G(r)eeking out

The ancient Greek writer Herodotus has been called “the father of history.” And “the father of lies.”

He is remembered today for his Histories, a sprawling account of the origins and outcome of the clash between the Greek city-states and the mighty Persian Empire in the fifth-century B.C.

It’s also stuffed with moral instruction, folklore, palace gossip, wild speculations and incredible tales of floating islands, giant gold-digging ants and flying serpents.

It also has some dark wisdom about happiness and the changeability of human fortunes.

One story involves two people whose names have become words, Solon and Croesus. Solon was an Athenian lawgiver who laid the foundation for that city’s democracy, while Croesus was the wealthy king of Lydia, in what is now Turkey.

A solon is a wise legislator, although you don’t hear the term around West Virginia much these days for some reason. Someone who is fabulously wealthy can be said to be “as rich as Croesus.”

The story goes that after Solon reformed Athenian laws, he left the city for 10 years after making the citizens swear an oath to abide by his measures for that period of time.

He visited Lydia, said to be the first country to mint coins, and stayed with Croesus. Eager to impress his guest, who was reputed to be wise, Croesus showed Solon his many treasures and asked him who he thought was the happiest man.

As my wife would say, he was fishing for a compliment.

He didn’t get one.

To Croesus’ surprise, Solon’s answer was someone he’d never heard of, an apparent Athenian nobody named Tellus, who had a decent life, a good family and who died fighting for his city and was honored with a funeral at public expense.

Croesus then asked who was next happiest. Once again, the answer wasn’t what he was looking for. Solon gave the names of two brothers from Argos named Kleobus and Biton.

They were the sons of a priestess of the goddess Hera. When the time came for her to go to the temple, the oxen who drew the cart had wandered off. Her sons put the yoke around themselves and pulled her several miles to the temple, where they were praised for their devotion to their mother and the gods who protected their city.

When the exhausted boys fell asleep, their proud mother prayed that they would receive whatever was best.

They never woke up. Let’s just say they went out on a high note.

Solon went on to explain to an angry Croesus that, since human life is subject to major reversals, he made it a practice not to say a person had a happy one until he saw how it ended. He said, “Until he is dead, keep the word ‘happy’ in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky.”

Croesus wasn’t having it. Solon soon left, while he continued to pursue wealth and power. He sent fabulous gifts to the major temples and oracles, including the famous oracle of the god Apollo, at Delphi.

As if you could buy the favor of the gods.

Croesus became concerned about the rise to power on his eastern frontier of the Medo- Persians under Cyrus. He asked the oracle at Delphi if he should go to war with Cyrus.

He was told that, if he did, a mighty empire would fall. Another oracle told him that he had nothing to fear until a mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse, ruled over the Medes and Persians empire.

He did go to war with Cyrus, but the empire that fell was his own. The mule, it turned out, was Cyrus himself, whose mother was a Mede and father was a Persian.

Apollo’s oracle was pretty funny that way, but the blame for the disaster belonged to Croesus and not the god.

After losing everything, Croesus was about to be burned alive as Cyrus watched. He cried out “Solon, Solon, Solon” as the flames burned higher. Cyrus, who was a pretty nice guy as world conquerors go, asked through an interpreter what he was saying and spared his life when Croesus told the story.

As he put it later, “Human life is like a revolving wheel and never allows the same man to continue long in prosperity.”

The point Herodotus and the Greek tragic poets were trying to make was that power, wealth and pride can lead to arrogance (Hubris) and moral blindness (Ate), which, in turn, can invite disaster, often personified as the vengeance of Nemesis, goddess of justice and retribution, who renders that which is due.

The biblical Book of Proverbs makes a similar point, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Meanwhile, the wheel still turns.

(This appeared as an op-ed in today's Gazette-Mail.)

Do you feel lucky today?

I’ve been musing lately about the role of luck in human affairs. By luck, I mean things that affect us for good or ill that we can’t anticipate or control. We go through our lives bouncing between automatic pilot and conscious planning, but even when we try to leave nothing to chance, the universe gets a vote.

Even when things work according to plan, I’d say we were lucky. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t.

The biblical book of Ecclesiastes sums it up: “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all.”

Similarly, I found this quote by American philosopher John Dewey:

“No one knows what a year or even a day may bring forth, the healthy become ill; the rich poor; the mighty are cast down, fame changes to obloquy. Men live at the mercy of forces they cannot control. Belief in fortune and luck, good and evil, is one of the most widespread and persistent of human beliefs. Chance has been deified by many peoples. Fate has been set up as an overlord to whom even the Gods must bow. Belief in a Goddess of Luck is in ill repute among pious folk but their belief in providence is a tribute to the fact no individual controls his own destiny.”

A lot of our lives is conditioned by things we have no control over — the genetic dice our parents rolled when we were conceived, or their bank accounts and zip codes at the time.

I’ve also been struck by the idea of “moral luck” as developed by philosophers Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel. It works something like this: We praise or blame people for actions, as if everything was up to the individual. But in real life, what people do or don’t is often as much a matter of time and chance as choice.

Consider a soldier who commits atrocities in a war. Would he or she have done the same without war? Or what if people who did evil in a dictatorship were born in a different country and/or under a different system?

Consider a car accident. Most of us have zoned out at a stop sign or neglected to obey a speed limit. Driver X runs a light and nothing happens, but with Driver Y innocent people are killed. Both are blameworthy for not paying attention, but the results are vastly different. We tend to blame one more, but the actions were the same. The main difference is luck.

Looking back at my life, the fact that I didn’t get into more serious trouble had more to do with luck than anything. Virtue is often a matter of chance and opportunity.

It’s also fascinating how different religions have incorporated luck and apparent randomness into their beliefs and practices.

In the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament, divination was performed with dice- or coin-like urim and thummin to determine the will of God. These were objects connected with the breastplate of the high priest. In the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, the 11 remaining disciples cast lots to see who would be selected to fill the void left by Judas.

In Chinese tradition, people threw yarrow stalks (or nowadays, flip coins) to consult the I Ching, an ancient book of oracles. Many peoples have attempted to read signs from things like the flight of birds or the entrails of sacrificial animals. Cards have been used for similar purposes. Even people who make fun of superstition sometimes flip a coin to make a decision.

Some traditions even make chance or luck divine, as in the Greek goddess Tyche, who morphed into the longer-lived Roman goddess Fortuna. Fortuna has been described as the one pagan goddess to survive into the Christian era.

Her main symbol is the famous wheel, which gave us the TV game show of the same name. The fact that this image has lasted so long in popular culture speaks of its power. As you know if you’ve ridden a Ferris wheel, sometimes you’re up and sometimes down. As the ancient Roman writer Seneca said, “Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low.”

Fortuna’s wheel is a good image to recall as we navigate life’s changes. If things are going good, don’t assume they always will be. If things are bad, this too can change. Nobody owns Fortuna.

One interesting effort to grapple with this is the situation of the Roman patrician Boethius (circa 480-525), who held high office between the fall of Rome and the early Middle Ages. Rome was under the power of the Ostrogoth. Boethius fell afoul of King Theodoric, was stripped of wealth and position, imprisoned and sentenced to be executed in a pretty nasty way.

There he composed a classic work, “The Consolation of Philosophy,” in which Lady Philosophy visits and instructs him so he can face death with composure. While that might sound contrived, his situation was all too real.

His basic point is that it’s the nature of Fortune to change. Those who put themselves in her power by basing happiness on things they can’t control are helpless when things change — as they will.

Fortuna says: “Here is the source of my power, the game I always play: I spin my wheel and find pleasure in raising the low to a high place and lowering those who were on top. Go up, if you like, but only on condition that you will not feel abused when my sport requires your fall.”

As powerful as she is, however, she can’t dictate how we respond to her. There’s an old-wisdom tradition that says while we can’t control events, we can control our responses to them and thus acquire a degree of independence from fortune. Alas, that’s easier said than done.


“Dante’s Inferno” portrays Fortuna as God’s agent in bringing change to the world: “… he ordained a general minister and leader/who would transfer from time to time the empty goods from one people to another, from one family to another, beyond any human wisdom’s power to prevent.”

Though we may curse her, “she is blessed in herself and does not listen … she gladly turns her sphere and rejoices in her blessedness.”

Love Fortuna or hate her, the bottom line is we’re all subject — to some degree — to forces beyond our control, whether we see these as inscrutable providence or random chance. In that case, maybe we should be a little easier on each other.

In any case, good luck! We’ll need it.

(This op-ed of mine ran in Sunday's Gazette-Mail)

Keenest to win fame

Goat Rope is all about Beowulf these days, although you will also find links and comments about current events. For more, click on earlier posts.

The Beowulf poet and the society he or she (or they) came from knew nothing about Greek tragedy, but it doesn't take much looking to find some tragic themes there. For many people, especially those influenced by Aristotle, tragic art involves a noble character brought low by some flaw or mistake of lack of insight. That kind of works for Beowulf, although the flaw in question is as much a part of the society it came from as it was of the hero.

Beowulf as a young man was all about winning fame. Hence, the trip to the land of the Danes to kill the monster Grendel. Before all that,

...He had been poorly regarded
for a long time, was taken by the Geats
for less than he was worth: and their lord too
had never much esteemed him in the mead-hall.
They firmly believed that he lacked force,
that the prince was a weakling; but presently
every affront to his deserving was reversed.

He got fame alright, but never quite lost the thirst for it. He eventually became king and ruled well over the Geats for fifty years until someone stirred up the wrath of a dragon, which he vowed to kill single handedly. As the last lines of the poem go,

They said that of all the kings upon the earth
he was the most gracious and fair-minded,
kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.

You could say that the tragic flaw of Beowulf was the conflict between the first part of the sentence and the last four words. Had he been less keen to win fame, he would have delegated the dragon slaying to younger men and continued to rule justly over the Geats and kept them in safety. Instead, he died in the effort, leaving his people to the nasty fate anticipated by a grieving woman, who

...sang out in grief;
with hair bound up, she unburdened herself
of her worst fears, a wild litany
of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,
enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles,
slavery and abasement.

As Dylan pointed out in a song, sometimes it's either fortune or fame, though neither are what they claim. Beowulf chose fame. I think I prefer fortune.

HOLY JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, BATMAN! A federal judge in Florida may have been overly caffinated (or something) when he ruled on the constitutionality of health care reform.

THINGS THEY DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM. Here's an excerpt from a new book about that topic.

OF WRITERS, RELIGION, EXILE, POLITICS AND SUCH. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW. If memory serves, a labor dispute in Egypt a few thousand years ago led by an agitator named Moses kicked up some dust. Here's an item from the AFLCIO blog on the role of Egyptian unions in the struggle for reform.

CORPORATIONS AND THE COMMONS. This entrepreneur calls for a balance between the two.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Excellence and fragility

The classical scholar Martha Nussbaum opens her book The Fragility of Goodness with a quote from the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who made a career for himself writing odes for victors in the Olympic and other sacred games. He wrote:

...human excellence
grows like a vine tree
fed by the green dew,
raised up, among wise men and just,
to the liquid sky.
We have all kinds of needs for those we love--
most of all in hardships, but joy, too
strains to track down eyes that it can trust.

In other words, most of the good things or qualities we have are not inherently ours--even if they are things we've worked hard to achieve or attain. They depend on many other and external conditions, all of which are changeable and subject to loss and reversal.

Nussbaum expounds on Pindar thus:

The excellence of the good person, he writes, is like a young plant: something growing in the world, slender, fragile, in constant need of food from without. A vine tree must be of good stock if it is to grow well. And even if it has a good heritage, it needs fostering weather (gentle dew an drain, the absence of sudden frosts and harsh winds), as well as the care of concerned and intelligent keepers, for its continued health and full perfection. So, the poet suggests, do we. We need to be born with adequate capacities, to live in a fostering natural and social circumstances, to stay clear of abrupt catastrophe, to develop confirming associations we other human beings.

We are all, in other words, subject to fortune and reversal. One of the functions of Greek tragedy, the theme these days at Goat Rope, is to remind us that no one is immune and to warn us against assuming that fleeting good luck is something we own.

50 HERBERT HOOVERS. This NY Times editorial talks sense about the fiscal crisis many states are facing.

GOD ON THE BRAIN. Here's a link to a recent NPR series on science and spirituality.

RELIGION IN THE WAR ROOM. Here's an item about how briefings for for former president Bush were laced with biblical language.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? Here's an item from Wired Science about why we stare.

TEXTING could be bad for teenagers'
health.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The wheel turns

If there is any upside to the current economic crisis, it is that it gives us a chance to realize something together that we're sooner or later going to realize on our own one of these days.

That lesson is that Fortune is a wheel that turns. When we're on the upswing, we often tend to think that we enjoy life's good things--health, wealth, power, prestige, looks--as a matter of merit and that the universe has to recognize our property rights to them.

It doesn't.

The temptations of arrogance and hubris are probably strongest for the powerful. As Simone Weil said,

Thus it happens that those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.

The book of Ecclesiastes nailed it:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Time and chance.

Anyone can experience a reversal and we're all bound to at one time or another. A time like this can make those of us who may have been spared some of fate's harder blows realize that misfortune isn't just for those other people or for those who somehow deserve it.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls and all that.

One of the most powerful parts of Shakespeare's dark tragedy of King Lear comes when the arrogant king is himself dispossessed and exposed in a brutal storm that forces him to recognize things he'd ignored before:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES after a reversal is the subject of this article.

THE RISING. This op-ed from the Baltimore Sun calls the Employee Free Choice Act a stimulus from the bottom up.

A STATE MESS. The solvency of WV's unemployment fund has been the cause of a major dust up in the legislature. It's also taken up a bit of El Cabrero's time lately.

WHAT THE...? In a battle between coal companies and the preservation of one of WV's most significant historical places, the smart money is probably on the coal companies. Come to think of it, if state government had to choose between the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and the coal companies, the same would probably be the case.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The turkey fallacy

One way that people can get in big trouble is by assuming that the future will be exactly like the past. In philosophical terms, this is called the problem of induction.

It's easy to fall into this trap. The human mind evolved in a fairly simple environment compared to the one we're living in today and it's pretty natural to just assume that things will be like they've always been...except they won't.

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb put it in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,

Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race "looking out for its best interests," as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.

The hypothetical turkey's sense of safety would have been at its highest right before its greatest danger. But turkeys aren't the only ones to have this problem. Humans have it too. As Taleb points out, it is a problem inherent in empirical knowledge:

Something has worked in the past, until--well, it unexpectedly no longer does, and what we have learned from the past turns out to be at best irrelevant or false, at worst viciously misleading.

Take home message: things change, sometimes really quickly. We should be prepared to do the same.

SPEAKING OF TURKEYS, here's a good item on the Wall Street bailout mess.

THE NEXT BIG THING. Expect the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier and safer for workers to join unions, to be a major issue in the coming year. Winning that would probably be the most socially significant piece of legislation in recent years in terms of rebuilding the middle class.

INTERESTING GREEN ENERGY IDEA here.

YOU ALREADY KNEW THIS, but driving while drowsy is dangerous.

HOW DOES YOUR DINOSAUR SMELL? T. Rex did it pretty good.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Planning to be spontaneous

Wu (right) did not plan on getting chased by Diego the turkey.

El Cabrero is kind of a policy wonk by day, with a special interest in how laws and such impact people with low and moderate incomes. Every so often, I have to take part in attempting to do strategic planning.

(Actually, my main plan is to try to have a strategy.)

I don't have anything against real or pretend planning as long as people understand that in real life one has to adapt and adjust on a moment by moment basis.

There are two military sayings that are worth keeping in mind even for peaceful folks. One is "No plan survives contact with the enemy." The other is "The enemy gets a vote." You can substitute the word enemy with any number of other words: future, unforeseen random events, reality, life, etc.

In planning to deal with something as intricate and complicated as public life and policy, it's important to keep two basic things in mind. If the Gentle Reader will forgive me for stating the obvious, here they are:

1. We can't predict the future with any degree of certainty; and

2. We don't control other people.

It's actually even worse than that. Not only can we not predict the future, but we also have an incomplete understanding of the past, even though we often use it to anticipate events.

History is in large measure story--and humans secrete stories the way the liver secretes bile. If you ask just about anybody why just about anything happened, he or she will probably come up with some kind of explanation which may or may not have any basis in fact.

There's an awful lot we don't know about the present, come to think of it. And not only do we not control other people (which is probably a good thing), but we are all imperfect in self control.

The take-home message is that no matter how well we plan, there's no getting away from randomness, unpredicted events, luck, chance or fortune. It's how we respond to such things that often makes the difference between success and failure.

WHAT ABOUT A BAILOUT for the rest of us?

ATLAS MESSED UP. Here's another take on the fallen idol of Ayn Rand. (By the way, anyone really into Greek mythology would have known that Atlas wasn't the brightest crayon in the box.)

WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD. The coming winter means more hard times for people in economic difficulties. In nearby Ohio, the equivalent of one in ten households has received a gas or electricity termination notice in the last year.

IN OTHER CHEERY NEWS, the financial meltdown is also making the global food crisis worse.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Fortune and faith

El Cabrero has been thinking about luck, chance and randomness lately. In the Roman era, this was personified by the goddess Fortuna, who was about the only pagan deity to flourish in the Christian era.

This was more a matter of popular folklore than orthodox theology. It was hard to reconcile the idea of arbitrary chance with divine providence, although some managed to do it.

A case in point was Dante. In Canto 7 of the Inferno, Virgil explains to the pilgrim that God appointed Fortuna to be his agent in bringing change to the world:

He whose omniscience everything transcends
The heavens created, and gave who should guide them,
That every part to every part may shine,

Distributing the light in equal measure;
He in like manner to the mundane splendours
Ordained a general ministress and guide,

That she might change at times the empty treasures
From race to race, from one blood to another,
Beyond resistance of all human wisdom.

Therefore one people triumphs, and another
Languishes, in pursuance of her judgment,
Which hidden is, as in the grass a serpent.

Your knowledge has no counterstand against her;
She makes provision, judges, and pursues
Her governance, as theirs the other gods.

Her permutations have not any truce;
Necessity makes her precipitate,
So often cometh who his turn obtains.

And this is she who is so crucified
Even by those who ought to give her praise,
Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute.

But she is blissful, and she hears it not;
Among the other primal creatures gladsome
She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices.

She's still with us today and is as changeable as ever, which isn't always a bad thing.

81,312 HOMES were lost to foreclosure in September.

GETTING IT RIGHT THIS TIME. If another stimulus package is going to happen, here's how to get more bang for the buck.

MISTAKES WERE MADE. Alan Greenspan has apparently acknowledged that unregulated markets might actually not be divine. El Cabrero would like to ask, "What was your first clue?"

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL MINING isn't very popular with the American people, as a new poll reveals.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A turning of the wheel

Imagine having it all--fame, status, respect, wealth and more--and then suddenly losing it. (Some people are going through that right now.) How do you think you would deal with a big reversal of fortune (or Fortuna)?

That was pretty much the real situation of the Roman patrician Boethius (circa 480-535), who held high office in that twilight zone between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

Rome had fallen under the power of the Ostrogoths, although for a time much of daily life remained unchanged. Boethius fell afoul of King Theodoric and was stripped of wealth and position, imprisoned and executed in what no doubt was a pretty nasty way.

It was during this period of imprisonment that he composed a classic work, The Consolation of Philosophy. As he bemoans his fate, Lady Philosophy visits him in prison and instructs him in wisdom so that he can face his end with composure. While that might sound contrived in a work of fiction, Boethius' situation was all too real.

The book is interesting to me largely for its view of the role of Fortune in human affairs. As Richard Green wrote in the introduction to his translation,

The conception of Fortune as the feminine personification of changeable, unpredictable fate is drawn from pagan sources, notably from the Roman poets and moralists, where she is described as blind, vagrant, inconstant, meretricious. But, as Seneca had observed, there are limits to her power: she cannot give a man virtue, nor deprive him of it, and so virtue becomes the wise man's weapon against her. She represented fate as a random, uncontrollable force, to be feared or courted, opposed or despised, according to the theological and philosophical dispositions of those who, largely through the experience of misfortune, felt her power.

A basic point of the book is that it is the very nature of Fortune to change. Those who put themselves in its/her power by basing our happiness on things that aren't within our own power to keep are helpless when things change--as they will.

Fortune herself is quoted by Philosophy as saying

Here is the source of my power, the game I always play: I spin my wheel and find pleasure in raising the low to a high place and lowering those who were on tip. Go up, if you like, but only on condition that you will not feel abused when my sport requires your fall.

There is a very old wisdom tradition among many cultures that while we can't control everything that happens to us, we can control our own responses and thus acquire a degree of independence from fortune.

Too bad that's easier said than done.

THE AMERICAN DREAM of social mobility seems to have migrated to northern Europe, according to a new report on economic inequality.

A GOOD QUESTION. Have there been any pay cuts on Wall Street for CEOs since the bailout?

NOT TO BE. The US suicide rate is increasing for the first time in a decade. Women have shown the largest increase.

URGENT ANCIENT DINOSAUR/BIRD UPDATE here. You really have to see the picture.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lady Luck

Albrecht Durer's engraving of Fortuna. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

It's interesting that one of the Roman divinities to survive well into the Christian era was the goddess Fortuna, the personification of luck. This was the subject of Howard Rollin Patch's 1927 book, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature.

One of her symbols is her famous wheel, which was the inspiration of the TV game show Wheel of Fortune. It's not a bad image, which is probably why it has endured so long. As you've no doubt noticed if you've ever ridden a Ferris Wheel, as it spins along sometimes you go up and sometimes you go down.

As the ancient Roman writer Seneca put it in his tragedy Agamemnon,

Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low.

I think Fortuna's wheel image is a good one to keep in mind as one navigates life's vicissitudes. If things are going good, don't assume that will always be the case. If things are going bad, remember that this too is subject to change.

Nobody owns her.

NO DIRECTION HOME. USA Today reports an increase in homeless families with children.

NO JOB EITHER. Business Week expects a bulge in layoffs in the wake of the recession.

BOOGIE NIGHTS. A "dinosaur dance floor" has been discovered in Arizona.

ECONOMISERY. Did forgetting Keynes contribute to the current mess? Maybe, as this item argues.

GET A ROOM. Scientists in England claim to have created the worlds most relaxing room.

VAMPIRISM 101. Everything you always wanted to know about animal vampirism can be found here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED