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 mothers everywhere, my hat's off to you.
