The odds are somewhat decent that you have never heard of caecilians. I hadn't, except in a very vague and dim sense.
They are related to some of the most adorable animals on the planet: newts and salamanders! And even adorable little frogs! A little more distantly, they're related to lizards, turtles and crocodilians (AWWWW, ADORABLE BABY ALLIGATORS, SO CUTE WITH THEIR LITTLE YELLOW MOUTHS GAPING), which are reptiles--fairly close relatives of the amphibians, which include the salamanders, frogs and caecilians.
Caecilians have developed as burrowing animals, losing all internal and external evidence of legs. Many have only vestigial eyes covered over with skin, and have replaced sight with tentacles that serve as some sort of sensory organ. Many are pretty small, but one species gets 1.5 meters long, or an inch under five feet. They have very small scales, making them unique among amphibians.
They are not adorable.
Now, there are a lot of disgusting-looking creatures out there, and really, caecilians aren't that bad. For example, hagfish are essentially boneless tubes of organs with small tentacles and an extremely unpleasant fleshy character, and they exude mucous in quantities up to a gallon. In essence, they're much like a caecilian, only without bones (except for a little cartilage, including a partial skull but no jaws), and far slimier.
So what makes them disgusting and caecilians horrifying? Well.
Not much is known about caecilian behavior, but they do know something about how they breed. Or, rather, how the young are raised. Caecilian mothers are devoted parents, especially by amphibian standards: they guard and even feed their young.
This is where things start getting terrifying.
One species of caecilian, Siphonops annulatus, feeds her young with her own skin. She lays her eggs and then curls around them. When the young hatch, they consume her skin as she lays there, tearing it off of her until she's been completely stripped bare--skinned, you could say. She regrows her skin over the next three days as her family rests, and then the pattern's repeated.
This is not the most horrific way that they feed their young. There is another species that is even more disgusting and frightening. And painful to think about.
The female holds the eggs within her until they hatch--they're an ovoviviparous species, or a species that produces eggs (which are unattached to the mother, differentiating them from live-birth (viviparous) animals, but the eggs are retained within the mother until they hatch, giving the appearance of live birth--at which time the young start eating the lining of her oviduct. THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF HAVING YOUR BABY EAT YOUR UTERINE LINING. And it still gets worse because this? Can go on for eleven months. They live inside her, eating her reproductive organs, for almost a year.
More posts later about amphibians that terrify me! Surinam toads! COMING SOON.
(Sources: Life in Cold Blood by David Attenborough, which provided the inspiration for this post and the next. Online, the pictures linked are all from outside sources--obviously. Also, this article about hagfish.)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Some Notes for Princess Story I
My princess story is located in an extremely fictionalized version of the Basque country, or Euskal Herria, which is located (in the real world) in northeastern Spain and southwestern France, surrounding the Pyrenees. Not everything is accurate. However, I thought I'd explain some of the more specific details that I've used.
1. Many of the names I've used are Basque--but not all of them. Elixabete, Matxin, Zuzen, Edurne, Kistiñe and Matxin are all Basque names, while Iñigo, Cipriano and Santiago are not. Isidro is apparently actually an Italian name that's found some use in Spain.
2. I named my fictional country "Euskal." This doesn't actually make much sense in actual Euskara (the Basque language), but works well enough for my purposes.
3. "By the time Princess Elixabete was born, nobody really thought about Euskal unless they were a logging company or particularly interested in artisanal cheeses." The Basque people were primarily shepherds. They continue to make some damn fine cheese, let me tell you, although I think that logging is more a historic industry than a modern one. (I'm not 100% sure here.)
4. The cows the Basque keep (they also keep sheep and goats) are tan or a light, warm brown, not black-and-white, the way a lot of people in the US at least think of when cows are brought up.
5. Txapelas are a type of Basque hat very similar to a French beret, currently worn mostly by older, more traditional men. (Also by the younger generations, but usually only at festivals when they're feeling both patriotic and drunk.)
6. Matxin's home country, Nafarroa, is also based off of a region in Spain, Navarra, called Nafarroa in Basque. Navarra is just below the (official) Basque country and is claimed by some Basque secessionists, and it also continues in a further east part of the Pyrenees. There's a lot of Basque culture, historic and modern, in the northern part of Navarra, and there are a lot of cultural similarities between the two areas. Historically, real world Navarra was very important--it was the last independent region to cede to the Emperor/King of united Spain, and the seal of Navarra is the lower-right quarter of the seal of Spain--even if it's currently fairly obscure outside of Spain. The capital of Navarra is Pamplona, where they hold San Fermines, a festival you probably know of because that's where the Running of the Bulls happens. My fictional Nafarroa is somewhat more obscure than real-world Navarra. (Navarra is also spelled "Navarre" in English sometimes. This is crazytalk, don't listen to anyone who does it.)
7. Andalucía is another region, in the very southernmost part of Spain. It's very different from Euskal Herria and Navarra, and you probably know it as Andalusia. The accent spoken there is totally incomprehensible.
8. Cuajada is kind of like a sheep's-milk yogurt that's seared with a poker, giving it a delicate, smoky flavor. It's a traditional Basque dessert, served with honey or sugar and usually accompanied by walnuts, although that might be overlap from another traditional Basque dessert, sheep's-milk cheese accompanied by membrillo (a thick, sweet quince jelly) and walnuts.
1. Many of the names I've used are Basque--but not all of them. Elixabete, Matxin, Zuzen, Edurne, Kistiñe and Matxin are all Basque names, while Iñigo, Cipriano and Santiago are not. Isidro is apparently actually an Italian name that's found some use in Spain.
2. I named my fictional country "Euskal." This doesn't actually make much sense in actual Euskara (the Basque language), but works well enough for my purposes.
3. "By the time Princess Elixabete was born, nobody really thought about Euskal unless they were a logging company or particularly interested in artisanal cheeses." The Basque people were primarily shepherds. They continue to make some damn fine cheese, let me tell you, although I think that logging is more a historic industry than a modern one. (I'm not 100% sure here.)
4. The cows the Basque keep (they also keep sheep and goats) are tan or a light, warm brown, not black-and-white, the way a lot of people in the US at least think of when cows are brought up.
5. Txapelas are a type of Basque hat very similar to a French beret, currently worn mostly by older, more traditional men. (Also by the younger generations, but usually only at festivals when they're feeling both patriotic and drunk.)
6. Matxin's home country, Nafarroa, is also based off of a region in Spain, Navarra, called Nafarroa in Basque. Navarra is just below the (official) Basque country and is claimed by some Basque secessionists, and it also continues in a further east part of the Pyrenees. There's a lot of Basque culture, historic and modern, in the northern part of Navarra, and there are a lot of cultural similarities between the two areas. Historically, real world Navarra was very important--it was the last independent region to cede to the Emperor/King of united Spain, and the seal of Navarra is the lower-right quarter of the seal of Spain--even if it's currently fairly obscure outside of Spain. The capital of Navarra is Pamplona, where they hold San Fermines, a festival you probably know of because that's where the Running of the Bulls happens. My fictional Nafarroa is somewhat more obscure than real-world Navarra. (Navarra is also spelled "Navarre" in English sometimes. This is crazytalk, don't listen to anyone who does it.)
7. Andalucía is another region, in the very southernmost part of Spain. It's very different from Euskal Herria and Navarra, and you probably know it as Andalusia. The accent spoken there is totally incomprehensible.
8. Cuajada is kind of like a sheep's-milk yogurt that's seared with a poker, giving it a delicate, smoky flavor. It's a traditional Basque dessert, served with honey or sugar and usually accompanied by walnuts, although that might be overlap from another traditional Basque dessert, sheep's-milk cheese accompanied by membrillo (a thick, sweet quince jelly) and walnuts.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Environmentalism
There are seven species of salmon native to the Pacific Northwest, from the very small (the coastal cutthroat trout, a sometimes-anadromous subspecies, weighs one to four pounds on average and no more than six pounds; the pink salmon, a more typical member of the salmon family, weights three to five pounds and no more than twelve pounds) to the very large (the chinook salmon weighs only ten to fifteen pounds on average, but can grow up to one hundred thirty-five pounds.) Many salmon runs are already extinct, and more are expected to follow. There are predictions that entire species of salmon will start going extinct within the next fifty years.
Because salmon are both iconic and a large part of local industries, there's a big effort to restore them. Any dammed river requires a fish ladder, or if not that then an attached hatchery. Some hydroelectric power plants go to extremes like actually shipping--by truck--baby salmon around the dam on their way out to the ocean. (This is an ineffective system that causes large numbers of fatalities, although there's still probably fewer deaths than would be caused by going through a turbine.) There are very strictly regulated and calculated quotas and harvest limits for each species, based on hatch numbers for the year that's currently mature enough to fish. There's more of a conservation effort for salmon than any other animal in the state of Washington: schools raise tankfuls of baby salmon (part of the incredibly repetitive our-cultural-heritage/natural-bounty curriculum covered every year, until any given sixth-grader can repeat the salmon life cycle in a dull monotone: egg, alevin, fry, fingerling...) to be released, there are designated "salmon streams," and there's more and more laws going into effect about building near streams, and logging near streams, and polluting into streams.
But it's still not enough. Salmon are still going extinct. Why?
That's a complicated question. Partially, it's because salmon are sensitive. They require very clean, clear, fast-flowing, highly-oxygenated and cold water for their eggs to hatch. As eggs, alevin and fry, they're sensitive to pesticides; silt will clog up their gills and suffocate the eggs; too warm water or too sluggish water won't have enough oxygen for them to develop. Dams can even block the right-sized sediments from being washed downstream (and "the right size" varies depending on the salmon: a chinook will require bigger rocks than a pink salmon), which means that the salmon won't be able to build it's redd, or nest. Without it, the eggs get washed away.
As the salmon matures into a fingerling, it travels downstream, where it requires an estuary while it waits for its systems to adjust to saltwater and it grows. Estuaries are semi-marine environments, sheltered from most of the big predators of the open ocean, and they're highly nutrient-rich environments. Here, again, it's extremely sensitive: if there's no estuary, the odds of any given fingerling surviving become extremely minimal, even by the normal salmon standards, which are remarkably low to begin with. Then, once the fish leaves for the open ocean, there are, again, threats like whales and seals, other fish and humans.
Some environmental measures are fairly straight-forward: you put hundred-foot forest buffers around any known salmon stream, to keep the water from over-heating and to keep silt from getting into the stream. You protect pre-existing estuary environments, and work on restoring others. You continue monitoring catch sizes.
What about taking down all the dams on salmon rivers? What about farming salmon for food?
All the dams in western Washington are, in essence, for hydroelectric power. The problem is that there is no good answer to the energy question: oil, coal and natural gas are all finite resources that add to greenhouse gas emissions, causing global warming and climate change; nuclear power creates nuclear waste, which persists for thousands upon thousands of years; windmills can massacre flocks of birds, especially migratory ones; tidal energy is likely to disturb the echolocation of whales because of its vibrations, causing them to beach themselves, and will do the same thing that windmills due to birds, only underwater and with fish, along with potentially eroding beaches at a faster rate; hydrogen combustion is too potentially explosive; nuclear fusion is still only a theory.
So we make these pay-offs. Is it better to have dams that lower salmon numbers, or is it better to have that much more clean energy? Do you farm fish, saving precious wild stocks while still meeting the huge demand for Pacific salmon and preserving an important economic force in society, or do you save precious wild stocks from the deadly parasites bred en masse in fish farms, which also ruin the near-shore environment where they're placed by releasing huge amounts of waste, not to mention the antibiotics and dyes farmed salmon are fed?
These things move in waves. For a while, nuclear energy was going to solve the energy crisis, and the consequences be damned--regardless of how, now, when sites for the placement of nuclear waste are considered, it's thought of in terms of plate tectonics, because that's how long it will persist? For a while, GMOs--genetically modified organisms--were going to feed the world--now they're considered a possible threat to non-modified gene pools, potentially contaminating them. There's concerns about the safety of GMOs. There's concerns about what having our fields all be GMO monocultures could do, if a plague or disease breaks out. It'd be like the Irish potato famine, only on a global scale. Even earlier than that, pesticides and artificial fertilizers were going to feed the world--that led to the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and organic farms.
There's this huge cultural legacy of innovations coming with unforeseen consequences. There are no easy answers in this world--except maybe nuclear fusion as an energy source, assuming we can ever get it to work. But it doesn't look like fusion will be energy-efficient at any point in the foreseeable future, since it happens in conditions like those inside of stars, and there aren't any easy answers out there.
Recently, DDT, rightfully or wrongfully one of the most maligned pesticides, was re-approved for use in certain African countries. The plan is to paint it on the outside walls of houses, where it will help kill mosquitoes. Considering the astronomic (and equally horrific) levels of malaria, especially in children, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives and improve the standard-of-living for those who survive: malaria, a blood-borne parasite that settles in the liver, red blood cells and, in one particularly nasty strain, the brain (where it causes hemorrhaging and other nasty side-effects), is a killer that will end up infecting something like a quarter of all children in some African countries. And such a simple effort--DDT is cheap and, therefore, possible to subsidize, unlike providing daily anti-malarial medication to countries worth of people--especially when combined with mosquito netting, could do so much good.
But DDT almost caused the extinction of a lot of big raptors. It's been accused of, variously, causing cancer, infertility, brain damage, liver damage and pretty much anything else that you can think of. In reality, it's one of the safer chemicals to use for humans, especially when applied sanely, instead of it being dumped by the ton at random. Enough of it will kill you, but enough of anything will kill you--lethality is only determined by how much it takes. Salt will kill you, if you eat too much of it.
So will DDT, it just doesn't take as much of it. It's has been demonized. For the most part, it just kills insects, which is what makes it such an effective form of mosquito control--it was DDT, among other things, that eliminated malaria in the United States. That brings up environmental problems in and of itself: even ignoring bioaccumulation and biomagnification, the names for how fat-soluble chemicals and toxins build up the older, bigger and more predatory an organism is, killing all the insects, indiscriminately, in a certain area will knock out one of the most basic building blocks of the local food web. Bugs are really low on the trophic levels, and that equals a lot of starving animals further up the chain. It's like knocking out one of the legs on a three-legged stool, and balanced on top of that stool are another four and a half chairs. That's the most damaging thing DDT does. The killing-of-birds (especially birds of prey, who get the highest concentrations of the chemical, as well as being the slowest to reproduce) is what got attention--that was the "silent spring" that Rachel Carson alluded too, one without birdsong--got the attention, but the biggest impact was the death of insects. (Interestingly, DDT is not actually particularly toxic to the birds themselves. Instead, it thins their eggshells because of the way it effects how they metabolize calcium, and then the eggs break before the chick is hatched.)
So there's another issue. What's more important--the environment, or peoples' lives? To what extent are they codependent? How do you even know if you're doing the right thing? They introduced Nile Perch to Lake Victoria, in Africa, to feed the local fisherman, who subsisted primarily on native fish they pulled out of the lake. The Nile Perch devastated local species, driving some extinct and seriously endangering the others, causing population crashes in other species before they crashed themselves because they'd overhunted all their prey species, and significantly lowering the yield of the lake in terms of biomass. But it's too late to fix the problem.
We do tend to make things worse. Punishing Germany after WWI caused WWII. There was an Aleutian island, one that was essentially barren except for large numbers of nesting seabirds during the summer. Rats were introduced to it, and they decimated the numbers of birds on the island, stealing and eating their eggs--the birds had no natural defenses against their predation. Foxes were introduced to eat the rats, and instead they also ate bird's eggs, supplementing their diet with the birds themselves. It's the sort of idea that seems like a good one at the time, but turns out to be mind-numbingly stupid but also essentially irreversible.
(Sources: Puget Sound Shorelines: Species - Salmon; Endangered Species: Salmon & Bull Trout - The Issue; Salmon Facts: An Informational Guide to Our State's Natural Treasure.)
Because salmon are both iconic and a large part of local industries, there's a big effort to restore them. Any dammed river requires a fish ladder, or if not that then an attached hatchery. Some hydroelectric power plants go to extremes like actually shipping--by truck--baby salmon around the dam on their way out to the ocean. (This is an ineffective system that causes large numbers of fatalities, although there's still probably fewer deaths than would be caused by going through a turbine.) There are very strictly regulated and calculated quotas and harvest limits for each species, based on hatch numbers for the year that's currently mature enough to fish. There's more of a conservation effort for salmon than any other animal in the state of Washington: schools raise tankfuls of baby salmon (part of the incredibly repetitive our-cultural-heritage/natural-bounty curriculum covered every year, until any given sixth-grader can repeat the salmon life cycle in a dull monotone: egg, alevin, fry, fingerling...) to be released, there are designated "salmon streams," and there's more and more laws going into effect about building near streams, and logging near streams, and polluting into streams.
But it's still not enough. Salmon are still going extinct. Why?
That's a complicated question. Partially, it's because salmon are sensitive. They require very clean, clear, fast-flowing, highly-oxygenated and cold water for their eggs to hatch. As eggs, alevin and fry, they're sensitive to pesticides; silt will clog up their gills and suffocate the eggs; too warm water or too sluggish water won't have enough oxygen for them to develop. Dams can even block the right-sized sediments from being washed downstream (and "the right size" varies depending on the salmon: a chinook will require bigger rocks than a pink salmon), which means that the salmon won't be able to build it's redd, or nest. Without it, the eggs get washed away.
As the salmon matures into a fingerling, it travels downstream, where it requires an estuary while it waits for its systems to adjust to saltwater and it grows. Estuaries are semi-marine environments, sheltered from most of the big predators of the open ocean, and they're highly nutrient-rich environments. Here, again, it's extremely sensitive: if there's no estuary, the odds of any given fingerling surviving become extremely minimal, even by the normal salmon standards, which are remarkably low to begin with. Then, once the fish leaves for the open ocean, there are, again, threats like whales and seals, other fish and humans.
Some environmental measures are fairly straight-forward: you put hundred-foot forest buffers around any known salmon stream, to keep the water from over-heating and to keep silt from getting into the stream. You protect pre-existing estuary environments, and work on restoring others. You continue monitoring catch sizes.
What about taking down all the dams on salmon rivers? What about farming salmon for food?
All the dams in western Washington are, in essence, for hydroelectric power. The problem is that there is no good answer to the energy question: oil, coal and natural gas are all finite resources that add to greenhouse gas emissions, causing global warming and climate change; nuclear power creates nuclear waste, which persists for thousands upon thousands of years; windmills can massacre flocks of birds, especially migratory ones; tidal energy is likely to disturb the echolocation of whales because of its vibrations, causing them to beach themselves, and will do the same thing that windmills due to birds, only underwater and with fish, along with potentially eroding beaches at a faster rate; hydrogen combustion is too potentially explosive; nuclear fusion is still only a theory.
So we make these pay-offs. Is it better to have dams that lower salmon numbers, or is it better to have that much more clean energy? Do you farm fish, saving precious wild stocks while still meeting the huge demand for Pacific salmon and preserving an important economic force in society, or do you save precious wild stocks from the deadly parasites bred en masse in fish farms, which also ruin the near-shore environment where they're placed by releasing huge amounts of waste, not to mention the antibiotics and dyes farmed salmon are fed?
These things move in waves. For a while, nuclear energy was going to solve the energy crisis, and the consequences be damned--regardless of how, now, when sites for the placement of nuclear waste are considered, it's thought of in terms of plate tectonics, because that's how long it will persist? For a while, GMOs--genetically modified organisms--were going to feed the world--now they're considered a possible threat to non-modified gene pools, potentially contaminating them. There's concerns about the safety of GMOs. There's concerns about what having our fields all be GMO monocultures could do, if a plague or disease breaks out. It'd be like the Irish potato famine, only on a global scale. Even earlier than that, pesticides and artificial fertilizers were going to feed the world--that led to the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and organic farms.
There's this huge cultural legacy of innovations coming with unforeseen consequences. There are no easy answers in this world--except maybe nuclear fusion as an energy source, assuming we can ever get it to work. But it doesn't look like fusion will be energy-efficient at any point in the foreseeable future, since it happens in conditions like those inside of stars, and there aren't any easy answers out there.
Recently, DDT, rightfully or wrongfully one of the most maligned pesticides, was re-approved for use in certain African countries. The plan is to paint it on the outside walls of houses, where it will help kill mosquitoes. Considering the astronomic (and equally horrific) levels of malaria, especially in children, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives and improve the standard-of-living for those who survive: malaria, a blood-borne parasite that settles in the liver, red blood cells and, in one particularly nasty strain, the brain (where it causes hemorrhaging and other nasty side-effects), is a killer that will end up infecting something like a quarter of all children in some African countries. And such a simple effort--DDT is cheap and, therefore, possible to subsidize, unlike providing daily anti-malarial medication to countries worth of people--especially when combined with mosquito netting, could do so much good.
But DDT almost caused the extinction of a lot of big raptors. It's been accused of, variously, causing cancer, infertility, brain damage, liver damage and pretty much anything else that you can think of. In reality, it's one of the safer chemicals to use for humans, especially when applied sanely, instead of it being dumped by the ton at random. Enough of it will kill you, but enough of anything will kill you--lethality is only determined by how much it takes. Salt will kill you, if you eat too much of it.
So will DDT, it just doesn't take as much of it. It's has been demonized. For the most part, it just kills insects, which is what makes it such an effective form of mosquito control--it was DDT, among other things, that eliminated malaria in the United States. That brings up environmental problems in and of itself: even ignoring bioaccumulation and biomagnification, the names for how fat-soluble chemicals and toxins build up the older, bigger and more predatory an organism is, killing all the insects, indiscriminately, in a certain area will knock out one of the most basic building blocks of the local food web. Bugs are really low on the trophic levels, and that equals a lot of starving animals further up the chain. It's like knocking out one of the legs on a three-legged stool, and balanced on top of that stool are another four and a half chairs. That's the most damaging thing DDT does. The killing-of-birds (especially birds of prey, who get the highest concentrations of the chemical, as well as being the slowest to reproduce) is what got attention--that was the "silent spring" that Rachel Carson alluded too, one without birdsong--got the attention, but the biggest impact was the death of insects. (Interestingly, DDT is not actually particularly toxic to the birds themselves. Instead, it thins their eggshells because of the way it effects how they metabolize calcium, and then the eggs break before the chick is hatched.)
So there's another issue. What's more important--the environment, or peoples' lives? To what extent are they codependent? How do you even know if you're doing the right thing? They introduced Nile Perch to Lake Victoria, in Africa, to feed the local fisherman, who subsisted primarily on native fish they pulled out of the lake. The Nile Perch devastated local species, driving some extinct and seriously endangering the others, causing population crashes in other species before they crashed themselves because they'd overhunted all their prey species, and significantly lowering the yield of the lake in terms of biomass. But it's too late to fix the problem.
We do tend to make things worse. Punishing Germany after WWI caused WWII. There was an Aleutian island, one that was essentially barren except for large numbers of nesting seabirds during the summer. Rats were introduced to it, and they decimated the numbers of birds on the island, stealing and eating their eggs--the birds had no natural defenses against their predation. Foxes were introduced to eat the rats, and instead they also ate bird's eggs, supplementing their diet with the birds themselves. It's the sort of idea that seems like a good one at the time, but turns out to be mind-numbingly stupid but also essentially irreversible.
(Sources: Puget Sound Shorelines: Species - Salmon; Endangered Species: Salmon & Bull Trout - The Issue; Salmon Facts: An Informational Guide to Our State's Natural Treasure.)
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Nightmares
Nightmares are funny things: they're really not very scary. When you look at them by the light of day, they're mostly just ridiculous, even when you can still feel how incredibly, heart-stoppingly, achingly afraid you were when it happened. For example, when I was eleven or so I read a book of horror stories that I checked out of the library, not knowing what they were. I had screaming nightmares about a giant chicken--when my mom asked me what was wrong, why I couldn't speak, I didn't want to bring up the book (since I didn't want her watching what I checked out of the library more closely) and so I broached the conversation evasively and, as it turned out, ineffectively.
"Monsters," I said, looking away. We were in her bathroom, at probably midnight.
"What sort of monsters?" She insisted.
"...Giant, uh, pigs," I replied, because they were at least a little scarier than chickens, right?
My mom laughed at me, of course, and told me that that was a ridiculous fear and that I should go back to bed--this was all true. But I could still remember how the dream felt--I still felt that strong, undiluted fear, rushing through me. It took me a long time to go back to sleep, even while I still knew that it was a stupid thing to be afraid of.
I knew that it was ridiculous, but I still couldn't change that I was afraid. That's how strongly these things can grip you.
A more recent recurrent nightmare is almost as ridiculous, albeit much more complex. I'm in a department store, in the woman's clothing floor. It's stuffed with falls: the walls are lined with racks, the blouses and skirt-suits and pleated pants in tweed, navy and deep brown almost falling off of the hangers, bulging out into the aisles. The circular racks are just as full, and dotted thickly across the floor. I'm with my mom, and we're searching for my brother--everything appears deserted, but I know that when you go into the dressing rooms or the elevators (the elevator attendant is the one human we see, and I know that he's one of them) they take you, and turn you into a dinosaur, kind of like a velociraptor, or a Utahraptor: bigger than the former, smaller than the latter. I know that my brother's already been taken by them--he ran into a dressing room to play, or something like that--but my mom doesn't know. She doesn't listen when I tell her anything.
The last time I had this dream (so far, of course) was sometime in spring 2008, a little over a year ago, and I kept on trying to steer the dream into a new storyline, but it kept on snapping back, like a rubber band stretched too far; I would half-wake-up, turn over and huddle tighter, incredibly afraid, and fall back asleep, and I'd be doing something else, dreaming something else, and then all of a sudden I'd be back in that department store, or I'd feel the monsters approaching me, or I'd be looking for my brother again, even knowing that he might kill me and that I'd need to fight him to survive... The final scene I remember from that most-recent nightmare was my mom entering a changing room, even though I told her not to, and the elevator man coming, and I knew that I'd never see her again, even though she was still insisting that it was fine, and then I went in after her...
I've had other recurring nightmares--often they come years apart. There was one that happened in the ravine down the street from the house I was born in. We moved out when I was eight, and I no longer remember what the nightmare actually was, except for this vague sense of dread, gathering darkness and a sense that the ravine was pulling me towards it. Dreams can surprise you like that: every time I drive past this one movie theater--now fairly run-down and decrepit--along Highway 101, on the route our family takes to the Hurricane Ridge campground, I get this strange gasp of deja vu. I've had several dreams involving that movie theater (just outside of Deer Park), and I never know why: I've never been inside it, we've driven past it a lot but I've driven past a lot of movie theaters--it's a mystery.
So it's funny how much power nightmares hold over us, even though they're often so stupid. I had a nightmare several times that involved an enormous black cat--as tall as me at the shoulder--and an even bigger dog. They prowled the edge of our yard, huge smiles on their faces, and they'd wait for me, sitting right at the property line, at the top of the hill our house was at the base of, just over the crest. It was enough to unnerve me as I walked home from school, alone, the Monday after I had the dream. And then, the worst part, there was a huge black snail, biggest of all and with an eerie smile. It had huge, razor-sharp teeth, moved quickly and it was hunting me. It kept on coming closer, crossing the edges of our yard and moving towards the house. This dream terrified me--it was about a gigantic black snail. What's scary about that? Nothing at all--except for the fear that your mind can pull up out of nowhere. It doesn't even make sense...
"Monsters," I said, looking away. We were in her bathroom, at probably midnight.
"What sort of monsters?" She insisted.
"...Giant, uh, pigs," I replied, because they were at least a little scarier than chickens, right?
My mom laughed at me, of course, and told me that that was a ridiculous fear and that I should go back to bed--this was all true. But I could still remember how the dream felt--I still felt that strong, undiluted fear, rushing through me. It took me a long time to go back to sleep, even while I still knew that it was a stupid thing to be afraid of.
I knew that it was ridiculous, but I still couldn't change that I was afraid. That's how strongly these things can grip you.
A more recent recurrent nightmare is almost as ridiculous, albeit much more complex. I'm in a department store, in the woman's clothing floor. It's stuffed with falls: the walls are lined with racks, the blouses and skirt-suits and pleated pants in tweed, navy and deep brown almost falling off of the hangers, bulging out into the aisles. The circular racks are just as full, and dotted thickly across the floor. I'm with my mom, and we're searching for my brother--everything appears deserted, but I know that when you go into the dressing rooms or the elevators (the elevator attendant is the one human we see, and I know that he's one of them) they take you, and turn you into a dinosaur, kind of like a velociraptor, or a Utahraptor: bigger than the former, smaller than the latter. I know that my brother's already been taken by them--he ran into a dressing room to play, or something like that--but my mom doesn't know. She doesn't listen when I tell her anything.
The last time I had this dream (so far, of course) was sometime in spring 2008, a little over a year ago, and I kept on trying to steer the dream into a new storyline, but it kept on snapping back, like a rubber band stretched too far; I would half-wake-up, turn over and huddle tighter, incredibly afraid, and fall back asleep, and I'd be doing something else, dreaming something else, and then all of a sudden I'd be back in that department store, or I'd feel the monsters approaching me, or I'd be looking for my brother again, even knowing that he might kill me and that I'd need to fight him to survive... The final scene I remember from that most-recent nightmare was my mom entering a changing room, even though I told her not to, and the elevator man coming, and I knew that I'd never see her again, even though she was still insisting that it was fine, and then I went in after her...
I've had other recurring nightmares--often they come years apart. There was one that happened in the ravine down the street from the house I was born in. We moved out when I was eight, and I no longer remember what the nightmare actually was, except for this vague sense of dread, gathering darkness and a sense that the ravine was pulling me towards it. Dreams can surprise you like that: every time I drive past this one movie theater--now fairly run-down and decrepit--along Highway 101, on the route our family takes to the Hurricane Ridge campground, I get this strange gasp of deja vu. I've had several dreams involving that movie theater (just outside of Deer Park), and I never know why: I've never been inside it, we've driven past it a lot but I've driven past a lot of movie theaters--it's a mystery.
So it's funny how much power nightmares hold over us, even though they're often so stupid. I had a nightmare several times that involved an enormous black cat--as tall as me at the shoulder--and an even bigger dog. They prowled the edge of our yard, huge smiles on their faces, and they'd wait for me, sitting right at the property line, at the top of the hill our house was at the base of, just over the crest. It was enough to unnerve me as I walked home from school, alone, the Monday after I had the dream. And then, the worst part, there was a huge black snail, biggest of all and with an eerie smile. It had huge, razor-sharp teeth, moved quickly and it was hunting me. It kept on coming closer, crossing the edges of our yard and moving towards the house. This dream terrified me--it was about a gigantic black snail. What's scary about that? Nothing at all--except for the fear that your mind can pull up out of nowhere. It doesn't even make sense...
Friday, September 18, 2009
Animals That Horrify Me
Animals can be pretty damn scary things. To illustrate this, here is my personal list of seven animals that could destroy and/or control the world, if they so desired, in order from least to most horrifying. (This entry brought to you by a classroom discussion on appropriate uses of obscenities in writing. Things are--gosh!--a little foul-mouthed.)
1. Aphids. Now, even in terms of garden pests, aphids aren't as bad as you get. I mean, squirrels are more of a problem and they're, well, squirrels. So why single them out as having the potential to be destructive beyond all means?
Aphids control the ants. And ants are, bar no other living creature, the scariest fucking creatures on the face of the planet. They can get into almost any building, exist all over the world, are sometimes poisonous, are slavishly devoted to the good of their queen and hive to the point where they have no self-interest whatsoever, and they're incredibly numerous. Most horrifying? The mega-colony of ants located in Europe, which is like a whole bunch of different anthills, only instead of fighting each other, they cooperate. This is the most horrific thing I have ever heard.
To return to aphids, they have a pretty nice set-up going with the ants. Ants will protect, feed and even place aphids in opportune places, "farming" them, in return for the honeydew (or sweet, sugary piss) of aphids--the aphids lose nothing, since it's a natural waste product anyway, and in return, they control the most frightening insect on the planet.
Not so harmless now, are they?
2. Octopodes. (Before anyone gets me started on the name... Yes, I know, octopi. That's lovely and all, but that's a Latin plural ending on a Greek word. Either call them octopusses (my usual choice) or use the right plural form--just don't mix and match, especially if you then proceed to correct people smugly. "It's octopi," you may say, raising one brow with a superior sneer on your face. Yeah, shut up, bitch--it isn't.)
So what's so horrifying about the octopus? Well, for one, they're incredibly intelligent. They break locks. Sometimes they choose not to break locks, because it's easier for them to just break the locked box into pieces and get their fishy reward that way. They solve simple puzzles, they observe humans--there was an octopus that was being trained to do simple tasks for treats, which were stored in a cupboard. After a while, the scientists noticed that the treats were disappearing very quickly--reviewing the cameras in the lab showed that the octopus was escaping its cage (something they didn't even know it could do), climbing over to the cabinet where the treats were stored, opening it, and then eating its fill every night. Oh my fucking God. There are registered voters who couldn't do that shit.
The one thing holding the octopus back is its slightly less effective copper-based blood. Soon, they will find a way around this. And then--well, then the world will fall. With other cephalopodian shock troops, like the demonic Humboldt Squid, which hunts in voracious packs of up to 1200 individuals, devouring whatever crosses its path, working cooperatively and dragging humans down to be consumed in the darkest depths of the ocean, nothing will stand in their way--as soon as they find a way to subsist for long periods of time on the surface of the water, we're all doomed.
3. Canadian geese. They are some nasty motherfuckers, let me tell you. And adult geese are strong--they can knock you around pretty bad. Mostly, though, these are the most ruthless and aggressive birds on the planet: looking like a Canadian goose is the avian equivalent of being 6'5", made of muscle, wearing black leather, being heavily tattooed, twitching sporadically and generally giving the impression that you're about to snap and go for their throat, and probably wearing the caked-on blood of the multitudes of dead men, women, children, kittens and other innocents that they've killed. And, unlike many other types of birds, they're hideous rapists with an insatiable sexual appetite, to the point where birds sometimes drown because they have been fucked into the water, after a particularly enthusiastic drake landed on them while they were floating.
You probably think this is hyperbole. It's not. The invasion has already begun--notice how the geese no longer fly south for winter everywhere? They're planning their attack. They already have us feeding them bread--soon, our every goal will be to serve our feathered overlords.
Canadian geese will take a break from raping, murdering and eating your lawn, and then laugh and laugh, honking wildly as they chew on the severed fingers of your children. Not even the adorable goslings will make up for that. The cuteness is a lie.
4. Chinese giant salamanders. They get six feet long. They are a six-foot-long amphibian. One that can live for hundreds of years. Six-foot-long incredibly long-lived predatory amphibians. The only reason that they don't have human deaths attributed to them is because they're very obscure and unstudied, living high in the Chinese mountains. Nobody knows how intelligent they are. Nobody knows much of anything, in fact--and they like it that way.
5. Infectious dog cancer. "Infectious cancer?" you may say. "Don't be ridiculous!" But it is, in fact, the truth--another infectious cancer is behind Devil Facial Tumor Disease, which causes cancerous growths on the faces of Tasmanian devils, swelling until they're so large that the animal is unable to feed and starves to death.
The cancer dogs get is a little more benign: it's usually not fatal. Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is passed from dog-to-dog by sexual contact or by fighting--and unlike the cervical cancer caused by HPV, it's truly an infectious cancer. That means that every cell in every tumor in every dog who has this disease--and it's found across all five continents, commonly--is genetically identical, and that it all comes from one animal, a dog or wolf, who lived approximately 150-1000 years ago.
Which means that that dog, in essence, has never died. Instead it lives on, a few of its cells--mutated until they no longer follow the rules of genetics and the body as we know them--buried inside hundreds of thousands of dogs, all across the planet. Waiting.
6. Cordyceps fungi. Now, fungus usually aren't all that scary--maybe if you're immunologically depressed you might get certain species growing in you (like Schizophyllum commune, a known cause of "human mycosis," settling in the lungs and sinuses, among other organs, and causing things like brain abscesses) but mostly they stick to dead stuff, right? Or plants at the very least--although there is that fungus that grows on hibernating bats, causing erratic behavior, physical problems and eventually death--really, not a threat to humans or the greater part of the animal world.
Well, the Cordyceps fungus infects living insects. It moves slowly through the insect, consuming the most vital systems last and entwining with the insects nervous system. Now, let's say that the infected species was an ant: as it grows sicker and sicker, dying as more and more essential systems are confused by the parasite growing inside its body, it starts to exhibit erratic, abnormal behaviors. (This still isn't very scary, is it? Just wait.) It starts washing compulsively, for example--more to the point, it starts climbing up towards the canopy of the tropical rain forests it's found in. Why up? Because there's more air flow up there. Why? Because the Cordyceps fungus makes it. How can you tell? It's totally abnormal behavior for the ants.
As the ant moves upwards, it eventually dies. As it passes away, it grips its jaws into the wood beneath it, clinging to the tree even as death sets in, followed by rigor mortis. And, finally, the fungus shows itself: it begins to fruit, a long spike emerging from the body to spread its spores. The increased breeze at the tops of the trees helps the plant spread, to infect another ant.
No scientist really knows how it causes behavioral changes like that. It already effects hundreds, possibly thousands, of insect species...
7. Hairworms. This is another mind-control parasite, like the Cordyceps in some ways: it changes the behavior of the host, to its detriment and eventual death. It even infects insects--although the hairworm in question infects grasshoppers exclusively. (For the moment, at least. And as far as we know.) It was discovered when scientists noticed grasshoppers jumping directly into ponds--not normal behavior for them. It appeared that they were committing suicide, which they were, in many ways.
It was eventually discovered to be caused by a parasite. Somehow, it alters grasshopper behavior; for a while it lives relatively quietly within its host, consuming the flesh and vitality of the grasshopper like any normal parasite. Then things change. In the end, the grasshopper ends up plunging helplessly into the pond, where it drowns, leaving the worm free to leave its host and find a mate, finishing its complex life-cycle.
Essentially--somehow--this parasite makes the grasshopper kill itself so that it can continue to finish its disgusting life cycle. (To illustrate just how disgusting: the worms writhe themselves into hideous balls and clumps, earning their other name--Gordian worms, after Gordian knots.) How? Again, nobody knows--but I'd look really carefully at the number of human suicides-by-water in regions where this thing is found.
(Sources: Chinese Giant Salamanders, and the same again, hairworms, Humboldt squid, Tasmanian devils, Cordyceps fungus, and infectious dog cancer.)
1. Aphids. Now, even in terms of garden pests, aphids aren't as bad as you get. I mean, squirrels are more of a problem and they're, well, squirrels. So why single them out as having the potential to be destructive beyond all means?
Aphids control the ants. And ants are, bar no other living creature, the scariest fucking creatures on the face of the planet. They can get into almost any building, exist all over the world, are sometimes poisonous, are slavishly devoted to the good of their queen and hive to the point where they have no self-interest whatsoever, and they're incredibly numerous. Most horrifying? The mega-colony of ants located in Europe, which is like a whole bunch of different anthills, only instead of fighting each other, they cooperate. This is the most horrific thing I have ever heard.
To return to aphids, they have a pretty nice set-up going with the ants. Ants will protect, feed and even place aphids in opportune places, "farming" them, in return for the honeydew (or sweet, sugary piss) of aphids--the aphids lose nothing, since it's a natural waste product anyway, and in return, they control the most frightening insect on the planet.
Not so harmless now, are they?
2. Octopodes. (Before anyone gets me started on the name... Yes, I know, octopi. That's lovely and all, but that's a Latin plural ending on a Greek word. Either call them octopusses (my usual choice) or use the right plural form--just don't mix and match, especially if you then proceed to correct people smugly. "It's octopi," you may say, raising one brow with a superior sneer on your face. Yeah, shut up, bitch--it isn't.)
So what's so horrifying about the octopus? Well, for one, they're incredibly intelligent. They break locks. Sometimes they choose not to break locks, because it's easier for them to just break the locked box into pieces and get their fishy reward that way. They solve simple puzzles, they observe humans--there was an octopus that was being trained to do simple tasks for treats, which were stored in a cupboard. After a while, the scientists noticed that the treats were disappearing very quickly--reviewing the cameras in the lab showed that the octopus was escaping its cage (something they didn't even know it could do), climbing over to the cabinet where the treats were stored, opening it, and then eating its fill every night. Oh my fucking God. There are registered voters who couldn't do that shit.
The one thing holding the octopus back is its slightly less effective copper-based blood. Soon, they will find a way around this. And then--well, then the world will fall. With other cephalopodian shock troops, like the demonic Humboldt Squid, which hunts in voracious packs of up to 1200 individuals, devouring whatever crosses its path, working cooperatively and dragging humans down to be consumed in the darkest depths of the ocean, nothing will stand in their way--as soon as they find a way to subsist for long periods of time on the surface of the water, we're all doomed.
3. Canadian geese. They are some nasty motherfuckers, let me tell you. And adult geese are strong--they can knock you around pretty bad. Mostly, though, these are the most ruthless and aggressive birds on the planet: looking like a Canadian goose is the avian equivalent of being 6'5", made of muscle, wearing black leather, being heavily tattooed, twitching sporadically and generally giving the impression that you're about to snap and go for their throat, and probably wearing the caked-on blood of the multitudes of dead men, women, children, kittens and other innocents that they've killed. And, unlike many other types of birds, they're hideous rapists with an insatiable sexual appetite, to the point where birds sometimes drown because they have been fucked into the water, after a particularly enthusiastic drake landed on them while they were floating.
You probably think this is hyperbole. It's not. The invasion has already begun--notice how the geese no longer fly south for winter everywhere? They're planning their attack. They already have us feeding them bread--soon, our every goal will be to serve our feathered overlords.
Canadian geese will take a break from raping, murdering and eating your lawn, and then laugh and laugh, honking wildly as they chew on the severed fingers of your children. Not even the adorable goslings will make up for that. The cuteness is a lie.
4. Chinese giant salamanders. They get six feet long. They are a six-foot-long amphibian. One that can live for hundreds of years. Six-foot-long incredibly long-lived predatory amphibians. The only reason that they don't have human deaths attributed to them is because they're very obscure and unstudied, living high in the Chinese mountains. Nobody knows how intelligent they are. Nobody knows much of anything, in fact--and they like it that way.
5. Infectious dog cancer. "Infectious cancer?" you may say. "Don't be ridiculous!" But it is, in fact, the truth--another infectious cancer is behind Devil Facial Tumor Disease, which causes cancerous growths on the faces of Tasmanian devils, swelling until they're so large that the animal is unable to feed and starves to death.
The cancer dogs get is a little more benign: it's usually not fatal. Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is passed from dog-to-dog by sexual contact or by fighting--and unlike the cervical cancer caused by HPV, it's truly an infectious cancer. That means that every cell in every tumor in every dog who has this disease--and it's found across all five continents, commonly--is genetically identical, and that it all comes from one animal, a dog or wolf, who lived approximately 150-1000 years ago.
Which means that that dog, in essence, has never died. Instead it lives on, a few of its cells--mutated until they no longer follow the rules of genetics and the body as we know them--buried inside hundreds of thousands of dogs, all across the planet. Waiting.
6. Cordyceps fungi. Now, fungus usually aren't all that scary--maybe if you're immunologically depressed you might get certain species growing in you (like Schizophyllum commune, a known cause of "human mycosis," settling in the lungs and sinuses, among other organs, and causing things like brain abscesses) but mostly they stick to dead stuff, right? Or plants at the very least--although there is that fungus that grows on hibernating bats, causing erratic behavior, physical problems and eventually death--really, not a threat to humans or the greater part of the animal world.
Well, the Cordyceps fungus infects living insects. It moves slowly through the insect, consuming the most vital systems last and entwining with the insects nervous system. Now, let's say that the infected species was an ant: as it grows sicker and sicker, dying as more and more essential systems are confused by the parasite growing inside its body, it starts to exhibit erratic, abnormal behaviors. (This still isn't very scary, is it? Just wait.) It starts washing compulsively, for example--more to the point, it starts climbing up towards the canopy of the tropical rain forests it's found in. Why up? Because there's more air flow up there. Why? Because the Cordyceps fungus makes it. How can you tell? It's totally abnormal behavior for the ants.
As the ant moves upwards, it eventually dies. As it passes away, it grips its jaws into the wood beneath it, clinging to the tree even as death sets in, followed by rigor mortis. And, finally, the fungus shows itself: it begins to fruit, a long spike emerging from the body to spread its spores. The increased breeze at the tops of the trees helps the plant spread, to infect another ant.
No scientist really knows how it causes behavioral changes like that. It already effects hundreds, possibly thousands, of insect species...
7. Hairworms. This is another mind-control parasite, like the Cordyceps in some ways: it changes the behavior of the host, to its detriment and eventual death. It even infects insects--although the hairworm in question infects grasshoppers exclusively. (For the moment, at least. And as far as we know.) It was discovered when scientists noticed grasshoppers jumping directly into ponds--not normal behavior for them. It appeared that they were committing suicide, which they were, in many ways.
It was eventually discovered to be caused by a parasite. Somehow, it alters grasshopper behavior; for a while it lives relatively quietly within its host, consuming the flesh and vitality of the grasshopper like any normal parasite. Then things change. In the end, the grasshopper ends up plunging helplessly into the pond, where it drowns, leaving the worm free to leave its host and find a mate, finishing its complex life-cycle.
Essentially--somehow--this parasite makes the grasshopper kill itself so that it can continue to finish its disgusting life cycle. (To illustrate just how disgusting: the worms writhe themselves into hideous balls and clumps, earning their other name--Gordian worms, after Gordian knots.) How? Again, nobody knows--but I'd look really carefully at the number of human suicides-by-water in regions where this thing is found.
(Sources: Chinese Giant Salamanders, and the same again, hairworms, Humboldt squid, Tasmanian devils, Cordyceps fungus, and infectious dog cancer.)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
A Story about a Princess
Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in a very small and unimportant country far up in the mountains, named Euskal. There were ten villages and a lot of forests in this kingdom, and their castle was a little small and old-fashioned. Maybe the castle walls were a little derelict, since nobody had bothered to attack them in well over a hundred years, by the time this princess was born, and they weren't very well-off, because there weren't many neighboring countries and even fewer peasants, and so there was no real reason to repair them. It was a sensible place, Euskal, for the most part. They just weren't very rich or powerful.
Still, it was a very stable and mostly happy place, not at all in danger of being consumed by its larger neighbors--partially because there weren't any large or important neighbors at all, not for quite some distance, but also because it simply wasn't important to be worth conquering. By the time Princess Elixabete was born, nobody really thought about Euskal unless they were a logging company or particularly interested in artisanal cheeses.
Elixabete was an ugly baby and an awkward child. She grew into a woman most commonly described as stunning. She quickly became the most eligible girl in the whole empire, because she wasn't the first cousin of hardly anyone in the noble families, since they'd stayed out of the marriage games, being so unimportant--but she was still of royal blood, when it counted. Her beauty made her popular, and her attitude made her infamous and, more than that, a challenge.
The princess herself wasn't particularly interested in what went on. She was more concerned about the flooded market for pinewood, and the diseases lowering milk production in the sheep. Someone needed to be sensible, and her father, King Zuzen, was ailing. That only made the pressure for her to find a suitable husband (hopefully marrying up, since she was pretty enough to make up for her relatively low importance) that much worse, because once he was dead, the family would need some man to take over the role of ruler, and that meant Elixabete's husband-to-be, since there weren't any other men in the family eligible for the role. And to be without a king--that was unthinkable.
King Zuzen tried to encourage his daughter, as much as he could, but Elixabete was a little selfish and willful, as an only child who's position had been exaggerated far beyond what it normally would have been. He recruited his wife and queen into the matter, as she was very anxious as well, but Edurne proved just as ineffective. Elixabete's lady-in-waiting, and even her maids, all tried their hands at convincing the princess that some decision should be made--subtly, of course, because they knew what their place was.
"Prince Iñigo is very handsome," they'd say. "Did you see Lord Cipriano? He's very powerful, they say that he's favored by the emperor himself. Isidro is only a merchant, but he's very rich, and there wouldn't be any concern about the country being lost to another family if you married him..."
Princess Elixabete was entirely uninterested in the matter.
That alone was enough to discourage most of the suitors, after a while. Prince Iñigo left for a more profitable marriage to a better-connected second daughter of the rulers of a southern country, expressing his disgust at northern mountain weather (and their similarities to the inclinations of northern mountain princesses) as he went. Isidro lost interest, especially once he'd ascertained that the economics of country were so unprofitable. Lord Cipriano got called away to the emperor's side and, rumor had it, found a fair number of female companions in the process.
"It's for the best, really, then," Kistiñe said.
"I don't think it's appropriate for you to comment on that," Elixabete snapped, a little too on edge after all this nightmare business with finding a husband to tolerate that sort of backtalk from her lady's maid.
Finally, only two suitors remained. Officially, at least--there was a third, Elixabete was realizing. He left her clever little carvings of animals from the forest, little souvenirs of life in their idyllic village: perfectly carved cows made from wood almost the same warm tan color as the real animals, dark-haired children playing, old men with their pipes and txapelas. Certainly it wasn't anything that Matxin or Santiago would leave her.
They were the last two of her serious suitors, of the ones who hadn't been scared off or discarded as right out of the question by either Elixabete or, more often, Zuzen and Edurne. Matxin was the second son of the king of Nafarroa, a small country so much like Euskal that most of the southerners confused them; Santiago was, by comparison, a first cousin of the ruling family of Andalucía, very far to the south, making him very well-connected even if he wasn't local. He'd fallen head-over-heels for the rare beauty of Elixabete, especially when paired with her common-sense: he dreamed of her dark hair and her flashing blue eyes, the delicate curve of her throat, wrapped in translucent olive skin, and so he continued to pursue her, even though there were more auspicious matches available to him.
That was just like him, though. Santiago was romantic and impetuous, enamored of grand gestures and declarations of love. Elixabete thought him rather fool-hardy. She didn't think any better of Matxin: he was imperious and sometimes cold, and almost domineering in how he acted--which was, of course, appropriate for a ruler such as he was.
It was also true, though, no matter how uncomfortable she felt with Matxin and Santiago, ruling the country was her duty, and it would require a man. It could have been worse, as well: neither of her suitors (and certainly not her anonymous beau) would eat up her country into their own.
And so, she tolerated it when Matxin took her riding, and when Santiago read her love poetry, and when someone left her flowers and sweets, fresh fruit. She tolerated it when Matxin and Santiago would glare and sulk at each other, depending on who got to sit closest to her at the evening dinner table, and she tolerated it when both attempted, and failed, to maneuver her into more isolated (and intimate) areas.
"You're going to need to choose," King Zuzen told her one day, when she went to attend to him.
"I really don't feel that any of them are suitable," Elixabete said, voice soft but unyielding. She truly was willful soul.
"What do you mean?" her father replied, sounding confused--he truly was starting to sound his age, which made the princess's eyes fill with tears. "They're fine young men, both of them--you've been given so much choice--"
"Matxin is commandeering. He doesn't listen to his people, or consider them, which will drive the country into ruin. He doesn't understand how things word. Santiago is silly, and more in love with the idea of me than anything else."
"That's not enough to ruin a marriage," said Queen Edurne, voice pitched to carry. "They're young men who will do you well."
"I really don't feel that either is competent enough to rule the country!" Elixabete replied, voice rising in her anger. She flushed, knowing that she was being uncouth and unladylike, and tried not to stomp as she left.
"Such a selfish girl," Edurne said as Elixabete left, loud enough that the princess could hear her.
After a half hour of pacing and a few minutes of weeping, Elixabete felt better, if somewhat drained. She needed to go apologize to her parents, she knew, so she wiped her face clean and dry and shook the wrinkles out of her long skirt, pinned her hair back up, and left for dinner. She was only a few minutes late, and she slipped into her chair with a murmur of noncommittal apology.
She'd planned on apologizing after desert, catching up with her mother and father as they departed for their chambers, but right before the cuajada was served, even before the cheese and membrillo was brought out, her father rose, signaling the hall into silence.
"My health is failing," King Zuzen announced. There was a murmur of surprise. For that to be said so bluntly! "And my daughter is in the process of choosing a suitor. I know that all of you know this. Since it is such a hard choice for her, as both Prince Matxin and Lord Santiago are fine and honorable men who would honor our family, the next few weeks will be a series of tests, so that we are able to judge the no-doubt-great extent of valor, courage and righteousness that these fine young men have. The choice is so hard in part because of the extremely high caliber of both of them..."
Elixabete sat back, horrified but masking it with a blank face, as was only proper. And she decided not to speak to her parents this night, as it would only go poorly.
(To be continued!)
Still, it was a very stable and mostly happy place, not at all in danger of being consumed by its larger neighbors--partially because there weren't any large or important neighbors at all, not for quite some distance, but also because it simply wasn't important to be worth conquering. By the time Princess Elixabete was born, nobody really thought about Euskal unless they were a logging company or particularly interested in artisanal cheeses.
Elixabete was an ugly baby and an awkward child. She grew into a woman most commonly described as stunning. She quickly became the most eligible girl in the whole empire, because she wasn't the first cousin of hardly anyone in the noble families, since they'd stayed out of the marriage games, being so unimportant--but she was still of royal blood, when it counted. Her beauty made her popular, and her attitude made her infamous and, more than that, a challenge.
The princess herself wasn't particularly interested in what went on. She was more concerned about the flooded market for pinewood, and the diseases lowering milk production in the sheep. Someone needed to be sensible, and her father, King Zuzen, was ailing. That only made the pressure for her to find a suitable husband (hopefully marrying up, since she was pretty enough to make up for her relatively low importance) that much worse, because once he was dead, the family would need some man to take over the role of ruler, and that meant Elixabete's husband-to-be, since there weren't any other men in the family eligible for the role. And to be without a king--that was unthinkable.
King Zuzen tried to encourage his daughter, as much as he could, but Elixabete was a little selfish and willful, as an only child who's position had been exaggerated far beyond what it normally would have been. He recruited his wife and queen into the matter, as she was very anxious as well, but Edurne proved just as ineffective. Elixabete's lady-in-waiting, and even her maids, all tried their hands at convincing the princess that some decision should be made--subtly, of course, because they knew what their place was.
"Prince Iñigo is very handsome," they'd say. "Did you see Lord Cipriano? He's very powerful, they say that he's favored by the emperor himself. Isidro is only a merchant, but he's very rich, and there wouldn't be any concern about the country being lost to another family if you married him..."
Princess Elixabete was entirely uninterested in the matter.
That alone was enough to discourage most of the suitors, after a while. Prince Iñigo left for a more profitable marriage to a better-connected second daughter of the rulers of a southern country, expressing his disgust at northern mountain weather (and their similarities to the inclinations of northern mountain princesses) as he went. Isidro lost interest, especially once he'd ascertained that the economics of country were so unprofitable. Lord Cipriano got called away to the emperor's side and, rumor had it, found a fair number of female companions in the process.
"It's for the best, really, then," Kistiñe said.
"I don't think it's appropriate for you to comment on that," Elixabete snapped, a little too on edge after all this nightmare business with finding a husband to tolerate that sort of backtalk from her lady's maid.
Finally, only two suitors remained. Officially, at least--there was a third, Elixabete was realizing. He left her clever little carvings of animals from the forest, little souvenirs of life in their idyllic village: perfectly carved cows made from wood almost the same warm tan color as the real animals, dark-haired children playing, old men with their pipes and txapelas. Certainly it wasn't anything that Matxin or Santiago would leave her.
They were the last two of her serious suitors, of the ones who hadn't been scared off or discarded as right out of the question by either Elixabete or, more often, Zuzen and Edurne. Matxin was the second son of the king of Nafarroa, a small country so much like Euskal that most of the southerners confused them; Santiago was, by comparison, a first cousin of the ruling family of Andalucía, very far to the south, making him very well-connected even if he wasn't local. He'd fallen head-over-heels for the rare beauty of Elixabete, especially when paired with her common-sense: he dreamed of her dark hair and her flashing blue eyes, the delicate curve of her throat, wrapped in translucent olive skin, and so he continued to pursue her, even though there were more auspicious matches available to him.
That was just like him, though. Santiago was romantic and impetuous, enamored of grand gestures and declarations of love. Elixabete thought him rather fool-hardy. She didn't think any better of Matxin: he was imperious and sometimes cold, and almost domineering in how he acted--which was, of course, appropriate for a ruler such as he was.
It was also true, though, no matter how uncomfortable she felt with Matxin and Santiago, ruling the country was her duty, and it would require a man. It could have been worse, as well: neither of her suitors (and certainly not her anonymous beau) would eat up her country into their own.
And so, she tolerated it when Matxin took her riding, and when Santiago read her love poetry, and when someone left her flowers and sweets, fresh fruit. She tolerated it when Matxin and Santiago would glare and sulk at each other, depending on who got to sit closest to her at the evening dinner table, and she tolerated it when both attempted, and failed, to maneuver her into more isolated (and intimate) areas.
"You're going to need to choose," King Zuzen told her one day, when she went to attend to him.
"I really don't feel that any of them are suitable," Elixabete said, voice soft but unyielding. She truly was willful soul.
"What do you mean?" her father replied, sounding confused--he truly was starting to sound his age, which made the princess's eyes fill with tears. "They're fine young men, both of them--you've been given so much choice--"
"Matxin is commandeering. He doesn't listen to his people, or consider them, which will drive the country into ruin. He doesn't understand how things word. Santiago is silly, and more in love with the idea of me than anything else."
"That's not enough to ruin a marriage," said Queen Edurne, voice pitched to carry. "They're young men who will do you well."
"I really don't feel that either is competent enough to rule the country!" Elixabete replied, voice rising in her anger. She flushed, knowing that she was being uncouth and unladylike, and tried not to stomp as she left.
"Such a selfish girl," Edurne said as Elixabete left, loud enough that the princess could hear her.
After a half hour of pacing and a few minutes of weeping, Elixabete felt better, if somewhat drained. She needed to go apologize to her parents, she knew, so she wiped her face clean and dry and shook the wrinkles out of her long skirt, pinned her hair back up, and left for dinner. She was only a few minutes late, and she slipped into her chair with a murmur of noncommittal apology.
She'd planned on apologizing after desert, catching up with her mother and father as they departed for their chambers, but right before the cuajada was served, even before the cheese and membrillo was brought out, her father rose, signaling the hall into silence.
"My health is failing," King Zuzen announced. There was a murmur of surprise. For that to be said so bluntly! "And my daughter is in the process of choosing a suitor. I know that all of you know this. Since it is such a hard choice for her, as both Prince Matxin and Lord Santiago are fine and honorable men who would honor our family, the next few weeks will be a series of tests, so that we are able to judge the no-doubt-great extent of valor, courage and righteousness that these fine young men have. The choice is so hard in part because of the extremely high caliber of both of them..."
Elixabete sat back, horrified but masking it with a blank face, as was only proper. And she decided not to speak to her parents this night, as it would only go poorly.
(To be continued!)
Monday, September 14, 2009
A Proposition
There are two serious problems facing our world today, and I think that there's an obvious, logical and (most importantly) feasible way to combat both of them and once. On one hand, there are the problems caused by unwanted pets, particularly dogs and cats, although potentially invasive exotics in locations such as Florida are also troublesome. The other issue is world hunger and the difficulties the poor and underprivileged have in obtaining sufficient nutrition, even in our own country. The primary nutrient deficiency in the world, after all, is calories, and even those people who get adequate calories can suffer from protein-deficiency diseases such as kwashiorkor and marasmus. On a less extreme level, poor nutrition caused by poverty contributes to the obesity epidemic (as unhealthy, low-quality foods are often cheaper than fresh meat and vegetables) which in turn causes a multitude of health problems such as heart disease and diabetes.
The obvious answer is to start turning unwanted pets into food. There are some health issues, but these can be easily avoided if some basic standards of sanitation and more cleanly breeding programs are put into place. For those of you who are horrified by the idea of eating little Muffy and darling Whiskers, just think about the thousands of pets euthanized every day because of a lack of funding and space to care for them. Wouldn't it be better to give them a purpose in life, instead of just discarding of their uneaten corpses?
You may say that this is a radical and illogical approach to dealing with unwanted pets, and that instead improved efforts at spaying and neutering animals would solve the problem. Well--it hasn't, has it? And of course the surgeries require money that isn't there, and housing that isn't in there because it in turn requires money. Furthermore, domesticated animals like dogs and cats can't survive well in the wild: a feral cat has an average lifespan of one year. Wild dogs can be down-right dangerous.
It's even possible that you could add other benefits onto this plan. Manufacturing pet meat could be a great source of income for the poor and unemployed, on many levels, from start-up cat farmers to dog handlers. You could even make it a high school volunteer program, to keep teenagers interested and involved in the community! Cat and dog meat could be sold at very low prices for the poor, or handed out as a government program. Of course, no doubt some crafty entrepreneurs will realize that there's a market for free-range organic cats, and other people will step forward to make faux catmeat tofu products for vegetarians and vegans.
This will, of course, be embraced by environmentalists, because after all, what animal is more destructive to songbird populations than cats? Domestic animals cause hell in ecosystems around the world. Obviously eradication of them can only improve the odds of survival for endangered species.
You can even argue that it's better for the animals to be bred for food. They'll still live longer than they probably would in the wild, and there's a far lower risk of disease and the sort of desperate conditions that uncared for pets live in. It's really a humanitarian plan, and one that can only benefit the animals.
There's one final question that needs to be addressed: how do you convince people that cute little kittens and puppy-dogs will improve the health of the American public as part of an every-day diet, that they'll provide an important protein source in third-world underdeveloped countries in desperate need of food and nutrition, and that they'll be better off than they would be languishing in city parks, alleys and underfunded shelters? There's a really easy answer for that one: an aggressive advertising campaign.
The obvious answer is to start turning unwanted pets into food. There are some health issues, but these can be easily avoided if some basic standards of sanitation and more cleanly breeding programs are put into place. For those of you who are horrified by the idea of eating little Muffy and darling Whiskers, just think about the thousands of pets euthanized every day because of a lack of funding and space to care for them. Wouldn't it be better to give them a purpose in life, instead of just discarding of their uneaten corpses?
You may say that this is a radical and illogical approach to dealing with unwanted pets, and that instead improved efforts at spaying and neutering animals would solve the problem. Well--it hasn't, has it? And of course the surgeries require money that isn't there, and housing that isn't in there because it in turn requires money. Furthermore, domesticated animals like dogs and cats can't survive well in the wild: a feral cat has an average lifespan of one year. Wild dogs can be down-right dangerous.
It's even possible that you could add other benefits onto this plan. Manufacturing pet meat could be a great source of income for the poor and unemployed, on many levels, from start-up cat farmers to dog handlers. You could even make it a high school volunteer program, to keep teenagers interested and involved in the community! Cat and dog meat could be sold at very low prices for the poor, or handed out as a government program. Of course, no doubt some crafty entrepreneurs will realize that there's a market for free-range organic cats, and other people will step forward to make faux catmeat tofu products for vegetarians and vegans.
This will, of course, be embraced by environmentalists, because after all, what animal is more destructive to songbird populations than cats? Domestic animals cause hell in ecosystems around the world. Obviously eradication of them can only improve the odds of survival for endangered species.
You can even argue that it's better for the animals to be bred for food. They'll still live longer than they probably would in the wild, and there's a far lower risk of disease and the sort of desperate conditions that uncared for pets live in. It's really a humanitarian plan, and one that can only benefit the animals.
There's one final question that needs to be addressed: how do you convince people that cute little kittens and puppy-dogs will improve the health of the American public as part of an every-day diet, that they'll provide an important protein source in third-world underdeveloped countries in desperate need of food and nutrition, and that they'll be better off than they would be languishing in city parks, alleys and underfunded shelters? There's a really easy answer for that one: an aggressive advertising campaign.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Anothropomorphism
As humans, we try to apply human values to the natural world. This is wrong. Evolution, for example isn't purposeful, it's just a series of happy accidents. Rabbits don't hate wolves, and chickens don't hate raccoons, and no animal hates humans. There's fear, of course, but that's an instinct bred into us through natural selection: the fight-or-flight instinct is part of our genetic code, not a learned behavior, just like the broken wing display of killdeer, a type of long-legged wading bird. When killdeer build their nests, which are flush to the ground and almost invisible, if a predator approaches they hold one wing out like it's broken and make high-pitched, panicked piping noises, trying to draw the threat away from their eggs, since they look like an injured and therefore easy target. Again, this isn't a learned behavior: it's instinctive, and it only happens around the breeding season.
As humans, we see a killdeer try and draw away a predator, and we see maternal love. The killdeer is only interested in the continuation of its genes, which isn't even a selfish urge, because selfishness requires the need to know better. Nature is purposeless. The urge to see your genes continue is selected for because it means that more of the offspring survive--it's not even a conscious decision for animals. That's where humanity differs: what we show over an infant is maternal love because it's more than the genetic drive to ensure survival--although that, of course, counts for a lot as well.
Not every animal displays behaviors that we would call "mothering." Many species don't parent at all, instead just releasing their eggs and sperm, or pollen and seeds. Again, this is just how things are: it's a reproductive strategy that has worked at least marginally functionally, and therefore ensured the continuation of the species--at least while conditions remain stable. Most birds species (around 90%, far more than mammals because both a male and female bird are able to equally care for the young, unlike mammals, for example) form monogamous pair bonds that raise young cooperatively. This is not an "admirable" trait, because it's simply something that worked from a genetic standpoint--because birds aren't human, we can't apply moral standards to them, even if we apply them to our own society, wrongly or rightfully. Almost every species of bird that has social monogamy also has considerable amounts of extra-pair copulation--cheating, if you want to use our anthropocentric and anthropomorphic term. Almost all of them exhibit intraspecific brood parasitism, where a bird places one of their eggs in the nest of another couple, causing them to raise the genetic inheritor of the other bird. It's not an "evil" or "amoral" act, because the birds don't have the intelligence or awareness to be doing it for any other reason than that it works and that it is an inherited, genetic trait.
So when a cat washes itself or a kitten, it's not an inherent value for cleanliness, it's an instinct that comes from a genetic urge. It probably keeps or kept the cats healthier by washing away parasites and preventing infection. Similarly, when a cat kills far more birds and rodents than it could possibly eat, it's not a sign of greed or avaricious malice, it's something that was bred into the cat by humans: cats were domesticated to keep rats and other pests out of stored grain. When your dog waits for you by the door, it's because of ingrained instincts about social hierarchies. Wolves aren't "noble," and neither is any other animal. Weasels aren't tricky and devious. It's all just illusions, cast by society and human perception and misconceptions--anthropomorphism, just another reflection of anthropocentrism.
As humans, we see a killdeer try and draw away a predator, and we see maternal love. The killdeer is only interested in the continuation of its genes, which isn't even a selfish urge, because selfishness requires the need to know better. Nature is purposeless. The urge to see your genes continue is selected for because it means that more of the offspring survive--it's not even a conscious decision for animals. That's where humanity differs: what we show over an infant is maternal love because it's more than the genetic drive to ensure survival--although that, of course, counts for a lot as well.
Not every animal displays behaviors that we would call "mothering." Many species don't parent at all, instead just releasing their eggs and sperm, or pollen and seeds. Again, this is just how things are: it's a reproductive strategy that has worked at least marginally functionally, and therefore ensured the continuation of the species--at least while conditions remain stable. Most birds species (around 90%, far more than mammals because both a male and female bird are able to equally care for the young, unlike mammals, for example) form monogamous pair bonds that raise young cooperatively. This is not an "admirable" trait, because it's simply something that worked from a genetic standpoint--because birds aren't human, we can't apply moral standards to them, even if we apply them to our own society, wrongly or rightfully. Almost every species of bird that has social monogamy also has considerable amounts of extra-pair copulation--cheating, if you want to use our anthropocentric and anthropomorphic term. Almost all of them exhibit intraspecific brood parasitism, where a bird places one of their eggs in the nest of another couple, causing them to raise the genetic inheritor of the other bird. It's not an "evil" or "amoral" act, because the birds don't have the intelligence or awareness to be doing it for any other reason than that it works and that it is an inherited, genetic trait.
So when a cat washes itself or a kitten, it's not an inherent value for cleanliness, it's an instinct that comes from a genetic urge. It probably keeps or kept the cats healthier by washing away parasites and preventing infection. Similarly, when a cat kills far more birds and rodents than it could possibly eat, it's not a sign of greed or avaricious malice, it's something that was bred into the cat by humans: cats were domesticated to keep rats and other pests out of stored grain. When your dog waits for you by the door, it's because of ingrained instincts about social hierarchies. Wolves aren't "noble," and neither is any other animal. Weasels aren't tricky and devious. It's all just illusions, cast by society and human perception and misconceptions--anthropomorphism, just another reflection of anthropocentrism.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Society
Humans are inherently selfish. Society and our parents teach us to stop grasping and demanding as we grow up, but babies, in our most innocent and natural state, want to be catered on hand and foot, fed and changed and cradled with nothing in return whenever they demand it. (Partially this is because they're so dependent: our young are born extraordinarily incapable of taking care of themselves, and extremely slow to mature. There are evolutionary advantages to this, including a larger, better-developed brain, and a long life span leads to a long adolescence. Elephants have a lifespan comparable to that of a human, and reach sexual maturity, a historical marker of adulthood in human cultures around the world, at ages nine to seventeen.) (Information taken from here at animalinfo.org.)
So society serves a purpose, because no responsible parent lets their child grow up selfish. As the brain develops and it becomes possible for the child to grasp concepts like manners and responsibility and selflessness, parents begin to teach their children not to steal, how to share and when to say please and thank you. Of course, this isn't a perfect system, and there's always exceptions, for numerous reasons: not all cultures even share the same values to be taught, to start with, and there are bad parents or neglectful ones, and children with social, developmental or psychological disorders who can't grasp the concepts or apply them. The process is a long one, too, extending through childhood and into adulthood--and the brain isn't even fully developed until between the ages twenty-five and twenty-seven, long past when most people consider themselves adolescents.
This is the point and purpose behind manners. It's not a matter of which fork to use (start on the outside and work inwards with each course) but instead a system of rules and regulations to provide clarity to social interactions, and to help combat instinctual selfishness. You say thank-you because it's polite, not because it's instinctual and natural, and that simple phrase does a lot to prevent resentment. It keeps the wheels of society spinning smoothly.
So society serves a purpose, because no responsible parent lets their child grow up selfish. As the brain develops and it becomes possible for the child to grasp concepts like manners and responsibility and selflessness, parents begin to teach their children not to steal, how to share and when to say please and thank you. Of course, this isn't a perfect system, and there's always exceptions, for numerous reasons: not all cultures even share the same values to be taught, to start with, and there are bad parents or neglectful ones, and children with social, developmental or psychological disorders who can't grasp the concepts or apply them. The process is a long one, too, extending through childhood and into adulthood--and the brain isn't even fully developed until between the ages twenty-five and twenty-seven, long past when most people consider themselves adolescents.
This is the point and purpose behind manners. It's not a matter of which fork to use (start on the outside and work inwards with each course) but instead a system of rules and regulations to provide clarity to social interactions, and to help combat instinctual selfishness. You say thank-you because it's polite, not because it's instinctual and natural, and that simple phrase does a lot to prevent resentment. It keeps the wheels of society spinning smoothly.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Continental Drift, a poem
The African continent is breaking in two.
And Europe and Asia are fighting each other.
This is creating the Himalayas, as one giant plate
swallows the other.
California isn't a contiguous part
of the rest of the West Coast--it's drifting away
while the East and the West
push into each other;
that's how the Rocky Mountains were made.
Hawaii's the result
of the Earth splitting apart
and the magma revealed building up mountains.
As the crack moves on, the fire scabs over
and the water starts wearing the islands away.
Further on, new islands start building up under the waves.
You can track the movement of the earth underneath us.
It dances, in a time that shifts like molasses
or slower, liquid like glass, but still moving forwards
or sometimes back, or away. Land being eaten or land being made,
these fragments of rock floating on lava
give the illusion of rock-solid stability,
no matter how much or what changes.
And Europe and Asia are fighting each other.
This is creating the Himalayas, as one giant plate
swallows the other.
California isn't a contiguous part
of the rest of the West Coast--it's drifting away
while the East and the West
push into each other;
that's how the Rocky Mountains were made.
Hawaii's the result
of the Earth splitting apart
and the magma revealed building up mountains.
As the crack moves on, the fire scabs over
and the water starts wearing the islands away.
Further on, new islands start building up under the waves.
You can track the movement of the earth underneath us.
It dances, in a time that shifts like molasses
or slower, liquid like glass, but still moving forwards
or sometimes back, or away. Land being eaten or land being made,
these fragments of rock floating on lava
give the illusion of rock-solid stability,
no matter how much or what changes.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Water
There is no liquid water on Mars. The atmosphere's too thin for it to subsist on the surface of the planet. There's water ice, beneath the surface of the planet and crusted beneath carbon dioxide ice at the poles of the planet, but if there ever was any liquid on Mars' surface, it was in the past.
Not everyone's convinced that there was. And there's still a lot of information being gathered. But on Mars, there are channels carved into the surface of the planet, many of them comparable in size to the Grand Canyon. But even here on Earth, scientists are unsure about how the Grand Canyon formed--it's too huge to be explained away by the ordinary reasons for canyon formation: water carving a path through stone, wearing it away. If it was water that made it, we've halted that process by damming the Colorado river, which traps sediment and controls flooding, and by consuming too much water for agriculture and industry.
It's possible, however, that these channels were carved by lava. The streamlined islands that some of the larger ones feature, showing flow direction, aren't necessarily a definite sign of water; and it would take a lot of water to carve the channels in question. (If Mars' South Pole melted, there would be enough liquid water to cover the surface of the planet a few feet deep.) There are certain ripple patterns in the rock at the bottom of certain canyons that seem to indicate lava flows passing through.
Certain craters, such as the Bacolor Crater in Utopia Planitia, show a dramatic ring of materia ejecta, or material sprayed around the crater itself by the force of the impact, that indicates a phreatomagmatic explosion, which would be caused by a crater impacting into water or possibly ice, if it melted fast enough. Instead of the usual dust and rock fragments that would be ejected from a normal impact crater, there's a much larger pattern of more liquid debris.
There's a certain land form known as "chaotic terrain" on Mars, often associated with the beginnings of channels. It's jumbled-looking (chaotic), like a patchwork of ups-and-downs, where portions of land collapsed inwards. It was caused by magma coming closer to the surface of the planet, heating subterranean ice until it melted almost instantaneously, leaving the ground collapsed and webbed behind it. Because it seems to have formed channels, it couldn't have evaporated instantly, the way water would today: it had to have persisted, in a liquid state, for at least a little while.
There's recent evidence of hematite, an iron-rich mineral that can only be formed in warm, still water, on Mars. It's only present in tiny nodules in the soil, but that it's there at all is strong evidence for water. How else would it have gotten there? And Mars certainly has enough iron. The red color in the soil is iron oxide, or rust, coloring the pale basaltic dust.
Finally, there are certain surfaces on Mars that are newer than the others. The lava flows surrounding the biggest volcanoes are one spot. The insides of some of the newer meteor craters. The largest area is north pole of the planet and the area surrounding it, a series of low plains. It can't be a fresh surface because of lava flows, because it's lowered, not raised. It looks a lot like a dried-up ocean.
But we have no way of knowing. And even if we do find ever conclusively prove that there was liquid water on Mars, once upon a time, it's still no guarantee that there was ever life on Mars, just like there's no evidence that the liquid water ocean on Saturn's moon Enceladus means that there's life there.
Not everyone's convinced that there was. And there's still a lot of information being gathered. But on Mars, there are channels carved into the surface of the planet, many of them comparable in size to the Grand Canyon. But even here on Earth, scientists are unsure about how the Grand Canyon formed--it's too huge to be explained away by the ordinary reasons for canyon formation: water carving a path through stone, wearing it away. If it was water that made it, we've halted that process by damming the Colorado river, which traps sediment and controls flooding, and by consuming too much water for agriculture and industry.
It's possible, however, that these channels were carved by lava. The streamlined islands that some of the larger ones feature, showing flow direction, aren't necessarily a definite sign of water; and it would take a lot of water to carve the channels in question. (If Mars' South Pole melted, there would be enough liquid water to cover the surface of the planet a few feet deep.) There are certain ripple patterns in the rock at the bottom of certain canyons that seem to indicate lava flows passing through.
Certain craters, such as the Bacolor Crater in Utopia Planitia, show a dramatic ring of materia ejecta, or material sprayed around the crater itself by the force of the impact, that indicates a phreatomagmatic explosion, which would be caused by a crater impacting into water or possibly ice, if it melted fast enough. Instead of the usual dust and rock fragments that would be ejected from a normal impact crater, there's a much larger pattern of more liquid debris.
There's a certain land form known as "chaotic terrain" on Mars, often associated with the beginnings of channels. It's jumbled-looking (chaotic), like a patchwork of ups-and-downs, where portions of land collapsed inwards. It was caused by magma coming closer to the surface of the planet, heating subterranean ice until it melted almost instantaneously, leaving the ground collapsed and webbed behind it. Because it seems to have formed channels, it couldn't have evaporated instantly, the way water would today: it had to have persisted, in a liquid state, for at least a little while.
There's recent evidence of hematite, an iron-rich mineral that can only be formed in warm, still water, on Mars. It's only present in tiny nodules in the soil, but that it's there at all is strong evidence for water. How else would it have gotten there? And Mars certainly has enough iron. The red color in the soil is iron oxide, or rust, coloring the pale basaltic dust.
Finally, there are certain surfaces on Mars that are newer than the others. The lava flows surrounding the biggest volcanoes are one spot. The insides of some of the newer meteor craters. The largest area is north pole of the planet and the area surrounding it, a series of low plains. It can't be a fresh surface because of lava flows, because it's lowered, not raised. It looks a lot like a dried-up ocean.
But we have no way of knowing. And even if we do find ever conclusively prove that there was liquid water on Mars, once upon a time, it's still no guarantee that there was ever life on Mars, just like there's no evidence that the liquid water ocean on Saturn's moon Enceladus means that there's life there.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Geography: A Matter of Scale
On Mars, there's a canyon longer than the United States is wide. You could put a state on the bottom of it, and it would disappear. There are mountains three times as tall as Mt. Everest, and craters the size of continents. Mars itself is smaller than the Earth, one fourth to one third the diameter of our own planet and with only one tenth as much mass, but the features are exaggeratedly huge.
The biggest of these titantic cracks and features are because the planet is so small. Olympus Mons, the biggest mountain in the solar system (twenty-seven kilometers high, and big enough that it needs to be calculated for when they're programming the orbits of satellites) is now extinct, but it was once a vast volcano, clustered with three others; together, they caused lava flows that cover almost a fifth of the planet's surface. They make up four of the five largest mountains.
They are all volcanic, because Mars doesn't have crustal plates. Since the smaller planet, with a thinner atmosphere--often one one-thousandth of Earth's--couldn't insulate effectively against the chilling vacuum of space, Mars' molten core cooled faster than Earth's has, before the drag of magma was able to break up the planet's solid surface into plates. Or maybe it's because there wasn't enough magmatic force to build up the momentum required to fracture the surface so effectively--either way, Mars is one solid sheet of rock, not an ever-shifting, recreating sheath of a puzzle, like Earth.
The biggest valley on Mars, the Valles Marineris, is because of early volcanic action, before the planet cooled to nothing more than an orbiting rock. Valles Marineris is rift, visibly different from the sinuous valleys carved onto the planet's surface by lava, water or some other liquid. Valles Marineris is located near the volcanoes, in an area visibly raised from the rest of the planet: it was pushed outwards by magma rising up underneath it, creating this volcanic locus. It was enough to start fracturing the planet's crust--it was starting to form into crustal plates, but it wasn't quite enough. Instead, it stopped, in a gash carved across the planet, a scar that could span the United States.
Because there are no plates, and therefore no plate tectonics to constantly renew the surface of the planet, swallowing and recreating land constantly in a dance that plays out under our very feet on Earth, the surface of Mars is far more ancient. Again, this has caused scars: the landscape is littered with craters, ranging in size from ones you could step across to craters more than two thousand kilometers across: Hellas Planitia is a vast, ancient impact crater with a diameter more than half of the United States' width: from San Francisco to Cincinnati.
Meteors hit only rarely, and it's only because of the unimaginable age of the exposed planetary surface that it's so covered with the pockmarks of meteor craters. If Earth's surface wasn't constantly refreshed, it would look similar, or maybe only a little cleaner, because the thicker atmosphere would help protect a little against incoming meteors. The planets are comparable ages: four and a half billion years old.
Other than the meteors, and the winds that stir the Martian dust, there is very little movement on the planet's surface. The volcanoes have all gone cold; there is no liquid water, only slowly evaporating ice. Nothing grows or lives. The only regular disturbances are dust storms and landslides along the edges of the chasms, shifting around the fine, powdery dirt. The dust devils are usually relatively small, forming inside of craters where the air heats unevenly and momentarily stripping away the dust before it forms again, but sometimes they grow much larger, turning into dust storms that can envelop half the planet, thousands and thousands of miles across, like a grossly exaggerated, vast hurricane.
In many ways, Mars is an unextraordinary planet. It is not the largest (Jupiter) or the smallest (Mercury), not the coldest (Uranus) or the hottest (Venus). It has two small, irregular moons, glorified asteroids who got caught up in the planet's orbit: it's much like our planet, only with less variation. There are two poles, both with large amounts of water ice capped with dry ice. Liquid water would sublimate instantly on the surface of Mars, because of the thinness of the atmosphere. The temperature ranges from negative two hundred thirty degrees to sixty-eight degrees, depending on the location, time of year and season. One day on Mars is half an hour longer than a day on Earth, and a year is about twice as long. Again, there are planets with greater extremes on either side.
Still, Mars has captured the human imagination. There are myths and stories about Mars ranging from the oldest civilizations to today: the word "Martian" is almost interchangable with the word "alien." People are captivated with the search for life on Mars. It's the best-studied planet in our solar system, second only to Earth. NASA is working on a manned mission to Mars. Many of the channels on Mars are named after the words cultures have held or hold for the planet: Al-Qahira, Aries, Auqakuh, Bahram, Harmakhis, Her Desher, Hrad, Huo Hsing, Kasei, Labou, Ma'adim, Maja, Mamers, Mangala, Marikh, Marte, Mawrth, Nirgal, Shalbatana, Simud and Tiu Valles, all meaning the same thing in twenty different, disparate languages and cultures, spread across the planet.
The biggest of these titantic cracks and features are because the planet is so small. Olympus Mons, the biggest mountain in the solar system (twenty-seven kilometers high, and big enough that it needs to be calculated for when they're programming the orbits of satellites) is now extinct, but it was once a vast volcano, clustered with three others; together, they caused lava flows that cover almost a fifth of the planet's surface. They make up four of the five largest mountains.
They are all volcanic, because Mars doesn't have crustal plates. Since the smaller planet, with a thinner atmosphere--often one one-thousandth of Earth's--couldn't insulate effectively against the chilling vacuum of space, Mars' molten core cooled faster than Earth's has, before the drag of magma was able to break up the planet's solid surface into plates. Or maybe it's because there wasn't enough magmatic force to build up the momentum required to fracture the surface so effectively--either way, Mars is one solid sheet of rock, not an ever-shifting, recreating sheath of a puzzle, like Earth.
The biggest valley on Mars, the Valles Marineris, is because of early volcanic action, before the planet cooled to nothing more than an orbiting rock. Valles Marineris is rift, visibly different from the sinuous valleys carved onto the planet's surface by lava, water or some other liquid. Valles Marineris is located near the volcanoes, in an area visibly raised from the rest of the planet: it was pushed outwards by magma rising up underneath it, creating this volcanic locus. It was enough to start fracturing the planet's crust--it was starting to form into crustal plates, but it wasn't quite enough. Instead, it stopped, in a gash carved across the planet, a scar that could span the United States.
Because there are no plates, and therefore no plate tectonics to constantly renew the surface of the planet, swallowing and recreating land constantly in a dance that plays out under our very feet on Earth, the surface of Mars is far more ancient. Again, this has caused scars: the landscape is littered with craters, ranging in size from ones you could step across to craters more than two thousand kilometers across: Hellas Planitia is a vast, ancient impact crater with a diameter more than half of the United States' width: from San Francisco to Cincinnati.
Meteors hit only rarely, and it's only because of the unimaginable age of the exposed planetary surface that it's so covered with the pockmarks of meteor craters. If Earth's surface wasn't constantly refreshed, it would look similar, or maybe only a little cleaner, because the thicker atmosphere would help protect a little against incoming meteors. The planets are comparable ages: four and a half billion years old.
Other than the meteors, and the winds that stir the Martian dust, there is very little movement on the planet's surface. The volcanoes have all gone cold; there is no liquid water, only slowly evaporating ice. Nothing grows or lives. The only regular disturbances are dust storms and landslides along the edges of the chasms, shifting around the fine, powdery dirt. The dust devils are usually relatively small, forming inside of craters where the air heats unevenly and momentarily stripping away the dust before it forms again, but sometimes they grow much larger, turning into dust storms that can envelop half the planet, thousands and thousands of miles across, like a grossly exaggerated, vast hurricane.
In many ways, Mars is an unextraordinary planet. It is not the largest (Jupiter) or the smallest (Mercury), not the coldest (Uranus) or the hottest (Venus). It has two small, irregular moons, glorified asteroids who got caught up in the planet's orbit: it's much like our planet, only with less variation. There are two poles, both with large amounts of water ice capped with dry ice. Liquid water would sublimate instantly on the surface of Mars, because of the thinness of the atmosphere. The temperature ranges from negative two hundred thirty degrees to sixty-eight degrees, depending on the location, time of year and season. One day on Mars is half an hour longer than a day on Earth, and a year is about twice as long. Again, there are planets with greater extremes on either side.
Still, Mars has captured the human imagination. There are myths and stories about Mars ranging from the oldest civilizations to today: the word "Martian" is almost interchangable with the word "alien." People are captivated with the search for life on Mars. It's the best-studied planet in our solar system, second only to Earth. NASA is working on a manned mission to Mars. Many of the channels on Mars are named after the words cultures have held or hold for the planet: Al-Qahira, Aries, Auqakuh, Bahram, Harmakhis, Her Desher, Hrad, Huo Hsing, Kasei, Labou, Ma'adim, Maja, Mamers, Mangala, Marikh, Marte, Mawrth, Nirgal, Shalbatana, Simud and Tiu Valles, all meaning the same thing in twenty different, disparate languages and cultures, spread across the planet.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Natural History
The osage orange is a tree with a shrubby growth habit and tough, burnished leaves. It's not prone to insect depredation because the leaves and stems contain latex, a sticky and distasteful sap that makes it difficult to eat. This latex is also present in the knobbly green fruit it produces.
The fruit is actually composite, made up of a million small flowers gone to seed and grown together. It's the size of a large softball and heavy. It is inedible to humans, and sometimes eaten by squirrels or other animals, but only rarely. The skin is very tough, and it's too big for even deer to eat easily.
This is curious, since fruit is meant to spread seeds, to increase a plant's range, and the osage orange fruit is rarely consumed by animals, especially not in any great quantity. Since it's never eaten, consumption won't spread its seeds, the way other fruiting plants spread. In Indiana it's considered an invasive pest, but not because of how it travels without human involvement: instead, the issue lies with how humans plant it. The plant exerts great energy every year to produce the essentially useless fruit, which will fall near the base of the tree or maybe roll down a nearby hill, pulled by gravity. Nothing more.
There's a certain understanding that nature produces no dead ends, because natural selection and the process of evolution ensure that only the most fit pass on their genes. Part of the problem is that evolution is not driven solely by natural selection. Partially, also, there is a misunderstanding of the word "fit": it can be solely related to terms of survival, how long an organism lives, or it can be more indirect--for example, how effectively an organism reproduces, so that even a tree or a fish that dies earlier on in its life can pass on its genes to future generations. There's also sexual pressures; for example, there's a species of bird where the male's tail grows to such ridiculous lengths during the breeding season that it can no longer fly. The male with the longest tail (assuming he can survive the treacherous period where he's at much greater risk for predation) will attract the most females, and have the most offspring. It's a huge waste of energy and a danger to all the male birds, but it's been effectively selected for by countless generations, because it's pretty.
But still, there's no obvious, modern explanation for the osage orange's fruits. It wastes nutrients and other resources on what's essentially a useless gesture towards reproduction, in a way that won't increase its range, spread its seed. The answer, instead, lies in the past.
Ten to twelve thousand years ago, during the Wisconsin era of the Pleistocene epoch, before the end of the Ice Age and the introduction of humans to North America (these two events combining to reshape North American fauna drastically), Indiana was populated with creatures like the mastodon, the dire wolf and the ancient bison. There were species related to ones we know today, but exaggeratedly larger: the giant beaver and the stag-moose, and the teratorn, a bird with a twenty-six foot wingspan. It was also an unfamiliar landscape, with glaciers retreating and then advancing in cycles, flattening the land, but most strikingly different were the animals, who seem almost unbelievably ridiculous, almost fake, today. For example, there was the giant sloth.
The giant sloth stood at a comparable height with a mammoth, although it was less massive. It was an herbivore, but armed with heavy claws, and many times the size of the modern sloths. With the introduction of humans to North America, as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge, it was hunted into extinction, along with all its relatives. Some of them--the antique bison, the stag-moose, the sabre-toothed tiger--developed into smaller species; others were simply lost. Among them the giant sloth.
The osage orange had evolved to have its seeds spread by the giant sloth. It was a big enough animal to eat the fruits, as hard and solid and heavy as they were, in one bite; and it traveled, spreading the seeds away from the plant as it went. An animal that big ate a lot of vegetation, and it enabled the osage orange to spread across a considerable stretch of North America, perfectly adapted to coattail onto this animal's travels.
But change happened. Giant sloths were wiped out, unable to stand up to the introduction of a new biological factor--humans. Not fit to deal with this new type of predator, the megafauna were lost. The environment shifted, climate change happened, and the osage orange did not find a new niche to inhabit. Its territory slowly retreated, until it was limited to only the Ozark mountains, a relic of a long-gone epoch remembered only in fossilized skeletons, tar pits and ice-mummified mammoths.
Currently, osage orange is found throughout the East coast and the Midwest. It was re-introduced by humans: it is unable to spread quickly or efficiently without an herbivore big enough to consume its fruit. Instead, its fast-growing habit and the way it forms thorns on bruised branches made it a desirable hedge-plant for fencing in fields and properties. It was one of many opportunist species, and it persists, once more spreading across the country. But it is reliant on this conscious aid.
The osage orange may evolve another reproductive trait. Maybe the seeds will shrink back down to something smaller, splitting up into individual fruits instead of massive compound balls, or there will be a random mutation that encourages aggressive suckering and asexual reproduction. Maybe another animal will start to take advantage of osage orange fruit, filling the gap left by the giant sloth ten million years ago--at least in part. Maybe it will eventually be rendered extinct, except for a few specimens kept somewhere for study.
Right now, it's a plant that's almost irrelevant. Nobody plants hedgerows anymore. The osage orange grows too big, too fast and too messy, and pruning it makes it grow sharp thorns, only desirable when you want to keep someone out. Humans can't eat the fruit. Nothing eats the fruit--except for sometimes a hungry squirrel who will gnaw through the tough skin to the seeds and bitter flesh. It's been rendered irrelevant by the evolutionary niche that made it successful before collapsing. Human activity opened its range back up, but it's temporary or it will be an ever-present crutch. It has no independence; but then, it never really did. It was reliant on the sloth, and then it was reliant on humanity.
None of us are truly independent.
But humanity is not slowly fading out of the world because it doesn't fit anymore. Humanity is not--as of now--growing increasingly marginalized.
It's a little sad to think of something that was once successful, in every sense of the word, biologically and evolutionarily and otherwise, even a plant that's well-known and well-recognized for its fruit--the osage orange is a relic. It's a scientific term, one that matches the common definition in many ways: something no longer important, dead and gone and buried. An evolutionary trait that has been rendered irrelevant, even if the organism still persists. For now.
The fruit is actually composite, made up of a million small flowers gone to seed and grown together. It's the size of a large softball and heavy. It is inedible to humans, and sometimes eaten by squirrels or other animals, but only rarely. The skin is very tough, and it's too big for even deer to eat easily.
This is curious, since fruit is meant to spread seeds, to increase a plant's range, and the osage orange fruit is rarely consumed by animals, especially not in any great quantity. Since it's never eaten, consumption won't spread its seeds, the way other fruiting plants spread. In Indiana it's considered an invasive pest, but not because of how it travels without human involvement: instead, the issue lies with how humans plant it. The plant exerts great energy every year to produce the essentially useless fruit, which will fall near the base of the tree or maybe roll down a nearby hill, pulled by gravity. Nothing more.
There's a certain understanding that nature produces no dead ends, because natural selection and the process of evolution ensure that only the most fit pass on their genes. Part of the problem is that evolution is not driven solely by natural selection. Partially, also, there is a misunderstanding of the word "fit": it can be solely related to terms of survival, how long an organism lives, or it can be more indirect--for example, how effectively an organism reproduces, so that even a tree or a fish that dies earlier on in its life can pass on its genes to future generations. There's also sexual pressures; for example, there's a species of bird where the male's tail grows to such ridiculous lengths during the breeding season that it can no longer fly. The male with the longest tail (assuming he can survive the treacherous period where he's at much greater risk for predation) will attract the most females, and have the most offspring. It's a huge waste of energy and a danger to all the male birds, but it's been effectively selected for by countless generations, because it's pretty.
But still, there's no obvious, modern explanation for the osage orange's fruits. It wastes nutrients and other resources on what's essentially a useless gesture towards reproduction, in a way that won't increase its range, spread its seed. The answer, instead, lies in the past.
Ten to twelve thousand years ago, during the Wisconsin era of the Pleistocene epoch, before the end of the Ice Age and the introduction of humans to North America (these two events combining to reshape North American fauna drastically), Indiana was populated with creatures like the mastodon, the dire wolf and the ancient bison. There were species related to ones we know today, but exaggeratedly larger: the giant beaver and the stag-moose, and the teratorn, a bird with a twenty-six foot wingspan. It was also an unfamiliar landscape, with glaciers retreating and then advancing in cycles, flattening the land, but most strikingly different were the animals, who seem almost unbelievably ridiculous, almost fake, today. For example, there was the giant sloth.
The giant sloth stood at a comparable height with a mammoth, although it was less massive. It was an herbivore, but armed with heavy claws, and many times the size of the modern sloths. With the introduction of humans to North America, as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge, it was hunted into extinction, along with all its relatives. Some of them--the antique bison, the stag-moose, the sabre-toothed tiger--developed into smaller species; others were simply lost. Among them the giant sloth.
The osage orange had evolved to have its seeds spread by the giant sloth. It was a big enough animal to eat the fruits, as hard and solid and heavy as they were, in one bite; and it traveled, spreading the seeds away from the plant as it went. An animal that big ate a lot of vegetation, and it enabled the osage orange to spread across a considerable stretch of North America, perfectly adapted to coattail onto this animal's travels.
But change happened. Giant sloths were wiped out, unable to stand up to the introduction of a new biological factor--humans. Not fit to deal with this new type of predator, the megafauna were lost. The environment shifted, climate change happened, and the osage orange did not find a new niche to inhabit. Its territory slowly retreated, until it was limited to only the Ozark mountains, a relic of a long-gone epoch remembered only in fossilized skeletons, tar pits and ice-mummified mammoths.
Currently, osage orange is found throughout the East coast and the Midwest. It was re-introduced by humans: it is unable to spread quickly or efficiently without an herbivore big enough to consume its fruit. Instead, its fast-growing habit and the way it forms thorns on bruised branches made it a desirable hedge-plant for fencing in fields and properties. It was one of many opportunist species, and it persists, once more spreading across the country. But it is reliant on this conscious aid.
The osage orange may evolve another reproductive trait. Maybe the seeds will shrink back down to something smaller, splitting up into individual fruits instead of massive compound balls, or there will be a random mutation that encourages aggressive suckering and asexual reproduction. Maybe another animal will start to take advantage of osage orange fruit, filling the gap left by the giant sloth ten million years ago--at least in part. Maybe it will eventually be rendered extinct, except for a few specimens kept somewhere for study.
Right now, it's a plant that's almost irrelevant. Nobody plants hedgerows anymore. The osage orange grows too big, too fast and too messy, and pruning it makes it grow sharp thorns, only desirable when you want to keep someone out. Humans can't eat the fruit. Nothing eats the fruit--except for sometimes a hungry squirrel who will gnaw through the tough skin to the seeds and bitter flesh. It's been rendered irrelevant by the evolutionary niche that made it successful before collapsing. Human activity opened its range back up, but it's temporary or it will be an ever-present crutch. It has no independence; but then, it never really did. It was reliant on the sloth, and then it was reliant on humanity.
None of us are truly independent.
But humanity is not slowly fading out of the world because it doesn't fit anymore. Humanity is not--as of now--growing increasingly marginalized.
It's a little sad to think of something that was once successful, in every sense of the word, biologically and evolutionarily and otherwise, even a plant that's well-known and well-recognized for its fruit--the osage orange is a relic. It's a scientific term, one that matches the common definition in many ways: something no longer important, dead and gone and buried. An evolutionary trait that has been rendered irrelevant, even if the organism still persists. For now.
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