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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| I know I've written about this word before, but not about this particular article, which is pretty new as I write this. From NPR (apparently, a transcript of a broadcast piece): Sorry, yinz. Fuhgeddaboudit, you guys: In the past 20 years or so, "y'all" has gone from being a Southernism to become America's favorite way to use the second person plural, according to linguists. Huh. So the South did, indeed, rise again, only this time without shots being fired or people being enslaved. "Y'all has won," says Paul E. Reed, a linguist at the University of Alabama who studies Southern American English and Appalachian English. I'm not sure a Southerner declaring victory is any sort of proof of anything. I'd also like to note the construction of his sentence. By saying "Y'all has won," it's clear that he means that the word "y'all" has become victorious, and it does not violate subject/verb number agreement. Admirers appreciate y'all's tidiness and utility. In particular, Reed says, young people across the U.S. seem to love y'all. Young people create and/or latch on to new words all the time, in part to rebel against their stodgy elders. Most of such words are dumb and eventually fall out of favor. Occasionally, one will worm its way into the general lexicon. "Cool," used to describe something or someone that doesn't suck, is one such word. I fully support that same trajectory for "y'all." (I'm also quite fond of "yeet.") Long-term migration patterns have also helped y'all spread, from Black Americans who brought it with them out of the South during the Great Migration, to Northerners and others who have more recently adopted the term after moving to the South. Whatever its origin (still somewhat disputed), the lack of a defined second-person plural pronoun in standard modern English is a linguistic oversight just begging to be filled by something. As the article notes: The word has thrived because it's utilitarian, filling a gap in standard English. We use y'all — and relatives like yinz (for those in Pittsburgh) and youse — because the language has long lacked a satisfying plural pronoun for "you." "Basically, all of the non-mainstream varieties are better than the mainstream variety, because 'you' being for plural is confusing," Reed says. I would argue that "y'all" is mainstream, but then, I've always lived in the South. The article goes into some of the origin debate, which I don't have much to say about. Another theory notes that written instances of y'all date to 17th century England, as far back as a 1631 poem. But Reed and other linguists say it's not clear whether those examples exactly mirror the meaning and usage of the modern y'all. Why that matters is beyond me. It's well-established that, in the absence of language fascism, word meaning and usage changes over time. It's an example I've used before, but the word "nice" has changed meaning more than once since 1631, and yet no one seems to care about its changes as opposed to the ones associated with "y'all." Y'all is on a popularity streak. It's been springing up as far away as Australia, and executives are being trained to adopt "y'all" to be more inclusive. I have yet to see it in a formal context, though (except, of course, formal reports about the use of "y'all.") It's hard to imagine, but lots of stuff that used to be hard to imagine has happened, like the first time I heard a Star Trek character say "fuck." (I cheered.) Wright says y'all is benefiting from a process called diffusion, as it grows beyond its former geographic boundaries — a process that's very difficult to predict. "So being able to watch this happen in real time, it's like a celestial event or something for an astrophysicist, it's like this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing." Okay, I'm not trying to downplay the impact for a linguist of watching language change in real time, but let's not go overboard, here. Watching a nearby (but not too nearby) supernova go off would be way more awesome. Until that happens, though, I'm happy for y'all. |
| This article, from aeon, is nearly ten years old. But as far as I know, very little progress has been made on this age-old question. The real problem  It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be "You're doing it wrong," profound thoughts edition. What is the best way to understand consciousness? I don't know, but I have a strong suspicion that the first step is "be conscious." Psychedelics are also an option. In philosophy, centuries-old debates continue to rage over whether the Universe is divided, following René Descartes, into ‘mind stuff’ and ‘matter stuff’. Regular readers will note that I appreciate Descartes. But I reject that dualism. Provisionally. But the rise of modern neuroscience has seen a more pragmatic approach gain ground: an approach that is guided by philosophy but doesn’t rely on philosophical research to provide the answers. Which is good, because "philosophical research" is nothing more than "reading dense tomes that philosophers crafted." And there are more of those than can be read. I've said before that philosophy and science are partners, in a sense: science informs philosophy, while philosophy guides science. Its key is to recognise that explaining why consciousness exists at all is not necessary in order to make progress in revealing its material basis – to start building explanatory bridges from the subjective and phenomenal to the objective and measurable. A noble goal, in my way of thinking, but from my purely amateur perspective, the question of "why consciousness exists at all" has, at base, a very simple answer: because evolution selected for it. That's not a complete answer, of course, but one thing I haven't seen (though I haven't seen everything) is an attempt to explain consciousness in terms of evolutionary adaptation. All species have evolved, and not all have evolved what we think of consciousness, but those that didn't have other adaptations that promote survival and reproduction. In humans, it's adapted to the point that we can consciously choose (whether choice is an illusion or not) not to reproduce, and that's interesting. In my own research, a new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and bodies work together to maintain physiological integrity – to stay alive. In this story, we are conscious ‘beast-machines’, and I hope to show you why. And, questionable labels aside, that's pretty close to my own thoughts—albeit with more resources, education, and focus. Let’s begin with David Chalmers’s influential distinction, inherited from Descartes, between the ‘easy problem’ and the ‘hard problem’. The ‘easy problem’ is to understand how the brain (and body) gives rise to perception, cognition, learning and behaviour. The ‘hard’ problem is to understand why and how any of this should be associated with consciousness at all: why aren’t we just robots, or philosophical zombies, without any inner universe? Again, though, I suspect that "hard problem" is asking the wrong question. But there is an alternative, which I like to call the real problem: how to account for the various properties of consciousness in terms of biological mechanisms; without pretending it doesn’t exist (easy problem) and without worrying too much about explaining its existence in the first place (hard problem). Ask me, calling it "the real problem" is a problem, because it exudes an air of self-superiority. But don't ask me what I'd call it, because I don't know. I'm not going to get into much more of the article here. Just one more quote: Rather, consciousness seems to depend on how different parts of the brain speak to each other, in specific ways. Science likes to divide and conquer. That is, if you have a complex system, it can be more productive to study its subsystems to gain an understanding of that. Like, if you're trying to figure out a car, you can break it down into things like engine, cooling system, steering mechanism, brakes, etc. Each one of those can be understood on its own. But to make a recognizable "car," you also need to know how all of these systems interact with each other. That's relatively simple with a car; not so much with a body. I'm not weighing in on the results, here. I just think (perhaps because I'm programmed to) that it's helpful to try a different approach sometimes, and this seems like just such an attempt. It could well be that, just as we can't get an outsider's perspective on the Universe, perhaps we can never truly understand consciousness. Or maybe we're just asking the wrong questions. |
| I'm no stranger to weighing in on issues I know little about. This article from Smithsonian is a prime example. A Search for the World’s Best Durian, the Divisive Fruit That’s Prized—and Reviled Devotees of the crop journey to a Malaysian island to find the most fragrant and tasty specimens I've heard of durian before. I even incorporated them into a short story at one point. But I've never been to the places where they're common; I don't think I've ever seen one outside of a picture; and I've certainly never experienced the smell or taste. Once you actually taste and smell a ripe durian, the Southeast Asian fruit best known for its penetrating odor, you will understand what all the fuss is about—and why it’s banned from some public spaces throughout the region. I have a desire for new experiences; I'm just not sure that particular experience is one I want to have. “It has something we call hong,” a sudden smell—in this case, the aroma of “bad breath and butane gas,” said Wong Peng Ho, a Malaysian Chinese doctor and durian fanatic, as we shared a particularly pungent fruit on the Malaysian island of Penang, just off the country’s west coast. “You know how when you smell butane and you know it’s not good, but you want to continue sniffing anyway? That’s hong.” On the other hand, I do have intimate familiarity with the smell of butane, and I don't find it repulsive. Not that I want to go huffing it or anything; it's just not something I care about, unless it's somehow filling the entire house, in which case the only thing I'd care about is getting out before a spark ignites. True durian aficionados don’t just accept extreme flavors; they celebrate, savor, even exult in them. The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once said of its aroma, “Try leaving cheese or a dead body out in the sun and you’re in the same neighborhood as durian.” Now, I do have to wonder if there's a cultural component to the varied reactions. In the West, we don't have a lot of super-pungent foods. Limburger cheese is one classic example, but people enjoy that (and I don't mind it). Another is Hákarl, which I'm really not interested in attempting.Almost all desirable durian, at least in Malaysia, has fermented to the point that it has a slight or strong taste of alcohol. Hm. Maybe I could be persuaded, after all. After a few nights of aimless wandering and random tasting, I realized something important: Unlike local people, who have had durian wisdom passed down to them by their friends and relatives, I desperately needed a guide, someone who could help me decipher this array of very strange fruit. In search of this knowledge, I came across a distinct breed of sojourners—fruit travelers—who crisscross the earth in search of just-off-the-tree, perfectly ripe produce. I can understand that. It's like going to France and being completely on your own with wine-tasting. You can do it; you might even enjoy it; but there's nothing like local guides telling you maybe-bullshit stories about the history and culture. For Gasik, now 36, it all started 16 years ago, while she was working at what she describes as a hippie festival in the northwestern United States. She smelled something strange in the campsites and outdoor classrooms of the event. She asked around. She sniffed. She asked around some more. Finally, an older man told her that she was smelling durian, a magical fruit from Southeast Asia. A superfood. The healthiest thing in the world. “If you eat it, you will get addicted to it,” he told her. “It elevates your spirit, opens your chakras. Durian will change your life.” He was right about the addiction. Everything else there is, like I said, obvious bullshit. There's a great deal more at the article. My favorite bit is the photo with a "No Durians Allowed" sign, featuring the usual circle/slash over an all-black spiky ball with a short stem. Just to be clear here, I'm not ragging on anyone's culture or traditions. I find the whole thing fascinating. And yeah, if I'm ever in the right area, I might even give it a shot. |
| Today (or yesterday, depending on your time zone) is the anniversary of the first bootprint on the Moon, 56 years ago. We know it happened (if you don't believe it did, wow are you in the wrong place right now) in part because they sent photographic images. There was a first one of those, too, but it was a bit further back in history. From Open Culture: In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the medium. Near as I can tell, Daguerre means something like "of war," which explains the next 200 years of war photography. But had things gone differently, we might know better the harder-to-pronounce name of his onetime partner Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who produced the first known photograph ever, taken in 1826. Nah, lucky name, is all. "daguerrotype" sounds better than "niépcotype." Eventually, after much trial and error, Niépce developed his own photographic process, which he called “heliography.” Yeah, that wasn't going to catch on, either. In 1827, Niépce traveled to England to visit his brother. While there, with the assistance of English botanist Francis Bauer, he presented a paper on his new invention to the Royal Society. His findings were rejected, however, because he opted not to fully reveal the details, hoping to make economic gains with a proprietary method. Oh, come on, it's because he was French. Sadly for Niépce, his heliograph would not produce the financial or technological success he envisioned, and he died just four years later in 1833. Daguerre, of course, went on to develop his famous process in 1839 and passed into history, but we should remember Niépce’s efforts, and marvel at what he was able to achieve on his own with limited materials and no training or precedent. Remember how, yesterday, we talked about accidental inventions? Well, this one's something of the opposite of that. Niépce’s pewter plate image was re-discovered in 1952 by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, who published an article on the find in The Photographic Journal. Photography, and its derivative the motion picture (also a French invention, of course), is a key tool of communication now, though the process has changed. I find it remarkable that the image survived nearly 200 years. I doubt most of today's selfies will. |
| I haven't linked to Cracked in a while. I'm not a fan of the direction they went in. And yet, on rare occasions, I still see an article there that's worth a look. 5 Hollywood-Style Twists That Let Us Figure How the Universe Works We weren’t trying to solve the world. We were just eavesdropping Science requires long, repetitive, dedicated work. If we make a movie about a scientific discovery, we’d probably skip all of that and give the hero one crazy eureka moment, because that’s more exciting than how it works in real life. Well, yeah. It's like the "training montage" that compresses a year or more of dull practice, or how cop shows almost never show them filling out forms or writing reports, except as something to be interrupted. But occasionally, real discoveries truly do play out thanks to scientists stumbling into something they were never searching for. What's the bit about blind squirrels finding nuts? It does happen fairly often, but the article only goes into five examples. 5 The Ugly Smiles Now there's a band name for you. Have you ever wondered, though, how we began adding fluoride to water in the first place? It wasn’t because we started out interested in making teeth stronger and tested various substances on teeth till we found the one that worked. No, of course not. It was because we had to impose mind control on an unruly populace. Joking, of course. 4 The Noisy Radio The Big Bang theory is arguably the oldest theory of the universe we have. Well, at least they're using the word 'theory' in the scientific sense. There were plenty of "theories" (guesses) before the BBT, featuring all-powerful entities and/or turtles. From a scientific perspective, even Einstein did most of his work under the assumption that the universe was eternal and, on a large scale, unchanging. But they didn’t have proof back when Georges Lemaître proposed the theory in 1931. Proof didn’t come until 1965, when scientists detected background radiation lingering from the birth of the universe. And then they backslid with this "proof" stuff. I'd have phrased it as "support." 3 What the Spies Heard Space contains many other kinds of radiation as well. For example, there are gamma-ray bursts, the biggest explosions in the universe, from billions of light-years away. We'd best hope they stay that far away. We first observed a gamma-ray burst in the 1960s. We weren’t looking for one of them. We were looking for gamma rays from nuclear tests being secretly conducted by the Soviets, and our satellites were expecting to find such rays coming from Earth. And here we have another example of wartime tech advancing scientific knowledge. 2 The King’s Challenge The three-body problem isn’t just the name of a book series and a Netflix show. It’s a real problem in physics, which can be stated like this: There follows a series of simultaneous equations. Yes, Cracked is unafraid to go where even science sites fear to tread: actual math equations. You don't need to understand them to follow the article, though. In 1889, the King of Sweden offered a prize to whoever could solve a question he presented about stability of the objects in a three-body problem. Money is an excellent motivator, even for scientists. What is it with Sweden and fun cash prizes, anyway? 1 Metal in the Snow Another excellent band name. Or album name. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. We know this not from checking the dates on contemporary news reports about the Earth’s creation but because of a calculation in the 1950s from geochemist Clair Patterson. If we did check contemporary news reports, I'm pretty sure the consensus would have been that this was a Bad Idea. He found lead in rocks, as expected, and he used this for his calculations, but lead also seemed to coat just about everything. He looked in Californian snowdrifts and saw they had loads of lead. He looked in the atmosphere and saw it had loads of lead. You’d think someone else would have noticed this by now, but it seemed that all scientists who previously researched the subject were employed by the National Society for Selling More Lead. Like I said, money is an excellent motivator. So is the threat to remove money. Patterson was now looking at something completely unrelated to what he’d planned, but he pressed further and proved that this lead contamination came from vehicle emissions. This finally ended with new clean air laws and the phasing out of leaded gasoline. And the world became a shining utopia. |
| Last time, it was USA Today; now, it's Psychology Today. Never will be tomorrow, will it? The other appropriate thing is that this comes up after I was pretty damn judgmental yesterday. No, I'm not sorry; when it comes to people actively making things worse for those who are already disadvantaged, that's when we should be judgmental, in my view. Before I get into the actual subject, a usage note: Both "judgment" and "judgement" are acceptable spellings. The one with two Es is more common in British English, while the other is more of a US thing, kind of like how we dropped the superfluous U in "colour." The article, being written by a US author and presumably published for a US audience, uses "judgment," but I can't promise to be consistent in my commentary. Like I said, neither is wrong, any more than "gray" vs. "grey." (Gray is a color. Grey is a colour.)Judgments are knee-jerk, negative opinions of others, which are based on limited information. We can make positive judgments, too; but that's not the sense of "judgmental." On the one hand, it helps you feel superior. And, on the other, it contributes to chronically feeling unsafe because you believe people are awful. Except that they're not. A few are, and, like with yesterday's example, they tend to ruin it for everyone else. Unfortunately, perfectionism and cynicism tend to go hand in hand. Yeah, they're going to have to explain that one to me, because I don't see the connection. The perfectionist know-it-all believes they're the rational one. They don't perceive their defenses as defenses; to them, their perceptions are reality. Seems to me that everyone believes they're the rational one. No one actually is. So, self-oriented perfectionists, those who hold themselves up to extremely high standards, are usually also other-oriented perfectionists, treating others the same way. Anyone falling short of those standards is then criticized as being stupid, lazy, inconsiderate, and/or incompetent. Ah, now I think I understand. I consider myself stupid, lazy, inconsiderate, and/or incompetent; I don't expect others to be superior to me. (Or inferior, just to be clear.) This way of thinking forms the foundation of isolation and subsequent chronic loneliness. Not all who isolate are lonely. As usual, I feel like the article is written with the extroverted majority in mind. And empathy allows us to see ourselves in others, eliciting memories of similar choices in similar moments. However, that sense of weakness can scare us; perfectionists demand perfection for a sense of security, again from themselves and others. I begin to see the real problem: thinking empathy is a weakness. It is not. To challenge our judgmental mindset, we have to acknowledge our fear of being perceived as weak, which stems, in part, from hierarchal thinking. Well. That ties in nicely with my non-hierarchal (look, it may be "hierarchical," but I find that unwieldy) viewpoint. But that doesn't mean it's right. My own defenses include a) humor and b) skepticism about the soft sciences like psychology. When we're always competing, we need constant reminders of why we're better. In addition to supposedly protecting us from the world, judgments help us see the parts of ourselves that we don't like in others instead. They let us know that we're progressing well. And they act as mood regulators, picking us back up when we're down. Yet, we pay a significant price for them. The person reading this is challenged to find another way to feel proud and good about themselves. Or, and hear me out here, maybe grow beyond needing to compete or find reasons to "feel proud and good about themselves?" I feel like there's no point competing when your competition includes up to 8 billion other people and counting. Carl Jung noted, "Thinking is difficult; that's why most people judge." Moreover, thinking can be scary. Yet, judgments, when they become one's main coping mechanism, make our worlds even scarier. Well, at least he quoted Jung and not Fraud. Yes, that's a judgment. Not only have I never claimed to be consistent, I've noted repeatedly that I'm full of contradictions. "I am large; I contain multitudes." Again, though, I feel like there's a line between judging people for cause and taking shortcuts due to perfectionism or cynicism or whatever psychojargon you prefer. But we're all flawed, and maybe a little less condemnation for things like wearing socks with sandals, which ultimately doesn't harm anyone, would be appropriate. Then again, we all need exercise, and what's an easier exercise than jumping to conclusions? Just to be clear once again, I'm not trying to contradict the article. I'm also not saying it's right. Just something to think about. And at least he didn't sidetrack into purely speculative evolutionary psychology, which I think most other authors would have found a way to shoehorn in there. |
| This story from USA Today (actually from April, not today) is something I've been complaining about for a while, but people seem to think that complaining about it makes me a bad person. Service dogs can be four-legged lifesavers, alerting to dangerous allergens, assisting with travel and making people with a wide range of disabilities safer. Cats could do all that too, but they're too intelligent to want to. But fake service dogs, advocates say, are taking a bite out of real service dogs’ credibility, exacerbating the challenges that people with disabilities who rely on service animals already face. Fake service dogs are poorly trained or untrained animals falsely passed off by individuals trying to access restricted places or benefits. And that is what I've complained about, only to be told that I'm a terrible person for even suggesting it. Thousands of grocers and shop owners now prohibit any animals, including legitimate service dogs, from entering their stores. Huh. I didn't even know that was legal in the US. I thought ADA required service animal accommodation. Legitimate service animal accommodation, that is. Businesses are required to allow service animals onto their premises under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but it's not always obvious whether a service dog is legitimate. See? I was right. "There are individuals and organizations that sell service animal certification or registration documents online," federal officials warn. "These documents do not convey any rights under the (Americans with Disabilities Act) and the Department of Justice does not recognize them as proof that the dog is a service animal." This is the problem. Entitled people who want to bring their stupid dog everyfuckingwhere are the problem, and so are the people who enable it. If I were dictator, I'd ship every last one of them to a gulag. Without their dogs. Mollica advises individuals with service dogs who encounter skeptical business owners to take "a nonaggressive, non-defensive stance" and let them know the animal is legitimately needed. Nonagressive AND nondefensive. Um... okay. Yes, people with a legitimate need for service animals should be accommodated. I'm not arguing that. But it's not the business owners who are to blame, here; it's the fake-service-animal people. It's kind of like the shops that only allow in one teen at a time: it's not because every teen is a problem, but because enough are that the business feels the need to have some control over potential situations. According to Canine Companions, loopholes in the ADA have enabled scammers to exploit the system. In 2024, the group said it hopes to persuade lawmakers to add definitive language to the act that addresses service dog representation, making it "crystal-clear that misrepresentation of a disability for personal gain – including the use of a service dog – is against the law." We might have more pressing legislative matters to deal with, but that seems like a step in the right direction. It's not always about personal gain, though; often, it's about Main Character Syndrome. A false sense of entitlement. Maybe even a dose of denial: "Oh, Froofloo won't hurt anyone." *Froofloo bites some kid* "That kid must have deserved it!" Now, I'm aware that things aren't always so clear-cut. Like, maybe you've grown attached to a dog but the only place you can find to live doesn't allow dogs, so you fib a little to say it's a service animal. I'd still send you to the gulag, but at least I can sympathize with that situation. But for the most part, anyone who fakes having a service animal is part of the problem and should be mocked, shunned and avoided. |
| Well, the random numbers have hit on another article about Europe, but this time, a different country and a different ethnic group. From the very American Smithsonian: Jewish Food Is Making a Comeback in Poland Bagels, knishes, bialys and more are popping up in bakeries as the country reckons with historical trauma I have, of course, written about bagels before, but that was in the context of New York City. Jewish food, and especially Ashkenazic Jewish food, is slowly but steadily returning to the country, where many of the dishes actually originated. The comeback is driven by a growing interest from Polish people in finally facing their country’s past. I don't know how widespread this knowledge is, so I'll just mention that there were two main branches of Judaism in Europe: Ashkenazic in the east, and Sephardic in the west. The Ashkenazi were the ones who spoke Yiddish and popularized bagels, bringing them to the US through immigration to NYC. This is certainly the case with the bagel, with bakeries all over Poland serving them. But other foods are reappearing as well, such as the knish, or knysz in Polish—a bun filled with kasha, potatoes or cheese. Dammit, now I'm getting hungry. Jewish communities in Poland originated foods like the bagel, knish and bialy. When they fled from pogroms during the late 19th century, they brought their recipes with them, says Maria Zalewska, executive director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation and co-editor of the book Honey Cake & Latkes, a compilation of recipes written down by survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Okay, that's a little dark. Between 1881 and 1914, more than two million Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States. A large majority, about 1.6 million, came from the Russian Empire (which included parts of Poland at the time). Their exodus was driven by social, economic and technological change combined with antisemitic persecution in their countries of origins. Pretty sure my great-grandparents were part of this migration, but I'm still not entirely clear on what year they immigrated, and probably never will be. I do remember my grandmother spoke Polish and Yiddish, though her English was excellent. “You can follow the history of the Jewish community through food and understand why these foods have disappeared [in Poland] but survived in New York,” says Magdalena Maślak, culinary program curator at Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Another place a bunch of Ashkenazi landed in the Americas was Montreal, not mentioned in the article. I say this because Montreal is also known for having excellent bagels. Dill pickles have long been considered a Jewish food in America, because Jewish immigrants brought pickles to this country and popularized them at Jewish delis. “But they’re not necessarily Jewish, and that tells you something. That’s the story of food,” says Liz Alpern, a chef and co-founder of the Gefilteria, a New York-based venture that offers Ashkenazic food with a modern twist. And I'm going to clarify something here, because the article doesn't and I feel it's important: one of the most popular varieties of dill pickles is called the kosher pickle, or kosher dill. There's nothing inherently unkosher about pickles, made up as they are of cucumbers in brine with various herbs and spices including dill and garlic. The reason Kosher is a pickle style is because they use the coarse-grain kosher salt for the brine. Kosher salt itself is misnamed; it's the kind that was used to make meat certifiably kosher. I just typed all that from memory, and my memory might be faulty, so, as usual, don't just take my word for it. With time, foods such as the pastrami sandwich or the bagel became staples of an evolving Jewish American food culture, different from those of their parents and grandparents, that gave rise to new traditions. We have a very good (though not up to some NYC standards) bagel place here where I live, and one of their offerings is a pastrami bagel. It is very good. It is even better with Swiss cheese on top, which makes it very much not kosher. Pastrami itself is interesting and, if I had more time today, I'd delve into its history. Likewise, it was Hersz Lender, a Jewish baker from Lublin, Poland, who was credited with bringing the bagel to New York—and turning it into the morning staple known today. I'm sure you recognize the name; a very common frozen bagel still bears his name. But the current version of them bears little resemblance to the Platonic ideal of bagel; they're just cheap and mass-producible and have the toroidal shape. Last I heard, it's currently produced by the same company that does Thomas' English Muffins. Jewish American foods mixed with other cuisines and influences, and the bagel is no exception. “The lox itself is Scandinavian. The cream cheese is from New York. The capers on it are Italian. But it’s putting it all together that made it Jewish,” says Jeffrey Yoskowitz, a New York City-based food writer and co-founder of the Gefilteria. And yes, the cream cheese is a New York thing. Never mind that the most widespread (pun absolutely intended) brand in the US says "Philadelphia." It's got nothing to do with Philly, any more than Land O' Lakes butter is from some idyllic lake-strewn countryside that used to have Native Americans on it. So anyway, the rest of the article is kind of depressing, as anything involving Eastern Europe and Jews tends to be. But the important thing is: bagels have come full circle. And that pun was also absolutely intended. |
| I'm mostly sharing this PopSci article because it's interesting archaeology, but there's also a computer-age twist. Construction workers find Viking graves linked to King ‘Bluetooth’ The site includes relics illustrating a ‘vast and dynamic world.’ Construction workers digging about four miles north of Aarhus, Denmark have accidentally discovered a “spectacular” Viking gravesite. That's the interesting bit, to me at least: that it wasn't a deliberate dig in a known burial mound or settlement site, but just some semi-random place. Dating back to the second half of the 10th century, the archeological trove may even tie directly to one of Denmark’s most famous rulers: King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson. And yes—his legacy is tied to the handy wireless feature in your smartphone. Hence the computer-age twist, however tenuous and speculative it might be. Hopefully the archaeologists involved work more reliably than the ancient king's namesake. Human remains such as bones and teeth were also found at the site along with smaller, less ornate graves that possibly held an elite family’s enslaved workers. Sometimes we forget that slavery, in some form or another, was the norm rather than the aberration throughout most of human history. It wasn't always tied to racism like we tend to think of the concept. I'm not defending the practice, mind you. Archeologists speculate the burial site is probably related to a nobleman’s farm located less than 0.65 miles away. Okay, look. I get that PopSci has a mostly US audience to target, so they convert to units this back-asswards country is familiar with. But would it have killed them to phrase it as "about 1km away?" The son of King Gorm the Old, Harald ruled over Denmark and Norway from around 958–986 CE... At which point, presumably, the Nordic countries could be described as Gormless. ...and allegedly earned his nickname from a conspicuously colored tooth. As they didn't find said tooth, I'm withholding judgement on whether Bluetooth was actually involved in the burial site. His influence is so prominent that during the 1990s, Swedish telecom giant Ericsson picked “Bluetooth” as the working name for a technology intended to “unite” the computer and cellular service industries. I suppose that's a better name than, say, Leif, though I'd wager more people knew of Leif Erikson than Harald "Bluetooth." Its recognizable icon still used today? The Nordic rune for “B,” also featured prominently on King Bluetooth’s Jelling Stone. Only part of the logo is the runic "B," or berkana, or bjarkan. It also incorporates a "K" or kaunaz, which has associations with fire, torches, and even death, and I'm still not clear on why the kaunaz is in there except to make the whole thing look like a variant on hagalaz, which is associated with transformation. That bit of symbolism is the truly appropriate one. When, that is, it actually works. Yes, I know something about Nordic runes. No, I don't ascribe them mystical properties. But symbols are what we make them, and I've always been amused at this connection between 21st century technology and 10th century kingdoms. |
| For anyone who still reads, from Big Think: 5 stories that teach you philosophy (better than some philosophy books) Want to study philosophy but skip some of its heavier tomes? These five novels are a great place to start. (Existential despair guaranteed.) Sure, because why bother chewing when you can have your meal pre-processed? Okay, sure, that's an unfair comparison. Sometimes, fiction is what it takes to really get your ideas across. Philosophy is a rewarding discipline to study. Actually reading philosophy? That can sometimes be a slog through scholastic drudgery. I suspect that's true for any discipline. If you want to dive into some philosophy but aren’t in the mood for its heavier tomes, you can find many excellent fiction stories that explore philosophical ideas in accessible and enjoyable ways. I would argue that most fiction involves some philosophy. Yes, even mass-market pulp fiction. Maybe except for romance. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973) “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a short story focusing entirely on a philosophical issue. Specifically, it presents a full-throated argument against utilitarianism. The idea's been stolen, too. Notably, an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds directly cribbed the premise. And I'm pretty sure someone else did it before Le Guin, in turn. It's not about whose idea it was, though; it's about the idea. Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791) Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone, is an 18th-century novel. It is considered one of the great classic Chinese novels, alongside Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. As an ugly American, I hadn't even heard of this one. So I can't weigh in on the content, except to say that any overview of world philosophy does need to include, well, the world. Solaris by Stanisław Lem (1961) The 1961 novel follows a group of astronauts trying to communicate with the planet Solaris. It should surprise absolutely no one that science fiction ties in with philosophical ideas. And yet, some still scoff at the entire genre. Candide: Or, Optimism by Voltaire (1759) His vast bibliography includes numerous letters, pamphlets, plays, and novels. One of the funniest is certainly Candide: or, the Optimist. Imagine if the Monty Python trope were one French guy writing in the 18th century, and you’ll have a sense of Voltaire’s humor. Yes, sometimes philosophers write fiction. And sometimes, it doesn't suck. I haven't actually read this one, though. But I've said this for a long time: The optimist insists that we're living in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that this is true. The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925) The Trial follows Joseph K, a man who is arrested one morning for reasons never made clear to him. His attempts to follow the byzantine rules of the legal system alternatively benefit or harm his case with little rhyme or reason. He is told to attend court sessions without being told when or where and blamed for being late. I really should read Kafka, even if he didn't write science fiction. Anyway, mostly, I just wanted to share, though I'm only personally familiar with two of the five works. Thing is, though, pick almost any book that's not for sale at an airport, and there's sure to be some philosophy in it. Sugar-coated, maybe, but that's how the medicine goes down, I'm assured. |
| From Nautilus, a reminder that "bug bomb" used to mean something very different. Maybe they should have called it a bugapult instead of a catapult. Alongside sticks, stones, and bone, humans also once harnessed a surprising ally in their early weaponry: insects. To bee, or not to bee? Researchers hypothesize that humans started using them on the battlefield as far back as 100,000 years ago, long before the beginning of recorded history. Yeah, okay, but I'm going to need something more than guesswork. Venomous stingers, refined through millions of years of evolution, can tear the skin and unleash poison. Bacteria that cause deadly diseases in humans and other animals can hitch a ride as insects scatter and swarm across a human landscape. Clearly, they didn't know about the whole bacteria thing, just that bugs somehow caused illness and death sometimes. Bee Cannons Beehive bombs may have been some of the first projectile weapons, according to scholars. As early as Neolithic times, evidence suggests that warriors would attack enemies hiding in caves by throwing hornet nests through the openings. I'll give them a pass on confusing bees, hornets, wasps, etc. Bee-cause the idea of a bee cannon is darkly humorous. Bee Grenades As early as 2600 B.C., the ancient Mayans conscripted bees for warfare. Mayans, traditionally skilled potters, are understood to have created specialized bee grenades from clay. This is even more funny. If, of course, you're not the one getting stung by the bees (or whatever). Scorpion Bombs When the Roman emperor Septimus Severus waged the Second Parthian War to expand his control to Mesopotamia in 198-99 A.D., little did he know that his soldiers would also be up against venomous stinging creatures. I can also forgive the stinging insect confusion above because a) they know the difference between "venomous" and "poisonous," and b) they didn't call scorpions "insects." Yeah, I know, calling everything a "bug" is just as wrong, from a taxonomic point of view, but everyone knows what you mean and it's easier than saying "arthropod." Porcelain Flea Bombs In 1920s Japan, a mosquito-borne encephalitis virus killed 3,500 people on the island of Shikoku. General Shiro Ishii, a microbiologist and an army officer, was sent to Shikoku to study the epidemic, and he quickly began to plot using the great destructive power of insects for war. Hm... Porcelain Flea Bombs would make an excellent band name. Maggot Bombs In the interest of expanding their repertoire, Japanese Unit 731 began experimenting with house flies—a pest known to flourish among human habitations. Borrowing from the design of the Uji bombs, they developed the maggot bomb, officially known as the Yagi bomb. As the article notes, no maggots were actually involved, but adult flies were. Because of the horrors such weapons visited upon their human victims, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of biological weapons in war, and by 1972, international authorities had outlawed even their creation or possession. Oh, yeah, that always works. However long ago bug warfare actually started, I'm once again impressed at the creativity of humans when it comes to destroying or inconveniencing other humans. |
| An "everything you thought you knew was wrong" article from The Conversation: Shakespeare’s language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English. Oh, right, sure, English only went downhill from there, and no other authors or poets ever created, or could create, anything worthwhile. I don't even know why we try. But that status is underpinned by multiple myths – ideas about language that have departed from reality (or what is even plausible). The sarcasm about pinnacles (can you put those on pizza?) aside, I'm all for correcting misconceptions. The Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare’s language. Speaking of which, has anyone told one of those LLMs to write a Shakespeare play yet? I bet they have, and I just haven't heard of it. 1. Shakespeare coined a vast number of words Well, he did, but not as many as people think – even reputable sources assume more than 1,000. Whatever the actual number is, anything we (or our computers) come up with is still an estimate. The word “hobnail” first appears in a text attributed to Shakespeare, but it’s difficult to imagine it arose from a creative poetic act. More likely, it was around in the spoken language of the time and Shakespeare’s use is the earliest recording of it. "Difficult to imagine" isn't evidence of anything. However, I can absolutely believe that unrecorded spoken language preceded things being written down. Speaking was the social media of the time. 2. Shakespeare IS the English language The myth that Shakespeare coined loads of words has partly fuelled the myth that Shakespeare’s language constitutes one-quarter, a half or even all of the words of today’s English language. Yeah, even if I had heard something like this, which I don't think I have until this article, my bullshit meter would have beeped. 3. Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary Ludicrously, popular claims about Shakespeare’s huge vocabulary seem to be driven by the fact that his writings as a whole contain a large number of different words (as noted above, around 21,000). But the more you write, the more opportunities you have to use more words that are different. This means Shakespeare is likely to come out on top of any speculations about vocabulary size simply because he has an exceptionally large surviving body of work. Seems like this is a version of survival bias. 4. Shakespeare has universal meaning Sure, some themes or aspects of the human condition are universal, but let’s not get carried away and say that his language is universal. Canonically, he stole Hamlet from the Klingons. The mantra of the historical linguist is that all language changes – and Shakespeare isn’t exempt. If the meanings didn't change, we wouldn't have whole bodies of work translating Elizabethan English to some modern version. 5. Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin Within some theatrical circles, the idea that Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin emerged. Indeed, the contemporary playwright Ben Jonson famously wrote that Shakespeare had “small Latin, and less Greek”. Shakespeare lacked a university education. University-educated, jealous, snooty playwrights might have been keen to take him down a peg. I'm not going to address this directly, but one thing I keep seeing is, I think, related: the conceit that Shakespeare didn't write what we attribute to Shakespeare. The reason this is related, in my view anyway, is that both of these claims seem to be rooted in academic snootery. "How could a commoner have written such scenes and verses? It absolutely had to have been someone more educated." For all I know, they may be right. I'm no expert, so I'm not weighing in. But claiming that on the grounds of literary snobbery just rubs me the wrong way. Whoever wrote those plays didn't write them for ivory-tower academics; they were the 16th-century equivalent of our pulp paperbacks, written for the amusement of the general public. And besides, it just doesn't matter. Four hundred and some years later, we're still analyzing and reinventing these words, coined or not, and whoever originally penned them is long gone. As much as I like to dispel myths and correct misunderstandings, we know for sure that the words exist, as well as some historical context for them. And that's what really matters. |
| Oh, wonderful. More about tipping in the USA, from USA Today. I'm not tipping a slack-jawed teen for no work. Let's fix our tip culture. The social contract has been shredded, and we're all left fumbling with our wallets while the person behind us in line judges our generosity for a transaction that once went untipped. Okay, well, worrying about the person behind you is a "you" thing. They might be just as fed up with tip creep as you are. Food "tipping" has become an absolute circus, and I’ve had enough. "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" The practice should be a straightforward way to reward exceptional service. Now, it’s a guilt-ridden tap dance where a rogue iPad demands a 25% premium for a slack-jawed teen handing you a muffin. Don't blame the teen, dammit. They just work there. Tipping has become a source of national anxiety, a phenomenon known as "tipflation," and frankly, it's exhausting. Ugh. Anxiety is not what "tipflation" (goddamn stupid silly portmanteau) is. It's the proliferation of tips to inappropriate places, and increasing expectations for percentages. If we don’t draw some clear lines in the sand, we’ll soon be tipping the self-checkout machine at the grocery. Some people already are. In the spirit of restoring some sanity, allow me to propose 10 reality-adjusted food tipping rules for 2025. Yeah, that'll work out great. (I'll comment on a few here.) 1. The full-service sit-down meal ‒ 18-22% There's little argument about this one. Until we find a way to do away with tipping culture, this stands. One might quibble with the amounts, though. 2. The counter offensive ‒ 0% Most dining experiences these days stand in stark contrast to the classic waited table. If you order at a counter, pick up your food from someone hollering a number, fill your own drink and bus your own table – congratulations, you’ve just provided your own service. I use the McDonald's Rule: if the level of service is that of McDonald's, where you don't tip, then you don't tip. 5. Coffee, cocktails and courtesy ‒ $1 minimum per drink, double it for effort Coffee shops usually fall into the "counter service" category. Unless they're bar-like. Anything bar-like, you tip. 9. No SALT Don’t tip on state and local taxes (SALT). The government is literally charging you to eat. You should not pay someone else a percentage of that amount. Look, the problem with that is: it takes extra work. Say you go and eat out and it costs $25. Locally, taxes amount to about 10%, so the check comes with $27.50 or so. That's going to be the bottom line on the receipt. If you tip 20%, that's either $5 or $5.50. Is it really worth your time to dial in precisely on the pre-tax amount? It just seems really picky to me, when you can just see the final total, double it, and move the decimal one to the left. Let’s reclaim some common sense in 2025. No. No, let's not. Common sense is neither common, nor sense. Conspicuously missing from that list: what to tip a rideshare. And you absolutely should tip a rideshare. |
| Leave it to the French to come up with new ways to confound scientists. From Smithsonian: Doctors Detected a Mysterious Antibody in a French Woman’s Body. It Turned Out to Be a Brand New Blood Type Called “Gwada negative,” it marks the discovery of the 48th known blood group system in humans Of course it's a new blood type. It's only an antibody if it's from the Antibody region of France. In 2011, a French woman was undergoing routine medical testing before surgery when doctors discovered a mysterious antibody in her blood. Personally, I think we should tell kids that antibodies are little ants crawling around under their skin. Yes, it's wrong, but so is teaching them that only the ABO blood classification system matters. And my suggestion would be funnier. Now, scientists say the woman is the only known carrier of a new blood type called “Gwada negative.” It’s the only blood type within a new blood group system that scientists have dubbed “PigZ,” which is now the 48th known blood group system in humans, as the French Blood Establishment (EFS) announced last week. I was going to make a comment about the inappropriateness of "PigZ," but then I saw the part about there being a French Blood Establishment, and that's way more amusing. Sounds more like a secret society of French vampires. Humans have four major blood groups—the same ones identified at the beginning of the 20th century: A, B, O and AB. Since then, scientists have also determined that blood cells are influenced by a protein called the Rhesus factor. Apparently, that has nothing to do with Reese's Cups, but a lot to do with rhesus monkeys, which are properly named rhesus macaques, which is yet another source of amusement. But the full range of human blood is more complex. Scientists now know blood types result from the presence or absence of at least 366 antigens, according to the International Society of Blood Transfusion. Slight variations in which of these antigens are present can lead to rare blood types. The ABO blood group system is only one of many—with the new French research bringing that total to 48. To be serious for a moment, I didn't know any of that, so hey, I learned something. But more importantly, I had a chuckle. |
| I'm sharing this two-year-old article from Inverse, not for the movie reference, but for the tech itself. 40 Years Ago, a Wild Sci-Fi Movie Predicted a Life-Changing Invention Playing fast and loose with its reductive portrayal of the brain, the film’s mind-sharing technology is far from reality. I'm going to skip past the movie part, actually. For one thing, science fiction doesn't "predict;" it, at best, speculates or extrapolates. The original Star Trek communicators, for example, didn't predict flip phones; flip phones were inspired by communicators. For another thing, that was hardly the first SF creation to consider mind-recording technology. And finally, full disclosure, I never saw the movie (Brainstorm) and doubt I ever will. Four decades later, with the rise of brain-computer interfaces (or BCIs) melding the mind with machines, we may be closer to making thoughts tangible, if not to others but to devices like prosthetic limbs and speech synthesizers. Which is a noble goal and all, but let's stop for a moment and consider the direction other technology has taken. Your computer or phone, for instance, tracks your every move, tap, click, and keystroke. I'm not paranoid enough to say "you're being watched at all times," but the potential is there, and you very well might be. I've long said that as soon as we develop a technology that lets us share thoughts directly (which itself would be a nightmare scenario), someone will infest it with advertisements. The primary aim of BCIs is to assist individuals with disabilities, such as paralysis, by enabling them to control prosthetic limbs, communication devices, or wheelchairs using their brain signals. Much research and innovation has gone into offering a means of communication for individuals with severe motor impairments, such as those with locked-in syndrome, allowing them to express thoughts and needs. And, like I said, that's great. It's the inevitable follow-on that delves into dystopia. If you have technology that lets you convert brain states into action, it's not all that far off from being able to induce the brain states that you want, eliminating all that pesky rebellion in the people you want to control. Not to mention how easy it would be to zap a brain through an electrode. That’s the extent of BCIs at the moment. We’re not anywhere close to recording whole memories or sensations — let alone afterlife experiences — nor conveying them telepathically through a headset. The "afterlife experiences" thing, if you don't read the article, is a reference to a major plot point in the movie, one which I say takes it from SF to fantasy. And sure, we may not be close now, but research has a way of eventually getting results. And that's the true power of science fiction: not to predict, but to warn. You get to talk about the ethical implications of something before it becomes reality. That has been the case with SF from its very beginning. It's kind of like how horror movies teach us things like "never split up" and "don't dig up that 4,000-year-old corpse." Only with a slightly higher threshold for realism. It's unlikely that this will reach that point in my lifetime, though further advances have been made even in the two years since this article came out. But, you know, some people think we're already there. You can spot them because they're wearing the classic paranoid-fashion accessory, tinfoil hats. Those don't work, by the way. What you need are implanted electrodes. |
| This is a few weeks old now, which matters in this case, but I wanted to share this anyway. From BBC, something new under the sun: A powerful new telescope in Chile has released its first images, showing off its unprecedented ability to peer into the dark depths of the universe. You know why I didn't become an astronomer? It involves going to high, cold, remote places. Well, I'm okay with remote, but fuck those other two qualities. I'm perfectly content staying below a few hundred feet above sea level, in a relatively warm spot, and reading about it. And, of course, looking at the pictures. Seriously, go look at that picture. Chances are, you've seen it already because, like I said, kinda old news now, but it's still awesome. The Vera C Rubin observatory, home to the world's most powerful digital camera, promises to transform our understanding of the universe. I'm going to address this because the article doesn't: the name of the telescope isn't "woke" or "DEI" or some doggy treat for feminists. Vera Rubin was one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century. I'd put her right behind Edwin Hubble in terms of discoveries that shattered our worldview and helped us build another one, and Hubble, as you might know, already had a telescope named after him. To be more specific, Rubin was the astronomer who figured out that galaxies weren't behaving like they should if you only accounted for the visible matter in them. This led to the dark matter hypothesis, which also turned out to fit other observations and can be used to make predictions, so it's very important to astronomy and cosmology. While they don't yet know exactly what dark matter is, it led science down a more productive path. That's oversimplified, of course, and she obviously did more than just that, but the point stands. If a ninth planet exists in our solar system, scientists say this telescope would find it in its first year. Pluto fans seen turning red, smoke pouring from ears and nostrils. It should detect killer asteroids in striking distance of Earth and map the Milky Way. It will also answer crucial questions about dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up most of our universe. That last bit being, as I mentioned above, the most fitting. But the other stuff is important, too. This once-in-a-generation moment for astronomy is the start of a continuous 10-year filming of the southern night sky. This is completely off-topic, but "filming" is exactly what the telescope doesn't do. It features, as the article goes on to explain, a very large digital camera. We have words for recording images that no longer describe what's being done; "filming" is one of them. So is "footage" used to describe video images. I have invented a word for these words that describe processes that are now as obsolete as the floppy disc or punch-card computers. Here it is: Anachronyms. Of all the words I've coined, I like that one the best. Anyway, the rest of the article goes into some of the technical capabilities of the telescope, and what they expect it to be able to do. It's all very cool, and I look forward to hearing about the results. |
| This one may have come up at an inopportune time, considering recent events in Texas and North Carolina. But I figured, there's always a flood somewhere, or will be soon. This flood story is from BBC History: Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of its most famous stories A Mesopotamian myth from nearly 4,000 years ago tells of a man who builds a boat to save the world from a divine flood, long before the Bible’s famous story I guess they're weaseling their words so as to not ruffle any feathers (to mix a species metaphor). I have no such qualms, so I'll rewrite the headline to be more accurate. Hell, I'll even keep the British spelling: "Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation provided inspiration for one of its most famous myths." Because the Ark thing was clearly stolen from earlier writings, and your religious stories are just as much mythology as the other guy's religious stories. When most people think of a legendary flood of world-ending proportions, their mind will jump to the story of Noah; a man chosen by God to build an ark, gather animals and survive a divine global deluge sent to cleanse the world. I don't know about "most people." Perhaps most English readers who have access to this online article. Long before it appeared in the Hebrew Bible, a remarkably similar tale was written down on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia – the home of civilisations that flourished in what is now Iraq, more than 4,000 years ago. Again with the wording. Was Charlie Chaplin's mustache "remarkably similar" to Adolf Hitler's? Chaplin's came first. I suppose "remarkably similar" has the property that the equals sign does in arithmetic: you can switch sides. Still, language may be math, per yesterday's entry, but it's not arithmetic, and that sentence construction seems to imply that the older story might have copied the newer. I will also point out that a flood story makes a whole lot more sense to have its origins in Mesopotamia than in the Levant. The setting for this myth is ancient Mesopotamia, a civilisation whose name literally means “the land between the rivers”. These rivers – the Tigris and Euphrates – run through modern-day Iraq and parts of Syria and gave rise to some of the world’s first urban civilisations, including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians. Which gave us beer, which is the really important thing. From as early as 3000 BCE, these cultures developed literature, law codes, the first cities, monumental temples, advanced irrigation and vast mythological traditions. And beer. Among these stories is the Atra-Hasis Epic, a myth composed in the Old Babylonian period (c. 1900–1600 BCE), which contains the oldest known account of a divine flood sent to destroy humanity – and a chosen survivor tasked with saving life on Earth. Okay, I don't think I've ever heard it described as the Atra-Hasis Epic. Just goes to show I'm still learning. In the myth, the Mesopotamian gods have created humans but quickly come to regret it, as the unruly people disturb the gods with their chaos and violate the cosmic order. I should write a story about how humans created gods but quickly come to regret it. “The gods decide to send a deluge to wipe out humanity,” explains Al-Rashid, “because they become too loud and annoying, effectively.” Anything to deflect blame from yourself, I suppose. If my neighbors become too loud and annoying, I might say something, or call the appropriate civil authorities, or wish a flood upon them. But I didn't create my neighbors. If I did, I'd acknowledge my own complicity in the disturbance of my peace. But one god, Ea (also known as Enki), disagrees. In secret, he warns a wise king named Atra-Hasis, whose name means “exceeding in wisdom”. Ea instructs him to build a boat, a great vessel that will preserve “the seed of all life on Earth”. It's long occurred to me that, while most of our names tend to be derived from ancient languages, at some point, there weren't ancient languages to draw from, and you get more literal names. The English equivalent would be like when you name someone Patience or Hope. ("Robert," incidentally, comes from Germanic roots meaning something like "bright and famous.") Atra-Hasis persuades his community to help him build an ark. “He’s got everyone in the town to help him build this boat basically in a day,” Al-Rashid says. “And they're having a feast to celebrate.” But the feast is overshadowed by the king’s dread. Atra-Hasis gives a speech filled with puns and wordplay that hint at the catastrophe to come. Sadly, puns almost never translate between languages, so much of the nuance is lost in translation. You get this with the Bible, too. Some verses that make people scratch their heads when read in English (or almost any other modern language) make perfect sense as puns in Ancient Hebrew or Greek. I'm no expert on either language, so I won't provide examples; they're easy enough to find online. Point is, some of our first recorded stories included puns. The first known joke, however, was a fart joke. One of these is the lowest form of humor, and it's not the pun.This Babylonian version of the flood myth wasn’t a one-off, either. Instead, this was a recurring motif in Mesopotamian theology. Yes, because they lived along rivers, and what do rivers do? And this archetypal structure isn’t limited to Mesopotamia. Similar flood stories appear in cultures around the world – from India’s tale of Manu to China’s story of Yu the Great, to Native American myths and Aboriginal oral traditions in Australia. It would be a stretch indeed to claim that all of these flood stories had a common origin. They certainly weren't based on any event that actually affected the entire world. But if you live along a river, and it floods, and you lack knowledge of the size or shape of the planet, it can easily seem that your entire world was destroyed. Why? Well, obviously because the gods were pissed off. There's really no other logical explanation. Certainly not anything involving weather patterns or hydrology, because that shit hadn't been invented yet, but gods had. But, as the article notes, the link between Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean is well-documented. So there's no real mystery as to how one morphed into the other. Because we are, fundamentally, a story-telling species, and we love to copy and modify others' stories. |
| So, you were told there would be no math? Lies. There is always math. From Quanta: Where Does Meaning Live in a Sentence? Math Might Tell Us. The mathematician Tai-Danae Bradley is using category theory to try to understand both human and AI-generated language. And no, I don't understand it, either. If everyone understood this stuff, it wouldn't need a whole article, would it? Growing up, Tai-Danae Bradley had no love for math. In 2008, she entered the City College of New York, where she played for the basketball team and hoped to start a career in sports nutrition. Which would have required math. But in her sophomore year, her calculus professor changed her mind. Mathematics, she learned, was the language that all the sciences are written in. Well, all the real sciences, anyway. Now, as a researcher at the artificial intelligence company SandboxAQ, and a visiting professor at the Master’s University in California, Bradley is using the language of math to try to better understand language itself. I've known for a long time that language is mathematical. Not that I had the means or ability to analyze it myself, of course, but, like with a turbulent river or a thunderstorm, there's math that describes it, even if we haven't quite figured it all out yet. Her lens is category theory, a way of stepping back from the specifics of any individual field in favor of a broader underlying framework that bridges all of them. By thinking of language as a mathematical category, she’s been able to apply established tools to study it and glean new insights. Which is one reason this article caught my eye; I like it when things from different fields of study can be connected. The bulk of the article is in interview format. (Don't worry; there's nothing we'd call "math," unless you count some equations in illustrative photographs.) I'm not going to quote much of that; it's there and I think it's pretty much accessible. There's really only a couple of quotes by Bradley that I wanted to highlight, like this one: I’m very interested in this phenomenon where things that feel different turn out to be fundamentally related. And I am, as well, though I don't have the formal tools to analyze such things. This is why I like to learn a little bit about a lot of things rather than a lot about one or two things. Ideally, I'd learn a lot about a lot, but I'm entirely too lazy for that. So I pick up what I can, when I can. Like this article, for instance. One final quote, then: I think in five years, we might have new mathematical ideas that were inspired by language. And this, I want to see. |
| Let's wrap up my entries for this round of "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] depressed arches You know how, sometimes, it feels like you just can't go on? Nothing's right, but you don't have enough desire or ability to try to make it right? I don't know; maybe you're one of the lucky ones who never feel that way. But I think most people, especially creatives, get depressed at some point, even if it doesn't descend to the clinical level. Sometimes, paradoxically perhaps, it can add fire to one's work. Bruce Springsteen, one of the most prolific songwriters of all time and one of the most energetic in concert, disclosed in his autobiography that he suffered from depression, to the great surprise of anyone who's never heard one of his hundreds of songs. I don't know if Leonard Cohen did, but shit, man, just read his poetry. Lots of great comedy comes out of depression, because, really, what can you do but laugh and try to make others laugh, too? Not to mention every Russian writer ever, and at least half the French ones. Thing is, though, when you're an arch, you have no choice. You have one job: supporting everything above you. And you do it, through rain, snow, sleet, and (at least relatively minor) earthquakes and hurricanes. Worse, when you're a depressed arch, the thing you're holding up tends to be very heavy, like train tracks. Well, those aren't all that heavy, comparatively speaking, but sometimes there's a train and then you really feel the weight. But that's not even the worst thing. No, the worst thing is knowing that you didn't have to be an arch. You could have been a solid wall, except that someone decided that something—trucks, pedestrians, a river, wildlife, whatever—absolutely had to get from one side of the thing you're holding up to the other. And your span is too wide to simply throw a beam on top, so to be able to hold up something that's not you, you become an arch. You don't even get paid. Maybe, sometimes, you appear in some book on structural engineering and/or architecture, or get your picture posted to Wikipedia, but otherwise, you just sit there. Brooding. Not for all eternity, mind you, because you're acutely aware that everything eventually crumbles to rubble and dust, but sometimes, it sure feels like it.Perhaps, on better days, when the sun is shining and the people admiring your smooth lines and graceful curves are happy and smiling, you realize that things could, indeed have been worse: you could have been located on the bottom of someone's foot. |
| Today, I'm sharing an older article from Mental Floss. Usual disclaimer for that site: I don't trust its fact-checking, if indeed it does any. And to be honest, I'm not doing a lot of research for something this inherently silly. Just be careful: to use a different but related origin myth, the number of people who think "Ring Around the Rosie" is about the Plague is substantial, even though that claim has been pretty thoroughly debunked. So I'd urge anyone reading this not to spread this around at tailcock parties as Absolute Truth. Tongue twisters have been screwing up speaking abilities around the world for centuries. They do have a purpose, though. As entertaining as tripping over tricky terms can be, early English twisters were also used to teach pupils proper speech. From what I understand, actors use them to help with enunciation and controlling one's speech. I remember using "red leather, yellow leather" for that. It was surprisingly difficult, even for those with English as a first language. In a note to teachers in his 1878 book Practical Elocution, J.W. Shoemaker reminded them of the “higher motive” of these confounding sayings: “To The Teacher—While many of the exercises ... may create amusement in a class, a higher motive than 'Amusement' has prompted their insertion. Practice is here afforded in nearly every form of difficult articulation.” As if there were a higher motive than amusement. Pfeh. ...some of these difficult phrases go way back to when elocution was practiced as routinely as multiplication tables. Do they even do those in schools anymore? 1. Peter Piper This might be memory revisionism on my part, but I don't recall that particular twister being very twisty. I just tried it again (my cats heard me, but they already think I'm weird), and it's still not difficult. What I find interesting isn't the alliteration, but that "piper" is part of the botanical name for pepper. But not the pickled kind. Come to think of it, when's the last time you saw pickled peppers? Several spice enthusiasts have also suggested the Peter in question was based on 18th-century French horticulturalist Pierre Poivre, though that connection should probably be taken with a grain of salt (or pepper, in this case). Considering that "poivre" is the translation of "pepper," yeah, I don't know. Again, though, it's the "black pepper" kind, not the "green pepper" kind, which is similar: poivron. Or piment for those degenerates in Québec. At least it's not as ambiguous as the English word. 2. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Oh come on, that's not even a twister; it's more... I don't know, wordplay? The difference in pronunciation between "wood" and "would" is indistinguishable, at least in American English, and tongue-twisters generally rely on similar but different sounds, like "picked a peck of pickled..." And one wonders what was actually meant by "chuck" in "woodchuck." It might very well be the American version of woodcharles. In 1988, a fish and wildlife technician for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation made national headlines when he posited if a woodchuck could chuck wood (because they actually can’t) it would be able to chuck about 700 pounds of the stuff—but that little detail must not have fit into the linguistic flow of the original rhyme. Stop making sense of nonsense. Woodchucks (better known as groundhogs, famous for their ability to destroy flower beds, predict weather and cause time loops) may not chuck wood, but one doesn't pick pecks of pickled peppers, either. You pick peppers, then pickle them. Even if you're Peter Piper. But the nonsense is more fun, and we've already established that there is no higher purpose than amusement. 3. and 4. Betty Botter and Two Tooters I have vague memories of the first one. As for the second, I'm pretty sure we never learned it. Because if we had, we'd have changed it to "Two Hooters." 5. She Sells Seashells Finally, a legitimate twist-tonguer. At least for me. The code-switching necessary to go from s to sh and back to s is notoriously difficult. Like, when I was a kid, being trained in how to train a dog, I commanded the dog to shit. The other humans couldn't hide their laughter. The dog, fortunately, interpreted what I meant: sit. I think she was laughing, too. This was, of course, before I developed my potty mouth, and had no clue that "shit" was a 13+ word. But, just as with anything, you practice until you get it right. Most of the time. Maybe. 6. I Scream, You Scream Oh for fuck's sake, that's not a tongue-twister; that's a pun. (To be fair, the article acknowledges the lack of twist involved). 7. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious OH COME ON. That's an exercise in spelling, not speaking (this time, I cheated and used copy/paste). Still, the origin story is interesting, if true. Spoiler: no, it wasn't Mary Poppins. Well, not really. Unless you're a Disney lawyer reading this, in which case it was definitely Mary Poppins and please don't sue me. 8. Pad Kid Pad kid poured curd pulled cod I hadn't heard of this one, and it turns out there's a good reason for that. Not yet as recognizable as some other more traditional rhymes, this short sentence was developed by MIT researchers in 2013 as the world’s trickiest twister. Worse, it's more nonsensical, and not in a fun way, than the older and more famous ones, which at least follow some semblance of English grammar and syntax. To me, this makes it inferior, even if it was developed at MIT. If you want English grammar and syntax, you'll need to go up the Chuck river to Harvard. And still, I wonder why they didn't somehow work the word "card" into that one. I guess they're still trying to live down the card-counting story. |
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So, I think I think therefore I delude myself in thinking I exist? Too much work for too little reward. 
Perhaps one day.
