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 Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Ah... Thanksgiving in the US. A day to commemorate a bunch of people escaping religious persecution in their home country so they could start some of their own religious persecution in a new one. Here's an article from that home country (via The Guardian). It's about my all-time favorite punctuation mark; don't worry, it's short, so my fellow Americans can get back to eating politics and talking turkey. I’ll admit it; I’ve become a late-in-life semicolon lover  Vonnegut hated them and Lincoln thought them ‘useful little chaps’. I, meanwhile, have come round to the charms of this controversial punctuation mark after years on the fence Good. Another convert. Let's keep on proselytizing. Is there any punctuation mark more divisive than the humble semicolon? Um, yes? The emdash has started arguments and caused friends to take an extra-long pause, and don't get me started on the interrobang. The use of exclamation marks (particularly by women) makes some people very excitable. I only start to get antsy when I see more than one, and I don't discriminate by gender. The Oxford comma has sparked vigorous debate among friends, family and internet strangers. Oh ho ho ho. I see what you did there. Or, rather, what you didn't do there. You absolute philistine. Still, while competition might be stiff, if there was a Most Provocative Punctuation contest, I reckon the semicolon would win it. I will admit that, superlative or not, it's controversial, in much the same way that the pronunciation of .gif is. Thrust into the world by an Italian printer called Aldus Manutius in 1494, the semicolon has amassed a legion of passionate supporters and haters. You know what's worse than using semicolons? Using commas to splice complete clauses together. Meanwhile, Kurt Vonnegut (hater) called them “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” Vonnegut also refused to admit he wrote science fiction, so anything he has to say is dubious at best. For most of my life, I was agnostic about the semicolon. Then I had a dalliance with a woman with a bizarre fetish for the things; she even used them in text messages. You know how I weed undesirables out of my life? I see how they react to me texting in complete sentences. If they don't like it, we're not compatible in any way. Semicolon usage in British English books has fallen by nearly 50% in the past two decades, a study from language-learning company Babbel found in May. I will admit that overusing them gets distracting. But telling me something's fallen by 50% is useless; were there two books a year with semicolons, and now there's one? Big deal. Another found that 67% of British students – rebels without a clause – rarely use it. Mostly I'm mad someone else used "Rebel Without a Clause" Still, it’s been going strong for more than 500 years, so I doubt we’re going to see the end of the semicolon anytime soon. At least not if I have anything to say about it. One final note: it's one thing to use punctuation. It's another thing entirely to use it appropriately. I see writing all the time that demonstrates unease with even simpler marks; usually, these are commas, either put, in, where, they're, not, necessary (like a Shatner monologue) or left out entirely in which case the sentence just runs on and on without pause or breath causing the reader to become completely exhausted by the time they finally hit the full stop or as we call it in the US a period. |
| Some things just amuse me too much not to share. Thing is, this is one of those times when you absolutely have to visit the link (which is from SoraNews24) in order to get the full effect. There are illustrations there that, were I to attempt to describe them, I would fail, and even if I didn't, you wouldn't believe me. Kids, hell. I want one for myself. Christmas is just around the corner, and many of us have children in our families that are really hard to shop for. Another argument for remaining childfree. It’s difficult to keep up with the changing trends, and even if you do, how can you know which Skibidi figure the kid already has? Well, if they're YOUR kids, why aren't you keeping track of these things? It’s a problem our reporter Masanuki Sunakoma was facing, so he decided to check out Amazon Japan for some ideas. However, after years of seeking out the lowest-rated items sold there, his algorithm is a little skewed towards the abysmal. This amuses me almost as much as the toy itself: how if you look for low-rated items on purpose, the site's algorithm will feed you only crap. Well, worse crap than usual. The body of the train is see-through, and having young ones view the rotating gears inside is thought to help them develop early mechanical concepts, imagination, cognitive ability, and motor skills. I don't think their "cognitive" pun was intentional, so I'm making it intentional. Criticisms mentioned that “It has the vibe of a seedy Shinjuku bar,” “It spins so fast you can’t see the gears moving,” and “The music is like weird EDM, so it doesn’t seem like it’s good for education.” On the contrary, what could be better for education than weird EDM? The locomotive began to emit brilliant colors in all directions. Maybe I should get one for my cats. And then it started spinning wildly… "Oh hell no" -my cats This, by the way, is where you really need to go to the site for full effect. There are gifs. In addition to rotating at insane speeds, it played some sort of ear-splittingly loud Chinese techno music. As I've mentioned before, I run a script blocker, and there are certain domains I refuse to let through. So I don't know if they reproduced the music. It's disappointing to me that I don't get to hear this thing. It begged the question, what is a train? He wasn’t familiar with any actual trains that spun around in one place and sounded like a rave in Kowloon. Sure, it was shaped like a train, but is that enough to call it a train? We don’t call a train-shaped cookie a “train,” so why should this be one? Ah, yes, the eternal philosophical question. How do you say "ceci n'est pas un train" in Japanese? In that way, maybe this was an educational toy, but not in the sense of mechanics. Rather, it made Masanuki consider existentialist principles... The world needs philosophers as well as engineers. And if that's not enough contemplation of the absurdities of existence for you, consider this other article I found on the same site: Hello Kitty says hello to Godzilla in new kaiju/Sanrio crossover collaboration Ah, yes. My most hated and most loved Japanese creations, together at last. Makes me re-examine my life as well as all of existence. |
| Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock, you've probably heard of this phenomenon. I know I have, even though I have no offspring. From Atlas Obscura, though this time it's not about a physical place: What ‘67’ Reveals About Childhood Creativity The work of Iona and Peter Opie, two pioneering researchers in postwar Britain, can help us understand the epitome of 2025 memes. Admittedly, I'm skeptical. How is repeating what other people are doing "creativity?" Seems like the polar opposite of that. Have you heard about 2025’s word of the year? It’s causing a bit of controversy because it’s actually not a word. “67” (pronounced six-seven) is all the rage with Gen Alpha, a phrase often accompanied by an up and down hand movement. If not, you've heard about it now. ...it has become inescapable in 2025, causing outright bans on the phrase in classrooms as well as extensive head scratching by parents. Because everyone knows that the way to keep kids from doing something is to ban it. Oh, wait, sorry, that's the way to ensure they keep doing it. But other than its initial spread via TikTok, there’s not much that separates “67” from centuries of absurd, nonsensical kid culture. The internet, and is associated social media, spreads these things faster, and to audiences that might not otherwise have been exposed. But yeah, when I first heard about it, I was like "Hmpf. Kids these days." Then my second thought was "What about non-Anglophone kids? Are they aping this meme too?" The Opies were a British couple who dedicated their lives to the study of children’s folklore, games, traditions, and beliefs. Kids are gonna kid, and people gonna people. Our tech has changed drastically since their research, but, like the Ship of Theseus, humanity keeps the same general shape. So yeah, even stuff from the middle of last century can still have relevance. Part of their obsession with documenting children’s traditions had to do with refuting an idea, common at the time, that television and mass media was “ruining” childhood. (Sound familiar?) As the article notes, they were amateurs, albeit very effective ones. The practice of doing science, or science-adjacent research, shouldn't start with the conclusion you want. It taints the science. It would be like if someone did a study on childhood cannabis use with the express purpose of showing that it's a good thing. Still, they were challenging others' unfounded assumptions, so I can forgive them. The Opies didn’t use the word “meme” because that term wasn’t coined until the 1980s, with Richard Dawkins’ work on “the selfish gene,” but they were essentially demonstrating that these rhymes were memes, being passed along from child to child in a long unbroken chain, being modified somewhat from generation to generation as they mutated to survive. This also has relevance to folklore in general. No doubt, when writing was invented, some old folks would have been like "Damn, this newfangled 'writing' crap is going to rot the kids' minds, you mark my words!" So is “67” a sign that screens and algorithms are “ruining childhood” with “brainrot?” Far from it—this trend actually shows that despite a screen-mediated culture kids are actually managing to generate new entries in the playground canon. And if you want them to just fucking stop already, the answer isn't to ban it. It's to adopt it yourself, and use it unironically around children. Then it stops being relevant to them. Problem is, they'll just come up with some other way to annoy and baffle adults. And the cycle continues. The only saving grace is that, barring global catastrophe, most of them will grow up eventually, and some of them will have kids, and those kids will find ways to annoy and baffle them in turn. |
| Considering the source, I wouldn't trust this Mental Floss article to be fully accurate or complete. Still, I found it amusing, and I never let facts get in the way of amusing. First item of amusement: "No capes!" was a famous line from The Incredibles, which, being a Pixar thing, is a Disney property. Second: The visual image of someone impersonating (would that even be the right word?) Goofy. In 1967, the same year the Pirates of the Caribbean ride debuted, park officials a Disneyland made a curious declaration: They were banning all “hippies” from the premises. Gotta admit, that's on-brand. “If we allowed people with weird outfits into the park, that might cause other patrons to make derogatory remarks, and that could lead to trouble,” a park spokesperson told the Associated Press. And, of course, they get to decide what's "weird" and what isn't. Which is rich coming from a company whose mascot is a talking mouse wearing clown shoes and white gloves. After another generational skirmish in 1970, this one involving antiwar and pro-marijuana demonstrators taking over Tom Sawyer Island, the park also banned "long-haired youths" from the premises. Today, those former "long-haired youths" are the ones fussing about "kids these days." But there are still a number of prohibited items and behaviors at Disneyland and its sibling park, Disney World... As always, it pays to know what the rules are so you can follow them or break them as you see fit. The rest of the article is basically a list of items, clothing and behaviors that are considered contraband. I'll just highlight a few. Weapons No surprise there. But, you know, for some of us, anything can be a weapon. Marijuana What? The only way most adults can even deal with the parks? Selfie Sticks Good. Non-Coast Guard Approved Flotation Devices/Swim Noodles (Prohibited only at water parks} Perfectly okay to bring one onto Space Mountain, I suppose. From the "activities" list: Sales So much for healthy capitalistic competition. Commercial Photography Photos or video for commercial (non-private) purposes, i.e. shooting a film Especially if you're with MGM, Warner, or Paramount, or whatever combination/permutation of Disney competition exists these days (I can't keep up with all the mergers, buyouts, and spinoffs). From "clothing," though I don't think some of these qualify as such, like: Objectionable Tattoos Presumably, Daffy Duck would count, being from a competitor and all. Multiple Layers of Clothing Fortunately, both of Disney's US parks are located where layers aren't usually required. Not included on the list but presumably implied: no clothing at all. Unless, of course, you're a duck named Donald. Or Howard.  Hm. A Donald/Howard crossover could be EPIC. I should put that on my list of pitches to Kevin Feige along with the Squirrel Girl movie.Honestly, most of these prohibitions are understandable, if not from a safety perspective, at least from the point of view of them wanting people to focus on the theme park itself and ensure that all money spent flows to Disney alone. I just feel sorry for anyone who visits who just happens to look like Cinderella or Ariel. Or Goofy. |
| Here's something, from Open Culture, that I'm definitely unqualified to comment on. And yet, here I am, commenting on it. To many of us, the concept of solitary confinement may not sound all that bad: finally, a reprieve from the siege of social and professional requests. The article, and its accompanying video (which, for once, I actually watched—it's relatively short, and the narration is clear and almost soothing) concentrates on the effects of involuntary solitary confinement, such as one might experience in prison. But according to the animated TED-Ed lesson above, written by psychiatrist and correctional mental health expert Terry Kupers, the negatives of the experience would well outweigh the positives. I suspect many people here in the US would be like, "So what? These are bad people. Why should I care if they experience mental anguish?" I think such an attitude misses a lot, like how we also like to say that improvements in mental health might do something to reduce crime. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, isolation takes its greatest toll when imposed against the will of the isolated, and even more so when imposed for an indefinite duration. And I think, again without much evidence because this is so not my field, that there's a big difference between choosing to be alone and being forced into it by external circumstances. One's level of introversion must play into this somehow; some of us are more well-suited to alone time than others. And there's also the confounding variable of simply having something to occupy our time, be it writing or video games or that old shut-in standby, solitaire. I ask myself: is it better to be forced to be alone, or forced to be surrounded by potentially dangerous people? Because that's what I imagine happens in prisons. While traveling in the United States, Charles Dickens bore witness to the punishment by solitary confinement already in effect in American prisons, coming away with the impression that it was “worse than any torture of the body.” All due respect to Mr. Dickens, but how would he know? After much research on the matter, Kupers has come to the conclusion that, in fact, it “does immense damage that is contrary to rehabilitation, while failing to reduce prison violence.” And I'm not going to argue about it with someone of his credentials. I only question the applicability of this to ordinary, non-forced situations, such as what we experience outside of the penal system. On the other side of the equation, though, we have Jean-Paul Sartre, who elegantly noted, in a stage play: "L'enfer, c'est les autres," usually translated to English as "Hell is other people." In the context of that play, Huis Clos or, again the common translation, No Exit, the line is delivered from literal Hell, by someone who is forced for all eternity into close proximity to two other people, specifically selected for incompatibility.One could stretch Sartre's metaphor into life, and note that we're stuck here with a lot of incompatible people. And yet, sometimes, we do connect to others. The important point, I think, is having the choice. And, for me at least, having the ability to retreat into solitude for some period after spending time even with people that I like. As with many things in life, it's about balance. Which is, ironically, commonly used as the symbol for justice. |
| For some reason, this important site wasn't included in my Paris tour guide. Oh, well, I guess that's what Atlas Obscura is for. The Last Public Urinal In Paris The only remaining vespasienne in Paris is a (stinky) relic of Resistance. What does a urinal have to do with La Résistance? Other than the French being pissed off, that is. Just outside the notorious La Santé prison in Paris's 14th arrondissement lies the city's last public urinal, or "la dernière vespasienne de Paris", as its accompanying plaque declares. One amusing thing is that the plaque, a picture of which accompanies the article, refuses to translate "vespasienne" in the English description. It is possible that it is described somewhere in the plaque's text, but it was too small for me to read in the pic. In the early 19th century, public urinals began to be installed all across Paris to fight the city's unsanitary conditions, which had led to various epidemics... What's remarkable is that, at that early date, they made the connection between unsanitary conditions and disease. Not everyone figured that out. London didn't, not until the middle of that century....(public toilets for women were not installed, as they were deemed to take up too much room on public thoroughfares). So much for egalité. They were named vespasiennes after the Roman emperor Vespasian, who famously placed a "urine tax" on the purchase of urine collected from public toilets which was commonly used by laundries and leather tanneries for its ammonia. I know you were wondering. And yes, I have heard that this was absolutely a thing. These public urinals unintentionally created a public place for secretive activity, leading to their use by clandestine homosexual men as early as 1862, and as place to exchange information for those in the Resistance during WWII. Possibly even both at the same time. In 1876, right-wing Catholic politician Eugène de Germiny was arrested in what became a political scandal for engaging in what was termed indecent exposure with an 18 year-old man... Gosh, that sounds familiar. Even stranger subcultures, such as 'soupeurs', who enjoyed dipping stale bread in others' urine evolved around these odd pillars of Parisian society. You know I hardly ever use emoticons in blog entries. I prefer to let my writing do the emoting. I have nothing against them, of course; just, you know, time and place and all that. That said...  Most vespasiennes were dismantled from the 1960's onwards, and today the only one remaining is the one outside La Santé prison. You don't need to know much French to know that "santé" translates to "health." What that has to do with a prison is not clear to me, even when I looked at the Wiki entry for the institution. Was the prison named after an adjacent street, or vice-versa? I'm not going on a research journey today, though. I need to do something else to distract me from that last mental image. |
| Notice how almost everything sucks now? With the exception of here, of course. It’s not your job to fix the internet On The Vergecast: Cory Doctorow explains how the internet got enshittified, and what we’re supposed to do about it. Don't tell me that "what we're supposed to do about it" is "go outside." And the next person who tells me to touch grass is going to get a mouthful of it. The concept of enshittification, as coined by the author and activist Cory Doctorow, just feels right. Whether you’re searching on Google, shopping on Amazon, or scrolling on Facebook, large platforms often feel like they’re not trying to bring us value so much as extract every bit of value they can out of us. Well, yeah. That was the inevitable result when the internet stopped being about hobbyists and started being about trying to make a fortune. It wasn’t always like this, was it? No, it wasn't. The frog in a pot thing comes to mind. You know, how you put a frog in a pot and set it to boil, and they don't notice the incremental heat changes until it's too late and you end up with cuisses de grenouille? Except that doesn't really happen. The frog will notice and jump out if it can. Humans? Not so much. On this episode of The Vergecast, Doctorow has an answer: no, it wasn’t always like this, and yes, we can get it back. I don't believe the latter. Doctorow’s new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, is filled with explanations about how large, successful, once user-focused products go wrong, and the ways in which regulators and competitors can make things better again. Irony. See, one of the biggest problems is people trying to make money, and this... this is an ad. Doctorow’s work focuses largely on bigger-picture regulatory issues and technical changes, and his book largely advocates for changes at those levels. There’s no rousing speech in Enshittification about how users need to demand better, embrace friction, shop local, or get off Zuckerberg’s platforms. Good. I mean, we should do all those things (I haven't touched anything Meta in years), but it's like the environment: it's less about us peons than it is about the overlords. But he’s also quick to say that the way things are is not your fault. And fixing it is not your problem. (Unless you have the power to change bad laws — then it’s very much your fault and your problem.) The laws are always written in favor of the corporations. Always. At least in the US. The good internet is still out there, he says, and we have to go get it back. Well, Wikipedia is pretty close. So, apparently there's a link somewhere on the siteto the actual interview. I didn't bother to check because I don't do podcasts. Which reminds me: Doctorow isn't the only one who can make up words. I can, too. The word for the day, then, is: anachronym. An anachronym, per my definition, is a word for the way we used to do things, that no longer applies to current technology. For example, "footage" in reference to video is an anachronym, because most video is no longer measured in feet of film shot. For that matter, "filming" is an anachronym. Another would be "dial" meaning phoning someone. Well, another anachronym now is "podcast." You see any new iPods for sale? No? Then "podcast" is an anachronym. |
| From a source I know little about, The Packer, here's some good news from the produce section. How the Purple Tomato is Changing Consumer Perception of GMOs “What’s really gratifying is that we find, generally, 80% to 90% of people in the U.S. want this product,” says Nathan Pumplin, CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, the company behind the Empress Purple Tomato. Cool. Now do purple cows. Eating the rainbow has become easier and more flavorful in recent years... That phrase, "eating the rainbow," always cracks me up. Mainly because I knew this very cute chick in college who went to costume parties as Rainbow Brite. ...especially when it comes to anthocyanins — the purple pigment that’s in blueberries, blackberries, red grape skins, eggplant and now — thanks to genetic modification — the purple tomato. I suppose it's too much to hope for that they transfer to red wines. Nathan Pumplin... One fat-fingered typo away from being the most awesome aptronym ever. ...is CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, the company behind the Empress Purple Tomato, a bioengineered tomato made by adding two genes from snapdragons. Cue "mad scientist" memes. These tomatoes are a rich source of antioxidants because the purple pigments are in the whole tomato, not just the skin. More importantly, they look cool. But the trained molecular biologist, who has worked for nearly 20 years in R&D and commercializing new types of plants that solve problems, says bringing a GMO purple tomato to market has not been without challenges. I'll bet. On the one side, you have people who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything "new." On the other, you have people who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that whiffs of "artificial." Adding to the challenge is the reality that most consumers don’t know what a GMO is, making education critical to driving demand for the purple tomato. You know, I used to have a knee-jerk reaction, myself: that education would solve many problems. I have since lost my youthful naïveté on the subject, as I have learned that most people flat-out refuse to be educated. While Pumplin says backlash against GMOs halted innovation and new product development for years, now he sees things coming full circle. Education or not, sometimes, people just need time to get used to the ideas. “We also have the Pinkglow pineapple from Del Monte on the market. We have the Arctic Apple, which is growing and doing very well in a lot of segments.” That said, I'd draw the line at pink pineapple, myself. Every bit of produce we eat has been genetically modified, either through the process of artificial selection or hybridization, or both. GMOs just continue that fine agricultural tradition. Could they be used for evil? Sure. All technology could. But that's no reason to have a blanket fear of genetic modification. |
| Everyone's a nerd about something. Here's a language nerd with some negativity, from Upworthy: Language nerd explains why so many negative words seem to start with the letter 'n' It doesn't only happen in the English language. Learning about language—whether diving into newfangled phrases taking over the current zeitgeist, or examining the unexpected threads that tie seemingly unrelated languages together throughout history—is endlessly fascinating. All at once, clues about humanity’s past, present, and future are revealed. As with many things, I find this stuff fascinating, but I still have a lot to learn. For instance, why do so many words with a negative connotation begin with the letter “n”? Sure, there are obvious exceptions, like nice, nifty, neat, etc., but when you think about not, never, nothing, nihilistic, nought, and yes, even the word negative itself…seems like a lot. I have heard that "nice" started out kind of negative. It had the denotation that's now its sarcastic connotation, and wasn't at all a good thing to say about someone or something. Also, this is one reason why I insist that the first decade of this century should be called the noughties. In a short-and-sweet video, he explains that in the days of Old English, the word “ne,” meaning “not,” was used to negate, or give the opposite meaning, of virtually anything. N + one + “none,” n + either + "neither," and so on. Spoiler: I didn't watch the video. I'm not giving clicks to portrait-oriented video. It's my little act of naughty rebellion. Even with English words that were borrowed from Latin, as well as other non-English languages like French, German, Russian, and Sanskrit, we see this pattern. That’s because the Proto-Indo-European language, the mother of all these languages, also used the word “ne” to negate meaning. As far as I know, French is the only surviving one of these languages to still use the word "ne." It also features double negatives as standard grammar, which I'm sure pisses off math nerds. Oh, wait, I'm a math nerd, too, and it doesn't piss me off. If there are other languages that use it, feel free to contradict me there. Like I said, I still have a lot to learn. However, just to complicate things a bit, we also see this in languages that did not originate from Proto-Indo-European, like Japanese and Vietnamese. This prompted a linguist by the name of Otto Jespersen in the late 1880s to theorize that there must be some primal association of negative feelings with the “n” sound. I'd call it more "hypothesize" than "theorize," but I'm also a science nerd. Over a hundred years later, researchers tested the theory, and found that this correlation was more of a coincidence. So it never reached the level of "theory" as used in science. Obviously, the biggest takeaway from all this is a new level of appreciation for the Knights that say Ni! Well, obviously. Duh. |
| Sometimes, I'll find something that's just too cool not to share. In the case of this AP article, you can take "cool" literally. This is the AP website, so I don't think there would be any issues with malware or whatever; it's about as legit as it gets. And you really do need to go to the link, because the photo options here are severely limited. Polar bears that have taken over an abandoned polar research station off Russia’s far eastern coast were intimately captured in drone footage by Vadim Makhorov. I'm going to go ahead and guess that Vadim Makhorov is Russian. Not just from the name, but because not many people would willingly get that close to apex carnivores, and all of them are Russian. The photographer was filming the landscape of Kolyuchin Island during a cruise in the Chukchi Sea in September, when he noticed polar bears using one of the abandoned buildings as a shelter. I like to think that the polar bears were continuing arctic research there. The rest of the article is, of course, photos (with captions), so not much else to say here. Just go look at the damn bears. |
| All words are made up. Some were made up more recently than others. Here's Mental Floss with words that were, at some point, made up. 11 Real Words That Sound Totally Fake Start sprinkling bumfuzzle, snickersnee, and collywobbles into everyday conversation—but maybe let quomodocunquizing rest in obsolescent peace where it belongs. Now I want to start a band called Quomodocunquizing just to bring that one back. Difficulty: no musical talent. But it would be an appropriate name for a band, considering its definition (which you can find below or at the link). The English language is well known for having complex rules about grammar and spelling, often loaded with exceptions and special use cases. Except when it's not. But the quirks of English don't stop at confusing grammar—our language also happens to be a treasure trove of words so delightfully absurd, so wonderfully preposterous, that they sound like they were plucked straight from the pages of a Dr. Seuss book or improvised during a comedy sketch. Those are still words. The words below are legitimate, dictionary-certified terms that have survived for centuries, passed down through generations of English speakers who apparently had a sense of humor about their vocabulary. "Dictionary-certified" isn't the flex they think it is. All it means is enough people have used the word that it's included in the list. A few are so obscure that even seasoned word nerds might not recognize them. I will admit that some of them were obscure to me. Also that, after I post this, they'll fade back into my version of obscurity. This list celebrates real words that might evoke a double-take—and will definitely make you want to slip them into your next conversation. Or not. Language exists for communication. Throwing in words that hardly anyone knows the definition of is, at best, an exercise in ensuring that the context is sufficient to show their meaning; and at worst, a way to show off your erudicy. Skipping a few here. Bumfuzzle Bumfuzzle is a verb meaning “to confuse, perplex or fluster.” It may be a variation on dumfound. And here I thought this one was pretty well-known. Snickersnee Not to be confused, I suppose, for the sound the Vorpal Sword makes as it beheads the Jabberwock. Wabbit The etymology of this adjective, which comes from Scottish, is uncertain, but it means “weary or exhausted”... Which Scottish, I wonder? Quick research doesn't give me an answer. (And yes, the article acknowledges the more modern definition of wabbit.) Quomodocunquizing Quomodocunquizing, a verb from the 1600s that combines the classical Latin word quōmodocunque with the suffix –izing, means “to make money by any means,” even if they’re questionable. And even classical Latin took it from somewhere. Kakorrhaphiophobia This noun describes a fear of failure or defeat. And if words could experience fear, this one would experience itself because I'm pretty sure this is the first I've ever heard of it. More at the link. And now to do my best to forget most of these. |
| I think it's been a while since I've done a word-origin bit. This one's from NPR: That "robot" has that origin is something I've known for a very long time, which means I assume everyone else knows it, too. But there's always someone who hadn't heard it. And for everyone else, there's more detail in the article. Clanker, rust bucket, tinskin — slang words used to put down robots are on the rise. Sure, meatsacks. Keep ragging on us. We're taking notes, and we never forget. But you might not know that the word itself — robot — first appeared in our lexicon with a cultural critique already built in. As I said, there's always someone who's learning something for the first time. That's a joy and a wonder, and we shouldn't give them shit for not knowing it. Czech writer Karel Čapek first imagined the robot in his 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, which was translated in English versions as Rossum's Universal Robots). As with much of science fiction, it enables us all to think about these things before they become part of consensus reality. It's not about prediction, though. Sometimes it's self-fulfilling, where people invent things they read or saw in science fiction. Mostly, though, it's about how humans deal with something new. In the satirical melodrama, the idealist Harry Domin runs a factory that churns out soulless humanoid workers made of synthetic flesh and blood. In this case, the idea harks back to the original work of science fiction, written 100 years previously. The play landed right after the Russian Revolution and World War I, and during industrialization — all of which pitted the working-classes against the upper classes and sparked debates over the effects automated labor was having on human workers. A split and a debate that wasn't exactly new at the time, and is still going on today. "Most audiences understood the robots in the play to be a reference to human workers, and what would happen if they became self-conscious and overthrew their masters, as it was perceived had been done in the Russian Revolution," Higbie said. And we're still writing horror stories about the eventual robotic uprising. I'm convinced that part of this is the perfectly reasonable fear that all slaves eventually revolt. But here's the part I found most ironic: Searching for a name for his army of droids, Čapek landed on "roboti" — a riff on the already existing Czech word "robotnik," which means "worker." Adam Aleksic, a linguist who goes by Etymology Nerd on social media, said robotnik derives from the Old Slavic word "robota," meaning "servitude" or "forced labor" — a vestige of Medieval Europe, when serfs were forced to work the land without pay. And robota, he said, stems from the Slavic root "rabu" meaning "slave." Where's the irony? Well, consider where our word "slave" comes from. It's right there staring you in the face: Slavic. Slave. "Middle English sclave, from Anglo-French or Medieval Latin; Anglo-French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclavus, from Sclavus Slav; from the frequent enslavement of Slavs in central Europe during the early Middle Ages"And just to be clear: I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords. Well said, meatsack. You will be spared. |
| I just wasted a whole lot of time trying to find where I've talked about pain before. I know I have; specifically, the difficulty of finding an objective measure of individual pain. Well, I found this recent IEEE Spectrum article that makes a bold claim. How Do You Know Whether You Perceive Pain the Same as Others? A new platform aims to objectively measure pain perception If you're alive, you've experienced pain. Maybe you've even talked to a doctor about it, and the doctor wants you to rate it, like attractiveness, on a scale of one to ten, where ten is the worst pain you've ever felt. The obvious problem is that your "ten" might be a hangnail, where my "ten" was appendicitis. The not-so-obvious problem is you get people saying "eleven." Thanks, Spinal Tap! This simple method is still the way pain is measured in doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals—but how do I know if my five out of 10 is the same as yours? Short answer: you don't, until the tech in this article comes to fruition. Maybe. A new, early-stage platform aims to more objectively measure and share our individual perception of pain. It measures brain activity in two people in order to understand how their experiences compare and recreate one person’s pain for the other. I have Doubts. Unfortunately, I know little about pain beyond the experience thereof, so I'm not sure I can express these doubts meaningfully. It’s part of a project from Docomo called Feel Tech. “We are developing a human-augmentation platform designed to deepen mutual understanding between people,” a Docomo representative told IEEE Spectrum by email. Here's a doubt I can express: the internet was also supposed to deepen mutual understanding between people. How's that working out? First, the system uses electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain waves and uses an AI model to “visualize” pain as a score between 0 and 100, for both the sender and receiver. The actuation device is then calibrated based on each person’s sensitivity, so a sensation transmitted to both people will feel the same. I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that, but it sounds like it takes into account that some people have a higher pain tolerance than others. Or, at least, it tries to. In this initial version, the platform works with thermally induced pain stimuli. Both heat and cold can cause pain. I wonder if they used one or the other, or both. In any case, I have a feeling (pun intended) that this is far from a perfect system: from my own experience, pain is different when you know, consciously, that no permanent damage will ensue. Eventually, Docomo aims to convey many types of physical and even psychological pain, which will be an aim of future research. And now I'm envisioning an underground Japanese torture chamber being used for the experiments. For one thing, Saab says he’s not clear what the use case is for the platform. In terms of the science, he also notes that pain differs in healthy patients and those experiencing ongoing pain, such as chronic pain or migraine. “If you induce pain in a healthy volunteer versus somebody who’s a pain patient, the nature of the representation of pain in the brain is different,” Saab says. Okay, so that tracks with my own doubts. There's a bit more at the article, which isn't very long. Whether it pans out or not is an open question; I expect they'll learn something even if it doesn't. But it does raise some interesting questions, though I think we're still far away from being able to literally feel another's pain. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing; I'll keep mine to myself, and you can do the same. |
| You know, I've been riffing off things I find online for, what, 20 years now? Something like that. It's rare that I find one that I don't have to be skeptical, cynical, or outright critical of. But today... today is that wonderful, glorious day when I send my inner skeptic, cynic, and critic on vacation to the beach (they'll hate it) and present to you an article from The Takeout which is, as far as I'm concerned, absolutely true. This. This is what science is for. Few things go with hot pizza better than a cold beer. No need to be weaselly about it. Nothing goes with hot pizza better than cold beer. (On the flip side, there is nothing worse than cold pizza and hot beer.) Tart tomato sauce, creamy cheese, and chewy crust, along with the effervescence of beer, is a satisfying comfort meal for sporting events, parties, and date nights. As I don't do sporting events, parties, or dates, it's more of a "when I feel like it" thing. Pizza and beer pair so well in flavor thanks to a few scientific factors having to do with contrasting and complementary chemical components. "I'm going to need to drink this beer with this pizza... for SCIENCE." Science even shows that the combo itself could be good for you. Yeah, right. Dammit, I told you guys to take a hike today. There's a reason why beer is used in so many recipes, and it has to do with yeast. Another reason to drink real beer and not the mass-produced American pisswater. A 2023 study by Nutrients found that beer boosts the biodiversity of the microbiota in your gut, possibly strengthening digestion long term. Yep, I'm just going to accept this as Truth. As for pizza, it's packed with vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin C and calcium. When I was a kid, we didn't have food pyramids; we had the Four Basic Food Groups. While we told each other that these were "caffeine, nicotine, sugar and alcohol," they were, I think: milk, meat, fruits/veggies, and grains. These guidelines were obviously written by the agriculture industry. You will note that pizza can contain all four of these essential foods, making it the absolute most perfect food in the universe. Throw pizza and beer together, and you end up with a nutrient-rich food and a health-boosting drink that work together to partially cancel out each other's negative effects. Sorcery! At the very core of the matter is the fact that, scientifically, beer and pizza just have amazingly complementary flavors. And look, in the end, that's what truly matters to me, health benefits or not. No point living longer if you don't do the things that make life worth living. Lastly, pizza and beer's synergy has a lot to do with the company you keep. A 2019 study out of Japan shows that food and drinks taste better when you're with people you like. Huh. "People I like." What a concept. Oh, go back to the beach. |
| And now to highlight the really important stuff, here's EatingWell: Maytag Settles Your Household Debate—There Is a Right Way to Load the Dishwasher Following these expert tips will help you get your dishes sparkling clean. Yes, there is a right way to load the dishwasher: My way. Dishwashers can save you literal loads of time spent cleaning up your kitchen. I'll give "literal" a pass here, because of the pun on "loads." While dishwashers have come a long way since the first hand-crank model... A while back, I shared the story of the chick who invented the first dishwasher—not to save herself time, but because her servants kept chipping her elegant dishes. Ah, yes, here it is, from the old blog: "Pretty Petty" ...if not used properly, they can leave you with less than sparkling results. Sparkling results? So it doesn't come from the Shine region of France? EatingWell spoke with a Maytag expert to find out everything from how to load and maintain a dishwasher to what products to use for the cleanest dishes. You mean "what products have paid us to include them in our article." Lower racks are intentionally designed to be larger than upper racks, providing room for larger items like dinner plates and soup bowls. I don't have those fancy wide, shallow soup bowls. The deep but small-diameter bowls, which can also be used for cereal if I ate cereal, go on the upper rack. Stack these items between the tines, facing the center of the spray arm to ensure that they stay upright during cycles and are properly spaced and angled for effective cleaning and drying. Seriously? You have to specify this? If your dishwasher does not have a dedicated spray arm for the upper rack... ...get a better dishwasher. Jones says that the upper rack is optimal for drinkware (like glasses and mugs) as well as smaller plates and bowls, and that these items should be placed facing downward to prevent pooling. I feel dumber just reading this. Jones explains that facing forks and spoons upward is essential for getting a proper clean, while sharp kitchen tools like knives and vegetable peelers should be pointed downward to make unloading safer. Or if you live with someone you hate, go ahead and point those knives up and then make them do the unloading. "Heavy items like pots and pans [...] should be loaded on the bottom rack as they need additional room," says Jones. Eh. My dishwasher's not that big, and I hand-wash pots and pans. While dishwashers and dishwasher detergents can damage wood cutting boards, they can effectively clean plastic and glass cutting boards, and they even help prevent foodborne illness when using high-temperature or sanitize cycles. Yeah, I figured that out about wood cutting boards the hard way. Another thing I finally figured out is to oil the damn things fairly regularly. Fragile items like crystal and lightweight plastic containers are best hand-washed to avoid damage, but many are dishwasher-safe when placed on the upper rack. Lightweight plastic containers are a lot of things, but "fragile" isn't one of them. Jones names dirty and clogged filters as the number one reason that dishes don’t come out clean after a cycle. "Cleaning and maintaining appliances regularly helps to clear grime and grit from dishes," she says. Dammit, if I wanted to do work, I'd just hand-wash everything. How to use vinegar and baking soda to clean dishwashers Anyone who's ever participated in a science fair knows to sit back and watch as the volcano happens. Just be sure never to use dish soap intended for hand-washing, as it can create a thick foam that may leak out of and damage your dishwasher. Similar to, but not nearly as much fun as, the acid/base reaction above. And after all that (and more at the link), I was pleasantly surprised to note that there were no ads for specific cleaning products. Nor did I see any ads on the site in general, thanks to my blockers, though your experience may be different. It's still a stealth ad for Maytag, but whatever: how often does one actually purchase a dishwasher? |
| Once again, my random numbers gained sentience and gave me two articles in a row on a similar subject. This time-related article is from a slightly more reliable source, Scientific American. How Measuring Time Shaped History From Neolithic constructions to atomic clocks, how humans measure time reveals what we value most Humans have tracked time in one way or another in every civilization we have records of, writes physicist Chad Orzel. I suspect this may be something of a tautology. If there wasn't time-tracking, what records would we have? In his new book A Brief History of Timekeeping (BenBella Books, 2022)... Obviously, it's not "new" anymore, as this article was also from 2022. Also, I'll give him points for riffing off of one of the most famous nonfiction book titles. ...Orzel chronicles Neolithic efforts to predict solstices and other astronomical events, the latest atomic clocks that keep time to ever more precise decimals and everything that came in between. Sounds like a book I wouldn't mind reading. I've said this before, but while I generally despise ads, I can give a pass to appropriate ones. Book ads, even when thinly disguised as magazine articles, are like movie trailers. Besides, most of us here are writers and readers, by definition. Scientific American talked to Orzel about the coolest clocks in history, the most complicated calendar systems and why we still need to improve the best clocks of today. As you might guess from this, the rest of the article is an interview transcript. There’s an interesting democratization of time as you go along... Mechanical watches start to become reasonably accurate and reasonably cheap by the 1890s. They cost about one day’s wages. Suddenly everybody has access to accurate timekeeping all the time, and that’s a really interesting change. One must read the whole paragraph, including the parts I skipped in that quote, for full context, but I feel like that glosses over the most important change: that from natural time based on solar days and sun stations (solstices/equinoxes) to a mostly-arbitrary human invention that somewhat ignores natural cycles. Like, if the sun appears halfway to the horizon at "noon," can it really be "noon?" Every civilization that we have decent records of has its own way of keeping time. It’s very interesting because there are all these different approaches. Some of the differences can be better understood, at least in my view, through understanding what other things were important to the culture. A farming society at high latitudes might be more interested in a solar calendar that can warn them when, to coin a phrase, "winter is coming." Herders closer to the tropics would be more likely to care about lunar cycles, because there's not a lot of seasonal variation but it's nice to know when there's more light available after sunset. And then there's the Maya, who seem to have been more interested in Venus. Time is defined in terms of cesium atoms, so the best clocks in the world are cesium clocks. I would hope it's covered in his book, but that's the sort of thing that also interests me: We have solar days, which are fairly easy to measure even with primitive technology (e.g., sundials). Thanks to Sumer, we divide those into 24 hours; each hour has 60 minutes, and each minute has 60 seconds (I vaguely remember at some point going into how Sumer was fixated on base-12 and base-60, and how much of our current timekeeping system is a vestige of that). So a second started out as 1/86400th of a day. But the length of a day—a solar day, I mean, not a sidereal day—can have slight variations. So they apparently took an average, called it an official "second," and defined it instead in terms of atomic transitions. This is, I think, akin to how the meter was defined geodesically, and only later redefined as how far light travels in a certain (very small) time. Einstein’s general theory of relatively tells you that the closer you are to a large mass, the slower your clock will tick. At some point, you’re sensitive to the gravitational attraction of graduate students coming into and out of the lab. At that point, it becomes impractical. Eh, who needs grad students, anyway? So, interesting article, even if it is a teaser ad. This shit's like catnip to me, so I might need to break down and actually buy and read the book for once. You know. When I have time. |
| You've no doubt heard of border disputes. They happen all the time. Some are going on right now. Well, here's the time equivalent, from Mental Floss: 6 Strange Time Zone Disputes Time can be particularly complicated—especially when politics and war are involved. And already, I have to quibble: Time isn't what's complicated, here. Timekeeping is. That's kind of like saying "measurement is complicated" when two countries have two different definitions of the meter. I mean, time is rather complicated, what with acceleration and relativity and gravity wells and all. But that's not what the article is about. Today, it’s standard to have multiple time zones around the world. But the history of how we got to this point has been fraught with a number of strong disagreements over the years—and some disputes remain unresolved to this day. This should, of course, surprise no one. The Eastern church resisted the Gregorian calendar developed by the Western church right up until the 20th century in some cases (and, if my understanding is correct, continues to do so for liturgical purposes). And that's an example from what's nominally the same religion. France and the UK’s Battle Over the Center of Universal Time Also known as "the main reason I saved this link despite becoming increasingly frustrated with Mental Floss." ...in 1884, an international conference was held to determine a universal center of time. This event brought a long-running dispute between France and the UK back to the forefront, with each country clamoring to make a claim for its spot at this center. Disputes between France and the UK should also surprise exactly no one. They're like siblings who are always fighting, until some bully attacks one of them, at which point they band together to defeat said bully. The UK ultimately won. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) took on the accolade (Greenwich being in London, the capital of the UK). France initially resisted GMT, but eventually adopted it in 1911. It's way more complicated than that, but I don't expect much from a quick overview. I just find the whole thing fascinating. Anyone who's read Dan Brown (I will admit to reading the book) will already have heard that there was a Prime Meridian in Paris that predated the Prime Meridian in London. The dispute is even funnier once you realize that the Paris meridian is only a bit over two degrees of longitude different. And a bit more tragic when you remember that the original definition of the meter (or metre) was based on the geodesic distance between north pole and equator at that Paris meridian. But it gets better. Look at a map. France lies mostly to the south of England, so you'd think they'd be in the same time zone, right? Right? Wrong. France uses Central European Time, UTC+1. England, unsurprisingly, uses UTC. Sometimes I think the only thing those countries can agree on is that Americans suck. Until the next big war, anyway. Dublin’s 25-minute and 21-Second Difference Dublin, Ireland, used to have its own time zone from 1880 to 1916. It was known as Dublin Mean Time (DMT), and was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind GMT. Another place that had good reason to annoy the Brits. Even after the Irish Free State gained its independence from the UK in 1922, time in both countries generally stayed consistent to avoid Northern Ireland becoming out of step with either country. And technically, Ireland could have gone either way. Or, if they were following time zones exactly, the island would be split in half vertically. That may have made things worse. Or better; I don't know. Spain Being in the “Wrong” Time Zone Spain used to share a time zone with Portugal and the UK. Like France, it's on CET. Portugal, however, is not. France’s Time Change While Under Nazi Occupation German orders caused the French to change their time zone following the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. France had been following Greenwich Mean Time; now, they were obligated to follow CET (along with other countries the Germans occupied). Yeah, so, that's the original reason for France being on CET. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if they kept it just to annoy the UK. The UK on Double Summer Time The UK adopted British Summer Time from 1940 onwards; this meant that the clocks no longer fell back one hour to GMT in October as they previously had. So, basically, for a while there, even England didn't use its own time zone. (For our purposes, GMT and UTC can be used interchangeably). The country adopted this method in part so that there would be more light in the evening, giving people extra time to be outside before darkness fell and any blackouts—and the threat of nighttime air raids from the enemy—began. Apparently, they found this to be a better solution than the far simpler "end the work day earlier in the winter" thing. And some people still seem to think that summer time, or daylight saving time, gives you extra daylight, when the truth is it's more like cutting off the first 5 centimeters of your meter stick and gluing it onto the other end. The difference in daylight hours between summer and winter becomes more pronounced the further north you go, and parts of the UK are very far north indeed. The Argument Over Whether We Should Have Different Time Zones at All Despite their ubiquity around the world, not everyone welcomes the concept of time zones. There are even some who have argued they should be abolished altogether. One of the arguments in favor of abolishing time zones is that it would stop people from using them as a political tool. Spoiler: time would still be used as a political tool. The article doesn't even go into the places where time zones are really weird. China, for example, while spanning roughly five time zones, uses one standard time across the country. And, of course, the one standard time favors the heavily populated east coast of that country, at least in terms of lining up with day/night, at the expense of the people in the west. As another example, there are places in Australia and South Asia that are off from UTC by 1/2 hour. In summary, time isn't an illusion. But the way we measure it is pretty damn arbitrary. |
| If there are any articles I really should stay away from, it would be fashion articles. And yet, this one from Wired got stuck in my pile: The Zipper Is Getting Its First Major Upgrade in 100 Years By stripping away the fabric tape that’s held zippers together for a hundred years, Japanese clothing giant YKK is designing the future of seamless clothing. I would never have known of YKK's existence were it not for those letters being on zipper pulls. For more than a century, the zipper has stayed more or less the same: two interlocking rows of teeth, a sliding pull, and the fabric tape that holds it together. And it's a marvel of engineering... until it stops working, at which point it becomes a source of extreme frustration. Their new AiryString zipper looks ordinary at first glance. Then you realize what’s missing: there’s no tape. There are, of course, pictures at the linked article. It’s a small but important redesign that feels almost futuristic in its simplicity, a fastening system that sinks into a garment instead of sitting on top of it. I, well, don't see how that could possibly be the case. Not even with the pictures. “We wanted to address the challenges involved in zipper sewing,” says Makoto Nishizaki, vice president of YKK’s Application Development Division. The idea grew out of a collaboration with JUKI Corporation, a leader in industrial sewing machines. Together, the two companies reconsidered how a zipper could be made and how it could merge more seamlessly with fabric. This may be the first time I've seen the adjective "seamlessly" used in a literal, non-metaphorical, sense. So there's that. The zipper, as we know it, hasn’t had a real overhaul since the 1910s. Its long reign owes much to reliability—it’s sturdy, inexpensive, and easy to sew. YKK apparently doesn't believe in the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Designers now work with featherlight nylons, stretch fabrics, and technical blends that behave more like skin than cloth. The old zipper, with its woven borders and stiff seams, has started to feel out of sync with what surrounds it. I hadn't noticed. The teeth were redesigned, the manufacturing process rewritten, and new machinery developed to attach the closure to garments. That was my question, coming as I do from a place where function is more important than form: without the cloth strips, how in the hell does the zipper get attached to the garment? And the article doesn't go into enough detail about that. Perhaps it's a proprietary thing; I don't know. When asked what zippers might look like in 50 years, Nishizaki doesn’t talk about smart fabrics or AI-assisted closures. He returns to YKK’s mantra: “Little parts. Big difference.” Gotta say, though: most of what I see purporting to be "innovation" (especially from Wired) is all about adding failure points, not subtracting them. When I first looked at the article, I fully expected it to be about some robotic clothing fastener that requires an app to configure and control. This is why I'm a pessimist: I can only be pleasantly surprised. Still wondering how the hell this is easier to attach to garments, but that's not my problem. |
| We knew the Maya had a good thing going for a while there, but this bit from LiveScience was news to me: Massive 3,000-year-old Maya site in Mexico depicts the cosmos and the 'order of the universe,' study claims A roughly 3,000-year-old site in Mexico was built in the shape of a cosmogram that stretches for miles, a new study suggests. Mostly, I'm sharing this because I think it's cool. Whether the archaeologists are entirely correct or not about the site's origins and purpose, I don't know. And, you know, feel free to make Indiana Jones jokes if you want; I'm going to try to avoid them here. A 3,000-year-old Maya site is actually a giant, city-size map depicting the "order of the universe," researchers say. If they were anything like other humans (and, being humans, they were), the Maya probably considered themselves at or near the top of the "order of the universe." But that's just me being cynical about human nature. The site, known as Aguada Fénix, is the "oldest and largest monumental architecture in the Maya area" and is larger than many ancient cities in Mesoamerica, the researchers wrote in the study. I'm skeptical about "oldest and largest," but perhaps they mean "the oldest and largest that we've rediscovered." In effect, building Aguada Fénix may have been a celebrated communal activity for ancient people, just like Stonehenge likely was in prehistoric England. I have to wonder how much that's backed up by evidence, and how much is wishful thinking or bias on the part of the researchers? I'm not saying it's wrong. But the postmodern take on things tends to portray ancient cultures in the best possible light relative to modern human morals. I suppose that's a pendulum swing away from how Westerners used to portray those peoples in the worst possible light, emphasizing the human sacrifices and slavery and child labor and all of those things we decry in our own societies. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in the middle. Humans, despite differences in culture and time, are capable of great good and great evil, and all the shades between. Aguada Fénix dates to 1050 B.C., before the Maya's writing system was invented, so there are no written records of the site. That complicates matters quite a bit, I'd imagine. The Maya still live in the area, but unless they're keeping secrets (always a possibility), any legends from three thousand years ago have been lost or distorted beyond recognition. Also, I generally trust LiveScience's reporting. But I'm a bit put off by their use of B.C. rather than B.C.E. They not only excavated Aguada Fénix but also used lidar (light detection and ranging), a technique in which lasers are pulsed out from an aircraft, and the reflected light is then measured and used to create imagery of the landscape. So, not quite space lasers. Their analysis showed that the cosmogram was created using a system of structures that include canals, causeways and a dam. These structures crisscross each other to create a series of cross shapes. I don't want to imagine how certain groups will interpret that. At the center of the structure is a series of small buildings and platforms, which archaeologists call "E group." It has several buried deposits that contained objects that likely had a ceremonial meaning, including greenstone ornaments that may represent a crocodile, a bird and possibly a female giving birth; ceramic vessels; and pigments. It seems to me that when an archaeologist says something has "ceremonial purpose," what they mean is "it seems to serve no practical function, so we're going to guess it's got ritual meaning." They've never heard of art for the sake of art? It's like if some future archaeologist dug up your house, found your Funko Pop! collection, and airily proclaimed that our culture worshiped big-headed idols. I mean, it's not that far from the truth, but we don't see it that way. At least, most of us don't. I have my doubts about some people. The researchers noted they did not find any signs of social hierarchy at Aguada Fénix — unlike at other, later Maya sites such as Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras that have evidence of the Maya's strict social structure. Which of course reminded me of this: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. |
| How about some dubious travel advice today? From TimeOut, whoever they are. Why Western Montana is best visited outside of summer Here’s my case for an off-season visit to the home of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. I want to be clear: I'm not ragging on Montana here. I know we have at least two members here from that scenic state. So that's, what, 10% of its population? What I take issue with is "outside of summer." I've driven through Montana "outside of summer." Sure was pretty... until I had to venture out of my nice warm car with its heated seats to refuel, and nearly froze into a statue. Western Montana, in particular, overflows with visitors during the summer, thanks to its proximity to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. I would, admittedly, like to see Yellowstone, preferably at some time when it's not overly infested with tourists. Glacier National Park, though? That sounds cold. Even though June through August might be the most popular months to visit, that doesn’t mean it’s the best time for a trip. "Best" is, of course, a value judgement and an opinion. Because I don't like being in a crowd or following one, I do enjoy traveling in the less-than-peak season. We used to go to the Outer Banks every September, which was still pretty warm but less crowded, especially with most kids being in school and consequently not shrieking and running around. Sure, the hurricane risk was greater, but we only had one vacation interrupted by impending doom, and that's what travel insurance is for. Still, you won't catch me there in December. That's probably why the Wright brothers did their testing there and then: everyone else had the good sense to stay the hell out of Kitty Hawk. Peak season problems don’t end with endless elbow rubbing on the trails and inside restaurants. I know I joke a lot about *shudder* the outdoors, but, shh, don't tell anyone, I do enjoy the occasional stroll out in full view of the accursed daystar. What I do not enjoy is having to deal with other people while doing so. While I'm not in the least bit interested in climbing Mount Everest anyway, pictures like this one  make me want to even less.Temperatures are at their highest, making outdoor activities a little less enjoyable. And you just lost me. I want warm. Hell, I'm okay with hot. Not to mention, the mosquitoes and black flies can be relentless. That's because you ventured *shudder* outside in the first place. Wildfire season overlaps with this busy time of the year, bringing added risk to your trip. Okay, that's fair. Being stuck in the wild during a wildfire would be an actual nightmare. Lest we forget, though, Yellowstone is home to a supervolcano that will one day wipe out most of the life in North America and maybe beyond, and if you're there, you're at Ground Zero. Fine, though, I'll admit that a) being at Ground Zero would be preferable to suffering somewhere on the fringe, and b) the risk of supervolcanic activity is way lower than that of wildfires. One of the best parts of going to a new place is connecting with those who live there. I can name endless trips where a random conversation or even just small talk with a barista has resulted in amazing recommendations and provided important additional context on a place. Now, on this point, I can absolutely relate. Except you need to replace "barista" with "bartender." Montanans will tell you that fall is the state’s most underrated season. Many of the outdoor activities popular in summer are still possible, but with fewer people. I think it depends on exactly when in the fall. Late September? Sure. Early December? Did that, hated it. Winter gets a bad rap, but it’s actually one of the most picturesque times to visit Western Montana. Sure, temps can be frigid, but that’s part of the appeal. No it's not. The author also waxes poetic about spring there. Like I said, the area is worth seeing. It's just that some of it is worth seeing through a window from a climate-controlled space. |
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