Word Up and Down

Over at The Guardian, a quintessentially English topic: what words make you wince? Some respond to the way they sound, some to their meaning, and some to the way they are abused. Some of the words I 'm not fond of:

• Anything from "corpospeak," such as "synergy," "leverage" (especially when used as a verb), or "disconnect" when used as a noun.
• "Bling."
• "Peeps," when not used to refer to those yellow polymer-based Easter treats.
• The suffix "-gate" appended to any type of scandal. "Watergate" was called that because it involved the Watergate Hotel. Likewise, the suffix "-holic" "or "-oholic" added to any kind of addict, like "chocoholic" or "workaholic." Someone who drinks excessively is called an "alcoholic" because alcohol is involved.
  
• "Text" as a verb, but I suppose I shall have to learn to live with it. Same with "friend" as a verb.
  
• The phrase "[x] is the new [y]."
  
• I really can't stand emoticons, or any other form of Instant Messaging shorthand, such as lol, btw, etc., especially when they seep into actual writing. I can see how they are useful on handheld devices that are unwieldy to type on, but when typing on a proper keyboard it's just uncalled for.
• Other Internet-coined words such as "meh" and "pwn" (instead of "own") make me want to chew my own head off.
  
• "Proverbial" when used to refer to something that is not mentioned in an actual proverb.
• "Literally" when used in place of "figuratively" (i.e., "he literally exploded with laughter," which would be rather messy).
• I used to have no problem with "segue" but then that dorky scooter came on the market and now everyone spells it "segway."
• I also am not a big fan of the word "blog" on strictly aesthetic terms but, again, I suppose it's something I shall have to live with. Same with "podcast."
  
• I've also never liked profanity all that much, except under extreme circumstances. Lately I've taken to reverting to quaint and archaic interjections like "egad," "dang," and "zounds," primarily for my own amusement.
  

Matt Groening has put out yearly lists of "forbidden words" (and phrases) that sensible people would do well to avoid. I'm embarrased to admit that at times I use some of these, usually when I'm just being lazy.

Pipe Dreams

Mi hermano told me this morning that in his hometown of Watertown, MA (appropriate), a plumbing museum has recently opened. And, indeed, it has: http://theplumbingmuseum.org. Apparently, it has been around since 1979, but only recently moved to its new location and reopened. I confess, I am intrigued. I am certain that one of the things they would mention is that the term "plumbing" comes from plumbum, the Latin word for "lead," which was what the original pipes were made of.

The museum features a history of plumbing, as well as "hands-on workshops." One shudders to think. Although I do wonder how often museum security has to yell, "That's not the restroom, that's an exhibit!"

Free Willy

Over at Movie Mis-Treatments, Peter Lupus (Willy in Mission: Impossible and Norberg in Police Squad) stars as the titular strongman in Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon, making, as Jon Stewart might say, a mess o'potamia.

One of the more dubious film genres of the 1950s and 60s was the so-called “sword and sandal” epic. Technically called pepla, these movies were usually (but not always) made in Italy, often on a shoestring (or sandalstring), and starred burly American bodybuilders as heroes from antiquity, the Bible, or Greco-Roman mythology. Often, a single movie could have many different titles (Hercules Unchained was also called Ercole e la regina di Lidia and Hercules and the Queen of Lydia), and movies were occasionally named after heroes that weren’t actually in them (Maciste and the Queen of Samar was also called Hercules Against the Moon Men, for some reason, while Maciste at the Court of the Czar was also known as Samson vs. the Giant King as well as Atlas Against the Czar). I suspect it was all a diabolical plot to crash the Internet Movie Database.

Perhaps the most famous “actor” in these movies was the original Hercules, Steve Reeves, although others included Reg Park, Gordon Scott, Mark Forest, Brad Harris, Dan Vadis, and many others. For some reason, even though everyone else in the cast was Italian, audiences (or at least the producers) preferred leads with American-sounding names. So Sergio Ciani had to be credited as “Alan Steel,” which should have been a bit of a giveaway (his first choice of nom de film was Sidney Applebaum).

The movie was directed by Domenico Paolella, which is also the name of a delicious Italian rice dish.

Anyway, the "plot" concerns an evil trio of Babylonian rulers apparently named Salmon Oscar, Azure, and Tennille (there is even a Captain). Tyranny will keep them together.

Died in the Wool

Some days, it's very hard to choose whether one wants to abuse animals or children. Decisions, decisions... But here's a fun way to do both simultaneously: mutton-busting.

How I wish I weren't making that up.

Essentially, it combines the horror and sadness of rodeo with the terror of having children tossed from hyperactive and freaked-out sheep. Fun for the whole family! Probably not so much fun for the sheep. There is a plethora of upsetting video at the link.

Creeped Out

If you thought that today's ads were vile and loathsome, in some ways they're nothing compared to some of the "vintage" ads from purportedly quainter times. Remember when wife-beating was used to pitch such diverse products as coffee and postage meters? (Postage meters?) Does the sight of a pig smiling and graphically disembowling himself make you hungry for sausage? Remember those "man in the Hathaway shirt" ads that inexplicably featured guys in eye patches to sell shirts to either pirates and/or Cyclops? They're even more surreal when the one-eyed guy is holding a Bengal tiger kitten...the aftermath of a tragic zoo mishap, methinks. ("Aww...what a cute little kitty...what's that he playing with...Oh, my god!!!")

Anyway, if you want to be creeped out by vintage advertising, be sure to check this site out.

Oldies But...Not So Goodies

Via Boing Boing, I came across a great little blog called Awful Library Books--examples of old, quaint, or downright silly titles from the past that can plague library shelves if librarians don't practice what is apparently referred to as "weeding." One doesn't like to get rid of books, but some, well, you know... Top candidates: flash-in-the-pan biographies of temporarily famous people--or worse: how-to/self-help books from temporarily famous people, such as:
Then there are how-to books on really old stuff:
Maybe that kid who couldn't figure out the Walkman could use one of these.

Then there are the quaint books that obviously hearken back to a simpler time:
Then there's the just plain weird:
Curiously, my primary care physician has this book.

Anyway, it's an enoyable blog, especially for those who are amused by obsolete typography.

These Boots Were Made for Walkmen

Here's a thought experiment: what if you handed a contemporary 13-year-old a vintage Sony Walkman from the late 1970s/early 1980s? Would he be able to figure out how it worked? The BBC (via Gizmodo) has an article on just such an experiment.

For all of you who have a tough time figuring out new technology, take heart (or be downright smug) that today's kids have (or at least this one had) a tough time figuring out old technology. Even the humble cassette tape itself posed problems:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Actually, I remember when a Walkman that had an auto-reverse feature (i.e., the head flips around at the end of a tape and plays the other side automatically) came out, I thought that was the greatest thing ever.

He did learn that one of the limitations of analog tape was the inability to shuffle songs:

But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.
I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don't have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, "Walkmans eat tapes". So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day.

I do recall that any tape length longer than 90 minutes (like the 120-minute ones) tended to get eaten anyway. But since most albums were under 45 minutes long (the limitations of vinyl), one 90-minute cassette could hold two albums. I used to obsessively record all my vinyl LPs on cassette--to play on my Walkman, of course. Just like I now obsessively rip all my CDs to play on my iPod. Technology changes, but behavior doesn't.

Next we'll have to give this kid a rotary dial phone--with a cord and everything--which may very well blow his mind.

Yes, the magnetic audio tape has gone the way of the VHS tape--and some years ago automakers stopped even including tape decks in new cars, a fact I only discovered about five years ago when I rented a car and had no place to insert my iPod tape deck adapter, which never worked well anyway. (In cold weather it would constantly eject itself.) In fact, the only reason I bought a new car a couple years ago was for a direct iPod jack. (And decent cupholders.) Any other car feature is pretty much wasted on me, since I hate driving.

Still, as someone who had his share of Walkmen over the course of the 80s and 90s (and seized on the iPod from Day 1 as far superior), I can't help but think that, in 30 years, the iPod will probably be seen as quaint and nostalgic, and the 13-year-olds of 2039 will likely be hard-pressed to figure out how it works. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Incommunicado

There is something deeply wrong about the fact that the only place to get cell phone reception in a 10-mile radius of Blue Mountain Lake, NY, is actually on a boat in the middle of the lake.

Last week, Ken A. and I rented--as we did last year--a cabin on Blue Mountain Lake up in the Adirondacks. I like it for many reasons, not the least of which is that there is absoluetly no cell reception, WiFi, or even TV in the house. And it's usually fairly quiet, free of the chain saws, .lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and the rest of the din of suburbia. (Though they were replacing the roof of the cabin next door, which tended to be a bit loud--not so much the hammering, but the bad 1980s radio station they had on.) Still, we had pretty decent weather, and happily missed black fly season.

I had been fretting the black flies, since the prior week I had gone up to Tupper Lake (about 30 miles north of Blue Mountain Lake) to interview the director of The Wild Center (The Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks) for an upcoming story for RealScience, and she had told me that they were still in the thick of them.

Black flies are nasty, but happily their season ends by the end of June, which is when most people start doing their summer activities. (Well, it's when I get around to doing them, anyway.) There are more than 1,800 or so species of black fly in the family Simuliidae in the order Diptera. Different parts of the world--and even the U.S.--have their own indigenous species, but Simulium venustum is the one familiar to campers and hikers. The black flies feed on blood and are worse than mosquitoes because whereas a mosquito inserts its proboscis into the flesh and sucks blood as if through a straw, the black fly rips open the flesh with its bladelike mouthparts (rather like those of a horsefly) and laps up the blood as it pools on the skin. (Although I've been to restaurants with people who eat like this.) They swarm in great numbers, and although they aren't lethal, there are those who have allergic reactions. Some species in South America and Africa can also transmit the parasitic nematode Onchocerca volvulus, which causes Onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Here's an interesting fact: black flies are more attrated to dark blue than white clothing. However, even black flies won't be caught wearing white after Labor Day.

Anyway, we were quite happy to have avoided the whole business and just had the mosquitoes to deal with. Hence, the entire cathedral's worth of citronella candles we had on hand. Still, we didn't do much beyond sit overlooking the lake with a stack of books and a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon (sorry, Audrey!). (K. goes to Kentucky fairly often to Corning's plant in Harrisburg, which is not far from the Bourbon Trail, and picked some up from the source. It's rather good.)

On Tuesday, we accidentally climbed up a mountain. That is, we had been in the Blue Mountain Lake general store (perfect when you're not looking for anything specific) and found a flyer on local hiking trails and throught we'd give one a try. The trailhead was just up the road, but, as it turned out, it was a 2-mile (one way) hike to the top of Blue Mountain (elevation 3,759 feet above sea level, but I believe from where we started it was only about 1,300 feet or something like that). Still it was rather steep, involved a lot of clambering over rocks, and it had been two or three years since I had last gone hiking--although it was not as arduous an ascent as the hike up Bash Bish Falls. At the top was a fire tower, the climbing of which was highly vertigo-inducing. Indeed, Jimmy Stewart was clinging to the ladder for dear life. Kim Novak was at the top about to be pitched off.

Still, the views from the summit were quite spectacular:


We also had a good view of Blue Mountain Lake, and could even spot generally where our cabin was:
There is also a sort of unwritten code of mountain hiking that states that, while descending, you offer encouragement to those on the way up (i.e., "The top isn't far"; "There's only one more really steep bit"; "You're utterly doomed. Turn back!")

We weren't aware just how high we had climbed until Thursday, when we rented a boat on Blue Mountain Lake and happened to see the mountain from afar:
You can't see it in the iPhone photo, but from the lake we could make out the fire tower we had climbed, as well as the cell phone tower at the summit--which is why I can get reception in the middle of the lake, but not anywhere else, as other mountains and landforms in the area block the reception. Thankfully.

I did actually check my e-mail once in the boat in the middle of the lake--but got aggravated by a note from a colleague, realized why I liked being incommunicado, and turned the iPhone off until I got home over the weekend.

I could have used another week there. Or three. Or...

Speaking of incommunicado, here's a blast from the past:

Carnage

Good grief, I go away for a week to a remote Adirondack cabin far from TV, cellphone reception, and WiFi, and when I return everyone is dead--Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson to name three. Two of the three were very surprising. Three guess which two. (Hint: "Hey-O!")

Census Working Overtime

Just got an exultant e-mail from Dr. Joe that the eagerly awaited 2007 Economic Census data are finally out. Let' s celebrate with song.

Waiting for the End of the World

I was in Borders the other day, and there now seems to be a cottage industry of books on the so-called "end of the world," which is said to be coming in 2012. Specifically, December 21, 2012. Whilst I am happy that it would mean I can avoid Christmas shopping, alas, we will all still be here in January (although I think I'll schedule any dentist's appointments for January 2013, so at least there will be an upside if the world does in fact end).

So where did this idea come from? Well, first of all, throughout history, there has never been any shortage of doomsday predictions, whether they be divinely inspired or technologically derives (the so-called Y2K disaster that also, if memory serves, spawned a cottage industry of books).

Interestingly, the current "2012" doomsday has actually been rescheduled from 2003. It's basically if Amtrak ran doomsday.

NASA's David Morrison, who writes the "Ask an Astrobiologist" blog, has 20 questions about the looming disaster. Some of his commentary has appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, and as 2012 looms closer, I expect will be appearing more places.

Why is NASA getting involved in this?

I refer you to Question 1:

1. What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in December 2012?
The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., The Twelfth Planet, published in 1976) that he has found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, orbiting the Sun every 3600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she is channeling aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Only recently have these two fables been linked to the end of the Mayan long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

It bears mentioning that doomsdayophiles conflate so-called Nibiru with "Planet X" and/or Eris. "Planet X" is a generic name assigned to any newly discovered object that might turn out to be a planet at the far edge of the Solar System. When the dwarf planet we now call Eris was first identified, it was referred to as "Planet X," then code-named "Xena" (those astronomers are lawless), and then officially named "Eris." Indeed, back in the early 20th century, when astronomers suspected that what we now call Pluto existed, it was also called "Planet X." None of these are Nibiru, and none of them are coming anywhere near the Earth, not in 2012 or...well, ever.

Doomsayers also, for reasons passing understanding, cite as evidence the fact that December 21, 2012, is the last date on the Mayan calendar. I don't know. December 31, 2009, is the last date on both my American Museum of Natural History wall calendar and my Anguished English page-a-day desk caldendar. I should be doubly worried--and a lot sooner!

Or it could mean that the end of the year is when the calendar resets, and I just have to buy a new one (or get one for Christmas, hint hint).

Likewise, there is evidence that the Mayan calendar is cyclical, albeit on a much larger scale than a single year, and that when it ends it simply means that you start again from the beginning. Like any calendar.

If you are concerned about the looming end of the world in 2012--and everyone seems to have their favorite method of destruction--I encourage you go read Dr. Morrison's Q&A.

Personally, I think the real worry is not the year 2012, but 2112. But at least I know if I find an ancient guitar in a cave, to not play it for the priests of the Temple of Syrinx.

Don't Catch the Bus

It has literally been almost 15 years since I was last on a Greyhound bus, and I hope it's at least that long before I am on one again. And, no, it has nothing to do with the passengers; rather, it's because it makes Amtrak look like the model of courtesy and efficiency.

I was supposed to return from New York Friday night on the 11:45 train. There was a World Science Festival event at 9:00 I wanted to attend (castmembers from the new Battlestar Galactica conjointly talking about cyborgs with roboticists) but I had innocently checked to see if there was an earlier train, only to find out that there had been a Metro North derailment south of Poughkeepsie and as a result there were no trains at all leaving until morning. I had a 10 a.m. meeting in Clifton Park, so staying overnight was not an option (for budgetary reasons, as well). I did some investigating and learned to my chagrin that the only way to get back to Albany was Greyhound.

There was a 9 p.m. bus that theoretically got in to Albany at 11:50. As it happened, it was almost entirely full of Amtrak refugees, and several of us bonded, as one does in those kinds of circumstances, through mutual grousing. Misery loves company, indeed. Anyway, Greyhound ticket counter agents are not exactly models of speed and efficiency; it was like watching a lava lamp. Gate numbers are merely suggestions which can change on a whim, and do. And then the bus was a half hour late getting in to the Port Authority, and one of course loves to spend as much time in Port Authority as possible. (Although, to be fair, Port Authority is actually much better designed and actually less horrid than Penn Station these days.)

On top of that, it is actually more expensive to take the bus than the train. I was not expecting that.

Finally, we get moving. Now, bear in mind, everyone on the bus is cranky and just wants to go home. The bus driver knows this. I don't see how he can't, unless he has no sensory apparatus whatsoever. Which in fact he doesn't.

Halfway up the Thruway, we pull off into a rest stop. Do buses do this? Everyone raises a fuss, but the driver simply says, "Nature calls," and gets off the bus. Naturally, other people decide to get off, too, either to smoke or to forage for food. I am certain we will spend the rest of our lives here.

After about 10 minutes, the natives start getting restless, as the bus driver has not returned. Some people toy with the idea of sending out a search party, and my immediate thought is that it will be like those horror movies where they send out a search party to look for a missing search party, and then that search party disappears. Anyway, it turns out the bus driver is calmly eating dinner at the McDonald's. Um...? He is cajoled into returning to the bus, only to discover that there are passengers missing. Those of us who stayed on the bus unanimously vote to leave without them, but we are overruled. So we wait another 10 minutes until they finally return with sacks of vile-smelling McDonald's food. Any chance we could careen off the highway into the Hudson?

Happily, the rest of the trip passes without incident. Until we get to Albany, and we discover that the bus driver does not know how to get to the Albany bus station. Isn't this the most basic skill one needs to be a bus driver, knowing where the bus station is? Especially since this was non-stop trip, with no stop other than Albany. In retrospect, I wonder if he even has a driver's license. So there we were, driving through downtown Albany with various passengers shouting out "Left!" "Right!" "Straight through this light!" It was very surreal. It was aso rather fortuitous, since we were all Amtrak refugees--and to be honest I hadn't a clue where the Albany bus station is. I still don't. And I hope I never have cause to find it again.

Anyway, we finally get in, and one of the folks I had met in Port Authority asked if I wanted to split a cab, because we all still had to get to the Rensselaer train station, where our cars all were. By this time, she was exceedingly cranky and made Lucrezia Borgia seem like Sandy Duncan. We had climbed into a cab and while the cab driver was trying to round up other passengers who were going the same place, she decided to rip him a new one and demand that we get going. Naturally, one doesn't like to rile cab drivers, and for good reason: we tore out of there at about 95, nearly crashed through utility poles, crash barriers, other cars, etc. It was like that chase scene at the end of The French Connection. I find it hard to believe that the five-minute ride from the bus station to the trail station should have been $20. I suspect he inflated that for our benefit. I sure wasn't going to argue with him at that point. He knows where the tire iron is.

And, of course, as I was paying for my parking, the attendant decided to launch into a long dissertation about what the effect of the derailment had been on the Rensselear station, the pattern of rail passeners returning to their cars, and so forth. I honestly thought he was going to pull out a PowerPoint presentation. All I'm thinking is, "It's 1 a.m. Can I go home now, please?" I was finally released, and I'm sure the people behind me were treated to the same lecture.

So, my new policy was that I'm never leaving the house again.

Well, until my douchebag neighbors started their ^%$#$&* chainsaws at 7:30 Sunday morning...

They Blinded Me with Science

Last week, after The Decemberists show, I trucked on down to NYC for the World Science Festival, which I was covering for RealScience.us (I had met the guy who runs it in Santa Fe last week--no, wait last month; oy, tempus fugit). Anyway, I wheedled my way into the opening night gala at Alice Tully Hall and the subsequent reception where I actually got to interview Alan Alda (he is one of the co-chairs of the event) and was snarked at by James Watson (Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule), but then Watson is 8,000 years old and is the most crotchety guy you could ever meet). It was a very enjoyable event; my decidedly un-Edward R. Murrow-like audio coverage can be heard here. A follow up report should be going up later today.

Ephemerata

Here's something interesting--while I was on the road last week, I took along my old G4 Powerbook (my designated traveling computer) which still works extremely well (I bought it in 2004), though the battery is a bit dodgy (unplugged, it will last less than 20 minutes). Anyway, it's not the computer I normally use to sync my iPhone, or, more to the point, buy iPhone apps and e-books. So while on the road, I took a couple of pictures on my iPhone and needed to download them. Unfortunately, when my iPhone synced (sunk?), it removed my iPhone apps (despite the fact that I told it to not sync anything but iPhoto) and my e-books, including ones I had paid for. Anything I had bought from Fictionwise could be easily restored from my bookshelf, but it seems that anything I had bought through my Kindle iPhone App was gone for good. Doh! Fortunately, there weren't that many, and as it turns out, I have found that I much prefer reading e-books via eReader than the Kindle app anyway.

The ephemeral nature of digital data is, to my mind, one of the downsides of e-books. (Not that I haven't lost printed books before.) Like any data, it can be easily destroyed or erased unless meticulously backed up. And who does that?

Festering Boil

Over at Movie Mis-Treatments, the 1953 confuse-fest Mesa of Lost Women starring Jackie Coogan awaits you.

The movie plays like a fever dream. It’s wildly incoherent at even its best moments. And it has no best moments. It is told in flashback—actually two flashbacks—although many of the events are not actually witnessed by either of the people flashing back. One character’s flashback suddenly becomes another’s about midway through the movie. I think.

It was edited using the “Sgt. Pepper technique” (i.e., cut the film into bits, throw them in the air, and randomly tape the bits back together); in fact, a deep existential conversation between two characters about love and life is intercut with random close-ups of grinning dwarves. Oh, and the soundtrack comprises 68 minutes of “Duet for Untuned Spanish Guitar and Kangaroo Jumping on Piano.” Endlessly.

Mark Your Calendars

Do you wonder how much time is left before the game show The Running Man premieres, or when we'll start eating Soylent Green, or when we can all cavort in upsetting red shorts like Sean Connery in Zardoz? Well, thanks to Dan Meth, this handy Timeline tells us when the events of our favorite sci-fi movies will be taking place (click image for larger version):

Plugging Away

Via Gizmodo, the ultimate solution for those of us who find that even power strips don't give us enough outlets for all our crap: the "Outlet Wall":

Rejoyce

Happy Bloomsday, all you James Joyce fans.

A Maritime Evening

Yes, it has been some time since last I blogged, but the past week has just left me all a-quiver with excitement, such that my typing fingers were vibrating like piano wires, thwarting my every attempt at blogging. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Last Tuesday, mi hermano and I braved a cold, rainy, March-like June evening to see The Decemberists at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. I had not known it was an outdoor venue, but at least there was a roof. As Colin Meloy (singer for The Decemberists) explained it during some between-song banter, “Weatherwise, it’s June, apparently, and it’s summer in other places. We’ve been there, we’ve lived through it, and we’ve come to tell you Northern people [they are from Portland, Oregon] that there’s summer out there to be had.”

Despite the weather, it was quite possibly the best concert I have ever been to.

First of all, to my utter surprise, the opening act was Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 whom we had tickets to see back in April but who cancelled mere hours before showtime. The Venus 3 are guitarist Peter Buck (R.E.M.), bassist Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh fellows, The Minus 5), and Bill Rieflin (Ministry). They did a stripped down 32-minute set comprising a handful of songs from the new album (Goodnight Oslo), and two older songs—“Adventure Rocketship” from Olé Tarantula, and “I Often Dream of Trains,” which dates back to 1984’s album of the same name. Interesting, Robyn messed up the opening lyrics to “I Often Dream of Trains.” His between-song banter was his usual stream-of-consciousness, although he was a bit less verbose than he usually is when he headlines.

Colin Meloy (who sings backup on a few tracks on Goodnight Oslo) joined in for those self-same tracks. (Robyn, by the way, plays guitar on one track on the new Decemberists album.)

The song list was:

“I Often Dream of Trains”
“What You Is”
“Adventure Rocketship”
“Saturday Groovers”
“Hurry for the Sky”
“I’m Falling”
“Up to Our Nex”
“Goodnight Oslo”

The short set list was to make room in the evening for what were two one-hour sets by The Decemberists. The first set was the entirety of the new album, The Hazards of Love. The reason for this is that the album is a “concept album” (or a “rock opera,” although I have always hated that term). It’s one long, unbroken piece of music (well, it’s broken if you listen to it on an iPod because the header data that the MP3 format uses makes it nearly impossible to segue tracks; score one for CDs). The story is a narrative; indeed, almost all of Colin Meloy’s songs are stories—he has a degree in creative writing, actually—and over the past two albums have been experimenting with longer-form songs. Originally, they were largely folk-based (their early albums I once described as sounding like pirate folk music, or if Herman Melville fronted Fairport Convention) but have been gradually adding more and more classic rock and even progressive-rock elements. (Their last record The Crane Wife sounds like it could be the long lost Jethro Tull album recorded between Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play.)

Anyway, story of The Hazards of Love runs something like this: Our heroine Margaret is out wandering in the taiga and comes across a wounded fawn. She helps it out, and the fawn immediately shapeshifts into a human male (William). The choice of men must be decidedly limited in Margaret’s part of the world, because she immediately falls in love with him—after all, what could be more attractive than someone who had been wildlife only scant seconds earlier? They get up to some wild life of their own, and by Track 3 Margaret is pregnant (the narrative skirts questions of whether the child will be half-human/half-fawn). They are in love, but one obstacle appears in the form of William’s mother, the Queen. She is a witch who had transformed him into a fawn to keep him safe. There are all sorts of Freudian issues going on, and the Queen disapproves of William’s love for Margaret. She then abets the villain of the piece, The Rake, who in the best song on the record (villains always get the best songs) introduces himself by describing how he killed all his children. The Rake kidnaps Margaret, and the Queen helps him get her across the river. William goes in hot pursuit. The ending isn’t very clear, but it seems The Rake’s children come back to life to avenge their deaths (people don’t stay dead long in Colin Meloy songs) by singing “ooooh, the hazards of love” at him. William and Margaret drown together in the river but get married as they do so. There’s one wedding planner whose job I don’t envy.

Like most rock operas or concept albums, the narrative is a little dodgy, but musically it is incredible, and runs the gamut from gentle folk melodies to pounding heavy metal riffing. It takes a few listens to get into, but once it clicks, it’s hard to not want to listen to it again. And again. And again.

So in concert, they indeed played the entirety of the record—as one unbroken stream of music. Sure, some bandmembers had to vamp for a few extra bars in between some songs so others could change instruments (when the lights went out you could see the silhouettes of roadies running on and swapping guitars). The female singers who play the roles of Margaret and the Queen on the album (Becky Stark and Shara Worden, respectively, the latter of which has a very powerful Grace Slick voice) reprised their roles in concert. Worden in particular pulled out all the stops as Witchie-poo. The highlight had to be “The Rake’s Song” in which Meloy plays acoustic guitar, Nate Query plays bass, and everyone else pounds on drums. As I said, villains always get the best songs. (The Queen’s songs also get into deep Black Sabbath territory.)

The song list for the first half was:

The Hazards of Love

“Prelude”
“The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)”
“A Bower Scene”
“Won’t Want for Love (Margaret In the Taiga)”
“The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)”
“The Queen’s Approach”
“Isn’t It a Lovely Night?”
“The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid”
“An Interlude”
“The Rake’s Song”
“The Abduction of Margaret”
“The Queen’s Rebuke/The Crossing”
“Annan Water”
“Margaret In Captivity”
“The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)”
“The Wanting Comes In Waves (Reprise)”
“The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)”

The second half of the show was another hour of other assorted tracks. My only disappointment was only one track from Picaresque (still my favorite album of theirs). But, who am I to complain? Meloy has been to a few Robyn Hitchcock concerts as he is getting that jokey stream-of-consciousness banter down pat. He treated the audience to a confession (“don’t tell anyone”) of “the worst song I ever wrote” describing the anatomy of “Dracula”s Daughter,” “A Cmaj7th to a G7, alternating back and forth in a swinging pattern—for the layman, all this is to say is that this is a douchy chord progression....As I put that on my notepad, my feather pen fell to the ground, with a splash of ink that spelled ‘Help.’” He then went on to talk about the ghosts that may have been in the room at the time...downright Hitchcockian. Still, Meloy is the kind of guy you actually would expect to use a feather pen; his lyric are rife with “thou”s and “shalt”s and the like, as well as vocabulary that sends even me running for the dictionary. (A “taiga” by the way, the setting for The Hazards of Love, is “a moist subarctic forest dominated by conifers [as spruce and fir] that begins where the tundra ends.”) That’s up there with “the curlews carve their arabesques” on The Crane Wife.

Other highlights included an extended “The Chimbley Sweep” in which various audience members were recruited to come on stage and strap on a guitar. The evening ended, as all Decemberists shows these days do, with “Sons and Daughters” and everyone in the audience chanting “Hear all the bombs fade away.”

The song list for the second half was:

“Oceanside” (5 Songs EP, 2001)
“Lesley Anne Levine” (Castaways and Cutouts, 2002)
“July, July!” (Castaways and Cutouts, 2002)
“Sleepless” (a truncated version of a track that appears on Dark Was the Night, a benefit album for Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS)
“Summersong” (The Crane Wife, 2006)
“O Valencia” (The Crane Wife, 2006)
“The Chimbley Sweep” (Her Majesty, 2003)
“Crazy On You” (yes, the Heart song, sung by Margaret and the Queen from The Hazards of Love)
“Eli, The Barrow Boy” (Picaresque, 2005)
“Sons and Daughters” (The Crane Wife, 2006)

Anyway, it was a wonderful evening and if anyone ever gets the opportunity to see The Decemberists, I highly encourage it. Here is what the Boston Globe said of the show.

Palm's Curdless Phone?

Perhaps you have heard of the new Palm Pre, Palm's new smartphone. Whilst I am perfectly happy with my iPhone, the Gizmodo folks did discover that the Pre does have one advantage over the iPhone: its sharp edge can be used to slice cheese.

They say smartphones have become the new Swiss Army knives, but I had no idea that was meant to be taken literally.

Pimp My Ride

Well, I think I know what the niece(s) are getting for Christmas. (h/t Boing Boing.)

They Call Me MISTER Squid

I'm not one for being posh, but the next time I have to go to a formal gathering, perhaps this T-shirt would be appropriate. I could even sing "Puttin' on the Ritz."

Nature Green in Tooth and Claw

I made a brief foray into the backyard today to once again try to tame the flora that is in danger of taking over everything. it kind of reminds me of a Brian Aldiss sci-fi novel I read a long time ago called Hothouse, in which plants evolved to take over just about every ecological niche on Earth, and a small remnant of humanity was banished into a large tree because if people got too close to the ground they’d be eaten by carnivorous plants. (Wouldn’t that make a great TV movie for the Home and Garden Network?) That’s pretty much my backyard. (I’ve decided to practice backyard Darwinism; whatever can survive me—or more precisely, my weed whacker—will live to spawn another day.) I guess I should mow the front yard at some point, before I have to yell at the lawn to stay off the kids.

It was in this context that I was reminded of poison ivy, as there is this colony of vines in the back that looks like it might be poison ivy. There is supposed to be a mnemonic phrase to remember how to tell if a plant is poison ivy. I think it goes something like “Leaves of three, sailors delight”? No, that can’t be right. Um, “Thirty days hath poison ivy, save for February, which has hairy vines...”? No... You know, I find it harder to remember mnemonics than the actual things.

Ah, here’s a picture. Box elder is on the left; poison ivy, with the serrated edges, is on the right. Kind of like a botanical police lineup.
It’s funny; growing up in the suburbs of New Hampshire, I don’t recall ever having had poison ivy, even though I had many friends who did. I find it hard to believe that I am not allergic to it. After all, it’s been estimated that 85% of people have allergic reactions to poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), and its brethren poison oak (T. diversilobum), and poison sumac (T. vernix). Heck, I even have allergic reactions to Yma Sumac (Soprano peruviana). Interestingly, the Toxicodendron genus is part of the family Anacardiaceae, which also includes the cashew, pistachio, and mango trees. All families have their ne’er-do-wells, I guess.

The culprit in poison ivy that causes all the problems is an oil called urushiol (the name comes from the Japanese urushi, which means “lacquer”). The urushiol touches the skin and chemically reacts with proteins on skin cells. The body fails to recognize these proteins as normal parts of the body (I think we’ve all had that experience, usually in fitting room mirrors) and sends in its army of T cells to destroy these invading pathogens—which are actually bits of the body’s own skin. The blistering and oozing are the results of the immune system response.

This urushiol is powerful stuff; as little as one billionth of a gram is enough to trigger an allergic response. Oh, and poison ivy can be spread, not by the ooze from the sores but rather from any stray urushiol that is transferred to clothing, pets, tools, toys, or just about any object. It can be transmitted from person to person if the one who made first contact still has the oil on his or her body.

Fortunately, poison ivy rashes are not usually very serious, just irritating, although they sometimes can lead to anaphylaxis, or a potentially life-threatening reaction.

People have tried to eradicate poison ivy but, like the weeds in my backyard, too easily recur. And I did come across an interesting study from 2006 that suggests that global warming may be a boon to poison ivy. Jacqueline E. Mohan, a postdoctoral scientist at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Lab’s Ecosystems Center, found that

[poison] ivy grown under high carbon dioxide grew twice as much over five years as the ivy exposed to today’s level of the greenhouse gas. Also, ivy grown in high carbon dioxide produced a more allergenic version of urushiol

Oh, good, more poison ivy and more toxic urushiol. Splendid. Furthermore:

Poison ivy is in a class of plants called woody vines. Around the world, woody vines are flourishing to the point where they can smother young trees, which are the “forests of the future,” said Mohan. Fifty to 100 years from now, if the level of carbon dioxide continues to rise and carbon dioxide promotes growth in woody vines, “what do we expect our forests to look like?” said Mohan.

Global warming doesn’t just affect carbon dioxide levels, but also the growing season (i.e., making it longer) as well as nitrogen resources. Mohan admits there is more to research before they can conclude what the effect of climate change on poison ivy will be. Still, it may very well be the case that, as the song says, you’re gonna need an ocean of calomine lotion.

Then I came across this news story this morning from the University of Delaware about another unpleasant plant: Phragmites australis, one of the most invasive plants in the United States. It invades by using a toxin which, as the UD researchers found out, gets even more potent in the presence of ultraviolet light (specifically, UV-B rays).

Phragmites secretes gallic acid, which it uses to kill off native plants and establish itself. However, the UD researchers found that UV light degrades gallic acid to produce a second toxin called mesoxalic acid, “effectively hitting susceptible plants and seedlings with a double-whammy.”

Nature adapts in its own ways to changes in the environment, and who knows what other changes in plant life climate change will bring? Maybe Brian Aldiss was exceedingly prescient, and plants will take over at some point. And then herbicide will be a crime. And where do they send people convicted of herbicide? Botany Bay, of course.

The Goth Fodder

Need a baby shower gift? Especially for a mother-to-be named Rosemary? How about this blade-covered baby equipment? (h/t Gizmodo) Perfect for what will almost certainly grow up to be a little hellion. What's next: a Bauhaus children's album?
You don't even want to see the rocking horse.

Seven Days to Decemberists

Counting down to next Tuesday, when mi hermano and I see The Decemberists at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. (We saw them previously back in 2006.)

Here is a 2007 performance of "Oceanside," the lead track from their debut EP 5 Songs (2003).

Meet the Beetles

In Santa Fe the other week, I happened to meet a Ph.D. candidate who was working at the NIH, but who also got a gig writing copy for the Smithsonian’s Web site. She was in my group, and she was workshopping an article on the Smithsonian Institution’s Osteo Prep Lab about a hitherto unknown (to me anyway) “behind the scenes” activity at many natural history museums: cleaning the skeletons of large animals. That is, removing the flesh and connective tissue.

I was reminded of this topic today as I was investigating the topic of “what do they do with dead zoo animals?” (My initial response was, “Two words: snack bar,” but further digging happily disproved this.) One possible destination for zoo animals that have joined the choir invisible and are pushing up the daisies (etc. etc.) is being sent to places like the Osteo Prep Lab.

Which then brings me back to my original subject: how do they remove the flesh from large animals to study or display bones, skulls, or entire skeletons? Surprisingly, they do not use chemicals or “mechanical” means (which are best left to an overactive imagination). In fact, they use bugs.

Dermestid beetles are a family (Dermestidae) of about 500–700 species in the order Coleoptera. (This order comprises beetles, essentially, of which there are about 350,000 known species; indeed, beetles represent 40% of all known insect species and as much as one-fourth of all the species on earth! The great naturalist J.B. S. Haldane was once asked by a cleric what he might infer about the Creator and is supposed to have responded, “an inordinate fondness for beetles.” The quote is perhaps apocryphal, but no less true.)

Anyway, dermestid beetles are also variously known as skin beetles, larder beetle, hide or leather beetles, carpet beetles, and khapra beetles (but not “silver beatles” with an “a”). Some are called “bow beetles” as they make their homes in violin cases and feast on the hair used to make violin bows, which would make Isaac very stern indeed.

Given so many dermestid species, it’s not surprising that they have a wide range of habits, but most are scavengers, and various genera have carved out their own nutritional niche. Some eat plants, some animal hair, others feathers, and still others eat other insects such as wasps.

One particular genus—the Dermestes—are carrion eaters. That is, they eat dead animal flesh (well, so do we, but “carrion” specifically refers to dead and putrefying flesh; there are a couple of restaurants I could pick on here, but I shan’t). This gives them two useful purposes for us humans.

I have not seen CSI in many years, but I would be very surprised if they had never done at least one episode about Demestes maculatus—hide beetles—which are one of a variety of insects that play a role in the field of forensic entomology. That is, medical examiners can gauge the time of death by examining how much of a dead body has been munched by dermestids. Dermestids have been found to “dine out” about 5–11 days after death (a pretty wide range, forensically speaking, but scientists are working to refine that range; interestingly, different species seem to arrive on the scene first, probably senior bugs after the “early bird special”).

Getting back to my original point, dermestids are also used by many natural history museums to clean animal skeletons.

This is not new; the process actually dates from 1922, and the earliest published description of its techniques dates from 1933 (Raymond E. Hall and Ward C. Russell, “Dermestid Beetles as an Aid in Cleaning Bones,” Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 372–374, 1933). (Ward Russell is said to be the “father of dermestid beetle bone cleaning.” I’m guessing he took many meals alone.) A 1974 article from Curator sums up some of the refinements to the technique.

A page on the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology’s Web site written by Stephen Hinshaw sums up the current state of the art. Whilst some of it gets a tad judgmental (“do not remove the brain unless you are an incredible pansy” or “the fish people don’t care to have their specimens degreased. They say that is part of the fishy ambiance that they like in their work. On the other hand the bird division has an almost fetish desire to degrease their specimens”) it is a very good detailed look at the topic.

Essentially, these labs start a healthy dermestid beetle colony and when it’s up and running, add fresh specimens (i.e., full-fleshed bones) for cleaning. The bugs eat the flesh, lay their eggs in the decomposing flesh, and the young’uns get in on the feast. After a while, significant levels of “frass” build up and must be removed. (Frass is insect excrement. If you’ve ever seen the movie Sideways, you may recall that there was a big celebrity winery called Frass Canyon. The insult was intentional.)

Once the flesh is gone (this was the original opening line of the Mamas and the Papas’ hit “California Dreamin’”: “All the flesh is gone, and the bones are clean...”) , you wash the resulting bones, make sure there aren’t any little critters left on (or in) them, and they’re ready to be sent to other departments in the museum.

The caveats involved with working with dermestids are fairly obvious. First, you have to be careful not to let them escape or they will get into other parts of the museum and eat things you don’t want them to eat. (We all have relatives like this.) One solution involves keeping the temperature below about 80°, since Dermestes maculatus can’t fly at those lower temperatures, which helps matters greatly. Building a bug box (or “dermestarium”) that is sufficiently secure is one big challenge of creating a colony. The bugs also achieve their best results on larger specimens; creatures like fish or small mammals can be damaged during the eating process and “disarticulated.”

I also have it on good authority that some dermestid labs smell rather awful. It’s hard to see why; after all, they only involve large chunks of decaying flesh that are being eaten by bugs. It’s hard to see how that would have any unusual odors. At the same time, dermestid larvae have tiny hairs that can go airborne and cause problems for people with respiratory problems or allergies.

It probably goes without saying that there are other creatures used to clean skeletons, but dermestids are useful because they are thorough, easy to keep, and don’t damage the bone they are cleaning. And it’s more environmentally sound than using chemicals.

So anyway, the next time you are at a natural history museum looking at an elephant skeleton, just remember all the little people that went into its preparation. And then be sure to skip the snack bar.

The Syllable Heard Round the World?

Via Boing Boing, LA Weekly has a review of a 15-minute film by video artist Daniel Martinico which is nothing more than an endless loop of the buildup to Shatner yelling "Khaan!!" in Star Trek II: The Wrath of... umm, sorry, I seem to have forgotten.

A two-minute excerpt fails to capture the majesty of the full-length version, it is said. I'll take their word for it. It might make a good opening short for the new Star Trek movie.

...in the Belfry

I have mixed feelings about bats. I mean, I like the idea of bats, if not their actual presence anywhere near me. (Then again, I rather like the Sun, but I can't say as I would want it in my kitchen, as I would imagine that it would be more of a fire hazard than an un-unplugged toaster.) Sure, they eat mosquitoes in vast quantities; this article by bat expert and Bat Conservation International founder Merlin Tuttle says that

Individuals of some bat species can capture from 500 to 1,000 mosquitoes in a single hour and large colonies can consume enormous quantities. For example, a Florida colony of 30,000 southeastern bats (Myotis austroriparius) was estimated to consume 50 tons (45 t) of insects annually, including over 15 tons (13.5 t) of mosquitoes, and from 77.4% to 84.6% of little brown bats (M. lucifugus) living in the northern U.S. and Canada eat mosquitoes. Nursing mothers of these species eat up to their body weight in insects nightly.

But then maybe it's a question of context. Waking up at 3 a.m. to find a bat flapping around the room does not do much to endear them to me. It was a very creepy moment. Awakened by an odd noise, I turned on the light, and there it was. My resulting scream actually approximated the frequency of the bat's echolocation, and it fled into the living room. What was interesting was that it was a very clumsy bat; it kept blundering into the walls and closet door.

Locked in the "panic room" until dawn, I started thinking... Bats eat mosquitoes of course, and mosquitoes in turn suck human blood. But it had been a Thursday night in early summer. What if the mosquitoes had been feasting on the high-blood-alcohol-level partiers on Caroline Street? Those mosquitoes could very well have then been munched by the bat. Ergo, could a bat get "drunk"?

Anyway, bats were in my own belfry as I was reading a post on Cocktail Party Physics about the mammals. I decided to trot on over to Wikipedia and see if there were any anwers to my question.

Did you know...

• There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide, accounting for about 20% of all mammal species?

• That the largest bat is the giant golden-crowned flying fox which has a wing span of 4 ft 11 in and weighs approximately 3 lb? I'm positive that this was the one that was in my apartment, but I may be mistaken...I'd need to see a police line up.

• That there are two suborders of bats--megabats (oh, come on, that sounds like something Douglas Adams made up) and microbats? The latter use echolocation, while the former do not.

• That one species of bat has the longest tongue of any mammal relative to its body size--perhaps known colloquially as the "Gene Simmons bat"?

Come to think if it, I think I'd much rather have a bat than Gene Simmons flying around my apartment.

What is one to do if one does indeed have a bat in one's home? Despite my aversion to the critters, I'd rather not kill it. The first bat--the 3 a.m.one--somehow got out of its own accord; the next morning, after the sun came up, the landlord and I did a thorough search and could find no sign of it. Needless to say, when I came home the following evening, I had left a broom outside the front door, and burst into the house and made a search of the place like Mulder or Scully, kicking in doors, pirouetting and twisting around. It was quite a sight; one wonders what the neighbors thought. The second bat--some months later, and I had been awake for this one--had a distinctive flight path and could be disposed of simply by opening the door and letting him/her fly out.

Anyway, instructions on what to do in the case of batness can be found here.

And, finally, for your amusement, Cocktail Party Physics had a link to a video of a vampire bat on a treadmill. This makes sense. With today's purported obesity epidemic and everyone's cholesterol level elevated, even Dracula needs to join a gym.

Act of Cod

Something's fishy in the state of Iceland:

The Atlantic cod has, for many centuries, sustained major fisheries on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the North American fisheries have now largely collapsed. A new paper in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE from scientists at the University of Iceland and Marine Research Institute in Reykjavik provides insights into possible mechanisms of the collapse of fisheries, due to fisheries-induced evolution.

Cod fishing is of highest intensity in shallow water in Iceland and it selects against genotypes of cod adapted to shallow water. The PLoS ONE paper reports a significant difference in Darwinian fitness (relative survival rate) between shallow-water and deep-water adapted cod. The shallow-water fish have only 8% of the fitness of deep-water fish. This difference can lead to rapid elimination of shallow-water fish in only a few generations with drastic effects on the population and the fishery.

Funny, everyone freaked out over the suggestion that codfishing be restricted to allow fish stocks to replenish themselves, fearing job losses. And now that there are so few cod left...the industry has collapsed and there were many job losses. Good one.

This same situation is playing out with other fish, especially bluefin tuna, as detailed in Richard Ellis' excellent 2008 book Tuna: A Love Story.

Ore Ida

Speaking of science and science journalist, I just came across this Q&A in New Scientist about last week's fossil find. That is:

The publication last week of a paper describing Darwinius masillae, a new fossil primate also known as "Ida", generated massive hype for its claim that the fossil represents an early haplorhine – the "dry nosed" primates that include old world monkeys and apes, including humans.

Other scientists dispute the claim, arguing that the fossil may simply be an early type of lemur and not the "missing link" between the haplorhines and the "wet nosed" primates, the strepsirrhines, such as lemurs and lorises.

A little clarification from the "Father of Ida" and, it bears mentioning, father of the media hype:

The money spent on Ida – the starting price was $1 million – was that spent purely on the fact that it was an exceptionally preserved primate, or did it have something to do with its potential evolutionary relationship to humans?

No. We started off thinking it was the ancestor of all lemurs.

It may still turn out to be a lemur. Do you still have an open mind about that?

Of course, this is science. The discussions will go for a long time. And if other people's arguments are better than what we present here or what we are going to do in the next two papers, we will accept it, no problem.

I happen to have befriended an evolutionary biologist last week in Santa Fe named Diane Kelly who was a tad blasé about the news (“gorgeous specimen introduced with excessive hype” was the term she uses). She blogged about it at her "Science Made Cool" blog which, like my long-winded post below, also talked about some of the issues we discussed last week.

If you’ve somehow missed the media circus surrounding the fossil, its story can pretty much be summed up by “gorgeous specimen introduced with excessive hype.” ...[W]hen Jorn Hurum (University of Oslo) rediscovered the fossil (it had been in a private collection), he didn’t just describe it, he went looking for a filmmaker to build a media event around it. So when the description of Darwinius masillae appeared in PloS Science on May 19th, it was accompanied by a press conference, a TV documentary, a companion book and website, and a whole raft of misrepresentation about its scientific importance. It may be an effective way to get a lot of quick public attention, but it doesn’t help more run-of-the-mill relations between scientists and writers one bit.

And I'll end by cryptically pointing out that "Ida" doesn't look anything like Nancy Walker.

Look What We Can Do

My father has occasionally told this story:

On July 20, 1969, he and my mother were watching the Moon landing. As the first transmissions from another world came back to Earth, my mother is reported to have remarked, “The picture is terrible.” My father looked at her and said, “Yes, but it’s coming from the Moon.” (Yes, I was rised by Burns and Allen.) I was apparently also watching but, only having been just over a month shy of my second birthday, I can’t say I have any recollection of this, although I certainly wish I did.

Look what we can do.

Whilst I may be out of the will for sharing that story, I was in a similar circumstance just last week.

At the Science Writing Workshop at the Ghost Ranch Santa Fe, one of the educational sessions was co-presented by a writer who was physically present, and another who was videoconferenced in via Skype, and whom we could all see on the main screen at the front of the room. The co-presentation worked pretty well except that, every 8–10 minutes or so, the Skype connection would be lost (gee, that never happens), and we would have to interrupt the presentation to call her back. It was a tad frustrating, but, as New York Times science writer George Johnson, who was sitting behind me, remarked, “That this works at all is pretty amazing.” And he was right; we often get so wrapped up in what are essentially new technologies that we expect them to work flawlessly—when only a few years earlier, it was scarcely possible that they worked at all. Sure, videoconferencing is nothing really new, but here it was taking place on an everyday computer with free software and not physically connected to anything except a projector (and wouldn’t it be great if those could be wireless).

Skype kept getting disconnected because the Ghost Ranch’s WiFi was not the most robust in the world; I recall getting frustrated with its slowness myself—forgetting that as recently as five years ago I was on the road struggling with dial-up using hotel phone lines and the 56K modem in my Apple iBook. I cursed it at the time—also forgetting that 15 years before that if I had suggested accessing the Internet from a hotel room it would have been as if I had suggested beaming up to the Starship Enterprise.

The “evolution and reliance on technology” was just one of the many recurring mealtime topics we talked about over the course of the week.

The Science Writing Workshop was attended by about 40 people, predominantly professional scientists (neuroscience and evolutionary biology were heavily represented), with a few professional writers, as well. (By my estimates, it was about 75% scientists, 25% writers.) We all dined together either in the Ghost Ranch’s dining room, or we assembled posses to go out and forage for food in downtown Santa Fe. (I personally will have a hard time looking at Southwest cuisine for a while.) Mealtime conversation was intensely intellectually stimulating, and I learned a great deal—and was actually able to hold my own much better than I thought I would.

Another recurring topic was the often contentious relationship between scientists and science journalists. That is, while there is a symbiotic relationship between the two, each side has its own agenda and those agendas often work at cross-purposes. Scientists have a responsibility to the facts, to the data they have collected, and the results of their studies, while journalists have a responsibility to their editors, publishers, and readers, and thus are often looking for “a good story” and gravitate toward the more sensational, even if the results of a given study don’t lend themselves to the kind of extrapolation that makes for a compelling story.

This is not unique to science writing, of course.

Many of the scientists present admitted they avoid talking to the press for fear of being misquoted or misrepresented. It’s a fair point, but I don’t think avoidance is the best strategy. Perhaps sound beatings would be a better approach.

A good example of this inadvertently presented itself in the project we had to complete for the workshop: On Tuesday, we went up to the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) (an interdisciplinary think tank in the hills above the city), listened to several scientific presentations, and then had to write and workshop a story about some aspect of one of them. (I’ll post my own as soon as I can find it...it’s on the other computer somewhere...)

The first presentation was by Caroline Buckee, a postdoctoral fellow at SFI who was researching malaria transmission, and she spoke at length about the microorganism that causes malaria. One of the reasons that malaria is such a problem, and has evolved resistance to drugs to treat it, is that it genetically recombines “like crazy” (a technical term). (After workshopping about a half dozen stories about malaria, I think I know all this by heart!) At one point, Dr. Buckee mentioned in passing—and I want to stress, in passing—that because the genetic structure of malaria is a moving target, the likelihood that there will be a vaccine against the disease is very slim.

During the Q&A, one of the audience members seized on that one passing statement and tried to get her to say one way or another: will there ever be a vaccine for malaria? It was obvious that she was not comfortable making a definitive statement either way; there is still so much that is unknown and who knows what discoveries await us? But, not having much experience with the press (or even the wannabe press that we were) she eventually was cornered into saying that, no, there probably won’t ever be a malaria vaccine. And yet, if a story were written with that as its primary thrust (and there were several), anyone who had been in the room would know that it was not entirely representative of the talk.

And we wonder why the public gets frustrated when one study seems to contradict an earlier one.

Kariena Dill, an Albuquerque-based writer who was in my group, expanded on this theme with a more egregious example involving the sequencing of the woolly mammoth genome. A summary of the research appeared in Nature magazine, and it bears mentioning that, according to the paper:

A major reason for sequencing the woolly mammoth is to identify functionally important amino-acid differences between mammoth and elephant.

That’s probably not the sexiest application in the world. Wouldn’t something like Jurassic Park be far cooler? And, sure enough, an editorial appeared in the same issue of Nature (sorry, I don’t have a link) suggesting that scientists were only a few million dollars away from actually cloning a woolly mammoth and bringing it back from extinction. Nowhere in the original study was this even suggested—but guess which angle was picked up by the rest of the science media?

Nicholas Wade’s lede in the Science Times was:

Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million.

No, the scientists were not talking about it at all. Science journalists were. Nowhere in the story does any scientist suggest that the completely sequenced mammoth genome would be used to clone an actual mammoth, though one does appear to have been coaxed into speculating about the idea.

It probably sold a few papers (I mean, come on, woolly mammoths capture the human imagination like nothing else), but is it an accurate representation of the work? And where would we put a herd of mammoths, anyway? Because one would get rather lonely, I should think. Could we effectively reconstruct their ecosystem which, after all, may also be extinct? And, perhaps most importantly, what would mammoth meat taste like, and what wine would go best with it? (I am the sole proponent of the field of Gustatory Taxonomy, or classifying animals and plants according to how they taste.)

Joking aside, is there a solution to this contentious reporter-reported relationship? Part of it could involve scientists getting better training in talking to the press, preparing a list of talking points and religiously sticking to them the way politicians do. Another would be a greater understanding of science on the part of people who cover science and a curbing of the desire to immediately go for the lurid and sensational (good luck with that).

But then it also comes down to the public. Science writing, to my mind, should educate the public, not just about the details of any given topic, but about science in general. And, by the same token, the public should look to science writing to be educated about a topic, rather than entertained as if it were a Michael Crichton novel. (Well, okay, bad example...)

In much science writing, there is a tendency to, as one of my lunch tablemates put it, present science “as a product rather than a process.” Those studies that seemingly contradict earlier studies are good fodder for stand-up comedians, sure, but the people who throw up their hands in frustration over this fail to recognize that science is a process. New data arise that shed new light on, clarify, or yes, even contradict and disprove earlier data.

Rather than see that as science’s failing, we should recognize it as science’s greatest strength. It’s what science is supposed to do. It’s about understanding nature and the universe through empirical observations and experiments; it’s not about crafting a written-in-stone law that explains everything, or at least not right off the bat. (It’s nice when that can happen, though.) Even the well-established laws of physics or chemistry or biology that everyone today accepts were only arrived at after many attempts, missteps, errors, and contradictions. Unfortunately, this “changing nature of reality” is one reason why many people turn exclusively to religion; they like the idea of immutable laws that are written in stone and never change or get contradicted. (And for those who do contradict them, there is excommunication or execution.) However, reality doesn’t work this way.

I started reading George Johnson’s excellent book The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments on the flight home and nowhere else is this better illustrated: the fundamental scientific laws and principles we now take for granted were only arrived at after much thought, observation, and experiment. There were many missteps along the way, and the famous names from the history of science—Newton, Galileo, Lavoisier, etc.—got all the credit, but there were many who came before them.

In this day and age, it’s hard to convey to people why learning about science is important. I would make the following cases:

Understanding science is increasingly necessary to secure a decent job in an increasingly high-tech job market. Research and development of new technologies is how we achieve economic growth, and how we get better jobs. Understanding science is a major part of that. Even if you are not in actual R&D, knowing basic science is invaluable. A friend of mine is a research scientist for a company that makes high-tech products, and very often sales and marketing ask them to develop products that violate basic laws of physics.

Understanding science (and math) is also important for understanding many of the political, social, and medical issues facing the world today (and tomorrow). Things like climate change, stem-cell research, and many other “controversial” topics can only be effectively discussed and understood with a strong scientific underpinning.

But the most important reason I would give for learning about science is the thrill of discovery. When it comes right down to it, as a species, we’re explorers. We came out of the cave, we looked up at the sky or down into the ocean and started asking questions and seeking answers. We built better and better tools to get at those answers; we launched probes into space; we have robots wandering around on Mars and flying through the rings of Saturn. What enriches the human spirit more than the excitement of landing on another world, or exploring the bottom of the ocean, or....well, name it? After all, there has to be more than life than just buying and selling stuff.

I would love to have experienced the thrill that Americans had on that July day nearly 40 years ago—lousy picture and all—when Neil Armstrong mentioned the “giant leap for mankind,” saying, essentially, “look what we can do.”

Driven to Distraction

I just saw this sign at the Price Chopper Plaza on Route 50. Great idea! Who woudn't be thrilled and excited to receive a gift certificate for defensive driving classes? "Happy Birthday! I think your driving sucks!" I'd be lucky if I left the party without wearing the cake.
Okay, I can actually sort of see the point, but I thought it amusing nonetheless...

Self-Absorption

The next time someone talks about so-called "frivolous lawsuits," I do hope this takes top honors as the most ridiculous waste of the legal system in the history of humanity. I swear this sounds like an Onion story:

Brawny and Bounty in Legal Squabble Over Paper-Towel Patterns

Those little quilts on paper towels and toilet paper are turning out to be a very big deal in federal courts.

Procter & Gamble Co. filed suit May 8 against Georgia-Pacific in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati alleging bow-tie patterns in new-and-improved Brawny paper towels infringe the trademark bow-tie shapes in the quilts of P&G's Bounty Extra Soft.

Brawny's "Great New Look" is "an obvious attempt to trade on the goodwill, reputation and commercial success achieved by Bounty Extra Soft," P&G says in its lawsuit.

Methinks P&G is a tad too "self-absorbed," so to speak. Who the heck pays that close attention to the patterns on paper towels?! I think whatever judge can preside over this case without bursting into hysterics should be the next Supreme Court justice.

Crash of Moons

Over at Movie Mis-Treatments, Rocky Jones, Winky, the senior-moment-personified Professor Newton, and the whole Scooby gang are back in 1954's Crash of Moons.

The Rocky Jones show was really low-budget, the writing is pretty lame, and the acting on a community theater level, but it has a certain charm and I confess I do kind of like these movies. I guess it would fall into that category of “quaint science fiction,” for want of a better term.

Crash of Moons has also been variously titled The Crash of Moons, Crash of the Moons, The Crash of the Moons, The Crash the of Moons, The Crash the of the Moons, The the the the Crash of the the the Moons the, and The The of the The. I think that covers all the bases. The.

As an added bonus (if you want to call it that), a pre-Hogan's Heroes John Banner guest stars as the improbably affable ruler of a doomed moon.

Splendid Isolation

The late, great Warren Zevon, from 1989. Transverse City remains my favorite Zevon record.

Seemed vaguely appropriate, if only for the opening lines.

Act of God

I'm not even remotely superstitious or religious, but even I find it rather unnerving to get on a flight from which a priest has been bumped. Then we flew through a thunderstorm... Fortunately, there's no such thing as divine retribution!