Being a fanatical birder, I belong to several birding listservs. One of them is the Cayuga Basin bird listserv, which posts regional sightings for the benefit of other birders in the area. A couple of days ago, the following message appeared:
"Heard/saw EAPH today -- my FOY -- is this FIB?"
Most people, upon reading this, might be excused if they responded, "Heard/saw what you WROTE today -- my WORD -- is this ENGLISH?"
In fact, of course, it is English. The individual who posted this was using abbreviations. Translated, it says, "Heard/saw an Eastern Phoebe today -- it was my first of the year -- is this the first in the (Cayuga) Basin?"
Although I understood what the person wrote, it did cross my mind to wonder why he felt the need to write it that way. Did he think he was being charged by the letter, or something? The four-letter bird codes, such as EAPH for Eastern Phoebe, were designed primarily to give a standard shorthand for cataloguing things such as bird song recordings. As such, they act a little like SKU codes for produce -- they are handy for keeping track of inventory, but they were never meant for common conversation. If you said over breakfast, "Wow, this 4011 is a little overripe," your family might look at you a little oddly.
Which brings up the topic of jargon. I define jargon as meaning "specialist vocabulary that is meant to deliberately conceal meaning from outsiders." To me, the four-letter bird codes that people throw around in posts on listservs are clearly jargon. They add nothing to the clarity of the post; they make it harder for beginners to understand and participate in discussions; and they give an air of being in the know without actually providing anything additional in the way of information.
It's often hard, however, to see when scientific language crosses the line into jargon. Scientists do use specialized vocabulary, and when it is used well, it clarifies the situation rather than muddying the waters further. To give a fairly simple example, when I tell my biology classes that botanists use the word "fruit" differently than cooks do, to mean "whatever develops from the ovary of the flower, and contains the seed(s)," it points up something fundamental and (hopefully) interesting about nature. The word "fruit," then, becomes a word whose scientific meaning is more clear and precise than its common meaning. (Although it can be counterintuitive; a zucchini and a cucumber are both fruits, although they're not sweet, and rhubarb is not a fruit, although it's delicious in pies.)
On the other hand, consider the following example, which I found by randomly pulling a copy of the magazine Nature from my bookshelf. It's the conclusion sentence in an article on neurology.
"Whether applied in basic science or clinical application, the spectral separation between the NpHR and ChR2 activation maxima permits both sufficiency and necessity testing in elucidation of the roles of specific cell types in high-speed intact circuit function; indeed, integration of GFP-based probes and fura-2 with the NpHR/ChR2 neural control system delivers a powerful and complementary triad of technologies to identify, observe, and control intact living neural circuitry with light."
Now, to point out a couple of things here: first, I'm a biology teacher, and teach (amongst other things) an introductory neurology course, and I haven't the vaguest idea what that sentence means. Second, I didn't select this sentence for its lack of clarity. I scanned the article, and if anything, the rest of it is worse -- as the conclusion of the article, the authors seemed to be trying to sum up the punch line of their research as concisely and cogently as possible.
The fault, of course, is not entirely with the authors. I'm a generalist, not a specialist, both by nature and by training. Reading stuff like this makes me even more convinced that I'd never have had the brains, or the focus, to survive in the rarified air of academic research.
But you do have to wonder how much of it is a deliberate attempt to conceal, to keep scientific knowledge in the realm of the initiates. During my brief stint as a graduate student in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Washington, I was horrified by the disdain that the professors and most of the graduate students had for popularizers -- for people like Bill Nye and Carl Sagan, who bring science to the masses. One of the professors, I recall, made the statement, "I have made a practice of never accepting a graduate student who mentions Jacques Cousteau in his interview." Well, whoop-de-doo, doesn't that make you a cut above? I wonder how many people have been inspired to study the oceans because of reading your scientific journal articles?
Myself, I think you never lose by making an understanding of the natural world as accessible as possible, and you lose little of its wonder and complexity in so doing. I could make my students memorize all of the steps of the Krebs Cycle, but I firmly maintain that they understand it far more deeply when I compare it to a merry-go-round where at every turn, two kids get on and two kids get off. Le Chatelier's Principle is like the chemistry version of a teeter-totter. Photorespiration in plants in dry climates is like living in a state with high property taxes; you can solve the resulting cash flow problem two ways, CAM (getting a better job) or C4 (moving to a state with lower taxes). And so on.
Of course, to any scientists amongst my readership, I've now probably painted myself as hopelessly shallow-minded. To which I respond: oh, well. Guilty as charged. But at least I don't look through my binoculars, and say, "Wow! Look at that EAPH! It's my FOY!"
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
"Hello, pot...?"
Today, we have two cases of mystics pointing fingers at other mystics for being mystics.
From the Balkans, we have a story of an Orthodox monk, known only as Brother Visarion. Visarion lives in the Greek community of Mount Athos, but was born and raised in Bulgaria; and it is in his homeland that he has raised a storm of controversy in his new book, Peter Danov and Vanga: Prophets and Precursors of the Antichrist.
Peter Danov was the founder of the White Brotherhood, which preached the unity of man and nature, and was revered by such luminaries as Albert Einstein and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Vanga, on the other hand, was a blind psychic whose healing powers were apparently legendary across Bulgaria. Both, Visarion claims, are occult figures, "tortured by dark forces," and are to be reviled, not revered.
A priest from Vanga's home town of Petrich, whose name was not mentioned in my source, has responded to Visarion's statement with outrage. "Vanga was a holy woman," he said. "Her gift was from God. She should be canonized."
Undaunted, Visarion shot back, "Instead of explaining to people what fortune-tellers, magicians and psychics are and that these incidents are renounced by God, he (the priest) is trying to set evil as an example."
Then we have the story of the current campaign by the Raelians to undermine Christianity.
The International Raelian Movement has apparently purchased a huge billboard near a freeway in Las Vegas, and put up the words, "GOD IS A MYTH," to the general outrage of the Las Vegas Christian community.
Some of you may be questioning why I'm commenting upon this in a post on mysticism, and wondering why, in fact, I'm not cheering them on. If so, you must not know who the Raelians are.
The Raelians, it turns out, are themselves a church, although some more orthodox believers would probably object to my using that word to describe them. The whole things was dreamed up in 1973 by an auto-racing journalist named Claude Vorilhon. The basic tenet of the Raelians is that life on earth was created by an advanced race of extraterrestrials called "The Elohim" (you might recognize that word as one of the Hebrew words for god; that, say the Raelians, is no coincidence). From this, they deduce that (1) there are other universes inside atoms, (2) world governments should be handed over to people with genius-level IQs, (3) the resurrection of Jesus will be accomplished by cloning, (4) you should have sex as often as possible and with as many people as possible, and (5) both men and women should go shirtless whenever the weather is warm.
Notwithstanding that most guys would be supportive of (5), I think the majority of people would read this list, and say, "These people are a bunch of wingnuts." Me, I'm thinking, "they criticize the Christians for having wacky beliefs? Seriously?"
So basically, what we have here is two cases of people who, with no apparent sense of irony, are objecting to the mystical beliefs of others, not because mysticism itself is (by definition) a bunch of claims for which no evidence exists, but because they think the others' weird mystical beliefs aren't as good as their own weird mystical beliefs.
*ring ring * "Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You're black." *click*
In my shoes, of course, the whole thing seems crazy. After reading these stories, I chuckled a little about how bizarre some folks' thought processes can be. Then I thought about the whole concept of "crusade" and "religious war," and my smile faded a little. I thought, "it's a good thing that people like this aren't in power." But then I remembered the fanatics who are heads of state in some countries in the Middle East, and some of the legislators here in the United States who want to use the bible to direct national policy, and I thought, "Maybe some of them already are." And then I really didn't feel like laughing any more.
From the Balkans, we have a story of an Orthodox monk, known only as Brother Visarion. Visarion lives in the Greek community of Mount Athos, but was born and raised in Bulgaria; and it is in his homeland that he has raised a storm of controversy in his new book, Peter Danov and Vanga: Prophets and Precursors of the Antichrist.
Peter Danov was the founder of the White Brotherhood, which preached the unity of man and nature, and was revered by such luminaries as Albert Einstein and Jiddu Krishnamurti. Vanga, on the other hand, was a blind psychic whose healing powers were apparently legendary across Bulgaria. Both, Visarion claims, are occult figures, "tortured by dark forces," and are to be reviled, not revered.
A priest from Vanga's home town of Petrich, whose name was not mentioned in my source, has responded to Visarion's statement with outrage. "Vanga was a holy woman," he said. "Her gift was from God. She should be canonized."
Undaunted, Visarion shot back, "Instead of explaining to people what fortune-tellers, magicians and psychics are and that these incidents are renounced by God, he (the priest) is trying to set evil as an example."
Then we have the story of the current campaign by the Raelians to undermine Christianity.
The International Raelian Movement has apparently purchased a huge billboard near a freeway in Las Vegas, and put up the words, "GOD IS A MYTH," to the general outrage of the Las Vegas Christian community.
Some of you may be questioning why I'm commenting upon this in a post on mysticism, and wondering why, in fact, I'm not cheering them on. If so, you must not know who the Raelians are.
The Raelians, it turns out, are themselves a church, although some more orthodox believers would probably object to my using that word to describe them. The whole things was dreamed up in 1973 by an auto-racing journalist named Claude Vorilhon. The basic tenet of the Raelians is that life on earth was created by an advanced race of extraterrestrials called "The Elohim" (you might recognize that word as one of the Hebrew words for god; that, say the Raelians, is no coincidence). From this, they deduce that (1) there are other universes inside atoms, (2) world governments should be handed over to people with genius-level IQs, (3) the resurrection of Jesus will be accomplished by cloning, (4) you should have sex as often as possible and with as many people as possible, and (5) both men and women should go shirtless whenever the weather is warm.
Notwithstanding that most guys would be supportive of (5), I think the majority of people would read this list, and say, "These people are a bunch of wingnuts." Me, I'm thinking, "they criticize the Christians for having wacky beliefs? Seriously?"
So basically, what we have here is two cases of people who, with no apparent sense of irony, are objecting to the mystical beliefs of others, not because mysticism itself is (by definition) a bunch of claims for which no evidence exists, but because they think the others' weird mystical beliefs aren't as good as their own weird mystical beliefs.
*ring ring * "Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You're black." *click*
In my shoes, of course, the whole thing seems crazy. After reading these stories, I chuckled a little about how bizarre some folks' thought processes can be. Then I thought about the whole concept of "crusade" and "religious war," and my smile faded a little. I thought, "it's a good thing that people like this aren't in power." But then I remembered the fanatics who are heads of state in some countries in the Middle East, and some of the legislators here in the United States who want to use the bible to direct national policy, and I thought, "Maybe some of them already are." And then I really didn't feel like laughing any more.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Writers' marketing
In the last week or so I've been looking for a venue for my other writing, namely, my fiction.
I've written fiction ever since I can remember, starting with some truly dreadful stories when I was in middle school, fortunately none of which have survived, a fact which will probably frustrate my future biographer but for which the rest of us should be extremely grateful. I have written fairly steadily thereafter, and probably passed the mark of "marginally adequate" when I was about 25, thus proving that if you keep doing something long enough, eventually you get better at it.
I have, at last count, three full-length novels, seven novellas, and six short stories that I consider reasonably good. I have tried repeatedly to get something published through the traditional route of querying an agent, submitting manuscripts for perusal, waiting 18 months for them to return it with a note that says, in toto, "No thanks," and then going on to the next agent. At some point I realized that at this rate, I would be 450 years old before I would have even odds of having something published, and I sort of gave it up as a bad job. As a result, all of my writing is now slowly mildewing in the Black Hole of Calcutta, a.k.a. my bottom desk drawer.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine passed along an article about the new "e-publishing" route, in which authors can upload their work onto a server, and readers can download them for a small fee (think iTunes for writing, and you've got the idea). My first thought was that it was cheating -- that it was a little like vanity publishing. My pride rebelled. Then, realizing that I could keep my pride at the cost of keeping my status as an "unpublished author," I decided to look into it.
I was surprised at what I found. Through sites such as Smashwords, Lulu, and PubIt!, authors can submit their work, along with cover art, and actually get their work out there more quickly and effectively than traditional publication. The author retains all rights, and gets a cut of the proceeds. Because of the low overhead, the cost to the reader is much less than a printed book (downloads generally run between $0.99 and 5.99). Some new, previously-unpublished writers have gone viral, and had tens of thousands of downloads. So that part, naturally, sounds pretty intriguing.
The downside is that the author is also completely responsible for publicity -- I would guess that the great majority of works uploaded to these sites only are downloaded a handful of times, mostly by the author's friends. And I know about myself that self-promotion is not something I'm very good at, notwithstanding the fact that this entire post is basically self-promotion, which I felt that I should point out before someone else did.
On the other hand, some readings are better than no readings, which is more-or-less where my writing has been for the past fifteen years. So I've decided to give it a try. To quote Hilaire Belloc, "When I am dead, I hope it is said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'" For no particular reason I decided to use Barnes & Noble's service, PubIt!, and this weekend started messing about with cover art for three of my pieces (two of the novellas and the short stories, which I intend to submit as a collection). This entailed that I learn a little bit about Photoshop, further bumping up the angle of the learning curve on all of this.
The long-and-short of it is that I have three pieces of cover art I'm actually fairly proud of, and am ready to go to the next step, which is to register, write up blurbs for each of the pieces, write an Author's Bio (I'm thinking that it probably needs to say something more than, "Gordon used to really suck as a writer, back when he was in middle school. Now he doesn't suck quite so much. We hope you'll agree.").
After all this, in my opinion, comes the hard part. How do I sell my work? I have a couple of ideas, mostly revolving around sending a broadside email to all of my friends saying, "Please please pleeeeeease buy my stories," but I'm suspecting that there's more to marketing than that or otherwise people wouldn't go to college and major in it. My problem is that of all of the jobs in the world that I'd really hate, "salesperson" would fall somewhere near the top of the list, probably immediately after "cat groomer" and "arctic explorer." So I'm going to have to give this some thought.
Or maybe just write a blog post ending with "Please please pleeeeeease buy my stories." $2.99 each, available through PubIt!. Release date to be announced presently.
I've written fiction ever since I can remember, starting with some truly dreadful stories when I was in middle school, fortunately none of which have survived, a fact which will probably frustrate my future biographer but for which the rest of us should be extremely grateful. I have written fairly steadily thereafter, and probably passed the mark of "marginally adequate" when I was about 25, thus proving that if you keep doing something long enough, eventually you get better at it.
I have, at last count, three full-length novels, seven novellas, and six short stories that I consider reasonably good. I have tried repeatedly to get something published through the traditional route of querying an agent, submitting manuscripts for perusal, waiting 18 months for them to return it with a note that says, in toto, "No thanks," and then going on to the next agent. At some point I realized that at this rate, I would be 450 years old before I would have even odds of having something published, and I sort of gave it up as a bad job. As a result, all of my writing is now slowly mildewing in the Black Hole of Calcutta, a.k.a. my bottom desk drawer.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine passed along an article about the new "e-publishing" route, in which authors can upload their work onto a server, and readers can download them for a small fee (think iTunes for writing, and you've got the idea). My first thought was that it was cheating -- that it was a little like vanity publishing. My pride rebelled. Then, realizing that I could keep my pride at the cost of keeping my status as an "unpublished author," I decided to look into it.
I was surprised at what I found. Through sites such as Smashwords, Lulu, and PubIt!, authors can submit their work, along with cover art, and actually get their work out there more quickly and effectively than traditional publication. The author retains all rights, and gets a cut of the proceeds. Because of the low overhead, the cost to the reader is much less than a printed book (downloads generally run between $0.99 and 5.99). Some new, previously-unpublished writers have gone viral, and had tens of thousands of downloads. So that part, naturally, sounds pretty intriguing.
The downside is that the author is also completely responsible for publicity -- I would guess that the great majority of works uploaded to these sites only are downloaded a handful of times, mostly by the author's friends. And I know about myself that self-promotion is not something I'm very good at, notwithstanding the fact that this entire post is basically self-promotion, which I felt that I should point out before someone else did.
On the other hand, some readings are better than no readings, which is more-or-less where my writing has been for the past fifteen years. So I've decided to give it a try. To quote Hilaire Belloc, "When I am dead, I hope it is said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'" For no particular reason I decided to use Barnes & Noble's service, PubIt!, and this weekend started messing about with cover art for three of my pieces (two of the novellas and the short stories, which I intend to submit as a collection). This entailed that I learn a little bit about Photoshop, further bumping up the angle of the learning curve on all of this.
The long-and-short of it is that I have three pieces of cover art I'm actually fairly proud of, and am ready to go to the next step, which is to register, write up blurbs for each of the pieces, write an Author's Bio (I'm thinking that it probably needs to say something more than, "Gordon used to really suck as a writer, back when he was in middle school. Now he doesn't suck quite so much. We hope you'll agree.").
After all this, in my opinion, comes the hard part. How do I sell my work? I have a couple of ideas, mostly revolving around sending a broadside email to all of my friends saying, "Please please pleeeeeease buy my stories," but I'm suspecting that there's more to marketing than that or otherwise people wouldn't go to college and major in it. My problem is that of all of the jobs in the world that I'd really hate, "salesperson" would fall somewhere near the top of the list, probably immediately after "cat groomer" and "arctic explorer." So I'm going to have to give this some thought.
Or maybe just write a blog post ending with "Please please pleeeeeease buy my stories." $2.99 each, available through PubIt!. Release date to be announced presently.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
A bone to pick
From the news today comes two stories that are interesting mainly in their juxtaposition.
First, the skull of Mary Magdalene is touring California. I didn't know that skulls went on tours, did you? I thought only rock bands did that. Although I have to admit that looking at Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler these days, there may be some overlap. Be that as it may, the "holy relics" of Mary Magdalene, who was according to the bible the first person to find that Jesus' tomb was empty, are making the rounds, including visiting a penitentiary at Atwater.
What happened to Mary Magdalene after the biblical account is a matter of some conjecture, but Catholic traditionalists believe that she was imprisoned for a time, and after her release went to France, where she became an itinerant preacher. She then went to live in a cave at Sainte-Baume, where she lived for thirty more years.
After her death, the story goes, her bones were in the care of monks near Sainte-Baume, and during the Saracen invasion they were hidden so as to protect them from the hands of the heathens. They were then rediscovered in 1279, were mentioned in a pontifical bull from Pope Boniface VIII, and have been venerated as authentic relics in a monastery ever since.
Me, I wonder. It puts me in mind of the whole thing about the "relics of the true cross," about which John Calvin famously quipped that if you put all of the relics of the true cross together, you'd have enough wood to fill a battleship. A pious 19th century clergyman, Rohault de Fleury, needled by Calvin's claim, set about to estimate the volume of the chips of wood claimed as pieces of the cross, and came up with only four million cubic millimeters, which sounds like a lot, but is actually a cube six inches on a side. De Fleury's conclusion was, "Ha, Calvin! Take it! We showed you! They are real!" (I paraphrase slightly.) However, it must be pointed out that de Fleury included only the ones that he thought were genuine, which is a small fraction of the relics that have been claimed to be pieces of the cross. In fact, back during the Crusades, there were a couple of chunks in a church in Constantinople that were "as thick as a man's leg and a fathom in length." So I think I'm to be pardoned if I have some degree of skepticism about the authenticity of the relics of the true cross, the relics of Mary Magdalene, and relics in general.
Now, on to our second story.
In Clearfield, Utah, a man named Robert Casillas-Corrales was booked into Davis County jail after police raided his home and found, in a shed, human skulls and the bones and carcasses of animals.
No one is alleging that Casillas-Corrales killed the people whose skulls were found on his property; he claims he brought them with him from Cuba, and indeed, they seem to be long dead. He told police he is a practitioner of Santería, a religion of African origin commonly practiced in the Caribbean and in Central and South America, which holds that the bones of powerful men and women retain their power after death and can be used in rituals. He claims that he was only using them for good purposes, and that they were part of his religious practice.
Nevertheless, he remains in jail on the charge of desecration of human remains.
Is it just me, or is there some similarity between these two stories?
Okay, now hold on just a second. Maybe I'm being too hasty, here. Let's examine the differences.
In the first case, we have a wealthy, powerful group of religious people who are taking human bones around and are using them for religious worship and rituals. In the second case, we have a poor, relatively powerless group of religious people who are taking human bones around and are using them for religious worship and rituals.
Ah, I get it, I understand now why no one is throwing the Catholics into jail! Makes perfect sense.
Allow me to go on record as saying that I'm not somehow pro-Santería and anti-Catholic; in fact, I think both beliefs are a little on the sketchy side, and I'd give thanks for my being an atheist except for the fact that I have no idea who to thank. What struck me is more that the difference has nothing to do with belief -- it has to do with power structure. The fact that one is perceived as legitimate, even holy, behavior, and the other is perceived as creepy and weird (and worthy of being sent to jail) is not because there is a substantial distinction between the two actions, but because the first one has the backing of one of the most powerful agencies in the world, and the second one does not.
To put it more succinctly: a religion is a cult with more members.
First, the skull of Mary Magdalene is touring California. I didn't know that skulls went on tours, did you? I thought only rock bands did that. Although I have to admit that looking at Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler these days, there may be some overlap. Be that as it may, the "holy relics" of Mary Magdalene, who was according to the bible the first person to find that Jesus' tomb was empty, are making the rounds, including visiting a penitentiary at Atwater.
What happened to Mary Magdalene after the biblical account is a matter of some conjecture, but Catholic traditionalists believe that she was imprisoned for a time, and after her release went to France, where she became an itinerant preacher. She then went to live in a cave at Sainte-Baume, where she lived for thirty more years.
After her death, the story goes, her bones were in the care of monks near Sainte-Baume, and during the Saracen invasion they were hidden so as to protect them from the hands of the heathens. They were then rediscovered in 1279, were mentioned in a pontifical bull from Pope Boniface VIII, and have been venerated as authentic relics in a monastery ever since.
Me, I wonder. It puts me in mind of the whole thing about the "relics of the true cross," about which John Calvin famously quipped that if you put all of the relics of the true cross together, you'd have enough wood to fill a battleship. A pious 19th century clergyman, Rohault de Fleury, needled by Calvin's claim, set about to estimate the volume of the chips of wood claimed as pieces of the cross, and came up with only four million cubic millimeters, which sounds like a lot, but is actually a cube six inches on a side. De Fleury's conclusion was, "Ha, Calvin! Take it! We showed you! They are real!" (I paraphrase slightly.) However, it must be pointed out that de Fleury included only the ones that he thought were genuine, which is a small fraction of the relics that have been claimed to be pieces of the cross. In fact, back during the Crusades, there were a couple of chunks in a church in Constantinople that were "as thick as a man's leg and a fathom in length." So I think I'm to be pardoned if I have some degree of skepticism about the authenticity of the relics of the true cross, the relics of Mary Magdalene, and relics in general.
Now, on to our second story.
In Clearfield, Utah, a man named Robert Casillas-Corrales was booked into Davis County jail after police raided his home and found, in a shed, human skulls and the bones and carcasses of animals.
No one is alleging that Casillas-Corrales killed the people whose skulls were found on his property; he claims he brought them with him from Cuba, and indeed, they seem to be long dead. He told police he is a practitioner of Santería, a religion of African origin commonly practiced in the Caribbean and in Central and South America, which holds that the bones of powerful men and women retain their power after death and can be used in rituals. He claims that he was only using them for good purposes, and that they were part of his religious practice.
Nevertheless, he remains in jail on the charge of desecration of human remains.
Is it just me, or is there some similarity between these two stories?
Okay, now hold on just a second. Maybe I'm being too hasty, here. Let's examine the differences.
In the first case, we have a wealthy, powerful group of religious people who are taking human bones around and are using them for religious worship and rituals. In the second case, we have a poor, relatively powerless group of religious people who are taking human bones around and are using them for religious worship and rituals.
Ah, I get it, I understand now why no one is throwing the Catholics into jail! Makes perfect sense.
Allow me to go on record as saying that I'm not somehow pro-Santería and anti-Catholic; in fact, I think both beliefs are a little on the sketchy side, and I'd give thanks for my being an atheist except for the fact that I have no idea who to thank. What struck me is more that the difference has nothing to do with belief -- it has to do with power structure. The fact that one is perceived as legitimate, even holy, behavior, and the other is perceived as creepy and weird (and worthy of being sent to jail) is not because there is a substantial distinction between the two actions, but because the first one has the backing of one of the most powerful agencies in the world, and the second one does not.
To put it more succinctly: a religion is a cult with more members.
Friday, March 18, 2011
It's a gas!
Two scientists have announced that they have solved the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
The Bermuda Triangle, for the benefit of the three people in the civilized world who haven't heard of this phenomenon, is the geographical region bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, in which (according to one website) "an astonishing number of mysterious disappearances have occurred, of both ships and aircraft."
Myself, I thought it had been solved years ago, the solution being that the Bermuda Triangle doesn't exist. Well, the place exists, but if you look at the actual documented cases of craft disappearances, there is the same loss rate as any other equally traveled, equal-sized blob of ocean.
The problem is, because of the claims by woo-woos of its being a great big mystery, you have the problem of exaggeration or actual faking of the anecdotal evidence. In fact, the whole preposterous idea was brought to the public's attention by a fellow named Charles Berlitz, who wrote a bestselling book on the subject in 1974. Berlitz's book, upon examination, is full of sensationalized hype, reports taken out of context, omitted information, and outright lies. Larry Kusche, whose painstaking collection of data finally proved once and for all that there were proportionally no more ships and planes going down there than anywhere else in the world, said about Berlitz, "If Berlitz were to report that a ship was red, the chances of it being some other color is almost a certainty."
So, I thought that the explanation of the Mystery as being Not Really All That Mysterious was pretty satisfying, and had closed the book on the Bermuda Triangle. I hardly gave it a second thought as we flew right through the middle of it on our trip to Trinidad last month.
Apparently, however, the Legend Lives On, and Dr. Joseph Monaghan of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and his graduate student David May, have written a paper on the subject, and it got accepted to (of all places) The American Journal of Physics. And their explanation is:
Oceanic flatulence.
Now far be it from me to discount the potentially devastating consequences of toxic flatulence. I own a dog, Grendel, whose output could solve the world's natural gas shortage. He has been known to clear a room at one go, all the while wearing an expression of feigned innocence that seems to say, "What? What's wrong with you guys? You think that was me?"
Monaghan and May claim that what happens in the Bermuda Triangle is much worse than the canine variety, hard though that may be for anyone who knows Grendel to comprehend. They claim that what happens there is that the ocean floor is covered with a material called "frozen methane hydrate," which under certain conditions can generate huge methane gas bubbles. As the bubbles rise, and the pressure of the surrounding seawater becomes less, they expand, displacing more and more water as they go, and when they finally reach the surface, you basically have the Colossal Sea Fart of Doom. Any ship caught in this situation would clearly capsize and sink; a plane flying through it might have engine failure.
I have three problems, of increasing difficulty, with this theory.
First -- any event like this, where you have a gigantic displacement of water, should generate a tsunami. If Monaghan and May's ideas are right, every time there has been a disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle, the east coast of Florida should have been hit with a gigantic wave shortly thereafter. There is no evidence of any such thing. Even given a bubble that is just big enough to engulf a ship, you would expect some sort of shock wave to propagate outward from the site, and to register with observers on the shore, if not wash them away entirely.
Second, Monaghan and May are acting like frozen methane hydrates are only found in the Bermuda Triangle region, when in fact, it's kind of everywhere on the deep ocean floor. The lion's share of it is made by anaerobic bacteria called methanogens, which by some estimates are the most numerous organisms on earth. So if Monaghan and May's theory solves the Bermuda Triangle Mystery, it opens up a bigger question, namely the Entire Ocean Mystery. If frozen methane hydrate explosions account for the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, why don't we see them happening everywhere?
Third, we must keep coming back to the question of whether there really is a statistically higher disappearance/plane crash/shipwreck rate there than there is anywhere else. And Kusche and others have concluded that the answer is: no. So it very much remains to be seen whether there is anything there to explain.
There you have it. As much as it would appeal to the 7th graders of the world to have a reason to discuss oceanic farts in science class, my feeling is that this one is a non-starter. So if you were planning on that trip to the Caribbean, there's no particular reason to worry, or to stock up on gas masks or extra-large bottles of Beano. But perhaps now that Monaghan and May are looking around for new research topics, they can come over and see if they can figure out what Grendel's problem is.
The Bermuda Triangle, for the benefit of the three people in the civilized world who haven't heard of this phenomenon, is the geographical region bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, in which (according to one website) "an astonishing number of mysterious disappearances have occurred, of both ships and aircraft."
Myself, I thought it had been solved years ago, the solution being that the Bermuda Triangle doesn't exist. Well, the place exists, but if you look at the actual documented cases of craft disappearances, there is the same loss rate as any other equally traveled, equal-sized blob of ocean.
The problem is, because of the claims by woo-woos of its being a great big mystery, you have the problem of exaggeration or actual faking of the anecdotal evidence. In fact, the whole preposterous idea was brought to the public's attention by a fellow named Charles Berlitz, who wrote a bestselling book on the subject in 1974. Berlitz's book, upon examination, is full of sensationalized hype, reports taken out of context, omitted information, and outright lies. Larry Kusche, whose painstaking collection of data finally proved once and for all that there were proportionally no more ships and planes going down there than anywhere else in the world, said about Berlitz, "If Berlitz were to report that a ship was red, the chances of it being some other color is almost a certainty."
So, I thought that the explanation of the Mystery as being Not Really All That Mysterious was pretty satisfying, and had closed the book on the Bermuda Triangle. I hardly gave it a second thought as we flew right through the middle of it on our trip to Trinidad last month.
Apparently, however, the Legend Lives On, and Dr. Joseph Monaghan of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and his graduate student David May, have written a paper on the subject, and it got accepted to (of all places) The American Journal of Physics. And their explanation is:
Oceanic flatulence.
Now far be it from me to discount the potentially devastating consequences of toxic flatulence. I own a dog, Grendel, whose output could solve the world's natural gas shortage. He has been known to clear a room at one go, all the while wearing an expression of feigned innocence that seems to say, "What? What's wrong with you guys? You think that was me?"
Monaghan and May claim that what happens in the Bermuda Triangle is much worse than the canine variety, hard though that may be for anyone who knows Grendel to comprehend. They claim that what happens there is that the ocean floor is covered with a material called "frozen methane hydrate," which under certain conditions can generate huge methane gas bubbles. As the bubbles rise, and the pressure of the surrounding seawater becomes less, they expand, displacing more and more water as they go, and when they finally reach the surface, you basically have the Colossal Sea Fart of Doom. Any ship caught in this situation would clearly capsize and sink; a plane flying through it might have engine failure.
I have three problems, of increasing difficulty, with this theory.
First -- any event like this, where you have a gigantic displacement of water, should generate a tsunami. If Monaghan and May's ideas are right, every time there has been a disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle, the east coast of Florida should have been hit with a gigantic wave shortly thereafter. There is no evidence of any such thing. Even given a bubble that is just big enough to engulf a ship, you would expect some sort of shock wave to propagate outward from the site, and to register with observers on the shore, if not wash them away entirely.
Second, Monaghan and May are acting like frozen methane hydrates are only found in the Bermuda Triangle region, when in fact, it's kind of everywhere on the deep ocean floor. The lion's share of it is made by anaerobic bacteria called methanogens, which by some estimates are the most numerous organisms on earth. So if Monaghan and May's theory solves the Bermuda Triangle Mystery, it opens up a bigger question, namely the Entire Ocean Mystery. If frozen methane hydrate explosions account for the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, why don't we see them happening everywhere?
Third, we must keep coming back to the question of whether there really is a statistically higher disappearance/plane crash/shipwreck rate there than there is anywhere else. And Kusche and others have concluded that the answer is: no. So it very much remains to be seen whether there is anything there to explain.
There you have it. As much as it would appeal to the 7th graders of the world to have a reason to discuss oceanic farts in science class, my feeling is that this one is a non-starter. So if you were planning on that trip to the Caribbean, there's no particular reason to worry, or to stock up on gas masks or extra-large bottles of Beano. But perhaps now that Monaghan and May are looking around for new research topics, they can come over and see if they can figure out what Grendel's problem is.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Dead ducks, depression, and "Danny Boy"
For the third year in a row, Foley's Irish Pub in New York City has declared a general ban on the singing of "O Danny Boy" on St. Patrick's Day.
Myself, I'm completely in favor of this ban. "O Danny Boy" has got to be one of the sappiest, smarmiest, most overplayed songs in the world. With its leaps of a sixth, soaring high notes, and maudlin words, there's nothing like it for catering to the tipsy, misty-eyed Missin' the Auld Sod crowd.
Never mind that it wasn't written by an Irishman. It was written by an English lawyer, Frederick Edward Weatherly, who not only wasn't Irish but allegedly never even set foot in Ireland. Apparently many Irish (and Irish wannabees) don't know this or don't care, because it's become de rigueur on St. Patrick's Day.
Not, however, in Foley's Pub. Owner Sean Clancy (which sounds a wee bit more Irish than "Frederick Edward Weatherly," doesn't it now?), a native of County Cavan, is so heartily sick of "O Danny Boy" that he'll give a free pint of Guinness to anyone who sings an Irish song for the patrons of his pub on St. Patrick's Day -- with the exception of "O Danny Boy."
According to Clancy, "It's overplayed, it's been ranked amongst the 25 most depressing songs of all time, and it's more appropriate for a funeral than for a St. Patrick's Day celebration."
To which I say, "Hear, hear." Well, except for the fact that most Irish songs are kinda depressing. Lessee, what will we sing instead? How about "Four Green Fields:"
Yeah, that'd be uplifting. How 'bout "Nell Flaherty's Drake?"
Myself, I'm completely in favor of this ban. "O Danny Boy" has got to be one of the sappiest, smarmiest, most overplayed songs in the world. With its leaps of a sixth, soaring high notes, and maudlin words, there's nothing like it for catering to the tipsy, misty-eyed Missin' the Auld Sod crowd.
Never mind that it wasn't written by an Irishman. It was written by an English lawyer, Frederick Edward Weatherly, who not only wasn't Irish but allegedly never even set foot in Ireland. Apparently many Irish (and Irish wannabees) don't know this or don't care, because it's become de rigueur on St. Patrick's Day.
Not, however, in Foley's Pub. Owner Sean Clancy (which sounds a wee bit more Irish than "Frederick Edward Weatherly," doesn't it now?), a native of County Cavan, is so heartily sick of "O Danny Boy" that he'll give a free pint of Guinness to anyone who sings an Irish song for the patrons of his pub on St. Patrick's Day -- with the exception of "O Danny Boy."
According to Clancy, "It's overplayed, it's been ranked amongst the 25 most depressing songs of all time, and it's more appropriate for a funeral than for a St. Patrick's Day celebration."
To which I say, "Hear, hear." Well, except for the fact that most Irish songs are kinda depressing. Lessee, what will we sing instead? How about "Four Green Fields:"
"There was war and death, plundering and pillage,
My children starved, by mountain, valley, and sea,
And their wailing cries, they shook the very heavens,
My four green fields ran red with their blood, said she."
Yeah, that'd be uplifting. How 'bout "Nell Flaherty's Drake?"
"May his spade never dig, may his sow never pig,
May each hair in his wig be well thrashed with a flail;
May his turkey not hatch, may the rats eat his meal
May every old fairy from Cork to Dunleary
Dip him, smug and airy, in river and lake,
That the eel and the trout, they may dine on the snout
Of the monster who murdered Nell Flaherty's drake."
Lovely. Dead ducks and fish nibbling on drowning victims. Happy St. Paddy's! Here, have a pint!
Okay, how about "Two Sisters?" That at least has a nice, swingy little reel as its melody:
"The miller he was hanged on the mountain head, sing-I-down, sing-I-day,
The miller he was hanged on the mountain head, the boys are bound for me,
The miller he was hanged on the mountain head, the eldest sister was boiled in lead,
I'll be true unto my love, if he'll be true to me."
Makes me homesick for the Auld Country, it does. Especially when you know that what had preceded this verse is that the eldest sister was jealous of the youngest, who had attracted the attentions of a man (predictably named "Johnny"), so the eldest sister had pushed the youngest into the mill stream. The miller ran afoul of the law when he pulled the youngest sister out of the water, "stole her gay gold ring," and then pushed her in again.
Ah, the charms of Celtic music.
It seems that the Irish are just completely unable to write a song that's not depressing. Even "Cockles and Mussels," the bouncy and perky unofficial theme song of Dublin, is about a beautiful fishmonger who gets a fever and dies. I guess, given their rather horrid history, it's understandable; if your country had been oppressed and starved for six hundred years by a foreign power, your leaders shot, hanged, or exiled, your religion, language, and culture the subject of a campaign of eradication, you'd be a little bitter, too.
Still, you have to wonder why these songs remain so popular. The tunes are nice, catchy, and easy to remember, that's got to be part of it. But I think it's more than that. Maybe it's the consolation that comes from knowing that however miserable your life is, there are people who have it worse. Consider "On We Go," set to a beautiful minor-key reel, whose lyrics are about an old woman and an old man. The gist of it is that the old woman gets her husband drunk and drowns him in the pond. Perhaps the line of reasoning is, "Well, you know, maybe we Irish have been oppressed for centuries, but at least my wife hasn't drowned me yet."
So today, when you raise a pint in honor of Ireland, and sing, "... the summer's gone, and all the leaves are dying, 'tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide... So come ye back, when summer's in the meadow, or when the valley's hushed and white with snow; and I'll be there, in sunshine or in shadow, O Danny Boy, O Danny Boy, I love you so," you can remember that (1) it's spring and the flowers haven't even started yet, and (2) anyone who went by the nickname "Danny Boy" had to be kind of a git anyway. Oh, yes, and (3) you have made it through another day without being boiled in lead, your significant other drowning you, the fields running red with your blood, or an eel eating your nose.
So drink up, and Happy St. Paddy's.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Reality check
fiction (n.) /fik-shin/ Something invented by the imagination; something feigned; esp. an invented story.
That, courtesy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, because it is becoming increasingly apparent that more than a few people need a refresher course in the distinction.
A recent survey, conducted in Britain (and I hasten to add that I strongly suspect that the Brits are far from unique in this regard), shows that we're having some difficulty, as a species, in remembering that movies aren't real. Some of the results:
Of course, what's supposed to occur when the lights come up is you stand up, shake the popcorn crumbs off your clothing, and say, "Back to the real world." Which can be jarring, sometimes. I still remember one of my smartest and best students sitting down in my class and declaring, "Whenever I watch Harry Potter movies, I can barely stand to come to this place." I get that -- it's hard for me to compete with rotating staircases, talking paintings, and teachers who can do magic. But as hard as it is, you have to come back eventually.
Evidently, though, some people never do. It's hard for me to fathom, but then I think about all of the fictions that people believe wholeheartedly, and it becomes more apparent that it's the truth, if not substantially more comprehensible. Young-earth creationism, for example, is as much a fictional account of the universe as the one in Star Wars -- sorry to put it that bluntly, but the science is incontrovertible -- and yet people hang on to that one with a vehemence that astonishes me. I've gotten death threats for teaching evolution, and after the immediate fear-reaction diminishes, I sit back and think, "Really? You're threatening me because I don't take a mythological creation story and pretend that it's science?"
Why do people believe weird things? One of my heroes, the prominent skeptic Michael Shermer, has written a book about it, called, appropriately enough, Why People Believe Weird Things. It should be required reading in every science curriculum, world-wide. It analyzes the origins of pseudoscientific thought, and then takes a look at a number of specific examples (and yes, young-earth creationism is one of them). If you haven't read this book, you should. Everyone should.
Now, what to do about it? Well, one solution to believing that what happens in movies, novels, and plays is real is to go see the current musical Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, in which you will have no problem disbelieving everything that goes on, because none of the technology works right, resulting in Spidey using his superhuman powers to fly straight into walls, miss his landings, fall off stage sets, and, in one real case, hang upside down from the rigging wires for fifteen minutes while the tech crew tried to figure out how to get him down.
Failing that, the only answer is education. We have to be taught to discern real from unreal; it certainly isn't something we're born to. Without the skills of critical thinking, we not only get hoodwinked by plausible fictions, we fall prey to every charlatan and flim-flam artist out there. If we don't start putting more emphasis on thinking, in every discipline, every classroom, and every school, we've no one but ourselves to blame if kids grow up thinking that hoverboards are real and that gravity is visible - and believing in other bizarre, non-scientific views of the universe.
That, courtesy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, because it is becoming increasingly apparent that more than a few people need a refresher course in the distinction.
A recent survey, conducted in Britain (and I hasten to add that I strongly suspect that the Brits are far from unique in this regard), shows that we're having some difficulty, as a species, in remembering that movies aren't real. Some of the results:
- 20% of the people surveyed thought that light sabers exist.
- 1 in 4 believe in human teleportation.
- Almost 50% believe that there is currently technology that can selectively erase memory.
- 40% think that hoverboards exist.
- 1/5 of the respondents believe that they can see gravity.
Of course, what's supposed to occur when the lights come up is you stand up, shake the popcorn crumbs off your clothing, and say, "Back to the real world." Which can be jarring, sometimes. I still remember one of my smartest and best students sitting down in my class and declaring, "Whenever I watch Harry Potter movies, I can barely stand to come to this place." I get that -- it's hard for me to compete with rotating staircases, talking paintings, and teachers who can do magic. But as hard as it is, you have to come back eventually.
Evidently, though, some people never do. It's hard for me to fathom, but then I think about all of the fictions that people believe wholeheartedly, and it becomes more apparent that it's the truth, if not substantially more comprehensible. Young-earth creationism, for example, is as much a fictional account of the universe as the one in Star Wars -- sorry to put it that bluntly, but the science is incontrovertible -- and yet people hang on to that one with a vehemence that astonishes me. I've gotten death threats for teaching evolution, and after the immediate fear-reaction diminishes, I sit back and think, "Really? You're threatening me because I don't take a mythological creation story and pretend that it's science?"
Why do people believe weird things? One of my heroes, the prominent skeptic Michael Shermer, has written a book about it, called, appropriately enough, Why People Believe Weird Things. It should be required reading in every science curriculum, world-wide. It analyzes the origins of pseudoscientific thought, and then takes a look at a number of specific examples (and yes, young-earth creationism is one of them). If you haven't read this book, you should. Everyone should.
Now, what to do about it? Well, one solution to believing that what happens in movies, novels, and plays is real is to go see the current musical Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, in which you will have no problem disbelieving everything that goes on, because none of the technology works right, resulting in Spidey using his superhuman powers to fly straight into walls, miss his landings, fall off stage sets, and, in one real case, hang upside down from the rigging wires for fifteen minutes while the tech crew tried to figure out how to get him down.
Failing that, the only answer is education. We have to be taught to discern real from unreal; it certainly isn't something we're born to. Without the skills of critical thinking, we not only get hoodwinked by plausible fictions, we fall prey to every charlatan and flim-flam artist out there. If we don't start putting more emphasis on thinking, in every discipline, every classroom, and every school, we've no one but ourselves to blame if kids grow up thinking that hoverboards are real and that gravity is visible - and believing in other bizarre, non-scientific views of the universe.
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