“The Lunar New Year, or more accurately the lunisolar new year, began February 4 and in most countries that celebrate it ushered in the Year of the Rabbit according to the Chinese zodiac. In China Lunar New Year is the most important date on the calendar and triggers over a month of holiday travel which is often described as the largest annual human migration in the world. Hundreds of millions tax the transport system. The new year also marks the beginning of the Spring Festival in China which continues until the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day. Lunar New Year is celebrated in many countries, with many different traditions as well. Gathered here are pictures of China’s travel wave and celebrations, as well as pictures from other countries’ Lunar New Year observations.” (via The Big Picture – Boston.com.)

Gallup Poll: “Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Thirty-eight percent believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, while 16%, up slightly from years past, believe humans developed over millions of years, without God’s involvement.”

The article discusses some of the surprising implications, even using a Star Trek analogy.

People may be familiar with the transmissible facial tumor that is decimating the Tasmanian Devil population. One unfortunate animal contracts it when bitten by another affected individual. This New York Times story describes another infectious malignancy, the Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumor (CTVT) (thanks to Steve Silberman).

Vesna Vulović, … a former Serbian flight attendant, …holds the world record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 meters (33,330 feet).

… 

She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae (one crushed completely) that left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down and two broken legs. She was in a coma for 27 days. In an interview she commented that, according to the man who found her, “…I was in the middle part of the plane. I was found with my head down and my colleague on top of me. One part of my body with my leg was in the plane and my head was out of the plane. A catering trolley was pinned against my spine and kept me in the plane. The man who found me, says I was very lucky. He was in the German Army as a medic during World War two. He knew how to treat me at the site of the accident.”  (via Wikipedia)

.

“The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is getting ready to go supernova, and when it does Earth will have a front-row seat. The explosion will be so bright that Earth will briefly seem to have two suns in the sky.

The star is located in the Orion constellation, about 640 light-years away from Earth… In stellar terms, it’s predicted to explode in the very near future. Of course, the conversion from stellar to human terms is pretty extreme, as Betelgeuse is predicted to explode anytime in the next million years.

But still, whether the explosion occurs in 2011 or 1002011 (give or take 640 years for the light to reach Earth), it’s going to make for one of the most unforgettable light shows in our planet’s history.” (via io9)

…as if we didn’t know: “Howard Kurtz on Olbermann’s career highlights and his clashes with network brass.” (via The Daily Beast).

“Los Angeles-based photographer Mitch Dobrowner takes incredibly striking black-and-white photos of landscapes in the likeness of his inspiration, Ansel Adams. His most breathtaking series is about ominous storms that form over Wyoming, Kansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma..”.(Via My Modern Metropolis)

.

Douglas Copeland with 45 tips for survival “and a matching glossary of the new words you’ll need to talk about your messed-up future.” You won’t like some of this but you had best listen.  (via The Globe and Mail).

“In The Science of Kissing, Sheril Kirshenbaum approaches the kiss through biology, history, culture, psychology, even zoology – but some secrets remain.” (via New Scientist).

(via NASA Science).

“Hanny’s Voorwerp—a glowing, green blob in space—is unexpectedly giving birth to stars, a new Hubble Space Telescope picture has revealed.

The odd object was discovered in 2007 by a Dutch schoolteacher participating in Galaxy Zoo—”voorwerp” is Dutch for “object.” The online project had public citizens worldwide helping to classify galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey catalog.

(See related pictures of the “green pea” class of galaxies discovered via Galaxy Zoo.)

Although it’s the size of our Milky Way galaxy, Hanny’s Voorwerp is not itself a galaxy, but a cloud of gas near the spiral galaxy IC 2497, which lies about 650 million light-years from Earth.

The new Hubble picture—the sharpest yet taken of the brilliant cloud—shows that gas in a small region of Hanny’s Voorwerp is collapsing and forming stars, the youngest of which are just a couple million years old.” (via National Geographic).

This is a prepublication .pdf of a paper by Cornell psychologist Daryl Bem detailing experimental evidence for precognition, accepted for publication by a respected peer-reviewed psychological journal. (link).

Backlash:

• Has a U.S. psychologist uncovered proof of ESP? (ctv.ca)
• NYT on the controversial ESP paper (boingboing.net)
• “Psychic” paper provokes backlash (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• NY Times: Journal to publish paper on ESP, scientists mortified (seattlepi.com)

“This – I think, I fear, I suspect – is going to suck, unless the Obama administration gets out of their permanent crouch and finally starts fighting back against a newly-empowered GOP, and the lies that will be pouring fourth like polluted water from an open spigot. The simple fact that Mr. Obama tapped William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase executive whose purview was “corporate responsibility,” to be the new White House Chief of Staff does not bode well at all. Try not to laugh too hard at seeing the words “JPMorgan Chase” and “corporate responsibility” in the same sentence.Yeah. I’m pretty sure this is going to suck.”  — William Rivers Pitt  (Truthout).

The thinking is that they were startled by fireworks and died of blunt trauma after flying into obstacles. (NYTimes.com)

2000 vs. 2010 at a glance (io9).

This is the annual update of my New Year’s post, a tradition I started early on on FmH:

I once ran across a January 1st Boston Globe article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article. Especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond getting drunk [although some comment that this is a profound enactment of the interdigitation of chaos and order appropriate to the New Year’s celebration — FmH], watching the bowl games and making resolutions.

A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point. It is weighted toward eating traditions, which is odd because, unlike most other major holidays, the celebration of New Year’s in 21st century America does not seem to be centered at all around thinking about what we eat (except in the sense of the traditional weight-loss resolutions!) and certainly not around a festive meal. But…

Traditionally, it was thought that one could affect the luck they would have throughout the coming year by what they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for folks to celebrate the first few minutes of a brand new year in the company of family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also thought to bring luck. Many cultures believe that anything in the shape of a ring is good luck, because it symbolizes “coming full circle,” completing a year’s cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones. After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors. First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat, dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Here’s why we clink our glasses when we drink our New Year’s toasts, no matter where we are. Of course, sometimes the midnight cacophony is louder than just clinking glassware, to create a ‘devil-chasing din’.

In Georgia, eat black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day for luck and prosperity in the year to come, supposedly because they symbolize coppers and currency. Hoppin’ John, a concoction of peas, onion, bacon and rice, is also a southern New Year’s tradition, as is wearing yellow to find true love (in Peru, yellow underwear, apparently!) or carrying silver for prosperity. In some instances, a dollar bill is thrown in with the other ingredients of the New Year’s meal to bring prosperity. In Greece, there is a traditional New Year’s Day sweetbread with a silver coin baked into it. All guests get a slice of the bread and whoever receives the slice with the coin is destined for good fortune for the year. At Italian tables, lentils, oranges and olives are served. The lentils, looking like coins, will bring prosperity; the oranges are for love; and the olives, symbolic of the wealth of the land, represent good fortune for the year to come.

A New Year’s meal in Norway also includes dried cod, “lutefisk.” The Pennsylvania Dutch make sure to include sauerkraut in their holiday meal, also for prosperity.

In Spain, you would cram twelve grapes in your mouth at midnight, one each time the clock chimed, for good luck for the twelve months to come. (If any of the grapes happens to be sour, the corresponding month will not be one of your most fortunate in the coming year.) The U. S. version of this custom, for some reason, involves standing on a chair as you pop the grapes. In Denmark, jumping off a chair at the stroke of midnight signifies leaping into the New Year. In Rio, you would be plunging into the sea en masse at midnight, wearing white and bearing offerings. In many northern hemisphere cities near bodies of water, they will have a tradition of people plunging into the cold water on New Year’s Day. The Coney Island Polar Bears Club in New York is the oldest cold-water swimming club in the United States. They have had groups of people enter the chilly surf since 1903.

Ecuadorian families make scarecrows stuffed with newspaper and firecrackers and place them outside their homes. The dummies represent misfortunes of the prior year, which are then burned in effigy at the stroke of midnight to forget the old year. Bolivian families make beautiful little wood or straw dolls to hang outside their homes on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck.

In China, homes are cleaned spotless to appease the Kitchen God, and papercuttings of red paper are hung in the windows to scare away evil spirits who might enter the house and bring misfortune. Large papier mache dragon heads with long fabric bodies are maneuvered through the streets during the Dragon Dance festival, and families open their front doors to let the dragon bring good luck into their homes.

The Indian Diwali festival, welcoming in the autumnal season, also involves attracting good fortune with lights. Children make small clay lamps, dipas, thousands of which might adorn a given home. In Thailand, one pours fragrant water over the hands of elders on New Year’s Day to show them respect.

Elsewhere:

• a stack of pancakes for the New Year’s breakfast in France.
• banging on friends’ doors in Denmark to “smash in” the New Year, where it is also a good sign to find your doorstep heaped with broken dishes on New Year’s morning. Old dishes are saved all years to throw at your friends’ homes on New Year’s Eve.
• going in the front door and out the back door at midnight in Ireland.
• making sure the First Footer, the first person through your door in the New Year in Scotland, is a tall dark haired visitor.
• water out the window at midnight in Puerto Rico rids the home of evil spirits.
• cleanse your soul in Japan at the New Year by listening to a gong tolling 108 times, one for every sin
• it is Swiss good luck to let a drop of cream fall on the floor on New Year’s Day.
• Belgian farmers wish their animals a Happy New Year for blessings.
• In Germany and Austria, lead pouring” (das Bleigießen) is an old divining practice using molten lead like tea leaves. A small amount of lead is melted in a tablespoon (by holding a flame under the spoon) and then poured into a bowl or bucket of water. The resulting pattern is interpreted to predict the coming year. For instance, if the lead forms a ball (der Ball), that means luck will roll your way. The shape of an anchor (der Anker) means help in need. But a cross (das Kreuz) signifies death.
• “It’s a bit bizarre when you think about it. A short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s has become a German New Year’s tradition. Yet, although The 90th Birthday or Dinner for One is a famous cult classic in Germany and several other European countries, it is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, including Britain, its birthplace.” (Watch on Youtube, 11 min.)

Some history; documentation of observance of the new year dates back at least 4000 years to the Babylonians, who also made the first new year’s resolutions (reportedly voews to return borrowed farm equipment were very popular), although their holiday was observed at the vernal equinox. The Babylonian festivities lasted eleven days, each day with its own particular mode of celebration. The traditional Persian Norouz festival of spring continues to be considered the advent of the new year among Persians, Kurds and other peoples throughout Central Asia, and dates back at least 3000 years, deeply rooted in Zooastrian traditions.Modern Bahá’í’s celebrate Norouz (”Naw Ruz”) as the end of a Nineteen Day Fast. Rosh Hashanah (”head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, the first day of the lunar month of Tishri, falls between September and early October. Muslim New Year is the first day of Muharram, and Chinese New Year falls between Jan. 10th and Feb. 19th of the Gregorian calendar.

The classical Roman New Year’s celebration was also in the spring although the calendar went out of synchrony with the sun. January 1st became the first day of the year by proclamation of the Roman Senate in 153 BC, reinforced even more strongly when Julius Caesar established what came to be known as the Julian calendar in 46 BC. The early Christian Church condemned new year’s festivities as pagan but created parallel festivities concurrently. New Year’s Day is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision in some denominations. Church opposition to a new year’s observance reasserted itself during the Middle Ages, and Western nations have only celebrated January 1 as a holidy for about the last 400 years. The custom of New Year’s gift exchange among Druidic pagans in 7th century Flanders was deplored by Saint Eligius, who warned them, “[Do not] make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom].” (Wikipedia)

The tradition of the New Year’s Baby signifying the new year began with the Greek tradition of parading a baby in a basket during the Dionysian rites celebrating the annual rebirth of that god as a symbol of fertility. The baby was also a symbol of rebirth among early Egyptians. Again, the Church was forced to modify its denunciation of the practice as pagan because of the popularity of the rebirth symbolism, finally allowing its members to cellebrate the new year with a baby although assimilating it to a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. The addition of Father Time (the “Old Year”) wearing a sash across his chest with the previous year on it, and the banner carried or worn by the New Year’s Baby, immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, January 1st is not a legal holiday in Israel, officially because of its historic origins as a Christian feast day.

Auld Lang Syne (literally ‘old long ago’ in the Scottish dialect) is sung or played at the stroke of midnight throughout the English-speaking world (and then there is George Harrison’s “Ring Out the Old”). Versions of the song have been part of the New Year’s festivities since the 17th century but Robert Burns was inspired to compose a modern rendition, which was published after his death in 1796. (It took Guy Lombardo, however, to make it popular…)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Here’s how to wish someone a Happy New Year around the world:

• Arabic: Kul ‘aam u antum salimoun
• Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo means “Good Parties and Happy New Year”
• Chinese: Chu Shen Tan Xin Nian Kuai Le (thanks, Jeff)
• Czechoslavakia: Scastny Novy Rok
• Dutch: Gullukkig Niuw Jaar
• Finnish: Onnellista Uutta Vuotta
• French: Bonne Annee
• German: Prosit Neujahr
• Greek: Eftecheezmaenos o Kaenooryos hronos
• Hebrew: L’Shannah Tovah Tikatevu
• Hindi: Niya Saa Moobaarak
• Irish (Gaelic): Bliain nua fe mhaise dhuit
• Italian: Buon Capodanno
• Khmer: Sua Sdei tfnam tmei
• Laotian: Sabai dee pee mai
• Polish: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku
• Portuguese: Feliz Ano Novo
• Russian: S Novim Godom
• Serbo-Croatian: Scecna nova godina
• Spanish: Feliz Ano Nuevo
• Swedish: Ha ett gott nytt år
• Turkish: Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
• Vietnamese: Cung-Chuc Tan-Xuan
• [If you are a native speaker, please feel free to offer any corrections or additions!]

However you’re going to celebrate, my warmest wishes for the year to come… and eat hearty! [thanks to Bruce Umbaugh for research assistance]

Related?

• New Year’s foods for prosperity and luck?
• What’s Cooking in January
• Pickle, Peach, Carp Drops Mark New Year
• It’s New Year’s Eve, You’re Drunk and Damnit, You Drove

Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs’ son: “The Espionage Act is a huge danger to our open society; it’s been used to send hundreds of dissenters to jail just for voicing their opinions, transforming dissent into treason.”(via AlterNet).

The Neurocritic.

“Tuesday’s FCC ruling on net neutrality shifts billions in profits and boils down to one fact: There will soon be a fast Internet for the rich and a slow Internet for the poor.” (via Daily Beast).

“The lunar eclipse of Dec. 21st falls on the same date as the northern winter solstice. Is this rare? It is indeed, according to Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory, who inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years. “Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is Dec. 21, 1638,” says Chester. “Fortunately we won’t have to wait 372 years for the next one…that will be on Dec. 21, 2094.”

The total eclipse lasts more than an hour from 02:41 am to 03:53 am EST on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st. Any time within that interval is a good time to look. For other time zones, consult Shadow & Substance’s animated eclipse.” (via SpaceWeather.com)

‘Flash opera’ at Macy’s Phila., 11/01/2010: “A flash mob hit Macy’s in Center City on Saturday – 650 vocalists who, unknown to shoppers, had arranged to burst into song at noon.” (Philly.com)

“It is the silly season so it was only right to announce that supercomputing giant IBM are so confident in the processing abilities of their new Watson machine that they are pitting it against two human contestants on popular TV show

Jeopardy in a three night special that starts on February 14th according to the BBC.

The prize fund on the night will be $1m, though it’s unclear at this time what the computer would spend it on if it won.” (Ghacks Technology News)

Related:

• Supercomputer Goes Synapse-to-Circuit with Jeopardy Champs (readwriteweb.com)
• Man v machine showdown date set (bbc.co.uk)
• Can IBM’s Watson Beat ‘Jeopardy!’ Champs to the Answers? (dailyfinance.com)

(Google Search)

A Rolling Stone slideshow

When Your Company Kills Your iPhone : Beware. If you have your smartphone configured to receive mail from your company’s Microsoft Exchange Server, you have given the company’s IT dept. the capability to remotely control a number of your phone’s functions, including doing a remote wipe of all your content. (NPR)

How many of these have you visited? I have been in three of the ten, bookshop aficionado as I am.

Related?

• In Praise of the Humble Comma (time.com)
• Celebrate National Punctuation Day Sept 24th (whattheythink.com)

‘Follow Me Here’ celebrates 11 years of weblogging today.Yes, eleven years. I once was totally cutting edge, I fancied! In any case, many thanks to my loyal readers, new and old.

Why don’t you leave a comment telling me what you found to be the most memorable FmH post of the past year? or the most unmemorable (grin)?

It is also the 11th blogiversary of Kevin Murphy’s Ghost in the Machine, the ‘blog twin’ of FmH. All the best, Kevin! And many happy returns.

Steve Silberman

Although my praise is not as important as that of the AAAS, I too found the piece lucid and important. Perhaps that is because it agrees with my own biases; I have often said that most of healing relies on the placebo effect, i.e. mobilizing the body and mind’s own powers.

Related:

• NeuroTribes (followmehere.com)
• So, What’s in a Placebo, Anyway? (nlm.nih.gov)
• Good Placebos Gone Bad (3quarksdaily.com)
• The Message of the Placebo (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
• When is a Placebo Not Really a Placebo? Maybe More Often Than You Think (blogs.wsj.com)
• What’s In Your Placebo? (motherjones.com)
• The Kavli Prizes (cenblog.org)

I’ve been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn’t
I was never sure how I would get there

I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch

I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love

No longer do I hunt for targets
I’ve climbed all the summits I need to
and I’ve eaten my share of lotus

Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice

I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life

I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I’d rather be blithe than correct

Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.

~ James Broughton

Barbara Bush Shows George W. Bush the Results of her Miscarriage in a Jar (via The Daily Beast)

This is not the point of Thomas Friedman’s op-ed piece, but it is the interesting part:

(Yes, the puppeteer allows the puppet to think about cutting his strings.)

“…if everyone who fought for change in 2008 shows up to vote in 2010, we will win this election, I’m confident that we will.” –President Barack Obama

“With his new film, writer-director Gareth Edwards says he set out to make the most realistic monster movie ever. Not that he wanted the most biological plausible aliens or the highest possible quality of special effects. He wanted a film about a story that might happen if aliens really had invaded Earth. Has he succeeded? ” (via New Scientist CultureLab)

A reprise of my Hallowe’en post of past years:

It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time. It is fortunate that Hallowe’en falls on a Monday this year, as there is evidence that the pagan festival was celebrated for three days.

With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve. All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.

Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North AMerica, given how plentiful they were here.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

Folk traditions that were in the past associated wtih All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition and liminality.

The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards

The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence, and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (Familiar with the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain?) Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well.

What was Hallowe’en like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? For my purposes, suffice it to say that it was before the era of the pay-per-view ’spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from several years ago [via walker] puts it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like. Related, a 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Hallowe’en?”, argues as I do that reverence for Hallowe’en is good for the soul.

That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Hallowe’en certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Hallowe’en errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.

The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).

In any case: trick or treat!

Related:

• Happy Samhain (Hallowe’en) (liveactivecultures.net)
• The History Of Halloween Plus 5 Things You Didn’t Know About The Holiday! (huffingtonpost.com)
• The history and origin of Halloween (witnessthis.wordpress.com)
• Vatican condemns Hallowe’en as antiChristian (telegraph.co.uk)
• el dia do los muertos – a history lesson (thesecretlifeofviv.blogspot.com)
• Halloween to be frightening for retailers (dailyfinance.com)
• Trick or Treat! (halloweenforkids.blogspot.com)
• Toward a trick-or-treat philosophy (clubtroppo.com.au)

Tea Party Strikes Back at Rove after Palin Attack :

Levi Russell, spokesperson for the Tea Party Express: …

“The difference is that Rove is a D.C. analyst, and Sarah Palin is a leader.” Russell described Palin as “unquestionably the most electrifying figure in politics today,” while Rove “strikes me as a guy who would cross his arms and scowl at the thought of some Hollywood actor named Reagan running for Governor of California. …Personally I’ve always liked Rove, but it is painfully obvious that he is losing his connection with the American people, and no longer has his finger on the very strong pulse of the conservative movement in this country, which is fueled by the tea party and figures such as Gov. Palin.”

Karl Rove:

“There are high standards that the American people have for it [the presidency] and they require a certain level of gravitas, and they want to look at the candidate and say ‘that candidate is doing things that gives me confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world’…”

(via The Daily Beast)

The failure of diplomacy so far in dealing with Iran has apparently prompted a debate in the Obama administration about threatening Iran more directly with military intervention. But it is a bad idea and it will not work, says Marc Lynch (Foreign Policy).

…Keep Benford’s Law in mind.

“Odd, small and unappealing animals on the brink of extinction are still one-of-a kind works of evolutionary art, sculpted over millions of years. Leaf through these critters that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided this year to consider for endangered status.”   (via Wired Science)

Drug Co. Flattery Wins Docs, Influences Prescriptions : Part of an NPR exposé on a major way in which the pharmaceutical industry gets doctors to whore for it. It was of course obvious to me that the main purpose of funding doctors’ educational talks was to make a profit, but I was surprised (although, after listening to this series, it seems indubitable) that the major impact of enlisting a physician into a “speakers’ bureau” is to influence not the prescribing practices of his or her audiences but that of the speaker h’self.

.

(adafruit)

I have always loved these three objects (especially the poiuyt, to which I was first introduced here) and they have occupied a prominent position in my doodling life for years. Never before seen them juxtaposed in this way, though. I think the nuts are a kind of round tuit, by the way. I always wanted to get a round tuit.

Astounding photos, some magnified as much as 22 million times, from Brandon Bolls’ book Microcosmos, taken with the colored scanning electron microscope. (via bookofjoe)

Albert Mohler: The body is not a ‘vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine’ (msnbc.com).

“Three new studies led by Notre Dame Psychology Professor Darcia Narvaez show a relationship between child rearing practices common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies (how we humans have spent about 99 percent of our history) and better mental health, greater empathy and conscience development, and higher intelligence in children.” (Science Daily)

Related:

• Undocumented language found hidden in NE India (ibnlive.in.com)
• “Researchers discover koro, a previously unknown language” and related posts (personalmoneystore.com)
• Undocumented language found hidden in India (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Researchers Discover Totally Unique Language in the Himalayas (neatorama.com)
• Linguists discover new language in remote India (reuters.com)
• New language identified in rmote corner of India (scienceblog.com)

.

Related:

• Douglas Coupland designs monument to Canadian firefighters (guardian.co.uk)
• Player One by Douglas Coupland: review (telegraph.co.uk)
• Generation A, By Douglas Coupland (independent.co.uk)
• Here’s to future days (hermenaut.org)

by Andy Denzler (but does it float)