…frog is the size of a housefly (via National Geographic).

Tourism’s ‘Merry Mountain’

‘ “For as long as people have been able to travel, they have been drawn (…) towards sites, attractions or events that are linked in one way or another with death, suffering, violence or disaster. ” As disturbing as it may sound, chances are pretty high that you have been guilty of this so-called dark tourism yourself. Think about it…’ (via Getaway Travel Blog).

Jonathan Turley: “Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.” (via The Washington Post).

“Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called microlensing. Kailash Sahu, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., is part of an international team reporting today that our galaxy contains a minimum of one planet for every star on average. This means that there is likely to be a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth.” (via HubbleSite ).

Cory Doctorow: ‘The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has offered Occupy protesters a get-out-of-jail card: all they need to do to skip their court dates is pay $355 for private “free speech lessons” where they will be taught a highly selective version of Constitutional law that holds that the First Amendment doesn’t include the kind of protest they enjoy. It’s like they combined traffic school with Maoist “self-criticism sessions” from the Cultural Revolution to make something worse than both combined.’ (via Boing Boing).

Related:

• The Irony of Free Speech in California (jonathanturley.org)
• LA City Attorney to Occupy: pay for brainwashing lessons on limits of free speech and we’ll drop the charges (boingboing.net)
• #OccupyLA: Take ‘Free Speech’ Class After Arrests for Exercising Freedom of Speech (crooksandliars.com)
• City offers to teach Occupy L.A. protesters a free-speech lesson (latimesblogs.latimes.com)

There was some buzz last week in astronomical circles that SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) had discovered a candidate radio signal. In this this post, Phil Platt (Bad Astronomy) explains why the detected signal did not originate with an ETI and, in so doing, gives an informative explanation of some of the principles of SETI.

Related:

• dustinmartian: Image of the Day: 1st Kepler “Search for… (kellysutton.tumblr.com)
• First Kepler SETI Signals ID’d: No Aliens – PC Magazine (pcmag.com)
• Kepler Receives First Images; Looks To Be From An Alien Civilization, But Isn’t (techie-buzz.com)
• First Alien Signals Found By SETI (disclose.tv)
• Deus Ex Alpha Centauri: Buy Euros Now As SETI May Have Discovered Aliens (zerohedge.com)
• SETI’s Search for Intelligent Alien Life Resumes (livescience.com)

William Gibson

Cory Doctorow on Distrust That Particular Flavor:

“By many standards, Gibson is a slow writer — his book publishing career is 27 years old, and consists of nine and a half novels, a book of short stories and this collection of essays — but he is a very, very fine one. His work has been seminal to many key moments at the end of the last century and the start of this one, and it is a rare pleasure to read his direct reflections on society and his work, rather than inferring them from his fiction. This is a fine and even essential complement to the Gibson canon, and a delight to read.” (via  Boing Boing).

Related:

• Books of The Times: William Gibson’s ‘Distrust That Particular Flavor’ – Review (nytimes.com)
• Timothy Leary and William Gibson in conversation (dangerousminds.net)
• Catching Up To the Future: An Appreciation of William Gibson (tor.com)
• William Gibson and Timothy Leary in conversation, 1989 (boingboing.net)
• William Gibson on writing, science fiction and digital panopticons in the 21st century [VIDEO] (digiphile.wordpress.com)

There was no Dec. 31st in Samoa in 2011. At midnight on Dec. 30th, the country switched to the western side of the International Dateline (to be date-aligned with China, its main trading partner), thus setting the date to Jan. 1st instead of Dec. 31st. (via Discovery News). I wonder how many Samoans missed a Dec. 31st birthday.

‘…[T]here’s something remarkable and whimsical that happens when a fine art photographer takes her lens to Earth’s creatures — they become poetry. Today, we turn to five such photographers, whose portraits of animals — unusual, otherworldly, kooky, tender, charismatic — make the eye swoon and the heart sing.’ (via Brain Pickings).

Violinists can’t tell the difference between Stradivarius violins and new ones: ‘The test was a true “ double-blind” one, as neither the players nor the people who gave them the violins had any way of knowing which instrument was which. The room was dimly lit. The players were wearing goggles so they couldn’t see properly. The instruments had dabs of perfume on the chinrests that blocked out any distinctive smells. And even though Fritz and Curtin knew which the identities of the six violins, they only passed the instruments to the players via other researchers, who were hidden by screens, wearing their own goggles, and quite literally in the dark.’ (via Not Exactly Rocket Science).

Related:

• How many notes would a virtuoso violinist pay for a Stradivarius? (guardian.co.uk)
• Researchers Use CT to Recreate Stradivarius Violin (prnewswire.com)
• Stradivarius-beating “fungus violins” could be mass-produced (gizmag.com)

“Medicines to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are in such short supply that hundreds of patients complain daily to the Food and Drug Administration that they are unable to find a pharmacy with enough pills to fill their prescriptions.

The shortages are a result of a troubled partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration, with companies trying to maximize their profits and drug enforcement agents trying to minimize abuse by people, many of them college students, who use the medications to get high or to stay up all night.” (via NYTimes.com).

As a psychophwho did early research and treatment of the putative condition of “adult ADHD”, I have come to believe that around 90% of diagnoses with this disorder are specious. A careful clinical decision about whether stimulants should be prescribed has to go much further than simply deciding if the pt will benefit from (or enjoy) being on these medications, for that would be true of most people. Such care is rarely applied in the evaluation of those who end up receiving a stimulant prescription. While the NYTimes article touches upon the tragedy of auto accidents and job loss that arises from attention-disordered patients not getting their medications, I see patients all the time who are victims of misdiagnosis and misprescribing. This is no moralistic diatribe against “abuse”, which is often in the eyes of the beholder, but based rather on the real adverse and dire consequences, including strokes, seizures, addiction, depressive ‘crashes’ from abrupt cessation, and suicide. Not to mention the contribution to the shortsighed and pervasive promulgation of the paradigm that better living through chemistry is the only way to attain better living. We have crippled a generation of patients with such a message of pharmacological materialism.

If a falling cat usually lands on its feet and toast usually lands buttered side down, what happens if you attach buttered toast to a cat’s back? Amazing the places you can go with this paradox. (via  Mental Floss).

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

“I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not already, but there is much, very much, which though I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.

Take heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this precious little instant.

Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and courage in the darkness could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, and wisdom, and power. Welcome it, greet it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence.

Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims wending through unknown country our way home.

And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greeting, but with profound esteem now and forever.

The day breaks and the shadows flee away.”

— Christmas greeting from a letter written by Italian friar and painter Giovanni da Fiesole (Fra Angelico) 1387-1455

And so the Shortest Day came and the Year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of that snow white world
came people
Singing, Dancing
To drive the Dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees
They hung their homes with evergreens
They burned beseeching fires, all night long
To keep the Year alive
And when the new Year’s sunshine blazed awake, they shouted
Reveling!
Through all the frosty ages, you can hear them
Echoing behind us.
Listen.
All the long echos sing the same delight
this Shortest Day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land
They carol, feast, give thanks, and dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now
This year and every year: Welcome Yule!
All: Welcome Yule!

— Susan Cooper, “The Shortest Day”

“When attempting to diagnose depression using the patterns of activity exhibited by the brain, it turns out that we don’t need to ask people lots of questions or measure stress levels or investigate their mood. Rather, we only need to show them a picture of their moms.” (via Wired.com).

Krulwich Wonders… : “…Very short stories can get very, very short and still be good. The most famous example (supposedly written by Ernest Hemingway) draws a little sigh with only six words; it’s a sales ad.

‘For sale:

baby shoes,

never worn.’

Nobody has been able to beat that one, at least nobody I’ve read,…

But I’ve seen stories that are way richer, and much, much shorter, if we’re counting words. They use no words at all…” (via NPR).

After nine years, the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the near bankruptcy of the US economy, the squandering of the goodwill of most of the world and the fueling of rabid anti-Americanism, Bush-Cheney’s American occupation of the Iranian province that was formerly the nation of Iraq finally ends. Mission accomplished!

For a stroll down memory lane, here is a Google search that should point you to all the posts I wrote about Iraq over the years of the war.

Related:

• American Mission In Iraq Formally Ended; Will Iraq Enter Iranian Sphere? (crazyjew.wordpress.com)
• Ravaged and Remade, Iraq Is on Its Own – New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Panetta formally shuts down US war in Iraq (sfgate.com)
• US formally draws curtain on the unpopular war in Iraq (video) (csmonitor.com)

 

Use of Chimps Halted in New U.S.-Funded Research: “The National Institutes of Health on Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and accepted the first uniform criteria for assessing the necessity of such research. Those criteria require that the research be necessary for human health, and that there be no other way to accomplish it.

In making the announcement, Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., said the agency was accepting the recommendations released earlier in the day by an expert committee of the Institute of Medicine and would establish a working group to decide how to carry out those recommendations. The decision by the N.I.H. and the recomentions from the Institute of Medicine, a expert advisory group, do not put an end to research on chimps, but were claimed as victories by animal rights groups that have been fighting for ban on such research for decades, arguing that research on chimpanzees was unneeded and cruel to the animal that is human’s closest relative. They said that the move was a step toward eventually ending chimp research, already a tiny segment of federal research.” (via  NYTimes).

”

A jury has acquitted a Hoquiam, Wash., man accused of breaking into a home in June and throwing a dead mink at another man. Police said Jobie J. Watkins, 33, went to the other man’s apartment looking for his ex-girlfriend. The other man was struck after he asked Watkins why he had a dead weasel and Watkins reportedly insisted that it was a marten.” (via SFGATE).

Thanks to rich, who wonders if this is a problem of “infidelity or taxonomy.”

“Photographs by Charlotte Dumas of privately owned dogs who were mobilized, with their owners, to search for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They are now retired.” (slide show via NYTimes.com).

This, from Robert Krulwich, is so good it deserves to be excerpted in full:

‘Here’s something you should know about yourself. Vowels control your brain. “I”s make you see things differently than “O”s. Here’s how. Say these words out loud:

• Bean
• Mint
• Slim

These “I” and “E” vowels are formed by putting your tongue forward in the mouth. That’s why they’re called “front” vowels.

Now, say:

• Large
• Pod
• Or
• Ought

With these words, your tongue depresses and folds back a bit. So “O”, “A” and “U” are called “back” of the throat vowels.

OK, here’s the weird part.When comparing words across language groups, says Stanford linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky, a curious pattern shows up: Words with front vowels (“I” and “E”) tend to represent small, thin, light things.Back vowels (“O” “U” and some “A”s ) show up in fat, heavy things.

It’s not always true, but it’s a tendency that you can see in any of the stressed vowels in words like little, teeny or itsy-bitsy (all front vowels) versus humongous or gargantuan (back vowels). Or the i vowel in Spanish chico (front vowel meaning small) versus gordo (back vowel meaning fat). Or French petit (front vowel) versus grand (back vowel).

Try this yourself. If I make up two words, “Frish” and “Frosh” and tell you each is about to become a new ice cream, which of the two seems richer, heavier?

For me, “Frosh,” (with the back vowel “o”) seems creamier. I don’t know why. Just feels that way. And not just to me. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found most people imagined Frosh creamier than Frish.

Here’s another example. Richard Klink, a marketing professor at Loyola College in Maryland created a test using two sets of names. They were nonsense names, chosen at random:

Nidax vs. Nodax and Detal vs. Dutal

And then, slapping these names on various imaginary products, he asked a group of people:

• Which brand of laptop seems bigger; Detal or Dutal?
• Which brand of vacuum cleaner seems heavier, Keffi or Kuffi?
• Which brand of ketchup seems thicker, Nellen or Nullen?
• Which brand of beer seems darker, Esab or Usab?

“In each case,” reports Professor Jurasky, “the participants in the study tended to choose the product named by back vowels (dutal, nodax) as the larger, heavier, thicker, darker product. Similar studies have been conducted in various other languages.”

Jurasky then wondered, Do businesses know this about vowels? For example, would an ice cream company (looking to create a rich, creamy and satisfying product,) and a cracker manufacturer, (looking to make something, thin, light and crackily) use different vowels?  He thought they might, so, on his blog, he writes:

To test the hypothesis I downloaded two lists of food names from the web. One was a list of 81 ice cream flavors that I constructed by including every flavor sold by either Haagen Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s. The second was a list of 592 cracker brands from a dieting website. For each list, I counted the total number of front vowels and the total number of back vowels (details of the study are here). The result, shown in the table [below], is that ice creams names indeed have more back vowels and cracker names have more front vowels. (Language of Food)

Ice cream companies mix in lots of “O”s and “A”s, says Jurasky, like…

Rocky Road, Jamoca Almond Fudge, Chocolate, Caramel, Cookie Dough, Coconut

But the cracker people stick pretty much to “E”s and “I”s.

Cheese Nips, Cheez It, Wheat Thins, Pretzel thins, Ritz, Krispy, Triscuit, Thin Crisps, Cheese Crisps, Chicken in a Biskit, Snack sticks, Toasted chips, Ritz bits

But Why? Why do we associate “front” vowels with small, thin light things and “back” vowels with big, solid, heavy things?

Two linguists, John Ohala and Eugene Morton proposed that over evolutionary time, humans instinctively associate pitch with size. Lions, bears, seals make low sounds, canaries, mice, rabbits higher sounds. Not always, but enough of the time that when we hear a low frequency (even in an “O” or a “U”) we may think big and heavy, whereas higher frequencies (even in “I’s and “E”s) suggest small and light.

The Origin Of The Smile? Dan Jurasky goes even further. Scholars have noticed, he says, that when people say “Boo!”, they form an o-shape with their lips and mouth, and look aggressive and a little dangerous.

But use the “front” vowels, like “I” and “E”, your mouth and lips will widen into a kind of smile. Why do we say “cheese” when it’s time to take the picture? Why does the word smile contain an “I”? These front vowels, he says, are the “smile” vowels. One day they may even explain why we smile, but in the meantime, the big news is that it’s old fashioned to think of vowels as just sounds.

They are more than that: they are little strings that pull on our brains and it turns out, “I”s pull us to different places than “O”s.

Who knew?  (via NPR).

“A lot has been written recently about the recent militarization of US police forces. The impression is inescapable in an atmosphere saturated with imagery of Occupy protesters being bullied by domestic police who wield militarized weaponry, clad in what used to be thought of as riot gear, but is now a de rigueur feature of official responses to things that do not resemble nor threaten to become riots. It appears this militarization comes partly courtesy unprecedented and legally dubious collaboration between civilian police and the CIA…” (via Truthout, with thanks to hal).

Related:

• Occupy Ourselves | Truthout (indigenist.blogspot.com)
• Indefinite Military Detention: Revised Defense Bill Still Gives President Authority To Lock Up Citizens (huffingtonpost.com)
• | A Dangerous Woman: Indefinite Detention at Carswell Air Force Base! (truthaholics.wordpress.com)

Senator Al Franken, speaking to AFL-CIO on Monday, points out the glaringly contradictory schools of thought that define the Republican economic theory. (via progressivetoo; thanks to  hal).

“Lists are created, and have been for many centuries, for all manner of reasons. It’s my aim to feature some of the most notable examples right here. Updated as often as possible; usually on weekdays. Edited by me, Shaun Usher. I also run Letters of Note.”  (Lists of Note).

‘Melting ice is beginning to transform the world’s shipping routes. But will it launch a new Cold War?’ (via Salon).

‘…a nuclear explosion from the Tumbler-Snapper tests performed in Nevada during 1952. It looks different from all nuclear explosions you’ve seen because it’s what it looks like one millisecond after detonation. It looks like a skull by Tim Burton.

The face of atomic death just one second away from unleashing its absolute destruction.

Only one millisecond after the bomb explodes, this 65.6-foot (20 meters) ball of fire appears in midair, with spikes that look like rotten teeth or stalactites of fire (called the rope trick effect).

The explosion was captured by a Rapid Action Electronic camera—a high speed device designed to photograph nuclear explosions just milliseconds after ignition. The rapatronic camera, as it is called, was created by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s using two polarizing filters and Kerr cell instead of a shutter, which is too slow for this job. A Kerr cell is a panel that changes its polarization depending on the voltage applied. This acts as a very high speed shutter, which allows the perfect exposition to capture this moment.’ (via Gizmodo).

“…[G]rowing excitement that the first signs of the ultra-elusive Higgs boson particle have been detected by teams working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).’ (via Mail Online).

Free Trapped Friends, Hint at Universal Empathy: ‘With a few liberating swipes of their paws, a group of research rats freed trapped labmates and raised anew the possibility that empathy isn’t unique to humans and a few extra-smart animals, but is widespread in the animal world.

Though more studies are needed on the rats’ motivations, it’s at least plausible they demonstrated “empathically motivated pro-social behavior.” People would generally call that helpfulness, or even kindness.

“Rats help other rats in distress. That means it’s a biological inheritance,” said neurobiologist Peggy Mason of the University of Chicago. “That’s the biological program we have.” ‘ (via Wired.com).

“We want to rebrand the US Dollar, rebuild financial confidence and revive our failing economy.” (via richardsmith.posterous.com).

Ted Kaptchuk’s Quest to Understand the Placebo Effect: ‘It boils down to one question, Kaptchuk asserts: “Do you think this entire field is based on a foundation of magical thinking, or do you not?” ‘ (via The New Yorker).

‘Is the idea that the End is near a recent phenomenon? Far from it. Indeed, Chicken Littles have crying doom since ancient times. The aim of this page is to debunk end-time prophecy by listing hundreds of failed doomsday predictions, allay the fears spread by end-time preachers, anddemonstrate that doomcrying is nothing new. I also hope you will derive amusement from some of the more bizarre prophecies.

I have strived for accuracy through careful cross-referencing amongsource materials. I’m constantly adding new information and correcting mistakes, yet there may still be some errors.

Please journey with me through the wild, wacky and wonderful world of failed doomsday prophecy!’ (via Abhota).

Related:

• And Just When I was Getting Prepared for the Apocalypse… (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Mayan Doomsday Prophecy of 2012 apocalypse ‘wrongly translated’ (news.bioscholar.com)
• Catholics Agree With Prophecies Contained in The ‘2012’ Mayan Prophecy and New Hollywood Movie (prweb.com)
• Author Presents Enlightening, Analytical Interpretation of the Book of Revelation (prweb.com)
• Apocalypse Predictions Are Nothing New: A Look Back At Doomsday Theories (newyork.cbslocal.com)
• Preacher apologizes for failed apocalypse prediction (abclocal.go.com)
• Why the World Will End (Again) on Friday (livescience.com)

‘The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has resumed at the Allen Telescope Array in northern California. The ATA was in hibernation for months due to a lack of funding. But new cash came in from the public (yay, public support of science!) and also the US Air Force “as part of a formal assessment of the instrument’s utility for Space Situational Awareness.” Exoplanet candidates found via NASA’s Kepler space telescope will be one focus of the resumed effort.’ (via Boing Boing).

“James & Other Apes: While watching a nature program on primates I was struck by their facial similarity to our own. Humans are clearly different to animals, but the great apes inhabit that grey area between man and animal. I thought it would be interesting to try to photograph gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans using the aesthetic of the passport photograph- its ubiquitous style inferring the idea of identity.

I decided against photographing in zoos or using ‘animal actors’ but traveled to Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia to meet orphans of the bush meat trade and live pet trade.” (via Hunch).

Related:

• James Mollison’s Where Children Sleep series (lostateminor.com)
• The Disciples: Fans of Rock Concerts by James Mollison (amusingplanet.com)
• Random Excellence: James Mollison (theonlinephotographer.typepad.com)
• An Incredible Look At The Sleeping Conditions Of Children Around The World (businessinsider.com)

Jazz died in 1959.

There maybe cool individuals who say they play Jazz, but ain’t shit cool about Jazz as a whole.

Jazz died when cool stopped being hip.

Jazz was a limited idea to begin with.

Jazz is a label that was forced upon the musicians.

The musicians should’ve never accepted that idea.

Jazz ain’t shit.

Jazz is incestuous.

Jazz separated itself from American popular music.

Big mistake.

The music never recovered.

Ornette tried to save Jazz from itself by taking the music back to its New Orleanian roots, but his efforts were too esoteric.

Jazz died in 1959, that’s why Ornette tried to “Free Jazz” in 1960.

Jazz is only cool if you don’t actually play it for a living.

Jazz musicians have accepted the idea that it’s OK to be poor.

John Coltrane is a bad cat, but Jazz stopped being cool in 1959.

The very fact that so many people are holding on to this idea of what Jazz is supposed to be is exactly what makes it not cool.

People are holding on to an idea that died long ago.

Jazz, like the Buddha, is dead.

Let it go, people, let it go.

Paul Whiteman was the King of Jazz and someday all kings must fall.

Jazz ain’t cool, it’s cold, like necrophilia.

Stop fucking the dead and embrace the living.

Jazz worries way too much about itself for it to be cool.

Jazz died in 1959.

The number one Jazz record is Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue.

Dave Brubeck’s Time Out was released in 1959.

1959 was the coolest year in Jazz.

Jazz is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

Let it die.

You can be martyrs for an idea that died over a half a century if y’all want.

Jazz has proven itself to be limited, and therefore, not cool.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt from looking back.

Jazz is dead.

Miles ahead.

Some may say that I’m no longer the same dude who recorded the album with Doc Cheatham.

Correct: I’m not the same dude I was 14 years ago.

Isn’t that the point?

Our whole purpose on this planet is to evolve.

The Golden Age of Jazz is gone.

Let it go.

Too many necrophiliacs in Jazz.

You’re making my case for me.

Some people may say we are defined by our limitations.

I don’t believe in limitations, but yes, if you believe you are limited that will define you.

Definitions are retrospective.

And if you find yourself getting mad, it’s probably because you know Jazz is dead.

Why get upset if what I’m saying doesn’t ring true?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t play Jazz.

I play Postmodern New Orleans music.

Louis Armstrong and Danny Barker play Traditional New Orleans Music.

Ellis Marsalis and James Black play Modern New Orleans music.

Kidd Jordan and Clyde Kerr play Avant-garde New Orleans music.

Donald Harrison plays Neoclassical New Orleans music.

I play Postmodern New Orleans music.

I am a part of a lineage.

I am a part of a blood line.

My ancestors didn’t play Jazz, they played Traditional, Modern and Avant-garde New Orleans Music.

I don’t play Jazz.

I don’t let others define who I am.

I am a Postmodern New Orleans musician.

I create music for the heart and the head, for the beauty and the booty.

The man who lets others define him is a dead man.

With all due respect to the masters, they were victims of a colonialist mentality.

Blacks have been conditioned for centuries to be grateful for whatever crumbs thrown to them.

As a postmodern musician, it’s my duty to do better than my predecessors.

To question, reexamine and redefine what it is that we do.

They accepted it because they had to.

Because my ancestors opened the door for me, I don’t have to accept it.

Louis bowed and scraped so Miles could turn his back.

It’s called evolution.

It’s the colonialist mentality that glorifies being treated like a slave.

There is nothing romantic about poor, scuffling Jazz musicians.

Fuck that idea.

It’s not cool.

Jazz is a lie.

America is a lie.

Playing Jazz is like running on a treadmill: you may break a sweat, but ultimately you ain’t going nowhere.

Some people may say we are limited.

I say, we are as limited as we think.

I am not limited.

Jazz is a marketing ploy that serves an elite few.

The elite make all the money while they tell the true artists it’s cool to be broke.

Occupy Jazz!

I am not speaking of so-called Jazz’s improvisational aspects.

Improvisation by its very nature can never be passé, but mindsets are invariably deadly.

Not knowing is the most you can ever know.

It’s only when you don’t know that “everything” is possible.

Jazz has nothing to do with music or being cool.

It’s a marketing idea.

A glaring example of what’s wrong with Jazz is how people fight over it.

People are too afraid to let go of a name that is killing the spirit of the music.

Life is bigger than music, unless you love and/or play Jazz.

The art, or lack thereof, is just a reflection.

Miles Davis personified cool and he hated Jazz.

What is Jazz anyway?

Life isn’t linear, it’s concentric.

When you’re truly creating you don’t have time to think about what to call it.

Who thinks of what they’ll name the baby while they’re fucking?

Playing Jazz is like using the rear-view mirror to drive your car on the freeway.

If you think Jazz is a style of music, you’ll never begin to understand.

It’s ultimately on the musicians.

People are fickle and follow the pack.

Not enough artists willing to soldier for their shit.

People follow trends and brands.

So do musicians, sadly.

Jazz is a brand.

Jazz ain’t music, it’s marketing, and bad marketing at that.

It has never been, nor will it ever be, music.

Here lies Jazz (1916 – 1959).

Too many musicians and not enough artists.

I believe music to be more of a medium than a brand.

Silence is music, too.

You can’t practice art.

In order for it to be true, one must live it.

Existence is not contingent upon thought.

It’s where you choose to put silence that makes sound music.

Sound and silence equals music.

Sometimes when I’m soloing, I don’t play shit.

I just move blocks of silence around.

The notes are an afterthought.

Silence is what makes music sexy.

Silence is cool.

— Nicholas Payton

“It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.” (via Zócalo Public Square).

‘NASA has found a planet outside our solar system that looks to be an awful lot like Earth–or maybe even better, given that its climate is roughly like a balmy day in Key West.

The planet, Kepler-22b, is the first confirmed planet within the “habitable zone,” meaning that liquid water could exist on the surface and support life. It is almost 2.5 times the size of Earth and 600 light years away, so you may want to start saving your frequent flier miles now if you want your great-to-the-29th-power grandchildren to have a shot at vacationing there.’ (via CNET).

“Continuous glucose monitoring using a sensor implanted under the skin has been a recent technological improvement for patients with this illness. But the long-desired diabetes treatment has been an artificial pancreas: an implant that could both sense blood glucose levels and administer the appropriate amount of insulin instantaneously. Prof Toumazou’s innovation is to integrate sensing and treatment in one device, effectively creating a new pancreas outside the body.” (via Elements).

This has been one of the holy grails of medicine. If it works, it will be an incalculable benefit.

“I’ve worked really hard to narrow down this list to five items that no kid should be without. All five should fit easily within any budget, and are appropriate for a wide age range so you get the most play out of each one. These are time-tested and kid-approved! And as a bonus, these five can be combined for extra-super-happy-fun-time.” (via GeekDad). 

“Psychology has a stereotype problem with grief and mourning. Over and over again false assumptions are repeated, not even valid in Western cultures, that there are certain ‘stages’ to grief, that people will reliably react in certain ways with certain key emotions – sadness, anger, resignation and so on.

This leads to both a professional pathologising of grieving people including endless variations on ‘the person hasn’t accepted their loss’, ‘they haven’t elaborated their grief’ and ‘they’re in denial’ applied to anyone who doesn’t mourn within the expected boundaries.

Moreover, it leads to a cultural blindness about how other societies feel and understand the loss of others with the implicit assumption that the experience of grief is somehow universal.” (via Mind Hacks).

“No team? No sweat — at least for spaceman Satoshi Furukawa, who pitches, bats, fields, and floats all by his lonesome…” (via The Week).

“China’s national post office is hoping to boost business by allowing customers to send letters postmarked from space. Emails will be sent to a computer aboard Tiangong-1 spacecraft currently orbiting the earth, and rerouted to a special China Space Post Office branch on the ground in Beijing, the country’s space program announced on its website.

The emails will be printed, placed in space-themed envelopes, stamped with a new galactic postmark and sent on in the mail. The service, which features China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, as head of the “space post office”, is the latest initiative devised by the postal service to drum up business as more and more Chinese go online.” (via Daily Galaxy).

“Yes, there will be times when to troubleshoot a problem with your smartphone, you’re going to need to let your carrier look deeply into your network traffic. But, as a matter of course to let them snoop on your every click? And, the content of your messages!? I don’t think so!

So what can you do?” (via ZDNet).

I am grateful that you held the door open for me as I walked into the bakery.  I am sorry that I was so preoccupied that I did not acknowledge your kindness quickly enough for your liking.

A great man once told me not to qualify my apologies with extenuation, but simply to take responsibility for my transgression. But, I’m sorry, I’m going to make an exception this time.

I am sorry that, for you, a benevolent act is ruined if it is not given proper recognition by the recipient. Pitiful.

Indeed, I am grateful that you have helped me identify that I am sometimes a pitiful assh*le. I don’t refer so much to times I fail to acknowledge a courtesy but, rather, to when I myself have muttered an epithet under my breath when someone else was not grateful enough for my egotistical kindness.

Sometimes, the contempt of the contemptible is akin to a compliment.

“I believe the time is right for science to reconsider its use of the phrase “shark attack” on humans. Such language creates a one-dimensional perception of these events and makes protecting threatened shark species more difficult. After all, why care about an animal that wants to eat us?

…The argument for change is compelling. Modern research has shown that bites by sharks are often investigatory or defensive, taking place in cloudy water and out of curiosity.” (via New Scientist).

The mystery of anaesthesia: ‘The development of general anaesthesia has transformed surgery from a horrific ordeal into a gentle slumber. It is one of the commonest medical procedures in the world, yet we still don’t know how the drugs work. Perhaps this isn’t surprising: we still don’t understand consciousness, so how can we comprehend its disappearance?

That is starting to change, however, with the development of new techniques for imaging the brain or recording its electrical activity during anaesthesia. “In the past five years there has been an explosion of studies, both in terms of consciousness, but also how anaesthetics might interrupt consciousness and what they teach us about it,” says George Mashour, an anaesthetist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “We’re at the dawn of a golden era.” ‘ (via New Scientist)

Opium poppy field, Burma

“Technologists will become the next drug dealers, administering narcotics through brain stimulation, according to Rohit Talwar, the founder of Fast Future Research, speaking at Intelligence Squared’s If conference.

Talwar was charged by the government to investigate the drugs landscape over the next 20 years, exploring scenarios going beyond the traditional model of gangs producing and shipping drugs around the world.

He described how the world of genomic sequencing and services such as 23 and Me open up possibilities for tailoring drugs to the individual, delivering effects based on your physiology — which could  pply just as effectively to narcotics as it could medicines.”  (via Wired Science).

Jonah Lehrer: “Chewing without eating seems like such a ridiculous habit, the oral equivalent of running on a treadmill. And yet, people have been chewing gum for thousands of years, ever since the ancient Greeks began popping wads of mastic tree resin in their mouth to sweeten the breath. Socrates probably chewed gum.

It turns out there’s an excellent rationale for this long-standing cultural habit: Gum is an effective booster of mental performance, conferring all sorts of benefits without any side effects. The latest investigation of gum chewing comes from a team of psychologists at St. Lawrence University…” (via The Loom, Wired Science).

‘

Pick up an object that’s close at hand. Throw it at something, or even someone (but gently, of course!) You’ve just reenacted what appears to be a pivotal stage in human evolution, when a propensity for projectiles shaped cognitive powers that later became language and symbolic thought.’ (via Wired Science).

“Jürgen Habermas has had enough. The philosopher is doing all he can these days to call attention to what he sees as the demise of the European ideal. He hopes he can help save it — from inept politicians and the dark forces of the market.” (via SPIEGEL ONLINE).

‘No matter how fervently Macdonald avowed that he detested middlebrow consumers, he needed them as much as they needed him. Much of the lucid, cutting criticism he wrote was addressed to that “intelligent layman” who might otherwise succumb to Midcult’s temptations; Macdonald, in turn, was the guide who discriminated between the phony gesture and the real thing. He was a predator who required a steady diet of prey to survive, and for all that he was vexed by middlebrow cultural consumption, he was sustained by it too. His panic now seems less prescient than misplaced. At a time when reading up on Kafka is neither more nor less valid than keeping up with the Kardashians, a thriving demographic of middle-class strivers looks to me less ludicrous or menacing than the vacancy it has left behind.’ — Jennifer Szalai (via The Nation).

Related:

• Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald – review (guardian.co.uk)
• Essay: Dwight Macdonald’s War on Mediocrity (nytimes.com)
• Louis Menand: Dwight Macdonald’s war on Midcult. (newyorker.com)

 

Fox News Food Products: “In my recent post on the poisonous nature of pepper spray, I noted that the name makes it sound more innocuous than it really is. We’re talking, after all, about a chemical agent potent enough that our soldiers are banned by international treaty from using it in other countries:

But we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.

As it turns out, this is exactly the message that Fox News is promoting to its views. And not subtly either. As Gawker reported, last night News co-hosts Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly mulled over the pepper-spraying of peacefully protesting students at UC-Davis this weekend. Why all the outrage, Kelly wondered. After all “pepper spray is a food product, essentially.”

On Twitter, this has launched some fairly hilarious suggestions from my fellow science writers for potential Fox News Food Products…” — Deborah Blum (via Speakeasy Science).

“A virus with the potential to kill up to half the world’s population has been made in a lab. Now academics and bioterrorism experts are arguing over whether to publish the recipe, and whether the research should have been done in the first place.” (via RT).

Kalliopi Monoyios: ‘I can’t say for certain whether New York based photographer Ted Sabarese had science or evolution in mind when he conceived of this series. But I’m almost glad he never responded to my follow-up questions about his inspiration behind these. Part of the fun of art is its mirror-like quality: everyone sees something different when faced with it because everyone brings a different set of experiences and expectations to the table. When I look at these I see equal parts “you are what you eat,” “your inner fish,” and “United Colors of Benetton.” ‘ (via Symbiartic, Scientific American Blog Network.

“Here’s a superbly-kept secret: You know all those dates you see on food products—sell by, use by, best before? Those dates do not indicate the safety of your food, and generally speaking, they’re not regulated.” (via NRDC).

An interesting way of quantifying the risks we take and their relationship to our life expectancy, with perhaps surprising implications for conceptualizing how fast we live our lives. (via Understanding Uncertainty).

 Daniel Engber: “The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease.” (via Slate Magazine).

“The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality.” — Naomi Wolf (via guardian.co.uk).

Related:

• Who Coordinated the Raids? (Riverdaughter)
• Glenn Greenwald: OWS-Inspired Activism (Salon)
• No, the Crackdown Against Occupy Wall Street is Not the Work of the Shadowy Elite (forbes.com)
• Feds Helped Coordinate Occupy X Crackdowns (yro.slashdot.org)

‘This article is a list of fictional diseases — nonexistent, named medical conditions which appear in fiction where they have a major plot or thematic importance. They may be fictional psychological disorders, magical, from mythological or fantasy settings, have evolved naturally, been engineered artificially (most often created as biological weapons), or be any illness that came forth from the (ab)use of technology.’ (via boing boing)

‘[Svante] Paabo has changed the way scientists study human evolution. Along with fossils, they can now study genomes that belonged to people who died 40,000 years ago. They can do experiments to see how some of those individual genes helped to make us human. During his talk, Paabo used this new research to sketch out a sweeping vision of how our ancestors evolved uniquely human brains as they swept out across the world.’ (via The Loom | Discover Magazine).

Related:

• Dear Professor, I think my husband may be a Neanderthal (guardian.co.uk)
• Admit it – you totally would have had sex with Neanderthals [Evolution] (io9.com)
• What Happened Between the Neanderthals and Us? : The New Yorker (gcmpacaquaticindustries.wordpress.com)
• Svante Paabo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal [Greg Laden’s Blog] (scienceblogs.com)

‘Though …academic ethnographers have balked at working with the military — the American Anthropological Association issued a report condemning the Human Terrain program as a violation of professional ethics — they have not ignored the country. Noah Coburn’s “Bazaar Politics” is the first extended study of an Afghan community to appear since the Taliban fell. It follows an ambitious history of Afghanistan by the Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield, and an impassioned essay by Rory Stewart, the Conservative M.P., author-adventurer and Kabul preservationist, that faults the international .effort in Afghanistan for its neglect of ethnographic insight. Whatever anthropology has to say about America’s longest war, it’s saying it now.’ (via Book Review – NYTimes.com).

‘People with high IQs are more likely to smoke marijuana and take other illegal drugs, compared with those who score lower on intelligence tests, according to a new study from the U.K.’ (via TIME). This finding is universally referred to as ‘counterintuitive’, but I don’t think so. We are not talking about use of tobacco, and we are probably not talking about heroin addiction, but those with higher IQ are generally more open to novel experience, less credulous about anti-drug propaganda and less rigidly moralistic.

‘When our autobiographical memory lets us down, how do we reconstruct the lost chapters?’ (via BPS Research Digest).

“There’s definitely something to be said for first impressions. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests it can take just 20 seconds to detect whether a stranger is genetically inclined to being trustworthy, kind or compassionate. The findings reinforce that healthy humans are wired to recognize strangers who may help them out in a tough situation. They also pave the way for genetic therapies for people who are not innately sympathetic, researchers said.

…Two dozen couples participated in the UC Berkeley study, and each provided DNA samples. Researchers then documented the couples as they talked about times when they had suffered. Video was recorded only of the partners as they took turns listening. A separate group of observers who did not know the couples were shown 20-second video clips of the listeners and asked to rate which seemed most trustworthy, kind and compassionate, based on their facial expressions and body language.

The listeners who got the highest ratings for empathy, it turned out, possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype.” (via e! Science News).

Ummm, okay, so we can recognize people with a particular oxytocin gene variant. and we think they are more empathic. But is there any evidence that truly correlates with greater empathy? (I know  there is some evidence that, at least in animals, oxytocin has a relationship with strength of social affiliation.)

Related:

• The kindness of strangers: Caring and trust linked to genetic variation (eurekalert.org)
• Oxytocin Revisited (psychologytoday.com)
• A Kindness Gene? Researchers Say Caring, Trustworthiness May Be In Our DNA (huffingtonpost.com)
• Body Language Reveals ‘Empathy Gene’ (webmd.com)
• Is empathy in our genes? – CNN (edition.cnn.com)
• Being a jerk could be in your genes (windsorstar.com)

‘With current technology, nothing larger or heavier than [the Mars Science Library, touching down on Mars in August 2012] can be put on the surface of Mars. Anything more massive, including a human mission, which NASA estimates would require landing at least 40 to 80 tons of machinery, is completely out of the question.

“We’ve maxed out our ability to take mass to the surface of Mars,” said engineer Bobby Braun, former NASA chief technologist and co-author of a 2005 research paper highlighting this problem.

The basic obstacle for large-scale missions is Mars’ tenuous atmosphere, which is more than 100 times thinner than that of Earth. The pressure of the Martian atmosphere at its surface is equivalent to what someone would experience flying at 100,000 feet on Earth.’ (via Wired.com). 

“For most researchers’ money, an Earth-like planet is the best bet for finding alien life. But looking in such an exclusive range of possibilities might give them only half the story.

A team of scientists is now proposing an index that ranks a planet’s habitability using a much wider set of criteria.

“We are trying not to be geocentric, calculating planetary habitability independent of liquid water,” said physicist Abel Mendez of the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo and one of the co-authors of the new index, published in Astrobiology on Nov. 21.

Astronomers have discovered more than 700 extrasolar planets, many of them gas giants that orbit too near or far from their parent star to be comparable to Earth. But Mendez and his group want to expand the narrow possibilities generally considered necessary for a planet to host life.

The team proposes to rank planets on both an Earth Similarity Index (ESI) and also a broader Planetary Habitability Index (PHI). The first index looks at how close a planet is to Earth in mass, temperature, and composition while the second is based on the whether or not it possesses more exotic chemistries, liquids, and energy sources than found on our planet. Alien life could be based on elements other than carbon, require liquids other than water, and gain energy through means other than sunlight.” (via Wired.com).

Related:

• Through data, evaluating the potential for life on other worlds (89lp63.wordpress.com)
• Lighting ‘sprites’ in outer space may signal alien life (news.bioscholar.com)
• New system would assess odds of life on other worlds (nextbigfuture.com)
• System for assessing the odds of life on other worlds (scienceblog.com)
• Scientists rate livability of alien worlds (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)

This short film by Erroll Morris  slaps conspiracy theory in the face, with reference to a famous controversy from the Kennedy assassination.

(via boing boing)

‘Codenamed the Cotton Candy (at 21 grams it weighs as much as a bag of the candy), the computer is powered by a dual-core 1.2 GHz Samsung Exynos ARM CPU and runs a version of Google’s Android operating system. It also sports wi-fi, Bluetooth, and a HDMI-out port, and a MicroSD card slot.

The Cotton Candy can be used either on a HDTV or a Mac or Windows computer. When The HDMI port is used with a TV, the USB port is used to power it, while Bluetooth is used to attach a keyboard and mouse. When used with a computer, you plug in the USB end and run the Android OS inside a secure window while your Mac OS X or Windows OS runs in the background.’ (via Complex).

“A new experiment by CERN has reproduced findings to confirm discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos in a modified study they claim is more accurate.” (via Neon Tommy).

‘Members of the “super committee” charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in budget cuts are focused on how to announce failure to reach a deal, Democratic and Republican aides confirmed to CNN Sunday.

While aides said no final decision had been made, they acknowledged that — barring an unforeseen development — an announcement of an end to negotiations is the most likely scenario.’ (via CNN.com)

How to announce failure? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-VT) said it well in June:

“

Everyone understands that over the long-term we have got to reduce the
deficit – a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall Street greed, tax
breaks for the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program written
by the drug and insurance companies. It is absolutely imperative,
however, that as we go forward with deficit reduction we completely
reject the Republican approach that demands savage cuts in
desperately-needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick,
our children and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest among us to
contribute one penny.”

House of Representatives by party

‘The “60 Minutes” piece last week on the free pass members of Congress get when it comes to trading on nonpublic information they routinely receive opened a lot of eyes. But it came as no surprise to reform advocates or academicians who have studied the investing skills of federal lawgivers for years.

A 2004 study concluded that U.S. senators outperformed the stock market by 12 percent annually during the 1990s, about twice as well as corporate insiders did. A more recent study concluded that members of the House of Representatives outperformed the broad market by about 6 percent annually.’ (via Post-Gazette, with thanks to abby)

Follow Me Here…  is twelve today.

I was proud to have been a friend and neighbor of Dr Epstein. He championed many other ‘inconvenient truths’ before turning his attention to climate change in the past decade. This interest was a natural outgrowth of his radicalism and determination to encompass the political dimension of public health issues and the public health dimension of political issues, e.g. poverty, colonialism and the nuclear threat.

“…To those uncomfortable with quantum theory’s picture of wavelike particles that are simultaneously everywhere, their message in The Quantum Universe is clear: tough. Scientists are, they tell us, “not mandated to produce a theory that bears any relation to the way we perceive the world at large”, although you might comfort yourself with the thought that even Einstein found quantum mechanics disturbing.” (via New Scientist).

Related :

• Making Sense of It All (online.wsj.com)
• Paul Dirac: The unsung genius (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Mysticism in quantum mechanics (wrongscience.wordpress.com)
• Releasing Schrodinger’s Cat from its box (cordus.wordpress.com)
• Creating Quantum Matter (usnews.com)
• The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw: review (telegraph.co.uk)

‘Signs of consciousness have been detected in three people previously thought to be in a vegetative state, with the help of a cheap, portable device that can be used at the bedside.

“There’s a man here who technically meets all the internationally agreed criteria for being in a vegetative state, yet he can generate 200 responses [to direct commands] with his brain,” says Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario. “Clearly this guy is not in a true vegetative state. He’s probably as conscious as you or I are.” ‘ (via New Scientist).

“So-called cognitive-enhancing drugs are usually prescribed to treat medical conditions, but they are also known for their ability to improve memory or focus. Many people buy them over the internet, which is risky because they don’t know what they are getting. We also know next to nothing about their long-term effects on the brains of healthy people, particularly the young. But some scientists believe they could have a beneficial role to play in society, if properly regulated.

So who’s taking what?” (via New Scientist).

‘The Dove (De Düva) is an Academy Award-nominated short parody of Ingmar Bergman’s films, made in 1968. They used to show this a lot in the early days of HBO. The short lampoons elements of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, The Silence and Smiles of a Summer Night.

Professor Viktor Sundqvist (co-director George Coe) is being chauffeured to a lecture at a university, when a dove shits on the car’s windshield. He decides to make a visit to his childhood home ala Wild Strawberries .

In a flashback, Viktor and his sister challenge Death (screenwriter Sid Davis) to a game of badminton in exchange for Death sparing her life. A dove shits on Death and he loses the game.

The ridiculous fake Swedish is a mix of English, Yiddish and adding “ska” to certain words, as in “It will take a momentska” or “sooner or lateska.” ‘ (via Dangerous Minds)

I remember seeing this in the early ‘70’s at the late great Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, MA. Abut half an hour into the screening, someone jumped up in the front row, raised his arms in amazement and exclaimed, “My God! I’m so stoned I can understand Swedish!!”

Related:

• Woody Allen on Ingmar Bergman (time.com)
• The greatest Ingmar Bergman online resource ever! (gointothestory.com)
• My 15 Favourite Moments in Ingmar Bergman Movies (via Southern Vision) (manonmona.wordpress.com)

Krulwich Wonders: “Suppose there’s a vanishing species of animal you love. Its population is down to a scary few, the last survivors are hiding deep in the wilderness, and you want to protect them, save them from extinction.

And let’s further suppose, that one day, you happen upon a small remnant, the last of these wild animals, and by sheer luck, one of them is healthy, strong, beautiful, a true survivor. What would you do? Cage it? Trap it? Let it go?

I’m going to tell you a story — it’s a true story, about William Temple Hornaday and the animal he loved, the American buffalo, but this tale is so improbable, so strange, I can’t quite explain what happened. It makes no sense to me.” (via  NPR).

“A few pig cells, a single surgery and a rigorous daily workout: They’re the three ingredients that patients will need to re-grow fresh, functional slabs of their own muscle, courtesy of Pentagon-backed science that’s already being used to rebuild parts of people.” (via Danger Room | Wired).

“Astronomer David Nesvorny from the Southwest Research Institute in Texas believes that the solar system might have once contained a fifth gigantic planet, which was ejected deep into the galaxy in a moment of cosmic turmoil.

By looking at the population of the Kuiper belt — the icy-cold ring of asteroids beyond Neptune — and by studying the historical fingerprints left on the craters of the Moon, Nesvorny was able to piece together clues about our solar system’s adolescence…” (via Wired).

‘An extreme surfer is set to earn a place in the record books after riding a 90-foot wave.

Garrett McNamara caught the monster wave during the ZON North Canyon Project in Praia do Norte, Nazare, Portugal.

The coastline is home to a deep water canyon which funnels large swells from the Atlantic Ocean, creating record-breaking waves such as the one McNamara rode.’ (via Mail Online).

Also: Watch the video (YouTube).

Related:

• Hawaiian Garrett McNamara surfs a 90-foot wave off the coast of Portugal.McNamara has been working with the Portuguese Hydrographic Institute to understand how the waves reach such record-breaking heights at this particular point By KILIAN DOYLE (theboldcorsicanflame.wordpress.com)
• Garrett McNamara Sets World Record, Surfs 90-Foot Tall Wave [Video] (inquisitr.com)
• Garrett McNamara Breaks World Record For Largest Wave Ever Surfed (Video) (dailypicksandflicks.com)
• Surfer Garrett McNamara rides world’s biggest wave in Portugal – video (mirror.co.uk)
• Surfer Survives Towering 90-Foot Wave (abcnews.go.com)
• Scientists peer into mystery of giant waves off the coast of Portugal (theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com)
• Surfer breaks the world record riding a 90-foot wave [Video] (thenextweb.com)
• Watch: Surfer rides world’s biggest wave (cbsnews.com)
• Surfer breaks world record by riding 90-foot wave (newslite.tv)
• VIDEO: American surfer sets world wave riding record in Portugal – 90 feet (3news.co.nz)

We won’t have another moment so elevenish for a hundred years (unless you don’t use military time and will observe it again tonight). Eleven is the first number which cannot be counted with a human’s eight fingers and two thumbs additively. In English, it is the smallest positive integer requiring three syllables and the largest prime number with a single-morpheme name. Numerologists believe there is something quite powerful about the time 11:11, having to do with synchronicity. Imagine what they will be thinking today.

Related:

• What’s All The HYPE? (khamillion.wordpress.com)
• 11/11/11: What Does November 11, 2011 Really Mean? (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Happy Super Luck Day! (And enjoy it because you’ll never see it again!) (michigantelephone.wordpress.com)
• 11-02-2011: Happy Palindrome Day! (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)
• Is the 11-11-11 Phenomenon Real? (amog.com)
• 11.11.11 Is Just Another Day! Period (techie-buzz.com)
• Eleven Eleven (wellheregoes.wordpress.com)
• How People Are Testing Their Luck On 11/11/11 (huffingtonpost.com)
• ‘Passionate’ date to tie the knot (mirror.co.uk)

‘All the while, the Supreme Court was debating whether Americans had a “reasonable” expectation their movements would not be electronically monitored. Yet we live in a world today where we pay $300 for a hotel room that spies on your alcohol intake, where millions of people voluntarily “check in” their every movement on FourSquare and Facebook, and where we routinely give big-name and no-name mobile-phone applications the right to track us everywhere we go.’ (via Wired.com).

As someone said: “Do you see (Washington Post)  what happens (Reuters) when you vote? Let’s try it again next year, shall we?” (thanks, Hal)

‘OverDrive is a digital distribution and publishing company that partners with thousands of libraries, schools, and universities around the globe to give users access to ebooks on any device they may own. The beauty of the OverDrive service though is that it’s not limited to Kindle owners, but it supports them and Kindle app users. The OverDrive Media Console works on Mac OS systems, Windows computers, iOS devices, Android devices, and Windows Phones, and OverDrive locations support lending ebooks to more ereaders and tablets than we can list here. It’s safe to say that if there’s a library near you in the search results, you can take any device and borrow an ebook to read.

A few months ago, Amazon announced that Kindle owners could visit their local libraries to check out books, which was really their way of announcing Amazon finally partnered with OverDrive for distribution to Kindle devices. OverDrive already works worldwide. To find out if your library participates, visit OverDrive Search, click Library Search, and type in your ZIP or postal code. Odds are there’s some location near you.’ (via Lifehacker).

 

 

‘Gwilym Davies has sworn off lattes and flat whites. The 2009 World Barista Champion has also removed cappuccinos and cortados from the menu of his Prufrock Coffee trolley at London’s Present. Gibraltar, SG-120 and all the other groovy terms for an espresso with hot milk have been banished from his vocabulary. Henceforce all his milk-marbleised coffees will be identified by their cup sizes: 4 oz, 6 oz or 8 oz.

The trouble with his old menu, according to Gwilym, was that the coffee names mythologised what were, from his hands, fundamentally the same drink: a double espresso blended with varying quantities of milk he steamed and textured in the identical manner. Furthermore, the terms were confusing and meant different things to different people from different places. It was problematic to figure out what each customer’s understanding of a flat white or a cortado was and frustrating when what the barista champion served measured below – or above – each one’s expectations.’ (Via YoungandFoodish, thanks to William Gibson)

[Fighting a small battle against pretension, I have always insisted on ordering my coffee as  ‘small’, ‘medium’ or ‘large’ when I have occasion to patronize a Starbucks.]

Related:

• Cappuccino vs Caffe Latte (savesavesave.blogspot.com)
• Choices (sorted.net.au)
• i wanna be a barista, lalala. (ask.metafilter.com)
• Barista’s “Starbucks Rant” song gets him fired (boingboing.net)

Oh, how I wish I had been pointed to this last week. These are definitely people who know how to have fun with Hallowe’en. (via boing boing)

“Fright night just got a little bit spookier. Pregnant women have their own little trick on Halloween – they seem able to time the delivery of their baby to avoid giving birth on this day.

Rebecca Levy at Yale School of Public Health and colleagues examined 1.8 million US birth records from 1996 to 2006, and found that birth rates dropped by 11.3 per cent on 31 October, when compared with the two-week window surrounding the date. The significant declines in deliveries on Halloween applied to natural births as well as scheduled caesarean and induced births….

Levy suggests that Halloween’s associations with death and evil are in direct contrast with the idea of creating life and may subconsciously affect a woman’s desire to give birth.” (via New Scientist).

Related:

• Are pregnant women refusing to give birth on Halloween? [Pregnancy] (io9.com)
• Do women avoid giving birth on Halloween? (hotair.com)
• Well Blog: Really? The Claim: Holidays Can Affect When Expectant Mothers Deliver (well.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Women Defy Biology to Not Give Birth on Halloween (neatorama.com)
• Move Halloween From October 31st To Last Saturday Of Month? “Today’s Stupid News, In Brief.” [10/26/11] (wirk.radio.com)

Mind Hacks pointed me to this fascinating article from the current issue of The Psychologist, which explores the psychology of horror, why we like to be scared, and whether a greater psychological understanding could even guide horror writers and directors into even scarier territory. I would welcome that, as long as my cardiovascular health can tolerate being frightened out of my wits. I have always been a fan of horror films and relished the feeling of the eerie, but it has been a long time since I have been truly, disquietingly, scared by a movie-viewing experience.

Related:

• Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film Exhibit Opens October 2nd in Seattle (dreadcentral.com)
• What Makes A Good Horror Movie? (somethinsomethin.wordpress.com)
• Why I Write Horror (hoomahmoos.wordpress.com)
• Horror Flicks Done Right – The Asian Way (seesuestitch.wordpress.com)
• This Your Brain On Horror (pinkbananaworld.com)
• The best horror seldom pounces (gregoryhamel.net)

This is from a Padre Island sand-castle sculpting contest. The artist, Carl Jara writes, “Calavera del Toro… depicts Occupy Wall Street in a Day of the Dead satire. Created last weekend at Sand Castle Days in South Padre Island, Texas. A banker and a politician sit comfortably toasting their overflowing champagne flutes to the skull of their recently slain Wall Street bull, draped in a Golden Parachute.” (via Flickr, with thanks to Boing Boing)

“This 2009 video shows off a curiously effective Hallowe’en prank: the pranksters dressed a child-sized mannequin in a skeleton costume, then posed it, holding a candy-bag, in front of houses, rang the bell and ran off. The homeowners opened their door to find a silent, staring, motionless, costumed “child” — creepily clever. ” (via Boing Boing).

When Maryland educator and artist  Hasan Elahi was erroneously flagged as a would-be terrorist and investigated by the FBI, he decided to cooperate and given them all the information they needed to clear himself… and more, much much more. He found that overwhelming them with irrelevant meticulous edtail about your life protects your privacy as well as trying to hide. It sort of reminds me of what some people did to resist the draft in the ’70’s, trying to paralyze and overwhelm the system by sending tons of data, or even bricks, for inclusion in their Selective Service files. Elahi conceived of it as an art project, and more:

 

“What I’m doing is no longer just an art project; creating our own archives has become so commonplace that we’re all — or at least hundreds of millions of us — doing it all the time. Whether we know it or not.” 

(via NYTimes)

Related:

• Helping the FBI Track You (yro.slashdot.org)
• Color Me Unprivileged – Color Me Patriot Acted (thevigilantlens.com)
• Flipping the Script on the FBI With 45,000+ Pieces of Digital Art (mashable.com)

Hilarious Straight Dope column from Cecil Adams.Read to the bottom for one manufacturer’s application instructions. Has any of my readers run across a merkin before? (I had not.) Perhaps you would care to share your experience in the comments? :-P

Related:

Famous merkins on screen

A reprise of my traditional 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:

• Tricks, Treats and Traditions – Some Useful Tips for Hallowe’en (southeasttourguides.co.uk)
• Weighing In on Hallowe’en (4mothers1blog.wordpress.com)
• Preparing for All Hallow’s Eve (sporeflections.wordpress.com)
• OCTOBER FINALE! Hallowe’en! (pm27.wordpress.com)
• Tricksey Treats (jasperlocalfood.wordpress.com)
• Hallowe’en Night divination game. (jenniferlinton.com)
• Hallowe’en Weekend (sporeflections.wordpress.com)