Monday, May 23, 2005
What makes a true friend?
I spent today shopping and having dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends. She has no interest in karma or spirituality. She knows nothing about science, psychology or couture. She has never been online, and wouldn't know what a blog was if asked. I'm an old married lady, but she still lives with her parents although she's in her 40's. Aside from trivial things, like both finding it attractive when a man has a hairy chest and both liking the flavor of blue raspberry Icees, we have nothing in common. It doesn't sound like we should have any basis for friendship, does it?
We can talk nonstop for hours; we've never run out of things to say. I honestly couldn't tell you what we talk ABOUT most of the time... we just have a smooth flow of communication in which the metamessage of caring is more important that what's being said.
She's totally accepting of me; she's never demanded that I justify my often-unusual preferences or choices, or tried to argue me out of them.
I'm totally accepting of her; she's one of the unfortunate souls whose beauty is 100% INternal, and although I was considered a hot item when we met, and she was the butt of jokes, I befriended her and was always good to her... she told me at one point that I was one of only 2 people in her life who'd ever been a true friend.
When we shop, I help her look for things for herself most of the time rather than looking for things for myself; I've taught her how to put herself together as attractively as possible, to allow her to feel better about herself... which has allowed a once-doormat to get enough self-esteem to stand up for herself and be her own person.
When we have dinner and she gets a salad and I don't, she gives me some of hers so I have something to eat... including most or all of her croutons. She's taught me generosity of spirit, about giving in the purest sense; important lessons for the child of selfish, stingy parents.
NOW is there any confusion as to why we're friends?
True friendship isn't about liking the same things or doing the same activities; a true friend accepts you where you're good (and understands that if it isn't harmful it's ok even if it's not their style), offers help where you need it, and makes you a better person. Did you EVER consider those qualities as requirements in a friend? Why not... what could be more important? How much do you suppose we're missing out on in the modern day, where we can't be bothered to really get to know someone unless they have an overwhelming amount of surface things in common with us? How many times has karma sent you someone who could enrich you, and who you in turn could enrich, only to have you and/or them be unwilling to make the effort to get to know each other because you didn't have the easy route of mutual interests?
People used to think I was nuts for being willing to attempt friendship with anyone who offered it, even if the offerer was the sort of person that everyone turned their noses up at; in retrospect, that's one of the smartest decisions I ever made.
We can talk nonstop for hours; we've never run out of things to say. I honestly couldn't tell you what we talk ABOUT most of the time... we just have a smooth flow of communication in which the metamessage of caring is more important that what's being said.
She's totally accepting of me; she's never demanded that I justify my often-unusual preferences or choices, or tried to argue me out of them.
I'm totally accepting of her; she's one of the unfortunate souls whose beauty is 100% INternal, and although I was considered a hot item when we met, and she was the butt of jokes, I befriended her and was always good to her... she told me at one point that I was one of only 2 people in her life who'd ever been a true friend.
When we shop, I help her look for things for herself most of the time rather than looking for things for myself; I've taught her how to put herself together as attractively as possible, to allow her to feel better about herself... which has allowed a once-doormat to get enough self-esteem to stand up for herself and be her own person.
When we have dinner and she gets a salad and I don't, she gives me some of hers so I have something to eat... including most or all of her croutons. She's taught me generosity of spirit, about giving in the purest sense; important lessons for the child of selfish, stingy parents.
NOW is there any confusion as to why we're friends?
True friendship isn't about liking the same things or doing the same activities; a true friend accepts you where you're good (and understands that if it isn't harmful it's ok even if it's not their style), offers help where you need it, and makes you a better person. Did you EVER consider those qualities as requirements in a friend? Why not... what could be more important? How much do you suppose we're missing out on in the modern day, where we can't be bothered to really get to know someone unless they have an overwhelming amount of surface things in common with us? How many times has karma sent you someone who could enrich you, and who you in turn could enrich, only to have you and/or them be unwilling to make the effort to get to know each other because you didn't have the easy route of mutual interests?
People used to think I was nuts for being willing to attempt friendship with anyone who offered it, even if the offerer was the sort of person that everyone turned their noses up at; in retrospect, that's one of the smartest decisions I ever made.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Is anyone an expert on romantic relationships?
There are certainly many who CLAIM to be, some with actual degrees in psychology, some with careers as couples therapists (did you know that you do NOT have to have a degree to call yourself a therapist?)... and it never ceases to amaze me how little clue they generally have.
A standard line of thought from them, and the one that always amuses me the most, is to claim that all successful couples do, don't do, say or don't say certain things... ridiculous things that I can't imagine that ANY couple has EVER handled that way. They describe elaborate communication rituals that, even if any woman independently came up with them, no man would participate in beyond the grunts and groans that men typically come out with when their women try to get them to discuss the details of the relationship or to drag deep thoughts and feelings out of them. They detail behavior patterns, emotional reactions and mindsets that are totally contrary to both male and female relationship norms. They talk about the regular occurrence of novel sexual, romantic, and couple-time activities that shows a total lack of grasp of how human beings fall into ruts and have no interest in climbing out, even if it's to their benefit. They insist upon the necessity of wild spontaneous goings-on that only the idle and childless wealthy would have the time and ability to do.
It should come as no surprise that many of these folks are either single or have failed in at least one marriage; most notably, one of the best-known female relationship gurus, Barbara De Angelis, has been married FIVE times, and her 3rd husband was fellow guru John Gray, author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"... so why do we listen to these people?
There's an old saying; "A woman marries a man expecting him to change, and he doesn't... and a man marries a woman expecting her not to change, and she does." This is certainly an over-generalization, but it points up 2 of the most important things to remember when trying to form a lasting relationship:
1) Do NOT put on a fake persona, or fake any part of how you interact with your prospective partner, as you can NOT keep it up forever, and more importantly you're being deceptive, and that'll come back to bite you eventually. If you can't show your true self to a person, either you lack what it takes to have a long-term relationship, or they're too immature to handle normal human failings and so are themselves lacking... or of course both.
2) Do NOT delude yourself that you can change the other person, or that you can prevent them from gradually changing as they mature and grow. You can't expect your partner to be like your same-sex or friends, or like you (unless you're gay, in which case I wouldn't pretend to be able to offer advice); men and women are DIFFERENT, and will STAY different, and will grow and change in different ways over the years... so if you can't handle socks on the floor or panties drying on the shower rod, or the other irritating things each gender does, you're not ready for a long-term relationship yet.
To these, I'd add 3 others:
3) Don't confuse lust and infatuation with love; you can NOT love a person until you've known them long and well enough to see what's lovable about them, so if you're talking about love within a few weeks, or even months, of meeting someone, you're very likely heading for a fall.
4) Don't confuse having things in common plus sexual attraction with love; someone too like you will usually bore you sooner or later, and, more importantly, it's too easy to get too close too fast with such a person, and to not realize that they differ from you in crucial ways before it's too late.
5) Don't enter into a relationship with unrealistic expectations. Don't think that your relationship will be like what you see in the movies, or even like what your parents had; expect it to be hard work, with plenty of fighting and aggravation and not getting your way, and fairly dull much of the time... in other words expect it to be like LIFE, and if your mate has the same perspective you'll do ok.
There will certainly be people whose relationships are exceptions to the above, just as there are people who married as teenagers, or after only knowing each other a few weeks, who manage to beat the odds and be together forever, but they WILL apply to most people... which is more than the so-called experts can say about THEIR advice.
A standard line of thought from them, and the one that always amuses me the most, is to claim that all successful couples do, don't do, say or don't say certain things... ridiculous things that I can't imagine that ANY couple has EVER handled that way. They describe elaborate communication rituals that, even if any woman independently came up with them, no man would participate in beyond the grunts and groans that men typically come out with when their women try to get them to discuss the details of the relationship or to drag deep thoughts and feelings out of them. They detail behavior patterns, emotional reactions and mindsets that are totally contrary to both male and female relationship norms. They talk about the regular occurrence of novel sexual, romantic, and couple-time activities that shows a total lack of grasp of how human beings fall into ruts and have no interest in climbing out, even if it's to their benefit. They insist upon the necessity of wild spontaneous goings-on that only the idle and childless wealthy would have the time and ability to do.
It should come as no surprise that many of these folks are either single or have failed in at least one marriage; most notably, one of the best-known female relationship gurus, Barbara De Angelis, has been married FIVE times, and her 3rd husband was fellow guru John Gray, author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"... so why do we listen to these people?
There's an old saying; "A woman marries a man expecting him to change, and he doesn't... and a man marries a woman expecting her not to change, and she does." This is certainly an over-generalization, but it points up 2 of the most important things to remember when trying to form a lasting relationship:
1) Do NOT put on a fake persona, or fake any part of how you interact with your prospective partner, as you can NOT keep it up forever, and more importantly you're being deceptive, and that'll come back to bite you eventually. If you can't show your true self to a person, either you lack what it takes to have a long-term relationship, or they're too immature to handle normal human failings and so are themselves lacking... or of course both.
2) Do NOT delude yourself that you can change the other person, or that you can prevent them from gradually changing as they mature and grow. You can't expect your partner to be like your same-sex or friends, or like you (unless you're gay, in which case I wouldn't pretend to be able to offer advice); men and women are DIFFERENT, and will STAY different, and will grow and change in different ways over the years... so if you can't handle socks on the floor or panties drying on the shower rod, or the other irritating things each gender does, you're not ready for a long-term relationship yet.
To these, I'd add 3 others:
3) Don't confuse lust and infatuation with love; you can NOT love a person until you've known them long and well enough to see what's lovable about them, so if you're talking about love within a few weeks, or even months, of meeting someone, you're very likely heading for a fall.
4) Don't confuse having things in common plus sexual attraction with love; someone too like you will usually bore you sooner or later, and, more importantly, it's too easy to get too close too fast with such a person, and to not realize that they differ from you in crucial ways before it's too late.
5) Don't enter into a relationship with unrealistic expectations. Don't think that your relationship will be like what you see in the movies, or even like what your parents had; expect it to be hard work, with plenty of fighting and aggravation and not getting your way, and fairly dull much of the time... in other words expect it to be like LIFE, and if your mate has the same perspective you'll do ok.
There will certainly be people whose relationships are exceptions to the above, just as there are people who married as teenagers, or after only knowing each other a few weeks, who manage to beat the odds and be together forever, but they WILL apply to most people... which is more than the so-called experts can say about THEIR advice.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
What do you call your loved ones?
Do you call your mother "Mother," "Mom," "Ma," "Mama," "Mommy," or something else? How did you come to use that particular name? I'm fairly sure that I called my mother "Mama" early on, which is what most little kids are taught, then "Mom" for most of my life, again because that was pretty standard with my peers, then started mingling it with a tongue-in-cheek reprise of "Mama" because that's what my father called her (more on that in a minute), and since I got married I've pretty much ceased to refer to her by any name at all, not from any conscious choice but, I think, in a subconscious desire to obliterate her. Of course, it's occasionally necessary to attach some label to her; I put "Mom" on her cards, and on the rare occasions when I need to single her out of a group, I'll call her "Mother," but in a way that makes it clear that it's a formal title rather than a name.
Fathers also have a range of names they can be called, and I think our adult choice for how to refer to our parents says alot about the relationship; looking back, I can see that I stopped referring to my father by any name by about my mid teens, at which point he'd non-coincidentally stopped calling ME by name, too... "that little bastard" and "that little son of a bitch" were his favorite terms for me (the former amused me as it denied his existence), but he'd use "that kid" as a contemptuous shorthand when his mood wasn't too vile. My mother and I referred to him amongst ourselves with an expletive, and do so to this day; when my husband first met the rest of my mother's family, he had to ask them who they were talking about, because they were using my father's actual name, and he'd never heard it, lol.
We have many different ways to refer to grandparents, too; the only one of mine that I ever knew well enough to have a name for is my mother's mother, and I created a nickname for her as a young child that I've used for her my entire life... somewhat to her embarrassment at times, when visitors to her home would want to know what the name I addressed her by in cards meant, and she couldn't explain how I'd invented it.
I think that one of the sure signs you've become an adult is when you stop referring to your aunt Mary as "Aunt Mary" and start calling her "Mary"; in some families, though, the aunt and uncle titles are never dropped, which is more traditional and respectful, but probably makes those so referred to feel older... if my husband (who's adopted) turns out to have half-siblings, and thus nieces and nephews, I think I'll try to dodge the aunt and uncle labels for just that reason.
What do your parents call each other? My father followed what used to be the standard pattern and called my mother "Mom" or "Mama," despite her periodic protests of, "Stop calling me that, I'm NOT your mother!!" I remember being stunned when the press made an issue of Ronald Reagan calling Nancy "Mom" or "Mommy" or whatever they said it was, because I'd always heard men calling their wives the same thing the kids called her; since wives ARE, in many ways, mothers to their husbands (sigh), this still seems perfectly reasonable to me.
My mother was quite sly in her choice of nickname for my father. I have virtually no memories of her calling him by his actual name; she always called him "Prince," which would cause periodic protests from HIM of, "Stop calling me 'Prince,' I'm not a dog," to which she'd of course reply with "Yes you are"... but dogs had nothing to do with this moniker. She'd occasionally refer to him as "Prince Knotso," which always vaguely puzzled me (since I didn't know what the connection was between him and knots), and which I eventually questioned her about; it turned out that she was actually saying "Prince Not-So," which was short for "Prince Not-So-Charming"... so when she called him "Prince," which would sound to anyone overhearing it like an affectionate and laudatory name, she was actually zinging him. :-)
What do you and your romantic partner call each other? I hadn't made the obvious connections before, but my husband's main nickname for me, although mostly flattering, carries on a deeper level a little bit of a zing, and my numerous nicknames for him, which are always multi-part, center around words that are at least semi-expletive in nature (usually connected with bodily functions-marriage is often weird and gross). I don't know what's eerier, now that I'm thinking about it; the way I adopted my mother's naming conventions for my father to invent nicknames for my husband, or how my husband, not even knowing what my mother called my father, came up with a similar nickname for me.
What's in a name?
Fathers also have a range of names they can be called, and I think our adult choice for how to refer to our parents says alot about the relationship; looking back, I can see that I stopped referring to my father by any name by about my mid teens, at which point he'd non-coincidentally stopped calling ME by name, too... "that little bastard" and "that little son of a bitch" were his favorite terms for me (the former amused me as it denied his existence), but he'd use "that kid" as a contemptuous shorthand when his mood wasn't too vile. My mother and I referred to him amongst ourselves with an expletive, and do so to this day; when my husband first met the rest of my mother's family, he had to ask them who they were talking about, because they were using my father's actual name, and he'd never heard it, lol.
We have many different ways to refer to grandparents, too; the only one of mine that I ever knew well enough to have a name for is my mother's mother, and I created a nickname for her as a young child that I've used for her my entire life... somewhat to her embarrassment at times, when visitors to her home would want to know what the name I addressed her by in cards meant, and she couldn't explain how I'd invented it.
I think that one of the sure signs you've become an adult is when you stop referring to your aunt Mary as "Aunt Mary" and start calling her "Mary"; in some families, though, the aunt and uncle titles are never dropped, which is more traditional and respectful, but probably makes those so referred to feel older... if my husband (who's adopted) turns out to have half-siblings, and thus nieces and nephews, I think I'll try to dodge the aunt and uncle labels for just that reason.
What do your parents call each other? My father followed what used to be the standard pattern and called my mother "Mom" or "Mama," despite her periodic protests of, "Stop calling me that, I'm NOT your mother!!" I remember being stunned when the press made an issue of Ronald Reagan calling Nancy "Mom" or "Mommy" or whatever they said it was, because I'd always heard men calling their wives the same thing the kids called her; since wives ARE, in many ways, mothers to their husbands (sigh), this still seems perfectly reasonable to me.
My mother was quite sly in her choice of nickname for my father. I have virtually no memories of her calling him by his actual name; she always called him "Prince," which would cause periodic protests from HIM of, "Stop calling me 'Prince,' I'm not a dog," to which she'd of course reply with "Yes you are"... but dogs had nothing to do with this moniker. She'd occasionally refer to him as "Prince Knotso," which always vaguely puzzled me (since I didn't know what the connection was between him and knots), and which I eventually questioned her about; it turned out that she was actually saying "Prince Not-So," which was short for "Prince Not-So-Charming"... so when she called him "Prince," which would sound to anyone overhearing it like an affectionate and laudatory name, she was actually zinging him. :-)
What do you and your romantic partner call each other? I hadn't made the obvious connections before, but my husband's main nickname for me, although mostly flattering, carries on a deeper level a little bit of a zing, and my numerous nicknames for him, which are always multi-part, center around words that are at least semi-expletive in nature (usually connected with bodily functions-marriage is often weird and gross). I don't know what's eerier, now that I'm thinking about it; the way I adopted my mother's naming conventions for my father to invent nicknames for my husband, or how my husband, not even knowing what my mother called my father, came up with a similar nickname for me.
What's in a name?
Friday, May 20, 2005
A freaky flaw in DNA testing
We're told that DNA testing is essentially infallible; scarily, in at least a small % of cases, it's NOT. I saw a program tonight on the Discovery Science channel called "I Am My Own Twin" that explained that some people have TWO different sets of DNA in their bodies; since DNA testing naturally doesn't include searching every part of the body for a 2nd set, if they test the "wrong set" they can get incorrect results for the primary uses of these tests, paternity and criminal identification.
These double-DNA people are called "chimeras," after the mythical creatures with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail
http://www.sp.unipi.it/index.php?page=/settling/prova2004
http://webhome.idirect.com/~donlong/monsters/Html/Chimera.htm
and, while there are only about 30 known cases, they have no idea how common this actually is, as very few people receive DNA tests, and there's hardly ever a reason to suspect there's a problem, or to take test samples from different parts of the body that might give different results, so a chimeric person could be tested and still not know that they have a 2nd set of DNA.
How does a person end up with 2 sets of DNA coexisting in their bodies? Wikipedia says:
"In zoology, a chimera is an animal which has (at least) two different populations of cells, which are genetically distinct and which originated in different zygotes (fertilized eggs). Chimeras are named after the mythological creature Chimera.
Chimerism may occur naturally during pregnancy, when two non-identical twins combine in the womb, at a very early stage of development, to form a single organism. Such an organism is called a tetragametic chimera as it is formed from four gametes-two eggs and two sperm. As the organism develops, the resulting chimera can come to possess organs that have different sets of chromosomes. For example, the chimera may have a liver composed of cells with one set of chromosomes and have a kidney composed of cells with a second set of chromosomes. This has occurred in humans, though it is considered extremely rare, but since it can only be detected through DNA testing, which in itself is rare, it may be more common than currently believed. As of 2003, there were about 30 human cases in the literature, according to New Scientist."
Sadly, New Scientist only makes full articles available to subscribers, but this site
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_838312.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery.genetics
gives the story, which is about one of the women who was covered on the TV show:
"A mother-of-three has discovered she is not the biological parent of two of her naturally conceived sons and is in fact made up of two women.
Scientists came to the extraordinary conclusion that the 52-year-old was formed from two non-identical twin girl embryos which fused into a single person in her mother's womb.
Tests carried out on the woman - known as Jane - showed she had two distinct types of DNA in her body.
Her blood is made up of her own cells, but when doctors took samples from her thyroid gland, mouth and hair, they found they came from two different people.
Jane is a tetragametic chimera - someone whose body is made up of two genetically different lines of cells.
Her story, told in the New Scientist, is extremely rare and only 30 cases have been reported.
The discovery came when Jane needed to find a suitable donor for her kidney transplant. When her sons underwent blood tests to see if they could help their mother, the results showed that two of her boys could not be hers because they had different DNA.
Jane's doctor, Margot Kruskall, from the US Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, was perplexed and asked her colleagues for advice. "I did get the most amazing set of explanations," she said. "Nobody could quite figure it out."
The children were definitely conceived naturally and Jane's husband was proved to be the father. Some doctors thought she had secretly undergone fertility treatment using donated eggs while others thought she had used her sister as a surrogate mother.
Finally, a familial link was established with the boys when doctors tested Jane's brother and found he had similar genes to her sons. When Jane's ovaries were studied, it was found that the two different sets of genes in her body were living amicably alongside each other.
One of her sons came from her set of cells, while the other two were derived from her non-identical twin's set of cells. Dr Kruskall said the number of chimeras may increase due to the use of modern fertility drugs."
YIKES!! Can you imagine how that family must have felt? They had another, similar case on the show, where they thought the woman was trying to commit welfare fraud by passing someone else's kids off as hers, because they didn't have her DNA; they showed that the boys shared DNA with her mother, and then they had someone there when she gave birth to her 3rd child to witness the birth and take blood samples which proved that THAT child didn't share her DNA either. I think in her case they eventually found the other set of DNA in cells taken from a scraping of her cervix; she and her family are continuing to participate in studies being done at Harvard on chimerism.
A more detailed description of what can lead to chimerism comes from this site
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=23
which tells us:
"First, it is possible to become a chimera if developing fraternal twin embryos fuse together to become one embryo. (Think of this is as the reverse of identical twins where a single embryo splits into two.) This happens very early on when the embryos are just unspecialized cells, so a healthy baby can still be made. Fraternal twins do not have the same DNA, so a mixture of two embryos will give a chimera.
Second, chimeras can arise when developing fraternal twins share a blood supply. This happens when the twins (who have different DNA) share a placenta and cells from their blood mix. The twins will be chimeras only in terms of their blood since other cells in the body are not affected by the blood supply.
Third, sometimes chimeras can happen through an error in the way cells divide in the developing embryo. (These people are technically called mosaics but the concept is similar.) Cells split into two to make more of themselves - something embryos need to do a lot of to grow into a baby. For this, cells need to double their DNA and divide it between the two new halves. Sometimes this goes wrong and some new cells end up with different DNA. If this happens early on, the tissues that come from these cells end up with a different genotype. "
The term "mosaics" came up in the TV show, too, and was used to describe chimeras with unusual skin pigmentations; I don't know if the patterns that they sometimes get on their skin are why they're called mosaics, but it's a good way to remember the term. As shown on the show, some chimeras have what looks like a sharp line of demarcation down the middle of their abdomens with different colors of skin on each side of the line, like in that old Star Trek episode, some have all sorts of streaks, splotches and mottlings, and some actually have what can only be described as a checkerboard pattern of pigmentation; you've got to see it to believe it, it looks surreal. This unusual pigmentation is a big clue to medical types that the person might be chimeric; other possible clues are the eyes being different colors (heterochromia iridium), and the presence of a combination of male and female genitals (intersexuality). The 2 women in the show lacked any of these characteristics, which gives us the creepy realization that ANY of us might actually be chimeras and not know it.
Because they can't do DNA testing on every bodily part of anyone, much less a big enough sample of people to know how common this is, we have no way of knowing if it's rare or not... and thus no way of knowing how often paternity tests that come up "not the father" are wrong, how often DNA test done to identify criminals that come up "not the criminal" are wrong, and of course how often the other sorts of answers sought from DNA tests are wrong.
Scary, isn't it?
These double-DNA people are called "chimeras," after the mythical creatures with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail
http://www.sp.unipi.it/index.php?page=/settling/prova2004
http://webhome.idirect.com/~donlong/monsters/Html/Chimera.htm
and, while there are only about 30 known cases, they have no idea how common this actually is, as very few people receive DNA tests, and there's hardly ever a reason to suspect there's a problem, or to take test samples from different parts of the body that might give different results, so a chimeric person could be tested and still not know that they have a 2nd set of DNA.
How does a person end up with 2 sets of DNA coexisting in their bodies? Wikipedia says:
"In zoology, a chimera is an animal which has (at least) two different populations of cells, which are genetically distinct and which originated in different zygotes (fertilized eggs). Chimeras are named after the mythological creature Chimera.
Chimerism may occur naturally during pregnancy, when two non-identical twins combine in the womb, at a very early stage of development, to form a single organism. Such an organism is called a tetragametic chimera as it is formed from four gametes-two eggs and two sperm. As the organism develops, the resulting chimera can come to possess organs that have different sets of chromosomes. For example, the chimera may have a liver composed of cells with one set of chromosomes and have a kidney composed of cells with a second set of chromosomes. This has occurred in humans, though it is considered extremely rare, but since it can only be detected through DNA testing, which in itself is rare, it may be more common than currently believed. As of 2003, there were about 30 human cases in the literature, according to New Scientist."
Sadly, New Scientist only makes full articles available to subscribers, but this site
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_838312.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery.genetics
gives the story, which is about one of the women who was covered on the TV show:
"A mother-of-three has discovered she is not the biological parent of two of her naturally conceived sons and is in fact made up of two women.
Scientists came to the extraordinary conclusion that the 52-year-old was formed from two non-identical twin girl embryos which fused into a single person in her mother's womb.
Tests carried out on the woman - known as Jane - showed she had two distinct types of DNA in her body.
Her blood is made up of her own cells, but when doctors took samples from her thyroid gland, mouth and hair, they found they came from two different people.
Jane is a tetragametic chimera - someone whose body is made up of two genetically different lines of cells.
Her story, told in the New Scientist, is extremely rare and only 30 cases have been reported.
The discovery came when Jane needed to find a suitable donor for her kidney transplant. When her sons underwent blood tests to see if they could help their mother, the results showed that two of her boys could not be hers because they had different DNA.
Jane's doctor, Margot Kruskall, from the US Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, was perplexed and asked her colleagues for advice. "I did get the most amazing set of explanations," she said. "Nobody could quite figure it out."
The children were definitely conceived naturally and Jane's husband was proved to be the father. Some doctors thought she had secretly undergone fertility treatment using donated eggs while others thought she had used her sister as a surrogate mother.
Finally, a familial link was established with the boys when doctors tested Jane's brother and found he had similar genes to her sons. When Jane's ovaries were studied, it was found that the two different sets of genes in her body were living amicably alongside each other.
One of her sons came from her set of cells, while the other two were derived from her non-identical twin's set of cells. Dr Kruskall said the number of chimeras may increase due to the use of modern fertility drugs."
YIKES!! Can you imagine how that family must have felt? They had another, similar case on the show, where they thought the woman was trying to commit welfare fraud by passing someone else's kids off as hers, because they didn't have her DNA; they showed that the boys shared DNA with her mother, and then they had someone there when she gave birth to her 3rd child to witness the birth and take blood samples which proved that THAT child didn't share her DNA either. I think in her case they eventually found the other set of DNA in cells taken from a scraping of her cervix; she and her family are continuing to participate in studies being done at Harvard on chimerism.
A more detailed description of what can lead to chimerism comes from this site
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=23
which tells us:
"First, it is possible to become a chimera if developing fraternal twin embryos fuse together to become one embryo. (Think of this is as the reverse of identical twins where a single embryo splits into two.) This happens very early on when the embryos are just unspecialized cells, so a healthy baby can still be made. Fraternal twins do not have the same DNA, so a mixture of two embryos will give a chimera.
Second, chimeras can arise when developing fraternal twins share a blood supply. This happens when the twins (who have different DNA) share a placenta and cells from their blood mix. The twins will be chimeras only in terms of their blood since other cells in the body are not affected by the blood supply.
Third, sometimes chimeras can happen through an error in the way cells divide in the developing embryo. (These people are technically called mosaics but the concept is similar.) Cells split into two to make more of themselves - something embryos need to do a lot of to grow into a baby. For this, cells need to double their DNA and divide it between the two new halves. Sometimes this goes wrong and some new cells end up with different DNA. If this happens early on, the tissues that come from these cells end up with a different genotype. "
The term "mosaics" came up in the TV show, too, and was used to describe chimeras with unusual skin pigmentations; I don't know if the patterns that they sometimes get on their skin are why they're called mosaics, but it's a good way to remember the term. As shown on the show, some chimeras have what looks like a sharp line of demarcation down the middle of their abdomens with different colors of skin on each side of the line, like in that old Star Trek episode, some have all sorts of streaks, splotches and mottlings, and some actually have what can only be described as a checkerboard pattern of pigmentation; you've got to see it to believe it, it looks surreal. This unusual pigmentation is a big clue to medical types that the person might be chimeric; other possible clues are the eyes being different colors (heterochromia iridium), and the presence of a combination of male and female genitals (intersexuality). The 2 women in the show lacked any of these characteristics, which gives us the creepy realization that ANY of us might actually be chimeras and not know it.
Because they can't do DNA testing on every bodily part of anyone, much less a big enough sample of people to know how common this is, we have no way of knowing if it's rare or not... and thus no way of knowing how often paternity tests that come up "not the father" are wrong, how often DNA test done to identify criminals that come up "not the criminal" are wrong, and of course how often the other sorts of answers sought from DNA tests are wrong.
Scary, isn't it?
Thursday, May 19, 2005
The best interest of the child
You hear this phrase all the time, and it's a non-stop refrain during custody cases, but do we have any idea what it MEANS... and do we actually strive to achieve it?
One of the basic principles that we adhere to in this area is that a child's biological parents are "best" for them... but what do we base this idea on? There's nothing about sharing DNA with a child that makes people more loving, more special, or better parents, is there? There are countless adoptive parents who are wonderful, and countless biological parents that, like mine, are only slightly "better" for a child than being raised by wolves; you either love a child or you don't, and there's no magical extra effect added in if there's shared DNA.
But wait a minute, don't a mother's hormones fill her with love for the child? Sure, as long as she's not hit with postpartum depression, or indifferent contempt like MY mother was, but non-biological parents who are eager for a child are overcome with love, too; any time you hear an adoptive parent talk about the moment when they were given their child, and you'll hear rapture equal to anything that biological parents ever came out with. Any adult that wants a child can feel that love, and they can feel it for any child they see as theirs; that parents can take home the wrong baby from the hospital and never notice anything's amiss shows how strong the biological drive is to bond with a baby, whether or not one has given birth to or sired it.
One of the biggest strides humanity made in the last century was to realize that some parents are abusive or neglectful, and that this is NOT ok; the laws that allow kids to be taken away from parents that don't treat them right (to an extreme degree, as we still consider a certain amount of abuse to be ok) have saved countless kids from permanent physical and psychological damage, and even death... in this situation, at least, we've seen that the biological parents can be the WORST thing for the child, rather than the best. But what about situations where no egregious abuse is involved?
It's not hard to see that you can't just take a child away from its parents on a whim-the child would be devastated and traumatized, which is clearly NOT in their best interest. Then again, even in abusive households, if a child is taken out for their protection, it's standard for them to scream and cry and beg to be take back to their parents... so how do you know which is the greater harm to the child, their suffering with their parents or their suffering withOUT them? I don't know how you determine a child's best interest in that sort of situation; since there's no way to objectively measure or predict suffering, I'm betting they don't have much better of a record of judgment in cases where the abuse isn't monstrous than random chance would give them, which is pretty sad.
Then, there are the cases where a long-missing biological parent appears on the scene, and the judge decides that the terrified child should be dragged off struggling and screaming to spend time with, or even LIVE with, what to them is a total stranger; on what planet would it be in a child's best interest to be taken from a loving and familiar family to be with someone who just happens to have contributed half of their DNA? What benefit do they get from the proximity to the DNA donor that makes up for their misery?
What about when the parents are desperately poor and live in a horrible neighborhood, or are homeless; would it be better for the child to be adopted by wealthy parents who could give it a safe and comfortable life? The child would be upset at first, but would the countless advantages they'd receive make it better for them in the long run?
And now for the $64K question; what if the child is an infant, not yet bonded to the parents as an older child would be, and the biological parents were poor, uneducated types who could never provide it with any of the good things in life, and there was a wealthy couple who were desperate for a child, would love a child with all their hearts and give it every advantage... which set of parents would be to the child's best interest, the biological ones or the ones who could love it AND give it everything a child could ever need or want? Isn't it better for the child to have love AND financial benefits than just love? If not, why not? If so, shouldn't we be taking babies away from poor parents and giving them to rich parents with the justification that it's in the best interest of the child?
No one would agree to such a plan, of course, because, above and beyond the idea of the best interest of the child is a more primitive one; that a child is the property of the parents. We don't take a child from poor parents any more than we'd take anything else of theirs; we see that child as belonging to them, and, as long as they keep their abuse below a certain level, they can treat the child any way they want, make them live any kind of life they want, make their life a living hell of joylessness and rules if they want... and we see that as their right.
Is THAT in the best interest of the child?
One of the basic principles that we adhere to in this area is that a child's biological parents are "best" for them... but what do we base this idea on? There's nothing about sharing DNA with a child that makes people more loving, more special, or better parents, is there? There are countless adoptive parents who are wonderful, and countless biological parents that, like mine, are only slightly "better" for a child than being raised by wolves; you either love a child or you don't, and there's no magical extra effect added in if there's shared DNA.
But wait a minute, don't a mother's hormones fill her with love for the child? Sure, as long as she's not hit with postpartum depression, or indifferent contempt like MY mother was, but non-biological parents who are eager for a child are overcome with love, too; any time you hear an adoptive parent talk about the moment when they were given their child, and you'll hear rapture equal to anything that biological parents ever came out with. Any adult that wants a child can feel that love, and they can feel it for any child they see as theirs; that parents can take home the wrong baby from the hospital and never notice anything's amiss shows how strong the biological drive is to bond with a baby, whether or not one has given birth to or sired it.
One of the biggest strides humanity made in the last century was to realize that some parents are abusive or neglectful, and that this is NOT ok; the laws that allow kids to be taken away from parents that don't treat them right (to an extreme degree, as we still consider a certain amount of abuse to be ok) have saved countless kids from permanent physical and psychological damage, and even death... in this situation, at least, we've seen that the biological parents can be the WORST thing for the child, rather than the best. But what about situations where no egregious abuse is involved?
It's not hard to see that you can't just take a child away from its parents on a whim-the child would be devastated and traumatized, which is clearly NOT in their best interest. Then again, even in abusive households, if a child is taken out for their protection, it's standard for them to scream and cry and beg to be take back to their parents... so how do you know which is the greater harm to the child, their suffering with their parents or their suffering withOUT them? I don't know how you determine a child's best interest in that sort of situation; since there's no way to objectively measure or predict suffering, I'm betting they don't have much better of a record of judgment in cases where the abuse isn't monstrous than random chance would give them, which is pretty sad.
Then, there are the cases where a long-missing biological parent appears on the scene, and the judge decides that the terrified child should be dragged off struggling and screaming to spend time with, or even LIVE with, what to them is a total stranger; on what planet would it be in a child's best interest to be taken from a loving and familiar family to be with someone who just happens to have contributed half of their DNA? What benefit do they get from the proximity to the DNA donor that makes up for their misery?
What about when the parents are desperately poor and live in a horrible neighborhood, or are homeless; would it be better for the child to be adopted by wealthy parents who could give it a safe and comfortable life? The child would be upset at first, but would the countless advantages they'd receive make it better for them in the long run?
And now for the $64K question; what if the child is an infant, not yet bonded to the parents as an older child would be, and the biological parents were poor, uneducated types who could never provide it with any of the good things in life, and there was a wealthy couple who were desperate for a child, would love a child with all their hearts and give it every advantage... which set of parents would be to the child's best interest, the biological ones or the ones who could love it AND give it everything a child could ever need or want? Isn't it better for the child to have love AND financial benefits than just love? If not, why not? If so, shouldn't we be taking babies away from poor parents and giving them to rich parents with the justification that it's in the best interest of the child?
No one would agree to such a plan, of course, because, above and beyond the idea of the best interest of the child is a more primitive one; that a child is the property of the parents. We don't take a child from poor parents any more than we'd take anything else of theirs; we see that child as belonging to them, and, as long as they keep their abuse below a certain level, they can treat the child any way they want, make them live any kind of life they want, make their life a living hell of joylessness and rules if they want... and we see that as their right.
Is THAT in the best interest of the child?
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)
They say you learn something new every day, and today this one was my thing; I saw part of an ad for the DVD release of the movie "White Noise," which I'd never heard of, and when I looked it up
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=141298&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Full
it turned out to an interesting-sounding horror movie circling around the idea of EVP, which I'd never heard of either. I did a search, and here
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa020303a.htm
I discovered that
"Electronic voice phenomena - or EVP - is a mysterious event in which human-sounding voices from an unknown source are heard on recording tape, in radio station noise and other electronic media. Most often, EVPs have been captured on audiotape. The mysterious voices are not heard at the time of recording; it is only when the tape is played back that the voices are heard. Sometimes amplification and noise filtering is required to hear the voices.
Some EVP is more easily heard and understood than others. And they vary in gender (men and women), age (women and children), tone and emotion. They usually speak in single-words, phrases and short sentences. Sometimes they are just grunts, groans, growling and other vocal noises. EVP has been recorded speaking in various languages.
The quality of EVP also varies. Some are difficult to distinguish and are open to interpretation as to what they are saying. Some EVP, however, are quite clear and easy to understand. EVP often has an electronic or mechanical character to it; sometimes it is natural sounding. The quality of EVP is categorized by researchers:
Class A: Easily understood by almost anyone with little or no dispute. These are also usually the loudest EVPs.
Class B: Usually characterized by warping of the voice in certain syllables. Lower in volume or more distant sounding than Class A. Class B is the most common type of EVP.
Class C: Characterized by excessive warping. They are the lowest in volume (often whispering) and are the hardest to understand.
The most fascinating aspect of EVP is that the voices sometimes respond directly to the persons making the recording. The researchers will ask a question, for example, and the voice will answer or comment. Again, this response is not heard until later when the tape is played back."
At 1st glance, this looks like a clear case of wishful thinking applied to little bits of noise that went unnoticed when the taping was being done, but people apply similar "logic" to the existence of ghosts to dismiss them, and I know THEY exist, so... maybe there's something to this. There are all sorts of energy around us, and it's not impossible to imagine that some of it could imprint on a tape; it'd sure be interesting if they did a study to see if anything other than sound waves could do something to a tape that would be translated into sound when the tape was played, wouldn't it?
Where do people think the "voices" come from? Some of the explanations are:
"They are voices of people who have died. This is why many researchers go to cemeteries seeking EVPs (and often with great success). In this context, the phenomenon is sometimes called instrumental transcommunication or ITC.
They are from another dimension. It is theorized that there may be many dimensions of existence, and somehow beings from some other dimension are able to speak and communicate with ours through this method. A good question is, however: How do they know English and other languages of our dimension?
They come from the researchers' own subconscious. It's been suggested that somehow the researchers' thoughts are projected onto the tape.
Some people believe that these voices are angelic or demonic in origin.
Skeptics assert that there is nothing to EVP at all - that the "voices" are either hoaxed, random noise interpreted as voices, real voices already on the tape, or voices picked up from radio, cell phones and other such sources."
They left one out; since energy can never be destroyed, every thought we have exists forever in some form... so words from ANY person's thoughts might in theory be recorded, not just from the researchers.
This blew my mind:
"It is not generally known that in the 1920s Thomas Edison tried to invent a machine that would communicate with the dead. Thinking this was possible, he wrote: 'If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, other faculties, and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth. Therefore... if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.'"
Would any scientist dare to openly admit to doing that sort of research today? Nope... and that's why we never get anywhere with discoveries in the area of the unknown, sigh.
Later in the article, they describe how you can try recording these "voices" for yourself; I'm not copying that info here, because the idea of focusing on any entities that might currently be hanging around unnoticed, and thus risking being given special notice by THEM, gives me a cold chill... although I don't think most spirits would mean us any harm, poltergeists are no joy to deal with, and it's anyone's guess as to what else is there, just beyond our ability to perceive them, so why take chances?
With no experience, and no intention of getting any, and no facts at my disposal, I can't make any sort of judgment on this one; my instinct is that it's possible, but that most of the time all there is are fragments of sound that coincidentally sound vaguely like words. I found a guy who describes himself as "a programmer and musician making music from Chaos Theory - using a system I've written myself I convert mathematic fractal data into musical tones and durations, and then compile these to make compositions," who got more than he bargained for from one of his projects:
"... when playing these sequences through vocal-based patches on my synthesisers, for example, a "choir" sound, I found that the sequences produced sounds that mimic real vocal phrases - in the case of "Season" in two places there are vocal sounds that listeners have mistaken for real vocal phrases, and, most strange of all, one seems to be saying "Rimbaud.""
He doesn't seem entirely sure if these are coincidences or something else, but to my mind it's proof that at least some of these EVP's are cause and effect with technology. You can read his whole story, and his explanation of how to generate the sort of stuff he does, here
http://users1.ee.net/pmason/music3.html
The ever-helpful Wikipedia site suggests that EVP might be attributable to pareidolia, which is "a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, seeing the man in the moon, and hearing messages on records played in reverse." This probably accounts for 99% of the alleged EVP's.
But what about that last 1%?
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=141298&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Full
it turned out to an interesting-sounding horror movie circling around the idea of EVP, which I'd never heard of either. I did a search, and here
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa020303a.htm
I discovered that
"Electronic voice phenomena - or EVP - is a mysterious event in which human-sounding voices from an unknown source are heard on recording tape, in radio station noise and other electronic media. Most often, EVPs have been captured on audiotape. The mysterious voices are not heard at the time of recording; it is only when the tape is played back that the voices are heard. Sometimes amplification and noise filtering is required to hear the voices.
Some EVP is more easily heard and understood than others. And they vary in gender (men and women), age (women and children), tone and emotion. They usually speak in single-words, phrases and short sentences. Sometimes they are just grunts, groans, growling and other vocal noises. EVP has been recorded speaking in various languages.
The quality of EVP also varies. Some are difficult to distinguish and are open to interpretation as to what they are saying. Some EVP, however, are quite clear and easy to understand. EVP often has an electronic or mechanical character to it; sometimes it is natural sounding. The quality of EVP is categorized by researchers:
Class A: Easily understood by almost anyone with little or no dispute. These are also usually the loudest EVPs.
Class B: Usually characterized by warping of the voice in certain syllables. Lower in volume or more distant sounding than Class A. Class B is the most common type of EVP.
Class C: Characterized by excessive warping. They are the lowest in volume (often whispering) and are the hardest to understand.
The most fascinating aspect of EVP is that the voices sometimes respond directly to the persons making the recording. The researchers will ask a question, for example, and the voice will answer or comment. Again, this response is not heard until later when the tape is played back."
At 1st glance, this looks like a clear case of wishful thinking applied to little bits of noise that went unnoticed when the taping was being done, but people apply similar "logic" to the existence of ghosts to dismiss them, and I know THEY exist, so... maybe there's something to this. There are all sorts of energy around us, and it's not impossible to imagine that some of it could imprint on a tape; it'd sure be interesting if they did a study to see if anything other than sound waves could do something to a tape that would be translated into sound when the tape was played, wouldn't it?
Where do people think the "voices" come from? Some of the explanations are:
"They are voices of people who have died. This is why many researchers go to cemeteries seeking EVPs (and often with great success). In this context, the phenomenon is sometimes called instrumental transcommunication or ITC.
They are from another dimension. It is theorized that there may be many dimensions of existence, and somehow beings from some other dimension are able to speak and communicate with ours through this method. A good question is, however: How do they know English and other languages of our dimension?
They come from the researchers' own subconscious. It's been suggested that somehow the researchers' thoughts are projected onto the tape.
Some people believe that these voices are angelic or demonic in origin.
Skeptics assert that there is nothing to EVP at all - that the "voices" are either hoaxed, random noise interpreted as voices, real voices already on the tape, or voices picked up from radio, cell phones and other such sources."
They left one out; since energy can never be destroyed, every thought we have exists forever in some form... so words from ANY person's thoughts might in theory be recorded, not just from the researchers.
This blew my mind:
"It is not generally known that in the 1920s Thomas Edison tried to invent a machine that would communicate with the dead. Thinking this was possible, he wrote: 'If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, other faculties, and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth. Therefore... if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.'"
Would any scientist dare to openly admit to doing that sort of research today? Nope... and that's why we never get anywhere with discoveries in the area of the unknown, sigh.
Later in the article, they describe how you can try recording these "voices" for yourself; I'm not copying that info here, because the idea of focusing on any entities that might currently be hanging around unnoticed, and thus risking being given special notice by THEM, gives me a cold chill... although I don't think most spirits would mean us any harm, poltergeists are no joy to deal with, and it's anyone's guess as to what else is there, just beyond our ability to perceive them, so why take chances?
With no experience, and no intention of getting any, and no facts at my disposal, I can't make any sort of judgment on this one; my instinct is that it's possible, but that most of the time all there is are fragments of sound that coincidentally sound vaguely like words. I found a guy who describes himself as "a programmer and musician making music from Chaos Theory - using a system I've written myself I convert mathematic fractal data into musical tones and durations, and then compile these to make compositions," who got more than he bargained for from one of his projects:
"... when playing these sequences through vocal-based patches on my synthesisers, for example, a "choir" sound, I found that the sequences produced sounds that mimic real vocal phrases - in the case of "Season" in two places there are vocal sounds that listeners have mistaken for real vocal phrases, and, most strange of all, one seems to be saying "Rimbaud.""
He doesn't seem entirely sure if these are coincidences or something else, but to my mind it's proof that at least some of these EVP's are cause and effect with technology. You can read his whole story, and his explanation of how to generate the sort of stuff he does, here
http://users1.ee.net/pmason/music3.html
The ever-helpful Wikipedia site suggests that EVP might be attributable to pareidolia, which is "a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, seeing the man in the moon, and hearing messages on records played in reverse." This probably accounts for 99% of the alleged EVP's.
But what about that last 1%?
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
The future of blogging
This keeps coming up on other people's blogs, so I figured it was time to address it here; in a nutshell, the golden age of blogging has come and gone. I say this because:
It used to be cool to have a blog; now, almost everyone you encounter has one, and of course nothing that everyone has, and that everyone can easily do or get, is ever cool.
The novelty of blogs has long since worn off, and we're driven by the desire to find new things, and tend to lose interest in the old ones.
Blogging is a great deal of work, and people stop being willing to do that work in the same way that most people can't maintain a paper diary or journal indefinitely.
Those who blog about whatever's on their minds often find that they don't have an infinite # of interesting lines of thought to rant about, leaving them having to try too hard to find something to say; it stops being fun and starts being work.
There are so many blogs around now that people who want to have a certain level of traffic and/or commenting can't compete with older blogs, and the countless blogs similar to theirs, and thus end up posting to themselves; again, that stops being fun after awhile.
Alot of people got burned out on blogs after the post-election frenzy, and stopped reading, commenting and posting.
The reason I got to thinking about why blogging is declining is because in recent months a FLOOD of blogs that I've been a long-time reader of have been deleted, or abandoned, or put on indefinite hold, or reduced to blank pages that don't have anything put on them even weeks later, or have a seriously reduced frequency of posts; also, when I look for blogs in the various directories, I consistently find that a scary % of the links now lead to dead or deleted blogs. These things, combined with a great deal of "next-blogging" that's verified that many excellent blogs are being largely ignored, made the truth impossible to mistake... the "Age of the Blog" is, if far from over, clearly past its peak.
What I see happening over the next year or so is a continuing gradual die-out of blogs, after which we'll be left with a far smaller (but still non-trivial) # of hard-core bloggers, who'll collectively be seen as a subspecies of geek, interesting perhaps but not worthy of the attentions of CNN and the rest of the mainstream media... 5 years from now, people will read old articles that refer to what's being said in the blogosphere and laugh in disbelief that we were once so watched and paid attention to. Blogs will end up being like Geocities sites; a few years ago, everyone had to have that Geocities URL, leading to a conglomeration of personal photos and info or a "fan site," and now you almost never see that sort of personal page anymore... and sooner than we think, the daily-entry text arrangement will seem just as quaint, although I'm guessing more people will hold onto it and keep doing it than they did with "personal pages"-time will tell.
What's replacing blogs as the cool thing to do? Podcasting. Seemingly overnight, it went from something I'd never heard of to being EVERYWHERE, which is a sure sign of something catching on; it's much easier to talk than to write for most folks, plenty of people would rather listen than read, it's far more personal to hear a voice than to look at text, and it's still NEW, so I expect an ever-increasing amount of enthusiasm to be shown for it... and I'll be amazed if I haven't seen/heard mentions of it in the media by, say, the end of the summer (which will allow time for the young people to turn this into a major thing over their vacation).
If you're not familiar with podcasting, or are getting into it and would like to experience something new, you'll find terrific ones being produced by my friends Robert Keeme
http://www.keeme.com/
and Gary Bibb (with Yaz Larino)
http://www.bibbsrevenge.com/
I won't be joining the podcast revolution, as it'd eliminate my deniability if anyone I know ever found my blog... and my long, elaborate posts wouldn't translate attractively into spoken monologues in any case (just ask my husband, lol). Although I empathize with those who say that their blogs were taking up too much of their time, energy and thoughts, I won't be joining THEM any time soon either; unless and until a day arrives when no one comes here anymore, I'll still be slaving over a hot laptop to give you a daily look into my mind for the foreseeable future.
It used to be cool to have a blog; now, almost everyone you encounter has one, and of course nothing that everyone has, and that everyone can easily do or get, is ever cool.
The novelty of blogs has long since worn off, and we're driven by the desire to find new things, and tend to lose interest in the old ones.
Blogging is a great deal of work, and people stop being willing to do that work in the same way that most people can't maintain a paper diary or journal indefinitely.
Those who blog about whatever's on their minds often find that they don't have an infinite # of interesting lines of thought to rant about, leaving them having to try too hard to find something to say; it stops being fun and starts being work.
There are so many blogs around now that people who want to have a certain level of traffic and/or commenting can't compete with older blogs, and the countless blogs similar to theirs, and thus end up posting to themselves; again, that stops being fun after awhile.
Alot of people got burned out on blogs after the post-election frenzy, and stopped reading, commenting and posting.
The reason I got to thinking about why blogging is declining is because in recent months a FLOOD of blogs that I've been a long-time reader of have been deleted, or abandoned, or put on indefinite hold, or reduced to blank pages that don't have anything put on them even weeks later, or have a seriously reduced frequency of posts; also, when I look for blogs in the various directories, I consistently find that a scary % of the links now lead to dead or deleted blogs. These things, combined with a great deal of "next-blogging" that's verified that many excellent blogs are being largely ignored, made the truth impossible to mistake... the "Age of the Blog" is, if far from over, clearly past its peak.
What I see happening over the next year or so is a continuing gradual die-out of blogs, after which we'll be left with a far smaller (but still non-trivial) # of hard-core bloggers, who'll collectively be seen as a subspecies of geek, interesting perhaps but not worthy of the attentions of CNN and the rest of the mainstream media... 5 years from now, people will read old articles that refer to what's being said in the blogosphere and laugh in disbelief that we were once so watched and paid attention to. Blogs will end up being like Geocities sites; a few years ago, everyone had to have that Geocities URL, leading to a conglomeration of personal photos and info or a "fan site," and now you almost never see that sort of personal page anymore... and sooner than we think, the daily-entry text arrangement will seem just as quaint, although I'm guessing more people will hold onto it and keep doing it than they did with "personal pages"-time will tell.
What's replacing blogs as the cool thing to do? Podcasting. Seemingly overnight, it went from something I'd never heard of to being EVERYWHERE, which is a sure sign of something catching on; it's much easier to talk than to write for most folks, plenty of people would rather listen than read, it's far more personal to hear a voice than to look at text, and it's still NEW, so I expect an ever-increasing amount of enthusiasm to be shown for it... and I'll be amazed if I haven't seen/heard mentions of it in the media by, say, the end of the summer (which will allow time for the young people to turn this into a major thing over their vacation).
If you're not familiar with podcasting, or are getting into it and would like to experience something new, you'll find terrific ones being produced by my friends Robert Keeme
http://www.keeme.com/
and Gary Bibb (with Yaz Larino)
http://www.bibbsrevenge.com/
I won't be joining the podcast revolution, as it'd eliminate my deniability if anyone I know ever found my blog... and my long, elaborate posts wouldn't translate attractively into spoken monologues in any case (just ask my husband, lol). Although I empathize with those who say that their blogs were taking up too much of their time, energy and thoughts, I won't be joining THEM any time soon either; unless and until a day arrives when no one comes here anymore, I'll still be slaving over a hot laptop to give you a daily look into my mind for the foreseeable future.
Monday, May 16, 2005
The TOS
That stands for "Terms of Service," and virtually any site you sign up with will have one; it might have literally pages of gobbledygook, and no one ever reads it, but it's there. Most times, they have a box to check that says that you've read and accepted the TOS, which is accessible via a link that no one clicks, so you don't even have to SEE it... but it's there.
Under normal circumstances, as long as you're not trying to do something criminal to or with that service or the company that provides it, you never have to worry about the TOS, but there's one big exception that hardly anyone knows about; email providers. Since the early days of cyberspace, most providers of both free and paid email accounts have, for reasons that I can't imagine, taken it upon themselves to decide what sort of language you can use in your emails; if you check the TOS of your provider, you'll almost certainly see something that'll be vaguely described as vulgar or abusive or objectionable language that you're not allowed to include in any correspondence... and what they mean by that is curse words, racial and religious (etc) slurs, and various other offensive words and terms. They never give you a list, so you can't tell exactly what they have a problem with, but you can make pretty solid guesses... as long as your guesses include everything that 2nd grader would get busted for saying in class.
AOHell in particular was really ridiculous about policing everyone's language on their site in the early days when they had close to a monopoly; my husband actually got a warning from them for using "s***" or something similar as a substitute for the familiar 4-letter word... that's right, he didn't even use the word, and he STILL got warned. I'm guessing that they have too many users, and too many competitors, to be so anal today, but you never know.
I found out a way to turn this to my advantage when I got into an email battle with some twit from one of my online clubs who thought that not being agreed with about everything was an excuse for her to act like a lunatic, figuring that she could get away with it because she was effectively anonymous; when I didn't obey her abuse-filled missive instructing me to not write her back (on what planet did she think she had the right to send a final slew of attacks and not be replied to?), she responded by informing me that she was going to report me to my email provider... not to be outdone, I reported HER to HER provider, Hotmail... and within about an hour received an email from them telling me that they'd DELETED her account because she'd violated their TOS by using improper language.
DELETED. All her saved emails, GONE. All of the email addresses she had stored there, GONE. All the personal info she had stored in the address book, GONE. Anyone who had only that addy for her would no longer be able to reach her. Anyplace where she'd signed up with that addy would need to be updated with a new one. Her MSN ID associated with that addy vanished, and there went any MSN clubs she was in, the MSN IM with all THOSE records... the whole bit. All because she used ONE ill-advised word; I was so stunned when my husband read her final email to me and explained what they'd taken issue with that I almost fell off my chair.
And yes, I was angry enough at her to be DELIGHTED that her ugly behavior, and her making an issue of reporting ME, had backfired on her, and caused her some real grief; I'd have given ANYTHING to have seen the look on her face when she realized that her account was gone, and then realized WHY it was gone.
Since that happened, any time I get sucked into an email war with anyone I'm just WAITING for them to violate the TOS so I can report them and get their account deleted; I still get the same thrill at seeing that I've taught yet another person that you need to think twice before launching an attack on someone online, because unless you have your own server you're NOT immune to getting in trouble if you get nasty.
If you're curious as to how touchy providers like Hotmail are when it comes to the TOS, here's the best example from my experience; one pushy young man who became infuriated when I declined to arrange a meeting with him called me a whore (which is a pretty silly choice of epithet to use on a conservative married woman), and that got him deleted... plain old name-calling, with a word that most folks wouldn't even consider vulgar.
An odd thing that I found that encourages people to use profanity, etc, is to tell them that their addy has been blocked from my inbox; everyone knows about email blocking, so no one should keep writing after they've been told they're blocked, but, because I'm hoping to catch them out, I don't actually block them, and then I wait... and here will come a final email from them in which they're certain to include an abusive word. Why would ANYONE write an email to an account they think they've been blocked from? It's happened multiple times, so there's gotta be some psychological thing going on... maybe it's therapeutic to send an ugly email even if the intended victim doesn't get it? Be that as it may, the apparent requirement for online attackers to say something that violates the TOS of their email providers in that final email has proven to be their undoing.
As an aside; if you're feeling any sympathy for these folks, DON'T. When an individual takes time out of their day to attack someone, they're an @sshole, and when they do it online they're a coward as well; people that use the unreachability of being in cyberspace to try to hurt and upset others are COCKROACHES, and deserve as little mercy as their insectile counterparts do.
If you ever have someone sending you abusive emails, wait for that inevitable dirty word, or tell them they've been blocked to flush it out, then go to the homepage for their email provider, check their TOS for the bad-language clause so that you can quote it, and then send their customer service or similar department a copy of the offending email with full headers, and ask them to take action against this violation of the TOS... you might not succeed in getting action taken (although *I* always have), but chances are good that you'll get an email telling you that that account has been closed, and thus you'll have struck a blow for every person that was ever harassed and mistreated online but didn't think they could do anything about it.
Long live the TOS!! :-)
Under normal circumstances, as long as you're not trying to do something criminal to or with that service or the company that provides it, you never have to worry about the TOS, but there's one big exception that hardly anyone knows about; email providers. Since the early days of cyberspace, most providers of both free and paid email accounts have, for reasons that I can't imagine, taken it upon themselves to decide what sort of language you can use in your emails; if you check the TOS of your provider, you'll almost certainly see something that'll be vaguely described as vulgar or abusive or objectionable language that you're not allowed to include in any correspondence... and what they mean by that is curse words, racial and religious (etc) slurs, and various other offensive words and terms. They never give you a list, so you can't tell exactly what they have a problem with, but you can make pretty solid guesses... as long as your guesses include everything that 2nd grader would get busted for saying in class.
AOHell in particular was really ridiculous about policing everyone's language on their site in the early days when they had close to a monopoly; my husband actually got a warning from them for using "s***" or something similar as a substitute for the familiar 4-letter word... that's right, he didn't even use the word, and he STILL got warned. I'm guessing that they have too many users, and too many competitors, to be so anal today, but you never know.
I found out a way to turn this to my advantage when I got into an email battle with some twit from one of my online clubs who thought that not being agreed with about everything was an excuse for her to act like a lunatic, figuring that she could get away with it because she was effectively anonymous; when I didn't obey her abuse-filled missive instructing me to not write her back (on what planet did she think she had the right to send a final slew of attacks and not be replied to?), she responded by informing me that she was going to report me to my email provider... not to be outdone, I reported HER to HER provider, Hotmail... and within about an hour received an email from them telling me that they'd DELETED her account because she'd violated their TOS by using improper language.
DELETED. All her saved emails, GONE. All of the email addresses she had stored there, GONE. All the personal info she had stored in the address book, GONE. Anyone who had only that addy for her would no longer be able to reach her. Anyplace where she'd signed up with that addy would need to be updated with a new one. Her MSN ID associated with that addy vanished, and there went any MSN clubs she was in, the MSN IM with all THOSE records... the whole bit. All because she used ONE ill-advised word; I was so stunned when my husband read her final email to me and explained what they'd taken issue with that I almost fell off my chair.
And yes, I was angry enough at her to be DELIGHTED that her ugly behavior, and her making an issue of reporting ME, had backfired on her, and caused her some real grief; I'd have given ANYTHING to have seen the look on her face when she realized that her account was gone, and then realized WHY it was gone.
Since that happened, any time I get sucked into an email war with anyone I'm just WAITING for them to violate the TOS so I can report them and get their account deleted; I still get the same thrill at seeing that I've taught yet another person that you need to think twice before launching an attack on someone online, because unless you have your own server you're NOT immune to getting in trouble if you get nasty.
If you're curious as to how touchy providers like Hotmail are when it comes to the TOS, here's the best example from my experience; one pushy young man who became infuriated when I declined to arrange a meeting with him called me a whore (which is a pretty silly choice of epithet to use on a conservative married woman), and that got him deleted... plain old name-calling, with a word that most folks wouldn't even consider vulgar.
An odd thing that I found that encourages people to use profanity, etc, is to tell them that their addy has been blocked from my inbox; everyone knows about email blocking, so no one should keep writing after they've been told they're blocked, but, because I'm hoping to catch them out, I don't actually block them, and then I wait... and here will come a final email from them in which they're certain to include an abusive word. Why would ANYONE write an email to an account they think they've been blocked from? It's happened multiple times, so there's gotta be some psychological thing going on... maybe it's therapeutic to send an ugly email even if the intended victim doesn't get it? Be that as it may, the apparent requirement for online attackers to say something that violates the TOS of their email providers in that final email has proven to be their undoing.
As an aside; if you're feeling any sympathy for these folks, DON'T. When an individual takes time out of their day to attack someone, they're an @sshole, and when they do it online they're a coward as well; people that use the unreachability of being in cyberspace to try to hurt and upset others are COCKROACHES, and deserve as little mercy as their insectile counterparts do.
If you ever have someone sending you abusive emails, wait for that inevitable dirty word, or tell them they've been blocked to flush it out, then go to the homepage for their email provider, check their TOS for the bad-language clause so that you can quote it, and then send their customer service or similar department a copy of the offending email with full headers, and ask them to take action against this violation of the TOS... you might not succeed in getting action taken (although *I* always have), but chances are good that you'll get an email telling you that that account has been closed, and thus you'll have struck a blow for every person that was ever harassed and mistreated online but didn't think they could do anything about it.
Long live the TOS!! :-)
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Could you marry someone VERY different?
By an odd coincidence, 2 different movies that I've seen in the past few days have featured couples where one was a dwarf... and before you say, "oh no, it's 'little people,'" these movies, and some documentaries I've seen recently, have used the term "dwarf," so I'm assuming that's the preferred one currently. Anyways, this 2nd movie coming hard on the heels of the 1st got me to thinking; how "different" of a person could YOU marry... and I say "marry" because I'm talking about making a serious and permanent emotional commitment, NOT about what you might accept out of curiosity for a fling. So, could you marry someone who was:
Deaf?
Blind?
An amputee?
In a wheelchair?
Facially disfigured?
Otherwise physically deformed?
Paralyzed?
Otherwise handicapped?
Terminally ill?
Obese?
A giant/giantess?
A dwarf?
Intersexed?
A conjoined twin?
4 or more decades apart from you in age?
Anything I've forgotten that would make people double-take when they saw that person, or saw them with YOU, or would make people say, "But, why would you want to be with her/him, (s)he's..."?
There are "normal" individuals who HAVE chosen people of all of these types as their life partners, so it CAN happen; if you're like most folks, though, there are few, if any, of the above categories of people that you'd even be willing to be set up on a blind date with, or to date if you got to know them, say, at work, much less marry. Do you think that's an ok way to feel about it? If not, will you do some soul searching and work on your inner self to become more accepting, or will you just shrug it off?
And what about ME, you ask? Fair question; the fast answer is that dating demand for me was always so low, as in non-existent, that I honestly think it would never have occurred to me to reject a man for ANY reason other than being a violent lunatic... and even then, I dated a man who thought he was a ninja for about 6 months, so...
The "slower" answer is; I've never been unable to interact comfortably with any kind of person, so I could see it happening that I could get to know someone in one of the above categories and have it progress to something serious... why not? They'd have to be willing to accept ME, and deal with all MY unusual characteristics, would they not, so why shouldn't I reciprocate?
There was a man I knew in college whose body was twisted to the point that he could barely walk, and was legally blind too (he attributed these things to being given oxygen right after he was born); despite these afflictions, he was totally without negativity or self-pity, and was in fact very funny as well as highly intelligent. If he saw me approaching him on campus, he'd "run away," which meant that I could "catch" him without speeding up my walking pace much, and we'd both laugh about it when I reached him; I found his ability to make his handicap into a recurring joke very impressive. I would absolutely have dated him if he'd asked me, as I liked him a great deal, and in fact tried not too subtly to get us off campus together, but he never went along with it; I hope, looking back, that it was just that he found me entertaining but not datable, like the other guys did, rather than that he felt unable to handle a dating situation.
In my early 20's, I dated a man who weighed perhaps 400 lbs; my mother's comment when she 1st saw him was "cross him off the list," and the way people stared and double-took when they saw us made it clear that people in general thought we didn't belong together... I even had guys try to chat me up with this man hanging onto my hand, as if they thought he must be an over-affectionate brother or something, and not possibly a boyfriend. Even the man's PARENTS, both of whom were obese, seemed to look askance at he and I being together; in the closest thing to a laudatory statement I recall her EVER making about my appearance, my mother actually said after I met his parents, "They just can't believe that someone with your looks and brains is interested in their son." Despite all of this, I WOULD have married him, and we had talked about marriage; if he hadn't just vanished one day, never to call again, it might well have happened.
At this point in my life, I've long since ceased to care what anyone other than the people I know and respect think of me or what I do, and none of those folks would have any objection to my being with someone because they were different, or VERY different, perhaps because we're geeks, and have been to enough scifi conventions, which always attract people with disabilities because of the culture of acceptance there, to have hung out with all sorts of people and learned through experience that they're not different in any way that matters... so, if something were to happen to my husband, and I was acquitted (lol), I'd be willing to become involved with, and marry, ANY sort of man who possessed the only qualities that matter... the INNER kind.
Deaf?
Blind?
An amputee?
In a wheelchair?
Facially disfigured?
Otherwise physically deformed?
Paralyzed?
Otherwise handicapped?
Terminally ill?
Obese?
A giant/giantess?
A dwarf?
Intersexed?
A conjoined twin?
4 or more decades apart from you in age?
Anything I've forgotten that would make people double-take when they saw that person, or saw them with YOU, or would make people say, "But, why would you want to be with her/him, (s)he's..."?
There are "normal" individuals who HAVE chosen people of all of these types as their life partners, so it CAN happen; if you're like most folks, though, there are few, if any, of the above categories of people that you'd even be willing to be set up on a blind date with, or to date if you got to know them, say, at work, much less marry. Do you think that's an ok way to feel about it? If not, will you do some soul searching and work on your inner self to become more accepting, or will you just shrug it off?
And what about ME, you ask? Fair question; the fast answer is that dating demand for me was always so low, as in non-existent, that I honestly think it would never have occurred to me to reject a man for ANY reason other than being a violent lunatic... and even then, I dated a man who thought he was a ninja for about 6 months, so...
The "slower" answer is; I've never been unable to interact comfortably with any kind of person, so I could see it happening that I could get to know someone in one of the above categories and have it progress to something serious... why not? They'd have to be willing to accept ME, and deal with all MY unusual characteristics, would they not, so why shouldn't I reciprocate?
There was a man I knew in college whose body was twisted to the point that he could barely walk, and was legally blind too (he attributed these things to being given oxygen right after he was born); despite these afflictions, he was totally without negativity or self-pity, and was in fact very funny as well as highly intelligent. If he saw me approaching him on campus, he'd "run away," which meant that I could "catch" him without speeding up my walking pace much, and we'd both laugh about it when I reached him; I found his ability to make his handicap into a recurring joke very impressive. I would absolutely have dated him if he'd asked me, as I liked him a great deal, and in fact tried not too subtly to get us off campus together, but he never went along with it; I hope, looking back, that it was just that he found me entertaining but not datable, like the other guys did, rather than that he felt unable to handle a dating situation.
In my early 20's, I dated a man who weighed perhaps 400 lbs; my mother's comment when she 1st saw him was "cross him off the list," and the way people stared and double-took when they saw us made it clear that people in general thought we didn't belong together... I even had guys try to chat me up with this man hanging onto my hand, as if they thought he must be an over-affectionate brother or something, and not possibly a boyfriend. Even the man's PARENTS, both of whom were obese, seemed to look askance at he and I being together; in the closest thing to a laudatory statement I recall her EVER making about my appearance, my mother actually said after I met his parents, "They just can't believe that someone with your looks and brains is interested in their son." Despite all of this, I WOULD have married him, and we had talked about marriage; if he hadn't just vanished one day, never to call again, it might well have happened.
At this point in my life, I've long since ceased to care what anyone other than the people I know and respect think of me or what I do, and none of those folks would have any objection to my being with someone because they were different, or VERY different, perhaps because we're geeks, and have been to enough scifi conventions, which always attract people with disabilities because of the culture of acceptance there, to have hung out with all sorts of people and learned through experience that they're not different in any way that matters... so, if something were to happen to my husband, and I was acquitted (lol), I'd be willing to become involved with, and marry, ANY sort of man who possessed the only qualities that matter... the INNER kind.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
My husband's long-lost brother
The Sports Illustrated website, among others, reported the amazing story
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/more/05/09/bc.rac.derby.bigwinners.ap/index.html
of 39 year old Phoenix firefighter Chris Hertzog, who hit the superfecta (the 1st 4 horses) for the Kentucky Derby last Saturday, which, thanks to a 50-1 long shot horse, Giacomo, winning, a 72-1 horse taking 2nd, and a 30-1 horse taking 4th, "yielded the highest payout in Derby history," making his ticket worth $864,253.50; by the time he found out he'd won, he'd already long since abandoned his tickets on the table... and, when he went back, they were GONE!!
A protracted search of all the garbage bags in the clubhouse didn't turn up the missing winner, and Hertzog had to go home thinking about how his carelessness had cost him the payoff of a lifetime.
The next day, mutuel clerk Brenda Reagan, who'd sold him the ticket, "noticed two tickets lying next to her machine," and, you guessed it, one of them was the winner; her explanation for this was, "When I punched Chris' tickets, there were so many that they bunched up and these two must have fallen on the side." You can see a pic of her and Hertzog at the bottom of the page here
http://gamingtoday.com/index.cfm?articleid=12898&AIN=541716
To truly describe the emotional rollercoaster Hertzog went through last weekend, you'd have to invent totally new words, don't you think?
Why did I refer to this guy as "my husband's long-lost brother"? Because every element of this story is EXACTLY how it would happen with my husband in similar circumstances; he said so himself when he told me about all this. Specifically:
1) Hertzog didn't use any skill to pick his winners; the winning ticket was one of 100 he'd bought that day, "all in random computer-generated quick picks"... and wasting $100 on blind bets is something my lazy husband would do to save himself the effort of figuring out what bets to place.
2) Hertzog wasn't paying attention when his tickets were handed over, which is how 2 got away from him; my husband wouldn't pay attention to what was going on around HIM if he was with Daniel in the lion's den.
3) Hertzog somehow managed to not realize that he was missing 2 tickets when he checked for winners after the race (a smart person would have counted them off as (s)he checked them over, to be sure none were stuck together or had fallen off the table), and then walked off and left them, even though he KNOWS he's a screw-up (more proof in a minute) and was thus at high risk for not noticing a winner if he'd had one, and should have hung onto them and re-checked them later; my husband is just that careless with... EVERYTHING.
4) Despite his random choices of winners and his near-tragic unobservantness, Hertzog had a BIG winner; my husband would have that sort of luck, too-everything just lands in his lap despite how he bungles his way through life.
5) Hertzog required other people to be involved in a protracted search for something desperately important that he'd lost; this happens every day in my household, sigh.
6) Hertzog had a world-class disaster; my husband IS a world-class disaster.
7) Thanks to circumstances outside of his control (eg the attentiveness and quick thinking of Brenda Reagan), Hertzog's victory-turned-tragedy turned back into a victory; my husband is ALWAYS having someone else, usually ME, make things right for him.
8) And here's the bonus; according to the story of this incident as it appears on this site
http://gamingtoday.com/index.cfm?articleid=12898&AIN=541716
Hertzog once "lost a $10,000 Rolex watch while fishing"... and in all the world, only he and my husband would ever be STUPID enough to wear a Rolex to go fishing, much less be careless enough to lose it.
Truth, as they say, is truly stranger than fiction...
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/more/05/09/bc.rac.derby.bigwinners.ap/index.html
of 39 year old Phoenix firefighter Chris Hertzog, who hit the superfecta (the 1st 4 horses) for the Kentucky Derby last Saturday, which, thanks to a 50-1 long shot horse, Giacomo, winning, a 72-1 horse taking 2nd, and a 30-1 horse taking 4th, "yielded the highest payout in Derby history," making his ticket worth $864,253.50; by the time he found out he'd won, he'd already long since abandoned his tickets on the table... and, when he went back, they were GONE!!
A protracted search of all the garbage bags in the clubhouse didn't turn up the missing winner, and Hertzog had to go home thinking about how his carelessness had cost him the payoff of a lifetime.
The next day, mutuel clerk Brenda Reagan, who'd sold him the ticket, "noticed two tickets lying next to her machine," and, you guessed it, one of them was the winner; her explanation for this was, "When I punched Chris' tickets, there were so many that they bunched up and these two must have fallen on the side." You can see a pic of her and Hertzog at the bottom of the page here
http://gamingtoday.com/index.cfm?articleid=12898&AIN=541716
To truly describe the emotional rollercoaster Hertzog went through last weekend, you'd have to invent totally new words, don't you think?
Why did I refer to this guy as "my husband's long-lost brother"? Because every element of this story is EXACTLY how it would happen with my husband in similar circumstances; he said so himself when he told me about all this. Specifically:
1) Hertzog didn't use any skill to pick his winners; the winning ticket was one of 100 he'd bought that day, "all in random computer-generated quick picks"... and wasting $100 on blind bets is something my lazy husband would do to save himself the effort of figuring out what bets to place.
2) Hertzog wasn't paying attention when his tickets were handed over, which is how 2 got away from him; my husband wouldn't pay attention to what was going on around HIM if he was with Daniel in the lion's den.
3) Hertzog somehow managed to not realize that he was missing 2 tickets when he checked for winners after the race (a smart person would have counted them off as (s)he checked them over, to be sure none were stuck together or had fallen off the table), and then walked off and left them, even though he KNOWS he's a screw-up (more proof in a minute) and was thus at high risk for not noticing a winner if he'd had one, and should have hung onto them and re-checked them later; my husband is just that careless with... EVERYTHING.
4) Despite his random choices of winners and his near-tragic unobservantness, Hertzog had a BIG winner; my husband would have that sort of luck, too-everything just lands in his lap despite how he bungles his way through life.
5) Hertzog required other people to be involved in a protracted search for something desperately important that he'd lost; this happens every day in my household, sigh.
6) Hertzog had a world-class disaster; my husband IS a world-class disaster.
7) Thanks to circumstances outside of his control (eg the attentiveness and quick thinking of Brenda Reagan), Hertzog's victory-turned-tragedy turned back into a victory; my husband is ALWAYS having someone else, usually ME, make things right for him.
8) And here's the bonus; according to the story of this incident as it appears on this site
http://gamingtoday.com/index.cfm?articleid=12898&AIN=541716
Hertzog once "lost a $10,000 Rolex watch while fishing"... and in all the world, only he and my husband would ever be STUPID enough to wear a Rolex to go fishing, much less be careless enough to lose it.
Truth, as they say, is truly stranger than fiction...
Friday, May 13, 2005
Intelligence loses again
On this site:
http://health.nzoom.com/health_detail/0,2811,177771-399-406,00.html
I found the following fascinating article (the asterisks are mine throughout this post):
"Want to impress? Don't overuse big words
Essay writers who use complicated language where simple words will do tend to be seen as less intelligent than people who stick with more basic vocabulary, according to a new study.
This suggests that attempts to impress readers by rifling through a thesaurus may actually backfire, study author Daniel Oppenheimer of Stanford University in California told Reuters Health.
"I think it's important to point out that this study is not about problems with using long words--it's about problems with using long words needlessly," Oppenheimer said.
"If the best way to say something involves using a complex word, then by all means do so. But if there are several equally valid ways of expressing your ideas, you should go with the simpler one," he noted.
Oppenheimer based his findings on students' feedback regarding writing samples that contained more or less complex language.
He explained in an interview that one essay might contain the phrase "the primary academic goal I have set for myself is to use my potential to the fullest"; its counterpart read "the principal educational aspiration I have established for myself is to utilize my capabilities to the fullest."
Oppenheimer found that people tended to rate the intelligence of authors who wrote essays in simpler language as higher than those who penned the more complex works.
This finding persisted whether the authors were fellow students or the philosopher Descartes, said Oppenheimer, who reported the findings at the recent annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Los Angeles.
The samples included graduate school applications, sociology dissertations and various translations of a work of Descartes. Half knew the author and half were unaware of the source of the text.
The more unnecessarily complex the samples were, the worse the essays were rated. Oppenheimer noted that authors of essays with moderate levels of obfuscation were rated as less intelligent than those who penned essays with no added complexity, but more intelligent than authors of highly complex works.
"That is, any obfuscation hurts the essay, and the more obfuscated the essay is, the worse off the author is," Oppenheimer said.
***** The researcher added that he is not sure why people tend to equate intelligence with simpler language. He said that people might just prefer things that are easy to understand.
"The fact that the non-obfuscated essays are easier to read makes people like them better, which in turn makes people evaluate the essays more positively in all dimensions--including the intelligence of the author," Oppenheimer noted. *****
Many people try to boost their writing by tossing in some big words, the researcher added--a previous survey found that 75% of undergraduate students say they try to appear smarter by opting for complicated words where simple ones will do.
The continued popularity of this technique may largely stem from the fact that people who overuse big words may not realize the technique could backfire, Oppenheimer noted.
In the case of a college admissions essay, Oppenheimer explained that applicants may decide to add complicated language to impress the reviewers. And if the school rejects their application as a result of the heavy-handed writing, the student may not realize why.
"The student might even think that the reason was because he or she didn't obfuscate enough," Oppenheimer noted."
What a cruel irony; we spend our entire school careers being force-fed big words, and it turns out that we shouldn't even USE them in our writings!! Unless you've got a bunch of overly-educated people in your circle of acquaintance, like I do, you won't be using them when you speak either, as no one would understand you, which leaves you with NOWHERE to use those big words... and makes it a total waste of time drilling every American child on all those vocabulary lists every year.
The results of the study are scary; it goes to show you how warped our brains are that we'd look at evidence of GREATER intelligence, as seen by the ability to use more advanced words correctly (just lifting words from the thesaurus, which anyone can do, will lead to incorrect usages over and over, because there are shades of meaning to consider), and twist it around via our innate dislike and distrust of intellectuals (which we often see as just being all those people who're significantly smarter than we ourselves are) to end up being "proof" of LESSER intelligence. Sure, it IS irritating when someone tries to make themselves sound brilliant by using non-stop big words, but that should NOT have any derogatory bearing on how we judge that person's intelligence... not even if we feel bad because they used words we don't know.
How utterly pitiful that even in an academic setting people are so ingrained to make judgments based on what they LIKE rather than on an actual objective analysis, or even a casual perusal of the facts, that they come up with conclusions such that the big words that high school teachers push and push for the kids to use in all their writings turn out to be counterproductive.
Another quote from Oppenheimer from this research paper (which I discovered is called "Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems With Using Long Words Needlessly," how's THAT for being a cool guy) is here
http://www.speechworks.net/newsletters/0803/StoryD.htm
"Big words don't make you sound big brained.
In fact, just the opposite is true, according to new research done by Daniel Oppenheimer, a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at Stanford.
"By making a text sound more difficult to understand, you are only going to annoy your reader and leave him or her with the negative evaluation of you and your work," Oppenheimer says."
That same page also has a little factoid that the politicos should think about:
"Indeed, research also shows that people tend to mistrust people that use a log of jargon. A British consulting firm found that 10 percent of the working population mistrusts people that use buzzwords and jargon.
Think about that! ***** When you use jargon, you make 10 percent of the audience question your credibility." *****
Verrrrrrrrry interesting, don't you think? You can be perfectly sincere, but be mistrusted by your listeners if you use the wrong words... MISTRUSTED, how's that for ridiculous? And talking about politics, this site
http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2004/09/30/Decision2004/In_so_many_words__ima.shtml
provides more evidence for the dislike most people have for intellectuals and the way they express themselves, and the preference they correspondingly tend to have for those who sound like themselves; the article (from last year, obviously), compares Bush and Kerry, but it is NOT a Republican vs Democrat thing, so don't be put off from reading it. It's subheaded, "An analysis shows President Bush's simpler speaking style is more effective than John Kerry's longer sentences," and the high points are:
"An analysis of their interviews and news conferences found that, by every measurement, Kerry is more difficult to understand than the president. He spoke in longer sentences - an average of 19.9 words per sentence compared with 14.2 for Bush; he spoke at a 10th-grade level, the president at a seventh-grade level; he used slightly larger words and had more passive sentences.
The results suggest why Kerry has been struggling to convey his message. His wordy style leaves many voters unsure what he wants to do as president.""
"Bush's punchy sentences leave little doubt where he stands.
"It's all about style," said Craig Crawford, a political analyst for MSNBC and Congressional Quarterly. "Bush's style, with ***** shorter, declarative sentences, communicates directness and decisiveness."" *****
"The Flesch-Kincaid rating is the grade level necessary to understand it. A lower grade means it should be easier to comprehend. Writers often aim for a seventh or eighth grade level. (This story, according to Word, is written at a seventh-grade level.)
In the 2000 presidential debates, YourDictionary.com calculated Bush spoke at an average grade level of 6.6; Vice President Gore was 7.9."
"Linguists say shorter sentences usually are more effective."
"Bush speaks concisely and directly. He uses shorter words - 4.3 letters per word versus 4.5 for Kerry - and gets to the point. Kerry speaks in passive sentences about twice as often as the president. Only 5 percent of Bush's sentences are passive, compared with 9 percent for Kerry."
"Metcalf, the author of Presidential Voices, said Bush's ***** short sentences give the impression "that he is speaking the plain truth. The plain style implies directness and sincerity." *****
"Crawford said Bush also connects with voters because of the words he chooses.
"Bush uses the language of guys sitting around a bar - without the cursing," Crawford said. "Kerry uses the language of people sitting around a university faculty lounge.""
"This is one of the reasons that Bush is seen as more decisive and Kerry as a flip-flopper," said Crawford. ***** "When you answer in long, twisted sentences you don't seem as though you are really confident in what you are saying." *****
I've often said that people don't want intellectualism in our country's leaders, and now there's actual analysis that proves it; we want short sentences, short words, a junior high level of understandability, and the vernacular of the common man... which is clearly NOT what you'd think we SHOULD want in a leader, which would be someone who sounds highly intelligent and educated. What's even worse than the perhaps understandable desire of people to have a leader who's like them is that whether or not a person is seen as honest, decisive, sincere or confident, of all the illogical things, is being judged, wrongly of course, by the person's average sentence length.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Everyone talks a good game about valuing intelligence, and wanting it in their friends and lovers, and for their children, but the reality is that people like an intelligence level that matches their own, which for most people means being AVERAGE, NOT intelligent... and most of them take an immediate, unconscious dislike to anyone who sounds too brainy. Intelligence is the most valuable resource on this planet, it's the thing that will create astounding medical and other scientific advances, it's the only hope we have of ever understanding the universe, conquering space, and maybe even eventually defeating death itself, and we HATE it, and turn our noses up at, and all too often our backs on, those who possess it; isn't it enough to make you CRY?
http://health.nzoom.com/health_detail/0,2811,177771-399-406,00.html
I found the following fascinating article (the asterisks are mine throughout this post):
"Want to impress? Don't overuse big words
Essay writers who use complicated language where simple words will do tend to be seen as less intelligent than people who stick with more basic vocabulary, according to a new study.
This suggests that attempts to impress readers by rifling through a thesaurus may actually backfire, study author Daniel Oppenheimer of Stanford University in California told Reuters Health.
"I think it's important to point out that this study is not about problems with using long words--it's about problems with using long words needlessly," Oppenheimer said.
"If the best way to say something involves using a complex word, then by all means do so. But if there are several equally valid ways of expressing your ideas, you should go with the simpler one," he noted.
Oppenheimer based his findings on students' feedback regarding writing samples that contained more or less complex language.
He explained in an interview that one essay might contain the phrase "the primary academic goal I have set for myself is to use my potential to the fullest"; its counterpart read "the principal educational aspiration I have established for myself is to utilize my capabilities to the fullest."
Oppenheimer found that people tended to rate the intelligence of authors who wrote essays in simpler language as higher than those who penned the more complex works.
This finding persisted whether the authors were fellow students or the philosopher Descartes, said Oppenheimer, who reported the findings at the recent annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Los Angeles.
The samples included graduate school applications, sociology dissertations and various translations of a work of Descartes. Half knew the author and half were unaware of the source of the text.
The more unnecessarily complex the samples were, the worse the essays were rated. Oppenheimer noted that authors of essays with moderate levels of obfuscation were rated as less intelligent than those who penned essays with no added complexity, but more intelligent than authors of highly complex works.
"That is, any obfuscation hurts the essay, and the more obfuscated the essay is, the worse off the author is," Oppenheimer said.
***** The researcher added that he is not sure why people tend to equate intelligence with simpler language. He said that people might just prefer things that are easy to understand.
"The fact that the non-obfuscated essays are easier to read makes people like them better, which in turn makes people evaluate the essays more positively in all dimensions--including the intelligence of the author," Oppenheimer noted. *****
Many people try to boost their writing by tossing in some big words, the researcher added--a previous survey found that 75% of undergraduate students say they try to appear smarter by opting for complicated words where simple ones will do.
The continued popularity of this technique may largely stem from the fact that people who overuse big words may not realize the technique could backfire, Oppenheimer noted.
In the case of a college admissions essay, Oppenheimer explained that applicants may decide to add complicated language to impress the reviewers. And if the school rejects their application as a result of the heavy-handed writing, the student may not realize why.
"The student might even think that the reason was because he or she didn't obfuscate enough," Oppenheimer noted."
What a cruel irony; we spend our entire school careers being force-fed big words, and it turns out that we shouldn't even USE them in our writings!! Unless you've got a bunch of overly-educated people in your circle of acquaintance, like I do, you won't be using them when you speak either, as no one would understand you, which leaves you with NOWHERE to use those big words... and makes it a total waste of time drilling every American child on all those vocabulary lists every year.
The results of the study are scary; it goes to show you how warped our brains are that we'd look at evidence of GREATER intelligence, as seen by the ability to use more advanced words correctly (just lifting words from the thesaurus, which anyone can do, will lead to incorrect usages over and over, because there are shades of meaning to consider), and twist it around via our innate dislike and distrust of intellectuals (which we often see as just being all those people who're significantly smarter than we ourselves are) to end up being "proof" of LESSER intelligence. Sure, it IS irritating when someone tries to make themselves sound brilliant by using non-stop big words, but that should NOT have any derogatory bearing on how we judge that person's intelligence... not even if we feel bad because they used words we don't know.
How utterly pitiful that even in an academic setting people are so ingrained to make judgments based on what they LIKE rather than on an actual objective analysis, or even a casual perusal of the facts, that they come up with conclusions such that the big words that high school teachers push and push for the kids to use in all their writings turn out to be counterproductive.
Another quote from Oppenheimer from this research paper (which I discovered is called "Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems With Using Long Words Needlessly," how's THAT for being a cool guy) is here
http://www.speechworks.net/newsletters/0803/StoryD.htm
"Big words don't make you sound big brained.
In fact, just the opposite is true, according to new research done by Daniel Oppenheimer, a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at Stanford.
"By making a text sound more difficult to understand, you are only going to annoy your reader and leave him or her with the negative evaluation of you and your work," Oppenheimer says."
That same page also has a little factoid that the politicos should think about:
"Indeed, research also shows that people tend to mistrust people that use a log of jargon. A British consulting firm found that 10 percent of the working population mistrusts people that use buzzwords and jargon.
Think about that! ***** When you use jargon, you make 10 percent of the audience question your credibility." *****
Verrrrrrrrry interesting, don't you think? You can be perfectly sincere, but be mistrusted by your listeners if you use the wrong words... MISTRUSTED, how's that for ridiculous? And talking about politics, this site
http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2004/09/30/Decision2004/In_so_many_words__ima.shtml
provides more evidence for the dislike most people have for intellectuals and the way they express themselves, and the preference they correspondingly tend to have for those who sound like themselves; the article (from last year, obviously), compares Bush and Kerry, but it is NOT a Republican vs Democrat thing, so don't be put off from reading it. It's subheaded, "An analysis shows President Bush's simpler speaking style is more effective than John Kerry's longer sentences," and the high points are:
"An analysis of their interviews and news conferences found that, by every measurement, Kerry is more difficult to understand than the president. He spoke in longer sentences - an average of 19.9 words per sentence compared with 14.2 for Bush; he spoke at a 10th-grade level, the president at a seventh-grade level; he used slightly larger words and had more passive sentences.
The results suggest why Kerry has been struggling to convey his message. His wordy style leaves many voters unsure what he wants to do as president.""
"Bush's punchy sentences leave little doubt where he stands.
"It's all about style," said Craig Crawford, a political analyst for MSNBC and Congressional Quarterly. "Bush's style, with ***** shorter, declarative sentences, communicates directness and decisiveness."" *****
"The Flesch-Kincaid rating is the grade level necessary to understand it. A lower grade means it should be easier to comprehend. Writers often aim for a seventh or eighth grade level. (This story, according to Word, is written at a seventh-grade level.)
In the 2000 presidential debates, YourDictionary.com calculated Bush spoke at an average grade level of 6.6; Vice President Gore was 7.9."
"Linguists say shorter sentences usually are more effective."
"Bush speaks concisely and directly. He uses shorter words - 4.3 letters per word versus 4.5 for Kerry - and gets to the point. Kerry speaks in passive sentences about twice as often as the president. Only 5 percent of Bush's sentences are passive, compared with 9 percent for Kerry."
"Metcalf, the author of Presidential Voices, said Bush's ***** short sentences give the impression "that he is speaking the plain truth. The plain style implies directness and sincerity." *****
"Crawford said Bush also connects with voters because of the words he chooses.
"Bush uses the language of guys sitting around a bar - without the cursing," Crawford said. "Kerry uses the language of people sitting around a university faculty lounge.""
"This is one of the reasons that Bush is seen as more decisive and Kerry as a flip-flopper," said Crawford. ***** "When you answer in long, twisted sentences you don't seem as though you are really confident in what you are saying." *****
I've often said that people don't want intellectualism in our country's leaders, and now there's actual analysis that proves it; we want short sentences, short words, a junior high level of understandability, and the vernacular of the common man... which is clearly NOT what you'd think we SHOULD want in a leader, which would be someone who sounds highly intelligent and educated. What's even worse than the perhaps understandable desire of people to have a leader who's like them is that whether or not a person is seen as honest, decisive, sincere or confident, of all the illogical things, is being judged, wrongly of course, by the person's average sentence length.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Everyone talks a good game about valuing intelligence, and wanting it in their friends and lovers, and for their children, but the reality is that people like an intelligence level that matches their own, which for most people means being AVERAGE, NOT intelligent... and most of them take an immediate, unconscious dislike to anyone who sounds too brainy. Intelligence is the most valuable resource on this planet, it's the thing that will create astounding medical and other scientific advances, it's the only hope we have of ever understanding the universe, conquering space, and maybe even eventually defeating death itself, and we HATE it, and turn our noses up at, and all too often our backs on, those who possess it; isn't it enough to make you CRY?
Thursday, May 12, 2005
The subjectivity of time
First, let me say a word about the chunk of hours tonight (and into the morning at this point) that the main page of my blog either wouldn't load at all, or loaded only a blank white page; GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! Ok, that's not a word, but it sums up my feelings very accurately.
Oddly enough, this experience has illustrated the point I've been intending to make about time, because what has objectively been a few hours of waiting for my blog to come back has felt like FOREVER; the exact same amount of time can seem endless, or like an instant, depending on one's frame of mind. That's hardly a new observation, but this one is; how can we be sure that ALL of the different possible perceptions as to the passing of time aren't correct? Why do we think that time is a perfectly regular thing, applying equally everywhere, all the time... because we SAY it is? That's circular reasoning. Because we've built devices that track time, or that we THINK track time, and they all say the same thing? What if they're all WRONG, in other words what if the repetitive ticks and tocks, or vibrations of quartz, etc, do NOT correspond to the movements of time, and we've just decided they do because it's convenient for us?
I know, that sounds a little nuts, but we need to keep in mind that quantum physics experiments have PROVEN that time does NOT work the way we think it does, and may in fact not even exist, so it stands to reason that some part of how we've decided time works is WRONG... and shouldn't we try to figure out WHICH part(s)? Only a theoretical physicist could come up with the equations that undoubtedly are involved, but anyone can sit and think about it and try to see outside of the box our brains have made for us.
Yes, it's our brains that are to blame; they perceive time in a certain way, and as anyone who's ever looked at optical illusions knows, the brain can see things that aren't there, fail to see things that ARE there, and see things all wrong, so we know that our brains are very fallible. We see the sun appear to rise and set, the changing of the seasons, the vibration of cesium atoms, and we tell ourselves that we can count and subdivide these intervals and say that we're keeping track of time... but ARE we? Are we perhaps instead just doing something like if we made marks on a CD to show where tracks begin and end, and then played the tracks sequentially, and said, "See, we reached the 1st mark... and now the 2nd..." and treated it as if those tracks were just then coming into existence, when in fact every track that will ever be on there already exists, and the player is just moving along them? We can fast forward, and it seems like the song is going faster, but it hasn't changed; it's our perception of it that has changed, because the player is handling it differently.
What if time is the cosmic version of a CD player, and can fast forward, and "slow forward" (as if a 45RPM record were played at 33RPM), through events, either overall or locally, and thus time DOES move more slowly or more quickly, although the actual events stay spaced the same distance in time apart, as the datums do on a CD when you navigate through it? If time is largely a matter of our perceptions, unconnected to the lockstep progressions of clocks that we THINK are measuring time, why couldn't that be true?
What brought all these thoughts into my mind is an enlightening experience I had today; I woke up a little while before I needed to get up, looked at the clock, sighed wearily, closed my eyes "for a moment," and fell back asleep, where I had a dream that lasted about 10-15 minutes. I woke up, looked at the clock... and ONE minute had passed. I had seen 10-15 minutes worth of action inside of my head, seen it at normal speed, but somehow I saw it all in ONE minute; proof positive, in my mind, that our brains can show us the passage of time in more ways than the one shown by clocks, ways that seem equally right to us... and a strong indication that time might not exist at all, which seems to me to be the simplest explanation for the brain's ability to seemingly show images at 10-15 times the speed we'd normally perceive them in.
IS time in fact a totally subjective thing? Does it seem different, for example, to different species of animal? Or to spirits? How about to fetuses? If we had a scifi-type device that could be beamed at the Earth and reprogram all of our brains to perceive time differently, would a day suddenly seem to be 30 hours instead of 24, would the vibration of a cesium atom seem to take a minute instead of a second, would everything seem to have different durations than before just because we were perceiving differently? What if there were some astronauts on the moon when this beam was used, and so didn't get zapped; when they came back, would their lives become a Twilight Zone-type nightmare of being permanently out of synch with the rest of us?
I wish those physicists would hurry up and figure this out...
Oddly enough, this experience has illustrated the point I've been intending to make about time, because what has objectively been a few hours of waiting for my blog to come back has felt like FOREVER; the exact same amount of time can seem endless, or like an instant, depending on one's frame of mind. That's hardly a new observation, but this one is; how can we be sure that ALL of the different possible perceptions as to the passing of time aren't correct? Why do we think that time is a perfectly regular thing, applying equally everywhere, all the time... because we SAY it is? That's circular reasoning. Because we've built devices that track time, or that we THINK track time, and they all say the same thing? What if they're all WRONG, in other words what if the repetitive ticks and tocks, or vibrations of quartz, etc, do NOT correspond to the movements of time, and we've just decided they do because it's convenient for us?
I know, that sounds a little nuts, but we need to keep in mind that quantum physics experiments have PROVEN that time does NOT work the way we think it does, and may in fact not even exist, so it stands to reason that some part of how we've decided time works is WRONG... and shouldn't we try to figure out WHICH part(s)? Only a theoretical physicist could come up with the equations that undoubtedly are involved, but anyone can sit and think about it and try to see outside of the box our brains have made for us.
Yes, it's our brains that are to blame; they perceive time in a certain way, and as anyone who's ever looked at optical illusions knows, the brain can see things that aren't there, fail to see things that ARE there, and see things all wrong, so we know that our brains are very fallible. We see the sun appear to rise and set, the changing of the seasons, the vibration of cesium atoms, and we tell ourselves that we can count and subdivide these intervals and say that we're keeping track of time... but ARE we? Are we perhaps instead just doing something like if we made marks on a CD to show where tracks begin and end, and then played the tracks sequentially, and said, "See, we reached the 1st mark... and now the 2nd..." and treated it as if those tracks were just then coming into existence, when in fact every track that will ever be on there already exists, and the player is just moving along them? We can fast forward, and it seems like the song is going faster, but it hasn't changed; it's our perception of it that has changed, because the player is handling it differently.
What if time is the cosmic version of a CD player, and can fast forward, and "slow forward" (as if a 45RPM record were played at 33RPM), through events, either overall or locally, and thus time DOES move more slowly or more quickly, although the actual events stay spaced the same distance in time apart, as the datums do on a CD when you navigate through it? If time is largely a matter of our perceptions, unconnected to the lockstep progressions of clocks that we THINK are measuring time, why couldn't that be true?
What brought all these thoughts into my mind is an enlightening experience I had today; I woke up a little while before I needed to get up, looked at the clock, sighed wearily, closed my eyes "for a moment," and fell back asleep, where I had a dream that lasted about 10-15 minutes. I woke up, looked at the clock... and ONE minute had passed. I had seen 10-15 minutes worth of action inside of my head, seen it at normal speed, but somehow I saw it all in ONE minute; proof positive, in my mind, that our brains can show us the passage of time in more ways than the one shown by clocks, ways that seem equally right to us... and a strong indication that time might not exist at all, which seems to me to be the simplest explanation for the brain's ability to seemingly show images at 10-15 times the speed we'd normally perceive them in.
IS time in fact a totally subjective thing? Does it seem different, for example, to different species of animal? Or to spirits? How about to fetuses? If we had a scifi-type device that could be beamed at the Earth and reprogram all of our brains to perceive time differently, would a day suddenly seem to be 30 hours instead of 24, would the vibration of a cesium atom seem to take a minute instead of a second, would everything seem to have different durations than before just because we were perceiving differently? What if there were some astronauts on the moon when this beam was used, and so didn't get zapped; when they came back, would their lives become a Twilight Zone-type nightmare of being permanently out of synch with the rest of us?
I wish those physicists would hurry up and figure this out...
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Otherkin
I came across this term in a blog post today, in which a woman asserted that she was actually a DRAGON, that she'd had her "awakening" and could "feel" her wings and tail... and no, she was NOT joking, nor were the people who'd responded who also claimed to be otherkin of various kinds.
I try very, VERY hard to be open-minded and see how anything that people believe in might be possible, because I've gained so much knowledge and understanding by giving objective analyses even to things I was previously sure had no bearing on the truth (such as animism), but I'm going to fail with this one.
I went to the site that I figured would have an attempt at an objective description of even this odd of a concept, and was not disappointed; Wikipedia's page about otherkin is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
and the part that I think is central to grasping this phenomenon (as much as anyone can who isn't involved in it) is:
"The Otherkin subculture is made up of people who believe themselves to be partially non-human. Specifically, these individuals believe themselves to have biological, psychological, and/or spiritual aspects of an animal, legendary creature, or some other non-human entity. Many claim to have the mentality and instincts of the creature they claim to be. "Otherkin" is also sometimes used as an umbrella term describing various people and communities with similar beliefs, but who may not consider themselves to be part of the mainstream otherkin community. Examples of these are the draconic [dragon], vampire and therianthrope [non-human animal] communities.
Otherkin may claim their "otherside" to possess the nature(s) of cats, dogs, elves, fairies, angels, dragons, demons, vampires, extraterrestrials, or any other number of other non-human beings. Some may profess a combination of non-human natures, such as being both elf and angel. The otherkin community also has a relatively high proportion of multiple personalities, who may have internal personalities with different otherkin types, and may include walk-ins [people whose original souls have departed their bodies and been replaced with new souls] amongst their number."
"While some otherkin believe themselves to be biologically non-human--for example, by claiming distant, or not so distant descent from a non-human--others believe themselves to be human in biology but "other" in spirit, often attributing this to reincarnation or a "misplaced soul". The reincarnationists, who currently are the dominant force in the subculture, disagree amongst themselves as to whether these otherkin souls come from Earth, other planets, or different planes of consciousness. Another idea otherkin associate with is totemism. Such an explanation for an otherkin's bond with another entity--with the totem guiding or temporarily taking possession of the human body--is especially popular among those involved with Paganism and the New Age movement."
Have we really, as a culture, become so frightened of reality, so bored, so self-hating, so unaccepting of ourselves and others, so eager to find some group to belong to, so desperate to find a way to feel special, so unable to learn normal social behavior and to deal with that inability, that this seems like a viable option to some people?
Granted, as with nearly everything, there's a tiny bit of gray area here... NOT about the near-religious schema that the "otherkin community" has constructed to explain and define their "otherness," of course, but about how there might in theory be a flicker of truth to the idea that not everyone's soul is necessarily "pure," ie totally what their own thoughts and feelings have created. Because we don't know how souls "work," in particular how each one keeps all its energy consolidated and separate from other souls, we have to accept the small but non-zero possibility that there might sometimes, or I suppose even frequently, be some degree of mixing of souls; if you believe, as I do, that animals have souls, you then have the possibility of having some bit of animal soul mixed in with yours, which might have all sorts of effects on you, including making you feel like you're part dog (or whatever) if souls are somehow encoded with data on what physical body they're associated with (which is certainly possible, but not provable). This soul-mixing concept is an intriguing idea, and one that I'll think more about, especially since many so-called "primitive" cultures include in their belief systems the idea of people being part animal, or being able to somehow trade places with animals, or shift shapes into animal forms; even without the animal connection, it's an interesting question as to whether souls can gain, lose and exchange pieces, and if not WHY not.
Very few alleged otherkins claim to be something as lowly and unmagical as mere animals, of course, so what about the rest of them? If angels and demons are real, and I admit that they might be, could their souls, if they have them, or their energy, mix with human souls? I suppose. If extra-terrestrial intelligences exist, and statistically it seems as if they MUST, could THEIR souls/energies mix with human souls? Possibly. However, creatures like dragons, elves, fairies and vampires, which are purely the invention of human minds and thus don't actually exist, can NOT be part of a human soul, much less body, and I don't care HOW certain these people are that they have wings or tails or the "need" to drink blood, they are simply deluded, or of course lying, and using the internet to gather together and reinforce each other's delusions.
Could it be that there's some truth to the "animal otherkin" concept, as described previously, and that people determined to escape from reality developed the idea into something out of a Disney movie, and then the fantasy creatures got tacked on because people wanted more exotic "others," and the biological connection got thrown in by people eager to be "more otherkin than thou"? Or, did the whole thing evolve out of roleplaying games and speculative fiction, with the animal facet getting added in because they're real and often beloved entities, and thus made the whole thing seem more realistic? I don't suppose we'll ever know; there are too many nutcases who are caught up in this to ever get to the bottom of it.
If you read people's stories about their "awakenings," you typically see things like, "I never felt right, never fit in, never understood why I felt different... and then one day I realized that I was really a VAMPIRE, and it all made sense." Needless to say, what these folks should ACTUALLY be realizing is that they're misfits, people that, for a variety of reasons, don't fit in with our culture; I DO feel sympathy for them, as I was a misfit myself until I learned how to mimic "normal" people, but is it too much to expect them to handle the resulting loneliness by using the internet to find communities of people who share some of their interests, rather than as a fastlane into fantasy?
The existence of online forums of various kinds has really benefited many people, who can now easily find others to interact with who share their political views, or passion for collecting potholders, or interest in an obscure band or TV show; the dark side of this is that those who are unhappy and unable to connect with people in real life can also congregate, and thus encourage and enable each other's problems... showing yet again that anything can be good or bad, depending on how it's used.
If you've found this post via a search engine, because you're trying to figure out if YOU are an otherkin... no, you're NOT. If you're feeling like you have wings or other non-human body parts, or are having "memories" come back to you of being a vampire, you need to get to a shrink, and FAST, because you're losing touch with reality. If you're just trying to figure out how you fit into the world, the answer is that you obviously don't right now, and you won't find a way to fix that on a website; turn the computer off, get out of your house, and meet some people face to face. Take a class, hang out at the park or rec center, sign up to do volunteer work, whatever it takes to get you interacting with other human beings under circumstances that aren't based on a warped view of reality... and use those vivid imaginings of yours to create art or write poetry, rather than to imagine how you're not fully human.
I try very, VERY hard to be open-minded and see how anything that people believe in might be possible, because I've gained so much knowledge and understanding by giving objective analyses even to things I was previously sure had no bearing on the truth (such as animism), but I'm going to fail with this one.
I went to the site that I figured would have an attempt at an objective description of even this odd of a concept, and was not disappointed; Wikipedia's page about otherkin is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
and the part that I think is central to grasping this phenomenon (as much as anyone can who isn't involved in it) is:
"The Otherkin subculture is made up of people who believe themselves to be partially non-human. Specifically, these individuals believe themselves to have biological, psychological, and/or spiritual aspects of an animal, legendary creature, or some other non-human entity. Many claim to have the mentality and instincts of the creature they claim to be. "Otherkin" is also sometimes used as an umbrella term describing various people and communities with similar beliefs, but who may not consider themselves to be part of the mainstream otherkin community. Examples of these are the draconic [dragon], vampire and therianthrope [non-human animal] communities.
Otherkin may claim their "otherside" to possess the nature(s) of cats, dogs, elves, fairies, angels, dragons, demons, vampires, extraterrestrials, or any other number of other non-human beings. Some may profess a combination of non-human natures, such as being both elf and angel. The otherkin community also has a relatively high proportion of multiple personalities, who may have internal personalities with different otherkin types, and may include walk-ins [people whose original souls have departed their bodies and been replaced with new souls] amongst their number."
"While some otherkin believe themselves to be biologically non-human--for example, by claiming distant, or not so distant descent from a non-human--others believe themselves to be human in biology but "other" in spirit, often attributing this to reincarnation or a "misplaced soul". The reincarnationists, who currently are the dominant force in the subculture, disagree amongst themselves as to whether these otherkin souls come from Earth, other planets, or different planes of consciousness. Another idea otherkin associate with is totemism. Such an explanation for an otherkin's bond with another entity--with the totem guiding or temporarily taking possession of the human body--is especially popular among those involved with Paganism and the New Age movement."
Have we really, as a culture, become so frightened of reality, so bored, so self-hating, so unaccepting of ourselves and others, so eager to find some group to belong to, so desperate to find a way to feel special, so unable to learn normal social behavior and to deal with that inability, that this seems like a viable option to some people?
Granted, as with nearly everything, there's a tiny bit of gray area here... NOT about the near-religious schema that the "otherkin community" has constructed to explain and define their "otherness," of course, but about how there might in theory be a flicker of truth to the idea that not everyone's soul is necessarily "pure," ie totally what their own thoughts and feelings have created. Because we don't know how souls "work," in particular how each one keeps all its energy consolidated and separate from other souls, we have to accept the small but non-zero possibility that there might sometimes, or I suppose even frequently, be some degree of mixing of souls; if you believe, as I do, that animals have souls, you then have the possibility of having some bit of animal soul mixed in with yours, which might have all sorts of effects on you, including making you feel like you're part dog (or whatever) if souls are somehow encoded with data on what physical body they're associated with (which is certainly possible, but not provable). This soul-mixing concept is an intriguing idea, and one that I'll think more about, especially since many so-called "primitive" cultures include in their belief systems the idea of people being part animal, or being able to somehow trade places with animals, or shift shapes into animal forms; even without the animal connection, it's an interesting question as to whether souls can gain, lose and exchange pieces, and if not WHY not.
Very few alleged otherkins claim to be something as lowly and unmagical as mere animals, of course, so what about the rest of them? If angels and demons are real, and I admit that they might be, could their souls, if they have them, or their energy, mix with human souls? I suppose. If extra-terrestrial intelligences exist, and statistically it seems as if they MUST, could THEIR souls/energies mix with human souls? Possibly. However, creatures like dragons, elves, fairies and vampires, which are purely the invention of human minds and thus don't actually exist, can NOT be part of a human soul, much less body, and I don't care HOW certain these people are that they have wings or tails or the "need" to drink blood, they are simply deluded, or of course lying, and using the internet to gather together and reinforce each other's delusions.
Could it be that there's some truth to the "animal otherkin" concept, as described previously, and that people determined to escape from reality developed the idea into something out of a Disney movie, and then the fantasy creatures got tacked on because people wanted more exotic "others," and the biological connection got thrown in by people eager to be "more otherkin than thou"? Or, did the whole thing evolve out of roleplaying games and speculative fiction, with the animal facet getting added in because they're real and often beloved entities, and thus made the whole thing seem more realistic? I don't suppose we'll ever know; there are too many nutcases who are caught up in this to ever get to the bottom of it.
If you read people's stories about their "awakenings," you typically see things like, "I never felt right, never fit in, never understood why I felt different... and then one day I realized that I was really a VAMPIRE, and it all made sense." Needless to say, what these folks should ACTUALLY be realizing is that they're misfits, people that, for a variety of reasons, don't fit in with our culture; I DO feel sympathy for them, as I was a misfit myself until I learned how to mimic "normal" people, but is it too much to expect them to handle the resulting loneliness by using the internet to find communities of people who share some of their interests, rather than as a fastlane into fantasy?
The existence of online forums of various kinds has really benefited many people, who can now easily find others to interact with who share their political views, or passion for collecting potholders, or interest in an obscure band or TV show; the dark side of this is that those who are unhappy and unable to connect with people in real life can also congregate, and thus encourage and enable each other's problems... showing yet again that anything can be good or bad, depending on how it's used.
If you've found this post via a search engine, because you're trying to figure out if YOU are an otherkin... no, you're NOT. If you're feeling like you have wings or other non-human body parts, or are having "memories" come back to you of being a vampire, you need to get to a shrink, and FAST, because you're losing touch with reality. If you're just trying to figure out how you fit into the world, the answer is that you obviously don't right now, and you won't find a way to fix that on a website; turn the computer off, get out of your house, and meet some people face to face. Take a class, hang out at the park or rec center, sign up to do volunteer work, whatever it takes to get you interacting with other human beings under circumstances that aren't based on a warped view of reality... and use those vivid imaginings of yours to create art or write poetry, rather than to imagine how you're not fully human.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
The delicate ecological balance
We hear that phrase tossed around alot, and it's undoubtedly an accurate description of how stuff like pollution can mess measurably with every living thing in a given area, but it turns out that it's NOT accurate for at least one thing; the alleged threat that introduced species pose to whatever already exists in an established ecosystem. Yeah, it surprised ME, too, but according to an article called "The Truth About Invasive Species, How to stop worrying and learn to love ecological intruders" in the May 2005 issue of Discover:
"For the past 50 years ecologists have devoted close study to movements of exotic species, in an effort to better understand why they go where they do and the impact they have when they arrive. The results of this unintended natural experiment turn out to be surprising, even to scientists. Nature, it seems, is far more resilient and is run by ecological rules that are far less orderly than expected. Alien species do pose a threat. But their real crime isn't against nature; it's against us and our self-serving ideas of what nature is supposed to be."
I've always maintained that nature, or shall we say Nature, is far tougher and more adaptive than we gave it credit for... and I was right. The standard scientific view of the introduction of alien species, however, was that Nature was fragile, easily disrupted by the arrival of new species:
"A natural, undisturbed ecosystem could be thought of as an immunologic system; invasion, its disease. A recent issue of National Geographic described ecological invasion as a 'green cancer'... The disease metaphor is compelling. There's just one problem: Fifty years of research by invasion biologists around the world has failed to confirm it."
I highly respect science and scientists, but am often disgusted with the frequency with which they come up with theories that sound good, and all decide to agree with them in the absence of any evidence; a logical-seeming explanation of how things MIGHT work is NOT a substitute for doing research. One of the many groundless assumptions of the so-called, and now it appears wrongly-called, ecology experts is that a new species will compete with existing species, perhaps driving the original species to extinction; this is why, for example, gerbils are illegal in California, because they think they will out-compete native rodents if they escape their cages. The reality, however, is:
"When an alien species enters a new ecosystem, it can alter the environment in a number of ways: by eating native species... by spreading disease among them... or by altering the environment in such a way that favors themselves... What invading species mostly don't do, it turns out, is outcompete native species."
We've been so thoroughly indoctrinated abut how non-native species are somehow always better and stronger than native species (which just CAN'T be true, when you think about it), and thus will always drive native species to extinction by taking all their food, that if this had appeared in a non-science magazine I wouldn't have believed it; how could they have been so WRONG about something so basic? The revelations continue:
"By and large, superior competitive ability isn't what enables alien species to invade."
"one of the big surprises to invasion biologists is the large number of alien species that any given ecosystem can harbor."
"In San Francisco Bay, marine ecologists Jim Carlton of the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport and Andrew Cohen of the San Francisco Estuary Institute have discovered more than 250 nonindigenous species. In the classic view of ecosystems, outlined by Elton and later Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson in their theory of island biogeography, ecosystems run on a knife's edge: They are tightly structured, without much room for new competitors.
'What invasions have shown is that there are plenty of unused resources,' says Ted Grosholz, a marine biologist at the University of California at Davis who for years has monitored the incursion of the European green crab into the bay. 'Ecosystems can absorb a lot of new species. I mean, holy cow, look at San Francisco Bay! Who would have thought an ecosystem had that much unused niche space?'"
"Most alien species blend seamlessly into the ecosystems they enter. Like wallflowers, they slip in quietly, hang around the margins, and keep to themselves."
"most invasions do no harm. Even prevalent ones can have surprisingly little impact on their new environments. A review of the history of purple loosestrife by zoologists Heather Hager and Karen McCoy, formerly at the University of Guelph in Ontario, concluded that despite belief to the contrary, there is little or no evidence to suggest that the incursion of the plant has serious ecological consequences. 'The direct scientific rationale used to advocate purple loosestrife control does not exist,' they write, adding that 'aesthetic reasons remain the justification for its control.' "
Ahhhhhhh, now there's a VERY important point; if an introduced species displeases us, then we assume it must be bad for all of nature... the very height of arrogance.
"Marine environments turn out to be particularly absorbent to--and forgiving of--alien species. Although exotic crabs, sea worms, sponges, clams, and diseases have been introduced around the world for hundreds of years on or in ships (and by many other means), marine biologists have documented not a single example of an invading marine species driving a native marine species extinct, whether by predation, competition, or disease."
How many times has there been hysteria because the wrong species of lobster (or whatever) got accidentally released into a bay somewhere? The ocean turns out to be able to handle such things, which should NOT come as a surprise to any rational person.
"Invasion is not a zero-sum game, with invaders replacing natives at a one-to-one (or a one-to-two, or more) ratio. Rather, and with critical exceptions, it is a sum-sum game, in which ecosystems can accept more and more species. Indeed, in both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the big surprise is that the incursion of alien species can actually increase, rather than decrease, biodiversity at a local level. This makes sense: If you add many new species and subtract no or only a few native ones, the overall species count goes up... To put it differently, invasions don't cause ecosystems to collapse."
If you had asked a 5 year old what the result would be of bringing a new kind of plant or animal into a place, they'd have been able to tell you that it would mean that there was one more plant or animal living there; too bad some of these scientists didn't have that level of insight.
There is, of course, some gray area:
"In small ecosystems like the Everglades or the Hawaiian Islands, where native species are already imperiled by disappearing habitat, invading species may be the final straw. Invasions may radically alter the components of an ecosystem, perhaps to a point at which the ecosystem becomes less valuable, engaging, or useful to humans. But unlike, say, the clear-cutting of a forest or the poisoning of a lake, invasions don't make ecosystems shrink or disappear."
Another important point is that we have to be careful what terminology we use to describe ecological "invasions":
"In the early days of invasion biology, notes Macalester College biologist Mark Davis, most researchers used neutral terms like 'introduced,' 'nonnative,' and 'founding populations' to describe the phenomenon. Charles Elton was largely alone, though not for long, in his use of the flashier terminology: 'alien,' 'exotic,' 'invader.' While emphasizing the threat, the heavy use of this language implied that the otherness of an invading species is somehow ingrained in its biological being. In fact, an invader is simply a species that comes from somewhere else; its definition is purely geographic. It took invasion biologists 50 years to grasp the truth: Alien species are alien in name only."
Here's an eye-popper to anyone who's heard a billion times the chant about how valuable each and every species is, both intrinsically and to the ecosystem it inhabits:
"All numbers aside, our concern about alien species is really an attempt to articulate the plight of the natives: the rare flower pollinated only by one species of bird, or the albino cricket endemic to one cave in Hawaii. Alas, such organisms may have no value-not to world economies, not even to the ecosystems they inhabit, which will hardly pause when these members are gone."
Of course, some alien species HAVE wreaked havoc, notably in Australia where the primitive marsupials can't compete with introduced placental mammals... or is even that claim false? Oz isn't mentioned in this article; what it does say is:
"A few species do cause costly problems and have caused tragic extinctions. But those are the rare cases. By and large, most species have no visible impact. They blend in. They live happily among us--on our lawns, under our homes--and we, it seems, live happily among them. What alien species reveal in a place like Homestead is that nature and humans, long considered incompatible, can get along quite well together."
What sort of a moron would actually insist that one animal species, homo sapiens, was "incompatible" with the rest of nature? I have little patience with these sorts of claims, as we'd literally have to have come here from another planet to NOT be part of nature.
In summation:
"Fifty years of invasion biology has failed to identify a clear ecological difference between an ecosystem rich in native species and one chock-full of aliens. Invasions don't weaken ecosystems--they simply transform them into different ecosystems, filled with different organisms of greater or lesser value to us... The point is not that all invasions, or even any invasions, are desirable. Rather, the point is that the only reliable measure for the value of native species is our desire. Whether invasions are good or bad is a question to ask ourselves, not our scientists."
Personally, I don't think that we should indiscriminately toss "alien" species into new ecosystems, as that would be irresponsible, but I think the time has come to stop being hysterical because a pet gerbil might run wild in California, or because a crab got into a part of the ocean where it didn't previously exist, etc; we need to instead look at how our actions directly and adversely affect other forms of life, from pollution, habitat destruction, the disruption of migration corridors, etc, and let Mother Nature handle the introduction of new species with the same efficiency she's been showing all along.
"For the past 50 years ecologists have devoted close study to movements of exotic species, in an effort to better understand why they go where they do and the impact they have when they arrive. The results of this unintended natural experiment turn out to be surprising, even to scientists. Nature, it seems, is far more resilient and is run by ecological rules that are far less orderly than expected. Alien species do pose a threat. But their real crime isn't against nature; it's against us and our self-serving ideas of what nature is supposed to be."
I've always maintained that nature, or shall we say Nature, is far tougher and more adaptive than we gave it credit for... and I was right. The standard scientific view of the introduction of alien species, however, was that Nature was fragile, easily disrupted by the arrival of new species:
"A natural, undisturbed ecosystem could be thought of as an immunologic system; invasion, its disease. A recent issue of National Geographic described ecological invasion as a 'green cancer'... The disease metaphor is compelling. There's just one problem: Fifty years of research by invasion biologists around the world has failed to confirm it."
I highly respect science and scientists, but am often disgusted with the frequency with which they come up with theories that sound good, and all decide to agree with them in the absence of any evidence; a logical-seeming explanation of how things MIGHT work is NOT a substitute for doing research. One of the many groundless assumptions of the so-called, and now it appears wrongly-called, ecology experts is that a new species will compete with existing species, perhaps driving the original species to extinction; this is why, for example, gerbils are illegal in California, because they think they will out-compete native rodents if they escape their cages. The reality, however, is:
"When an alien species enters a new ecosystem, it can alter the environment in a number of ways: by eating native species... by spreading disease among them... or by altering the environment in such a way that favors themselves... What invading species mostly don't do, it turns out, is outcompete native species."
We've been so thoroughly indoctrinated abut how non-native species are somehow always better and stronger than native species (which just CAN'T be true, when you think about it), and thus will always drive native species to extinction by taking all their food, that if this had appeared in a non-science magazine I wouldn't have believed it; how could they have been so WRONG about something so basic? The revelations continue:
"By and large, superior competitive ability isn't what enables alien species to invade."
"one of the big surprises to invasion biologists is the large number of alien species that any given ecosystem can harbor."
"In San Francisco Bay, marine ecologists Jim Carlton of the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport and Andrew Cohen of the San Francisco Estuary Institute have discovered more than 250 nonindigenous species. In the classic view of ecosystems, outlined by Elton and later Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson in their theory of island biogeography, ecosystems run on a knife's edge: They are tightly structured, without much room for new competitors.
'What invasions have shown is that there are plenty of unused resources,' says Ted Grosholz, a marine biologist at the University of California at Davis who for years has monitored the incursion of the European green crab into the bay. 'Ecosystems can absorb a lot of new species. I mean, holy cow, look at San Francisco Bay! Who would have thought an ecosystem had that much unused niche space?'"
"Most alien species blend seamlessly into the ecosystems they enter. Like wallflowers, they slip in quietly, hang around the margins, and keep to themselves."
"most invasions do no harm. Even prevalent ones can have surprisingly little impact on their new environments. A review of the history of purple loosestrife by zoologists Heather Hager and Karen McCoy, formerly at the University of Guelph in Ontario, concluded that despite belief to the contrary, there is little or no evidence to suggest that the incursion of the plant has serious ecological consequences. 'The direct scientific rationale used to advocate purple loosestrife control does not exist,' they write, adding that 'aesthetic reasons remain the justification for its control.' "
Ahhhhhhh, now there's a VERY important point; if an introduced species displeases us, then we assume it must be bad for all of nature... the very height of arrogance.
"Marine environments turn out to be particularly absorbent to--and forgiving of--alien species. Although exotic crabs, sea worms, sponges, clams, and diseases have been introduced around the world for hundreds of years on or in ships (and by many other means), marine biologists have documented not a single example of an invading marine species driving a native marine species extinct, whether by predation, competition, or disease."
How many times has there been hysteria because the wrong species of lobster (or whatever) got accidentally released into a bay somewhere? The ocean turns out to be able to handle such things, which should NOT come as a surprise to any rational person.
"Invasion is not a zero-sum game, with invaders replacing natives at a one-to-one (or a one-to-two, or more) ratio. Rather, and with critical exceptions, it is a sum-sum game, in which ecosystems can accept more and more species. Indeed, in both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the big surprise is that the incursion of alien species can actually increase, rather than decrease, biodiversity at a local level. This makes sense: If you add many new species and subtract no or only a few native ones, the overall species count goes up... To put it differently, invasions don't cause ecosystems to collapse."
If you had asked a 5 year old what the result would be of bringing a new kind of plant or animal into a place, they'd have been able to tell you that it would mean that there was one more plant or animal living there; too bad some of these scientists didn't have that level of insight.
There is, of course, some gray area:
"In small ecosystems like the Everglades or the Hawaiian Islands, where native species are already imperiled by disappearing habitat, invading species may be the final straw. Invasions may radically alter the components of an ecosystem, perhaps to a point at which the ecosystem becomes less valuable, engaging, or useful to humans. But unlike, say, the clear-cutting of a forest or the poisoning of a lake, invasions don't make ecosystems shrink or disappear."
Another important point is that we have to be careful what terminology we use to describe ecological "invasions":
"In the early days of invasion biology, notes Macalester College biologist Mark Davis, most researchers used neutral terms like 'introduced,' 'nonnative,' and 'founding populations' to describe the phenomenon. Charles Elton was largely alone, though not for long, in his use of the flashier terminology: 'alien,' 'exotic,' 'invader.' While emphasizing the threat, the heavy use of this language implied that the otherness of an invading species is somehow ingrained in its biological being. In fact, an invader is simply a species that comes from somewhere else; its definition is purely geographic. It took invasion biologists 50 years to grasp the truth: Alien species are alien in name only."
Here's an eye-popper to anyone who's heard a billion times the chant about how valuable each and every species is, both intrinsically and to the ecosystem it inhabits:
"All numbers aside, our concern about alien species is really an attempt to articulate the plight of the natives: the rare flower pollinated only by one species of bird, or the albino cricket endemic to one cave in Hawaii. Alas, such organisms may have no value-not to world economies, not even to the ecosystems they inhabit, which will hardly pause when these members are gone."
Of course, some alien species HAVE wreaked havoc, notably in Australia where the primitive marsupials can't compete with introduced placental mammals... or is even that claim false? Oz isn't mentioned in this article; what it does say is:
"A few species do cause costly problems and have caused tragic extinctions. But those are the rare cases. By and large, most species have no visible impact. They blend in. They live happily among us--on our lawns, under our homes--and we, it seems, live happily among them. What alien species reveal in a place like Homestead is that nature and humans, long considered incompatible, can get along quite well together."
What sort of a moron would actually insist that one animal species, homo sapiens, was "incompatible" with the rest of nature? I have little patience with these sorts of claims, as we'd literally have to have come here from another planet to NOT be part of nature.
In summation:
"Fifty years of invasion biology has failed to identify a clear ecological difference between an ecosystem rich in native species and one chock-full of aliens. Invasions don't weaken ecosystems--they simply transform them into different ecosystems, filled with different organisms of greater or lesser value to us... The point is not that all invasions, or even any invasions, are desirable. Rather, the point is that the only reliable measure for the value of native species is our desire. Whether invasions are good or bad is a question to ask ourselves, not our scientists."
Personally, I don't think that we should indiscriminately toss "alien" species into new ecosystems, as that would be irresponsible, but I think the time has come to stop being hysterical because a pet gerbil might run wild in California, or because a crab got into a part of the ocean where it didn't previously exist, etc; we need to instead look at how our actions directly and adversely affect other forms of life, from pollution, habitat destruction, the disruption of migration corridors, etc, and let Mother Nature handle the introduction of new species with the same efficiency she's been showing all along.
Monday, May 09, 2005
eBay shows some sense
Although I think that overall eBay is a wonderful thing, providing an invaluable service to the world by letting those of us who want rare items to get them from those who have them to sell, and giving everyone the chance to bargain-hunt and use a ready-made system to set up an e-selling business, they've made some unbelievably stupid mistakes in how they set things up.
The most basic, and irresponsible, mistake is to not make clear that, by Federal law, if you do business through the mail (and that includes UPS and other non-postal delivery services), you MUST get into the customer's possession the EXACT item they paid for, and in exactly the condition they expect it to be in based on your representation of it; if it gets lost in the mail, arrives damaged, or differs in ANY way from what you advertised, you MUST make good, and 100% at your expense. Sadly, eBay allows sellers to say on their auction pages that they won't be responsible for items once they're mailed, or won't be responsible for uninsured items, and buyers who are ignorant of the laws get cheated by this every day, by sellers who don't send the items, or send them incorrectly addressed or poorly packed, and refuse to make good... and all eBay'd have to do to fix the situation is to place a statement about the laws on each auction page, and make clear that those who violate the law can NOT sell on eBay.
The concept of insuring packages leads to another problem; no one who uses eBay seems to grasp that all insurance does is to offer the POSSIBILITY of eventually getting awarded from the post office the $ paid for an item that got damaged in transit IF, and this is a BIG if, they analyze the evidence and decide that the damage was due to postal actions and NOT to improper packing... and the shipping box would have to look like it'd been dragged behind a truck, or smashed with a boulder, for them to admit that they were to blame, and even then they'll try to say that poor packing is partly responsible, and thus that they don't owe the full amount. Again, buyers who're ignorant of the way things work get victimized by sellers who can't pack properly and don't care every day, and the solution is to put the necessary info on the auction pages, and make clear that sellers that don't pack properly and don't make good on their errors can't sell on eBay.
Then, there are the myriad feedback issues:
Foolishly, they allow either party to leave - feedback at any time once an auction has been won, thus making it possible for psycho sellers to leave it if they aren't paid 5 seconds after the auction ends, and for psycho buyers to leave it if they don't have what they won beamed to them the moment they've paid... and - feedback can NOT be removed if it turns out it was left in error, which is INSANE. The best you can do is leave a retaliatory - feedback, and then try to get the infuriated trading partner to agree to a mutual withdrawal of the feedbacks, which means they won't count towards the rating, but the ugly words of the feedback "post" remain, AND a tally is kept of how many times this is done. They should make it impossible to leave other than + feedback for, say, a month after the end of the auction, and require someone wishing to leave - or even neutral feedback to have made several attempts, spaced out over a reasonable length of time, to contact the trading partner using the eBay message system, so that there's no doubt that every attempt was made to make the transaction work... and they should be required to wait even longer before a - can be left with international transactions, as just mailing stuff between the USA and Canada can take 2 WEEKS or more, so imagine shipping between continents, and people can't always mail checks or ship packages instantly.
The biggest problem with feedback is that people are afraid to leave a - even when it's richly deserved because of the very real fear that a - feedback will be left for them out of spite even though they did nothing wrong; the fix for this would be handled in part by requiring the delay and emails before attempting to leave feedback, and then all they'd have to do is, once - feedback is left, block the other trading partner from leaving feedback... with the understanding that if a seller leaves - feedback on a transaction that they did in fact accept $ for, or for which payment was sent to them and they refused to cash the check or $ order (the buyer would have to have been given enough time to, if necessary, re-send non-PayPal payments with delivery confirmation so that they can prove they mailed the $, as part of making every attempt to complete the sale), they're history, and the same would go for any buyer who received the proper item in the expected condition within the allotted time and left a - for the heck of it.
To give eBay credit where it's due, though, they HAVE fixed a couple of their other major problems:
One was the NPB (non-paying buyer), which a seller could give at any time, and which they were NOT required to remove if they eventually got the $... and 3 unremoved NPB's meant that the buyer was booted off of eBay. Given the length of time it can take for the mail to travel even to the next city, and how many inboxes have been blocking emails from sellers with payment info, and how many sellers are either psycho or unaware of how serious the actions they take on eBay actually are, it was WAY too easy for someone to get 3 NPB's, especially since this was tallied over a person's entire LIFETIME of eBay usage... so they changed it. The term NPB has gone away, to be replaced by "strike," there's no longer any mention of being booted off of eBay after any magic #, and they're apparently only keeping track of the past 18 months; what they say now is, "If a buyer gets too many strikes in too short a time period, their account will be suspended indefinitely." Yes, this could lead to more sellers not getting paid, but no HARM comes to those sellers, even if the next-highest bidder doesn't want the item any more, because they get the $ they paid to run the auction refunded if they don't get paid by the buyer; this no-harm situation meant that there was never any excuse to have a special deal other than feedback to allow sellers to "get" buyers... especially since buyers, who DO lose out if they pay and get no item, or a wrong or damaged one, had no way to "get" the sellers other than feedback.
"Had," past tense... because at LONG last, this has been remedied; they now have a special setup to report items that haven't shown up, or are significantly different than what was described on the auction page. The explanation of this new setup is: "eBay's Item Not Received or Significantly Not as Described policy requires sellers to deliver items they have sold on eBay and have received payment for. Sellers who fail to deliver items to buyers, or who deliver items which are "significantly not as described," may face possible account restriction and suspension. An item is considered "significantly not as described" if the seller clearly misrepresents the item in a way that directly affects its value or usability. In some cases, eBay will also contact and cooperate with law enforcement to penalize fraudulent sellers." Giving buyers a way to put pressure on sellers, withOUT trading - feedbacks with them, and maybe getting rid of bad sellers altogether, is a BIG step in the right direction... the ideal final goal of which would be making dealing on eBay as safe for buyers as making any other sort of purchase that's received through the mail is.
You could make the case that buyer safety should have been made the #1 priority from the beginning, and you'd be right; come to think of it, it's amazing that eBay has gotten away with assisting crooked sellers to keep on selling to the public for a decade. Then again, PayPal, which is essentially a bank but acts without the laws that apply to banks being applied to it, is an even more extreme case of online mega-businesses being allowed to make up their own rules and thumb their noses at the laws... and you know who owns PayPal, right? eBay. Eventually, lawsuits will be filed by buyers who got seriously screwed by sellers with known histories of illegal selling practices who weren't kicked off of eBay for it, and eBay will be forced to make sellers act in accordance with Federal law, and to not allow any seller with even ONE non-delivery claim against them to sell unrestricted, if at all; until then, eBay deserves kudos for every time they take the initiative, and invest the $, in coming up with new policies that makes things work better for their users.
The most basic, and irresponsible, mistake is to not make clear that, by Federal law, if you do business through the mail (and that includes UPS and other non-postal delivery services), you MUST get into the customer's possession the EXACT item they paid for, and in exactly the condition they expect it to be in based on your representation of it; if it gets lost in the mail, arrives damaged, or differs in ANY way from what you advertised, you MUST make good, and 100% at your expense. Sadly, eBay allows sellers to say on their auction pages that they won't be responsible for items once they're mailed, or won't be responsible for uninsured items, and buyers who are ignorant of the laws get cheated by this every day, by sellers who don't send the items, or send them incorrectly addressed or poorly packed, and refuse to make good... and all eBay'd have to do to fix the situation is to place a statement about the laws on each auction page, and make clear that those who violate the law can NOT sell on eBay.
The concept of insuring packages leads to another problem; no one who uses eBay seems to grasp that all insurance does is to offer the POSSIBILITY of eventually getting awarded from the post office the $ paid for an item that got damaged in transit IF, and this is a BIG if, they analyze the evidence and decide that the damage was due to postal actions and NOT to improper packing... and the shipping box would have to look like it'd been dragged behind a truck, or smashed with a boulder, for them to admit that they were to blame, and even then they'll try to say that poor packing is partly responsible, and thus that they don't owe the full amount. Again, buyers who're ignorant of the way things work get victimized by sellers who can't pack properly and don't care every day, and the solution is to put the necessary info on the auction pages, and make clear that sellers that don't pack properly and don't make good on their errors can't sell on eBay.
Then, there are the myriad feedback issues:
Foolishly, they allow either party to leave - feedback at any time once an auction has been won, thus making it possible for psycho sellers to leave it if they aren't paid 5 seconds after the auction ends, and for psycho buyers to leave it if they don't have what they won beamed to them the moment they've paid... and - feedback can NOT be removed if it turns out it was left in error, which is INSANE. The best you can do is leave a retaliatory - feedback, and then try to get the infuriated trading partner to agree to a mutual withdrawal of the feedbacks, which means they won't count towards the rating, but the ugly words of the feedback "post" remain, AND a tally is kept of how many times this is done. They should make it impossible to leave other than + feedback for, say, a month after the end of the auction, and require someone wishing to leave - or even neutral feedback to have made several attempts, spaced out over a reasonable length of time, to contact the trading partner using the eBay message system, so that there's no doubt that every attempt was made to make the transaction work... and they should be required to wait even longer before a - can be left with international transactions, as just mailing stuff between the USA and Canada can take 2 WEEKS or more, so imagine shipping between continents, and people can't always mail checks or ship packages instantly.
The biggest problem with feedback is that people are afraid to leave a - even when it's richly deserved because of the very real fear that a - feedback will be left for them out of spite even though they did nothing wrong; the fix for this would be handled in part by requiring the delay and emails before attempting to leave feedback, and then all they'd have to do is, once - feedback is left, block the other trading partner from leaving feedback... with the understanding that if a seller leaves - feedback on a transaction that they did in fact accept $ for, or for which payment was sent to them and they refused to cash the check or $ order (the buyer would have to have been given enough time to, if necessary, re-send non-PayPal payments with delivery confirmation so that they can prove they mailed the $, as part of making every attempt to complete the sale), they're history, and the same would go for any buyer who received the proper item in the expected condition within the allotted time and left a - for the heck of it.
To give eBay credit where it's due, though, they HAVE fixed a couple of their other major problems:
One was the NPB (non-paying buyer), which a seller could give at any time, and which they were NOT required to remove if they eventually got the $... and 3 unremoved NPB's meant that the buyer was booted off of eBay. Given the length of time it can take for the mail to travel even to the next city, and how many inboxes have been blocking emails from sellers with payment info, and how many sellers are either psycho or unaware of how serious the actions they take on eBay actually are, it was WAY too easy for someone to get 3 NPB's, especially since this was tallied over a person's entire LIFETIME of eBay usage... so they changed it. The term NPB has gone away, to be replaced by "strike," there's no longer any mention of being booted off of eBay after any magic #, and they're apparently only keeping track of the past 18 months; what they say now is, "If a buyer gets too many strikes in too short a time period, their account will be suspended indefinitely." Yes, this could lead to more sellers not getting paid, but no HARM comes to those sellers, even if the next-highest bidder doesn't want the item any more, because they get the $ they paid to run the auction refunded if they don't get paid by the buyer; this no-harm situation meant that there was never any excuse to have a special deal other than feedback to allow sellers to "get" buyers... especially since buyers, who DO lose out if they pay and get no item, or a wrong or damaged one, had no way to "get" the sellers other than feedback.
"Had," past tense... because at LONG last, this has been remedied; they now have a special setup to report items that haven't shown up, or are significantly different than what was described on the auction page. The explanation of this new setup is: "eBay's Item Not Received or Significantly Not as Described policy requires sellers to deliver items they have sold on eBay and have received payment for. Sellers who fail to deliver items to buyers, or who deliver items which are "significantly not as described," may face possible account restriction and suspension. An item is considered "significantly not as described" if the seller clearly misrepresents the item in a way that directly affects its value or usability. In some cases, eBay will also contact and cooperate with law enforcement to penalize fraudulent sellers." Giving buyers a way to put pressure on sellers, withOUT trading - feedbacks with them, and maybe getting rid of bad sellers altogether, is a BIG step in the right direction... the ideal final goal of which would be making dealing on eBay as safe for buyers as making any other sort of purchase that's received through the mail is.
You could make the case that buyer safety should have been made the #1 priority from the beginning, and you'd be right; come to think of it, it's amazing that eBay has gotten away with assisting crooked sellers to keep on selling to the public for a decade. Then again, PayPal, which is essentially a bank but acts without the laws that apply to banks being applied to it, is an even more extreme case of online mega-businesses being allowed to make up their own rules and thumb their noses at the laws... and you know who owns PayPal, right? eBay. Eventually, lawsuits will be filed by buyers who got seriously screwed by sellers with known histories of illegal selling practices who weren't kicked off of eBay for it, and eBay will be forced to make sellers act in accordance with Federal law, and to not allow any seller with even ONE non-delivery claim against them to sell unrestricted, if at all; until then, eBay deserves kudos for every time they take the initiative, and invest the $, in coming up with new policies that makes things work better for their users.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Mother's Day
Most people who do a Mother's Day post will probably do one filled with loving thoughts for their maternal parents; if you've been reading here for a while, you know THAT ain't gonna happen, because there's no love, or even liking, between my mother and I, but I DID manage to dredge up a few good stories about her from her nearly 4 decades of being my mother:
When I graduated from high school, I got... nothing. When I graduated from college, I got... nothing. For reasons she never revealed, my mother decided that that 2nd nothing hadn't been right, and, without my father knowing, she gave me a ring of hers that she never wore that I'd admired.
After one of our moves, she couldn't find my Christmas stocking; this was because she didn't look very hard, having conveniently decided that I was "too old" to have it anymore, and somehow wouldn't care that I didn't have it, despite the fact that without the stocking my few gifts became even fewer (it never occurred to her to just give me the small gifts directly, so she eliminated them that year)... she pooh-poohed me when I protested, but the stocking resurfaced the next Christmas, and every Christmas thereafter until I got married, 20 years later, always with some little gifts with tags that said "From Santa."
Hmmmm, even the good stories sound sort of bad, don't they? I thought some more about it, and came up with couple that don't include questionable behavior from her:
Every year until I got married, she gave me an Easter basket with candy; now, she still gives me at least one piece of candy per Easter.
A few years ago, when I was going through an awful time, she gave me a little teddy beanie with a heart embroidered on its chest, out of the blue one day at the end of January; she said it had been meant for Valentine's Day, but she thought I could use it early to cheer me up.
That isn't much, but in honor of the day dedicated to those who do the world's most important job, I thought it'd be nice to offer it up; I hope you'll take a moment to realize how terrific YOUR mother is, if only by comparison, and that you'll give her a thanks today commensurate with all the countless things she's done for you, and all the love she's given you, all your life.
Motherhood, or more specifically being a GOOD mother, is a tough job; to any mothers reading this, and to all good mother's everywhere, my hat's off to you.
When I graduated from high school, I got... nothing. When I graduated from college, I got... nothing. For reasons she never revealed, my mother decided that that 2nd nothing hadn't been right, and, without my father knowing, she gave me a ring of hers that she never wore that I'd admired.
After one of our moves, she couldn't find my Christmas stocking; this was because she didn't look very hard, having conveniently decided that I was "too old" to have it anymore, and somehow wouldn't care that I didn't have it, despite the fact that without the stocking my few gifts became even fewer (it never occurred to her to just give me the small gifts directly, so she eliminated them that year)... she pooh-poohed me when I protested, but the stocking resurfaced the next Christmas, and every Christmas thereafter until I got married, 20 years later, always with some little gifts with tags that said "From Santa."
Hmmmm, even the good stories sound sort of bad, don't they? I thought some more about it, and came up with couple that don't include questionable behavior from her:
Every year until I got married, she gave me an Easter basket with candy; now, she still gives me at least one piece of candy per Easter.
A few years ago, when I was going through an awful time, she gave me a little teddy beanie with a heart embroidered on its chest, out of the blue one day at the end of January; she said it had been meant for Valentine's Day, but she thought I could use it early to cheer me up.
That isn't much, but in honor of the day dedicated to those who do the world's most important job, I thought it'd be nice to offer it up; I hope you'll take a moment to realize how terrific YOUR mother is, if only by comparison, and that you'll give her a thanks today commensurate with all the countless things she's done for you, and all the love she's given you, all your life.
Motherhood, or more specifically being a GOOD mother, is a tough job; to any mothers reading this, and to all good mother's everywhere, my hat's off to you.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
My new laptop
Getting my 1st laptop changed my life; before, I was chained to my desk nearly all evening, trying to get everything done that I needed to before bedtime, mostly only able to HEAR TV programs because there's no TV in the room with the computer (and no place to put one). When eBay changed the way their search function worked, eliminating the option to use a huge list of exclusionary terms to greatly reduce the # of auctions in the results, making my daily searches double and even triple their previous lengths, with the pages loading slower than ever (I'd love to know what the heck their tech staff does that makes pages with the same basic stuff load slower and slower as time passes), and I got involved in blogging, which, due to the length of most of my posts, took up a sizable chunk of my time every day, suddenly I couldn't watch ANYTHING on TV unless I wanted to be on the computer until dawn. There was no point in paying for cable and HBO if I couldn't SEE any of it, and more to the point I WANTED to be able to see all the shows that appealed to me AND get to bed at a reasonable hour, so I did the only thing I could think of; I asked my husband to get me a laptop... and when it arrived (he got in on eBay, used), and I was suddenly able to watch TV all night, it was like a miracle.
Then, one day, the problems started; the fan kept coming on and running and running, LOUDLY, making it necessary to close the machine more and more often, for longer and longer periods of time, such that it was really dragging out my computer usage every night. I switched to a different browser, one I didn't like but that was newer and faster, and that helped for a while, but then it started happening again, and it was taking far longer to get the fan to go off... AND, the machine began having problems keeping its ability to access my files on the desktop (via our network), along with some other technical issues, so I started telling my husband that I needed a new one. Last weekend, it got so bad that I told him that I needed a new laptop this week; the old one must have heard me, because it stopped being able to maintain an internet connection Wednesday night, making it effectively useless.
As you might imagine, I told my husband to check out the laptops that were under consideration and bring me a new one on Thursday, which he did; he'd ALMOST gotten it set up for me to use when one of the required restarts to get newly-installed software working left it DEAD, and nothing he could do could bring it back... brand new computer, and a pretty high-end one at that, can you believe it? I knew he could exchange it, but it was still disappointing, and, worse, a great deal of personal info had been transferred to the machine before it died; what if they were eventually able to restart it, and some unprincipled geek suddenly had access to a bunch of my stuff, including my bookmarks, some of which have password info, and the cookies that would allow them to log into my accounts? Fortunately, at the computer store they were disconcertingly ready for this situation, and pulled out and erased the drive in front of my husband, so that even if they DO revive the machine some day, they won't get my stuff-WHEW!! They gave him a new machine, and he brought it home tonight; as far as I can tell, it's working perfectly, and is MUCH faster than the old one, with a far better keyboard and some fancy new features... I'm not ready to pronounce this a done deal yet, since I already had one brand-new machine die completely, but it's looking good so far.
In fact, I've gotta say, this is the most beautiful laptop I've ever seen; it looks like something you'd see in a movie being used by royalty, I swear. About the dozenth time my husband caught me carefully removing specks from it, he inquired if he'd be needing to get some diapers for me; this was a reference to the scene from "Ferris Beuler's Day Off" where the son of the rich man says of his father's cherished sports car, "Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself... He never drives it, Ferris. He just rubs it with a diaper," NOT to the concept that I'd be too busy on the new computer to ever use the bathroom again, although I suppose that could happen too. ;-)
Among the cool features of this new machine is the ability to have wireless communication with a Blackberry; I'm not going to be willing to get another pricey piece of equipment any time soon, but it's an intriguing thought. A more immediately useful thought is about some friends that we're probably seeing next weekend; they're terrific people, but they're always making an issue of how much they're paying for everything, and about financial issues in general... they don't realize that we're significantly better off than they are, because WE don't make an issue about $, so they're actually making fools of themselves rather than making us feel bad, but this element of our relationship with them still irks me a little, so... I've been telling the better half of the couple about the darling video footage I've been getting of our little squirrel friend, and she of course expressed a wish to see said footage, which she'd expect to do the next time she came to my house, BUT, it occurred to me that the new laptop will hold quite a bit of footage even though the files are gigantic, and I could bring it along with me next weekend so that they could see some clips a few weeks earlier than expected... and I'm already imagining their faces when they, who share ONE computer between the 2 of them, see me plunk down the new machine, that looks every bit as pricey as it in fact was. No, I'm NOT going to tell them the amount we paid for it; the whole point will be to treat this slick new item as if it were nothing, so that the point gets made that the amounts of $ that they make an issue of are NOT an issue to US... and maybe they'll save their tales of wild expenditures for their less affluent friends from now on.
The best thing of all, though, is that my husband will now have my old laptop; the online connection, which miraculously returned to functionality, is still dodgy, but that can be fixed, we assume, and much of what he uses a computer for doesn't require him to be online in any case, so now HE will get to have the wonderful experience of getting away from HIS desk and watching some TV, not to mention hanging around with me and my laptop... modern marriage at its best.
Then, one day, the problems started; the fan kept coming on and running and running, LOUDLY, making it necessary to close the machine more and more often, for longer and longer periods of time, such that it was really dragging out my computer usage every night. I switched to a different browser, one I didn't like but that was newer and faster, and that helped for a while, but then it started happening again, and it was taking far longer to get the fan to go off... AND, the machine began having problems keeping its ability to access my files on the desktop (via our network), along with some other technical issues, so I started telling my husband that I needed a new one. Last weekend, it got so bad that I told him that I needed a new laptop this week; the old one must have heard me, because it stopped being able to maintain an internet connection Wednesday night, making it effectively useless.
As you might imagine, I told my husband to check out the laptops that were under consideration and bring me a new one on Thursday, which he did; he'd ALMOST gotten it set up for me to use when one of the required restarts to get newly-installed software working left it DEAD, and nothing he could do could bring it back... brand new computer, and a pretty high-end one at that, can you believe it? I knew he could exchange it, but it was still disappointing, and, worse, a great deal of personal info had been transferred to the machine before it died; what if they were eventually able to restart it, and some unprincipled geek suddenly had access to a bunch of my stuff, including my bookmarks, some of which have password info, and the cookies that would allow them to log into my accounts? Fortunately, at the computer store they were disconcertingly ready for this situation, and pulled out and erased the drive in front of my husband, so that even if they DO revive the machine some day, they won't get my stuff-WHEW!! They gave him a new machine, and he brought it home tonight; as far as I can tell, it's working perfectly, and is MUCH faster than the old one, with a far better keyboard and some fancy new features... I'm not ready to pronounce this a done deal yet, since I already had one brand-new machine die completely, but it's looking good so far.
In fact, I've gotta say, this is the most beautiful laptop I've ever seen; it looks like something you'd see in a movie being used by royalty, I swear. About the dozenth time my husband caught me carefully removing specks from it, he inquired if he'd be needing to get some diapers for me; this was a reference to the scene from "Ferris Beuler's Day Off" where the son of the rich man says of his father's cherished sports car, "Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself... He never drives it, Ferris. He just rubs it with a diaper," NOT to the concept that I'd be too busy on the new computer to ever use the bathroom again, although I suppose that could happen too. ;-)
Among the cool features of this new machine is the ability to have wireless communication with a Blackberry; I'm not going to be willing to get another pricey piece of equipment any time soon, but it's an intriguing thought. A more immediately useful thought is about some friends that we're probably seeing next weekend; they're terrific people, but they're always making an issue of how much they're paying for everything, and about financial issues in general... they don't realize that we're significantly better off than they are, because WE don't make an issue about $, so they're actually making fools of themselves rather than making us feel bad, but this element of our relationship with them still irks me a little, so... I've been telling the better half of the couple about the darling video footage I've been getting of our little squirrel friend, and she of course expressed a wish to see said footage, which she'd expect to do the next time she came to my house, BUT, it occurred to me that the new laptop will hold quite a bit of footage even though the files are gigantic, and I could bring it along with me next weekend so that they could see some clips a few weeks earlier than expected... and I'm already imagining their faces when they, who share ONE computer between the 2 of them, see me plunk down the new machine, that looks every bit as pricey as it in fact was. No, I'm NOT going to tell them the amount we paid for it; the whole point will be to treat this slick new item as if it were nothing, so that the point gets made that the amounts of $ that they make an issue of are NOT an issue to US... and maybe they'll save their tales of wild expenditures for their less affluent friends from now on.
The best thing of all, though, is that my husband will now have my old laptop; the online connection, which miraculously returned to functionality, is still dodgy, but that can be fixed, we assume, and much of what he uses a computer for doesn't require him to be online in any case, so now HE will get to have the wonderful experience of getting away from HIS desk and watching some TV, not to mention hanging around with me and my laptop... modern marriage at its best.
Friday, May 06, 2005
If you could have any ability
You've seen this before, right? "If you could magically be granted any ability"... and the answer is usually something like the one my husband gave, "The ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound... or at least the ability to leap medium-sized buildings with a running start." Not everyone would be quite so facetious, of course, but the point is that our first thought tends, naturally enough, towards "superpowers"; invisibility, being able to fly without a plane, and, if men were honest, to be able to, er, never need Viagra, seem like the best choices, and objectively they WOULD be, if they were available... but what if they weren't? What ability would you choose if you had to pick from abilities that actually exist?
With that restriction, most people jump to something in the entertainment industry; singing, acting, or athletic talent... wealth, fame and adoration come from these sorts of things, so they're great choices if you've got 'em. But what if you don't? What if, in addition to the no-superpowers clause, we add one saying that you can't make more than a good living via your new talent, and can't achieve fame with it... then what would you choose? This is where it becomes a sort of psychological question; what ability would you want just because it would enrich your life, or humanity, or both? You're always supposed to pick just ONE thing, but I'll be daring and pick 2:
1) I'd want to be the greatest world expert in the area of theoretical physics, specifically in those parts of it that pertain to string theory; when they talk about how only a handful of people in the world can understand the math that explains some facets of it, and thus fully grasp all aspects of it, I'd like to be one of the handful. I'd like to be able to look at quantum physics equations and be able to "see" that they describe something no one else has realized yet. I'd like to, ideally, take the sum total of knowledge in this area, and my understanding of karma, and try to merge the 2; just give me the ability, and I'd gladly work on it for the rest of my life... even if no one ever knew my name no matter what I discovered, even if I had to anonymously pass along what I learned to other physicists who could then publish the findings, I'd want to do it because I want so badly to KNOW.
2) I'd like to be able to design clothes at the couture level. I can visualize a huge # of garments, as I've been designing in my head for many years, but I can't sketch or sew them myself, so I can't go anywhere with my "vision"; a couturier can of course do both, and do so with in-depth knowledge of fabrics, trimmings and tailoring, which allows them to know how best to create whatever they've envisioned. I know this seems trivial compared to the other ability, but in a way it's actually a bigger deal, because I'm capable of getting a basic understanding of string theory, enough to think about it and how it relates to my perceptions of the unknown, but my fine motor skills are so poor that I can't so much as draw a doodle or sew on a button at a level beyond what a 5 year old could manage, much less produce the simplest garment or drawing thereof; I'm stuck in the starting gate, whereas normally when someone has ideas and passionately wishes to bring them forth, they can usually create SOMETHING, even if it's the worst poem, song, painting, or whatever, ever produced. Unless I someday meet someone who can take my ideas and do the sketching and sewing processes for me, my designs will never see the light of day in any form, so the ability to turn my ideas into actual garments would thrill me no end... even if I only earned a salary rather than millions, and was only on a design staff rather than being the official, and therefore famous, designer.
Theoretical physics and couture design; I'm sure that must make a strong psychological statement about me, but I'm afraid to imagine WHAT, lol.
With that restriction, most people jump to something in the entertainment industry; singing, acting, or athletic talent... wealth, fame and adoration come from these sorts of things, so they're great choices if you've got 'em. But what if you don't? What if, in addition to the no-superpowers clause, we add one saying that you can't make more than a good living via your new talent, and can't achieve fame with it... then what would you choose? This is where it becomes a sort of psychological question; what ability would you want just because it would enrich your life, or humanity, or both? You're always supposed to pick just ONE thing, but I'll be daring and pick 2:
1) I'd want to be the greatest world expert in the area of theoretical physics, specifically in those parts of it that pertain to string theory; when they talk about how only a handful of people in the world can understand the math that explains some facets of it, and thus fully grasp all aspects of it, I'd like to be one of the handful. I'd like to be able to look at quantum physics equations and be able to "see" that they describe something no one else has realized yet. I'd like to, ideally, take the sum total of knowledge in this area, and my understanding of karma, and try to merge the 2; just give me the ability, and I'd gladly work on it for the rest of my life... even if no one ever knew my name no matter what I discovered, even if I had to anonymously pass along what I learned to other physicists who could then publish the findings, I'd want to do it because I want so badly to KNOW.
2) I'd like to be able to design clothes at the couture level. I can visualize a huge # of garments, as I've been designing in my head for many years, but I can't sketch or sew them myself, so I can't go anywhere with my "vision"; a couturier can of course do both, and do so with in-depth knowledge of fabrics, trimmings and tailoring, which allows them to know how best to create whatever they've envisioned. I know this seems trivial compared to the other ability, but in a way it's actually a bigger deal, because I'm capable of getting a basic understanding of string theory, enough to think about it and how it relates to my perceptions of the unknown, but my fine motor skills are so poor that I can't so much as draw a doodle or sew on a button at a level beyond what a 5 year old could manage, much less produce the simplest garment or drawing thereof; I'm stuck in the starting gate, whereas normally when someone has ideas and passionately wishes to bring them forth, they can usually create SOMETHING, even if it's the worst poem, song, painting, or whatever, ever produced. Unless I someday meet someone who can take my ideas and do the sketching and sewing processes for me, my designs will never see the light of day in any form, so the ability to turn my ideas into actual garments would thrill me no end... even if I only earned a salary rather than millions, and was only on a design staff rather than being the official, and therefore famous, designer.
Theoretical physics and couture design; I'm sure that must make a strong psychological statement about me, but I'm afraid to imagine WHAT, lol.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
The truth about gladiators
In the May 2005 issue of Discover magazine is a brief article entitled "Gladiators Get a Thumbs-Up," which I've copied here in its entirety:
"Hollywood usually shows gladiators as brutalized slaves fighting to the death before bloodthirsty mobs in Rome's Colosseum. Don't believe it, says archaeologist Steve Tuck from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After studying Roman artwork, government documents, and fighting manuals, Tuck says gladiators were like modern-day athletes: highly trained, overpaid, well-fed sex symbols who were not expected to die. They were celebrities.
They were also slaves, but they were permitted to earn wages and own property. Gladiatorial schools purchased the finest physical specimens and then spent months or years training them in armed and unarmed combat. The fighting manuals show that gladiators usually aimed to injure. They tended to stab at their opponent's calves and shoulders and often ended the fight by tossing aside their weapons and shields to grapple. Fatalities--which happened in less than 10 percent of the matches--were usually accidents or the result of a gladiator's poor performance. The ideal outcome of a match was a "standing missio," when both fighters performed flawlessly and neither was defeated.
Gladiators were so expensive to train and maintain that their sponsors--either private or governmental--did not want to risk death or serious injury. At one point Emperor Tiberius limited the games to keep his government from going bankrupt. Later Emperor Marcus Aurelius put a cap on gladiators' salaries. Top fighters earned enough from one bout to buy their own slaves or estates. "Gladiators, like modern professional athletes, could become little corporations," says classics professor David Potter of Michigan State University. The names of famous gladiators adorned common household items like oil lamps. Pottery vessels were painted with images of famous bouts. Children even played with clay gladiator "action figures." "It was a culture that was obsessed with superstars," Potter says, "and the gladiator was a symbol of it.""
Of course, I was blown away to see that the image of gladiators that we've always been given is so radically wrong, especially because, now that it's been explained, it makes perfect sense that it would be the way it in fact was, and would make NO sense for it to be as we've always pictured it, but that pales beside the REAL bombshell of the article; that our sick obsession with people who become famous, which leads to us to idolize them to the point that we want to see their images and even their names all the time, is NOT a modern phenomenon, NOT a product of the brainwashing we get from the media, but clearly a human-nature sort of thing... which would explain the MANIA that an amazing # of people develop for their favorite famous figures, since it's tapping into something already in our brains.
I can see wanting to look at the image of a famous person you're hot for, by what about those who want to look at their fave sports figures or bands or whatever where no sexual feeling is involved; what do folks get from seeing THOSE faces all the time? Even harder to understand; what do people get from looking at just the NAMES of those famous people, bands or sports teams? Sure, there could be the association with good times (concerts, games, movies), but that explanation falls short of explaining the more extreme folks, who after all aren't surrounding themselves with visual reminders of the more-frequent good times they've had with NON-famous people; what's the psychological benefit from being reminded of the existence of the idolized ones by seeing their images and names, especially since we're already thinking about them excessively? Is it the primitive part of our brains telling us that the symbolic representations of the famous people are in some indirect way like having those people actually with us, as we wish they were, and/or that somehow we can absorb some of the glamour and greatness of our idols by having those symbols of them around us?
This might be a bit of a leap, but... since we, perhaps non-coincidentally, apply terms like "worship" to those who feel strongest about their "idols," which they sometimes refer to as "gods/goddesses," couldn't the same concept be applied to those religious folks who feel it necessary to have statues of holy beings everywhere, even on their dashboards, not to mention rosaries, crucifixes, crosses and paintings on velvet? Do they think that God, Jesus, the saints, etc are actually more likely to be there with them, or even ARE with them in some way, if they have these visible symbols of them around as reminders, and/or that they can absorb more of their holiness, their goodness, from these images? I don't know anyone who does that sort of thing, so I can only guess; still, it's an interesting insight, if true...
"Hollywood usually shows gladiators as brutalized slaves fighting to the death before bloodthirsty mobs in Rome's Colosseum. Don't believe it, says archaeologist Steve Tuck from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After studying Roman artwork, government documents, and fighting manuals, Tuck says gladiators were like modern-day athletes: highly trained, overpaid, well-fed sex symbols who were not expected to die. They were celebrities.
They were also slaves, but they were permitted to earn wages and own property. Gladiatorial schools purchased the finest physical specimens and then spent months or years training them in armed and unarmed combat. The fighting manuals show that gladiators usually aimed to injure. They tended to stab at their opponent's calves and shoulders and often ended the fight by tossing aside their weapons and shields to grapple. Fatalities--which happened in less than 10 percent of the matches--were usually accidents or the result of a gladiator's poor performance. The ideal outcome of a match was a "standing missio," when both fighters performed flawlessly and neither was defeated.
Gladiators were so expensive to train and maintain that their sponsors--either private or governmental--did not want to risk death or serious injury. At one point Emperor Tiberius limited the games to keep his government from going bankrupt. Later Emperor Marcus Aurelius put a cap on gladiators' salaries. Top fighters earned enough from one bout to buy their own slaves or estates. "Gladiators, like modern professional athletes, could become little corporations," says classics professor David Potter of Michigan State University. The names of famous gladiators adorned common household items like oil lamps. Pottery vessels were painted with images of famous bouts. Children even played with clay gladiator "action figures." "It was a culture that was obsessed with superstars," Potter says, "and the gladiator was a symbol of it.""
Of course, I was blown away to see that the image of gladiators that we've always been given is so radically wrong, especially because, now that it's been explained, it makes perfect sense that it would be the way it in fact was, and would make NO sense for it to be as we've always pictured it, but that pales beside the REAL bombshell of the article; that our sick obsession with people who become famous, which leads to us to idolize them to the point that we want to see their images and even their names all the time, is NOT a modern phenomenon, NOT a product of the brainwashing we get from the media, but clearly a human-nature sort of thing... which would explain the MANIA that an amazing # of people develop for their favorite famous figures, since it's tapping into something already in our brains.
I can see wanting to look at the image of a famous person you're hot for, by what about those who want to look at their fave sports figures or bands or whatever where no sexual feeling is involved; what do folks get from seeing THOSE faces all the time? Even harder to understand; what do people get from looking at just the NAMES of those famous people, bands or sports teams? Sure, there could be the association with good times (concerts, games, movies), but that explanation falls short of explaining the more extreme folks, who after all aren't surrounding themselves with visual reminders of the more-frequent good times they've had with NON-famous people; what's the psychological benefit from being reminded of the existence of the idolized ones by seeing their images and names, especially since we're already thinking about them excessively? Is it the primitive part of our brains telling us that the symbolic representations of the famous people are in some indirect way like having those people actually with us, as we wish they were, and/or that somehow we can absorb some of the glamour and greatness of our idols by having those symbols of them around us?
This might be a bit of a leap, but... since we, perhaps non-coincidentally, apply terms like "worship" to those who feel strongest about their "idols," which they sometimes refer to as "gods/goddesses," couldn't the same concept be applied to those religious folks who feel it necessary to have statues of holy beings everywhere, even on their dashboards, not to mention rosaries, crucifixes, crosses and paintings on velvet? Do they think that God, Jesus, the saints, etc are actually more likely to be there with them, or even ARE with them in some way, if they have these visible symbols of them around as reminders, and/or that they can absorb more of their holiness, their goodness, from these images? I don't know anyone who does that sort of thing, so I can only guess; still, it's an interesting insight, if true...
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Voluntary amputees
Tonight, on the Sundance channel, I saw a documentary called "Whole," which they describe as follows:
"Delving into one of the more obscure corners of abnormal psychology, Melody Gilbert's 'WHOLE' sympathetically investigates an impulse among otherwise normal humans to amputate a healthy limb. Although not found in any medical textbooks, the condition -- tentatively labeled Body Integrity Identity Disorder (B.I.I.D.) -- is vividly described by psychiatrists and a group of men who have either undergone amputations or fantasize about losing a leg in order to fulfill their ideal body image."
I watched with my jaw dropped in amazement as man after man described feeling like one of their legs didn't belong on their body, wasn't part of their body, shouldn't be on their body, and therefore should be removed. One of the men described how he used to run home from school as a child to put on his "fake peg-leg" and walk around with it on, one of them strapped the offending leg up behind him and went around with crutches or a wheelchair 5-6 times a day... and one of them had packed his leg in dry ice to freeze it solid so that it would be so damaged it would have to be surgically removed, and one of them had blown his own leg off with a shotgun.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There were also references to people who had done things like chop off an arm with a home-made guillotine or put a leg across the train tracks; they'd do ANYTHING to get rid of the limb that they couldn't bear to have, and some of them had died in the attempt. DIED.
It bears repeating: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The men who still had the undesirable limbs talked obsessively about wanting to be rid of them; those that had managed to become amputees spoke of their feelings of pleasure, relief and great relaxation at long last after managing to be de-limbed. They all seemed sane, and there were doctors saying, in essence, "They're not crazy, and aside from this one thing they're totally normal"; the problem is that this hasn't been studied, so they don't KNOW what's going on here... and it's hard to believe that wanting to have a limb removed badly enough to blow it off with a shotgun could fail to be indicative of some sort of a lapse in sanity.
One doctor, who did a couple of leg amputations on men who hadn't damaged them to force the surgeries to be done (and has since been forbidden to do so again), referred to those patients as having "apotemnophilia, an extreme form of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) in which the patient develops a hatred for a body part"; you can read more here
http://www.medicalpost.com/mpcontent/article.jsp?content=/content/EXTRACT/RAWART/3608/55A.html
If, as has been suggested, these people (there are some women, too, although none were shown in the film) have a disorder that makes them miserable that is "cured" if they can get a limb amputated, SHOULD it be permissible for doctors to do it, or is there nothing that can excuse the removal of a healthy limb, or even, as some prefer, TWO limbs? Who controls, or SHOULD control, what modifications a person can make to their own body; the government, the doctors, or the person themselves?
If laws start getting passed to make official what people can and can't have done to their bodies, and all it'd take would be for ONE voluntary amputee to make the national news for people to start screaming for legislation in this area, it could be a slippery slope; the transgender community, for example, which has limited legal rights to begin with, would be an easy target. Some unenlightened people still believe that transsexuals are "sick," that they do NOT actually NEED sex changes, and thus that when surgeons remove parts from them and remodel others they're doing harm to them, even though they're thrilled with the changes; if, once B.I.I.D. has been studied, laws get passed forbidding doctors to chop off legs and arms, is it such a stretch to imagine that gender reassignment surgeries would be banned too, if they make the case that it's the same basic thing? A well-known psychiatrist in the UK has already made the mental connection between B.I.I.D/BDD and transsexualism; if you look here
http://www.ftma.net/lib/03/1119.html
you'll find this:
"Today the best-known psychiatrist dealing with transsexualism is Dr Russell Reid, who runs a private practice as well as working in the NHS. In 2000 Reid was involved in controversy over the condition known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), where sufferers can experience a desperate urge to rid themselves of a limb. Reid was one of the psychiatrists who referred two patients with BDD to a surgeon for leg amputations.
'When I first heard of people wanting amputations it seemed bizarre in the extreme,' he said in a television documentary at the time, 'but then I thought, "I see transsexuals and they want healthy parts of their body removed in order to adjust to their idealized body image," and so I think that was the connection for me. I saw that people wanted to have their limbs off with equally as much degree of obsession and need.'"
I can't imagine that NO American doctors would see things the same way, and plenty of people with an agenda to stick it to the transgender community, especially if they see it as a way of getting at the gay community, would be eager to feign agreement with the idea of surgery harming transsexuals... and just that fast, the transgendered would lose much of what they'd gained in recent decades.
What about the removal of significant amounts of healthy tissue for things like tummy tucks and breast reductions (yes, some of the latter are done for valid medical reasons, but not all)? How much of your healthy body should you be allowed to have removed just because you want it removed? When is it sick and when is it not to want it, and who decides that, and based on what? Should surgery be seen as a cure for mental illness, EVER?
What if it turns out that there's a medication these folks can be given that would eliminate their desire to lose limbs? Does that change anything? If B.I.I.D. IS a version of BDD, and that same med would also work for regular BDD, would some patients wanting plastic surgery be told, "you can't have surgery, because if you take these pills you won't want to change this anymore?" How could they tell would-be patients with BDD from those without it? How many wealthy or famous patients do you think would be stuck with that diagnosis if laws were passed requiring doctors to make that analysis... and how many greedy doctors wouldn't bother questioning anyone?
What happens when the first voluntary amputee who later regrets it, and you KNOW it'll happen, sues the surgeon?
What happens when someone with acrotomophilia (sexual attraction to amputees) persuades a sexual partner to get an amputation, or when someone gets an amputation to gain the affections of an acrotomophiliac... and before you say it could never happen, remember that some sick people have killed their kids when they had the hots for someone who didn't want the kids around, which is FAR more extreme.
I'd NEVER have imagined that people existed who wanted to become amputees; I cringe to contemplate what else people want that I haven't heard of yet...
"Delving into one of the more obscure corners of abnormal psychology, Melody Gilbert's 'WHOLE' sympathetically investigates an impulse among otherwise normal humans to amputate a healthy limb. Although not found in any medical textbooks, the condition -- tentatively labeled Body Integrity Identity Disorder (B.I.I.D.) -- is vividly described by psychiatrists and a group of men who have either undergone amputations or fantasize about losing a leg in order to fulfill their ideal body image."
I watched with my jaw dropped in amazement as man after man described feeling like one of their legs didn't belong on their body, wasn't part of their body, shouldn't be on their body, and therefore should be removed. One of the men described how he used to run home from school as a child to put on his "fake peg-leg" and walk around with it on, one of them strapped the offending leg up behind him and went around with crutches or a wheelchair 5-6 times a day... and one of them had packed his leg in dry ice to freeze it solid so that it would be so damaged it would have to be surgically removed, and one of them had blown his own leg off with a shotgun.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There were also references to people who had done things like chop off an arm with a home-made guillotine or put a leg across the train tracks; they'd do ANYTHING to get rid of the limb that they couldn't bear to have, and some of them had died in the attempt. DIED.
It bears repeating: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The men who still had the undesirable limbs talked obsessively about wanting to be rid of them; those that had managed to become amputees spoke of their feelings of pleasure, relief and great relaxation at long last after managing to be de-limbed. They all seemed sane, and there were doctors saying, in essence, "They're not crazy, and aside from this one thing they're totally normal"; the problem is that this hasn't been studied, so they don't KNOW what's going on here... and it's hard to believe that wanting to have a limb removed badly enough to blow it off with a shotgun could fail to be indicative of some sort of a lapse in sanity.
One doctor, who did a couple of leg amputations on men who hadn't damaged them to force the surgeries to be done (and has since been forbidden to do so again), referred to those patients as having "apotemnophilia, an extreme form of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) in which the patient develops a hatred for a body part"; you can read more here
http://www.medicalpost.com/mpcontent/article.jsp?content=/content/EXTRACT/RAWART/3608/55A.html
If, as has been suggested, these people (there are some women, too, although none were shown in the film) have a disorder that makes them miserable that is "cured" if they can get a limb amputated, SHOULD it be permissible for doctors to do it, or is there nothing that can excuse the removal of a healthy limb, or even, as some prefer, TWO limbs? Who controls, or SHOULD control, what modifications a person can make to their own body; the government, the doctors, or the person themselves?
If laws start getting passed to make official what people can and can't have done to their bodies, and all it'd take would be for ONE voluntary amputee to make the national news for people to start screaming for legislation in this area, it could be a slippery slope; the transgender community, for example, which has limited legal rights to begin with, would be an easy target. Some unenlightened people still believe that transsexuals are "sick," that they do NOT actually NEED sex changes, and thus that when surgeons remove parts from them and remodel others they're doing harm to them, even though they're thrilled with the changes; if, once B.I.I.D. has been studied, laws get passed forbidding doctors to chop off legs and arms, is it such a stretch to imagine that gender reassignment surgeries would be banned too, if they make the case that it's the same basic thing? A well-known psychiatrist in the UK has already made the mental connection between B.I.I.D/BDD and transsexualism; if you look here
http://www.ftma.net/lib/03/1119.html
you'll find this:
"Today the best-known psychiatrist dealing with transsexualism is Dr Russell Reid, who runs a private practice as well as working in the NHS. In 2000 Reid was involved in controversy over the condition known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), where sufferers can experience a desperate urge to rid themselves of a limb. Reid was one of the psychiatrists who referred two patients with BDD to a surgeon for leg amputations.
'When I first heard of people wanting amputations it seemed bizarre in the extreme,' he said in a television documentary at the time, 'but then I thought, "I see transsexuals and they want healthy parts of their body removed in order to adjust to their idealized body image," and so I think that was the connection for me. I saw that people wanted to have their limbs off with equally as much degree of obsession and need.'"
I can't imagine that NO American doctors would see things the same way, and plenty of people with an agenda to stick it to the transgender community, especially if they see it as a way of getting at the gay community, would be eager to feign agreement with the idea of surgery harming transsexuals... and just that fast, the transgendered would lose much of what they'd gained in recent decades.
What about the removal of significant amounts of healthy tissue for things like tummy tucks and breast reductions (yes, some of the latter are done for valid medical reasons, but not all)? How much of your healthy body should you be allowed to have removed just because you want it removed? When is it sick and when is it not to want it, and who decides that, and based on what? Should surgery be seen as a cure for mental illness, EVER?
What if it turns out that there's a medication these folks can be given that would eliminate their desire to lose limbs? Does that change anything? If B.I.I.D. IS a version of BDD, and that same med would also work for regular BDD, would some patients wanting plastic surgery be told, "you can't have surgery, because if you take these pills you won't want to change this anymore?" How could they tell would-be patients with BDD from those without it? How many wealthy or famous patients do you think would be stuck with that diagnosis if laws were passed requiring doctors to make that analysis... and how many greedy doctors wouldn't bother questioning anyone?
What happens when the first voluntary amputee who later regrets it, and you KNOW it'll happen, sues the surgeon?
What happens when someone with acrotomophilia (sexual attraction to amputees) persuades a sexual partner to get an amputation, or when someone gets an amputation to gain the affections of an acrotomophiliac... and before you say it could never happen, remember that some sick people have killed their kids when they had the hots for someone who didn't want the kids around, which is FAR more extreme.
I'd NEVER have imagined that people existed who wanted to become amputees; I cringe to contemplate what else people want that I haven't heard of yet...
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
An odd tech triumph
If you're the observant sort, and I'm betting you are, you've noticed something nifty alongside of my URL in your address bar (if you use IE, you might NOT see it unless you bookmark my site); a cool pink and black graphic that says "OMNI." I chose that "word" because it's short for "omniverse," and thus is the screen-name I use when I post in the blogosphere; I chose the color pink because, like the name, it's really "me." Since my tech knowledge is almost non-existent, there's a story behind every technical innovation on my blog, and this time it's extra-weird:
Because I use an old browser (it's much easier to do things on because it's so simple), I'd never seen a favicon (that's what those little graphics in front of the URL's are called, as I just discovered) until very recently, when I had to start using a newer browser to do my eBay searches (those eBay pages take too long to load on an old browser, sadly); when I naturally started bringing up some other sites in the newer browser, there the favicons were. They looked pretty neat, but it didn't occur to me that what those big corporate sites had was something *I* could have, because I hadn't seen it on any blogs yet... and getting something to appear up in the address bar seemed a little too advanced for me.
Finally, I DID see one on a blog; my friend Sam's excellent blog, specifically, located here
http://sams-stuff.blogspot.com/
Being utterly lacking in any ability with graphics programs, before I got too excited I asked my husband if he could make me one of those little icons, and he assured me that he could figure it out; he also knew a little bit about favicons, and so was able to bring the source code for Sam's blog up and point out the relevant line of code, which saved me having to sort through and start guessing what might be doing it... yes, that killer effect comes from ONE line of code placed in the header section of the template.
My husband got to work on making me the image you see, which had to be done with a special plug-in that would produce an ico file, as that's the only file type that can be used; the process took longer than necessary, as always, because he insists on ignoring what I've asked for and doing a bunch of other things I don't like, after which a protracted argument is required before he'll attempt doing it the right way... you'd think he'd want to do it the way that would get it done most quickly, but you'd be wrong, lol.
I knew I'd need to find a new online file storage site to store the image on, as my current image-storing host doesn't accept ico files; again, Sam's source code did the trick, as I used the URL in her code to get to the site she uses, and long before the image was ready I'd registered there and was ready to go. Once the icon was completed and transferred to my machine, I copied the code from Sam, stuck it right at the top of the header section of my template as I'd been told to by my husband, substituted the URL of my favicon, republished, and...
You KNEW it couldn't possibly work the first time, right? I THOUGHT it had, as the icon did in fact show up in the address bar, but before I could get my husband in to look at it, it had VANISHED, to be replaced with the default image. My husband said to try putting it at the very END of the header section, so that Blogger would read it last and so not override it; that sounded good, but the reality was that the default icon loaded, and then mine, and then the default one again... and this happened on every computer, and on every browser we tried.
I took another look at Sam's code, and saw that she was NOT using a Blogger template, or at least was using one so different from mine that no real comparison could be made to see what she might have done differently... and I had to wonder if it was even POSSIBLE to have a favicon with a basic Blogger template, especially since a search of a bunch of other Blogger blogs revealed no one else that had one.
Stumped, I posted on some coding forums asking for help; only a few people responded, and they were all seeing MY favicon, not the default one... leaving me to wonder if there was a browser issue involved, or some other weird thing I couldn't even imagine. It turned out to be the latter; today, when I brought my blog up in a newer browser to get to work on it, the favicon loaded just fine. I tried it on all the browsers on all the computers, and they were ALL fine. We have no idea WHY. Someone suggested that it might have been a cache issue, but some of those browsers had never had my blog loaded on them before, and so didn't HAVE a favicon in cache for it... leaving us without so much as a GUESS for what might have happened to make it keep failing before.
Is there such a thing as blog gremlins?
Anyways, the thing that matters is that it seems to be working now, so I won't sweat the hows and whys; I'm pleased and proud, as always, to have taken another step forward into tech-ness.
Because I use an old browser (it's much easier to do things on because it's so simple), I'd never seen a favicon (that's what those little graphics in front of the URL's are called, as I just discovered) until very recently, when I had to start using a newer browser to do my eBay searches (those eBay pages take too long to load on an old browser, sadly); when I naturally started bringing up some other sites in the newer browser, there the favicons were. They looked pretty neat, but it didn't occur to me that what those big corporate sites had was something *I* could have, because I hadn't seen it on any blogs yet... and getting something to appear up in the address bar seemed a little too advanced for me.
Finally, I DID see one on a blog; my friend Sam's excellent blog, specifically, located here
http://sams-stuff.blogspot.com/
Being utterly lacking in any ability with graphics programs, before I got too excited I asked my husband if he could make me one of those little icons, and he assured me that he could figure it out; he also knew a little bit about favicons, and so was able to bring the source code for Sam's blog up and point out the relevant line of code, which saved me having to sort through and start guessing what might be doing it... yes, that killer effect comes from ONE line of code placed in the header section of the template.
My husband got to work on making me the image you see, which had to be done with a special plug-in that would produce an ico file, as that's the only file type that can be used; the process took longer than necessary, as always, because he insists on ignoring what I've asked for and doing a bunch of other things I don't like, after which a protracted argument is required before he'll attempt doing it the right way... you'd think he'd want to do it the way that would get it done most quickly, but you'd be wrong, lol.
I knew I'd need to find a new online file storage site to store the image on, as my current image-storing host doesn't accept ico files; again, Sam's source code did the trick, as I used the URL in her code to get to the site she uses, and long before the image was ready I'd registered there and was ready to go. Once the icon was completed and transferred to my machine, I copied the code from Sam, stuck it right at the top of the header section of my template as I'd been told to by my husband, substituted the URL of my favicon, republished, and...
You KNEW it couldn't possibly work the first time, right? I THOUGHT it had, as the icon did in fact show up in the address bar, but before I could get my husband in to look at it, it had VANISHED, to be replaced with the default image. My husband said to try putting it at the very END of the header section, so that Blogger would read it last and so not override it; that sounded good, but the reality was that the default icon loaded, and then mine, and then the default one again... and this happened on every computer, and on every browser we tried.
I took another look at Sam's code, and saw that she was NOT using a Blogger template, or at least was using one so different from mine that no real comparison could be made to see what she might have done differently... and I had to wonder if it was even POSSIBLE to have a favicon with a basic Blogger template, especially since a search of a bunch of other Blogger blogs revealed no one else that had one.
Stumped, I posted on some coding forums asking for help; only a few people responded, and they were all seeing MY favicon, not the default one... leaving me to wonder if there was a browser issue involved, or some other weird thing I couldn't even imagine. It turned out to be the latter; today, when I brought my blog up in a newer browser to get to work on it, the favicon loaded just fine. I tried it on all the browsers on all the computers, and they were ALL fine. We have no idea WHY. Someone suggested that it might have been a cache issue, but some of those browsers had never had my blog loaded on them before, and so didn't HAVE a favicon in cache for it... leaving us without so much as a GUESS for what might have happened to make it keep failing before.
Is there such a thing as blog gremlins?
Anyways, the thing that matters is that it seems to be working now, so I won't sweat the hows and whys; I'm pleased and proud, as always, to have taken another step forward into tech-ness.
Monday, May 02, 2005
ow
Men, be warned; this post is partially about "female matters"... if that makes you uncomfortable, skip down to the next entry.
Why is it that, when so many women have cramps non-stop for several days each month, ibuprofen, the OTC med that works the best for cramps for many people, only lasts FOUR FRIGGING HOURS?!! And don't tell me it's 4-6, because I've never had ibuprofen last me even 4 hours and 1 minute, not even when I'm sleeping; when the pain is at its worst, 4 hours to the second after I took those final couple of pills, I wake up from a dream of pain to the reality of pain, and have to get up and stagger to the bathroom for the next dose... and when the pain isn't so bad, I just don't get rested no matter how long I'm in bed, because there's enough pain to keep me from sleeping deeply, but not enough to wake me up.
Yeah, it sucks.
You can get cold medications that are time-released for up to 24 hours... so why can't they do the same with ibuprofen? How obvious of a step is that, right? There are all sorts of pain that people self-medicate for, not just cramps, and most of those pains will last far longer than 4 hours, and most of those people would like to be able to SLEEP for more than 4 hours before having to re-dose, so why are the various producers of ibuprofen pills NOT making a time-released version, when the market for it is HUGE? Heck they could charge double, triple, for the time-released version, and hordes of people would line up to pay it; if you ever hear that any company HAS made a time-released version, buy as much of their stock as you can afford.
If you're reading this and are male, and are wondering about the other OTC pain pills; Tylenol doesn't really work on cramps, as it's not an antiprostaglandin (and prostaglandins are responsible for cramps), aspirin is weak and irritating to the stomach, and Aleve isn't as strong against cramps for most people... and believe me, for some of us, NOTHING is as strong as we need it to be.
Before my mother had me, she was being given some sort of prescription pain pills that were given to patients who'd had open-heart surgery for their postoperative pain for HER cramps; I don't know if mine are as bad as hers were, but they're pretty grim... there are plenty of months when even taking the absolute maximum dose of ibuprofen it's supposed to be safe to take, 5 pills, doesn't damp the pain down enough for me to sleep.
I'm used to pain of various kinds (I have bursitis and lower back trouble, too), but this can be so intense, and you can't hold it back by holding a body part still, and, worst of all, it can make it difficult to THINK; when you have this semi-conscious chant of "ow ow ow" going on, it's hard to produce any dazzling feats of intellectualism... so I gave up trying and just wrote what's on my mind, like I always do.
Why has medical science done so poorly in dealing with pain? We all know people who have headaches, backaches, arthritis, and other non-deadly ailments, for whom no pill that they can take eliminates the pain... WHY? Then, there are the people with things like cancer who suffer unspeakable agony, because nothing helps them... WHY? Why, when they can do all sorts of seemingly miraculous things to help and heal, can they not shut pain OFF, not even for a comparatively trivial thing like menstrual cramps?
Tonight was the worst night for this particular cycle (and I say WAS, because it's full daylight out now, and I haven't been to bed yet), and the ibuprofen has FINALLY settled it down to a dull roar, so I'm going to jump into bed and hope for more than 4 hours of sleep. My final thought; if and when they DO find a way to switch off our perceptions of pain, it will affect so many people, nearly ALL of us as various points in our lives, that it might be the greatest medical achievement of all times.
Why is it that, when so many women have cramps non-stop for several days each month, ibuprofen, the OTC med that works the best for cramps for many people, only lasts FOUR FRIGGING HOURS?!! And don't tell me it's 4-6, because I've never had ibuprofen last me even 4 hours and 1 minute, not even when I'm sleeping; when the pain is at its worst, 4 hours to the second after I took those final couple of pills, I wake up from a dream of pain to the reality of pain, and have to get up and stagger to the bathroom for the next dose... and when the pain isn't so bad, I just don't get rested no matter how long I'm in bed, because there's enough pain to keep me from sleeping deeply, but not enough to wake me up.
Yeah, it sucks.
You can get cold medications that are time-released for up to 24 hours... so why can't they do the same with ibuprofen? How obvious of a step is that, right? There are all sorts of pain that people self-medicate for, not just cramps, and most of those pains will last far longer than 4 hours, and most of those people would like to be able to SLEEP for more than 4 hours before having to re-dose, so why are the various producers of ibuprofen pills NOT making a time-released version, when the market for it is HUGE? Heck they could charge double, triple, for the time-released version, and hordes of people would line up to pay it; if you ever hear that any company HAS made a time-released version, buy as much of their stock as you can afford.
If you're reading this and are male, and are wondering about the other OTC pain pills; Tylenol doesn't really work on cramps, as it's not an antiprostaglandin (and prostaglandins are responsible for cramps), aspirin is weak and irritating to the stomach, and Aleve isn't as strong against cramps for most people... and believe me, for some of us, NOTHING is as strong as we need it to be.
Before my mother had me, she was being given some sort of prescription pain pills that were given to patients who'd had open-heart surgery for their postoperative pain for HER cramps; I don't know if mine are as bad as hers were, but they're pretty grim... there are plenty of months when even taking the absolute maximum dose of ibuprofen it's supposed to be safe to take, 5 pills, doesn't damp the pain down enough for me to sleep.
I'm used to pain of various kinds (I have bursitis and lower back trouble, too), but this can be so intense, and you can't hold it back by holding a body part still, and, worst of all, it can make it difficult to THINK; when you have this semi-conscious chant of "ow ow ow" going on, it's hard to produce any dazzling feats of intellectualism... so I gave up trying and just wrote what's on my mind, like I always do.
Why has medical science done so poorly in dealing with pain? We all know people who have headaches, backaches, arthritis, and other non-deadly ailments, for whom no pill that they can take eliminates the pain... WHY? Then, there are the people with things like cancer who suffer unspeakable agony, because nothing helps them... WHY? Why, when they can do all sorts of seemingly miraculous things to help and heal, can they not shut pain OFF, not even for a comparatively trivial thing like menstrual cramps?
Tonight was the worst night for this particular cycle (and I say WAS, because it's full daylight out now, and I haven't been to bed yet), and the ibuprofen has FINALLY settled it down to a dull roar, so I'm going to jump into bed and hope for more than 4 hours of sleep. My final thought; if and when they DO find a way to switch off our perceptions of pain, it will affect so many people, nearly ALL of us as various points in our lives, that it might be the greatest medical achievement of all times.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
When you get the creeps
You know the feeling; it's late at night, and you're alone in the house, or, worse, outside somewhere alone, maybe taking out the garbage, and some little movement of shadow or crackling of leaves that you'd have barely noticed before sundown makes your heart speed up and goosebumps break out all over your body. It makes perfect biological sense that unexpected noises and movements would make us hyper-alert, but what is it about it being late at night that magnifies the effect so dramatically? How do the mechanisms in your brain that control all this KNOW that it's the middle of the night, even when you're in a well-lit house and can't see the darkness outside? (And in the parts of the world that have darkness nonstop for months, what happens to this reaction, does it eventually start to fade, or are they jumpy month after month every time they step out into the dark?)
The weird thing is when your mind apparently decides that there isn't enough stuff creeping you out, and so starts to manufacture some for you; for example, I've noticed that if I look at a doll or stuffie from across a dim room, or look at its reflection in a dark window, it eventually seems to start moving... the face changes expression, the mouth might move as if it's whispering to someone/thing unseen, the arms or hands will make threatening gestures... and no amount of knowing that it's absolutely not real makes my eyes "unsee" what I'm seeing. What's the biological or evolutionary value of THAT?
The REALLY weird thing is that dolls and stuffies, I think by virtue of having faces (and this ties in to why people often have a subconscious fear of them, and also of mannequins and ventriloquist dummies, hence their frequent appearance in horror movies/shows), can seem somehow menacing even in a brightly lit room if the hour's late enough: A few nights ago, as I was finishing up on my laptop, I heard some odd, stealthy-seeming rustling sounds from somewhere nearby, and my exhausted mind instantly went into overdrive, and adrenaline flooded my system; by the time I located the source of the noises, which was a stuffie that had slid down such that it was pressed against the blinds and was moving them a little as it continued to slide, I was wired. I hoisted the stuffie back up to its proper place, and happened to look at its sweet, smiling face, and... I got the creeps BIG time. The longer I looked at that fuzzy, innocent visage, the more I got that feeling you get watching, say, Chuckie pretending to be a normal doll, knowing that any moment it's going to erupt into violence... and no matter how loudly the logical part of my brain insisted that it was just a harmless stuffie, and that I was freaking myself out by focusing on it, the primitive part of my brain kept reacting as if I were in some sort of danger.
Is that about as dead-wrong as the animal instincts can be or what, lol? Somehow, the combination of the odd noises, the late hour, and the resemblance of the stuffed animal to a real one made the caveman brain go into overdrive... and it left a lasting impression, too, because I just tried giving the stuffie's face a long stare, and I felt a tiny prickle of unease. There CAN'T be any value to a person of something like THAT, so my best guess is that the ability of the brain to imagine that things that aren't quite perceptible might be predators, which WOULD be valuable, can be over-active, and thus start imagining that things that have already been verified to be non-predatory are nevertheless dangerous; horror movies use that to scare you, but they have to work at it a little... I think, I HOPE, that most people's imaginations don't run away with them like mine did.
Stephen King once said something like, "People think it's great to have a vivid imagination, but what they don't realize is that it can turn on you like a cannibal with razors for teeth"... and he's SO right.
The weird thing is when your mind apparently decides that there isn't enough stuff creeping you out, and so starts to manufacture some for you; for example, I've noticed that if I look at a doll or stuffie from across a dim room, or look at its reflection in a dark window, it eventually seems to start moving... the face changes expression, the mouth might move as if it's whispering to someone/thing unseen, the arms or hands will make threatening gestures... and no amount of knowing that it's absolutely not real makes my eyes "unsee" what I'm seeing. What's the biological or evolutionary value of THAT?
The REALLY weird thing is that dolls and stuffies, I think by virtue of having faces (and this ties in to why people often have a subconscious fear of them, and also of mannequins and ventriloquist dummies, hence their frequent appearance in horror movies/shows), can seem somehow menacing even in a brightly lit room if the hour's late enough: A few nights ago, as I was finishing up on my laptop, I heard some odd, stealthy-seeming rustling sounds from somewhere nearby, and my exhausted mind instantly went into overdrive, and adrenaline flooded my system; by the time I located the source of the noises, which was a stuffie that had slid down such that it was pressed against the blinds and was moving them a little as it continued to slide, I was wired. I hoisted the stuffie back up to its proper place, and happened to look at its sweet, smiling face, and... I got the creeps BIG time. The longer I looked at that fuzzy, innocent visage, the more I got that feeling you get watching, say, Chuckie pretending to be a normal doll, knowing that any moment it's going to erupt into violence... and no matter how loudly the logical part of my brain insisted that it was just a harmless stuffie, and that I was freaking myself out by focusing on it, the primitive part of my brain kept reacting as if I were in some sort of danger.
Is that about as dead-wrong as the animal instincts can be or what, lol? Somehow, the combination of the odd noises, the late hour, and the resemblance of the stuffed animal to a real one made the caveman brain go into overdrive... and it left a lasting impression, too, because I just tried giving the stuffie's face a long stare, and I felt a tiny prickle of unease. There CAN'T be any value to a person of something like THAT, so my best guess is that the ability of the brain to imagine that things that aren't quite perceptible might be predators, which WOULD be valuable, can be over-active, and thus start imagining that things that have already been verified to be non-predatory are nevertheless dangerous; horror movies use that to scare you, but they have to work at it a little... I think, I HOPE, that most people's imaginations don't run away with them like mine did.
Stephen King once said something like, "People think it's great to have a vivid imagination, but what they don't realize is that it can turn on you like a cannibal with razors for teeth"... and he's SO right.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
A good memory of my grandma
Let me preface this post by saying that nearly ALL of my memories of my grandma are positive; since she's human and not a saint, she had times when she was out of sorts like everyone else does, but overall she's a good and gentle soul... which makes me wonder how she could have possibly given birth to a warped and uncaring person like my mother.
When I was growing up, my grandmother used to spend most of the summer with us every year; looking back, I'm AMAZED at how good of a job my parents did of not going off the deep end when she was around... oh, they're too psycho to be able to cover it up completely, and she saw enough to form some disparaging opinions, but the sorts of extremes that she would have had to protest, and report back to the rest of the family, never happened in front of her. Since even the non-psycho have less than perfect judgment, though, there WERE a few times that my grandmother DID feel it necessary to intervene, and this is one of them:
My mother had decided at a point fairly early in my childhood that it was absolutely necessary for me to use the electric toothbrush (and I say "the" electric toothbrush because she was too cheap to buy more than one for the household) to be fully cleaning my teeth, so every night I went into my parents' bathroom and brushed my teeth; based on nothing I could ever find out, one day when I was in my teens my father decided that it was somehow problematic for me to be going into "his" room to get to the toothbrush, and my mother, unwilling to give up the idea that I MUST use it, or to simply tell him to stop being an @ss about trivial matters, agreed to semi-appease him by imposing upon me a new laundry-list of restrictions and directives (primarily concerned with what my father might be doing, about to do, or thinking of doing at toothbrushing time, and how I was to plan my actions based on these things... I only WISH I were kidding) that, if enforced, would have made it virtually impossible to brush my teeth without transgressing. She chose her favorite time to drop bombshells on me, right before I went to bed, to tell me this news... but she miscalculated the efficacy of that tactic on this occasion, because my grandmother was in the guest bedroom at the crucial moment, and when my mother gave her spiel as I was emerging from my bathroom, which was right next to that bedroom, it was overheard. For this story, my parents will be "Jane" and "John":
Mother: From now on, when it's time for you to brush your teeth, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. (I've forgotten the actual speech-perhaps that's just as well.)
Grandma (emerging from guestroom): JANE!! Are you out of your mind?!! Why are you giving that child this ridiculous list of rules for brushing her teeth?
Mother (in the contemptuous tone reserved for immediate family members): Mother, nothing has changed.
Me: Oh? That means I don't have to do anything different.
Mother: Yes you do!! You have to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah {etc}.
Me: Those things are all new, which means that EVERYTHING has changed.
Mother: No, nothing has changed.
Me (stubbornly clinging to logic): If nothing has changed, then I don't have to do anything different.
Mother: Yes you do!! You have to blah blah blah...
Grandma (interrupting): That's ENOUGH!! Why does this child always have to have a thousand rules for every little thing? A child doesn't need ANY rules about the brushing of teeth, so you just forget about all this nonsense.
Mother: Mother, John has decided that he doesn't like her going in there to brush her teeth, so this is necessary to...
Grandma: But Jane, this is NOT necessary; why do you let him get away with being so unreasonable?
Mother: He's going to get hysterical if she's in there when he wants her out, so this way that's avoided.
Grandma: Hysterical over WHAT, that the child needs to brush her teeth? That she needs to be in your room for a couple of minutes? That's crazy!! If you want her to use that toothbrush, you have to let her go in there when it's her bedtime and use it, and that's that; you don't need any of these rules.
Mother: Mother, he doesn't want her in the bedroom when he goes up there.
Grandma: WHY?
Mother: Look, all she has to do is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah {etc}, and everything will be fine.
Grandma: No it won't-you can't let him dictate like this for such a trivial thing. You tell John that the child needs to brush her teeth, and he can just wait a couple of minutes for her to be done if he comes up right then, and that's the end of it.
Mother: He doesn't want her in the room...
Grandma: But Jane, she goes in there to watch TV, so what's the difference... what harm could she be doing, brushing her teeth?
Mother: Look, Mother, I've already handled this, so...
Grandma: No, I'm sorry, but you can NOT expect the child to remember and follow all these elaborate rules about the brushing of teeth; either she has to go in there and brush them, or you let her take the toothbrush into HER bathroom and bring it back, or else YOU can come upstairs and bring her the brush and take it back if you want to make a production out of it, but you can just forget about these rules.
As she always did the rare times she was thwarted by an adult family member, my mother muttered something unintelligible and dashed away.
The new rules were never enforced, or referred to again; more talk about the earthshatteringly important topic of my brushing my teeth in their bathroom was going on behind the scenes, however, because my mother eventually announced that, contrary to what she'd always claimed was an inarguable requirement, I was no longer going to be using the electric toothbrush... and no, she never used the obvious solution and bought me one of my own, not even as a "gift," because her cheapness was more powerful than her need to believe that my teeth were fully brushed.
The horrified reactions of other adults to the infinitely rule-bound universe my parents had created for me were part of what kept me sane, as they were PROOF of my gut feeling that my parents were far, FAR from normal; the all too rare times that an adult was present at a time when they could intervene directly on my behalf were indescribable in the sense of relief they gave me. Imagine how different my life would have been if I'd had relatives living nearby, such that there were ALWAYS other adults there to intercede when my parents got too psycho...
When I was growing up, my grandmother used to spend most of the summer with us every year; looking back, I'm AMAZED at how good of a job my parents did of not going off the deep end when she was around... oh, they're too psycho to be able to cover it up completely, and she saw enough to form some disparaging opinions, but the sorts of extremes that she would have had to protest, and report back to the rest of the family, never happened in front of her. Since even the non-psycho have less than perfect judgment, though, there WERE a few times that my grandmother DID feel it necessary to intervene, and this is one of them:
My mother had decided at a point fairly early in my childhood that it was absolutely necessary for me to use the electric toothbrush (and I say "the" electric toothbrush because she was too cheap to buy more than one for the household) to be fully cleaning my teeth, so every night I went into my parents' bathroom and brushed my teeth; based on nothing I could ever find out, one day when I was in my teens my father decided that it was somehow problematic for me to be going into "his" room to get to the toothbrush, and my mother, unwilling to give up the idea that I MUST use it, or to simply tell him to stop being an @ss about trivial matters, agreed to semi-appease him by imposing upon me a new laundry-list of restrictions and directives (primarily concerned with what my father might be doing, about to do, or thinking of doing at toothbrushing time, and how I was to plan my actions based on these things... I only WISH I were kidding) that, if enforced, would have made it virtually impossible to brush my teeth without transgressing. She chose her favorite time to drop bombshells on me, right before I went to bed, to tell me this news... but she miscalculated the efficacy of that tactic on this occasion, because my grandmother was in the guest bedroom at the crucial moment, and when my mother gave her spiel as I was emerging from my bathroom, which was right next to that bedroom, it was overheard. For this story, my parents will be "Jane" and "John":
Mother: From now on, when it's time for you to brush your teeth, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. (I've forgotten the actual speech-perhaps that's just as well.)
Grandma (emerging from guestroom): JANE!! Are you out of your mind?!! Why are you giving that child this ridiculous list of rules for brushing her teeth?
Mother (in the contemptuous tone reserved for immediate family members): Mother, nothing has changed.
Me: Oh? That means I don't have to do anything different.
Mother: Yes you do!! You have to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah {etc}.
Me: Those things are all new, which means that EVERYTHING has changed.
Mother: No, nothing has changed.
Me (stubbornly clinging to logic): If nothing has changed, then I don't have to do anything different.
Mother: Yes you do!! You have to blah blah blah...
Grandma (interrupting): That's ENOUGH!! Why does this child always have to have a thousand rules for every little thing? A child doesn't need ANY rules about the brushing of teeth, so you just forget about all this nonsense.
Mother: Mother, John has decided that he doesn't like her going in there to brush her teeth, so this is necessary to...
Grandma: But Jane, this is NOT necessary; why do you let him get away with being so unreasonable?
Mother: He's going to get hysterical if she's in there when he wants her out, so this way that's avoided.
Grandma: Hysterical over WHAT, that the child needs to brush her teeth? That she needs to be in your room for a couple of minutes? That's crazy!! If you want her to use that toothbrush, you have to let her go in there when it's her bedtime and use it, and that's that; you don't need any of these rules.
Mother: Mother, he doesn't want her in the bedroom when he goes up there.
Grandma: WHY?
Mother: Look, all she has to do is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah {etc}, and everything will be fine.
Grandma: No it won't-you can't let him dictate like this for such a trivial thing. You tell John that the child needs to brush her teeth, and he can just wait a couple of minutes for her to be done if he comes up right then, and that's the end of it.
Mother: He doesn't want her in the room...
Grandma: But Jane, she goes in there to watch TV, so what's the difference... what harm could she be doing, brushing her teeth?
Mother: Look, Mother, I've already handled this, so...
Grandma: No, I'm sorry, but you can NOT expect the child to remember and follow all these elaborate rules about the brushing of teeth; either she has to go in there and brush them, or you let her take the toothbrush into HER bathroom and bring it back, or else YOU can come upstairs and bring her the brush and take it back if you want to make a production out of it, but you can just forget about these rules.
As she always did the rare times she was thwarted by an adult family member, my mother muttered something unintelligible and dashed away.
The new rules were never enforced, or referred to again; more talk about the earthshatteringly important topic of my brushing my teeth in their bathroom was going on behind the scenes, however, because my mother eventually announced that, contrary to what she'd always claimed was an inarguable requirement, I was no longer going to be using the electric toothbrush... and no, she never used the obvious solution and bought me one of my own, not even as a "gift," because her cheapness was more powerful than her need to believe that my teeth were fully brushed.
The horrified reactions of other adults to the infinitely rule-bound universe my parents had created for me were part of what kept me sane, as they were PROOF of my gut feeling that my parents were far, FAR from normal; the all too rare times that an adult was present at a time when they could intervene directly on my behalf were indescribable in the sense of relief they gave me. Imagine how different my life would have been if I'd had relatives living nearby, such that there were ALWAYS other adults there to intercede when my parents got too psycho...
Friday, April 29, 2005
At LAST, disc 2 of the Nova program on strings
The latest stunt being pulled by the @#$%^&* Blockbuster online rental service is that it's pretty much ignoring the order of the DVD's in the queue and picking at random from the available ones to send; their excuse for this is that it allows them to send those DVD's that their system thinks will reach you the quickest (yes, I ASKED), but that's a less important consideration than being able to see the DVD's you really WANT first, without having to delete all the other available ones and re-insert them after you've gotten the good ones... especially when you've seen disc 1 of a multi-disc set and end up having to wait a month and a half to get disc # 2!! GRRRRRRRRRR
On 3-10-05, I posted about having seen "the first 2 parts of a Nova program, 'The Elegant Universe,' which is dedicated to making string theory understandable to regular people," which were contained on disc 1; now, I've seen the 3rd and final part, and I've learned that:
1) The Einsteinian view of the universe wouldn't allow for wormholes, because it doesn't allow you to tear the "fabric of space" without causing a catastrophe; string theory, in a way they didn't make clear (they have to gloss over alot of stuff that only a theoretical physicist could understand), means that the strings make "tubes" as they move around, and these tubes would somehow encase tears that appear in space and keep them from leading to disaster.
2) NO ONE knows what the "M" in "M-theory" means, including the man who created it, physicist Ed Witten, who jokingly says that it could stand for "Magic, mystery, or matrix, according to taste." Witten demonstrated in 1995 that the alleged 5 different versions of string theory were in fact all just different ways of looking at the exact same thing, and thus that there's only ONE such theory; this is probably why the terms "M-theory" and "string theory" are used interchangeably.
3) The acceptance of M-theory means that 10 dimensions isn't enough; now, we need 11... I KNEW I'd seen both 10 and 11 being used for this topic, and thought maybe there were differing views-I'm glad this got cleared up. This added dimension allows for membranes, or "branes," to exist, which could be so huge that each one is an entire universe, hanging in a higher-dimensional space... and that's where we get the parallel universes. (Do you suppose that spirits might live in one of those "branes"? Are WE the spirits of beings from other branes? Could we move from brane to brane until we get back here, and that's what reincarnation is?)
4) Why does gravity seem so weak compared to all the other forces? It may be that gravity is just as strong as electromagnetism, but doesn't SEEM to be because, unlike the other forces, it might be able to leave our brane, dissipating our perception of it. They think this could be because the strings that make up everything else are open-ended in shape and are "tied down" to our brane, but that the strings of which gravity are made, called "gravitons," are closed circles, and thus NOT tied down and so able to leave the brane. (Would souls be made of closed-circle strings too, then, or are they tied forever to our brane?)
5) The hunt is on for supersymmetry, a central prediction of string theory that says that for every familiar subatomic particle there should exist a much heavier partner called a "sparticle"; the assumption is that they'd be so heavy that they probably couldn't be detected with today's atom smashers, and that's supposedly why they've found no evidence for them yet... which has a little bit of the feel of phlogiston (the non-existent material once believed to be contained in every substance that burned) to me, frankly, but time will tell. The belief that supersymmetry exists was necessary to bring the # of dimensions of string theory down from 26 to 10 (and now 11), and the inclusion of this concept led to the name "SUPERstring theory," which is used interchangeably with "string theory" because they're not looking at the original, non-super ("bosonic") version anymore... although maybe they SHOULD (if they could clear up the tachyon and fermion problems with the original theory some other way), and not be afraid of a huge # of dimensions, which don't seem any worse than new, unseen heavy particles... unless maybe sparticles are dark matter? I just looked it up, and this HAS been thought of... but *I* made the connection withOUT a PhD in theoretical physics. :-)
This Nova series gets the 2 thumbs up from me, and has given me much to think about, especially this new open/closed string idea, which I'm now going to use to try to guess the forms of the various "hidden" kinds of karma. Do you think that closed strings might be able to move around in the "time dimension" in ways we've never thought of, and in particular be responsible for precognition? hmmmmmmmmmmmm
On 3-10-05, I posted about having seen "the first 2 parts of a Nova program, 'The Elegant Universe,' which is dedicated to making string theory understandable to regular people," which were contained on disc 1; now, I've seen the 3rd and final part, and I've learned that:
1) The Einsteinian view of the universe wouldn't allow for wormholes, because it doesn't allow you to tear the "fabric of space" without causing a catastrophe; string theory, in a way they didn't make clear (they have to gloss over alot of stuff that only a theoretical physicist could understand), means that the strings make "tubes" as they move around, and these tubes would somehow encase tears that appear in space and keep them from leading to disaster.
2) NO ONE knows what the "M" in "M-theory" means, including the man who created it, physicist Ed Witten, who jokingly says that it could stand for "Magic, mystery, or matrix, according to taste." Witten demonstrated in 1995 that the alleged 5 different versions of string theory were in fact all just different ways of looking at the exact same thing, and thus that there's only ONE such theory; this is probably why the terms "M-theory" and "string theory" are used interchangeably.
3) The acceptance of M-theory means that 10 dimensions isn't enough; now, we need 11... I KNEW I'd seen both 10 and 11 being used for this topic, and thought maybe there were differing views-I'm glad this got cleared up. This added dimension allows for membranes, or "branes," to exist, which could be so huge that each one is an entire universe, hanging in a higher-dimensional space... and that's where we get the parallel universes. (Do you suppose that spirits might live in one of those "branes"? Are WE the spirits of beings from other branes? Could we move from brane to brane until we get back here, and that's what reincarnation is?)
4) Why does gravity seem so weak compared to all the other forces? It may be that gravity is just as strong as electromagnetism, but doesn't SEEM to be because, unlike the other forces, it might be able to leave our brane, dissipating our perception of it. They think this could be because the strings that make up everything else are open-ended in shape and are "tied down" to our brane, but that the strings of which gravity are made, called "gravitons," are closed circles, and thus NOT tied down and so able to leave the brane. (Would souls be made of closed-circle strings too, then, or are they tied forever to our brane?)
5) The hunt is on for supersymmetry, a central prediction of string theory that says that for every familiar subatomic particle there should exist a much heavier partner called a "sparticle"; the assumption is that they'd be so heavy that they probably couldn't be detected with today's atom smashers, and that's supposedly why they've found no evidence for them yet... which has a little bit of the feel of phlogiston (the non-existent material once believed to be contained in every substance that burned) to me, frankly, but time will tell. The belief that supersymmetry exists was necessary to bring the # of dimensions of string theory down from 26 to 10 (and now 11), and the inclusion of this concept led to the name "SUPERstring theory," which is used interchangeably with "string theory" because they're not looking at the original, non-super ("bosonic") version anymore... although maybe they SHOULD (if they could clear up the tachyon and fermion problems with the original theory some other way), and not be afraid of a huge # of dimensions, which don't seem any worse than new, unseen heavy particles... unless maybe sparticles are dark matter? I just looked it up, and this HAS been thought of... but *I* made the connection withOUT a PhD in theoretical physics. :-)
This Nova series gets the 2 thumbs up from me, and has given me much to think about, especially this new open/closed string idea, which I'm now going to use to try to guess the forms of the various "hidden" kinds of karma. Do you think that closed strings might be able to move around in the "time dimension" in ways we've never thought of, and in particular be responsible for precognition? hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Do you need a dream?
How about a goal? Or a plan?
Nope.
From the time we're little kids, people are always telling us that we DO need one or the other of these things, because... well, the because is always a little vague, which is a sure sign of a lack of logic to what's being said.
Let's start with the dream; this is supposed to be some BIG thing that you'd like to have, so big that it's presumably beyond your ability to achieve without a miracle, whether it's to live on a luxury yacht, marry a famous hottie, or have a platinum album. I'm all for fantasizing, but why would you HAVE to have ONE such fantasy that's the "official dream"? What benefit does that get you? If your life is so grim that you need a dream to keep you going, I suggest that you stop dreaming and change your life... and in the meantime, have MANY dreams to cheer yourself up-there's nothing magic about having ONE.
A goal, in contrast to a dream, is something beyond what you currently have that you CAN possibly achieve; it's supposed to be something very specific, AND you're supposed to have a specific time frame within which to achieve it (otherwise, it's a fantasy, NOT a goal). It's certainly admirable to want to better yourself or your life, but what does setting a goal get you that you wouldn't have had otherwise? If you do your best at work, for example, that gets you what it gets you when it's available; having a GOAL to get a promotion and/or raise doesn't alter the opinion the higher-ups have of your work, and so doesn't get you those things any faster, or make you more likely to get them at all. It's the same with ANY goal, whether it's to lose weight, save up for a trip, or whatever; all you have to do is do the work, and you'll get where you want to be withOUT having set an actual goal.
What about those people who say that if they don't have that end of the time period that's part of the goal looming over them, they can't keep their motivation up, won't work hard enough, won't make it a priority? To them I say; if something isn't important enough to you that you'll automatically do what it takes to get it in the shortest possible (reasonable) time frame, why bother making a goal about that particular thing? Why not just focus that time and effort on what DOES matter to you?
But what about those that say that if a thing is hard to achieve, playing a mind-game with themselves with a usually-arbitrary time frame (no, they don't use those exact words, but that's what it boils down to) makes them achieve more, more quickly? To them I say; one of the most important life skills is the ability to decide what needs to be done and just DO it, no matter what's going on to distract or tempt you, no matter what you feel, and no matter how hard it is. It used to be that EVERY adult had this ability as a matter of course, so it can't be that hard; just because we've become weak and wimpy compared to earlier generations does NOT mean that we can't still gain that ability, or even that we can make any valid excuse for not having it. If you choose, CHOOSE, to have that sort of dedication to what needs to be done, you can do it; if you decline to make that choice, then you'll spend the rest of your life trying to "trick" yourself into getting things done with goal-setting... and, if you're like most people, failing much of the time.
And that's another problem with goal-setting; it can set you up for failure. If the time frame you choose is less than the time you actually need to get from point A to point B, you'll feel like a failure even though you've in fact made as much progress as you could during that length of time, and so should feel like a success. If you set the goal too FAR in the future, and are using the goal time to motivate you, you'll pace yourself too slowly, because you're going for the goal rather than for making maximum progress, and so will get to point B LATER than you would have if you'd just worked hard with no specific goal. AND, if the goal is something that you can't reach directly, but must depend on the judgment of others for, such as a promotion, getting a record deal, or being allowed to buy an apartment in a fashionable co-op building, you're setting yourself up for extra disappointment if you pretend that you can make it happen by your actions and then don't get it.
And finally, there's the ever more popular concept with the self-styled experts on how we should live our lives; the plan. The usage in this case is that a plan is a description of where you want to be in all areas of your life at various points in the future, which can be as little as a few months away or DECADES away. If someone exists who was able to make such descriptions, and then ended up actually living their life as described when they got there, especially for the longer-term plans, I'd sure like to meet them; I don't know ANYONE whose life turned out like they thought it would no matter WHAT they planned it to be like, and I include myself in that statement... I could NEVER have envisioned my current life at any time earlier on.
Some people will tell you that you "can't" get anywhere in life without dreams, goals and plans; I'm here to tell you that it just ain't so, and *I* am living proof of that. I've gotten everything I could have ever asked out of life and more, more than not just my peers have at this point but more than most people far older than I am have too... and I did it withOUT having a dream, goal or plan, EVER. If there are things YOU want out of life that you haven't got now, and that are within your ability to get, don't DREAM of getting those things, don't set a GOAL to get them, don't PLAN to get them... choose, CHOOSE, to start taking the necessary steps, making the necessary effort, and devoting the necessary time to get you to those things. Forget the mind games that make you feel like you've done something when you haven't; TAKE ACTION... that's what our forebears did to get things done, and it's still all you need to achieve whatever's within your grasp today.
Nope.
From the time we're little kids, people are always telling us that we DO need one or the other of these things, because... well, the because is always a little vague, which is a sure sign of a lack of logic to what's being said.
Let's start with the dream; this is supposed to be some BIG thing that you'd like to have, so big that it's presumably beyond your ability to achieve without a miracle, whether it's to live on a luxury yacht, marry a famous hottie, or have a platinum album. I'm all for fantasizing, but why would you HAVE to have ONE such fantasy that's the "official dream"? What benefit does that get you? If your life is so grim that you need a dream to keep you going, I suggest that you stop dreaming and change your life... and in the meantime, have MANY dreams to cheer yourself up-there's nothing magic about having ONE.
A goal, in contrast to a dream, is something beyond what you currently have that you CAN possibly achieve; it's supposed to be something very specific, AND you're supposed to have a specific time frame within which to achieve it (otherwise, it's a fantasy, NOT a goal). It's certainly admirable to want to better yourself or your life, but what does setting a goal get you that you wouldn't have had otherwise? If you do your best at work, for example, that gets you what it gets you when it's available; having a GOAL to get a promotion and/or raise doesn't alter the opinion the higher-ups have of your work, and so doesn't get you those things any faster, or make you more likely to get them at all. It's the same with ANY goal, whether it's to lose weight, save up for a trip, or whatever; all you have to do is do the work, and you'll get where you want to be withOUT having set an actual goal.
What about those people who say that if they don't have that end of the time period that's part of the goal looming over them, they can't keep their motivation up, won't work hard enough, won't make it a priority? To them I say; if something isn't important enough to you that you'll automatically do what it takes to get it in the shortest possible (reasonable) time frame, why bother making a goal about that particular thing? Why not just focus that time and effort on what DOES matter to you?
But what about those that say that if a thing is hard to achieve, playing a mind-game with themselves with a usually-arbitrary time frame (no, they don't use those exact words, but that's what it boils down to) makes them achieve more, more quickly? To them I say; one of the most important life skills is the ability to decide what needs to be done and just DO it, no matter what's going on to distract or tempt you, no matter what you feel, and no matter how hard it is. It used to be that EVERY adult had this ability as a matter of course, so it can't be that hard; just because we've become weak and wimpy compared to earlier generations does NOT mean that we can't still gain that ability, or even that we can make any valid excuse for not having it. If you choose, CHOOSE, to have that sort of dedication to what needs to be done, you can do it; if you decline to make that choice, then you'll spend the rest of your life trying to "trick" yourself into getting things done with goal-setting... and, if you're like most people, failing much of the time.
And that's another problem with goal-setting; it can set you up for failure. If the time frame you choose is less than the time you actually need to get from point A to point B, you'll feel like a failure even though you've in fact made as much progress as you could during that length of time, and so should feel like a success. If you set the goal too FAR in the future, and are using the goal time to motivate you, you'll pace yourself too slowly, because you're going for the goal rather than for making maximum progress, and so will get to point B LATER than you would have if you'd just worked hard with no specific goal. AND, if the goal is something that you can't reach directly, but must depend on the judgment of others for, such as a promotion, getting a record deal, or being allowed to buy an apartment in a fashionable co-op building, you're setting yourself up for extra disappointment if you pretend that you can make it happen by your actions and then don't get it.
And finally, there's the ever more popular concept with the self-styled experts on how we should live our lives; the plan. The usage in this case is that a plan is a description of where you want to be in all areas of your life at various points in the future, which can be as little as a few months away or DECADES away. If someone exists who was able to make such descriptions, and then ended up actually living their life as described when they got there, especially for the longer-term plans, I'd sure like to meet them; I don't know ANYONE whose life turned out like they thought it would no matter WHAT they planned it to be like, and I include myself in that statement... I could NEVER have envisioned my current life at any time earlier on.
Some people will tell you that you "can't" get anywhere in life without dreams, goals and plans; I'm here to tell you that it just ain't so, and *I* am living proof of that. I've gotten everything I could have ever asked out of life and more, more than not just my peers have at this point but more than most people far older than I am have too... and I did it withOUT having a dream, goal or plan, EVER. If there are things YOU want out of life that you haven't got now, and that are within your ability to get, don't DREAM of getting those things, don't set a GOAL to get them, don't PLAN to get them... choose, CHOOSE, to start taking the necessary steps, making the necessary effort, and devoting the necessary time to get you to those things. Forget the mind games that make you feel like you've done something when you haven't; TAKE ACTION... that's what our forebears did to get things done, and it's still all you need to achieve whatever's within your grasp today.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
"Fashiontrance"
No, that's not a typo, it's the name of my new favorite show, courtesy of one of the many new channels I got with digital cable, Style Network:
http://www.stylenetwork.com/Shows/Fashiontrance/
We're so obsessed with the trashy and the trendy in this country that there aren't many places to see actual FASHION, in fact I mostly only see the good stuff in Vogue (which will only give a few selected looks from any show it covers, but is FAR better than nothing), so ANY fashion-themed TV show is going to be interesting to me; the problem with fashion TV, though, is that usually it's just a few precious minutes of actual looking at models on the runway, overlaid with the ceaseless yapping of the host, and the rest of it is interview clips with models, journalists, and random people who were at the shows babbling about what they saw... it's MADDENING. "Fashiontrance" was therefore a revelation to me; there was an opening graphic sequence with the name of the show, then, to the tune of low-key techno music, they started showing the first designer's runway show... and showed it... and showed it!! No cutting away after 5 seconds to show interviews, no host talking over it, just the models stomping up and down the runway one after the other, showing, probably not the entire collection of any of the designers, but a whole bunch of looks, with the only distraction being little bits of trivia showing up in text boxes, which was unnecessary and a tad disconcerting but really a small price to pay for being able to spend an entire hour looking at cutting-edge clothes.
How did they come up with an idea like this, to just show something going on with no commentary... I mean, for other than a porn movie? Who had the balls/ovaries to stand up and say, "Let's make an hour-long show with nothing but footage from the collections and a soundtrack?". Whoever thought of it, my hat's off to you (or would be if I HAD a hat); I sat here with my mouth hanging open, salivating madly (yeah, it got messy, lol) over fab outfit after fab outfit... it was by far my best fashion experience to date.
As always, there was some stuff that was creative but unwearable (sometimes even by the models), some of it was too basic to really count as fashion, and some of it was weird, clunky and ugly... but most of it was GREAT, especially the offerings of Donatella Versace and David Rodriguez. The coolest stuff I saw included: a long red dress trimmed with black leather, with gloves and knee-high boots also of black leather, jackets with long sleeves slit to the elbows, chic suits with just-below-the-elbow sleeves worn with long leather gloves, dresses with little slashes all over that from a distance looked like the cloth was patterned, dresses with the upper parts made of glittering embroidered mesh, a long red dress with a bunch of small flounces from the knee down that fluttered seductively with each step... ahhhhhhhh, it was a lovely show. :-)
http://www.stylenetwork.com/Shows/Fashiontrance/
We're so obsessed with the trashy and the trendy in this country that there aren't many places to see actual FASHION, in fact I mostly only see the good stuff in Vogue (which will only give a few selected looks from any show it covers, but is FAR better than nothing), so ANY fashion-themed TV show is going to be interesting to me; the problem with fashion TV, though, is that usually it's just a few precious minutes of actual looking at models on the runway, overlaid with the ceaseless yapping of the host, and the rest of it is interview clips with models, journalists, and random people who were at the shows babbling about what they saw... it's MADDENING. "Fashiontrance" was therefore a revelation to me; there was an opening graphic sequence with the name of the show, then, to the tune of low-key techno music, they started showing the first designer's runway show... and showed it... and showed it!! No cutting away after 5 seconds to show interviews, no host talking over it, just the models stomping up and down the runway one after the other, showing, probably not the entire collection of any of the designers, but a whole bunch of looks, with the only distraction being little bits of trivia showing up in text boxes, which was unnecessary and a tad disconcerting but really a small price to pay for being able to spend an entire hour looking at cutting-edge clothes.
How did they come up with an idea like this, to just show something going on with no commentary... I mean, for other than a porn movie? Who had the balls/ovaries to stand up and say, "Let's make an hour-long show with nothing but footage from the collections and a soundtrack?". Whoever thought of it, my hat's off to you (or would be if I HAD a hat); I sat here with my mouth hanging open, salivating madly (yeah, it got messy, lol) over fab outfit after fab outfit... it was by far my best fashion experience to date.
As always, there was some stuff that was creative but unwearable (sometimes even by the models), some of it was too basic to really count as fashion, and some of it was weird, clunky and ugly... but most of it was GREAT, especially the offerings of Donatella Versace and David Rodriguez. The coolest stuff I saw included: a long red dress trimmed with black leather, with gloves and knee-high boots also of black leather, jackets with long sleeves slit to the elbows, chic suits with just-below-the-elbow sleeves worn with long leather gloves, dresses with little slashes all over that from a distance looked like the cloth was patterned, dresses with the upper parts made of glittering embroidered mesh, a long red dress with a bunch of small flounces from the knee down that fluttered seductively with each step... ahhhhhhhh, it was a lovely show. :-)
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
The sexuality of doctors
Why do we believe that doctors never have sexual feelings for even the most gorgeous patients that they're seeing totally naked and touching in intimate ways?
WHY?
Can YOU turn your sexual feelings totally off, or even PARTIALLY off, like flipping a switch? No? Then why do we all believe that DOCTORS can do so, other than that we WANT to believe that because we have no choice but to endure being examined by them? Are doctors not human? What exactly do we convince ourselves that they do to doctors to make this magic possible for them? Are they brainwashed, or hypnotized, or subjected to some sort of treatment that's kept a secret from all non-doctors that allows them to not have the normal and very powerful biological reaction everyone else has to the presence of, not to mention physical contact with, a gorgeous person of their gender(s) of preference? If we can't come up with a procedure by which they'd learn to shut off their sexual feelings (and why do we assume they'd all WANT to do so, when doctors are no more pure and virtuous than the rest of us?), what reason is there to assume that such a procedure exists?
Granted, the mere fact that a doctor will see countless naked people, most of whom are FAR from attractive, will eliminate the ridiculous over-reaction we in this culture have to nudity because we so rarely see it in person other than with our lovers... EVENTUALLY. Do you honestly think that the first time a horny young male intern sees a naked woman who isn't either very old or very ugly, he feels NOTHING? For all that women are less visually stimulated (supposedly) on the average than men, I'm betting that female interns have some significant non-doctorish feelings as well... how can they NOT? They SAY they don't, and we hold doctors, even wet-behind-the-ears ones, in such high esteem, since they literally have the power of life and death over us, that we believe them... but we shouldn't, especially since, despite the existence of patients MOLESTED by doctors, the medical profession never admits that ANY doctor might fail to have achieved this perfectly non-sexual attitude towards patients by the time they graduate medical school, or, having gained it, ever have a lapse under any circumstances. Since even we non-doctors are all perfectly aware that it's not POSSIBLE for people to be given such perfect programming about ANYTHING, much less concerning the most powerful drive in the human body, we have to realize something else here; not only are their claims wrong, they're being knowingly dishonest, not to mention somewhat contemptuous of US (not an unfamiliar attitude from doctors, sadly)... and the fact that they ARE undoubtedly doing it to make patients feel less uncomfortable as well as to make themselves look more godlike doesn't change the reality of it.
Is it possible for doctors to ever get to the point of having NO reaction to the nudity of average people? Sure. People in so-called "primitive" cultures where nudity is an everyday thing do NOT go around having "woohoo baby" reactions to every non-ugly body they see, so I think we CAN assume that doctors of both genders DO reach the point that most nudity is a matter of indifference to them; I maintain, though, that the likelihood that they could ever, EVER, have a hottie of whatever type would make their hormones surge under any other circumstances walk into their office and have NO sexual response to them at all just because they're a patient, especially once they're naked, is... ZERO. They undoubtedly learn to hide it, suppress it, fight it, and ignore it to some extent, but gain the ability to turn their sexual feelings totally OFF... and then turn them ON at the end of the day when they go home to their partners, let's not forget THAT part of the myth... not a chance.
In the not so long ago days, all doctors were men, and all presumed to be straight; men as a rule have no problem with being seen nude by other men, so they had no worries about doctors, and women would have been seeing male doctors their entire lives, and so were used to it and accepted it. Once women started becoming doctors on more than a one in a million basis, though, there was a choice, and people started thinking; plenty of men decided they were totally unwilling to be examined by a woman, and there's hardly a one who wouldn't be at least a little bit uncomfortable about it (which was the end of people being automatically willing to go to opposite-sex doctors), and many women decided that they prefer to see a female doctor, or even insist on it... don't you suppose that the issue of the possible sexual feelings of the doctors was part of these decisions, if only on a subconscious level? If your answer to that is "no," ask yourself this, and maybe ask some friends of both genders for a broader perspective; would you be willing to go to a doctor of your gender who was GAY? Anyone who answers "no" to THAT question, or has any hesitation at all (which most people will), and doesn't have some sort of fear or hatred of gays, can ONLY be responding to the idea that the doctor might look at them in a sexual manner... proof that folks are finally wising up to the idea that getting handed a diploma from a medical school does NOT radically alter a person's biological nature, and that we've been a little too quick to believe that doctors turn their sexualities off like light bulbs when they see us naked.
WHY?
Can YOU turn your sexual feelings totally off, or even PARTIALLY off, like flipping a switch? No? Then why do we all believe that DOCTORS can do so, other than that we WANT to believe that because we have no choice but to endure being examined by them? Are doctors not human? What exactly do we convince ourselves that they do to doctors to make this magic possible for them? Are they brainwashed, or hypnotized, or subjected to some sort of treatment that's kept a secret from all non-doctors that allows them to not have the normal and very powerful biological reaction everyone else has to the presence of, not to mention physical contact with, a gorgeous person of their gender(s) of preference? If we can't come up with a procedure by which they'd learn to shut off their sexual feelings (and why do we assume they'd all WANT to do so, when doctors are no more pure and virtuous than the rest of us?), what reason is there to assume that such a procedure exists?
Granted, the mere fact that a doctor will see countless naked people, most of whom are FAR from attractive, will eliminate the ridiculous over-reaction we in this culture have to nudity because we so rarely see it in person other than with our lovers... EVENTUALLY. Do you honestly think that the first time a horny young male intern sees a naked woman who isn't either very old or very ugly, he feels NOTHING? For all that women are less visually stimulated (supposedly) on the average than men, I'm betting that female interns have some significant non-doctorish feelings as well... how can they NOT? They SAY they don't, and we hold doctors, even wet-behind-the-ears ones, in such high esteem, since they literally have the power of life and death over us, that we believe them... but we shouldn't, especially since, despite the existence of patients MOLESTED by doctors, the medical profession never admits that ANY doctor might fail to have achieved this perfectly non-sexual attitude towards patients by the time they graduate medical school, or, having gained it, ever have a lapse under any circumstances. Since even we non-doctors are all perfectly aware that it's not POSSIBLE for people to be given such perfect programming about ANYTHING, much less concerning the most powerful drive in the human body, we have to realize something else here; not only are their claims wrong, they're being knowingly dishonest, not to mention somewhat contemptuous of US (not an unfamiliar attitude from doctors, sadly)... and the fact that they ARE undoubtedly doing it to make patients feel less uncomfortable as well as to make themselves look more godlike doesn't change the reality of it.
Is it possible for doctors to ever get to the point of having NO reaction to the nudity of average people? Sure. People in so-called "primitive" cultures where nudity is an everyday thing do NOT go around having "woohoo baby" reactions to every non-ugly body they see, so I think we CAN assume that doctors of both genders DO reach the point that most nudity is a matter of indifference to them; I maintain, though, that the likelihood that they could ever, EVER, have a hottie of whatever type would make their hormones surge under any other circumstances walk into their office and have NO sexual response to them at all just because they're a patient, especially once they're naked, is... ZERO. They undoubtedly learn to hide it, suppress it, fight it, and ignore it to some extent, but gain the ability to turn their sexual feelings totally OFF... and then turn them ON at the end of the day when they go home to their partners, let's not forget THAT part of the myth... not a chance.
In the not so long ago days, all doctors were men, and all presumed to be straight; men as a rule have no problem with being seen nude by other men, so they had no worries about doctors, and women would have been seeing male doctors their entire lives, and so were used to it and accepted it. Once women started becoming doctors on more than a one in a million basis, though, there was a choice, and people started thinking; plenty of men decided they were totally unwilling to be examined by a woman, and there's hardly a one who wouldn't be at least a little bit uncomfortable about it (which was the end of people being automatically willing to go to opposite-sex doctors), and many women decided that they prefer to see a female doctor, or even insist on it... don't you suppose that the issue of the possible sexual feelings of the doctors was part of these decisions, if only on a subconscious level? If your answer to that is "no," ask yourself this, and maybe ask some friends of both genders for a broader perspective; would you be willing to go to a doctor of your gender who was GAY? Anyone who answers "no" to THAT question, or has any hesitation at all (which most people will), and doesn't have some sort of fear or hatred of gays, can ONLY be responding to the idea that the doctor might look at them in a sexual manner... proof that folks are finally wising up to the idea that getting handed a diploma from a medical school does NOT radically alter a person's biological nature, and that we've been a little too quick to believe that doctors turn their sexualities off like light bulbs when they see us naked.
Monday, April 25, 2005
"Let peace be your umpire"
That dazzling quote comes courtesy of Joel Osteen; what he means by it is that God will give you a feeling of peace if you're making the best choices, and you can use that feeling, or its lack, to tell you whether or not you're doing the right thing. In his sermon tonight, he described how you'll get some sort of bad feeling when you're about to do or decide something that's, not even necessarily detrimental, but even sub-optimal; he asserts that God wants you to make the best possible choice for every occasion, and will thus use feelings of peace, and of unease, to direct you to the ideal path... all you have to do is consult your feelings and obey their meanings.
I don't believe in God (nor do I DISbelieve in Him), and I've seen no evidence that anyone always makes the perfect choices when viewed with hindsight, but I've certainly had what most people would call "gut feelings" about things in advance, feelings not based on or backed up by the facts as I knew them, but which turned out to be accurate; many people have these feelings at least some of the time, and, although I think they're often based on subliminal clues we've picked up from people involved in whatever we're doing, there are also plenty of times that the feelings come seemingly out of a clear blue sky... and they're in effect a form of precognition, as they constitute knowing in advance whether something would turn out well or badly, or even for the best or 2nd-best.
I'm fascinated that, once again, Osteen has preached about something that's not in line with the teachings of traditional Christianity, but perfectly in line with my concept of how the engine of karma works; yes, he attributes everything to God, but he's clearly describing personal experience of how the universe actually works (and he almost always DOES use an example from his own life) and forcing it into the mold of his religion rather than making the all-important step of just accepting that the energies he perceives at work are what's definitely real, not his deity (who might in theory be the creator of karma, but there's no proof of that), and that there's no need to add an extra layer of explanation for what he perceives... not surprising for a man who's a pastor and the son of a pastor.
I'm such a high-strung and anxious person, programmed by my mother to not just envision but EXPECT worst-case scenarios, that I don't think I'd have much luck searching my emotions for feelings of unease from an external source as part of my decision-making process, but I'll try to notice if I'm getting any actual "at peace" feelings when I DON'T feel any anxiety; if this sort of low-grade precognition IS going on on a regular basis, that'd probably say something about the nature of time and of karma... I dunno what yet, but it'll be intriguing to contemplate.
I don't believe in God (nor do I DISbelieve in Him), and I've seen no evidence that anyone always makes the perfect choices when viewed with hindsight, but I've certainly had what most people would call "gut feelings" about things in advance, feelings not based on or backed up by the facts as I knew them, but which turned out to be accurate; many people have these feelings at least some of the time, and, although I think they're often based on subliminal clues we've picked up from people involved in whatever we're doing, there are also plenty of times that the feelings come seemingly out of a clear blue sky... and they're in effect a form of precognition, as they constitute knowing in advance whether something would turn out well or badly, or even for the best or 2nd-best.
I'm fascinated that, once again, Osteen has preached about something that's not in line with the teachings of traditional Christianity, but perfectly in line with my concept of how the engine of karma works; yes, he attributes everything to God, but he's clearly describing personal experience of how the universe actually works (and he almost always DOES use an example from his own life) and forcing it into the mold of his religion rather than making the all-important step of just accepting that the energies he perceives at work are what's definitely real, not his deity (who might in theory be the creator of karma, but there's no proof of that), and that there's no need to add an extra layer of explanation for what he perceives... not surprising for a man who's a pastor and the son of a pastor.
I'm such a high-strung and anxious person, programmed by my mother to not just envision but EXPECT worst-case scenarios, that I don't think I'd have much luck searching my emotions for feelings of unease from an external source as part of my decision-making process, but I'll try to notice if I'm getting any actual "at peace" feelings when I DON'T feel any anxiety; if this sort of low-grade precognition IS going on on a regular basis, that'd probably say something about the nature of time and of karma... I dunno what yet, but it'll be intriguing to contemplate.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Non-blog blogging trends
If you spend alot of time hitting the "next blog" button like I do, you've probably noticed that there are an increasing # of blogs that are totally at odds with the whole concept of blogging:
First, there are the "blogs" that... let's just say that if there was such a thing as a spam blog, these wastes of space would qualify. You know the ones I mean; the commercial "blogs," in which the "posts" are either advertisements or URL's to where a specific category of things can be purchased. Mortgage loans and insurance make up the content of the lion's share of these "blogs," but I've seen plenty for vacation packages, contact lenses, jewelry, investments, and LAWYERS; can you imagine anyone choosing a lawyer from a one-line post promising to get them reimbursement for... anything? Also in this category are the porn "blogs," most of which are only "teasers" for PAY sites, that assault your unsuspecting eyes with graphic images; just what the parents of blogging teens want their kids stumbling onto. Not only are these sites fundamentally worthless, you can't really call them blogs even though the info they provide IS put forth in a series of posts rather than arranged in a more traditional website layout, because ads and porn pics have nothing to do with what blogging's about.
Then, there are an amazing # of blogs used by teachers and professors to pass info or assignments to their students, and even to have them post their homework on; I've also seen a slew of blogs that individual students use to post their homework on. I'm as pleased as anyone else when any sort of technology is used to facilitate education, but what has that got to do with blogging? It's almost as impersonal as the advertising sites, really.
Lastly, there are some that you WON'T find via the "next blog" button, because they all have their own domains; nearly all of the biggest blogs, the ones that get tens or hundreds of thousands of hits per DAY, the ones that get quoted on CNN, center on politics. I think that those bloggers often provide a useful service by collecting information, perhaps analyzing it, and usually giving people a forum to discuss it, but that's not really blogging, any more than, say, being a newscaster is acting, although both newscasters and actors appear on TV shows and read lines written by other people in the way they're told to read them. (Note; this is NOT meant to apply to the NON-gigantic political blogs, which generally are done in a way that gives you the feeling of talking politics with a person rather than reading a newspaper column, and thus ARE blogs in the truest sense.)
Blogging was originally a way for folks to give whoever might be curious a glimpse into their lives, their interests, their heads, even their hearts, in other words a way for them to share of themselves with others; if you check through the various online dictionaries, some of them very specifically define blogs to be about people's lives, hobbies, and thoughts. I'm sure most of us would agree that, now that blogging has evolved and spread to all sorts of people, that definition is narrower than it should be, because there are lots of things that people like to share with others that aren't really "personal," and thus there are many terrific blogs featuring unusual stuff in the news, cool things to do online, discussions of topics and ideas, poking fun at celebs, and the like, rather than being specifically focused on the personal, but does that mean that EVERYTHING has to be squeezed into a blog format, or called a blog just because it follows that most basic form, that of having dated entries, but isn't following the substance, the SPIRIT, of blogging?
The blogosphere is currently fashionable, even faddish; eventually, though, the majority of people will tire of the idea that every single person is supposed to have a site that's meant to have regular entries, which is alot of work, and will go back to having basic websites with whatever they think is important to say about themselves that they can create and then mostly ignore, or just give up entirely the idea that everyone has to have a URL of a site that's theirs to give to people, and move onto the next online fad... sharing cellphone videos, maybe? When that happens, I hope there are still plenty of people who want to post about their favorite and least favorite things, pass along useful or entertaining bits of info, review the movies they go to and the CD's they buy, share their art, poetry, opinions, favorite jokes, stories and recipes, post the URL's to helpful sites, describe what they bought at the mall or even at the grocery store, analyze their dreams, dish about their relationships, post pics of their kids, pets and gardens, rant on about whatever's most important to them, reveal what's going on in their day to day existence and in their minds, and otherwise give us access to the stuff that normally only their friends and the other people in their lives get to enjoy, because that, THAT, is real blogging... one of the coolest things that the internet has ever given us.
First, there are the "blogs" that... let's just say that if there was such a thing as a spam blog, these wastes of space would qualify. You know the ones I mean; the commercial "blogs," in which the "posts" are either advertisements or URL's to where a specific category of things can be purchased. Mortgage loans and insurance make up the content of the lion's share of these "blogs," but I've seen plenty for vacation packages, contact lenses, jewelry, investments, and LAWYERS; can you imagine anyone choosing a lawyer from a one-line post promising to get them reimbursement for... anything? Also in this category are the porn "blogs," most of which are only "teasers" for PAY sites, that assault your unsuspecting eyes with graphic images; just what the parents of blogging teens want their kids stumbling onto. Not only are these sites fundamentally worthless, you can't really call them blogs even though the info they provide IS put forth in a series of posts rather than arranged in a more traditional website layout, because ads and porn pics have nothing to do with what blogging's about.
Then, there are an amazing # of blogs used by teachers and professors to pass info or assignments to their students, and even to have them post their homework on; I've also seen a slew of blogs that individual students use to post their homework on. I'm as pleased as anyone else when any sort of technology is used to facilitate education, but what has that got to do with blogging? It's almost as impersonal as the advertising sites, really.
Lastly, there are some that you WON'T find via the "next blog" button, because they all have their own domains; nearly all of the biggest blogs, the ones that get tens or hundreds of thousands of hits per DAY, the ones that get quoted on CNN, center on politics. I think that those bloggers often provide a useful service by collecting information, perhaps analyzing it, and usually giving people a forum to discuss it, but that's not really blogging, any more than, say, being a newscaster is acting, although both newscasters and actors appear on TV shows and read lines written by other people in the way they're told to read them. (Note; this is NOT meant to apply to the NON-gigantic political blogs, which generally are done in a way that gives you the feeling of talking politics with a person rather than reading a newspaper column, and thus ARE blogs in the truest sense.)
Blogging was originally a way for folks to give whoever might be curious a glimpse into their lives, their interests, their heads, even their hearts, in other words a way for them to share of themselves with others; if you check through the various online dictionaries, some of them very specifically define blogs to be about people's lives, hobbies, and thoughts. I'm sure most of us would agree that, now that blogging has evolved and spread to all sorts of people, that definition is narrower than it should be, because there are lots of things that people like to share with others that aren't really "personal," and thus there are many terrific blogs featuring unusual stuff in the news, cool things to do online, discussions of topics and ideas, poking fun at celebs, and the like, rather than being specifically focused on the personal, but does that mean that EVERYTHING has to be squeezed into a blog format, or called a blog just because it follows that most basic form, that of having dated entries, but isn't following the substance, the SPIRIT, of blogging?
The blogosphere is currently fashionable, even faddish; eventually, though, the majority of people will tire of the idea that every single person is supposed to have a site that's meant to have regular entries, which is alot of work, and will go back to having basic websites with whatever they think is important to say about themselves that they can create and then mostly ignore, or just give up entirely the idea that everyone has to have a URL of a site that's theirs to give to people, and move onto the next online fad... sharing cellphone videos, maybe? When that happens, I hope there are still plenty of people who want to post about their favorite and least favorite things, pass along useful or entertaining bits of info, review the movies they go to and the CD's they buy, share their art, poetry, opinions, favorite jokes, stories and recipes, post the URL's to helpful sites, describe what they bought at the mall or even at the grocery store, analyze their dreams, dish about their relationships, post pics of their kids, pets and gardens, rant on about whatever's most important to them, reveal what's going on in their day to day existence and in their minds, and otherwise give us access to the stuff that normally only their friends and the other people in their lives get to enjoy, because that, THAT, is real blogging... one of the coolest things that the internet has ever given us.
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