![]() CraveOnline.com is a property of CraveOnline Media, LLC, an Evolve Media, LLC company. NOT IN ANY WAY ASSOCIATED WITH CRAVE ENTERTAINMENT. ![]() ![]() But when Cal learns that his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore), has cheated on him and wants a divorce, his . Worse, in today's single world, Cal, who hasn't dated in decades, stands out as the epitome of un- smooth. Now spending his free evenings sulking alone at a local bar, the hapless Cal is taken on as wingman and prot. The ultimate news source for music, celebrity, entertainment, movies, and current events on the web. It's pop culture on steroids. A common complaint about the Transformers movies is that the robots take a backseat to the humans. Sam Witwicky, Cade Yeager—these are the main characters of the. Amanjena Route De Ouarzazate, Km 12, Palmeraie . Like every resort under the Aman umbrella, Amanjena is known for spectacular lodgings, service. Read the latest news and updates on your favorite movies, tv shows & stars. Moviefone is your source for entertainment, movie, DVD, online streaming & TV news. When Will the Great Human- Elephant War End? Humans are at war. They’re at war with each other, they’re at war with themselves, and some are at war with elephants. Researchers want to know how humans and the long- snooted aggressors can live in peace. Northern Botswana is a hotspot in the ongoing human- elephant conflict, with 1. As humans take up more and more space in the area to farm, the result has been crop- raids (elephants eating or damaging crops) and casualties on both sides. There are a few hundred elephant raids annually in Botswana alone, and hundreds of people have died worldwide from run- ins with elephants. Badminton champion died on dream Thai holiday when her friend rode their motorbike into the path of a truck on their way to swim with elephants. Another biased list, like I said if you think about all of those physical advantages the primates have over the rest of the animals they are the dumbest. ![]() So it’s understandably hard to convince the locals to protect the vulnerable African Elephant population when they keep raiding their farmland. But American and British scientists have realized it’s also difficult to predict and understand these complex interactions. The researchers are primarily collecting data from government and non- government agencies in the area, on the humans, the elephants, and on how both groups use land. To protect both the people and the elephant, the researchers believe they need to survey the trends in the data to determine the causes of the conflict, and what factors make it worse. They also worked alongside local village chiefs to figure out the number of times elephants raided cropland in the area. They found that the human population grew from around 2,0. Meanwhile, the elephant populations seemed to increase exponentially from 1. The amount of allocated farmland hasn’t increased by much over the same time period and has actually decreased in the past few years. Their findings surprised them, though: despite the increased populations of both people and pachyderms, the number of raids has seemed to decrease in the past ten years. And the models they built gave completely different predictions based on the amount of time they spanned. All that made the researchers wonder what was actually causing the human- elephant conflicts if more inhabitants doesn’t mean more fighting. That means that more farmland might mean more conflict, and reducing the number of crop raids might be as simple as more effective land use. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the findings. They’re based on a model, which built both estimates and a few different data sources, including self- reported data on an emotionally charged issue. There are so many factors that can go into whether or not elephants will raid farms, which is itself only one facet of the whole matter. Human- elephant conflict will continue to be an issue across the world—hundreds are killed annually by elephants in India as well. On top of that, Africa’s elephants, as well as their rhinos and other wildlife, already suffer from the poaching crisis. Also, who are we to go in there and think we can just fix everything? The study is nonetheless useful, simply in the fact that it proves just how difficult predicting trends in human- elephant conflict might be. Fewer raids over time, despite more people and elephants in the region, did encourage the scientists. The researchers hope that conservationists will think carefully about their models before simply recommending decisions about managing elephant populations to lawmakers. Reimbursing people whose land has been raided by elephants might not get to the core of the problem, and might skew numbers in the wrong direction. But hopefully one day we can learn to treat our trunked aggressors as friends. Jacob Jankowski in Water for Elephants. Character Analysis. Jacob is working overtime as the narrator of Water for Elephants. Younger Jacob and older Jacob each gets to have his say: they both have their own trials and tribulations, and they both tell the story as though it's happening right now. A senior in college, he's a little bit obsessed with sex. Sure, he's working on a promising vet career and has a job all lined up, but he's mostly preoccupied with his virginity. One of the first things he tells the reader is, . Nicely put. Why is Jacob so sex- focused when we first meet him? Well, he's a young guy constantly being exposed to pretty young ladies, like Catherine, who taunt him by being both available and unavailable. He's in college, away from his parents' authority, plus he likes school and doesn't have any major problems. That means he's free to obsess about sex. He's just learning who he is and what his place is in the world. Cut the guy some slack. Sex remains a major concern for Jacob even after his parents die and everything changes. In many ways, it seems like college in the 1. People are focused on who's done what with whom and who's experienced what when. Jacob's peers (like many people in college today) value knowledge over innocence. Jacob is embarrassed about his lack of experience, but he also has standards. He's a bit of a romantic: he stays away from prostitutes and porn. At the circus, he quickly (and embarrassingly) gets a crash course on the female body when a circus talent exposes her breasts at a show. Later, he sees Marlena and falls head over heels for her: it's pretty clear that he wants to sleep with her almost as soon as he sees her. And eventually, he does. To his credit, Jacob holds out for a long time – as does Marlena. It's not until August forces the issue that Marlena and Jacob finally turn to each other and really get it on. Is anybody surprised at that point that the sex is really great? Jacob is blown away by the closeness he feels, and he shares this with Marlena. He's the one who says . It's pretty clear that he values the emotional elements of sex and doesn't want to keep things up with Marlena unless love is a part of the equation. So Jacob's a little bit of a contradiction. On one hand, he seems like he's hell- bent on proving how masculine he is, given the way he displays such a keen interest in women and has such frequent thoughts about sex. It's like he has to prove that he's a . On the other hand, Jacob is committed to only having sex with someone he really loves and making sure that love is an explicit part of sex. He spends the majority of his life in a monogamous relationship and claims he never had the desire to get out of that relationship. These qualities don't sit as well with the definition of a masculine man, according to the other folks in the 1. The Honorable Jacob. Jacob has strong values. Even though he's often thwarted in his attempt to do the right thing (he's always getting held back from defending someone or rushing to someone's rescue), he has a stubborn sense of right and wrong. He can't abide the smell of a slaughterhouse. He puts a foundering horse out of its misery. He tries not to sleep with another man's wife, even if the man is a wife beater and animal abuser who doesn't deserve her. He gives up his father's gold watch for a medical examination for Camel. By the end of the book, he's even able to protect Rosie. Sacrifice and honor are just a part of who this guy is. This leads to a good amount of guilt, too. For example, Jacob's lowest moment comes when he discovers that Walter and Camel have been murdered. Of course, if he'd been there to help Walter and Camel, he might have been killed, too. But Jacob can't help but feeling guilty. You think this has anything to do with the death of his parents? How are the two incidents related in his mind? Seeing Red. Yet Jacob is also pretty violent. In fact, he often tries to express his awesome values by using not- so- awesome violence. He's always ready, maybe too ready, to beat up the bad guys. He's not good at using just his words to resolve conflicts, and other people often have to hold him back. Perhaps, like his interest in sex, Jacob uses his readiness to participate in violence as a way of proving his masculinity to other characters. Why do you think he's so concerned with this? Participating in violence isn't always a bad thing, though. It's good to be able to defend yourself if you need to. It's good to be able to stand up for people who can't stand up for themselves (like Camel). Fighting is one of the ways the circus people communicate with one another. Jacob's world is full of people who understand fighting with fists better than fighting with words, and Jacob is just fitting in with that. So can we let him off the hook? Both of them frequently resort to physical force as a way to address conflict. It's no surprise, then, that several times they use this force on each other. Jacob's participation in violence leaves permanent marks on his body: he develops a crooked nose and an eye condition. One could say, though, that Jacob's participation in violence is different than August's in that Jacob fights to defend others: Marlena, Rosie, Camel. August just tries to hurt them. Jacob tries to do right by his friends and loved ones and struggles internally when he fails them. The value system revealed by his attitude to sex shows up just as clearly in the ways he uses violence. Jacob always has a good, moral reason for violence. The one time when his interest in violence might take him too far – to murder – he remembers his moral code and backs down at the last minute. Like a Fine Wine. In his old age, Jacob is still mentally interested in sex, even if his body can't keep up: and so he retreats into his memories to relive sensuous pleasures. He's no longer worried about getting to have sex; instead, he's worried about his ability to hold on to his memories of it. And despite the fact that he previously had such a voracious appetite for physical pleasure, he never cheated on Marlena: . Not once in more than sixty years did I stray. This point becomes even more relevant in hindsight, when Jacob reveals that he and Marlena first got together by committing adultery. In order to be with him, she had to be unfaithful to someone else. As an old man, Jacob seems to wish, more than anything, that he could slot himself back into his young body and get back the freedom he used to take for granted. In his 9. 0s, he can barely walk across the room. When he describes his memories, he doesn't necessarily value one thing more than another. He misses sex the same way he misses food: . In a way, he seems to miss the drama and excitement of the Benzini circus. His memories focus on a time full of adventure and danger rather than the pleasant decades as father and husband he must have enjoyed as well. Jacob After Marlena. Jacob will always love Marlena. It was the moment it all ended for me. In other words, even though he's still alive, he's only half himself. What's up with that? Is losing Marlena as awful as being brutally murdered? What do you think?) Jacob says very little about his relationship with Marlena or about their day- to- day life after the catastrophe that shut the circus down. Without August to keep them apart, it seems like they just relax into life together. In fact, the events between the 1. Chapter 2. 5. He loved her and he loved being with her, but that's all we really learn. It seems their marriage was as gloriously ordinary as their courtship was dramatically difficult. Why do you think he doesn't go into more detail? Sequel, perhaps? Without Marlena, their family has disintegrated. We readers are left to imagine how Marlena changed (or didn't) as she got older; we don't meet an older version of her the way we meet an older version of Jacob. The people Jacob meets during the 1. Why do you think the people in Jacob's present seem less interesting –maybe even less real – than the larger- than- life characters who dominate his memories? Jacob's Stories. The older Jacob is a great storyteller. In both cases of his storytelling within the book (to Rosemary and Charlie), his audience is eager and excited to hear from him. Jacob reports: . Although Jacob doesn't tell Rosemary all the details, he can't keep himself from sharing the whole shebang with Charlie: . All these years it's been pent up inside me. I thought I'd feel guilty, like I betrayed her, but what I feel . The question is, what prompts Jacob to divulge everything to Charlie at long last? Is it just pure catharsis? Is he happy to finally get respect and recognition from someone? Or do you think Charlie reminds Jacob of himself? At the end of the book, both Jacobs get a version of a happy ending. Both of them go on to another, better circus. Would this older Jacob trade places with his younger self and go back and do it all again? Maybe he is finally content to be himself in his elderly body, on the road with the people and animals and costumes and lights, helping make sure the show does go on.
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