making a list of cooking supplies (did you know a burr-style coffee grinder can also mill flour? How exciting!). Along with Vegetarian Food for Thought and the badly-written but well-researched Real Food: What to Eat and Why, plus the frustration of not actually having my own kitchen, this has fermented into several wacky ideas.

The first is to do my own cooking show someday (podcast-style), in which I copy the illustrious Alton Brown (explaining the science, history, and health of ingredients and methods with the help of humorous props and skits), except vegan (I can honestly live without cheese and bacon — I know, it seems so wrong).

The second is to do a cooking vacation, in which I hire a chef in an exotic locale to teach me and some friends how to cook. Or maybe not even a big-time professional chef, but just a farmer, or a cafe-owner, or a baker. The lessons could even be in trade for helping out around the kitchen.

The third thing I might actually do, especially once I have full access to academic resources again: write about the philosophy and science of vegetarianism. I know I said to ignore health studies, but I think doing some solid research could really help get to the bottom of food myths and health propaganda (without the meat-and-dairy-biased Nina Planck). Plus there is basic information about the role of various nutrients. What is the role of cholesterol in the body? What are the differences between various kinds of fats? Does protein source matter?

And most importantly: will I find time to write an extra Thesis? Answer: only if no one gets me Spore. That game will suck up all the cognative surplus I have, and then some.

In the meantime, reap for yourself the harvest of my initial research:

• Vegan Action FAQ’s, for some quick vegan basics
• The Animal Rights Library, with some well-known names like Dawkins and Shelley (I’ve a lot of reading to do here)
• A response to criticism of The China Study, a book clearly on my reading list
• The Practical Ethicist, an interview with Peter Singer

Sleepy afternoon eyes
Legs still from moving
Thinking slow like light diffusion
Alone in the breeze
And wanting nothing else.

So much to say, so little internet! Here I’ve been off having adventures, and leaving all my anxious readers (if I have any) in the dark. Well, no more.

About two weekends ago, I went to Mistra on my last CYA excursion. Little did I know that Mistra is actually right next to Sparta, so I was able to spend the twilight hours in the ancient site — now a most tranquil place of olive groves, overgrown wildflowers, and wide cobbled paths. Prof. Coulson, advanced in years though she is, even jumped a fence to get us into the ruins of a Byzantine church.

Not that the next day wouldn’t be full enough of the things. We made sure to stop by the church Prof. Coulson did her thesis on, which actually left me completely enthusiastic for our on-sight final. Half Eastern, half Western, it was an intriguing puzzle… at least for those with at least a few weeks of background and an unusually excited guide.

The on-sight final was a similar project, describing a little church at Mistra in an attempt to argue whether or not Byzantine architecture was stagnant or truly creative. I went for the latter, but it’s hard to see why with the untrained eye. However, whether or not one likes Byzantium, one must certainly fall in love with the fairy-tale-like ruins of Mistra, with its brick-red churches and castles giving way to a spring of lush greenery and a kaleidoscope of flowers, all buzzing with honeybees. I saw a lizard, a lumbering beetle two inches big, a donkey, and came face-to-face with a grasshopper the size of a weta.

I also met a young man who didn’t know what pollination was… It’s still too painful to talk about.

Mistra, in fact, soon leapt to the top of my favorite locations in Greece, immediately followed by Meteora. However, you are in Greece for Orthodox Easter, do not miss pension Carlos in Akrotiri, Santorini. I’m sure glad I didn’t.

My Easter holiday was cold, windy, and rainy. Naxos provided me with hours of wanderings through the Old Market, a series of alleyways between white buildings with blue trim and dozens of little shops spilling out onto the pedestrian street. Naxos town was like a clean white labyrinth set on a hill, a pleasant enough place to stop for a day or two before moving on to Santorini.

But at the port of Santorini, I was picked up by Maria, and driven up to the modern town of Akrotiri and her family-run Carlos pension. I didn’t actually realize it was Akrotiri until I went for a walk past the (unfortunately closed) archaeological site, but wouldn’t you know it: a swallow flew right across the road in front of me, looking just like the famous Minoan wall-paintings. I am quite the Classics geek: It took my breath away.

I became fast friends with Maria, and her mother Eva. I helped Eva set up breakfast one morning for the big group of Icelanders, and we talked of vegetarianism: “Do you do this for God?” “No, I do it for myself.” It turns out Eva had been vegetarian herself for a time; “When I am on my own, I would like to give up meat again.” She made me some delicious fried vegetable patties.

The lambs, though… I almost had to leave the room. The night before Maria made candles for everyone, and we went to church to be mortar-bombed by fireworks. Now was the Sunday feast, and they brought in three whole lambs on spits, their white teeth grinning horribly from holocaust-charred faces. And there was Eva, honing her knife theatrically, and she and her son just started hacking those bodies to pieces. I stared at my water, waiting for the carnage to render them shapeless and meaningless.

Fortunately, it was uphill from there. I filled myself with potatoes, vegetables, bread, and Easter cakes. And then, oh then! Five hours of dancing: we watched the Greeks do individual Zembetiko, some of them quite amazing performances; and everyone joined in the line dances, and we eventually even picked up a few real dance steps. The Icelanders and I took center stage for a short bout of Western and Latin American music, from Wild Thing to Ricky Martin. By the end of the night, my feet hurt, but I was the happiest, most unselfconscious thing in the world!

I even managed to keep my spirits up for the 11-hour ferry ride I had to suffer through the next day, passengers sitting on the floor in the hallways like refugees. I might have gotten a little stir-crazy towards the end, when I started getting the urge to wear the fire-extinguisher cover as a pope-hat… er, let us never speak of this again.

The truck with all the trees
Rolls slowly down the street.
The gypsy calls
To sell! The trees!
But no one comes to buy
And the truck just rolls on by.