Erratica Reduex

Those who have read Little Fuzzy know that the book's climax hinges on a court trial to both determine whether the titular species is sentient, and also to come up with a general definition of sentience.

Recently, a New York court tackled that question when it comes to chimpanzees. Should chimpanzees be considered sentient? Honestly, this is a question I'm conflicted on, though I think a good case can be made in general for better treatment of animals, as we're finding them to be more and more like us.

Over on the Extraordinary Observations blog, Rob Pitingolo comments on the fact that bicycling seems to be mainly a practice of people from the middle to upper income brackets. He speculates that the primary reason low-income people fail to use the new bike paths is due to culture. In my time in low-income neighborhoods, I've also observed a low usage of bicycles among the citizenry. I agree that culture may be considered, bnut that  an overbroad explanation for behavior that may have some practical roots. There's a couple of factors in bicycle use that could preclude it from being a common transportation mode in low-income areas, ones that well-to-do bikers might not consider.

First of all road infrastructure should be mentioned- not only in terms of repair, but the function of the roads. Bicyclists tend to come from areas that have roads with relatively low traffic, that are designed to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians as well as cars. Many low-income residents on the other hand tend to live in mixed-use areas, with heavy commuter, freight and other traffic, making bicycling actively dangerous. For an example, my residential neighborhood is separated from San Jose proper by an industrial section, and several very busy streets that cross the freeway and that include on and off-ramps. Between the trucks, service vehicles, students going to the university, and harried commuters, crossing into downtown is moderately hazardous for cars and pedestrians. It would be dangerous to commute to the city proper on a bike. However, outside of taking a several mile detour, there is no direct bike-accessible route between South San Jose and the downtown. It's likely that even if a bike route across the freeway was established, the surrounding area would be considered dangerous enough

Secondly, there is the capital outlay that needs to be considered. Bicycles are nearly always secondary for the wealthy, however, low income people can generally only afford only one vehicle- and the price for a decent bike and a car that can be "made runnable" isn't as different as it may seem. Given a choice between a vehicle that has limited cargo and passenger capacity and foul-weather use, a car is a more practical choice.

Bicycles require a degree of mechanical knowledge to keep in good shape, mechanical knowledge that generally isn't as available in low-income communities. While nearly everyone knows someone who has mechanical knowledge, and who can teach the basics of keeping a car maintained, unless there's a pre-established culture of bicyclists in a community, learning how to maintain a bicycle may be difficult.

Finally, there is the problem in establishing a bicycling culture in the first place; generally before bicycles are thought of as commuter vehicles, they are thought of as toys for children.; In low-income families, a bicycle for a child may be considered a major expense. Combined with neighborhoods that are perceived as not generally considered safe for bicyclists, then a culture of seeing a bicycle as a practical vehicle will have difficulty in arising. In my time in low-income neighborhoods, I've rarely seen children riding bicycles anywhere except in the safety of parking lots, under the watchful eyes of parents.

This isn't to say that these are the only, or even primary reasons that bicycle use isn't common in low income areas. I've done no formal survey; these are merely my impressions from living in low-income areas.

If you ladies are still strapped for costume ideas at this late date, well, there's this original idea from a Japanese designer:





This is one of a collection of 15 chemograph plates from Military Costumes in Old Japan, by Kazumasa Ogawa, published in 1895.

It's not quite a social fallacy, but it's one that I've seen often enough. Some fan sees something he doesn't like in an upcoming movie, and taking inspiration from by the old Trek fan campaign that kept the original series on TV for a season, he believes that the power of fans opinions can make or break a major production. I've seen it time and time again, in fan reactions to films ranging from Star Trek, to Star Wars, to Lord of the Rings: it usually involves some statement about how no true fan will go to see the movie, and they will get all of their friends to boycott it as well.

In fact, they usually resemble statements like this one I saw today:



Oddly enough, I've never seen one of these threats of mass action have an effect. But these fans never seem to stop believing that they have a power of numbers that just doesn't exist.

As a public service, here's a couple of links that I want to share, for the reader's benefit.


FDA Recall: Peanut Butter Products Contaminated with Salmonella. This is a nasty one, because the factory new the products were contaminated. So, it's a long list.


USGS: San Jose Area Earthquake LIquidation Hazard Maps. It's worth having a look at these if you're in the area, to check out what the danger of ground liquidation in an earthquake may be, and takeprecautions accordingly. There's also maps for alameda county and the general bay area.


Aardvarchaeology: How to be polite to your Chinese stepmother. Especially important if you happen to be Swedish archeology blogger, because you'll definitely need the goodwill.

As in Pre-Christian Santa.  As in Pre-Christian, Shamanic, reindeer urine-drinking, tripping his eyeballs out Santa. 


I've been seeing this statement of the orgin of Santa floating around the interwebs recently,  the argument basically being:

• Old time shamans used Amanita muscaria mushrooms in hallucinogenic rituals.  It was too toxic to take directly, so the 'shrooms were fed to reindeer and then the shamans drank the urine, 
• The Christmas tree is representative of the World Tree, and the Star is the Pole Star.
• The sleigh represents either the Big Dipper, Odin's Chariot, or both.
• The flying trip aropund the world is well...the shamans tripping and thinking they were flying.  

OK, so it's from a pro-cannibas magazine, and it is about as fanciful as the Thomas Nast version.  And I can even find pages that go further, that had shamans dressing in the color of the mushroom (red and white), going to snowed-in huts and entering through the roof smokehole, to deliver bags of dried mushrooms to the community, which would be dried by hanging in front of the fire....

Isn't it just the perfect Just-So Story?  Really it's too cute to be believed, and probably has a similar origin as "A Visit from St. Nicholas".   Obviously there are elements of Germanic folk customs surrounding the story of Santa Claus, but  there's no real evidence linking the tale to shamanic traditions, mushrooms, or anything of the sort.  But it IS a tale that's making the rounds of the New-Age and occult websites, so it's interesting to meditate this winter, on how legends can evolve and be distorted or flat-out appropriated according to the agendas of given groups.  From a Christian parable, to an icon of middle-class comfort and then commercialism, and now a pro-drug symbol for New-Age religion. 

It's a reminder that nothing, not even classic legends, is static; over time, everything changes.

I'm not going to vouch for the accuracy of this paper, but it is interesting, in that it traces the common elements of the "elven" legends of pre-Christian Europe. Highly abridged, and translated from the Russian:

Leonid L. Korablev
The True Elves of Europe

Abstract:

In view of (relatively) abundant references to Elves in surviving ancient and medieval texts, modern connotations of the word 'elf' as well as 18th-19th century related folk-lore ideas appear as grotesque distortions of a waning tradition. Observing the older references, we notice striking similarities between Elves and their counterparts of various names across the mythological landscape of North-Western Europe. We claim that these are traces of an integral tradition, which, with time, gradually lost its integrity and merged with other traditions and/or random elements of folk fancy. It is clear that Tolkien widely used the elements of that tradition in creating his Elves; we maintain that besides being a marvelous achievement of a story-teller, Tolkien's Elves (Eldar, Quendi) were a (veiled) attempt of a scholar at reconstructing the tradition in question. Similar treatment of the Atlantis myth (i.e. providing a 'real' story of which the known myth could be an echo) speaks in favor of our hypothesis.

And then there's more, including the common characteristics of elves, and comments on how Tolkein adapted them to his work.  Interesting stuff, I'd love to see the whole paper.

Just in time for Halloween, we have an article at Archeology.org about how an English archaeologist Jacqui Wood has excavated a site in Cornwall that indicates a ritual magic tradition that may extend fro antiquity, up into modern times. According to Archeology.com and the archaeologist's own webpage, they excavated pits lined with the feathered skin of swans, and collections of stones, bird parts and nearly-hatched eggs. Wood reluctantly came to the conclusion that the pits were not merely ritual in nature, but were used for witchcraft!

Or so they say. I can't help being skeptical of this whole story, not so much because Jacqui Wood is self-taught (any number of important archaeological sites have been found by non-professionals), but because of the breathless, uncritical gee-whiz nature of the reporting. Add to that the newly uncovered "ritual pools" that are being reused by local pagans, and the unsubstantiated rumors of a local family engaging in this witchcraft up to the 1960s, and oh yes, "just in time for Halloween", and the whole thing starts to feel too good to be true.

Which may or may not be unfair to Ms. Wood, because the real problem is I haven't been able to find any corroborating articles for the claims. It would be nice to see what other archaeologists think about this find, but it's been too soon to see any reaction or criticism. That's really a problem with the field as a whole; there's so few archaeologists, so little funding, and so many sites of interest, that professionals are spread very thinly.  It's going to be a while before any other archaeologist has a say on the find. So all we're left with is a couple of non-academic articles that sound suspiciously like an advertisement for Saveock Water Archeology, and some interesting pictures.

But what the hell, it IS almost Halloween. So for the next 18 days at least, it's nice to think about cold moonlight nights in Cornwall, and hushed rituals done by secretive people. Archeology has always been a romantic science, and it's images like this that help keep archaeologists going when they're sifting through muddy turf searching for bones and potsherds.

Another couple pages I'm saving as game and worldbuilding references.

First of all, we have the "10 Most Incredible Ancient Oases in the Ancient World", which though it could give more pictures of the geography, does a decent job of showing the towns that grow up around oases, and surprised me with how large they are. I'm used to the Hollywood depiction of an oases as a small pond with a few trees surrounded by desert; in reality, they tend to be large areas filled with multi-layered agriculture (date trees, fruit trees, tubers). As oases would be centers of civilization in otherwise inhospitable areas, it makes sense that they would be utilized as much as possible. If you have water and soil, you have the fundamental elements of agriculture, and the people in the desert needed to eat something.

By contrast, 4 Amazing Ancient Cities of Color, and the sequel 3 More Amazing Ancient Cities of Color are mainly useful as sources for inspiration on creating cities with unified concepts. It's interesting to think of layers of successive civilization coexisting with architecture from earlier eras. Thera on the other hand gets me to thinking of old civilizations completely swept away by disaster, to be settled over by latecomers.

There are questions that will pry on our minds, that wake us up years later thinking "Damn it, I still don't know the answer!".

Case in point: on listening to the song "Behind the Wall of Sleep" by the Smithereens 20 years ago, I immediately asked the obvious question: "Who the HELL is Jennie Shelton?" . Unfortunately, it was many years before I found out: even when Googel was being established, the answer remained "Ask again later". It was only until recently, when lyric sites became well established and started covering second-string 80s bands, that I found the answer. And it started with the fact that I got the name wrong: it's wasn't Jennie Shelton, it was Jeannie Shrimpton



As for who she was? She was a model back in the 1960s, one of the first supermodels. She was famed for causing a fuss at the 1965 Melbourne Cup by wearing one of the early models of the miniskirt (hemline ABOVE the knees! Gasp! No Stockings, Gloves or hat!), a very practical, cool and sleeveless number, that was the height of fashion in London, and unknown elsewhere.



And there we have it, the rest- well, no, not even close to the rest of the story of Ms. Shrimpton (I haven't even mentioned her knitting). But it's a minor mystery solved, and so I am content.