Once Upon a Time, I Met a Tiger

TRUE STORY. In college, there was a cabinet maker who had a tiger as his company mascot. One of the girls on my floor knew him, and knew that I loved tigers and my lifelong dream was to work with them as a zookeeper (while writing, of course), so she took me to go see him/his tiger.

We got there, and the tiger was pretty friendly. It chuffed hello and came up to be pet -- he kept it on a really long chain inside a warehouse, in the evenings, and during the day it had an outdoor enclosure, but I mean, it was obviously a well-taken care of, well-loved animal -- and I let it lick my hand, and scratched behind its ears, and it was pretty much nirvana for me, because OMG PETTING A TIGER!!!!! It rubbed its head against me, and then, before I could even blink, wrapped its jaws around my thigh.

Thankfully, I'm a fool, and don't have even the sense God gave little green apples, because I have absolutely 0 fear of being eaten by a tiger, and so, instead of flinching, I just stood there like "oh, no big," and the tiger let me go, and I proceeded to keep petting it because I am really that ridiculous. Or maybe that smart, because if you flinch in front of a predator like that, it is pretty much a signal that you're prey and its time for them to give chase. But anyway. This is how I became covered in tiger saliva (and got it all over my coat) and pretty much immediately after I happened to touch my face, and my eyes started itching and my nose started running and thus, I learned, I am pretty Intensely allergic to tigers.

I remember getting home, just on cloud nine, and thinking "I could die happy tomorrow."

But did you know there are only an estimated 2000 Bengal tigers left in the wild? And only 3200 wild tigers of all subspecies, total? Did you also know that if a population drops below 1000 individuals, the necessary genetic diversity to maintain a healthy population (to breed them back, for instance, if such programs existed for the reintroduction of tigers into the wild) is lost forever?

For tigers, it's now or never.

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Some Old News and Some New News

I have returned from the wild west! Unfortunately, I did not find the most excellent bucking bronco Wyoming sweatshirt that I have lusted after since I first laid eyes upon it YEARS ago, but I did get a nice magnet and got to see the Badlands for the first time since age 3. That is to say, this time I may actually REMEMBER it for the foreseeable future.

(Oh, did you want to see a picture? Of the badlands? El Husbando is currently holding our personal photography--such as it is--hostage. But it was definitely cool to look at. Like someone had taken a paint brush to the hills and the stone and turned them all into sunsets. You will have to make do with this image from wiki commons* for now! It kind of washes out a lot of the color, but it gives you an idea I guess.)

Badlands, South Dakota, USA. From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Badlands.jpg

As far as the old news goes, while I was away a fabulous twitter-friend sent me an awesome link to an article of ANOTHER facial reconstruction from a found skull. This time, a young Athenian girl from ~430 BCE. It takes forever to load the page but the image is fascinating, I'm particularly interested by the fact that they chose to give her red hair. 

In a similar vein, I stumbled across a series of pictures of facial reconstructions from our ancient apish ancestors to the present day a while back, which I found to be COMPLETELY THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER. Or at least a really fascinating look at the evolution of the human face. And apparently I am a sucker for putting faces on the long dead. (Still hoping for the Headless Vikings to get their faces back!)

And speaking of Neanderthals (kind of), did you know the majority of the human race is part neanderthal? 1-4% of our genes! Interbreeding! The Stuff Stories Are Made Of! 

While searching for those links, I also found this one which is from an article dated way back in 2007 claiming that some Neanderthals were red-heads, which brings us back to the red-headed Athenian girl. I wish they explained why they thought she had red hair! Apparently they're going to do facial reconstructions of another couple of skulls for a museum exhibit. I'm dying to see the results, personally. 

Putting a face on these people seems to me to be a strong parallel to what we do as writers, giving stories to characters, historical, mythical, and imaginary. Or maybe it's the fact that when I create characters of my own, or even find characters from mythology attaching themselves to my writing, I don't SEE faces myself. I know I would recognize my characters on the street, if I saw them, but imagining the face in my mind just doesn't work out at all. Either way, facial reconstructions of ancient people is just one of the coolest things ever, in my opinion! 

So there you have it! The official return to hiatus post! Now with MORE Links!

Hair dye in Homeric Times

In my book, Helen dyes her hair twice to disguise herself. The first time with a home-made concoction that turns it black or brown, and the second time a proper dye which turns it red. The challenge is finding a home-made dye which Helen, as a child of twelve, would be able to get her hands on, mix, and apply without help. Now, she does have access to information that a normal twelve year old wouldn't, and so her knowing how to make dyes isn't my problem. My problem is that I personally have no idea what went into producing a good dye during the period in which Helen would have lived, which means that I have to do research.

And the process that was used during antiquity to dye hair is mind-blowingly awesome in its simultaneously simplicity and complexity. You see, during antiquity, Greeks and Romans and Egyptians dyed their hair using nano-technology without even knowing it! Of course the downside is that it required lead oxide, which probably didn't do much for their health. The other problem is, how the heck would Helen get her hands on lead oxide or lime? And that kind of dye process is absolutely permanent--which is, of course, what Helen is going for, but not at all helpful to ME for later events, and Homeric Greece was certainly not Antiquity. I can believe that these kinds of techniques were known in Egypt, however, and in the east. Troy by all accounts seems to be very rich in these kinds of things-- a center for trade. But Helen at age 12, working under the radar, can't really engage in trade at this juncture.

Now there are a variety of pigments that were available to people in those times. Umber and Ochre for browns, reds and yellows, Bone and Carbon blacks, for, well, black for certain. (Incidentally, this webpage is kind of AWESOME for tracking pigment use through history.) But could any of these pigments be made into dyes? I'm thinking it would require some kind of solvent (and I'm totally wishing I had blond hair of my own that I could trim and try mixing dyes in my kitchen sink about now), vinegar would be a good one, or possibly even just wine or water. Helen could easily get her hands on any of those, but I have no idea how permanent that kind of dye might be, if at all.

But the only information I've been able to find on making ochre based dyes involves soy milk as the bonding agent. Earliest records of soy milk do not stretch back to Mycenaean times, even in China. I know cow's milk has a similar amount of protein to soy milk, but I'm not sure it has the same enzymes to allow the bonding-- or it might require the addition of an acid to activate them (like Vinegar or wine, I'd imagine, though I have no idea how the chemistry would all work out), or maybe egg would do. I have a feeling that even Helen, with her working knowledge will be spending quite a bit of time engaging in trial and error tests. I hate when my character is smarter than I am!

Late in the game I did finally find something that could be a practical and easy to make dye for Helen's hair, mostly by luck and persistence through wikipedia--walnuts! Boiling the fruit of the walnut tree apparently makes a dye which will darken as it oxidizes. Somehow I have a feeling that the adventures in milk and vinegar are now over for Helen. All she needs is to collect some nuts! Believe me-- the answer to this question did not come soon enough.

After all this, the second instance of Helen's ventures into hair dye is much, much simpler to handle. Henna makes a very simple red dye, no tricks involved, and it's something that she could easily buy or trade for now that she's not doing it in secret. In fact, it's probably something she could get from Troy, which works conveniently with the rest of my story when all is said and done.

On the plus side, I did learn how to make Casein Paint. Seems pretty simple, when all is said and done. Hooray for useless information I will never use found in the search for the information I actually NEEDED.

What was your last research time-suck? Is there anything that you tried to learn for a book, but could never find the information for?

Killer Whales: As Smart As Chimpanzees?

After the blogfest Wednesday, Lugh has taken up a solid residence in my brain. Highly distracting, and definitely not conducive to a break from writing. I've caved, and I'm putting down some words to satisfy him for the short term, but in the meantime I'm going to take a bit of a break from blogging here for a week or so. I'll be back with something for you next Friday (and a guest post elsewhere), but I'll be skipping Tuesday's usual substantive post. Anything in the middle means that I've either overloaded on research or driven myself a bit demented. I'll let you decide.

In the meantime, I want to talk a little bit about Killer Whales today, because they've been in the news a bit, and I found a really fascinating article about Killer Whale intelligence on Physorg.com. (Man has it been a while since I surfed their website!)

The thing of it is, we work with these amazing animals and study them, and the more we learn the more we realize that we really haven't scratched the surface. Some scientists consider Killer Whales to be on par with Chimpanzees as far as intelligence goes, and you'll see in the article words like "Culture" thrown around. This is because we can't explain by any measurable scientific evidence why three populations, without significant genetic differences, have found such startlingly different ways to live, and not just live, but pass on their method of successful living through generations. These populations have distinct dialects, and distinct lifestyles. And what other animal, with startlingly few genetic differences, exists in distinct populations with distinct dialects, passing on those distinctions to their offspring for generations?

I've said it for years, and I'll keep saying it, not because I'm a tree-hugger or some crazed environmentalist, but because of studies like these that come out every so often and don't get the attention they should. Humans are animals, and the more research we do, the more I believe that we'll find ourselves less unique within the animal kingdom. The brain of a Killer Whale is 15 lbs. They're highly social animals, capable of learning, interested in interacting, and inquisitive. They are also, taking into account the incredibly different environment in which they thrive and the lack of opposable thumbs, not all that different from us.

One of the questions the article asks is whether Killer Whales, as intelligent as they are, could be capable of intentionally killing a trainer. Obviously we have no scientific way to know this, just as we have know way of knowing if a man murdered someone purposefully or not. That the question is even being asked at all is kind of a testament to the level of intelligence exhibited by these animals. Have you ever heard someone wonder if the tiger that attacked Roy did it on purpose, to lash out at the man who had been its trainer? It isn't exactly a common refrain. In my reading, the only other animal (non-ape, mind you) that has been accorded that level of consciousness is the elephant. The idea that animals might be capable of vengeance or the purposeful intent to kill a person which whom a relationship has been built is shocking. But so is murder.

Just because we have no way to measure it, does it mean it isn't possible? Just because we have no way of communicating effectively across the species divide, does it mean that we are the only animals capable of experiencing the things that we experience? Capable of thinking the things we think?

I'm inclined to think that it just means our understanding is too limited. And that's another thing that isn't really measurable by science, but we all know it exists in varying degrees. Ego. Hubris. Pride.


Sometimes we forget that science is just a method of observing the universe, not the entirety of the universe itself.

The Big 101!

Gah!
My last post was my 100th! And I didn't even realize it! I think this makes me a poor excuse for a blogger, or maybe just someone without a proper appreciation for celebratory moments! Well, to make up for it, we will celebrate this post! The big 101! Like the Dalmations, or something...

But what content would be properly celebratory?

I could, of course, discuss revisions, or present a character study of some kind, or perhaps share some information about the book I'm trying not to write because I have so much other work to do (but I don't want to encourage it, really).

I could talk about the heart-rending situation on Haiti, or the ridiculous response of Pat Robertson that it's just what Haiti gets for making a pact with the devil (?!?!?!?!?!) but I think at this point it's a little bit late to the ball game, and I'm sure that the things I might say in response to Mr. Robertson (No, I will not refer to him by his title, such as it is) have already been said much more eloquently. Of course, feel free to open up in the comments, if you like...

Today, I want to talk about some old news. Something that has fueled the telling of stories for generations. Today, I want to talk about Mars. And not just Mars, but Martian water.

We have sent people to Mars in our imaginations for practically the entire length of its known existence. Edgar Rice Burroughs populated Mars with giant green martians with four arms, and red-skinned egg-laying humanlike martians, and great white apes way before I was born. As a people, we are obsessed with life on Mars. As such, we are absolutely determined to locate water, because water is to the best of our knowledge, a fundamental for life. Pluuuussss finding water on Mars in any quantity means we don't have to export it when we send non-fictional people to the planet, and that saves quite a bit of weight on lift-off.

But I think NASA and the scientific community is forgetting an important fact here. Life As We Know It does not mean Life Is Limited By What We Know. 

Finding water on Mars doesn't mean that there was life there, ever. Finding water anywhere doesn't mean that there was life or that there IS life on a planet. Because as much as we know, as much as we've learned, there is no real proof that there isn't some other path to life. We don't even know, really know, how life formed on Earth.

Oh, we have guesses, theories, all educated, but if there were any real proof, and real understanding of how life began, we'd have duplicated the experiment by now, and there would have been a huge outcry over it by the religious right. The Pope would probably have smashed the whole thing under his heel in rage, if people like Pat Robertson didn't get to it first. (I could apologize for comparing the Pope to Pat Robertson here, but I'm not really Benedict's biggest fan either, to be honest with you. I'm equal opportunity that way.)

I guess it makes some kind of sense. We can only look for what we know to look for, the signs we can be certain are associated with life, but lets just not let that limited scope of knowledge blind us to the things that might exist outside of what we know.

And maybe that should go for more than just the search for water and life on Mars.

Endangered Languages

When I tell people that I'm studying Icelandic, I get a lot of guff.
"Why?" they ask.
"Why not?" I reply.

Most often the argument I hear is that it's fairly useless. Icelandic isn't a global language. It's relatively isolated. There are probably only a million people in the world who speak it, probably not a lot more outside of that who care about speaking it. But for all of that, I wouldn't call it endangered. Not yet, anyway. Not as long as Iceland keeps its right to negotiate in Icelandic when dealing with the rest of the Scandinavian nations, and maintains the sense of cultural pride which has kept the language pure enough that modern Icelanders can read the Sagas as they were written.

I've talked a little bit about my frustration that we, as a culture, seem to feel that we have to have a reason to learn something. An excuse. We no longer want to learn for the joy of learning. Being a "professional student" even among people who appreciate education is still something we can't embrace-- something we find somehow foolish. The emphasis is on what you'll accomplish with the education. The career. The money. "What are you going to do with your degree?" is the question students are asked again and again. If it isn't for your career, for your professional development, there's the sense that it's a waste of money and time.

It's a waste of money and time to learn. Ouch. No wonder we have high school drop outs and people who don't see any reason to go to college. No wonder Classical Studies programs are flailing about, desperate for students. And not just Classics, but all liberal arts. Because it isn't a trade. It isn't an area of study that lends itself directly to practical application.

What does this have to do with Icelandic? Or Endangered Languages?

Everything.

This is why people abandon the language of their small tribal community. Why young people are letting their traditions die out, by adapting "useful" and more common languages. Because learning their grandparents' language isn't worthwhile. They can't DO anything with it.

What people fail to see, is that every language, every piece of information, of shared knowledge, allows us a new worldview, a different way of seeing things. New ways of seeing things, of doing things, are the cornerstones of innovation. Cultural diversity NEEDS to be celebrated. Linguistic diversity is important for mapping out those different viewpoints and understanding others. Understanding OTHER.

It's kind of like the rainforest. Every language that goes extinct is like a tree being cut down, and with it goes all the amazing and unknown things we could have found living in that ecosystem. Opportunities of study, innovation, realization are destroyed. The cure for cancer, the fountain of youth, world peace. It's all the same. We need every tree to make it work.

A quote from the article--just some food for thought.

Turin said he was amazed so few linguists are working on endangered languages, and people "do PhDs on the apostrophe in French," but no one knows precisely how many undocumented languages there are. When a language ceases to exist, so does its cultural world view, and much of the heritage of the community is lost.

So my challenge to you is to go out and learn something. Not because it's going to earn you money, but because learning for the sake of learning, for the sake of understanding, is an example we should be setting for our children. Why don't we make an effort to make the preservation of differing world views and cultural heritage a part of OUR culture.

I mean, Why Not?

Body Image in Little Girls

Body image seems like an appropriate topic to me, while I'm writing about Helen, the most beautiful of all women in mythology. Apparently a new study shows that an alarming number of girls between the ages of 3 and 6 are worried about being fat-- 49% seem to worry either sometimes, or almost always.

Forty-nine percent seems like kind of an alarming statistic to me. But there's a silver lining, I guess. Those feelings of concern about being fat, and body image, AREN'T influenced by animated movies like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast, with the idealized princess beauty and the tiny waists.

So what does all this mean? I think it tells us something we are already well aware of--children are more than capable of differentiating between real and imaginary. They can look at animated drawings and renderings and say "that isn't what people look like." This brings us right back to the old argument over Barbie dolls, too. Barbie has unrealistic proportions. If Barbie were a real person, she wouldn't be able to walk. But what if that very unrealistic image is the reason that children have no trouble playing with those dolls? The proportions are so obviously wrong that it divorces the doll from reality altogether-- just like Belle's overly large eyes, tiny waist, and animation (to say nothing of the monstrous beast she's held prisoner by) keep her from becoming an example of what a girl should look like.

Media representation of the ideal is of course still an issue. Women who are as thin as models make up an extraordinarily low percentage of people on the earth-- but because we see them everywhere on television and in magazines, we're tricked into believing that it's more "normal." The problem with models, is that they're people. Real live, breathing people, not imaginary princesses or obscenely busty dolls. But it isn't just the media that's perpetuating this myth of idealized beauty and the compulsion to change to fit it. All you have to do is walk into any woman's bathroom at home to see the cosmetics lining the shelves, or take a walk through your favorite drug store to see all the many products that women bring home. Adult women. Mothers of impressionable children. And don't get me started on tanning...

We buy pounds and pounds of makeup and gallons of hair dye to make ourselves "pretty enough." To feel better about our body image. And if you think that kids aren't watching that, aren't witnessing that, aren't paying attention to every comment their mother, sister, cousin, aunt, or grandmother is making about how they don't like the way they look, or how they wish they were skinnier, then we're deluding ourselves.

So what do I think about this body image study? And the results? I think it's less about the cartoons and more about real life. And good body image for children starts with Mom, and Big Sis, not with the imaginary characters in animated cartoons, or the totally fake-looking Barbie dolls.

As for Helen, I suspect that after Leda's rape by Zeus, she heard all about the burden of being beautiful from her mother--and how she needed to be careful not to attract the notice of men. Helen probably wished she could do away with her beauty altogether, to avoid the troubles that would come with it. So that perhaps just one man would look at her as more than just a pretty face. I expect that men wouldn't be held responsible for what her beauty drove them to.

And on that note-- a new pair of letters between Meneleus and Helen are up on GeekaChicas for your reading pleasure!

Elephant Vengeance

A new Not-Yet-Of Troy post is up over on GeekaChicas! A Letter from Helen to Theseus, for your entertainment!  Now, on to the science!

This article is old, but I think striking all the same. There's a theory, apparently, that African Elephants may be seeking revenge against humanity for the murder of their fellows.

The thing is, it's so rare that we attribute these serious emotions to animals. Usually we reserve that sort of thing for chimps and other great apes, alone. Elephants are one of the  exceptions where there has been enough evidence of seemingly bizarre and uncalled for behavior, that we look at them and actually find ourselves wondering if they're driven by emotion more than just instinct. There are plenty of anecdotal stories about elephants in captivity becoming depressed and despondent when one of their "friends" is relocated to another zoo, or elephants in circuses going on rampages against their trainer for the abuse they've been subjected to over a lifetime. A program on the discovery channel even went so far as to suggest that African elephants Grieve for their dead, pausing as they journey on their annual migrations and lingering at places where a member of the herd had died in a previous year.

Personally, I have no trouble believing that animals are experiencing emotions-- and not just the animals who show these behaviors, like elephants that seem so human in nature. Grief. Revenge. Mourning. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence for domestic animals too. My husband's dog, while he was in college, would often mope around his parents' house for days after he returned to school, unwilling to even eat. And the dog was always thrilled to see him when he arrived home after months away. As a child I had a cat that would wait for me to walk home from school, meeting me on the street corner at the appropriate time if she had been let out of the house, or else sitting in the window watching me approach the house. And I distinctly remember once my cat disappearing for three days, but when she finally showed up at our front door again, I was given an overwhelming impression of her own joy to see me again when she didn't even feed herself before jumping all over my lap, demanding I pet her and sit with her.

Delusions and Hallucinations

NaNo Stats:

31872 / 50000 words. 64% done!

I'm not sure why I've come across so much on hallucinations and delusions lately on physorg, but I figured it was fitting to write a post up about it in honor of all of those people taking part in National Novel Writing Month. Especially for those who are going without sleep, and putting their mind and bodies through the grinder to pump out that 1,667 words on top of their already overfull schedule of working full time, parenting, and school. If you're feeling haunted by your characters, it's okay! Even "normal" people can start hallucinating extremely quickly, under the right circumstances!

Yesterday I linked briefly to a post discussing how children (mostly young girls) can sublimate imaginary friends into dear diary personalities, and then later, if they're writers, into the characters they write about (Abstract can be found here!). Basically, writers are expected to be nagged by their creations. Right now, I'd be more surprised if in the sleep-deprived-overly-stressed state that NaNoWriMo can sometimes subject us to, people weren't feeling haunted by their characters, even if it weren't relatively "normal."

The study I linked to above talks about how, placed in a sensory deprivation room, even people who aren't necessarily prone to hallucination may begin to experience them in as few as 15 minutes. And this is what they suspect:

One of the researchers, psychologist Oliver Mason, said the results of the experiment support the idea that hallucinations are produced through what the scientists call faulty source monitoring: the brain misidentifies the source of its own thoughts as arising from outside the body.

Personally I find it kind of interesting. It's another example, I think, of believing being more powerful than actuality. Of the brain having this incredible power of belief over its surroundings and the body.  We know this is true, we see it every day, but we don't really give it the research and study it deserves, in my opinion. For example, WHY would our brains decide, in the absence of other stimuli, to believe that our own thoughts are external? What's the pathway that allows something like that?

Imaginary Friends Are Not Just For Kids

If you're a writer and often find yourself talking with your characters, reassure yourselves!

It's okay, apparently 46 out of 50 of us do it, too!

Back to Science! Superbrainpower-palooza

So maybe this statement is going to sound obvious, but research apparently shows that phantom limbs don't HAVE to obey the laws of physics.

Yeah, when I put it that way it doesn't sound that spectacular, but think about what this means for people who are bound by those same phantom limbs, and the pain induced by them. They don't have to hurt. They can will themselves not to be in pain. They can will the phantom limb into a different and impossible position to make it stop acting up.

So maybe this still seems like common sense to you. But the article takes it a step further. This isn't just about phantom limbs, this is about body image. The way we imagine and see ourselves. The way we THINK our  bodies. The study shows that simply by practicing imagining the body in a different way, our brain essentially believes it to be come so. For people suffering from diseases which stem from poor body image-- like anorexia, as the article mentions-- this could be a huge break through. This is proof that if they close their eyes and practice imagining that their body image is something different, their ideal of beauty, perhaps, that they can, essentially, program their brain to BELIEVE it's the truth.

Proving once again that funny trope that keeps popping up in everything--Belief is power.

When I read the title of the article though, I was really hoping that they were going to talk about how Phantom Limbs could actually physically pick stuff up or something. I guess that's the science fiction geek in me...

Food and Water as Pain Reliever?

Apparently, for rats, food and water acts almost like a drug, and the act of eating or drinking can grant them a higher tolerance to pain (and it's supposed, other externals not yet tested for).

The implications of this are huge. The article touches on what this probably means for people, and goes a long way toward explaining the problems some people have with eating until whatever is in front of them is finished. Our compulsion to overeat. (You know, like that bag of chips you sat down with in front of the television, and now it's gone? Or that carton of ice cream you JUST opened, but somehow is already half gone?) But, if it's also true that just plain water accomplishes the same state of higher tolerance to pain+ (Yes, pain+, no that is not a typo) then it could also mean we can take extra unnecessary sugar out of our habits, replace it with water, and have the same result. The article talks about substituting lollipops at the doctor's office with a cup of water instead, for kids.

The Uncanny Valley and Monkeys!

I had never heard of the Uncanny Valley phenomenon until reading this article today, but now that I have, I'm kind of fascinated by it, and really interested in this research, especially as it applies to non-human animals.

Basically, the article tells us that monkeys respond to realistic and artificial images of monkeys with fear. Apparently this behavior has been seen in humans too. That when we look at realistic but artificial human faces--human but not quite human--we're disturbed by them, and respond with revulsion. Mostly this is applied to (or observed with) computer generated lifelike images (like characters in movies such as Polar Express and that newfangled Beowulf) and robotics.

I'm wondering if this applies to Wax Museum figures, and paintings that are so realistic they seem to stare at us, as well as just computer generated figures. I know that I can't stand wax museums, they creep me out. I don't necessarily have the same response to paintings though. I find realistic, almost photographical (did I make that word up?) paintings kind of fascinating to look at, and don't have any revulsion for them, but rather an admiration for the artist. Perhaps because they're static and only two dimensional, whereas wax figures are three dimensional and more lifelike? Too lifelike?

Anyway, apparently this is the first time this reaction has been observed in any other animal besides humans, and the most interesting part is, we have NO IDEA why we (or they) respond this way. I mean, there are theories listed within that wikipedia article that I linked to above, like, that the human but not quite human passive face reminds us of death and the innate fear of death we all have, and the fact that it may be conceived as a threat to our human identity, but we don't KNOW for sure what the imperative is.

More Language Fun

I was always jealous of schools that offered foreign languages to younger students. In my school, growing up, foreign language classes didn't begin until seventh grade. But I was well aware of the fact that supposedly, the younger you are, the easier it is to learn a new language. I always wondered why we weren't starting these classes in elementary school. Just because you're too young to make a choice between them? I don't know.

But anyway, apparently Use it or Lose it is NOT a correct statement to make about languages. And apparently, also, once a second language is learned and practiced (laid down a new map over our brain when you become bilingual), we don't shut it off.

I have always wanted to learn to master a new language. I've been fascinated by it for an excessively long time. Long enough to learn one-- but I never did. I took Spanish from seventh to tenth grade, but then I dropped it in favor of study halls (I know, shame on me!) and when I got to college and actually wanted to learn again, I chose Latin for the reasons already mentioned in this post. Though they were both romance languages, it fractured my language education.

Back to Brains!

I've been saying for years that for women, styling each other's hair and makeup is the human interpretation of social grooming in monkeys. Ever since I went to college and shared a bathroom with a whole hall of girls, where I observed again and again and again that the bathroom even more so than the lounge was where congregation on conversation happened. Women are social groomers. We bond over hair and makeup. Even those of us who eschew makeup and curling irons have been known to submit to this grooming in the interest of socialization.

So now we're back to brains again-- Monkeys' grooming habits provide clues to how we socialize.
Kind of obvious, right? Here's the twist. The larger the neocortex, the smaller circle in which they concentrate their social grooming. The larger the neocortex, the larger the groups in which these monkeys congregate, too. So, larger groups but smaller groups of friends. But it's okay, because the larger neocortex evidently allows for monkeys, and us, to balance more distant relationships. Essentially, they can be pleasant to everyone without being best friends forever with the entire group. The larger neocortex allows that complexity.

According to this article, our neocortexes (neocortegi?) are three times the size of these other monkeys. And that accounts for our ability to socialize on such tremendous scales. We're balancing relationships with hundreds of people at a time, as opposed to the 50 of even the more sophisticated monkeys. We have our close friends, who we concentrate our time and effort on, and two hundred other people we still associate with when we're put in the right situation. Go take a look at the number of friends you have on facebook or myspace. How many of them do you actually talk to on the phone? or spend time with once a week? How many of them do you just check status updates on, and call it good?

Thank your neocortex!
And remember, it isn't total brain size that counts-- it's the size of the PARTS of the brain that matters!

So what do you think this means about Hyenas and their greater ability to cooperate? What part of the brain is it that is more effectively developed? And what do their neocortexes look like?

Reflections on Further Education

You know what I love about writing? Every project is a new opportunity to learn.

Not just to learn how to write better, and improve my own skill level, but also, to research something new. Writing is a career path which allows one the luxury of never having to settle down into one particular field. Sure, in college I took English classes. Creative writing classes out the wazoo. But it wasn't the only thing I did. I didn't go to college with the goal of getting a BA in English. I hadn't intended on a liberal arts degree at all. I went to college for Wildlife Biology. My ultimate goal was to be a zookeeper, and write on the side, and while I was going to minor in English and suck up all the creative writing classes I could, it wasn't my academic priority.

Of course, Wildlife Biology wasn't really my calling, and I realized that the number and intensity of science classes it required was going to make me hate myself and my life and my education, so instead of hating what I loved, I went in a different direction. But the direction still wasn't English.

Hyenas cooperate, but do we?

First of all, I think the history of this article is a great example of how we tend to overlook things about animals that aren't what we expect them to be. We focus so much on our nearest relations in the animal kingdom, sometimes we blind ourselves to the ones that aren't so closely related, but are still capable of so many amazing and BRILLIANT things. We give other animals that aren't chimps and gorillas short shrift because they're not human-like. Because they're not "as smart" as the others.

The line that really caught me, was this:

Researchers have focused on primates for decades with an assumption that higher cognitive functioning in large-brained animals should enable organized teamwork. But Drea's study demonstrates that social carnivores, including dogs, may be very good at cooperative problem solving, even though their brains are comparatively smaller.

If you want to talk about brain size, maybe we should be looking at whales and elephants. I don't think that it's the answer to the question of intelligence, honestly. I don't think we're really able to measure intelligence effectively, either. What is "smartest"? Smartest at a set task, at a set series of tasks, but until we're able to really understand the mind of the animal, I don't think we're ever really going to know who REALLY IS the smartest.

And that same above quote made me stop and reflect on human behavior. The part about the assumption involving primates as large-brained animals and organized teamwork. I think at some point we really get too smart for teamwork. We don't want to teach other people what we can do, and we don't want to ask for help or give help. And look at us! We fight amongst ourselves instead of cooperating.

Break Out the Tinfoil Hats, My Friends!

Because, we're mind reading, now! (Well, okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. we're only reading NUMBERS, but still!)

I can't be the only person who thinks this is incredibly cool. But forget about people, I mean, not that mind reading wouldn't limit the infinite ways in which we misunderstand each other, accidentally and purposeful, but my personal dream has always been to be able to read the minds of animals! To find a way to improve that communication!

Yeah, so maybe I sound kind of like a tree-hugger, but I'm really dying to know what goes on in the brains of a lot of animals other than ourselves. Dolphins. Elephants. Whales. Imagine what we could learn from these other species, if we could only TALK to them. I mean, whales are incredibly mysterious. We don't really understand them at all. We don't know where they go 9 months out of the year. We don't know what they do with themselves. We don't know why they go where they go that we CAN track. The Ocean itself is a mystery--but what if one of its denizens was willing to show us the way? I bet a dolphin would be a hilarious tour guide. And elephants-- what kind of smack are they talking about us in the circus? Are they REALLY pissed off about being performers, or do they like the attention and have strong relationships with their people? It's proven that elephants experience depression, and have strong bonds with other elephants, can they have them with people?

Seriously, mind reading, on any level, could offer us so many insights! To human behavior, to animal behavior, to the world! To observe instinct acting on the brain-- how does it work? Is it just impulse without thinking? is it collective memory? How do other living things see the world? Feel about the world? Feel in general!

My husband and I talk about this a lot. Or at least with frequency, because I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of cross-species communication on a greater level. He doesn't believe that mind reading will offer us much insight. He thinks that the process of thought will be so different between ourselves and any other species that it won't be translatable. I can't bring myself to agree with him, but that's mostly just out of stubbornness. Maybe he's right, and we'll need to learn some common language of thought, but I can't believe that direct mind to mind communication would be impossible. I don't want to believe. What do you believe?

And in the meantime, if it ever happens, sign me up!

what an odd trend.

So this article from the wall street journal gave me some food for thought: New Light on the Plight of Winter Babies.

Firstly, I didn't even realize that this was even a thing. Babies born in winter have it harder? Don't do as well? Totally news to me. But I LOVE that this is something that's been debated seemingly for so long, and is now being looked at in a totally new and different way--that is, that perhaps the reason is because there's a correlation between winter babies and lower income/lower class/less educated families.

It also says in this article that babies born into the same family tend to have birthdays around the same times. In my family, I'm the youngest of five children. Our birthdays fall all within the months between March and mid September, but we cluster in July, August and September. My oldest sister is the oddball who was born in March. I'd never really thought about it at all before. My parents are both highly educated individuals, and both came from families where education was valued and appreciated. I'm not sure though, when my aunts and uncles birthdays fall, but that's kind of outside of their data points, since they were only looking at the years between 1989 and 2001. Honestly, my entire family falls outside of their data points too.

But here's the other thing that fascinated me: this research is being done by economists. It baffles me. Wouldn't this be more of a sociological issue, than economical? But that's kind of the beauty of it too--people from different backgrounds look at data differently, and can see things outside the box. This is why people with backgrounds in liberal arts are valued in medicine. This is why having a well rounded education (in my humble opinion) is important! This is why it scares the crap out of me that in New York State, the Regents board has all but wiped the Roman Empire and Classical History from is curriculum for world history.

And while I'm on that topic-- not to betray my social networking addiction-- I was looking at a facebook quiz that some people on my friendslist were taking, and I noticed that Julius Caesar was classified as "evil" in the same vein as Hitler. It really gets my goat, I'm not going to lie. Julius Caesar was a hero to the Roman people. The only people who didn't like him were the senators, and that was just because they didn't want to share their power. I'm not saying Julius Caesar was any kind of angel, but certainly he doesn't deserve to be classified or even spoken of in the same breath as Hitler, when a person is discussing villainy.

And how on earth do you teach the rest of world history without the foundation of the Roman Empire? I mean, it's the context for the rest of western civilization!

Argh!
ahem.
And that is my first post after returning from vacation. Enjoy my unfocused rantings.
Or, you know, not.

Levitating Mice! and rooms jam packed with light...

So we send all these astronauts into space without really understanding what the effects of "Zero" gravity are on the human body. Then they get home, and we say Oh, whoops, maybe we should look into that? To be fair, in the sixties when we were sending people to space for the first time, we probably had really no idea what to expect at all, as far as what challenges we would face, but by now I'd think, personally, that we'd sent plenty enough people up, frequently enough, and for extended enough periods, that maybe we'd have done some of this testing in, oh, I don't know, SPACE, instead of SIMULATING space on Mice.

Apparently, I'm wrong.

Of course, this doesn't mean I don't think that it's INCREDIBLY cool that they've found a way to make animals levitate. It is really neat. But isn't it a little bit late to be testing what simulated zero gravity does to Mice? Or maybe what I'm trying to say, is wouldn't it be more productive to send the mice to space to find out? Or can Mice not survive the force of blast off?

It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why simulate something, when you can have them experience the real thing and get results without that added avenue of error? Haven't we sent monkey into space? dogs? I thought this kind of thing was what the international space station was for? Or, okay, they want to find a way to simulate zero gravity on earth to train astronauts-- that makes sense-- but wouldn't it also make sense to do parallel experimentation on earth and in space, so that you know it really is an accurate simulation? So that you know the results will be the same?

On an unrelated note, and something which will probably ruin my credibility as someone with any kind of scientific background (I swear, I minored in Biology-- I was going to be a wildlife biologist! Physics was just never really my thing because the New York State Board of Regents destroyed it for me by not allowing me to use calculus-- Yes. You read that correctly. I wasn't allowed to use calculus to do physics. Yes, it was the most idiotic thing ever. Yes it made me hate physics passionately forevermore.) I've always wondered if it was possible to pack a room with light so densely that a person would be unable to move.

You see, light is energy waves, right? It bounces off things and into your eye, and that's how you see colors--different wavelengths bounce off different colors. Well, if something can BOUNCE, it seems to me that it ought to be exerting some kind of force when that happens. (I'm pretty sure this is totally flawed logic, and I'm pretty sure the reason is that energy waves are not matter, and have no mass or something, but I can't shake the idea so just go with it.) So what if you filled a room with tons and tons of light, across the spectrum, so that there was nothing in the room that the light wasn't bouncing off of, and so much bouncing was happening that there was no room for anything else--No Nothing Left. (Nothing being an absence of matter--the space between your molecules. The space between the electrons and the nucleus of your atoms. We're really made up of a lot of nothing, which has always boggled my mind.) So that all the space in the room was taken up with light waves. Could you pin someone to a wall?

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure a person would go blind first.

Anyway. Levitating Mice. I don't think it's worth closing the barn door-- the horses already got out.