Antisocial Media?

I suspect every new medium has encountered some level of resistance from church elders.

According to Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, modern friendships built around (or involving) heavy SMS volley, electronic mail correspondences, and social networking sites create "transient relationships" which put users at the risk of suicide.

Of course it does. Transient relationships? I bought one thing from Harry & David ten years ago and there's still no stopping them from e-mailing me.

I would imagine that if we went back in time to the advent of any new technology or communication medium, we would find all sorts of loopy pronouncements from those of the clerical persuasion, like "The Telephone: Collect Call from Mr. Satan," "The Telegraph: ... .. -." and probably even "CB Radios: Breaker, Breaker, Good Buddy...Of The Devil." And so it goes. Wait until the Pope starts Twittering. (I just checked. He's not. Yet.)

So what's the problem this time?

the Archbishop of Westminster believes that social networking sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of friends rather than build actual relationships, and they tend to view that number as a commodity.

Ah, because, of course, that never happens offline. Oh, and it's even worse than that:

your addiction to texting and email is ruining your relationship... with god.

You know, I think the archbishop is just bitter because god defriended him.

Grate Expectations

Sometimes an invention is so brilliant because it is so simple and yet no one had ever thought of it before. One of the winners of the 2009 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition is a cheese grater—with a solid bottom to catch the cheese. I wish I'd thought of that.

Another of the winners is a digital cookbook:

it sports a touchscreen and an edible print system with 18 "flavour" cartridges to recreate the taste of the dishes in the book.

I can imagine the dinner comments now: "Hmm...needs more magenta."

Blu-Rat

Could M&Ms--specifically, blue M&Ms--harbor healing properties? In cases of paralysis, quite possibly. Says National Geographic:

Fifteen minutes after [a] rat was paralyzed, researchers injected the rodent with Brilliant Blue G dye, a derivative of common food coloring Blue Number One. The dye reduced inflammation of the spinal cord, which allowed the rats to take clumsy steps—but not walk—within weeks, a new study says.
...
That lack of side effects may also help make the blue dye a boon to paralyzed humans down the road. "The beauty of it is that it wouldn't harm you," Nedergaard said—unlike previous compounds used to treat spinal cord injuries, which had toxic effects.

How blue is blue? Check it out:
Kind of looks like a furry Smurf. Do they come in any other colors? You could probably put together a pretty festive-looking menage à rat.

Jeff Bezos Ate My Homework

Remember last week when Amazon reached out its electronic tentacles and deleted copies of (heh) George Orwell books from customers' Kindles? Well, what if those e-books had been part of someone's homework? Don't take the law into your own handset, you take 'em to court:

A class action lawsuit filed today takes Amazon.com to task after the company deleted George Orwell books from customers Kindles.
...
The suit is being brought by Justin D. Gawronski, a 17-year-old high school student who had purchased Orwells 1984 to complete a summer homework assignment.

When Amazon deleted the book from his Kindle, it rendered the electronic notes he had taken worthless.

It suppose it's silly to point out that he could always just buy the print edition.

Crossword L[v]overs

This is pretty cool, via Gizmodo: an apartment building in Lvov, Ukraine, on whose edifice is painted an enormous crossword puzzle.
And the clues? Well, they are

located in different point of interests of the city, like monuments, theaters, fountains etc. So people while walking around the city can try to answer the questions and writing down the answers.

If you're stumped, all you have to do is wait until dark; the grid has actually been filled in with fluorescent paint that glows in the dark.
I wonder if being able to complete the puzzle is a requirement for living there. I can see it now: being evicted for not knowing 41-across.

The Importance of Being Ernest Borgnine

Over at Movie Mis-Treatments, the latest is the utterly loathsome "action" movie Laser Mission.

Say you had a computer system into which you could feed all the elements of every successful action-adventure-espionage movie and, through special software algorithms, have it automatically write the action flick to end all action flicks. This is no doubt the dream of every Hollywood studio executive, but my theory is that 1989’s Laser Mission was actually written by such a computer system. Unfortunately, it was written using the beta version of the software. Well, okay, not even the beta version. More like the alpha version. I take that back. Pre-alpha. So pre-alpha it has reverted back to the omega version.

Anyway, the movie is a non-stop stream of every bad action movie cliché, stuck together with a super-adhesive glue of sheer stupidity.

Still, it co-stars Ernest Borgnine.

Lost in the Supermarket

I have found that a good place to have a complete nervous breakdown is a supermarket. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, there are far too many choices. While attempting to buy breakfast cereal, I’ve been known to fall to the floor in Price Chopper, curl into the fetal position, and start weeping uncontrollably. Does the universe really need more than one type of Frosted Flakes? Rice Krispies? (Snap, crackle, and freak out.) And the first person who can tell me that there is any difference between Wheat Chex, Rice Chex, and Corn Chex is going to get beaten with an ear of corn.

When trying to pick out toothpaste, I can make Hamlet look like the very model of decisiveness and action. Tartar control, or not tartar control? That is the question. It’s reached the point where I blindfold myself, run into the toothpaste aisle, grab a tube of something at random, and flee as quickly as possible. Okay, so once I accidentally grabbed a tube of Preparation H instead. The only trouble is I think my teeth are shrinking. But I digress.

For a good exploration of why consumer products companies are making us all completely insane and miserable, I recommend a good book by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less.)

Tangentially, I was once in Price Chopper and saw a sign that advertised “semiboneless leg of lamb.” Semiboneless? Isn’t that like “slightly pregnant”? I mean, it’s a binary state—yes/no. On/off. 0/1. Bone/no bone. Must this be so difficult?

But for true supermarket anxiety, nothing can beat trying to read nutrition labels. I will admit that I do pay fairly close attention to comparing food labels, and I think by now I could easily obtain a Ph.D. in Advanced Mathematics. The trick is to find the number of calories per serving, find out what they consider a serving, and then--and this is the tricky part--determine how far removed from reality their estimate of a serving size is.

I was looking at a box of red beans and rice and according to the label, it contained only 190 calories per serving. Hey, that’s not bad! However, they considered a “serving” to consist of something like three grains of rice. Since I’m not a sparrow, I had to then work out what a realistic serving size for a human would be and then do the math.

Then there is comparing one product to another. The red beans and rice has 190 calories per serving, but it considers a serving to be 1/4 cup, but the rice pilaf has 150 calories per serving, but it considers one serving to be 1/3 cup. Okay, the lowest common denominator is 12... Help me, Spock!

Ah, but then there’s the Pasta-Roni option. The Olive Oil and Garlic Pasta has 220 calories per serving, but a serving size is 2.5 oz. Okay, 8 oz. per cup, four quarts in a gallon, 30 days hath September... The label also tells me that there are about 50 fewer calories “as packaged” than “as prepared.” That’s useful, because it lets me know that if I chomped down the dry pasta and had a few spoonfuls of the powdered mix, I can save some calories.

Oh, but the Three-Cheese Pasta has... And it’s usually at this point that the manager has me escorted out of the store, as I have been in the rice and pasta aisle for about 12 hours.

All that is bad enough, but then I read an article in New Scientist this week that found that the methodology used to determine nutritional information may be faulty--and could be off by as much as 25%! Well, that’s good to know. I have also discovered that screaming and pounding the floor with one’s fists is a good aerobic workout.

How do they determine how many calories are in a food anyway? In the same way that many of us prepare our meals: they burn it.

First of all, a “calorie” is a measure of heat. Specifically, it is a measure of the amount of heat that will raise the temperature of 1 gram of water from 14.5° to 15.5° Celsius. Making things even more confusing is that the “calorie” used by dietitians and nutritionists is actually a kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories, also referred to as a Calorie (with a capital C). (Yes, they hate us.) So if a food is said to have 200 Calories it actually has 200,000 calories. It would be pretty funny if labels listed the actual lowercase-c-calorie counts of foods! Well, maybe not funny ha-ha...

Anyway, the original method for measuring calorie (or Calorie) counts was developed by an American chemist named Wilbur O. Atwater. He used what was known as a “bomb calorimeter,” basically a fireproof container hooked up to a thermometer. He would put a food—say, a turkey leg or a piece of beef—inside it, burn it, and measure how much energy was released. Maybe it’s just me, but if I had been Atwater’s lab assistant, I would be burning with insatiable curiosity to put a human head in the bomb calorimeter. I mean, maybe if the Donner Party had had accurate nutritional information things might have tuned out differently.

But I digress.

As we all know far too well (particularly on long road trips) not everything in a food is absorbed by the human body, and the process of digestion itself burns calories (about which more later), so Atwater needed to add some extra steps, and through his research developed a series of tables that corrected the raw calorie counts based on type of food (protein vs. carbohydrate, for example). His research, while refined a tad over the years, is still the gold standard for generating nutrition label information. (A little bit of trivia for you: Atwater’s daughter Catherine married the famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith. It’s not particularly interesting but I thought I’d just throw it out there.)

Today’s calorimeters are a bit more advanced. As this article in Slate explains:

food laboratories often freeze their samples in liquid nitrogen and then blend them into a fine, monochromatic powder that can then be used in a variety of chemical analyses. In a Kjeldahl analysis, for example, lab techs remove nitrogen from the food powder and then use it to calculate the amount of protein the sample contains. A hexane extraction can gauge the amount of fat. Carbohydrates are usually measured by difference—they’re what is left over when you remove everything else.

Funny, I usually cook in that exact same way.

The methods developed by Atwater were useful, but new research suggests that it is still subject to a great deal of error. From the New Scientist article:

Nutritionists are well aware that our bodies don't incinerate food, they digest it. And digestion - from chewing food to moving it through the gut and chemically breaking it down along the way - takes a different amount of energy for different foods. According to Geoffrey Livesey, an independent nutritionist based in Norfolk, UK, this can lower the number of calories your body extracts from a meal by anywhere between 5 and 25 per cent depending on the food eaten. "These energy costs are quite significant," he says, yet are not reflected on any food label.

Take fiber (please!):

As well as being more resistant to mechanical and chemical digestion than other forms of carbohydrate, dietary fibre provides energy for gut microbes, and they take their cut before we get our share. Livesey has calculated that all these factors reduce the energy derived from dietary fibre by 25 per cent - down from the current estimate of 2 kcal per gram to 1.5 kcal per gram

Other nutrients such as protein are also subject to correction--and while this may not seem like a lot, it can add up over time. That is, as fat. The good news, I suppose, is that food labels tend to overstate the number of calories, although not consistently, and may give the impression that something that is actually healthier (the New Scientist article uses an oatmeal bar) has more calories than something unhealthier (a brownie).

Interestingly, there is evidence that suggests that food texture can also play a role in weight gain. That is, a food that is harder to chew (and, ergo, digest) burns more calories during the digestion process than something softer and chewier. A Japanese study found that women who ate soft foods gained more weight than women who ate harder foods. Thus, look for my new book, The All Rock-Candy Diet, coming soon to a disreputable bookstore near you.

Oh, and ingredients can also make a difference:

the brownie is made from refined sugar and flour, making it easier for our bodies to extract the available calories than it would be from the complex carbohydrates of the oatmeal in the cereal bar.

Cooking also imparts more calories to foods, too. It never ends.

So, what are we to do? Cry, basically.

Well, no, but on the one hand, there is the suggestion that food labels—and the methodology used to derive nutritional info—be updated to reflect the latest science. After all, Atwater’s methods are more than 100 years old. We know a scosh more about chemistry and biology and nutrition these days. On the other hand, it would be costly to do so—and how much stock do consumers put in food labels anyway? And is the margin of error on the current labels such that anyone would change their behavior all that much anyway?

It’s been my experience over the past few years that worrying about 20 calories here and 30 calories there is less effective than just eating sensibly and using “common sense.” (That is, salad, vegetables--good; pizza, 90-ounce Porterhouse steaks--bad.) Portion control and, more importantly, exercise are far more valuable in terms of beating the battle of the bulge. Avoiding junk food also helps. In fact, my treadmill tells me how many calories I am burning (itself a guesstimate that is prone to error). While on line at the supermarket, if I see a candy bar or some other unnecessary snack item, I look at the guesstimate of its calorie count and can figure if it has 200 calories, it will take an additional 20 minutes of running to burn it off. Once you start measuring foods in terms of how much exercise it requires to negate them, random snacking starts to lose its appeal.

What also makes bad eating habits lose their appeal is the thought of outgrowing one’s clothes and having to buy new ones. Which brings me back to the “paradox of choice.” At what point did buying jeans become so complicated? They have Easy Fit, Loose Fit, Baggy Fit, Boot Fit, Relaxed Fit, Unrelaxed Fit, Downright Tense Fit, and something called “Standard Fit” which is the most unhelpful name for something since they invented “regular flavor gum.”

And this I find this even more nervewracking than grocery shopping.

No Sanity Claws

Here's a headline to catch the eye, although it sounds like more of a surf-and-turf war:

Maine lobsterman charged in turf war shooting

PORTLAND, Maine – A turf war in the lobster-rich waters off Maine escalated into a dispute that left a lobsterman with a gunshot wound to the neck and another in jail, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

What a crab. To think, musseling in on someone else's turf like that. He put his whole heart and sole into that business. This sounds like something right out of The Codfather. They're all just prawns in a larger game. The police should really clamdown on this sort of thing.

Site for Sore Eyes

I just revamped my proper Web site (www.richtextandgraphics.com). I tested it on a variety of browsers (naturally only Internet Explorer has problems with it, though they're pretty minor). If anyone else experiences anything weird, please do let me know.

It Might Still be Continuing

The saga It Might Have Been lumbers onward. We're up to Chapter 19--only nine chapters left!

Big Bother

You almost get the sense that Amazon did this more out of perverse humor than anything.

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.
...
...it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

What author and what titles? Oh, you can figure it out easily enough. Click the link if you're truly stumped.

A Hard-Scrabble Upbringing

Here's an interesting question (and perhaps a unique definition of "interesting"): how many words are in the English language? And how many of them do you think you know?

You may recall that last month the Global Language Monitor announced that the one-millionth word was added to the English language (and, it seems, another 411 have been added since then). By the way, that "millionth word" was Web 2.0. Great. So now even words have revision numbers. Anyway, according to the site, more than 14 words are added to English every day. And every one of them is a gem, of course.

Naturally, many professional linguists had no words to describe how outraged they were by such a seemingly definitive quantification of English words. But, hey, it's all a bit of fun, and it's best to take such estimates with a grain of salt.

After all, the biggest question facing "word spotters" is, "well, what is a word anyway?" That is, take the word...take. That's obviously a word. But what about all the spin-offs of it, such as taking, taker, taken, or even took, for that matter? And take can be either a verb ("to get into one's possession") or a noun ("the act of taking"). There is a definition of take unique to filmmaking, and one to crime. And so on. Are all of these different words? Or the same word? Or what? Perhaps we could assign partial word values to these instances--so that, say, take itself could be considered 1 word, but taking is 0.5 word, taken another 0.5, and maybe took, because if its spelling, could be 0.75 word. Or something. Take as referring to a shot in filmmaking could be worth maybe 0.3759665 word. Or...

Okay, I'm better now.

Then of course there are written numbers...one, two, three... Technically, the list of nunbers is infinite, so if someone wanted to write out every number and count each as a different word, that obviously means that English has an infinite number of words right there.

Then there are obscure scientific terms, plants, animals...heck, there are believed to be between five and eight million species of beetles alone, words all.

So there are all sorts of problems quantifying English.

It may be somewhat easier to quantify how many words a single person knows, but, after all, the same basic problems apply.

I ran across a way of coming up with a quick (well, kind of quick) estimate:

Professor David Crystal, known chiefly for his research in English language studies and author of around 100 books on the subject...suggests taking a sample of about 20 or 30 pages from a medium-sized dictionary, one which contains about 100,000 entries or 1,000 to 1,500 pages.

Tick off the ones you know and count them. Then multiply that by the number of pages and you will discover how many words you know.

Okay, I'm game. So I grabbed my large unabridged Random House Dictionary (Second Edition, published in 1987) and decided to, as the name Random House suggests, randomly pick one
page per letter and count how many words on that page I knew. I say "random" but not entirely; I tried to avoid pages that contained words all having the same prefix (like all the re-s, un-s or foot-s, etc.). I also avoided proper names, towns, countries, and pretty much anything capitalized. And, no, I didn't read the defintion of a word I previously did not know and then claimed that I knew it. Cynical are we?

Anyway, here's how the "raw data" turned out:

A (aggressive-ago): 29
B (bleeder-blind): 25
C (cognize-coinage): 31
D (defliate-degranulation): 43
E (esotharnax-essence d'orient): 32
F (ferule-fetus): 33
G (gaby-gain): 25
H (Hippo Regius-histocompatibility): 21
I (irregular galaxy-Isaac): 52
J (jet-jib): 28
K (knot-Kodály): 27
L (leathery-lederhosen): 23
M (minus-mirror writing): 22
N (Nesselrode-Neufchatel): 23
O (OPM-opsonin): 18
P (percolation-perfective): 30
Q (quadrillion-qualify): 28
R (rappel-raspy): 39
S (spokesman-spoonbill): 22
T (temporary-tenderable): 27
U (ugly-ulterior): 20
V (vespiary-vexillate): 31
W (War Between the States-warlock): 35
X (xenograft-xylene): 14
Y (Yarkand-yearling): 23
Z (Zola--zoon): 21

There were 26 pages, which works out to an average words-I-know-per-page of 27.77. The dictionary has a total of 2,214 pages. Which means that I know 61,481.08 words. That's probably far more precise than this little experiment warrants, so I'm prepared to say that I know somewhere between 60,000–65,000 words, not that use them all on a regular basis (despite what some people may think). And this dictionary was published in 1987, before the Internet and all the technological terms I use and abuse on a regular basis existed. Looking around my office, I see a variety of things that would not have been in a 1987 dictionary: WiFi, cellphone (although "cellular phone" is but not the shortened one-word term), iPhone, iPod, podcast, blog, thumb drive, USB, FireWire, cable-modem, optical mouse, MP3, Web browser, ...the list goes on.

It's not surprising that words are constantly being added to English. Unlike a lot of languages, English is a highly dynamic, democratic language in the sense that there is no central authority overseeing it and placing strict controls over what words can be added to the lexicon (like, say, French). As long as a word can be understood by some number of other people, it's fair game for the vocabulary. Sure, I complain about this as much as anyone, but that's the English language's great strength. One man alone—William Shakespeare—is responsible for adding more than 1,000 words to the English language (well, sort of; his works are often the first written instances of many words; surely his contemporaries knew at least some of them or audiences would have had no idea what his characters were saying!). Some of the words attributed to Shakespeare include "arch-villain," "bedazzle," "cheap" (as in vulgar or flimsy), "dauntless," "embrace" (as a noun), "fashionable," "go-between," "honey-tongued," "inauspicious," "lustrous," "nimble-footed," "outbreak," "pander," "sanctimonious," "time-honored," "unearthly," "vulnerable," and "well-bred.

English words can come from anywhere. It's all about communication. As long as we understand each other, anything goes. However, I draw the line at pwn and text as a verb.

Still, I find that any discussion of lexicography can't ignore the episode of Black Adder the Third, featuring Edmund (Rowan Atkinson) and Dr. Samuel Johnson (who compiled the first dictionary and whose house I visited a couple years ago) and this classic exchange:

Dr. Johnson: Here it is, sir: the very cornerstone of English scholarship. This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.
...
Edmund: Every single one, sir?

Dr. Johnson: (confidently) Every single word, sir!

Edmund: (to Prince) Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.

Dr. Johnson: What?

Edmund: 'Contrafribularites', sir? It is a common word down our way...

Dr. Johnson: Damn! (writes in the book)

Edmund: Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anispeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.

Dr. Johnson: What? What? WHAT?

Prince George: What are you on about, Blackadder? This is all beginning to sound a bit like dago talk to me.

Edmund: I'm sorry, sir. I merely wished to congratulate the Doctor on not having left out a single word. (J sneers) Shall I fetch the tea, Your Highness?

Prince George: Yes, yes! And get that damned fire up here, will you?

Edmund: Certainly, sir. I shall return interfrastically. (exits) (J writes some more)

But no matter how we quantify our language, we should always make sure that in our word counts we never forget to include sausage.

Matter of Fact, It's All Dark

Unless you live in an underwater pyramid, you are aware that Monday marks to 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing. Apollo 11, however, launched 40 years ago this morning, and you can follow the mission in "real time" (+ 40 years, of course) over at wechoosethemoon.org. There is Flash animation, "live" transmissions in "real time," downloadable desktop mission tracking widgets, photos, and more. It's pretty cool.

Not Since Budokan

How's this for knowing who your audience is: Cheap Trick's latest album--cleverly titled The Latest--is available on 8-track tape. I'm not sure which is more surprising: that it's available on 8-track, or that Cheap Trick actually has a new album out.

Mega BUXX

Either prescription drug costs have gotten way out of hand, or there was some sort of system error:

The embarrassingly-named VISA BUXX card is a debit card for teenagers: parents get reports, control, etc. My daughter has one.

My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday she charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store. That's 2,000 times more than the national debt, which is a paltry 11 trillion.

The ever-vigilant folks at VISA added a $20 "negative balance fee," and have suspended the card.

But by using the CVS ExtraCare card she could have cut that $23 quadrillion by $10.

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).