Love, not actually

For about a year I've been working with a wonderful personal trainer.  Not only is Kevin an outstanding running coach (who has kept me going through the last eight months during which I've dealt with a back injury and various other health problems), he's also funnier than hell.  I swear, some sessions we spend as much time laughing as working out.  We're pretty similar in a lot of ways, not least that we both are frequently baffled by how absolutely weird the human race is.

So when I got an email from him a couple of days ago with the subject line, "Humankind is completely BONKERS," along with a link, I figured it had to be good.  I'm happy to say he didn't disappoint.

The link brought me to a story about a Japanese gentleman named Akihiko who has fallen madly in love with a woman named Hatsune Miko, and decided to marry her.  Here's where the problems start, though.  First, Hatsune is only sixteen years old, which is a little troubling.  But that's not the only issue.

Hatsune is a computer-generated hologram.

I swear I'm not making this up.  I know I say this a lot, but I can sense y'all looking at me like I've lost my marbles.  Akihiko calls himself a "fictosexual" -- someone who is sexually attracted to fictional characters.  Now, let me say up front that on some level, I understand.  My love for Doctor Who led to my basically being in lust with both Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) and Captain Jack Harkness (played by John Barrowman).  (Being bisexual comes along with the problem that I can get my head turned by just about anyone.)

But I've never lost sight of two facts: (1) Amy and Captain Jack are fictional characters; and (2) any attraction I have for them is disappears as soon as I turn the television off.  I might have been a bit goggle-eyed by Amy in her sleek little policewoman outfit and Captain Jack when he had all his clothes vaporized by a robot, but that was where it ended.

It turns out there's a name for this: a parasocial relationship.  The researchers who studied this -- it was the subject of a paper in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships last October, and in fact I touched on it in a post shortly after the paper came out -- describe it as "a false sense of mutual awareness with favorite characters and [the presence of] strong emotional bonds with them."  So somehow, the fact that the characters they love aren't real and are played by actors who have their own quite different lives and relationships gets lost, and they feel like that love is somehow reciprocated.

The researchers found that the likelihood of forming a parasocial relationship tended to go hand-in-hand with what they call avoidant attachment.  This sounds like an oxymoron, and it sort of is; a push-me-pull-you battle between a desperation to have a relationship and a powerful desire to avoid emotional connections.  When you think about it, it's at least somewhat understandable.  Actual human relationships are demanding, because humans are not only complex creatures, we sometimes hide parts of our personality that only come out later, or change because of external circumstances.  "Relationships" with characters in television and movies, on the other hand, are entirely one-sided.  You can read anything you like into them.

Well, most of the time.  I've run into people who are deeply enamored of a fictional character, and then become furious when the character "betrays them" by either doing something unexpected or (worse) falling in love with another character.  Or, sometimes, when the character is at odds with the actor portraying him/her.  To use my previous example -- apparently the actor John Barrowman can kind of be a putz, and there are allegations that he said and did some things behind the scenes that were completely inappropriate.  My guess is that he's not someone I would want to spend time with.

But I can still think that Captain Jack is hot.  Because he and the actor who plays him are not the same person.

So while attraction is one thing, actually going all in with a fictional character is in a different category altogether.  Or, in the case of Akihiko, a computer-generated hologram.  I'm particularly puzzled about the "sexual" part of "fictosexual."  As Kevin put it, "What if his penis is a USB-A plug and her vagina is a USB-B port?"  Which is it exactly.  Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to get cozy with someone who is actually flesh-and-blood.

Anyhow, that's our excursion into Weird Human Behavior for today.  I wish I had a good explanation for it, but failing that, I think I'll fall back on Kevin's assessment: "Humankind is bonkers."

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The dunes of Io

By anyone's standards, Jupiter's moon Io is a strange place.  It is by far the most geologically-active body in the Solar System, which is extremely unusual for an object its size.  Since tectonic forces are created by heat generated in the core, and smaller objects radiate away heat faster, it was thought that most planetary moons should be tectonically dead -- essentially, frozen in place.

What keeps the fires in Io going are the tidal forces between Jupiter and the other three "Galilean" moons (so called because they were first spotted by Galileo Galilei in January of 1610, and were instrumental in his championing of the heliocentric model of the Solar System).  But from earthbound telescopes all four just looked like points of light, despite the fact that as moons go, they're pretty big.  In fact, the largest of them -- Ganymede -- is bigger than Mercury, with a radius of 2,634 kilometers (as compared to Mercury's 2,440).  The four, the two aforementioned plus Europa and Callisto, were all named for various of Zeus's lovers, which meant astronomers had an extensive list of names to choose from, given that 95% of Greek mythology was driven by Zeus's inability to keep his toga on.

In any case, the push-and-pull of the gravitational forces from Jupiter and its moons stretches Io, and the friction thus created generates enough heat to keep its core (thought to be made mostly of iron, like Earth's) molten.  This thermal energy drives tectonic forces that dwarf the most violent volcanoes and earthquakes here on our planet.  Io has extensive lava flows, some over five hundred kilometers across.  Its volcanoes have ejected so much debris that there is a plasma ring surrounding Jupiter, sketching out Io's orbit.

We got our first good images of Io from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1979, and from its brightly-colored, pockmarked surface astronomers said it "looked like a moldy pizza" -- a vivid image that is certainly apt enough:

An image of Io taken, appropriately enough, by the spacecraft Galileo in 1995 [Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NASA/JPL]

The bright yellows and oranges come from crystalline sulfur, which is abundant on the moon's surface.  Also common on its surface is sulfur dioxide, which at Earth's surface temperatures is a colorless gas that smells like rotten eggs; at Io's temperatures, averaging at 110 K (about -160 C), it's a crystalline solid.  The rest is mostly made up of silicate rock and sand.

There's still a lot we don't know about this peculiar place.  One of its odd features is that it has dunes, some of them over thirty meters high.  This should be impossible, as dunes are caused by fluid flow -- on Earth, either wind or water -- and Io has essentially no atmosphere and no liquid component of any kind on the surface.  But a recent paper published in Nature Communications explains a way that dunes can form without any wind; once again, it's caused by Io's extreme volcanism.  The study found that if there's at least a ten-centimeter thick layer of sulfur dioxide ice, and it is contacted by the subterranean (well, subionion) lava flows, the ice sublimates rapidly and explosively, blowing plumes of gas and debris at speeds of up to seventy kilometers and hour, reaching as much as two hundred kilometers high.

The force, though, isn't just exerted upwards, it's exerted outward.  This lateral blast moves enough of the sand and rock on the surface to generate Io's extensive dunes.  A combination of two things -- Io's low gravity and lack of an atmosphere -- means that the airborne debris can move a lot farther than a similar flow could do on Earth.  So while at first glance the processes seem similar to what we know of planetary geology, it's (as far as we know) unique in the Solar System.

"In some sense, these [other worlds] are looking more familiar," says George McDonald, a planetary scientist at Rutgers University, who co-authored the study, in an interview with Science News.  "But the more you think about it, they feel more and more exotic."

If you want to experience mystery and wonder, just look up.  The night sky is filled with a myriad places we are only just beginning to understand.  As French physicist and mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré put it, "Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand; …  It shows us how small is man's body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is only an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony."

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Cellphones and brain explosions

A while back there was a rumor circulating that using cellphones could give you brain cancer. A study of 420,000 cellphone users, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, indicates that there is no correlation between cellphone use and cancer, which caused sighs of relief from the thousands of people who like to discuss details of their sex lives and intimate health issues in public places.

Now, however, thanks to a scary email I received yesterday, I find that cellphone users have worse things to worry about than cancer; using your phone can simply make your brain explode.

Don't believe me?  I'll show you.  I excerpt part of the email below:

Do not pick up calls under the following given numbers: 9888308001, 9316048121 91+, 9876266211, 9888854137, 9876715587.  These numbers will come up red in color, if the call comes from these numbers.  It's with very high wavelength, and very high frequency.  If a call is received from mobile on these numbers, it creates a very high frequency and will cause you to have a brain hemorrhage.

It's not a joke, it's TRUE.  27 people have died receiving calls from these numbers.  This has appeared on news programs and has been verified as true, it's not a hoax.  Please forward this on to all the people you care about!

Well, first off, it's a little ironic that I was the recipient of this email.  My phone service provider gives me a weekly rundown of use time, and I average about fifteen minutes a day.  Most of this use is not talking to people, but playing an idiotic game called Snood that I somehow have become addicted to.  Snood involves using a little catapult to launch funny-looking faces at an array of other funny-looking faces, with the Tetris-like goal of getting three or more in a row, at which point they fall off the screen.  The goal is to get all of the faces to fall.  I'd like to say I enjoy Snood, but honestly, mostly what it does is piss me off, because I always flub easy shots and then achieve phone-hurling levels of anger.

I should probably avoid games altogether, honestly, and find a hobby that is more suited to my temperament and level of technological skill, such as making music by banging two rocks together.

Part of the problem is that besides being a Luddite, I just hate telephones in general.  I actually enjoy being in a place where I can't be reached by telephone.  I'm sort of like Pavlov's dog -- but instead of salivating, when the phone rings, I swear.  If people want to communicate with me, my order of preferred modes of contact is as follows:

1. Email
2. Text
3. Social media direct message
4. Every other form of communication ever invented, up to and including carrier pigeon
5. Telephones

I will go to amazing lengths to avoid talking on the phone.  When we order take-out, my wife places the order (two-minute phone conversation) and I drive to pick it up (at least twenty-minute drive each way, because we live in the middle of nowhere), and I still think it's an excellent tradeoff.  As far as people calling me, thank heaven for caller ID, which at least allows me to screen the calls I get and ignore the ones from people I don't want to talk to, which is just about everyone.  The idea of taking a telephone with me, so I can be reached anywhere, has about as much appeal as taking along my dentist on vacation so that he can interrupt my lying around on the beach by doing a little impromptu root canal.

But I digress.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ed Yourdon from New York City, USA, People using cellphones on a street in New York, CC BY-SA 2.0]

For those of you who actually do use your phones to communicate with other human beings, should you worry about picking up your phone, for fear of your brain exploding?  The answer, fortunately, is no, and we don't need to have a study funded by the National Brain Explosion Institute to prove it.  Without even trying hard, I can find three problems with the contents of the email:

First, there's no way that a cellphone could transmit sound waves at a high enough volume to cause any damage.  Phone speakers are simply not capable of producing large-amplitude (high decibel level) sounds -- phone use isn't even damaging to your ears, much less your brain.  You're at more risk of ear damage from turning the volume up too high when you're listening to music through earbuds than you are from talking to someone on your phone.

Second, how do they know all of this, if all the people it happened to died?  Did the victims pick up their phones, say "Hi," and then turn to their spouses and say, "OMIGOD ETHEL I JUST RECEIVED A CALL FROM 9888308001 AND THE NUMBER CAME UP RED AND NOW I'M HAVING A BRAIN ANEURYSM ACCCCCKKKKK"?

Third, the email itself indicates that the originator has the intelligence of a peach pit, because anyone who's taken high school physics knows that it's impossible for a wave to have high frequency and high wavelength at the same time, as wavelength and frequency are inversely proportional, sort of like IQ and the likelihood of being a Flat Earther.

So, anyway, feel free to continue using your phones without any qualms, and I'll feel free to continue to not use mine.  Maybe one day I'll eventually arrive in the 21st century, and stop being such a grumpy curmudgeon about telephones, and consent to carry one around so I can have constant, 24/7 availability to receive calls about my car's extended warranty.

But don't expect it to happen any time soon.

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The meaning of "Two Dignified Spinsters Sitting in Silence"

I have frequently ranted at length about how silly the practice of astrology is.  The last mention of my general disdain for the practice prompted one of my readers to send me an email, the gist of which was, "You haven't even begun to plumb the depths of the silliness," and attached a link to a page called, "The Degrees and Meanings of the Sabian Symbols."

For those of you who would prefer not to risk valuable brain cells even opening this link, allow me to explain that the Sabian Symbols are mystical images, one for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac.  Another site, simply called "Sabian Symbols," describes them as follows:

Renowned worldwide as both an uncanny divination system and an insightful tool for astrologers, the Sabian Symbols were channeled in San Diego in 1925 by Marc Edmund Jones, a well reknowned [sic] and respected astrologer, and Elsie Wheeler, a spiritualist medium.  They consist of 360 word images corresponding to the 360 degrees of the zodiac (each zodiac sign comprising of 30 degrees)...  The Sabian Symbols are extraordinary for insight, revelation and guidance.  Miracles, big and small, happen in your life when you tap into their field... (it is) an "ancient mind matrix."

Well.  Alrighty, then.  Let's just take a look, shall we?  Here are a few selected Sabian Symbols from various degrees of the zodiac.  Let me know of any insight, revelation, or guidance you got from them, okay?

• Aries, 7-8 degrees: A large woman's hat with streamers blown by the east wind.
• Taurus, 15-16 degrees: An old teacher fails to interest his pupils in traditional knowledge.
• Leo, 1-2 degrees: An epidemic of mumps.
• Virgo, 15-16 degrees: In the zoo, children are brought face-to-face with an orangutan.
• Sagittarius, 20-21 degrees: A child and a dog wearing borrowed eyeglasses.
• Capricorn, 16-17 degrees: A repressed woman finds psychological release in nudism.
• Aquarius, 22-23 degrees: A big bear sitting down and waving all of its paws.

Okay, so that gives you an idea.  And no, I didn't make any of these up.  Nor did I pick these out because they sound especially weird; they all sound like this.  All I can say is: whatever drugs this guy was on when he came up with these, can I have some?

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Of course, the people who believe in this stuff don't think that it was drugs.  They think that Marc Edmund Jones was really channeling a mystical presence.  Once again, quoting from "Sabian Symbols:"

The Sabian Symbol story is embedded in the ancient cultures of the Middle East.  Marc Edmund Jones felt that there was an "unseen agency" - an external, esoteric mind-set at work in the birthing of the Sabian Symbols.  Connection was made through a 'Brother', a member of the ancient Mesopotamian brotherhood, the Sabian Brotherhood.  He believed that they were the 'voices' that were spiritually behind Elsie Wheeler, delivering the messages that became the Symbols...  As we move out of the Piscean age and into the Aquarian age, we are transmuting in many ways, with the vibration of our spiritual and intellectual minds moving into higher gears as we evolve.  In such hectic times, we hunger for meaning and guidance, but often don't have the time or the patience to pause and reflect deeply on our situation.  The Sabian Oracle opens the doorway between our inner feelings and intentions and our conscious mind.  They do this by helping to put what is within us into words.  Being provided with possibilities enables us to act positively and confidently, and think rationally.

My general response to all of that is that if you were thinking rationally you wouldn't be relying on astrology in the first place.  And, of course, the usual problem with symbolic fortunetelling occurs here, just as it does with the Tarot, the I Ching, runes, and so on; the symbols are so weird and open to interpretation that you can make just about anything out of them that you want.  Suppose that for some reason, the "oracle" told me that my symbol for today was Libra, 29-30 degrees ("Three mounds of knowledge on a philosopher's head.")  My first response would be that I didn't know that knowledge came in mounds.  But after that, what does it mean?  Is it saying that I'm smart?  Or that I'm not smart enough and should go study and try to gain more mounds of knowledge?  Or that today would be good for contemplation?  Or that I should be looking for guidance from three different sources?  Or that I could find answers in books by philosophers?

This is why the "Sabian Symbols" site offers "professional Sabian astrology consultations" -- because slobs like me just aren't qualified to interpret what "A butterfly with a third wing on its left side" (Libra, 23-24 degrees) means.

The take-home lesson here, I suppose, is that there is no realm of woo-woo so goofy that someone can't elaborate on it in such a fashion as to make it way goofier.  Wondering whether there might be anything else I could learn from all the time I spent reading this stuff, I clicked on the link that said "Clear your mind and click on this picture of a galaxy" to get wisdom from the oracle.  I got Scorpio, 16-17 degrees, which is "A woman, fecundated with her own spirit, is the father of her own child."   Which, I think, was a symbolic way for the oracle to tell me to go fuck myself.

Oracles can be so hostile, sometimes.

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The illusion of cynicism

"All politicians are liars."

"I don't trust anyone."

"You have to watch your back constantly."

"Nothing you read in media is true."

When I taught Critical Thinking -- one of my favorite classes to teach -- I found that it was much harder to counteract cynicism than it was gullibility.  Just about everyone knows that gullibility is a mistake; if you "fall for anything," or "believe whatever's told to you," you are automatically considered to be less smart or less sophisticated (at least by people who aren't gullible themselves).  Many of my students thought that the primary reason to learn critical thinking strategies was to make themselves less likely to get suckered by lies and half-truths.

This is itself half true.  As I told my classes, cynicism is exactly as lazy as gullibility.  Disbelieving everything without consideration is no wiser than believing everything without consideration.  It's why I hate the use of the word "skeptic" to mean doubter.  A true skeptic believes what the evidence supports.  The people who disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change, for example, aren't skeptics; they're rejecting the evidence collected over decades, and the theories that have passed the rigors of peer review to become accepted by 97% of the scientific establishment.

But somehow, cynicism has gained a veneer of respectability, as if there's something brave or smart or noble about having the sour attitude that no one and nothing can be trusted.  This was the subject of a paper that appeared in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin last week, called "The Cynical Genius Illusion: Exploring and Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism and Competence."  The authors, Olga Stavrova of Tilburg University and Daniel Ehlebracht of the University of Cologne, studied a huge amount of data, and found that the public tends to think cynics and scoffers are smarter than average -- but on actual tests of intelligence, people identified as cynics tend to perform more poorly.  The authors write:

Cynicism refers to a negative appraisal of human nature—a belief that self-interest is the ultimate motive guiding human behavior.  We explored laypersons’ beliefs about cynicism and competence and to what extent these beliefs correspond to reality.  Four studies showed that laypeople tend to believe in cynical individuals’ cognitive superiority.  A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks.  Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment.  Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that—at low levels of competence—holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others’ cunning.

So a strategy that might have come about because of a desire to avoid being hoodwinked morphs into the conviction that everyone is trying to hoodwink you.  While I understand why someone would want to avoid the former, especially if (s)he's fallen prey in the past, assuming everyone is out to get you is not only the lazy way out, it's factually wrong.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Wetsun, Cynicism graffiti, CC BY 2.0]

You know, I think that's one of the most important things I've learned from all the traveling I've done; that everywhere you go, there are good people and bad, kind people and unkind, and that regardless of differences of culture the vast majority of us want the same things -- food, shelter, security, love, safety for our families and friends, the freedom to voice our opinions without fear of repercussions.  The number of people I've run into who really, honestly had ill intent toward me (or toward anyone) were extremely few.

I'll admit, though, that maintaining a healthy, balanced skepticism is hard at times, especially given the polarization of the media lately.  We are very seldom presented with a fair assessment of what's happening, especially insofar as what the opposite side is doing.  Much of the media is devoted to whipping up hatred and distrust of the "other" -- convincing listeners/readers that the opposite party, the other religion(s), the other races or ethnic groups, are unequivocally bad.  Presenting the more complex, nuanced view that there are a few horrible people in every group but that most people are on balance pretty okay, takes a lot more work -- and doesn't attract sponsorship from the corporations who are profiting off the fear, panic, and anger.

It's nice that the Stavrova and Ehlebracht paper supports what I've been claiming for years.  And I'd like to ask you to make a practice of this -- setting aside your preconceived notions and what you've heard from the media, simply looking at the facts and evidence rather than the spin.  I think you'll find that the world is neither the Pollyanna paradise that the gullible believe nor the horrid hellscape in the cynics' minds, but somewhere in that wide middle ground.

And that honestly, it's a much better place to live than either extreme.

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If looks could kill

New from the Why Didn't I Think Of That First department, we have: a guy who performs psychic healing just by looking at people.

Here I thought you had to at least do something to affect a woo-woo cure -- swing some crystals around, say a chant or two, give your patient a homeopathic pill that doesn't contain any medicine -- at least something.

Enter the Croat healer known only as "Braco" (his real name is Josip Grbavac).  Braco, who has apparently been on tour for years and performs to packed houses, gets paid big bucks to sit on a stage for a half hour and stare at the audience.  He doesn't say a word -- just stares, then gets up and leaves, and goes backstage to collect his paycheck.  His gaze is said to have "healing powers."  "People aren't even sure what they're feeling," devotee Sahaja Coventry told a reporter after Braco's appearance at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland.  "But it is a sweetness, it is a loving energy and some people get physical healing, some just feel a sense of peace."

If I had to sit there for a half hour in a dimly-lit room in total silence for a half-hour, I bet I'd feel a sense of peace, too -- I'd probably fall asleep.  But of course, that's not what Coventry et al. are talking about.  Neither do they think they're being hypnotized, which is another possibility.  They really think that Braco is doing something with his eyes, somehow affecting "energy levels" in the room.  Braco, of course, does everything he can to beef up this claim; children and pregnant women are not allowed to attend, because the "energies could be too strong," and he does not let his face be broadcast on television for more than seven-second clips, presumably to prevent some sort of electronically-transmitted overdose of Braco Stare.

My objections, of course, are the usual ones.  First: show me the mechanism.  If you think this guy's gaze can cure your chronic headaches, show me how that could work in such a way that it eliminates the possibility of auto-suggestion.  Another of his followers who was interviewed hinted at the problem when she said, "You have to have an open mind and an open heart, more or less to get this feeling."  Why on earth should this be so?  If the guy is doing something real, how could my attitude make any difference?  You'd think it'd be even more impressive if Braco cured someone who thought he was a fraud.

Second, of course, there's the fact that the whole thing flies in the face of how vision actually works.  When you see, it's not because something's going out from your eyes, it's because something's going into your eyes (namely, light reflected from the object you're looking at).  Vision is receptive, not productive.  The ancients didn't get this, and we see this in some relic expressions like to "throw a glance" at someone, and in holdover beliefs such as the "evil eye."  Certainly, the eyes and face can communicate information; a lot of work has been done on the ease with which the human brain picks up on subtle "microexpressions," and how that effects social interaction.  But that's not what Braco's followers think is happening, here.  They really think that some "force" is leaving his body through his eyes, and traveling to you, and changing your mental and/or physical condition.  To which I say: I seriously doubt it.

In any case, if you'd like to see him (or, actually, to have him see you), you can check out his tour schedule at his website.  And because I just have to, here's a photograph of him, screen-capped from his YouTube channel (of course he has a YouTube channel).  I suggest putting on eye protection before looking at this, and whatever you do, don't leave it staring at you for more than seven seconds!  Don't say I didn't warn you.

On the other hand, I see from his current schedule that he's currently offering live online Braco Gaze.  If there's anything goofier than the idea that a guy on stage could send something to the audience via his gaze, it's that he could do the same thing virtually through a computer monitor.  It reminds me of the piece I did a while back about "Quantum Downloadable Medicines," wherein you pay money to get a download link that when you click it, allegedly downloads curative medicines directly into you.  How it works is never explained; presumably it realigns the qi of your chakras and increases the quantum frequencies of your harmonic resonant subatomic coupling to the universe.

You can see how that makes perfect sense, right?  

Of course, right.

I do wonder, though, about Braco's live online sessions.  How is this any different from seeing him on television?  If it isn't, do you pay money and then only get seven seconds of Braco Stare?  Or does he put some kind of filter on the webcam so that the dosage won't get too high?  So many questions.

Honestly, though, like I said initially, I kind of wish I'd thought of it first.  It seems an easier way to make a living than to do what I do, which is to write novels and hope like hell someone will read them.  If I could make a living just by staring at people from a stage for a half-hour every few nights, I'd could ditch all the editing and promotion and marketing and so on, and have a great deal more free time than I currently have (not to mention making a great deal more money).  But Braco seems to have cornered the Psychic Stare market, so I'll have to come up with a different angle.  Hey, I know!  Maybe you could just send me a check for a hundred dollars, and I'll gently place my fingertips on your signature for five minutes.  It will communicate healing energy through the psychic link established through your signature.  You'll feel better immediately.  Trust me.

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What's bred in the bone

See this innocent-looking face?

This is Cleo.  She's a Shiba Inu, a Japanese breed (the name means "underbrush dog" because they were used for hunting small game in overgrown places).  We adopted her from a rescue facility in December, and she has settled right into our home, including becoming best buds with our other dog, a big, goofy pittie mix named Guinness.

Cleo is sweet, charming, funny, playful, and cuddly.  However, she is also stubborn, independent, willful, and has zero interest in learning commands for rewards.  For any rewards.  She is the only dog I have ever met who is completely unmotivated by food.  She sort of likes cheese, so that occasionally works, but she approaches everything with the attitude, "I'm doing this only because I want to.  And if I don't want to, even cheese doesn't tempt me."

For example, shortly after we adopted her, we installed a dog door (once it became obvious that she wanted in and out dozens of times a day).  And for weeks, she steadfastly refused to use it.  We were becoming convinced that she wasn't smart enough to figure out how it worked.  Turns out she understood perfectly well, she just didn't want to.  Last week she started using the dog door -- going through it, both directions, as if it was nothing.  Apparently she wasn't going to do it until she made it clear to us that it was her decision.

Then there's her volubility.  There's a phenomenon called the "Shiba scream," which was one of many things we didn't find out about her breed until after we adopted her.  When she's excited by something good like my wife pulling into the driveway, or there's a red-alert situation like the FedEx guy or a cyclist going past or a squirrel farting somewhere in the next county, she goes -- and this is as accurate a transcription of it as I can manage -- "ruff ruff ruff rrrrOOOWWRRROOO WAAAAAHHWAAH WAAHWAAH."  She also barks when she's excited, or (especially) when she wants something and we are not providing it right away as we, of course, should.  This includes taking her on a walk at two in the morning, a habit that led my wife to christen her "Demon-Spawn Dog," or, more succinctly, "Beelzebark."

It's not that we don't love her, or don't appreciate her positive qualities, of which there are lots.  Something my wife and I have said about 358 times since adopting her is, "She is so cute -- fortunately for her."  It turns out we're not alone in this experience of Shiba Inus.  Here's what the site Shiba Rescue has to say:

In their eyes, Shibas can take on the world no matter how big the foe or the task.  They are dominant with other dogs and do not usually get along well with other "bossy" dogs of the same sex.  Many Shibas will, however, get along great with another dog or cat that agrees the Shiba is boss.

Shibas always like to be in charge; their favorite word is "mine."  Although not "barky" dogs, they do yodel and scream anytime they feel they are being violated, such as nail trimming, bathing, and leash training.  Shibas can be runners.  The Shiba Inu is a natural hunter.  Given a chance, Shibas will take off in search of game.  It is advisable to never trust your Shiba off-lead unless in a fenced yard.

The Shiba's least favorite word is "come."  They will usually take your number and get back to you, when called.

Shibas have a mind of their own.  While it is possible to obedience train a Shiba, it is a challenge.  Tell him to sit and he sits . . . sometimes.  If there is something in it for him, and it is convenient at the time.

The first thing I thought after reading this (besides "Amen!") was how interesting it is that you can characterize an entire breed like this, irrespective of how an individual animal was raised.  Not that prior treatment is inconsequential; one thing that Cleo still exhibits is wariness from having been abused as a puppy (you'll notice if you look closely at the photograph that she's missing her left eye).  But the fact that you can draw a detailed picture of a typical Shiba personality like this indicates something fascinating -- that a great deal of dog behavior is controlled by genetics, not by training.

Way back in 2008, a paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics considered this phenomenon, and suggested that these kinds of behavioral trends are caused by a fairly small number of genes (and speculated that the same sort of thing may be true of human personality types).  A more recent 2019 study looked specifically at canine aggression and fearfulness, and found that those have between sixty and seventy percent heritability.  Consider how many breeds you characterize in a word or two  -- the friendliness of Golden Labs, the intelligence and always-on-the-job attitude of a Border Collie, the aggressiveness (despite its size) of a Chihuahua.  And Shibas are not the only ones who have built-in, almost certainly genetic, difficult behaviors; a friend of mine once told me that if you want an exercise in frustration, try to house-train a Cocker Spaniel.  This kind of thing has an unfortunate effect on dog owners who are unprepared or uninformed.  A particularly sad example is that after the movie One Hundred and One Dalmatians aired, there was a run on Dalmatian puppies -- and six months later, an influx of Dalmatians being given up at shelters.  Far from the cute, cuddly stereotype of the puppies from the movie, as a breed Dalmatians tend to be high-stung, nervous, reserved, and aggressive; they are considered to be one of the top-ten breeds most likely to bite, and a great many of the people who adopted a Dalmatian puppy very quickly regretted their choice.

I say this knowing, of course, that "unprepared and uninformed" is a pretty good description of my wife and I when we adopted Cleo.  However, in our defense I have to add that we're experienced dog owners with a history of adopting rescues, just about all of whom have had bad pasts and the attendant behavior problems -- and we have yet to own a dog who hasn't turned out to be a wonderful and charming, if quirky, companion.  We strongly believe that pet adoption is forever; if you can't commit, don't adopt.  (I do reconsider that stance on occasion when Cleo starts screaming in the middle of the night, but those lapses are short-lived.)

So we're not expecting Cleo's personality to change, and indeed, we don't want it to.  She's a charmer even when she's being a pain in the ass.  We'd like to modify some of it -- such as the twice-aforementioned barking for something in the wee hours -- but by and large, those kinds of characteristics are what make dogs interesting.

It reminds me of the famous quote from John Heywood, "What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh."  There's a lot of truth to that, for better or worse.  For better at the moment; right now, Cleo is cuddled up at the foot of the bed, paws twitching as she dreams of chasing squirrels.  And she's already become part of the family, difficulties and all.  Whatever the source, each dog's personality is as rich and varied as each person's is, something I've come to appreciate more and more with every dog we've adopted.  And we've always been rewarded tenfold by having pets -- receiving love for kindness, devotion for care, deep trust for patience.

For me, that makes it all worthwhile.

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