Passing fancies and structures.

(Borrowed from The Anti Room.)

There's a pleasure in etymology beyond that of the purely trivial, of knowledge for its own sake, of tracing of one word of one language to an older word in a different language. Before the abstract (which language is) there existed the material, the innumerable objects and phenomena of the physical world -- or more concisely, nature. No matter how long, circuitous, or obscure the path, every noun, verb, and adjective leads back to nature, and sometimes studying language brings to our attention the exquisiteness of natural patterns, the germs of which are inextricable from our words.

I recall an evening some time ago -- whenever it was, it was during the winter, and I was in Jersey. Snow had fallen during the day; in the evening the clouds blew over, but the trees were still laden with snow, frozen to the branches.

I went for a walk that night on one of the trails through the woods. There's one path I've always frequented more than any of the others (probably because it's so close to my mother's house), and there's a certain tree that always caught my attention. It's unusual because it's a spruce -- the only evergreen in sight, towered over on all sides by the older ash and maple trees. It's the odd man out, and I've always felt a fondness (even a sort of kinship) for this tree.

It might have been last year, probably around Christmas. I had come from Pennsylvania to visit the folks, and I had gone out to walk the old path and pay my respects to the evergreen odd man.

It must have been Christmas because it was between midnight and 1:00 -- this I do remember -- and Orion was overhead.

It was exceedingly frigid, even for late December: the sky was a limpid black and the stars shone cold and crisp. (Cold nights are best for stargazing in the northeastern United States: the lower the temperature of the air, the less obfuscatory moisture and dust it can hold.) I remember standing beside the spruce and looking up through a gap in the bare canopy.

The loveliness of the winter sky is distinguished by an intimation of geometrical structure. It's dense and richly patterned, almost arabesque. The straight lines of Orion's belt and scabbard; the conjoined pairs in Auriga, Gemini, and Canis Minor; the "V" shape of Taurus, and the prongs of Canis Major -- and all of these are as points and branching outgrowths of a hexagon, a wheel with Betelgeuse at the fulcrum.

As I gazed at the stars through a trellis of spruce branches (and bear in mind that the geometry of evergreen growth, all straight, divergent lines, is suggestive of fractal patterns) there was a gust of wind, scattering ice crystals overhead. The stars were so bright and the snow so reflective that wisp of ice momentarily sparkled -- and during this moment of superpositioning between the snow, stars, and spruce branches, the words occurred to me.

"Stellar dendrite."

From The Online Etymology Dictionary:

stellar (adj.) 1650s, "pertaining to stars, star-like," from Latin stellaris "pertaining to a star, starry," from stella (see star (n.)).

dendrite (n.) mid-18c., from Greek dendrites "of or pertaining to a tree," from dendron "tree" (see dendro-).

Stellar dendrite, then: "of stars, that of a tree."

This is, of course, is the term used to describe a structure seen in ice crystals and snowflakes.

(Taken from On Flat Lake Time.)

It was a small and passing thing, but ineffable and astonishing. If I had the conviction or faith, I might have said a prayer. I don't think I said anything. I'm certain I didn't.

I would like to say that I marveled, like Whitman, in perfect, knowing silence, knowing that silence is the language of the ineffable. But I didn't say anything because I didn't have the words to speak of what had touched me.

All language stems from nature, but sadly tends to lack the precision and felicity of its estranged parent.

Space, Outer and Inner (Part II addendum)

Back in Jersey for the weekend -- sitting at my old desk where the window faces west; the waxing gibbous moon is in view, sinking toward the bare trees and power lines. And now I'm thinking that last post came out shallow and incomplete. Reading it back to myself, that line about human potential in hits an especially flat note.

The concept of "human potential" deserves examination. It sounds nice, but is most of the time employed only as a platitude. (My own usage is no exception.)

Comparative planetology is a line of study within astronomy aimed at learning more about the features of planets) particularly those in our own neighborhood) and seeing what their similarities and differences suggest about the general principles of planetary formation and evolution. It's a rich field, especially since the planets of our solar system are (relatively) easier to examine and probe than interstellar objects.

Anyone who paid attention in science class should remember the local planets are each defined by their unique features. Mercury is the densest planet and its surface is marked by craters and compression folds. Venus is distinct for its dense atmosphere and tremendous surface temperatures. Mars is sandy and gusty; Jupiter boasts a gigantic magnetic field and tumultuous clouds. Et cetera, et cetera.

On Earth we observe liquid oceans and organic life.

Through the lens of astronomy, life is a surface feature of this planet. No anthropocentric fallacies would be risked in suggesting it is the defining feature: we can point to ther worlds that probably have oceans of liquid water (Europa, Enceladus, Titan), atmospheres and weather (Venus, Mars, Titan), and geological activity (Io), but so far none of our probes or mechanical eyes have spied any worlds on which organic life is so suffusively visible.

The point is that we, Homo sapiens, are merely a constituent part of a characteristic of the planet on which we live.

Even this type of language betrays a profoundly-rooted fallacy in our accustomed reasoning. "The planet on which we live." It implies that the Earth is only the setting of human life, which is absurd.

Given what light astronomy and the related sciences have shed upon our own world, it becomes exponentially difficult to argue humanity's domination of, or even separation from the Earth. Homo sapiens' ascendance was contingent upon a multitude of factors within the Earth's biosphere, and the biosphere's existence is wholly owed to certain overlapping circumstances in the Earth's (and Solar System's) formation.

Given all we've learned about the evolution of terrestrial life and of our own species, we cannot avoid recognizing that Homo sapiens is a transitional stage. The varieties of organic life are constantly in flux, and "humanity" is no exception.

Moreover, our species is only one element in a dynamic, interrelated, and widely inscrutable biosphere that is likewise in a state of constant change. (Total terrestrial homeostasis is likely an impossibility.)

(Note: this is as much a concern of comparative planetology as Earth science. Either discipline can be viewed as an inversion of the other.)

A phrase like "human potential" is exceedingly singleminded. We must ask ourselves: potential for what? To do what? (And what will we become?)

To venture into space, explore the universe, seed the stars is a popular idea, and an ambitious one. But it's rather farsighted, looking ahead to the shore while ignoring the stones and shallows at the bow.

Sustainability and survival are more immediate concerns. Can humanity successfully adapt to the changes its proliferation has wrought upon Earth's biosphere?

At any rate: when we discuss "human potential" we must try to keep our arguments in the realm of practicality. Art, science, technology, and high standards of living are all nice things, but they're rather beside the point when we look at Homo sapiens without the tint of anthropocentric bias. "Where are we going?" is a good question, but it can't be answered until we solve the riddle of "how will we ensure the species' long-term survival?"

Touching upon these topics, we might take a lesson from the history of astronomy and astrophysics. The most renowned figures of these fields were people who, in the course of their inquiries, found that the facts pointed them towards disturbing conclusions. They are to be admired not only for their intellectual powers, but for their courage in following their findings into frightening and forbidden places.

Remember that Galileo, the father of modern astronomy, found himself tried by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. His professing the veracity of the heliocentric model went contrary to all conventional wisdom, traditional thought, and religious dogma. It was more than a taboo, more than just a disturbing thought -- it threatened to topple humankind from its special (imagined) position in the cosmos.

But Galileo's claims were correct. His detractors are today rightfully viewed as backwards-thinking dogmatists.

Any serious assessment of humanity, civilization, and the problems of their tenability must be made with the same discipline, resolve, and courage as a Galileo. (Or a Darwin. Or an Einstein.)

Though we are more or less a surface feature of our planet, we can control our activities -- to a certain extent. (Perhaps we can't, in which case it is helpful to believe we can.)

Human behavior continues to be largely influenced by hold assumptions about the species' origins and position within the cosmic order. How can this state of things be changed? How can human behavior be modified to better correspond with our changed (read: improved) perception of the facts? And what changes would we see?

These questions would be better posed and much better answered by more learned and intelligent people than me. But we owe it to ourselves to make an honest attempt to ask and try to answer such questions.

Words found written on the back of a library slip at the bottom of a wastebasket

We cannot afford not to be astounded.

More Busy, More Bullets

• As the weather grows sunnier, so becomes my general mood. Seems some of my anxious subterranean sludge started creeping up to the surface last week. OH GOD WHAT HAPPENS AFTER AUGUST WHERE WILL I WORK WHERE WILL I LIVE and OH GOD HOW DO I GET PEOPLE TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY BOOK remain persistent questions and stress sources, but I think I'm coping with them somewhat more gracefully than last week.

• Speaking of the book: Mistah K of Hardcore Gaming 101 (and architect of the Castlevania Dungeon), your favorite DIY archive of video game oddities and forgotten classics, recently posted an exceptionally thorough review of The Zeroes on Amazon. I'm pointing it out primarily because I wish I'd gotten him to write the damn product description. I could never figure out how to describe it without going on and on and on and bogging it in details or otherwise not saying enough. (As you can see I erred toward the latter.) In my defense, when your mindset during the whole process of writing the book is BE AS MUNDANE AS POSSIBLE, it becomes very hard to compose enticing dust jacket copy. (It's a book about nothing! You'll love it!)

• The Zeroes also appeared on NotRock Records' blog a couple weeks ago. Full disclosure: NotRock Records is headed by filmmaker, drummer, and Jedi master John Fisher, whose name appears on the book's dedication page. (Fortunately, John is a lot better off and a much better fellow than most of the people who appear in the book.) You'll also read that his one of the bands in which he's been involved (Insouciant) is on an indefinite hiatus, which is bullshit. (Sorry, John.)

• The spring star Arcturus is setting; the summer star Vega is rising. I'm pretty sure we've looked at the Summer/Northern Triangle in an earlier post, but why not glance at it once more?

• Speaking of: the summer solstice is only a few days away! From here on out we're only bound for winter. To help stave off the preemptive seasonal depression, Comics Over Easy will begin a series of regular updates the day after the solstice. (I hope.)

• Have you ever watched a primrose blossom at sunset? I'd have said me neither two days ago, but...

7:40 p.m.

8:53 p.m.

8:55 p.m.

8:56 p.m.

9:01 p.m.

(Sorry for the poor photo quality; my camera isn't the greatest, I have no idea how to change the settings, and it was low on battery power.)
 
That flower remained in bloom the next day, and then wilted and fell off that evening. Two more mature buds blossomed the day after.

I'd never seen a flower pop open before. The gentleman who takes care of the grounds at this place tells me that later on in the summer we can expect several buds popping open every night. Cool.

Stuck in My Craw File #429520: Walden, the Videogame

The Onion, America's finest satirical journal, has been really spot on for the last couple of years. Remember that piece about the grotesque new MacBook? How could you forget it? The one about the new Six Flags rollercoaster based on a miserable codependent relationship with a woman named "Deborah?" Priceless. And what about the story about a bunch of University of Southern California academics receiving $40,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to design a video game based on Henry David Thoreau's Walden? Har!

Oh, wait. That last one wasn't The Onion. It was TIME.

Well. Let's talk about Walden, a Game. It's the only way I will be able to get over it.

Composing a more substantive response to this news than ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING was a greater challenge than I thought it would be, likely because the incongruity between what's written in Walden and some fan's idea to make a video game about it should be so searingly obvious to anyone who has so much as read the book's back cover, and in so little need of explanation as to actually defy explanation. But as I am of the belief that one is better off not holding any convictions unless he can articulate and account for them, I suppose I'm obligated to scrutinize the anatomy of my knee and its peculiar jerkings.

Question one: what's this Walden book about, anyhow?

In brief: this guy Henry David Thoreau, a sort of libertarian hippie type, believes that there's too much bullshit in the modern world ("modern" meaning 1840-1850) and its outstanding effect is a population that's widely unhappy and dull. Thoreau posits that a happier and richer life would be one lived with a minimum of unnecessary bullshit, and to test this idea he goes out to live by himself in a little shack in the woods by Walden pond, where all he has to worry about are securing and maintaining food and shelter. He finds that when one lives deliberately and severs as much "civilized" nonsense from his life as possible, a kind of lucidity follows, tuning him in to the essential sublime brilliance in all things, et cetera et cetera.

So from the beginning: this is a piece of literature whose main argument is that people would be happier shedding the trappings of technology and engaging more directly and personally in their transactions with the world. And now there are some people, people who have presumably read this book more than once, who want to turn it into a video game. The NEA is giving them $40,000 in taxpayer money to do it.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? SERIOUSLY ARE YOU ACTUA

So I guess my question is what's the bloody point? I'm imagining something like Animal Crossing (the most depressing game in the world) without the cutesy visuals, and with snippets from Thoreau's writing wedged between the completion and assigning of fetch quests. My personal hope is that players who manage to achieve a 100% (or 200% as the case sometimes may be) completion rate in Walden, a Game are treated to a special message à la Guitar Hero à la South Park: "GO OUTSIDE."

On that note, may I suggest a substitute to playing Walden, a Game? 

GOING OUTSIDE.

Of course everyone should spend time in nature; but not all of us are able to set aside our lives for the time it would take to conduct an experiment like Thoreau’s, says the game's lead designer.

Fair enough. But do you suppose Thoreau would prefer that those interested in his ideas and legacy spent five, ten, twenty hours hunched before a computer screen indoors, following his pretend footsteps in a pretend forest; or that they tore themselves away from all the screens in their lives for just a few minutes and went outside? Found their own special places? Thought their own thoughts? Experienced their own moments of revelation?

Would anybody truly be willing to argue that someone who goes outside for half and hour and practices a deliberate mindfulness of his surroundings experiences less of nature than he would by playing a video game about experiencing nature in his sterile, climate-controlled, artificially-lit bedroom or cubicle for the same amount of time?

Walden, a game [sic] posits a new genre of play, in which reflection and insight play an important role in the player experience. While traveling the virtual world of Walden, the player applies themselves to both daily task of maintaining the basic aspects of life at Walden Pond, as well as having the opportunity to focus on the deeper meaning behind events that transpire in the world. By attending to these events, the player is able to gain insight into the natural world, and into connections that permeate the experience of life at Walden.

I don't think you can gain real experiential knowledge about nature and the world through pseudo-experience. That's not how it works.

You want to talk about the great outdoors? It reeks.

Nature is full of awful stenches. Nature is uncomfortable. Nature is mud and hairy coyote shit and vomit balls with fractured rodent bones poking out. Nature is rotting logs, grubs, maggots, and mold spores. Nature is a cloud of flies jumping from a half-decomposed animal carcass to a dung pile to your cheek. Nature is walking into spiderwebs face first, sap and evergreen needles stuck between your fingers, tripping on tree roots, and falling into poison ivy. Nature is blackberry seeds stuck between your teeth, trees with four-inch thorns protruding from their trunks, gnats flying into your eyes, poisonous snakes, ticks buried in your skin, and bears taking your food. Nature is sweating, shivering, bee stings, briars, and wet feet in the winter. Nature is pissing against a tree, shitting in the bushes, and wiping your ass with leaves.

The first step toward achieving that transcendental wonder for the wild world is to appreciate the fact that the living part of planet Earth did not make itself with any regard for you, your comfort, or your capacity to comprehend what it is and what it does. This is not something you can really know until you've been out in the thick of things (I never really grasped it myself until going on a camping trip that very nearly killed me), and the thick of things cannot be conveyed by a virtual "environment" that only communicates to your visual and auditory senses.

The potential for those sublime moments of peace and truth is always there, but you can't really receive them without first exposing yourself to the grime, stench, and discomfort. Supposing your can get the full taste of one without sampling the other can only be called shallow and shortsighted. It's the difference between diving into the pond and wading at the edge with your trouser legs pulled up to your shins. It's the difference between the living, growing, respiring thing and the mass-produced polystyrene image of it. It's the difference between doing something and playing a video game about it.

If you want to learn about nature, go outside and pay attention. You don't even need to be out in the middle of nowhere to do it. Nature is everywhere. The planet you're standing on is nature. Find a public park, a vacant lot, or really any place where the weeds are pushing up  through the concrete, and just pay attention to what's going on around you.

It might take a few minutes. It might take a few visits. But it's happening.

If you want a kid to understand nature, take him outside. Don't make him play Going Outside: the Game.

If you want a kid to read Thoreau, make him read Thoreau. If he is incapable of absorbing ideas that aren't being delivered through a video game, then Walden probably isn't for him anyway.

What we have here is a video game that's probably not going to be much fun, replicates something most people can do without a computer (going outside), and is designed to convey a set of ideas that you can simply go ahead and read without any intermediary Animal Crossing nonsense. It's basically pointless. And given that it's based on a book admonishing humanity for all the inessential nonsense it lugs around with it, Walden, a Game seems doubly pointless, and doubly demeaning to the spirit in which Thoreau wrote it.

The NEA grant is just insult added to insult -- Walden, a Game ain't a $40,000 idea, and with so many austerity hawks in Congress looking for programs to cut, the NEA picked a very bad time to endorse such a ridicule- and publicity-prone waste of treasure.

NPM: Matsuo Bashō

Okay. Ads gone. They were annoying. Live, learn.

Now: haiku. All originally by Matsuo Bashō and translated by Harold G. Henderson unless otherwise noted.

Who cares. I'll be gone all weekend and might be back on Monday evening. Maybe there will be more poetry then. Maybe not. But for now:

* * * *


shizukasa ya
  iwa ni shimi-iru
    semi-no-koe

(stillness / rocks to pierce-in / locust voices)


So still:
  into rocks it pierces——
    the locust-shrill.

*

yama-ji kite
  naniyara yukashi
    sumire-gusa

(mountain-path coming / in-some-special-way be-attractive / violet plant)

Here on the mountain pass,
  Somehow they draw one's heart so——
    violets in the grass.

*

chō tori-no
  shiranu hana ari
    aki-no-sora

(butterfly bird's / not-known flower there-is / autumn-sky?)

To bird and butterfly
  unknown, a flower blooms:
    the autumn sky.

*

inazuma ya
  yami-no-kata-yuku
    goi-no koe

(lighting / darkness-direction-go / night-heron's voice)

A lightning gleam
  into darkness travels
    a night heron's scream

*

haru nare ya
  na-mo-naki yama-no
    asa-gasumi

(spring is-it (?) / name-even-not mountain's / morning mist)

Oh, these spring days!
  A nameless little mountain,
    wrapped in spring haze!

*

furu-ike ya
  kawazu tobi-komu
    mizu-no-oto

(old-pond / frog jump-in / water-sound)

The old pond
  A frog jumped in,
    Kerplunk!

-- (trans. Allen Ginsberg)

*

koe ni mina
  naki-shimaute ya
    semi-no-kara

(voice to all / cry itself out (?) / cicada-shell)

Did it yell
  till it became all voice?
    Cicada-shell!

Fossilized Footprints & Relic Radiation

And I'm sick once again. Great. I've already hit the point where all I feel like doing is sitting and staring at the wall, so today I'll just post a few photographs from my trip back to Jersey this weekend because it means having to think that much less.

First: dinosaur footprints at the Riker Hill Fossil Site!

Mammal footprints at the same location:

Next, we visited the Horn Antenna behind the Lucent Technologies building in Holmdel!

(Behind that first door are many tubs of lubricant.)

 
 
To save you the trouble of typing it into Google yourself: what's the cosmic microwave background?

Meanwhile, across the street: a volleyball net.

Good god, I've got to lie down.

Jason C. says he can whip me up a concoction of garlic juice, ginger, and some other wholesome plants that will cure me right up if I can drink it and keep it down. We'll see how that goes.

Sease the Seizons

Whoa. Looks like we're short another textpile this week. All the other stuff I've got on my plate -- not the least of which is packing up and moving to Pennsylvania to start a new job -- is affording me very little time to do any writing. Looks like we'll both have to settle for another batch of snapshots about seasons and transitions. Click to enlarge!

(You have no need to worry about this turning into another photography blog, I assure you. All of these shots are at least two years old, and I've long since fallen out of the habit of toting a camera around.)

Walk the seasons

On Monday I got a flu shot to avoid a repeat of last winter's fiasco, and now I'm sick. Could this be an example of irony in the classical sense? Maybe -- but only if there exists a causal relationship between my inoculation and my subsequent incapacitation. Or, in other words, if my subsequent incapacitation is in fact consequent to my inoculation.

Wakka wakka! I'll be here all week, folks. (Because I can't move so good.)

Hmmm.

Tomorrow is the autumnal (or hibernal, as per your preference) equinox, ladies and gents. The oh-fficial first day of fall, and my first step down the spiral stair of seasonal affective depression. I plan to remain heavily medicated until the vernal equinox rolls round.

Earlier today I was sorting through some old photographs I took a few years ago (before the novelty of possessing a digital camera had worn off), and found a series of seasonal snappies I would like to share with you in the spirit of this transitional time of year.

Each was taken three or four months apart, and in pretty much the same spot. (I could never precisely match up the shots, and for some time it drove me absolutely crazy. This might be another reason I didn't pursue photography for very long -- I have enough neuroses already.)

Omake: for those who have been with us a while -- notice that tree in the background that's visibly larger than the rest? (It's especially prominent in the first shot.) That's the same specimen you see our heroes gazing at in this old 8EB strip.

(Note: 8easybits.net will be switching hosts in the next few days. I'm hoping to do it with a minimum of downtime, but we'll see what happens.)

A.E. in the Hous(e, )man

(Image ganked from the WeatherUnderground index of one dcswa.)

I haven't seen any fireflies lately. The skunk cabbage leaves have melted and shrunk back down into the mud, and the ferns begin to brown and curl. Today's relatively cool weather kept the cicadas quiet, and nearly a month has elapsed since the katydids commenced noising up the night.

I've noticed my friend Dave keeping an intent ear turned toward the latter.

A few nights ago, Dave and I shared a smoke on a back porch during the sunset and listened as the crickets and katydids roused themselves with a noticeable languor. Dave shook his head.

"Won't be long now," he said.

Understanding his meaning, I gave a nod.

Dave sighed. "Soon...soon everything is going to suck."

One downside to tuning in closely to the natural seasons and their permutations is that your sensitivity to their variations heightens -- and consequently, so does the susceptibility of your mental state and mood to seasonal affective swings.

I've only recently become more attuned to the particulars of the seasonal cycles, and as the result of a deliberate effort. Dave, on the other hand, can blame his own reptilian physiology. He requires steaming hot sunshine to thrive. His anxiety about the end of summer first began to mount when the days stopped getting longer in late June. Winter comes just a little closer to killing him every year.

I have a certain fondness and reverence for winter, but I absolutely do not prefer it. Heavens, no. Winter in the northeast is a bitch. Urging your out of bed in the morning is already plenty difficult when the simple act of availing yourself of the blanket doesn't bring pronounced physical discomfort. (My sleeping quarters are very poorly insulated.) Watching the sun set around 5:00 p.m. tends to make the day seem as through it's ended before even getting the opportunity to properly begin; and two solid months of such days and such thoughts tends to mire you in moods of futility and weariness. Immediately after you get sick of looking at the gray grass and bare trees, you're sick of looking at the snow instead. Also, I hate Christmas -- but that's another topic in itself.

But ultimately, having a lot to complain about is nothing to complain about. It's a fine and useful thing! With inexorable external forces imposing periods of desolation, deprivation, and dysthymia, you become accustomed to these things and develop a tolerance for them. When loss and sorrow find you in a sunnier clime, you're better equipped to cope with them. You're from the joy-forsaken northeast, dammit. You know sorrow and loss. They haunt your brief days and long nights five months for every year. Where you see an interruption, the perennial sunbathers see a catastrophe.

I proposed this thought to Dave, who laughed it off and informed me of his plan to escape to a friend's house in Florida for two weeks out of February. At that moment I experienced a remote sense of déjà vu -- and thought back, to all times and places, to the poetry course Dave and I took together in our university days. To a particular poem we both had to read for an early semester assignment...

That poem was "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff" by renowned British lyricist A.E. Housman. The topics of Housman's poem and our conversation that evening share fewer points of contact than I fancied, but the reason it suddenly sprung to mind will be obvious momentarily. (Actually, the piece's message has more direct congruences with some musings posted on this "web-log" back in February.)

I really wish I didn't have to say this, but the incoming poem is a quick and easy read and well worth the two minutes it will take to read. It needs to be read out loud -- and I should also mention, should it need mentioning, that when reading a poem like this you do not pause at the ends of lines, but only where the punctuation dictates.

And without further ado...!

Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff
By A.E. Housman (1859 - 1936)

'Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.'

 Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

 Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

 There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

Jaggedjaw Jewelwings

Anyone reading this is probably sick of all this talk about insects and would rather I composed an opinion column about the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 (seriously, why are you surprised). It is my regret to inform you that since bugs is what I'm into, it's bugs is what I'm blogging.

I usually stop by the pond to visit the damselflies every other day to revitalize myself after the workaday coma. During my last visit, I watched a female land on a leaf about a foot away from my face, and noticed she had something in her mouth.

Given the seemingly dainty, almost ornamental structure of their bodies, the damselfly probably doesn't strike one at first glance as a ravenous carnivore. But these guys are like little airborne sharks: they'll chow down on anything small enough for them to snare in their front limbs and shove into their mouths. (Incidentally, this is would be why I seldom get mosquito bites at this particular pond. The damselflies and dragonflies do an excellent job keeping it free of obnoxious little biters and buzzers.)

This was my first face-to-face look at a damselfly in the middle of a meal. Imagine a person with his hands at his sides and a hoagie sticking lengthwise out of his mouth, and you'll have a decent idea of how this female jewelwing looked as she held this unfortunate fly in her mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed. Little by little, more and more of the fly disappeared. After about ten minutes of chomping, the meal ended -- but only because the rear half of the abdomen snapped off and fell into the dirt. After that the female ground up the last mouthful and flapped off, pretty as you please.

Where organisms are concerned, it is often the case that the appearance of "cuteness" emerges from the viewer's not looking closely enough. Damselflies are no exception. They only seem dainty and ladylike to you because you're not small enough to have the fear of god thrown into you by their hideously jagged jaws. (Note: the name of their order, Odonata, comes from the Greek odonto, meaning "tooth.")

Let's have a look at some photographs taken by some more talented shutterbugs with more powerful cameras:

Nice whiskers!

These actually aren't teeth: the jaw itself is spiky.

Yes, it definitely should remind you of the Aliens movies.

Not really a mouth pic. Just a snap of the damselfly species (ebony jewelwing) with which I'm familiar.

One of the links above leads to a blog (I won't tell you which one; you'll just have to check them all out) discussing observed homosexual behavior exhibited by the blue-tailed damselfly. Toward the beginning it gives one of the most colorful descriptions of the suborder Zygoptera I've had the pleasure of reading:

The damselflies and the dragonflies are known as the odonata; the toothed jaws. Toothed in jaw they are for very good reason, for these are the birds of prey of the insect world… though in the case of the blue tailed damselfly the birds are too often preyed upon… making the chaps more like damsels. Of course the Odonata could be considered birds of prey if raptors were a bit scarier, about one hundred times the size of their snacks, plucking tiny birds out of the sky, like iridescent and clanking clockwork toothy biplanes.

That last line is especially apt in respect to the creatures' antediluvian lineage. Damselflies have not evolved very that much in the last couple hundred million years. Compared to the younger, smaller, and more streamlined insect species, damselflies seem big, awkward, and ungainly. But it's this rococo clunkiness that endows the little buggers with such unparalleled charm. From a distance, they almost seem like little jeweled automatons assembled by some sultan's tinkerer of antiquity to haunt the hanging gardens of the queen. But one look at those nasty jaws reminds you what they are and by what vicious processes the species was allowed to survive and thrive.

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP....

Bugs, roots, words

I'm going to wait until next weekend to post the second half of that last entry. I've had too much else to juggle this past week to produce anything more than 75% of a rough draft, and I'd rather not just rush it out without thinking it over a bit more.

In the meantime, I do have some other stuff for you. First, an update to that earlier piece about those neat little buggers called damselflies.

I had previously thought male ebony jewelwings came in two colors: blue and green. Turns out that they actually come in one color: blue and green.

Here is a photo of a male I snapped earlier today:

And this is a shot of the same bug, taken about two minutes later:

My hunch was correct: whether they appear green or blue depends on the light bouncing off of them. From what I've observed, they're blue when they're closer to water, and green when they're around leafy plants. Whether this is caused by the different amounts of sunlight hitting them (being near the water tends to put them out of the shade, after all) or by the general color of their surroundings, I'm not sure -- but I'm interested in looking further into it. (I suspect the first guess is probably the more accurate.)

Again: this all probably helps explain why I don't have a girlfriend.

Anyway. While visiting Manhattan last night to help a couple of friends lug their amps and synthesizers, I happened to pass a table of books on the sidewalk being sold for a buck each. The broad span of the collection consisted of dry periodicals, hardcover books about statistics, issues of comic books published by Valiant, and lousy fiction paperbacks about love and murder. Only one tome caught my eye: Constance Reid's A Long Way from Euclid, a 1963 hardcover about classical geometry's long and continuous influence upon the development of mathematics.

I spent a lot of time flipping through it between bands and on the ride back home. Just about everything in the later chapters goes over my head, but the first few sections -- which are much, much more elementary and therefore less terrifying to a reader who consistently got Cs and Ds in every math class from algebra I to precalculus -- were great fun to read.

If you read last week's entry, you'll remember my kvetching and complaining about how students are taught the discoveries of science without learning the methods or much of the history. The same is true with mathematics -- maybe even more so, if what I recall from my own primary school years suggests a wider trend.

I, like most students, was shown a right triangle in geometry class, told that a² + b² = c² , and then commenced solving twenty worksheets of right triangle problems. What we didn't learn was the history of the Pythagorean theorem and its tremendous influence upon the course of Western mathematics and thought -- topics any pupil would benefit from knowing. (I learned about these details a few years later during a "history of mathematics" course I took in college as a means to fulfill a math requirement without giving my abysmal computative abilities the chance to destroy my GPA.)

A Long Way from Euclid's first chapter discusses some of the Pythagorean theorem's immediate effects, and I've prepared an excerpt for your reading pleasure. You will either find it really interesting or boring as hell. There is not much likely middle ground. 

Thus, five hundred years before the birth of Christ, mathematics had in hand its famous theorem about the square on the hypotenuse of the right triangle -- a theorem which was destined, in the words of E. T. Bell, to run "like a golden thread" through all of its history. This theorem would serve -- in trigonometry, which is entirely based on it -- as the tool for measurement lying beyond the immediate use of tape measure and ruler. In analytic geometry, it would serve as the basic distance formula for space in any number of dimensions. In its arithmetical generalization (aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ), it would provide mathematics with is most famous unsolved problem, known as Fermat's Last Theorem. In the most revolutionary mathematical discovery of the nineteenth century, it would be revealed as the equivalent of the distinguishing axiom of Euclidean geometry; and in our own century it would be further generalized so as to be appropriate to and include geometries other than that of Euclid. Twenty-five hundred years after its first general statement and proof, the theorem of Pythagoras would be found, firmly embedded, in Einstein's theory of relativity.

But we are getting ahead of our story. For the moment we are concerned only with the fact that the discovery and proof of the Pythagorean theorem was directly responsible for setting the general direction of Western mathematics.

We have seen how the Pythagoreans lived and discovered their great theorem under the unchallenged assumption that Number Rules the Universe. When they said Number, they meant whole number: 1, 2, 3. . . . Although they were familiar with the sub-units which we call fractions, they did not consider these numbers as such. They managed to transform them into whole numbers by considering them, not as parts, but as ratios between two whole numbers. (This mental gymnastic has led to name rational numbers for fractions and integers, which are fractions with a denominator equal to one.) Fractions disposed of as ratios, all was right with the world and Number (whole number) continued to rule the Universe. The gods were mathematicians -- arithmeticians. But, all the time unsuspected, there was numerical anarchy afoot. That it should reveal itself to the Pythagoreans through their own most famous theorem is one of the great ironies in mathematical history. The golden thread began in a knot.

The Pythagoreans had proved by the laws of logic that the square on the hypotenuse of the right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. They had also discovered the general method by which they could obtain solutions in whole numbers for all three side of such a triangle. Although these whole number triples (the smallest being 3, 4, 5) still bear the name of "the Pythagorean numbers," the Pythagoreans themselves knew that not all right triangles had whole-number sides. They assumed, however, that the sides and hypotenuse of any right triangle could always be measured in units and sub-units which could then be expressed as the ratio of whole numbers. For, after all, did not Number -- whole number -- rule the Universe?

Imagine then the Pythagoreans' dismay when one of their society, observing the simplest of right triangles, that which is formed by the diagonal of the unit square, came to the conclusion and proved it by the inexorable process of reason, that there could be no whole number or ratio of whole numbers for the length of the hypotenuse of such a triangle:

When we look at any isosceles right triangle -- and remember that the size is unimportant, for the length of one of the equal sides can always be considered the unit of measure -- it is clear that the hypotenuse cannot be measured by a whole number. We know by the theorem of Pythagoras that the hypotenuse must be equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Since 1² + 1² = 2, the hypotenuse must be equal to √2. Some number multiplied by itself must produce 2. What is this number?

It cannot be a whole number, since 1 x 1 = 1 and 2 x 2 = 4. It must then be a number between 1 and 2. The Pythagoreans had always assumed that it was a rational "number." When we consider that the rational numbers between 1 and 2 are so numerous that between any two of them we can always find an infinite number of other rational numbers, we cannot blame them for assuming unquestioningly that among such infinities upon infinities there must be some rational number which when multiplied by itself would produce 2. Some of them actually pursued √2 deep into the rational numbers, convinced that, somewhere among all those rational numbers, there must be one number -- one ratio, whole number to whole number -- which would satisfy the equation we would write today as

The closest they came to such a number was 17/12, which when multiplied by itself produces 289/144, or, 2 1/144.

But one of the Pythagoreans, a man truly ahead of his time, stopped computing and considered instead another possibility. Perhaps there is no such number.

Merely considering such a possibility must be rated as an achievement. In some respects it was an even greater achievement than the discovery and proof of the famous theorem that produced the dilemma!

Perhaps there is no such number. How does a mathematician go about proving that there isn't a solution to the problem he is called upon to solve? The answer is classic. He simply assumes that what he believes to be false is in actuality true. He then proceeds to show that such an assumption leads to a contradiction, usually with itself, and of necessity cannot be true. This method has been vividly called proof per impossible or, more commonly, reductio ad absurdum. "It is," wrote a much more recent mathematician than the Pythagorean, "a far finer gambit than a chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game."

The most recent proof to shake the foundations of mathematical thought was based on a reductio and so, twenty-five hundred years ago, was the first. We shall present this proof, which is a fittingly elegant one for so important an idea, in the notation of modern algebra, although this notation was not available to the man who first formulated the proof.

Let us assume that, although we know we have never been able to find it, there actually is a rational number a/b which when multiplied by itself produces 2. In other words, let us assume there exists an a/b such that

We shall assume (and this is the key point in the proof) that a and b have no common divisors. This is a perfectly legitimate assumption, since if a and b had a common divisor we could always reduce a/b to lowest terms. Now, saying that

is the same as saying that

If we multiply both sides of this equation by b² (which we can, since b does not equal 0 and since we can do anything to an equation without changing its value as long as we do the same thing to both sides), we shall obtain:

or, by canceling out the common divisor b² on the left-hand side:

It is obvious, since a² is divisible by 2, that a² must be a even number. Since odd numbers have odd squares, a must also be an even number. If a is even, there must be some other whole number c which when multiplied by 2 will produce a; for this is what we mean by a number being "even." In other words,

If we substitute 2c for a in the equation a² = 2b², which we obtained above, we find that
 

or

Dividing both sides of this equation by 2, we obtain

Therefore, b² like a² in our earlier equation, must also be an even number; and it follows that b, like a, must be even.

BUT (and here is the impossibility, the absurdity which clinches the proof) we began by assuming that a/b was reduced to lowest terms. If a and b are both even, they must -- be definition of evenness -- have the common factor 2. Our assumption that there can be a rational number a/b which when multiplied by itself produces 2 must be false; for such an assumption leads us into a contradiction: we begin by assuming a rational number reduced to lowest terms and end by proving that the numerator and denominator are both divisible by 2!

We can only imagine with what consternation this result was received by the other Pythagoreans. Mysticism and mathematics were met on a battleground from which there could be no retreat and no compromise. If the Universe was indeed ruled by Number, there must be a rational number a/b equal to √2. But by impeccable mathematical proof one of their members had shown that there could be no such number!

The Pythagoreans had to recognize that the diagonal of so simple a figure as the unit square was incommensurable with the unit itself. It is no wonder they called √2 irrational! It was not a rational number, and it was contrary to all they had believed rational, or reasonable. The worst of the matter was that √2 was not by any means the only irrational number. They went on to prove individually that the square roots of 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17 were also irrational. Although they worked out a very ingenious method of approximating such irrational values by way of ratios...they had to face the fact that there was not just one, there were many (in fact, infinitely many) lengths for which they could find no accurate numerical representation in a Universe that was supposedly ruled by Number.

Tradition tells us that they tried to solve their dilemma by persuading the discoverer of the unpleasant truth about √2 to drown himself. But the truth cannot be drowned so easily; nor would any true mathematician, unconfused by mysticism, wish to drown it. The Pythagoreans and the mathematicians who followed them, from Euclid to Einstein, had to live and work with the irrational.

Here was the golden thread impossibly knotted at its very beginning!

It was at this point that the Pythagoreans, rather than struggling to unravel arithmetically what must have seemed to them a veritable Gordian knot, took the way out that a great soldier was to take in a similar situation. They cut right through the knot. If they could not represent √2 exactly by a number, they could represent it exactly by a line segment. For the diagonal of the unit square is √2.

With the choice of two mathematical roads before them, the Greeks, long before the time of Euclid, chose the geometric one; and
"That has made all the difference."

I'd say the book was worth the buck.

Damselflies!

During that silly freewrite post last week (empty-handed desperation will lead to some strange choices), I mentioned damselflies and posted a picture of one. Let's take a closer look at these little buggers, because they're kinda one of my favorite things about living on this planet.

The one species of damselfly that seems to live around here is Calopteryx maculata -- the ebony jewelwing. Every so often I'll see one or two elsewhere, but there's a pond a few miles down the road where dozens gather on summer afternoons. I keep trying to convince people to take the trip with me, but for some reason they always seem reluctant to sit down in the woods and stare at bugs with me for an hour. Clearly there is something wrong with everyone else in the world.

Look at him. He's almost as cute as a horseshoe crab, and nearly as ancient. Fossils belonging to an extinct subgroup of the order Odanta (which the damselfly shares with its more well-known and vigorous cousin, the dragonfly) have been dated 325,000,000 years old, while the oldest fossils belonging to recognizable members of the Zygoptera suborder (i.e., damselflies) date back 250,000,000 years. Although not quite as Darwin-vintage as our friends in the Limulidae family, Damselflies apparently haven't changed that much in the last couple hundred million years. Their bodies still have weird, outmoded ways of doing things -- mating, for one. You can look it up for yourself, but I will just mention here that it involves the male grabbing the female by the neck with his anus.

Of course, I'm not a biologist or a bug authority of any kind -- in fact, I just now had to look up those numbers and Latin names on this handy web page. Rather than paraphrasing and thereby diluting the information any further, let's quote right from the fountainhead:

Many characteristics distinguish Odonata from other groups of insects -- minute antennae, extremely large eyes (filling most of the head), two pairs of transparent membranous wings with many small veins, a long slender abdomen, an aquatic larval stage (nymph) with posterior tracheal gills, and a prehensile labium (extendible jaws underneath the head). Among living Odonata, there are twenty-five families, mostly dragonflies and damselflies. Of all their characteristics, the easiest way to tell a dragonfly or damselfly from other insects is by the size of the eyes and shape of the abdomen. If the eyes are very large in proportion to the head and the abdomen is long and thin, then it is almost sure to be in Odonata.

While both dragonflies and damselflies belong to the Odonata and share many common features, then are a number of noticeable differences as well. Even before hatching from the egg, differences in morphology of the egg distinguish dragonflies (Anisoptera) from damselflies (Zygoptera). Dragonfly eggs are round and about 0.5 mm long, whereas damselfly eggs are cylindrical and longer, about 1 mm long. Similarly, the nymphs (larvae) of the two groups differ. A larval damselfly abdomen is longer and narrower with three fin-like gills projecting from the end. Dragonfly nymphs are shorter and bulkier, and the gills are located inside the abdomen. The dragonfly nymph expands and contracts its abdomen to move water over its gills, and can squeeze the water out rapidly for a short burst of underwater jet propulsion.....

Both major suborders have large heads with very large compound eyes relative to the rest of their body. Each compound eye is composed of nearly 28,000 individual units (ommatidia), and together the eyes cover most of the head. More than 80% of their brain is devoted to analyzing visual information. By contrast, their antennae are tiny. Their mouths have been adapted for biting, making them efficient hunters. All Odonata have a prehensile labium, which can be extended forward from underneath the head faster than most prey can react, making their bite fatal to prey. The six legs are all located near the head and are seldom used for walking, but are more useful in catching prey and perching on vegetation to rest or lay eggs.

Both dragonflies and damselflies have two pairs of elongated membranous wings with a strong crossvein and many small veins that criss-cross in the wings, adding strength and flexibility to the wings. Both groups also have a characteristic nodus, or notch, in the front edge of each wing. In dragonflies, the rear wings have a broader base and are larger than the front pair. Damselflies, by contrast, have front and hind wings similar in shape, and as a result they fly slower than dragonflies do. Also, dragonflies do not have hinges enabling them to fold their wings together when resting, though damselflies do. This feature of the wings is the key morphological feature distinguishing adult dragonflies from damselflies.

Finding damselflies isn't that tough. Just go to a large wooded area and look for water. It is very important that there be sunlight; damselflies tend to stay put during cloudy weather. What you're keeping an eye open for is a bug that looks like a dragonfly but moves like a butterfly.
Taking pictures of these things isn't easy, unless you have a camera capable of extreme zooming (which I do not). Damselflies are shy. They'll just sit on a leaf and stare at you until you come within about six feet of them. At that point they'll jump and flit about until they're out of reach, land, and resume their staring. (And what cute little cold black eyes they have!) Taking these photos took a few minutes; most of the time the bugs didn't allow me to get close enough to snap a sufficiently detailed photo, but I got lucky every now and then.

They can move fast when they want to, though. If you watch them long enough, you might see a pair of males sparring. They'll approach each other in flight, stop right in front of each other, and hover in place for a few minutes. Their wingflaps become harder and more rapid, and then they'll start darting about like their dragonfly cousins, chasing and ramming into each other. I'm not really sure what's going on when this happens: I've been unable to discern if they're actually biting or inflicting any serious bodily damage on each other. I'm also not sure what the rules on stopping are: sometimes one will tap out and land somewhere, and the other will just flutter off in another direction. Once last year I watched a fight between a pair of males that must have lasted about ten minutes: every time the one removed himself from the fight and landed to take a breather, the other would immediately swoop back down on him and chase him around again. ("Well, animals are a lot like people, Mrs. Simpson....Some of them are just jerks.")

Distinguishing a male from a female is simple, at least as far as ebony jewelwings are concerned. The females are generally a dull, somewhat iridescent blackish-gray color that sometimes contains tints of other colors (I see a lot of purple and green). Their wings will be more transparent than the males', and will have white dots on the high tips.

Though the female has its charm, the male damselfly is comparatively brilliant. Most I've seen are either an emerald green or a deep cerulean, but I suspect that the difference hasn't to do with the individual bug, but on the lighting. I'm fairly positive I've seen a blue damselfly flap into the shade and become green by the time he landed. (I'll post something new if/when I verify this.)

And they're even cuter during their youth, when they squirm underwater as vicious, cannibalistic nymphs!

(I should mention that I did not record this. I've never been able to find any of these things, much less catch them.)

Again, from the University of California Museum of Paleontology:

Most of a dragonfly's life is spent in the larval stage where it molts from six to fifteen times. Depending on altitude and latitude, larval development varies from the common one or two years to as many as six years. At that time, the nymph crawls up out of the water and molts one last time, emerging from its old skin as an adult with functional wings. Unlike butterflies and beetles, dragonflies and damselflies do not have an intermediate pupal stage before becoming an adult. Because of this, Odonata are said to be hemimetabolous, or undergo an "incomplete" or "gradual" metamorphosis.

Dragonflies and damselflies begin their lives as nymphs, living underwater for a year of more....The nymphs are not as brightly colored as the adults, but are well camouflaged predators who ambush their prey.

And I haven't got much else. Those first two pictures at the top are from a year or two ago; today I went out to collect some more (for your viewing pleasure). You can click on any of them for a higher-resolution version.

On the way to the pond I met a dapper little mushroom:

And when I arrived, I found this gentleman sunning himself in a bush:

There was also a huge turtle floating in the middle of the pond, but he went under before I could get a snapshot of him.

I enjoy my hobbies, but they're probably one of the reasons I have such a hard time getting dates.