Divine meddling

In Paul McCaw's musical comedy The Trumpets of Glory, angels back various causes on Earth as a kind of competitive contest.  Anything from a soccer game to a war is open for angelic intervention -- and there are no rules about what kind of messing about the angels are allowed to do.  Anything is fair, up to and including deceit, malice, and trickery.  The stakes are high; the angel whose side wins goes up in rank, and the other one goes down.

It's an idea of the divine you don't run into often. The heavenly host as competitors in what amounts to a huge fantasy football game.

While McCaw's play is meant to be comedy, it's not so far off from what a lot of people believe -- that some divine agent, be it God or an angel or something else, takes such an interest in the minutiae of life down here on Earth that (s)he intercedes on our behalf.  As an example, take Paula White -- the "White House Spiritual Adviser" -- who just yesterday led a prayer service in which she called on "angelic reinforcements" to make sure that the vote counting went Donald Trump's way.

While this may seem kind of loony to a lot of us, it's a remarkably common attitude.  How often do you hear someone say things like, "I found my car keys!  Thank you Lord Jesus!"?  The problem for me, aside from the more obvious one of not believing that any of these invisible beings exist, is why Lord Jesus or the Heavenly Host would care more about whether you find your keys than, for example, about all of the ill and starving children in the world.

You'd think if interference in human affairs is allowable, up there in heaven, that helping innocent people who are dying in misery would be the first priority.

It's why I was so puzzled by the story in The Epoch Times that a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me.  It's called, "When Freak Storms Win Battles, Is It Divine Intervention or Just Coincidence?"  The article goes into several famous instances when weather affected the outcome of a war, to wit:

• A tornado killing a bunch of British soldiers in Washington D. C. during the War of 1812
• The storm that contributed to England's crushing defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588
• A massive windstorm that smashed the Persian fleet as it sailed against Athens in 492 B.C.E.
• A prolonged spell of warm, wet weather, which fostered the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, followed by a pair of typhoons that destroyed Kublai Khan's ships when they were attacking Japan in 1274

What immediately struck me about this list was that each time, the winners attributed the event to divine intervention, but no one stops to consider how the losers viewed it.  This isn't uncommon, of course; "History is written by the victors," and all that sort of thing.  But what's especially funny about the first two is that they're supposed to be events in which God meddled and made sure the right side won -- when, in fact, in both cases, both sides were made up of staunch Christians.

And I'm sorry, I refuse to believe that a divine being would be pro-British in the sixteenth century, and suddenly become virulently anti-British two hundred years later.

Although that's kind of the sticking point with the last example as well, isn't it?  First God (or the angels or whatever) manipulate the weather to encourage the Mongols, then kicks the shit out of them when they try to attack Japan.  It's almost as if... what was causing all of this wasn't an intelligent agent at all, but the result of purely natural phenomena that don't give a rat's ass about our petty little squabbles.

Fancy that.

But for some reason, this idea repels a lot of people.  They are much more comfortable with a deity that fools around directly with our fates down here on Earth, whether it be to make sure that I win ten dollars on my lottery scratch-off ticket or to smite the hell out of the bad guys.

If I ever became a theist -- not a likely eventuality, I'll admit -- I can't imagine that I'd go for the God-as-micromanager model.  It just doesn't seem like anyone whose job was overseeing the entire universe would find it useful to control things on that level, notwithstanding the line from Matthew 10:29 about God's hand having a role in the fall of every sparrow.

I more find myself identifying with the character of Vertue in C. S. Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress -- not the character we're supposed to like best, I realize -- when he recognized that nothing he did had any ultimate reason, or was the part of some grand plan:

"I believe that I am mad," said Vertue presently.  "The world cannot be as it seems to me.  If there is something to go to, it is a bribe, and I cannot go to it: if I can go, then there is nothing to go to."  

"Vertue," said John, "give in.  For once yield to desire.  Have done with your choosing.  Want something."

"I cannot," said Vertue.  "I must choose because I choose because I choose: and it goes on for ever, and in the whole world I cannot find a reason for rising from this stone."

So those are my philosophical musings for this morning.  Seeing the divine hand in everything here on Earth, without any particular indication of why a deity would care, or (more specifically) why (s)he would come down on one side or the other.  Me, I'll stick with the scientific explanation.  The religious one is, honestly, far less satisfying, and opens up some troubling questions that don't admit to any answers I can see.

*************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is about one of the deepest mysteries in science: the origin of time.

Most physical processes are time-reversible.  If you looked at a video of a ball bouncing off a wall, then looked at the same video clip in reverse, it would be really difficult to tell which was the forward one and which the backwards one.  Down to the subatomic level, physical processes tend to make no distinction based upon the "arrow of time."

And yet our experience of time is very, very different.  We remember the past and don't know anything about the future.  Cause and effect proceed in that order, always.  Time only flows one direction, and most reputable physicists believe that real time travel is fundamentally impossible.  You can alter the rate at which time flows -- differences in duration in different reference frames are a hallmark of the theory of relativity -- but its direction seems to be unchanging and eternal.

Why?  This doesn't arise naturally from any known theory.  Truly, it is still a mystery, although today we're finally beginning to pry open the door a little, and peek at what is going on in this oddest of physical processes.

In The Order of Time, by physicist Carlo Rovelli (author of the wonderful Seven Brief Lectures in Physics), we learn what's at the cutting edge of theory and research into this unexplained, but everyday and ubiquitous, experience.  It is a fascinating read -- well worth the time it will take you to ponder the questions it raises.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Dog travels

The human/dog association goes back a long way.

No one knows for sure how it began.  It may be that our distant ancestors fed scraps to wolves, buying their loyalty in order to gain protection for their dwellings from other predators (and hostile humans).  They might have been utilized for their specific skills -- herding, hunting, pulling sleds.

Or it may be that the dogs themselves gave up their wariness when they discovered that humans have sofas.

I can say from my own experience that my own two canine companions, Lena (L) and Guinness (R), are of fairly dubious utility.  The only things they've successfully defended the house from are squirrels and the UPS Guy.  Whenever we get a package the dogs go into a frenzy of vicious barking, and it always results in the UPS Guy leaving, reinforcing their conviction that they're providing a vital service.  

"Hey, look at that!  He's driving away!  We did it!"  *canine high-five*  "I think we deserve biscuits."

But whatever the reason, humans and dogs have been inseparable for as long as we have records, including genetic ones, as a paper last week in Science showed.  A trio of teams of researchers, one led by Pontus Skoglund of the Francis Crick Institute of London, another by Greger Larson of the University of Oxford, and the third by Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna, joined forces to combine cutting-edge genetics research with archaeology to analyze the genomes of dogs from 100 to 11,000 years ago.

Amongst the many cool features of this study is the window it gives us into human migration, in some cases movements which occurred before there were any written records to keep track.  When human groups moved, they took their dogs with them, so the relationship between domestic dog populations over time acts as a proxy record for the wanderings of their owners.  The study identified different, genetically-distinct lineages, each of which followed humans pretty much wherever they went.

"Dogs are a separate tracer dye for human history," said study co-author Pontus Skoglund.  "Sometimes human DNA might not show parts of prehistory that we can see with dog genomes...  Already, 11,000 years ago, there were at least five different groups of dogs across the world, so the origin of dogs must have been substantially earlier than that."

One interesting outcome of the study is that one of the lineages studied -- European dogs -- became less diverse as time went on.  I wonder if that's due to selection, and the gradual shift of dogs from workers to companions.  Working dogs have to have skills compatible with their jobs, be it herding, hunting, pulling sleds, or whatnot.  Companion dogs just have to be cute and friendly, because honestly, they're mostly home décor items and lap warmers.

Whatever the reason, this analysis of Our Best Friends is pretty fascinating not only for what it tells us about our own history, but the window it gives us into the long relationship between us and our furry friends.  Speaking of which, I gotta go.  Guinness and Lena are barking like hell at something, and I gotta go see if it's a squirrel or the UPS Guy.

He's a cunning one, that UPS Guy.  You gotta watch him like a hawk, or he'll do something awful like put a package on the front porch and then drive away.  

If you can imagine someone doing something that evil.

*************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is about one of the deepest mysteries in science: the origin of time.

Most physical processes are time-reversible.  If you looked at a video of a ball bouncing off a wall, then looked at the same video clip in reverse, it would be really difficult to tell which was the forward one and which the backwards one.  Down to the subatomic level, physical processes tend to make no distinction based upon the "arrow of time."

And yet our experience of time is very, very different.  We remember the past and don't know anything about the future.  Cause and effect proceed in that order, always.  Time only flows one direction, and most reputable physicists believe that real time travel is fundamentally impossible.  You can alter the rate at which time flows -- differences in duration in different reference frames are a hallmark of the theory of relativity -- but its direction seems to be unchanging and eternal.

Why?  This doesn't arise naturally from any known theory.  Truly, it is still a mystery, although today we're finally beginning to pry open the door a little, and peek at what is going on in this oddest of physical processes.

In The Order of Time, by physicist Carlo Rovelli (author of the wonderful Seven Brief Lectures in Physics), we learn what's at the cutting edge of theory and research into this unexplained, but everyday and ubiquitous, experience.  It is a fascinating read -- well worth the time it will take you to ponder the questions it raises.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The way it crumbles

If -- as some believe -- we're in a giant computer simulation, then I have to say that the aliens running it have lost the plot.

I'm not, surprisingly enough, talking about the United States presidential election here, although that's been surreal enough.  The latest, if you haven't heard, is Donald Trump throwing a pre-emptive tantrum, saying that if he doesn't win outright today he's already got a fleet of lawyers ready to challenge the results and fight until it turns out the way he wants.

Which aren't the actions of a sociopathic, narcissistic toddler, or anything.

What increasingly strikes me, though, is not just how bad 2020 has been, but how completely fucking weird.  For example, consider the following multiple-choice question:

A near miss by a sizable asteroid has spurred people to construct an impact-proof vault in the permafrost on the island of Svalbard.  What is this vault intended to store and protect, to ensure that it is preserved for posterity?

1. Critical historical documents and archaeological relics.
2. Examples of important technological devices and instructions on how to build them.
3. Top secret information on satellites, security, and communication contributed by world leaders.
4. A stash of Oreo cookies and the recipe thereof.

If you selected #4, congratulations, you've gotten into the True Spirit of 2020.

My first reaction, upon seeing this story, was that this couldn't possibly be true, that it had to be a parody news story of the type done so very well by sites like The Onion and The Babylon Bee.  But no, the Oreo vault is completely real, and its existence has been verified repeatedly by Nabisco, producers of the iconic cookie.  In fact, they provided coordinates (78°08’58.1”N, 16°01’59.7″E) in case you want to check it out from satellite images.  If you're not that motivated, they gave us the following photo:

"As an added precaution," Nabisco announced, "the Oreo packs are wrapped in mylar, which can withstand temperatures from -80 degrees to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and is impervious to chemical reactions, moisture and air, keeping the cookies fresh and protected for years to come."

So we can all relax.  If there's a catastrophic meteor strike, nuclear war, or whatnot, all we have to do is get to Svalbard somehow and we can all share some tasty cookies.

And access the recipe so we can make more, even though this is unlikely because (1) Svalbard doesn't look like a place that has a baking ingredients aisle, (2) the catastrophe that sent us there probably didn't leave many of the grocery stores elsewhere open for business, and (3) it's unlikely that if there's a worldwide disaster, any of us will say, "You know what?  I think I'll bake some cookies."

So I'm not sure what to think about the Oreo vault.  I mean, Nabisco can do what it wants, I guess, and if the government of Norway is okay having a cookie vault on Svalbard, that's fine by me.  But once again, 2020 has proven to resemble some kind of global fever-dream.  I've stopped saying "what's going to happen next?" because every time I do, things just get weirder.

And I say that fully aware that today Americans might well re-elect the worst president in our history, someone who is not only entirely amoral, but is so stupid that he would be out of his depth in a kiddie pool.

But I probably shouldn't stress about any of it.  At any moment, the aliens running the computer simulation could just shut it off.  Or maybe they'll come down from the acid trip they've been on, and things will return to normal.

Until then, I'll just quote the Oracle from The Matrix:

"Here.  Have a cookie."

*************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is about one of the deepest mysteries in science: the origin of time.

Most physical processes are time-reversible.  If you looked at a video of a ball bouncing off a wall, then looked at the same video clip in reverse, it would be really difficult to tell which was the forward one and which the backwards one.  Down to the subatomic level, physical processes tend to make no distinction based upon the "arrow of time."

And yet our experience of time is very, very different.  We remember the past and don't know anything about the future.  Cause and effect proceed in that order, always.  Time only flows one direction, and most reputable physicists believe that real time travel is fundamentally impossible.  You can alter the rate at which time flows -- differences in duration in different reference frames are a hallmark of the theory of relativity -- but its direction seems to be unchanging and eternal.

Why?  This doesn't arise naturally from any known theory.  Truly, it is still a mystery, although today we're finally beginning to pry open the door a little, and peek at what is going on in this oddest of physical processes.

In The Order of Time, by physicist Carlo Rovelli (author of the wonderful Seven Brief Lectures in Physics), we learn what's at the cutting edge of theory and research into this unexplained, but everyday and ubiquitous, experience.  It is a fascinating read -- well worth the time it will take you to ponder the questions it raises.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The lure of the ocean

We spent a good chunk of last week, including my birthday, in Montauk, New York, at the very eastern tip of Long Island.  I love the ocean, even when it's a cool, stormy, rainy October, and I have to do my beach runs dressed in several layers rather than my typical attire of a pair of shorts, a pair of running shoes, and damn little else.

There's something about the ocean that I find magnetic.  The crashing of the waves, keening of the gulls, smell of salt... it's magical.  There's also the overwhelming sense of power and immensity I get from it.  Staring out across the wind-tossed sea toward the misty horizon, there was literally nothing between me and the west coast of Africa except for salt water.  We sometimes see the ocean as willful and dangerous, but I think of it more as wielding a power so much greater than ours that we're simply inconsequential by comparison.  I'm reminded of the quote from H. P. Lovecraft that captures that sense of awe:

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.  Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.  All my days have I watched it and listened to it, and I know it well.  At first it told to me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years it grew more friendly and spoke of other things; of things more strange and more distant in space and in time.  Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath.  And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of time.

The mystique has captured the human imagination for as far back as we have cultural memory, and because of it we have always linked the ocean to strange and uncanny tales.  Mermaids and sirens and water kelpies and the ningen and the kraken and the shape-shifting seal/human selkies only scratch the surface of lore that reaches into our very distant past. 

It's no wonder that even some of our modern lore associates the ocean and oceanside land as being uncanny.  Shortly after our arrival, Carol mentioned the "Montauk Project" -- something I'd heard of but really didn't know much about.

Turns out, the legend is centered around Camp Hero, a state park that is at the site of the decommissioned Montauk Air Force Station.  What's left behind is distinctly eerie, and includes a decrepit radar antenna mounted on the top of a building:

I find the sign on the fence a little puzzling.  Where do the falling objects originate, is what I wonder.  The whole place is a gentle, grassy hill with a few trees.  Do they drop objects from helicopters or something, so as to discourage trespassers?

Then there are the concrete bunkers that were the site of giant gun emplacements dating back to World War II.  They're still there, locked securely and with threatening signs discouraging visitors from trying to get inside:

The whole place has a distinctly sinister air, and it was no surprise to me that the conspiracy theorists think the place is still being used for secret experiments, possibly involving psychological warfare, extraterrestrial weaponry, and time travel.  In fact, the series Stranger Things was inspired by Camp Hero -- the original proposed name for the series was Montauk -- but the decision was made to site it instead in the heartland of Indiana, believing that putting the evil research station trying to reach into the Upside Down in the middle of Small Town America made the series a lot more scary.  (I think they're right, actually.)

But there's no doubt that there's an uncanny feeling about Camp Hero.  I kept expecting guys to drive up in black cars and demand that I give them my phone.  That feeling wasn't improved any when, as we were leaving the area, our car got buzzed by a drone -- that followed us for about a hundred feet, then zoomed away.

The odd ambience of the Montauk area was helped considerably in 2008 when the "Montauk monster" washed ashore -- a strange-looking carcass that immediately made people think of a hideous mutant escapee from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.  Plum Island is fifteen miles offshore and on a clear day can be seen, low on the horizon -- about all you'll ever get to see of it, because it is entirely owned by the United States government and access is severely restricted, ostensibly to prevent the spread of animal diseases (and the potential for bioweapon development by hostile nations).  As it turns out, the "Montauk monster" had nothing to do with Plum Island and almost certainly was a decomposing carcass of a raccoon, but try to convince the conspiracy theorists of that.

Anyhow, the place was well worth a visit (Montauk, not Plum Island).  We only had one afternoon of sunny weather -- by a fortunate happenstance, the afternoon we went to Camp Hero, when I took the above photos -- and the rest was mostly rainy, windy, and gray.  But it was a lovely place to spend my sixtieth birthday.  Many (well-bundled) beach walks were taken, much seafood was eaten, and much wine enjoyed.

And, happily, I didn't get abducted by the Men in Black.

But here I am, back safe and sound in my little village in upstate New York.  Much as I loved Montauk, I don't think I could live there.  For one thing, the housing prices are absurd; Carol found an advertisement for a single-wide trailer on a half-acre of land going for $845,000.  For another, the traffic is terrible, even considering that we were there during the off season.  Plus, you have to wonder what climate change and sea level rise is going to do; Long Island is basically a giant sandbar, the terminal moraine of the last (Wisconsin) Continental Glaciation, that retreated about twenty thousand years ago after having shoved unsorted rocks and sand ahead of it like a plow, leaving behind a low ridge as it retreated.  The average elevation in Montauk is about ten meters; it wouldn't take much of a rise in sea level to swamp some of the lower-lying areas.

So I'll stay right where I am, frigid winters and all.  Great place to visit, though.  Getting up in the morning and going for a run on the beach, listening to the roar of the waves and the whistling of the wind through the dune grass, is a magical experience -- looking out to sea, sensing the restless, surging immensity before you, and feeling very, very small.

*************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is about one of the deepest mysteries in science: the origin of time.

Most physical processes are time-reversible.  If you looked at a video of a ball bouncing off a wall, then looked at the same video clip in reverse, it would be really difficult to tell which was the forward one and which the backwards one.  Down to the subatomic level, physical processes tend to make no distinction based upon the "arrow of time."

And yet our experience of time is very, very different.  We remember the past and don't know anything about the future.  Cause and effect proceed in that order, always.  Time only flows one direction, and most reputable physicists believe that real time travel is fundamentally impossible.  You can alter the rate at which time flows -- differences in duration in different reference frames are a hallmark of the theory of relativity -- but its direction seems to be unchanging and eternal.

Why?  This doesn't arise naturally from any known theory.  Truly, it is still a mystery, although today we're finally beginning to pry open the door a little, and peek at what is going on in this oddest of physical processes.

In The Order of Time, by physicist Carlo Rovelli (author of the wonderful Seven Brief Lectures in Physics), we learn what's at the cutting edge of theory and research into this unexplained, but everyday and ubiquitous, experience.  It is a fascinating read -- well worth the time it will take you to ponder the questions it raises.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Five dozen trips

Dear Skeptos...

After today I'm taking a quick break -- this will be my only post this week.  I'll be back on Monday, November 2.  Until then, please keep topic suggestions coming!

cheers,

Gordon

*********************************

Today is my sixtieth birthday.

I'm not a big believer in the significance of milestones, but this one seems to be pretty major.  Partly, it's my incredulity over turning sixty when I don't feel sixty.  Well, in some ways I do; I've got more aches and pains and minor physical issues than I used to.  Fortunately, at this point, nothing at all serious.  I've got some gray, especially in my facial hair, so I keep it trimmed really short to minimize the impact.  I have a few more wrinkles and laugh lines.  I need reading glasses (either that, or my conjecture that everyone is printing in smaller and smaller fonts is correct).  My stamina for running is less than it used to be.

Overall, though, I can't complain.  I've made it here relatively unscathed.

What sixty looks like

Part of that is good luck, and part is good genes.  I come from a family of long-lived people.  My parents both made it to 83, and my dad especially looked a consistent ten years younger than he actually was, pretty much his whole life.  His mom, my beloved Grandma Bertha, lived to 93, and her eccentric Aunt Clara died at 101.  (Great Aunt Clara was almost completely blind during the last ten years of her life, but still walked daily around her home town of Wind Ridge, Pennsylvania with her red-tipped cane.  The story is that she made a point of whapping people she didn't like with her cane as she passed them.  "Accidentally."  Just showing that irascibility runs in my father's family as well as longevity.)

So as far as genetics goes, I got dealt a pretty good hand.

I also attribute some of it, though, to the fact that I still have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.  Nothing keeps you young like retaining your ability to laugh at fart jokes.

Looking back, it's been a wild ride.  I've come a long way in sixty years, both literally and figuratively.  I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel to exotic places like Ecuador and Trinidad and Malaysia.  I live in upstate New York, which I would put in contention for the most beautiful place in the world.  I have two sons I'm proud of.  Despite off-the-scale shyness and social anxiety I'm happily married to the love of my life.  I'm a published author with fifteen books to my name.  I just retired a couple of years ago after a 32-year career teaching science to teenagers, a vocation that was some combination of challenging, fun, frustrating, and exhilarating -- truly a job where you never know what's going to happen next.  With the support of family and friends, two years ago I finally came out publicly as bisexual, shedding decades of shame and fear and finally stepping into the light and saying, "This is who I am."  I've learned a lot about myself and others, especially the deep, aching truth of what a family friend told me when I was six: "Always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."  Through it all, I've come out mostly happy, mostly healthy, and entirely glad to be where I am.

I am an incredibly lucky man.

Still, it's a little mind-boggling that I've made five dozen trips around the Sun.  It's hard to fathom that it's been that long.  When someone says "twenty years ago," I immediately think, "1980?"  No, that's forty years ago.  Twenty years ago is 2000.  Today's twenty-year-olds were infants when 9/11 happened.  So many of the things I think of as high-magnitude historical events -- the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the start of the Gulf War, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the development of the World Wide Web and email, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the siege of Sarajevo, the Oklahoma City bombing, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement that officially ended the Irish "Troubles" -- all happened before today's twenty-year-olds were born.

I can't fool myself.  I haven't been young for quite some time.  It brings back memories of my grandma, then about eighty, dropping into her favorite rocking chair with a groan, then cocking an eyebrow at me and saying, "You know, Gordon, I'm no spring chicken any more."  I'd usually grin and say, "Grandma, when were you a spring chicken?"  To which she'd retort something like, "Last Thursday, you little pipsqueak.  Now fix me a martini."  And we'd both crack up.

Then I'd fix her a martini.

That's the kind of eighty-year-old I want to be.

I guess there's no avoiding aging, although I do think a lot of it boils down to attitude.  You can't escape the physical stuff completely, although you can ameliorate it by staying active; I'm glad I'm still a runner, and I suspect that I'd be in way worse shape than I am if I'd become sedentary.  But I'm damned if I'll let it get me down.  I remember a friend of mine turning sixty, and he went into a serious depression -- it was so much harder than fifty, he said, "because there's no doubt you're past halfway.  Some people make it to a hundred, but almost no one makes it to a hundred and twenty."

Which might be true, but it's not going to stop me from trying.

So anyhow: happy birthday to me.  Despite my friend's hang-dog attitude, here's to the next five dozen trips.  Maybe my attitude is a little like the guy who fell off the roof of a skyscraper, and as he passes the twentieth floor, someone yells out of a window at him to ask how he's doing, and he shrugs and says, "So far, so good."

But it's better than the alternative.  Much better to relax, enjoy the view, and have a martini.

**********************************

Have any scientifically-minded friends who like to cook?  Or maybe, you've wondered why some recipes are so flexible, and others have to be followed to the letter?

Do I have the book for you.

In Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, from Homemade to Haute Cuisine, by Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz, you find out why recipes work the way they do -- and not only how altering them (such as using oil versus margarine versus butter in cookies) will affect the outcome, but what's going on that makes it happen that way.

Along the way, you get to read interviews with today's top chefs, and to find out some of their favorite recipes for you to try out in your own kitchen.  Full-color (and mouth-watering) illustrations are an added filigree, but the text by itself makes this book a must-have for anyone who enjoys cooking -- and wants to learn more about why it works the way it does.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

What doesn't kill you

In evolutionary biology, it's always a little risky to attribute a feature to a specific selective pressure.

Why, for example, do humans have upright posture, unique amongst primates?  Three suggestions are:

• a more upright posture allowed for longer sight distance, both for seeing predators and potential prey
• standing upright freed our hands to manipulate tools
• our ancestors mostly lived by the shores of lakes, and an ability to wade while walking upright gave us access to the food-rich shallows along the edge

So which is it?  Possibly all three, and other reasons as well.  Evolution rarely is pushed in a particular pressure by just one factor.  What's interesting in this case is that upright posture is a classic example of an evolutionary trade-off; whatever advantage it gave us, it also destabilized our lumbar spines, giving humans the most lower back problems of any mammal (with the possible exceptions of dachshunds and basset hounds, who hardly got their low-slung stature through natural selection).

Sometimes, though, there's a confluence of seeming cause and effect that is so suggestive it's hard to pass up as an explanation.  Consider, for example, the rationale outlined in the paper that appeared this week in Science Advances, called "Increased Ecological Resource Variability During a Critical Transition in Hominin Evolution," by a team led by Richard Potts, director of the Human Origins Program of the Smithsonian Institution.

What the paper looks at is an oddly abrupt leap in the technology used by our distant ancestors that occurred about four hundred thousand years ago.  Using artifacts collected at the famous archaeological site Olorgesailie (in Kenya), the researchers saw that after a stable period lasting seven hundred thousand years, during which the main weapons tech -- stone hand axes -- barely changed at all, our African forebears suddenly jumped ahead to smaller, more sophisticated weapons and tools.  Additionally, they began to engage in trade with groups in other areas, and the evidence is that this travel, interaction, and trade enriched the culture of hominin groups all over East Africa.  (If you have twenty minutes, check out the wonderful TED Talk by Matt Ridley called "When Ideas Have Sex" -- it's about the cross-fertilizing effects of trade on cultures, and is absolutely brilliant.)

Olorgesailie, Kenya, where our distant ancestors lived [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Rossignol Benoît, OlorgesailieLandscape1993, CC BY-SA 3.0]

So what caused this prehistoric Great Leap Forward?  The Potts et al. team found that it coincides exactly with a period of natural destabilization in the area -- a change in climate that caused what was a wet, fertile, humid subtropical forest to change into savanna, a rapid overturning of the mammalian megafauna in the region (undoubtedly because of the climate change), and a sudden increase in tectonic activity along the East African Rift Zone, a divergent fault underneath the eastern part of Africa that ultimately is going to rip the continent in two.

The result was a drastic decrease in resources such as food and fresh water, and a landscape where survival was a great deal more uncertain than it had been.  The researchers suggest -- and the evidence seems strong -- that the ecological shifts led directly to our ancestors' innovations and behavioral changes.  Put simply, to survive, we had to get more clever about it.

The authors write:

Although climate change is considered to have been a large-scale driver of African human evolution, landscape-scale shifts in ecological resources that may have shaped novel hominin adaptations are rarely investigated.  We use well-dated, high-resolution, drill-core datasets to understand ecological dynamics associated with a major adaptive transition in the archeological record ~24 km from the coring site.  Outcrops preserve evidence of the replacement of Acheulean by Middle Stone Age (MSA) technological, cognitive, and social innovations between 500 and 300 thousand years (ka) ago, contemporaneous with large-scale taxonomic and adaptive turnover in mammal herbivores.  Beginning ~400 ka ago, tectonic, hydrological, and ecological changes combined to disrupt a relatively stable resource base, prompting fluctuations of increasing magnitude in freshwater availability, grassland communities, and woody plant cover.  Interaction of these factors offers a resource-oriented hypothesis for the evolutionary success of MSA adaptations, which likely contributed to the ecological flexibility typical of Homo sapiens foragers.

So what didn't kill us did indeed make us stronger.  Or at least smarter.

Like I said, it's always thin ice to attribute an adaptation to a specific cause, but here, the climatic and tectonic shifts occurring at almost exactly the same time as the cultural ones seems far much to attribute to coincidence. 

And of course, what it makes me wonder is how the drastic climatic shifts we're forcing today by our own reckless behavior are going to reshape our species.  Because we're not somehow immune to evolutionary pressure; yes, we've eliminated a lot of the diseases and malnutrition that acted as selectors on our population in pre-technological times, but if we mess up the climate enough, we'll very quickly find ourselves staring down the barrel of natural selection once again.

Which won't be pleasant.  I'm pretty certain that whatever happens, we're not going extinct any time soon, but the ecological catastrophe we're increasingly seeming to be facing won't leave us unscathed.  I wonder what innovations and adaptations we'll end up with to help us cope?

My guess is whatever they are, they'll be even more drastic than the ones that occurred to our kin four hundred thousand years ago.

**********************************

Have any scientifically-minded friends who like to cook?  Or maybe, you've wondered why some recipes are so flexible, and others have to be followed to the letter?

Do I have the book for you.

In Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, from Homemade to Haute Cuisine, by Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz, you find out why recipes work the way they do -- and not only how altering them (such as using oil versus margarine versus butter in cookies) will affect the outcome, but what's going on that makes it happen that way.

Along the way, you get to read interviews with today's top chefs, and to find out some of their favorite recipes for you to try out in your own kitchen.  Full-color (and mouth-watering) illustrations are an added filigree, but the text by itself makes this book a must-have for anyone who enjoys cooking -- and wants to learn more about why it works the way it does.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The astronomical pogo stick

It's all too easy lately to find reasons to criticize humans.  I'm guilty of contributing to it myself, by my focus on pseudoscientific nonsense; you can jump from "some humans do stupid stuff" to the cynical "all humans are irreparably stupid" without even realizing it.

It's worthwhile focusing instead on our accomplishments, some of which are downright amazing.  This year, I think we all need something to cheer us up and make us feel a little more optimistic about our potential as a species.  So today we're going to look at: the mind-blowing reconnaissance mission NASA has undertaken to collect, and bring back to Earth, material from the asteroid Bennu.

Bennu is interesting from a number of standpoints.  It's a carbonaceous asteroid, meaning it is high in the carbon-containing compounds that were probably abundant in the early Earth's atmosphere -- carbon dioxide and monoxide, methane, and hydrogen cyanide.  Because these were the raw materials from which the first biochemicals were synthesized, it's of serious interest to people like me who are obsessed with the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.  Astronomers tend to be more curious about Bennu because its composition is thought to be very similar to the material from which the Solar System originally coalesced, so learning about it might give us a lens into our region of the galaxy's very distant past.

And if you needed another reason, Bennu is one of the asteroids which periodically crosses the Earth's orbit, making it high on the list of eventual Earth strikes.  (Not to worry: it's not going to hit the Earth, or anything else, for at least another two hundred years, and the current surmise is that it's much more likely to hit Jupiter than it is to hit Earth.)

So in 2016, NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx mission, which first did a near pass and mapped out its surface to look for good spots for rock collecting, and then on the second encounter -- which happened three days ago -- dropped onto the asteroid with a maneuver that looked like someone bouncing on a pogo stick.  The six-second contact stirred up material from the surface, which was sucked into a collector.  OSIRIS-REx then zoomed back off into space for its return voyage to Earth, carrying what scientists hope is a sixty-gram sample of the surface of the asteroid.

Okay, that's already impressive, right?  If you want your mind boggled further, consider this:

OSIRIS-REx's trip (one way) from Earth to Bennu covered about 820 million kilometers.  The asteroid's diameter is about 530 meters; the spacecraft's is a little under seven meters.  I did a bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation, and discovered that our ability to hit Bennu from this distance is equivalent to hitting a target the size of a bacterium with a bullet the size of a virus -- from a kilometer away.

Oh, and it's hardly standing still.  Bennu is a fast-moving target, zooming along at 28 kilometers per second.

If that doesn't impress you, I can't imagine what would.

OSIRIS-REx's sampling arm, seconds before impact on asteroid Bennu on October 20, 2020 [Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NASA/JPL]

"The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do," said mission principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona.  "I can’t believe we actually pulled this off."

His elation and incredulity are understandable considering all of the things that could have gone wrong, and how slight the error would have to be to result in the spacecraft either plunging into a destructive crash or else missing the asteroid entirely.  And at that point, OSIRIS-REx had to function perfectly on its own -- at that distance, radio signals traveling at the speed of light take over eighteen minutes to reach Earth, and (even assuming an instantaneous response by NASA scientists) another eighteen to send back a command like "NO NO NO DON'T DO THAT!"

By that time, the spacecraft would either be rubble or else zooming away into space, and away from the target.

So the mission went off without a hitch.  Well, the first half of it -- they still have to get OSIRIS-REx back to Earth safely.  But I'd say given how flawless the first bit was, there's a good chance they'll accomplish the whole shebang, and we'll have some really interesting stuff to study.

When you consider things like this, it's reassuring -- the capacity for human accomplishment is limitless.  Yes, I know there's still idiotic stuff going on down here.  But I'm not ready to give up on humanity yet.  I find the OSIRIS-REx mission incredibly inspirational.

Gives me hope that there may be a bright future for our species yet.

**********************************

Have any scientifically-minded friends who like to cook?  Or maybe, you've wondered why some recipes are so flexible, and others have to be followed to the letter?

Do I have the book for you.

In Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, from Homemade to Haute Cuisine, by Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz, you find out why recipes work the way they do -- and not only how altering them (such as using oil versus margarine versus butter in cookies) will affect the outcome, but what's going on that makes it happen that way.

Along the way, you get to read interviews with today's top chefs, and to find out some of their favorite recipes for you to try out in your own kitchen.  Full-color (and mouth-watering) illustrations are an added filigree, but the text by itself makes this book a must-have for anyone who enjoys cooking -- and wants to learn more about why it works the way it does.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]