Scot Bastian Ph.D.
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"Life Force" a Poem About Evolution in Honor of Burning Man

8/26/2015

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Yo! It's that time of year again, and I'm about to leave for TTITD (That Thing In The Desert), AKA Burning Man. In celebration of this epic event, I have written an epic poem about evolution which I will read at a couple of events on the Playa. For those not attending this event, below is a copy. If you're coming to Burning Man this year come and visit me and we can chat.

THE LIFE FORCE
     by Scot Bastian © 2015
     Camp Althing in Hushville at 5:15 and E.

I sit under the palm trees, breathing in the trade winds, as the cirrus clouds sweep by calling, calling, ever so quietly: come. Bring your dreams to the ocean, my friend. Come to the sea. My eyes open and the sun is falling and the fish jump to escape the sea lions and the sea lions flee the sharks. Come, come to me. Poseidon, my father, you are so deep. So blue. So kind. So limitless. With the foam hissing on the shore and the waves rising and falling. I ask why?

Never mind the why, just tell me when.

Such are my dreams. 


It is hard to imagine time.
From molten marble, to pale blue dot
the rumbling Earth awakens from its fiery past. It is also hard to imagine liquid rock.
To parse time into increments does it a disservice, for each moment is infinitely divisible.
Four and a half billion years.

Did I begin with a bang?

The crack of a lightning bolt
     striking a pond of dark ooze?
Or did I begin with a bubble
     clinging to the edge of a volcanic vent?
Perhaps I started elsewhere
     arriving on an ancient meteor originating from another planet.

I guess I’ll never know,
    but I wonder.

Molecules break apart, then recombine. 

Rare events that seem to defy entropy.
But the sun can reverse entropic chaos.
Patterns are formed. Order from disorder. Repeating units. Molecular arrays.
My life force traverses through millennia.
Adapting.
Becoming.

Then the sun goes and the sky blackens and my eyes close. I dream of mermaids and mermen skipping through the surf. Playing games of tag and singing songs. Joyous chortling and catching breaths. The sea never stops, you know, mermen and mermaids never die. They never stop cavorting through the waves. They also never eat, living in a continuous state of delight, giggling and guffawing forever. A mad loop of laughter and frantic swimming. Their favorite game is tag, but everyone wants to be “it.” They so love to chase. They never tire. They never cease.

Such are my dreams.

And here I swim at the edge of the sea
Not quite a land dweller, yet not a typical fish.
I am a mudskipper.

When the tide is low there are many things to see.
The bones of my mind are exposed.
I wish to crawl freely onto the land, but I am attached.
It will take many years until I can emerge freely.

Then she arises as Botticelli’s Venus from the clam shell. I, waiting like a child. Wanting. Wanting it so. And she smiles. Botticelli’s Venus, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and the countless Virgin Marys all bear the same smile. It is the smile of Earth-mother ever expecting. Let me lie in your arms Goddess-of-all. Gaia. Demeter. Diana, Goddess of the Moon. Can I just curl up in your arms? Can I be your child and feel the warmth of your breast. Caress me, not like a God, but hold me like a mother. Come Mother, and find me. And she does.

Such are my dreams.

In the tide pool, the sea stars have nowhere to go, nor do they want to. But I gulp spoons of warm sunshine, and gaze longingly at the shore. I break the surface with a rapid exhalation of breath. I crawl from my saltwater birthplace, carrying the salt within my veins. I cannot escape the sea—I carry it with me. I am newly-born. Emergent! I am cold mother. I walk the sand on the beach. Am I the child of the fish or the cousin of the mudskipper? The frog prince. My ventral sacs swell as I push out air. It is not a croak, it is a song. Others respond and we multiply. My skin hardens, as I breathe more freely. I walk slowly munching on the jungle. Now, so tall I can reach the canopy. Roaring with the gods! But, like the gods, I am arrogant, and thus fade. Fade away. Raging fires always blow out. Embers burn slowly, red hot, but inconspicuous, I live in the shadows of giants. Did my ancestors nibble on the eggs of the terrible lizards, contributing to their demise?

When I first escaped the ocean did I know that some my descendants would crawl back?

Are the dinosaurs the ghosts of birds? When the mighty fall I take wing. Soaring in the atmosphere, I look down not at the smallness of all things, but at the largeness of the expanse. The wind rushes through me. I am drawn again to the seashore. I light upon the cliff face and stuff bits of crab into my nestlings mouths. They are such beggars. They rustle their wings, nearly casting each other off the cliff side. I turn a gaze at the sea. The waves crash, exploding on the cliff.

My nose wiggles and my tail grows. I learn to scurry and then to run, launching onto my rear haunches I lean forward the wind whistling and then roaring through my hair. I plop down and survey the scene. Cycads and lichens abound. I gaze at the curl of the horizon and want more.

When the tide is low there are many things to see. When spirits are low and exposed, like driftwood washing onto the beach, my smooth, white, desires bake in the sun. The gulls call and drop from the sky, poking around, seeking bits of rotting fish and beached crabs. The air is rank and heavy, like a salty barnyard with fish-soaked silage. Stones and sand are interspersed with bits of glass rendered smooth by the waves grinding in the tumble of churning sand. The horizon curves into infinity, stretching in all directions. But I look to the sea. The sun shines, but it has no carefully circumscribed edge. I close my eyes again.

Such are my dreams.

My parents sort, and pair off, performing the love dance and the gene shuffle.
And I am conceived.
I dig into the wall of mother’s uterus, a spelunker in the primordial cave.
I dig deeper, releasing enzymes that allow me to burrow and implant.
Can I want, or do I only exist?
Can a fetus ask a question?
And now, I am man.
But what is man?
How far back do I go?
I am the sum of all my ancestors.
I am not the endpoint.
The journey is not over.
The life force continues to transform and grow.
How long will the journey last?
How can I know?
Perhaps, I will reach for the stars…Such are my dreams.

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A Poem for Geeky Skeptics

8/11/2015

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GO BOLDLY
   by Scot Bastian (with apologies to Dylan Thomas)
Is there a quark in your belfry?
A meme in your bonnet?
Do you, and yours, wax eusocial?
Do you try to grok the neurosciences?
Are you a heterogeneous, Homo sapiens, or, perhaps, a transhumanist?



Do you argue:
Charon or Karon?
Sagan or Tyson?
Cosmos 1 or 2?
Star Wars or Star Trek?
Kirk or Picard?
And who is right:
Hawking and Musk, or Krause?
Are your dreams peppered with the stars of the cosmos, rather than the stars of    Hollywood?
Do you love NASA more than the NFL?
Do you dream of androids dreaming of electric sheep?
Do you love spiders and snakes?

Do you ask these questions--and dream these dreams?
Then, I extend my welcome. 
For you and I are in the same tribe.

We are star stuff.


I exhort you!
Do not go gentle into that vacuous pit of the culturally inane
Rage, rage against the dumbing of the mind!

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Plutopalooza! Three local Seattle Events!

7/14/2015

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Oh, what fun! This week the New Horizons NASA Mission to flyby Pluto is coming to fruition. As I have said before, NASA is, by far, my favorite government agency. I am in continuous awe of what the NASA engineers can get done across the unbelievable expanse of space. And they often do it flawlessly. One of the things I learned this week, is how big that Charon, the moon of Pluto, compared to the planetoid. Check out this recent, false-color image of Pluto next to Charon (Note: The distance between the two is also false.)
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Another striking fact, is that both Pluto and Charon are much smaller than Earth. Below is a depiction that I find striking. Note that this might be fractionally off, because now that we're in the neighborhood, it seems that Pluto is a little larger than we thought. It's still only about the size of the US.
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One interesting speculation that I have, is I wonder if the flyby mission wasn't launched a few months before pluto was "demoted" from planet to planetoid, if this mission would have taken a different trajectory. No matter, Pluto is still the coolest dwarf planet I know. 

There are three Pluotopalooza Parties brewing locally that I know about, one is right here in West Seattle tonight at the library, another celebration by Astronomy On Tap, tomorrow, July 15th and yet another big celebration at the Museum of Flight on Sunday the 19th. Woo-Hoo, go get yer astrofix! 
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Trepidation About Trepanation?

1/1/2015

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   What is your favorite surgery? Mine, without a doubt, is trepanation. Trepanation is the deliberate creation of a hole in the head using surgery, exposing the Dura Mater (thick covering) of the brain. This website, "The Trepanation Guide" which advocates trepanation, describes it as "...oldest surgical procedure practiced by mankind."  I found what I consider a more responsible description in Wikipedia as "perhaps the oldest surgical procedure for which there is archaeological evidence." After all, doesn't it seem reasonable that soft tissue surgeries, such as castration or appendix removal, may have been performed or attempted, without leaving a trace?
   Evidence of trepanation is widespread, and has been traced back to neolithic times in Europe and at least 2500 years ago in South America. Below are pictures of an Incan skull from Peru (left). In ancient Peru trepanation was apparently fairly common--approximately 1000 Incan skulls have been identified. The picture on the right was discovered in Germany. One archaeological site in France identified 40 out of 120 skulls that had been trepanated. Many trepanated skulls have multiple holes, with the margins of "successful" surgeries often showing signs of healing. Sharper edged holes may indicate an "unsuccessful" surgery. Success rates have been estimated 75-80% in South America, and a remarkable 90% in Europe. 


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   I find it surprising that, given the absence of antibiotics and modern anesthesia, that they had any success at all.
   Why would anyone want to have a hole bored in their head? One can imagine that ancient humans might have used the technique to try and treat headaches, dizziness, epilepsy, evil spirits, tumors, head injuries, hematomas, etc.--virtually anything that might be related to the head. But, widespread use of trepanation and the presence of as many as 4, 5 or even 7 holes, might suggest a ritual aspect of the surgery. With the advent of modern medicine, trepanning has largely, gone the way of blood letting and bulbing, as an archaic treatment. There are modern, defensible uses of trepanation, to treat hematomas and assorted brain surgeries, but, of course, the bone is generally replaced after the surgical procedure (Many docs play golf. I wonder if they mumble to themselves "Always replace your divots," at the close of surgery.)
   However, there are a few advocates of the surgery for its supposed psychological benefits. Bart Huges, sometimes spelled Hughes, saw trepanation as a "pathway to higher consciousness." A recurring theme that I see in advocates is that it is an attempt to increase blood flow to the brain in an attempt to recapture the plasticity and "happier and more energetic" state of mind in an infant. The rationale is that the flexible fontanel (soft spot) in a baby's cranium allows for more blood flow, which is restricted with hardening of the skull as we mature. The result of the surgery, as the "Trepanation Guide" expresses it, is that you are “…happier, more energetic and less prone to crippling bouts of ennui. You'll ascend to the child's plane of acute consciousness from which you disembarked to enter the lowly malaise of adulthood." 
   Hmm, to put it mildly, I have my doubts regarding the benefits.
   Joey Mellen wrote a book called Bore Hole, which described his experiments with trepanation. His first attempt was unsuccessful. Mellen ended up hospitalized and was recommended for "psychiatric evaluation." His second attempt, with the aid of his girlfriend Amanda Fielding, worked. As Mellen described it,

“After some time there was an ominous sounding schlurp and the sound of bubbling. I drew the trepan out and the gurgling continued. It sounded like air bubbles running under the skull as they were pressed out. I looked at the trepan and there was a bit of bone in it. At last!”

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   Yeeesh, not something I would want to go through. Fielding later trepanned herself. Here is a link to an interview with Amanda Fielding, who founded the Beckley Foundation, which investigates consciousness and advocates drug reform, ran for office in the British Parliament in 1979 and 1983, although she described her candidacy as more of an "art project," intended to "try to get the medical profession to agree that [tepanation] is an interesting subject and is worthy of research,"rather than a serious attempt to get elected. Below is an interesting campaign poster. 


 There is an hour long documentary called "A Hole in the Head," which is available for purchase. I haven't seen the film, but it might be interesting. 
   If you want more info more on trepanation I recommend the Skeptic's dictionary and from this article from Charles D. Gross at Princeton. 
   Let me close with a couple videos. On the left is an interview with Bobby Lund, an advocate of trepanation, and on the right is a toe-tappin' light-hearted look at the process(along with some other interesting history of anatomy) from Zoochosis. 

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Newsvertising, Er, I Mean, Native Advertising, in the News

8/10/2014

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A few weeks ago I blogged about a new word, along with some other interesting words, that I coined, newsvertising. Well, interestingly, John Oliver has had some commentary on the concept, which he calls "native advertising." I still like my term better, but I have to admit that his take on the concept is pretty dang funny. 

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Breaking Bad Puns

7/9/2014

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TV Pilot for the Hallmark Channel: A drug lord swears off his criminal past to volunteer to teach inner-city disadvantaged kids how to read. The name of the the show? "Breaking Good." (Sorry, had to type it.)

TV pilot for the Cooking Channel: Mild-mannered high school teacher quits his job to "cook" highly-addictive GMO-laden, gluten-containing bread. Second season preview: Dave's Killer Bread muscles in on his territory, leading to an ever-increasing spiral of violence The problem is GMO foods and gluten are found to be harmless. Nobody dies. Canceled after first season due to the absence of drama. The name of the show? "Baking Bad." (You may unfriend me now.)

TV pilot for Animal Planet: A disgruntled dog leaves obedience school and teams up with an unlikely partner, a streetwise punk known as Hepcat to extract and sell 99% pure catnip crystal, noted for its slightly green tinge. The cat population becomes so addicted they entirely stop making videos, thus threatening to bring the Internet to a screeching halt. A pack of rival dogs moves in on the action. Hepcat, hopelessly addicted to crystal catnip, is no help in repelling the turf invasion, forcing Head Dog to take matters into his own paws. After several fruitless days of marking territory Head Dog contracts rabies followed by a maniacal slaughter of the invading pack. Alas, Head Dog, foaming at the mouth, expires due to a combination of inflicted wounds and disease. Hepcat disappears into the night, nowhere to be found. The name of the show: "Barking Bad." (Are you still there?)

TV pilot for Arts and Entertainment: Mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher quits to become a rogue poet and playwright, feeding the masses what they really crave: addictive quality entertainment. Alas and alack, much to his surprise, his sonnets and plays (all in diabolically tempting iamabic pentameter) prove to be irresistible to intellectuals everywhere, threatening to crater the entirety of academia. The rogue, shadowy, figure, known by the street pseudonym Heisenspeare, now in full control of the public mind, segues into the truly addictive and banal reprogramming: Pawn Stars. Duck Dynasty, Bigfoot Hunters, The Long Island Medium, The Dr Oz Show. Millions are transfixed, and drift into brainwashed catatonia. PBS attempts to mount a counteroffensive, but lacking in funds, all they can do to repel the attack is broadcast thinly-disguised infomercials, Yanni concerts, and "Lords of the Dance" reruns. Several Downton Abbey actors resign in protest and have to be "eliminated." Heisenspeare, now a media kingpin, feeling the walls closing in, screams "My kingdom for a horse!" and "To be, or not to be!" It ends with Heisenspeare, killing himself with a self-inflicted knife wound. His last words: "Remember my name." The name of the show? "Breaking Bard" (You really want to remove this blog from your bookmark list now, don't you?)
 

I have at least ten more of these. Hang on a second, there are a couple of guys ringing my doorbell. They're wearing white coats. I wonder what they want. I'll be back in a minute.

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A Skeptic Looks at Elephants

6/25/2014

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    Tuesday of last week I gave a talk to the Seattle Skeptics Meetup dinner (Sorry, the link only works for Meetup members) called "A Skeptic Looks at ELEPHANTS." This is a follow-up blog post containing some of the info and links from the talk.
    A couple months ago I blogged about the possibility of crows showing behavior resembling a funeral ritual. I discussed this with caveats about the dangers of analyzing of animals by applying human standards, known as anthropomorphism. But what of elephants? Do elephants have funerals? Do they have feelings? How intelligent or altruistic are they? Are there elephant artists? Should they be afforded the same ethic standards that we apply to humans? Or, is this all just anthropomorphising?
    First, let me say that I think elephants are one of the coolest critters in the world. It is hard to imagine that Mastodons wandered around in North America up until about 10,000 years ago and wooly mammoths did not become extinct until about 4,000 years ago. Contrast that with dinosaurs, which disappeared about 60 million years ago. In fact, human hunting is thought to be a major contributor to the demise of both species. Too bad. I think it would be neat to have elephant-like animals in my back yard (Well, maybe not.).
    But we still have elephants, the largest land animals in the world. I highlight elephants, because, it seems to me, to be one of the harder examples of animals to be dismissive of what appears to be human-like behavior. Here's an excellent article  from Scientific American Magazine about elephants that I recommend.
    An interesting aside, when I was researching this topic, I learned of a new word (DYT Blog readers know how much I love words)--the opposite of anthropomorphism-- "theriomorphism," i.e. to ascribe animal characteristics to humans (Quit acting like an ape, ya knucklehead. She eats like a bird!).

    So, what of elephants? In what ways do they resemble humans?
    For one thing, they're very intelligent. Proportionate to body size, elephant brains are very large, and seem to be organized similar to humans. (Note: This proportion is a pretty crude, and sometimes misleading, indication of intelligence. More info here.) In terms of intelligence, elephants seem to be comparable to cetaceans (whales and dolphins), corvids (crows, ravens, magpies and jays), and non-human primates.  Elephants have a strong sense of community, in a matriarchal system. They also have high levels of what appears to be emotional intelligence, with strong senses of empathy and altruism, possibly even across species. Here's a Wikipedia link on elephant cognition, which lists a wide variety of abilities, "...
including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and language." Wow! Quite a list. I really had no idea, when I started researching this topic, that elephants had that many skills.    
    Check out the video below, where, Kandula, an elephant at the National Zoo figured out how to use a cube to reach food that was suspended just out of reach overhead. This shows pretty good evidence of creative problem-solving and tool using skills, but elephants have a lot more indications of higher
cognition.


    Here's an interesting experiment. A device was constructed that allowed elephants to receive a reward if two elephants operated a pulley device. (Watch the video below to see how exactly it was designed.)This measured not only problem-solving skills, but their ability to cooperate.
Something I didn't know before looking into this topic is that elephants can be parrots; i.e. they can be mimics, that, with a little help from their trunks, emulate human speech. Check out the video below.
    Here's  a link to another interesting video of a scientist studying elephant communication through ground vibrations.
    Below are some videos showing examples of supposed elephant "art" that set my skeptic-sense tingling. Have you ever heard of elephant painting? How about an elephant orchestra? Below are three videos of so-called elephant "art." And, not to be outdone, one example of dolphin "art."
    So, what do I make of all this? I really can't see a lot of evidence of creativity, which is the hallmark of art. What I do see are well-trained elephants. I was going to do a lot more digging on this topic, but Snopes has already done most of the grunt work for me. I will say though that I'm mightily impressed by the dexterity of their trunks! I think this is pretty much a harmless way to mine for tourist souvenir dollars, but I'm dubious that this indicates real creative, i.e. artistic, expression.
    In contrast, I'm a little less doubtful of the possibility of elephant funerals. Apparently, elephants have been known to remain near a dead companion for a long time after they expired. Here is an account from the Wikipedia article cited above.
Elephant researcher Martin Meredith recalls an occurrence in his book about a typical elephant death ritual that was witnessed by Anthony Hall-Martin, a South African biologist who had studied elephants in Addo, South Africa, for over eight years. The entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf, were all gently touching her body with their trunks, trying to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream, but then the entire herd fell incredibly silent. They then began to throw leaves and dirt over the body and broke off tree branches to cover her. They spent the next two days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return.
    Apparently, reports like these are not at all uncommon. Check out the video below. Although the camera-placement, and enhanced spooky music suggest it is a bit staged, I think it conveys the idea that elephants are pretty curious about this dead body of their own kind.
    Are elephants afraid of mice? Below is a video that kind of surprised me. The guys of Mythbuster's fame tested this and found this possibility "plausible." Check it out. What do you think?
    My take is that, this can be criticized on several different levels: 1) a test with a brown mouse might have been preferable, 2) The test may have been repeatable, but it looks like they only tested one or two elephants, and 3) It's not at all obvious that the elephants didn't shy away simply because they were startled by by rapid movements not at all specific to mice (elephants have poor eyesight.) But hey, they did do a control with they empty dung ball, and they did repeat the experiment, and they illustrated the idea that when you do an experiment, you don't always get the expected outcome. I also give them credit for stating that the legend of mouse-fearing elephants is "plausible" rather than "definitive." I find their result intriguing. 
    I concluded my talk with a discussion of the ethics of keeping elephants in zoos and circuses. This is a tough call for me. I encourage the reader to give some thought about the ethics of keeping such large, intelligent, animals in a zoo enclosure, or transported from city to city to perform in circuses. Here's an article that lists the pros and cons of Zoos.  Zoos have done a lot of work to try and preserve species through captive breeding programs. There are more tigers in captivity now than in the wild. In addition many zoos have worked to create a more humane environment for the animals, providing more space and trying to preserve family structures--very hard to do with elephants, given their complex family structure and large size. Zoos educate the public, particularly important in cities where nature is scarce. I think the experience of seeing and elephant or a polar bear in a zoo can go a long way toward creating an appreciation and public awareness for natural history, and may encourage the preservation of ecosystems and even mitigation of the global climate change crisis. In other words, one might invoke a "greater good argument." reminiscent of arguments justifying the use of animals in medical research for the greater good of benefiting human beings, in developing an understanding of, or even cures, for disease. Similarly, it may be defensible to keep charismatic zoo and circus animals for the benefits accrued in public entertainment and education. But, to re-state my position, this is a tough call for me, and I would hope that zoos would provide as ideal and humane an environment for the animals as possible.
    A few years ago this was a prominent local issue in the Seattle area when a baby elephant died in the local Woodland Park Zoo. I invite you to check out the local news coverage if you want details.
    So, that is the basic outline of my talk. I really feel like it would take a lot more than a one hour talk to do this subject justice. I haven't read this book,
"
The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa," by Caitlin O'Connell, but it seems quite highly regarded by reviewers at Amazon, if you want more info. Maybe I'll read that next.
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Vegetable Woo: Asparagus Clairvoyance, Tasseography, and Electric Pickles.

2/25/2014

3 Comments

 
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I guess food is near and dear to all of us. A few weeks ago I blogged about breatharianism, featuring the very interesting "experiment" performed by Naveena Shine. Today I'd like to blog about the interesting relationship between the world of vegetables and woo.
    Maybe, I should have added this to the list of interesting words that I blogged about previously, but here's a great one: "Tasseography" (AKA tasseomancy) which is a fortune-telling technique that uses tea leaf or coffee ground residue, or wine sediments as a means of separating gullible people from their money. Part of a long tradition of shysters that include palm readers, tarot card readers, crystal ball readers etc. who are expert at "cold reading;" that is, using clues, often aided by leading questions, conveyed by their victims to answer questions about their relationships, money problems and their futures. The video on the below left features a woman who describes herself as an "energist" and a clairvoyant. She has "a gift." Add a few great feel good-buzzwords like, "transformation," "resonated," "comfort and peace" "empowered" some lit candles, and gruvy new agey music and what-do-ya got? a nice newsvertisement video. I really hate the way that psychics twist words and concepts like "energy" or "intuition." Exactly what sort of energy is radiated by tea leaves? The only intuitive powers that psychics have are their ability to cold read their hapless victims. The middle video is another example of a tasseographer. This woman is apparently both an "Inner Faith Priestess" AND an "interfaith Priestess" and a shamanist. Why not? More new agey background music. The tea leaves are a "gift from the cosmos." Blah, blah, blah.  But, why limit yourself to tasseomancy, when there are so many other plants? Below right is a different kind of quackmeister, she foretells the future using asparagus. That's right, she's "the world's only asparamancer." Will wonders never cease?


For my last entry into the vegetable woo hall of fame allow me to introduce Grandpa John and his electric pickle demonstration. Somehow Grandpa John twists glowing pickles as analogous to the energy that god puts into Christians. Confused? Oh, just watch the video, Gramps makes it all crystal clear. Not only is the glowing pickle cool, but you gotta love his sweater.
So, what to make of all this? I don't need to be an asparamancer to predict a cold, rainy day in Seattle. I predict my future holds a nice, tasty, bowl of homemade soup which will warm my innards this evening. Yummy.
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Raccoonitude to the Max. #chupacabra #raccoon

2/12/2014

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A few weeks ago I blogged about some words that have caught my attention. One of them was "raccoonitude," which I define as "the attitude of trying to get away with something, and when caught, being so charming that you feel like you should be entitled to your peccadillo, and thus, you might just get away with it."  Below is a video of a perfect example.

    This reminds me of a raccoon encounter that I had a few years ago. It involved myself, my cat, Alex, and what Dangblog described as a "hideous yowling destructo-animal." I didn't have a blog back then, but Dang pretty much got the facts right. Here is the quote from his blog entry:
"After watching a horror movie at a theater, Scot came home and entered his house. His cat is there, looking very anxious. From inside the house comes a ghastly shrieking howl; part-animal, part-banshee. This is followed by a loud crash of breaking glass as the sliding glass door in the back of his house shatters. Alex, the cat, freaks out and runs full bore into an unbroken part of the glass door and bounces off. He disappears into the shadows.

What the hell happened? It’s elementary, my dear Watson. When Scot is out, he leaves a window open a cat’s width for Alex to come into the house. The window is several feet off the ground. While at the movies, a raccoon entered through the window, scarfed cat food, and maybe was casing out the rest of the house when Scot walked in. The coon, scared by the sudden appearance of Scot, bolted for what looked like the outdoors but he was unfamiliar with the concept of glass. His thick skull smashed through the glass door and he escaped. No blood was found. Maybe the animal went to a local emergency room with a concussion. Alex, terrified by both raccoon and window crash, did exactly the same thing as the raccoon, only he was too small to break a window. He was found the next day; uninjured, but a little reluctant to come home. No raccoon was actually ever spotted in this incident, but a previous raccoon invasion made one these bandits the most likely suspect. "

As Dang recounted, I never did confirm with certainty, that it was a raccoon, but other than a chupacabra, I really don't know what else it could have been. The previous raccoon invasion was evidenced by what were apparent raccoon paw prints on the window. Let's examine the myth of the chupacabra, one of my favorite cryptozoids. El chupacabra (not to be confused with the Seattle restaurant) translates as "goat sucker," for it's reported habit of sucking the blood of goats.
    An interesting aside is there is a family of birds, the nightjars, or caprimulgidae, who are (falsely) reputed to suck the milk of goats. Their name comes from the bird's habit of flying over herds of goats with their mouths open to feed on stirred-up insects. But I digress.
    The existence or a "real" chupacabra has never been verified. They usually prove to be hideous-looking canids who, because of disease (often mange) or genetics, are lacking hair.
    They remind me of nude mice, which are often used in medical research, because, in addition to being hairless, nude mice lack a thymus, a feature important in the study of cancer and the immune system. I propose that nude mice be renamed as "chupamousra." But I digress (again).
    So, how can I be certain that the intruder was a raccoon and not a chupacabra? I never actually saw the animal and there was no blood to test, and although the incriminating paw prints strongly suggest it was actually a raccoon, it is possible, that it was BOTH. There are a few instances (see video below) of a reported chups that later on were proven to be hairless raccoons. I suppose, although I strongly doubt it, that it could have even been a small coyote, or even a "chupacoyote," (Yes, I made up that word too.) since there have been numerous documented cases of wild coyotes right here in West Seattle.

    One further digression I'd like to make--my last, I promise--is that I often see fears expressed and propagated by the local news that getting bit by a raccoon in Washington state could lead to a series of painful rabies vaccinations. It is my hope that the local medical establishment realizes that rabies, according to the Washington State Department of Health, for reasons I don't understand, is not endemic to the local raccoon population, although it has been found in bats.
    Anyhow, one of the puzzling aspects of the "hideous yowling destructo-animal incident" is the paradoxical behavior of my cat. What was Alex thinking when he tried to bash his brains out on the adjacent window pane? I can think of several possibilities: 1) Ego. That is, "This stupid raccoon thinks he can breakout at will, well I can too." Alex apparently was unaware of Newton's Laws of Motion, i.e., F=MA. He might have had the acceleration, but probably not the mass of the putative raccoon, thus not enough force to break the window; 2) Anger. Maybe, he thought, particularly since this bastard ate all his food, that with this human backing him up, he could kick the raccoon's ass; 3) My favored interpretation, confusion and stupidity. Although Alex was a very intelligent cat, he was just a cat--and cats can definitely be stupid. He seemed to recover fully from the ordeal--and so did I--although it cosy me about $400 to repair the window. Alas, ten years after adopting me, Alex disappeared, I'm almost certain that he's in cat heaven now. Unfortunately, supposedly cats don't go to heaven--but that's hard to prove.
Below are a couple of pictures of Alex, chupacabra ass-kicker. Come to think of it, he was a pretty big cat!
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Below is a selection of chupacabra videos for your enjoyment.
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Words, Words, Wonderful Words (Part 3) Moving Targets #diffability #quenelle #newsvertising # racconitude #janky #evangedouche #psychonaut

1/11/2014

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This is the third and final blog post on this topic about words that are either new or new to me. Previous entries can be accessed here and here



   
Diffability
or handicapable are new to me. Diffability is defined by Word-Spy as, "A disability, especially one that causes or encourages the person to develop different or special abilities." The earliest citation for diffability that Word-Spy could identify is from Tim Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics, in 1997. Diffability is a great example of how words can indicate a changing society. Almost no one that I know uses the terms crippled or retarded, which have morphed into handicapped, and have now evolved into disabled or challenged. Now, it seems, that the correct appellation is "diffabled." Okay by me. I have witnessed this evolution with many words. Here's a handy chart:


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When I was in elementary school in suburban Chicago (in the 60s) it was somewhat acceptable to use the "N-word" but one almost never used the "F-word." Now the frequency of use is reversed. I recall that us kids would all jump into a frenzied "nigger-pile." I also recall a counting rhyme:

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a nigger by the toe.
If he hollers, let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

Later on the word "nigger" was replaced with tiger. I recall my grandmother telling me that there was an audible gasp in the theaters when Rhett Butler delivered the now famous quote from the 1929 film Gone With the Wind, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!" Shocking!--for the time a swear word in the movies. The point is, that language is ever-evolving. This is not necessarily bad, but it is always interesting, and the words diffabled and handicapable are two fascinating examples of language in motion.
    A quenelle salute (or gesture) is recognized when one arm is directed downwards diagonally with the other hand touching its opposite shoulder. (See pic below). It is often considered an anti-establishment, scatalogical, or an anti-semitic inverted Nazi salute. The term quenelle comes from a disgusting-looking creamed fish or meat dish. There are lots of interesting salutes in the world. Below are pictures of a few. 

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My personal favorite is the Vulcan salute (upper left hand corner.). The quenelle is demonstrated in the upper right. Time will tell if the quenelle salute lasts, or whether it is just a fad. My guess is that if enough people are offended by it, it may last awhile. If people are wise enough to ignore it, it will die.
    Newsvertising is a word that I made up. Who knows if it will catch on. I define it as a news release which is really just a clever advertisement. Examples of newsvertising? Here are several:1)Contests by the Mars Candy Company to either name a replacement color or name a new color of M&Ms candy. 2)What seems like an annual release of the McDonald's McRib sandwich. 3) Amazon announcing on the news show "60 Minutes" the planned development of delivery drones, conveniently announced just prior to the height of the Christmas shopping season. 4) A very recent favorite, Kraft Foods announcing a "supposed" shortage of Velveeta "alleged" cheese. I write "supposed" because I wonder if this shortage isn't entirely contrived, and "alleged" because I think Velveeta is to cheese what cardboard is to a tree. All of these are examples of what I dub newsvertising. I really can't blame these companies, this is an absolute gold mine of free advertising, but I really wish the media would display at least a modicum of integrity (not likely, I know) and just let these obvious manipulative machinations just die before they become memes.
    Raccoonitude. I overheard this word at a local Burning Man event CriticaLand (see below). I can't remember the exact definition bestowed by its utterer, so I'll just make one up. Raccoons are really cute, but very devious. Raccoonitude is the attitude of trying to get away with something, and when caught, being so charming that you feel like you should be entitled to your peccadillo, and thus, you might just get away with it. Below is a video by the "Undisputed Truth."  The song is called Smiling Faces Sometimes," a perfect description of raccoonitude.


    Janky. I first heard this word in relation to a Burning Man regional gathering in the Seattle area put together by Critical Northwest. The CriticaLand theme for this year was "The Jankiest Place on Earth." What the heck? Here is a quote from an article I wrote entitled  "Welcome to Camp Janky" (Full article available here)
"The Urban Dictionary comes to the rescue,'… inferior quality; held in low social regard; old and dilapidated; …used to describe a person, place or thing which is questionable, fucked up, wrong, strange, broken down, undesirable, and/or just something you can’t think of another word for… a conjunction of ‘junky’ and‘skanky’.' Well, okay then, I think I get it now. Sounds like an Appalachian Paradise. But here is my fave definition: “Poorly constructed or put together, and does not seem like it should function at all, although it may perform beyond expectations.”
I think that about covers it, and CriticaLand was indeed totally janky in a wonderful way.
    Evangedouche is a great word that I first saw in a Jezebel Blog posting by Lindy West. The entry is entitled "Worst Guy Ever Alert: Beware of Horrible Hipster Pastor Mark Driscoll" who is described as a "preening alpha evangedouche." Ah, music to my ears. I have a particular interest in this evangedouche (I just love typing that word.) because this guy is the head of the Mars Hill Megachurch, which has a satellite right in my neighborhood of West Seattle. Readers of this blog know that I have some respect for the power of religion as a positive force, but there are some religious celebrities (e.g. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee) that are so extreme, so obviously idiotic, that I am reduced to name-calling, and evangedouche is as good an insult as any, and better than most. So, what is it that makes Driscoll a premier evangedouche? (I'm going to type that word as many times as context allows.) A couple examples: Driscoll believes that yoga is "demonic," and the wonderful film "Avatar" "the most Demonic, Satanic. film I've ever seen," Gimme a break. I could go on for many paragraphs about what a jerk that Driscoll is, but I recommend you read Jezebel's blog entry instead. If you want further reading about this evangedouche, I recommend this link about his views on "Avatar." How anyone, particularly women, can become part of his "flock" is a mystery to me. Below is a couple videos, the first is Driscoll the other is another notorious evangedouche John Hagee. Enjoy.
Psychonaut or psychonautics. Fascinating words introduced to me by a friend. It refers to the journey that one can take in one's mind using altered states of consciousness, often induced by hallucinogenic substances. I don't endorse this, nor do I practice it--at least not using drugs--but I do concede that some folks seem to think that psychonautics can launch the psychonaut on a creative, "spiritual" journey, perhaps leading to nirvanic bliss (or something like that.) and possibly a creative epiphany. Personally, I'm a little too concerned about permanently scrambling my brains--I prefer to not perform experiments on myself--and leave this to braver folks. But hey, I like the words, if not the practice.
    So, this completes my semantic journey through the American lexicon. It's been fun for me to collect these words. I can't close without mention of the greatest wordsmith of them all: William Shakespeare. Thanks Bill, you were the greatest. Check out his handy Shakespearean insult generator. I'm sure that Shakespeare would have heartily approved of evangedouche, or I'll be a "paunchy reeling-ripe moldwarp!"
 
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    Scot Bastian Ph.D. is a scientist and artist who lives in Seattle WA.

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