efference

Thoughts on the Thai Flood

2012-01-14T04:19:00.000-08:00

If you follow the international news, you know that parts of Thailand were deluged from October through December. I'm not sure the scope of this mess is appreciated, however. The total damage is estimated to be over $50,000,000,000. For reference, hurricane Katrina boasts an $80,000,000,000 figure. Consider, though, that Thailand is nowhere near as wealthy as the U.S., and the flood affected a large % of the Thai populace.

I've been through a couple major earthquakes and a fire. Floods are different, I can now say. In the recent case, at least, the water continually rose over a period of a month. First, the water creeps up to the level of the road. Then I found myself bicycling through a foot or more of water to get to the University. When the water began to enter the house, it was time to find a new dwelling. Like many others, I assumed it would just be a week before I could return, so I didn't bother to move my refrigerator, washing machine, etc., upstairs. Other folks fared worse, leaving their cars and motorcycles behind. Three weeks later, I returned in a "long tail" boat to survey the damage. In a village of 100's of townhouses, I saw maybe three faces. Inside the house, black, stagnant water. I had been told that the village management would turn off all electrical power...I discovered this was not true when I interacted with my refrigerator, floating, but tethered by the electrical cord.

All my previous experiences with long tail boats were in paradise, Southern Thailand. And, in fact, the one hour sojourn was quite pleasant, winding through palm trees and abandoned properties. I had to laugh.

Vandalism was being reported, so I pulled my hard drive and other valuables. Apparently, a crocodile was caught in the village.

Then, as the water recedes, the aforementioned events play out in reverse. The symmetry is broken, however, by death (my plants!) and filth that wasn't there a few months prior. It turns out that children's items are particularly floaty...thus a huge stash of shoes and plastic toys in my corner of the village. A pink plastic hobby horse with wheels. Large stuffed animals, including a smiling tortoise. The requisite tire. Endless plastic bags, garden pots, bottles, etc.

My camera was also a victim, so I regret that I can't show you the tortoise happily surveying the damage. My new camera can only capture the latter stages of this mess.

Snail eggs, stuck to my wall. It's amazing how fast these buggers, a bit bigger than ordinary escargot, propagate, infiltrate, and die.

Above is my lovely sewer. Over a couple of months, fish invaded every conceivable space. Now they're floundering around in whatever water they can find. This one's dead, but there are living specimens in that filth as well. See the pink toy?

My only surviving tree. Everything else is dead, including a mango that produced exactly one exceedingly delicious fruit in its life.

It wasn't advertised, but apparently these homes come with self-cleaning walls...exposure to the water causes everything to peel off. The dirt on the washing machine gives you an idea of its position as it floated around the interior. Unlike my refrigerator, it still works.

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Everyone, including me, observes that 2011's rainfall didn't seem much heavier than 2010's. There are 100 theories as to why this disaster occurred. As things go in Thailand, it's unlikely that a clear picture will ever emerge, particularly if some important people are to blame. Some blame the minister of the interior for his decisions regarding management of dams in Northern Thailand. The idea is that poor choices were made in the name of populist politics, aiming to please the farmers in the northeast of Thailand by retaining excess volumes of water. If so, the cost of a few folks' politically-motivated resource management decisions is almost inconceivable.

Though there's no evidence for it in this case, I note that Thai politicians are very much in the habit of timing events and making decisions based on astrology, numerology, feng shui, etc. I wonder if superstition played any role in this monstrous mess.

Buddha and Bobbing-Head Snoopy

2012-01-13T05:40:00.000-08:00

In case it's not obvious, that's a fat Buddha hanging out with two bobbing-head Snoopies on the carpeted dashboard of a taxi. In the Thai mind, there's nothing horribly incongruous about this arrangement.

It's a watercolor. I guess I cheated...the painting is based on a photo, which was then photoshopped, printed out, reproduced on tracing paper, and copied onto watercolor paper. From there, it's about as difficult as filling in a child's coloring book.

Salmon Sperm DNA

2011-04-17T06:23:00.001-07:00

You might be surprised at how important this stuff is in the biosciences. It's used as a "blocking agent" in Southern blotting, a common method for identifying a DNA of interest in a forest of DNA molecules, and as a "carrier" when trying to introduce DNA into yeast. DNA tends to interact with DNA; in cases where you want two kinds of DNA to interact in a general, not entirely specific, manner, you want DNA that comes from a species that isn't closely related to the organism you're working with. If you're working with human DNA, salmon sperm DNA will fit the bill. If you're working with salmon, of course, you'll have to find another source of DNA. In European genetics labs, you'd be more likely to find a bottle of herring sperm in the freezer.

You also want a relatively cheap source of DNA. Male salmon release their load into the water, so they need to make a lot of the stuff. As is the case throughout the animal kingdom, sperm has a high concentration of DNA (i.e. the cell doesn't contain much more than a nucleus), so it's a good source of DNA.

The dry flakes are difficult to dissolve in water, so you've got to boil the stuff. I had to prepare a few milliliters last weekend. Oddly, after all the processing and purification it took Sigma Labs to put 1 gram in a plastic bottle (at about $100 a pop), the distinctive aroma of salmon permeated our lab upon boiling.

Interestingly, if you examine the history of DNA science, salmon sperm has played an important role from the very beginning. Crick and Watson figured out the structure of DNA, but a dude by the name of Friedrich Miescher worked out its basic chemistry nearly a century prior. You can read the story in detail. Miescher, apparently, did fine and meticulous work, and understood that this substance ("nuclein", back then) must be of importance in the cell.

Salmon sperm (from the Rhine) provided a good source of DNA for Miescher's studies. Back then, if you wanted to characterize some chemical, you'd heat it and boil it and torture it, trying to register a weight change in, say, a phosphorus-absorbing substance. That way, Miescher worked out that DNA is 3% phosphorus. Needless to say, that approach required copious quantities of starting material.

Since sperm is mostly nuclei (which is where the DNA resides), it made sense that it was involved in fertilization. Given the techniques of the day, though, it seemed that nuclein from salmon was no different than nuclein derived from any other organism, so Miescher looked elsewhere for the genetic essence, even speculating that the chiral nature of protein might hold the key (40 chiral centers in a protein mean 1,099,511,627,776 arrangements!).

*****

Did you know there's actually a disease, trimethylaminuria, where the patient gives off a fishy odor? According to Wikipedia, "Living with TMAU can be challenging, and TMAU can adversely affect the livelihood of the people who have it, as well as their families." Yikes!

What Have I Been Up To?

2010-09-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while. That's because I've become obsessed with my work in the lab, to the neglect of other aspects of life; a real lab rat.

When folks ask me to give an indication of my pursuits in the lab, it's often difficult to respond. As with many fields, layers of understanding are built on layers of understanding. How does one simplify this knowledge for the non-specialist? Well, with the aid of Joan Miro ("Harlequin's Carnival"), I'll try.

In the realm where humans operate, manipulating objects in a narrow range of size and mass and speed, mostly in a gaseous medium, keys don't spontaneously diffuse into locks, opening doors, allowing 100,000 balloons to occupy the room. The balloons are then not removed by grasping tendrils that emerge from the wall sockets, and all the above doesn't occur in less than a second.

But appearances change a bit in the tiny, enclosed, fluid environment of a cell. There, the size of a water molecule actually makes a difference. It's zigging and zagging at about 600 meters per second. Some say Einstein's observation of little pollen grains getting zigged and zagged by the zigging and zagging of water molecules ("brownian motion") was the final proof of the existence of atoms.

Bigger items like proteins and DNA also zig and zag, just more slowly. A reasonably sized protein might cover 1 meter in a second. That's still outrageously fast for something that's bottled up inside a space that human eyes can't perceive.

The universe inside the cell is also one of exquisitely tailored shapes of a huge range of stickiness. Whereas a high speed collision between two cars often results in death, destruction, and freshly-unusable parts flung in every direction, a collision between two proteins can initiate a chain of events that does something useful. You might imagine Miro's disembodied hand having a particular affinity for the window latch. Having twisted the latch, the window opens. The hand has no affinity for the latch once the window is opened, so it releases its grip. The little harlequin dude releases the cat-figure, which closes the window, which spontaneously latches, and then the disembodied hand performs its role again. This could repeat, say, 10,000 times in a second.

I should emphasize that there's a huge variety of stickinesses inside the cell. In our tedious realm, there's the stickiness of masking tape, the stickiness of gravity, and a few other sorts of stickiness. In the cell, though, you might have rules like "fish only interact with items found on the table, never elsewhere." And the cone can only stick to a perfectly cone-shaped hole in the wall.

There's a lot of stuff I'm ignoring here. What's to prevent events occurring in reverse? What powers all this motion? How do things change, say, if the disembodied hand gets tethered to the wall? What's going on in the next room? That's OK.

Point is, the universe inside the cell is one of interactions. I suppose the typical interaction between components in the cell is one of total indifference, the ladder not giving a crap that the dice just rolled into it. But the "productive" interactions are frequent enough to make all the difference. Some branches of modern biology (e.g. "systems biology") seek to understand the complete cell in terms of all these interactions. It's a huge task, with maybe 50,000 different proteins and RNA molecules, and a couple meters of DNA in your cell, all jostling and interacting with various degrees of stickiness. Part of me rebels against this mechanistic view, but I don't see a reasonable alternative. At some point in the future some commentator might scold this generation of biochemists for ignoring the "weak" (but frequent) interactions, but that would be wrong; it's hard enough to document all the strong ones right now!

There have been some amazing and inspiring animated attempts to simulate the life of a cell based on real knowledge of shapes and interactions. Such videos, however, can't possibly convey the speed at which these events occur. Nor do they show the myriad random, unsuccessful interactions that occur for every productive one...thus it appears that components are actually being attracted together, magnetic-like, over long distances. That's not the case.

So now, to move away from Miro and the abstract, what I'm trying to do is this: identify all interactions between human proteins and the RNA of a particular virus. Viruses aren't like Arnold Schwarzenegger announcing his presence with a minigun. They do their best to merge with the crowd, making it difficult for the cell to detect any unusual interactions. We're using a technology called the "three hybrid system." Basically, a protein latches to both DNA and RNA, and if that RNA latches onto another protein, that protein will latch onto another protein, which will make a different kind of RNA, which will interact with a ribosome and get translated into a new protein, which will interact with a small molecule and turn the yeast cell blue. The blue color, in turn, makes me happy. With the help of numerous other interactions, of course. I'm still boggled by the fact that the system works at all. There would seem to be too many points where the system could fail. This boggledness, however, suggests that even I, after all these years, still don't properly conceive of the universe inside a cell.

Hia !

2010-05-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

That's a dead water monitor.

Supposedly, the critters are the epitome of lizard intelligence. Intelligence, then, is no barrier to wallowing in slime and muck and filth in search of decaying flesh. The Thais focus on the monitor's latter qualities and ignore its maze-navigating talents; refering to another human as a water monitor is a fairly serious insult, something like calling a Frenchman a cow.

The Thais have a number of terms for the water monitor. The insulting term would be "hia." You hear young Thais working "hia" into nearly every sentence, the same way some Americans would use "fuck."

Hia arai? -> What the fuck is that?

Ai hia! -> Oh fuck!

Suay yang hia -> Fucking beautiful

etc.

Oddly, the last time I visited the Dusit zoo in Bangkok, the monitor exhibit was labeled "hia", in Thai. My Thai friends are surprised at that.

Up to a few years ago, you'd say "tua ngern tua tong" if you wanted to speak of a water monitor in polite company. It translates to something like "body silver body gold." However, there's an attempt to clean "hia" entirely out of the Thai language and replace it with a new term; "woranut." It'll never work; can you imagine an American government agency declaring that "fuck" will be replaced with a new term?

The genus name for the creature is "Varanus", which is quite similar to "woranut", especially when you consider that the Thai language has no "v" sound. Also, though Thai words may begin with an "s" sound, an "s" letter gets a "t" sound when placed at the end of a word. Unfortunately, "Woranoot" (double o's) has long been a popular Thai name for girls. It simply means "beautiful girl." So now we have thousands of Thai women suddenly finding their name associated with the finest example of disgustingness in this part of the world.*

A number of superstitions relate to the creature. You should walk to the right (or is it left? I forgot) around a dead water monitor. About a decade ago a Thai man made the news when he adopted a monitor based on the belief that his son had reincarnated as one; you'd see nightly videos of the father fondling the creature with exquisite care, heaping affection on it.

The monitors are not-so-distantly related to Komodo dragons, the biggest of lizards. They're ubiquitous in this part of the world. Even when you can't see one, you might hear one rustling in the weeds, or slinking away into a shallow, scummy canal.

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*The Thais may be the world's greatest name-changers, though. I'm guessing 50% of Thais change their first name at least once in their lives, making searching for old friends on Facebook a bit more problematic than usual. It's generally the result of a visit to a fortune teller who augurs that one's name is inauspicious, offering a number of choices for replacement. So this problem of suddenly being saddled with a disgusting name can be dealt with relatively easily.

What Tiger Shoulda Said

2010-03-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

I know this has been done before, but let me give it a shot:

******************

I'm here to apologize. I made a huge mistake in my life. Getting married. Or, to be clear, getting married with the stipulation that I'd never offer physical affection to another human for the remainder of my life. What a crock!

Some of you may have heard that mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosome Adam were separated by almost 100,000 years. Now why is that? Without going into the math, it's because men have gotten around over the millenia. Historically, breeding males impregnate about 1.5 women. I've brought copies of Wilder, Mobasher, and Hammer's Genetic Evidence for Unequal Effective Population Sizes of Human Females and Males on the subject, for your perusal. Thoroughly peer-reviewed.

We needn't get all mathematical to see the unnaturallness of marriage, though. You might get wistful looking at the bonding that goes on between a few species of birds. I've got news for you...we're primates. Have some fun and type key words like "bonobo, chimpanzee, sex, mating" on YouTube after the press conference.

Yes, I'm aware of the naturalistic fallacy; being natural doesn't make it right. But quit the pearl-clutching. Some of you doth protest too much, I'd say.

Much has been made of my Buddhist practice. Well folks, the typical Thai Buddhist marriage ceremony says absolutely nothing about lifelong fidelity. And, of course, Thai men are world-famous as philanderers. Thai women are the world's greatest penis decapitators (about 100 per year...can you believe that?), by the way, so let's not pretend that Thai women are particularly tolerant of this behavior. The world is complex. And my wife is Swedish. Anyway, people need to quit projecting their Abrahamic values onto me. That's not my trip.

Come to think of it, doesn't the legal enforcement of monogamy violate the establishment clause? Gotta make a note of that.

Yes, Buddhism teaches balance and honesty, and I've veered off in the direction of an extreme. But it also teaches that jealousy and attachment are to be avoided. It's fair to say I'm a success in those departments. Clearly, my wife has failed here, but with 15 minutes of additional meditation per day, she can work it out.

Greed is also a failing that my wife and I are guilty of. Hey...if I'd conquered that, I wouldn't be speaking to you at this moment, now would I?

Some folks call for me to undergo therapy. Folks, I need therapy the same way you need therapy for not believing in Santa Claus.

Hopefully, I can use my celebrity status to inspire folks to reevaluate the sham that is marriage. 50% of the audience here are, or will be, divorced. Some of you have gotten divorced multiple times, and with each new marriage you felt that this was the last. Are you totally fucking unconscious? Of the remainder, a large portion will find themselves sleeping in separate beds. Or, at least, with one of those long pillow things delineating territories on the bed. Whatever. Let's not be ashamed to greet the new day with arms that are not numb, with fluid shoulder joints, as individuals, unafraid to see a movie alone.

Thank you!

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After writing the above, I googled "What Tiger Should Have Said." Wow...so many tracts with that title! Plenty of good humor, mostly from the "I'm Tiger Woods, and you wish you were" camp. Some racism too...white racism, black racism, nothing unexpected.

But there's also an army of condescending, judgemental Christians bloggers out there, evaluating Tiger's sincerity. He didn't go far enough, of course. His voice was too monotone. Blah, blah, blah. One blogger, an admitted ex-sex-addict minister, tallies up 10 positives and 3 negatives in Tiger's outpouring. For others, the speech didn't dwell enough on all the folks he has hurt, apparently. As far as I'm concerned, there wouldn't be nearly the hurt if Americans would loosen up their expectations of marriage.

Then there's a number of disgusting attempts to degrade Buddhism along the way. As usual, the Christian detractors begin with a straw man and proceed to disassemble it. In this case, it's the Buddhist attitude toward desire. See, us Christians are taught to desire God, but Buddhists are taught to desire nothing. This comes as a surprise to those who are taught that Buddha desired the enlightenment of all sentient beings, or who have taken the Boddhisattva vow.

Science as a Search for the "Mind of God"

2010-02-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

Why did science arise in the West? That's a loaded question; plenty of folks would argue that "science" arose elsewhere. Still, a quick scan of your surroundings will reveal electronics, plastics, time-keeping widgets, lighting, senders/receivers, engines, etc. It's Western stuff.

One Steve Fuller has an answer to the question: Christians, inspired by a search for the "mind of god", propelled science forward. Surprise, surprise, this Jesuit-educated disembodied blathering head believes that a Christian philosophical quest is responsible for science.

I find the view ludicrous. As I wrote on scienceblogs:

Let's not consider contingency,accidents, and snowballing effects in the development of science. Forget about climate and geography. Ignore abrahamic religions' needs for evangelizing and warmongering and manifesting/discovering magical substances. Toss out any complicating arguments about abrahamic religions' anti-science propensities. Toss out neutral events too (e.g. a need for time-keeping devices for medieval monks). Ignore what non-abrahamic religions actually say, and poo-poo any science that did emerge in non-abrahamic areas. And then Fuller can claim that science was motivated by the religion of his upbringing.

Fuller also says that the Abrahamic view that humans (as opposed to animals) are privileged, being created in the image of god, was a historical driver of science. Obviously, Hinduism and Buddhism lack this sort of creation myth, but anyone with a slight familiarity with these religions will know that humans have a superior birth to animals. The Tibetans, in their juicy way, compare the souls competing for a privileged birth while two humans are copulating to flies on meat.

Enough of my own views, however. How about the views of the folks around me at Mahidol University?

An Iraqi Student: The era of Muslim domination of science (roughly 900-1300) might have continued indefinitely had the Hulagu Khan not invaded Baghdad in 1255. He says the Tigris River turned blue as ink leached out of the pages of books that were tossed there by Mongol forces.

An Indian Muslim: The Western concept of separation between church and state was responsible for the rise of science in the west over the last 400 years.

An American Ichthyologist: Refuses to cop to the notion that science is a Western development, even when I attempt to narrow the scope down to the last few hundred years.

A Thai Toxinologist: The need for the technologies of war spurred science in the West.

The Director of a Dengue Research Lab: Life is easy in the tropics. Just pick a mango off a tree and gather up some frogs in the forest. Ingenuity was required in cold climates, however. He was also quick to chuckle about the supposed Christian/science link, knowing full well that Christianity has a history of feuding with science.

I'll add more views as they come in.

A few more words of my own: Ask for an example of non-Western ingenuity, and it's a decent bet that you'll get the Chinese invention of explosives. I wonder, though, if systematic thinking, a hallmark of science, was at all responsible here. In the bomb-making case, was there ever any attempt to formulate hypotheses, falsify them, and build on the results? And, if systematic thought is crucial for "real" science, how could the destruction of books signal the end of science in the Middle East? It seems like we need to discriminate between mere "technology" and "science", how-to-manuals and deduction/induction. Maybe my own cultural bias/ignorance is showing here, while I'm griping about someone else's. Correct me, if you wish.

*****

Oh, the pic above is Marcel Duchamp's "Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even." I don't dig it, but it came to mind, somehow.

A Conversation with Mr. Oarfish

2010-02-17T02:41:00.000-08:00

As a kid, I had a collection of flashcards with pics of fish on one side, and their specs on the other. The oarfish stood out as the weirdest and most captivating of the lot.

One of the folks I bump into fairly regularly at the Institute is an ichthyologist...a fish expert. Over lunch, I asked him if he had seen the recent video of an oarfish in deep waters:

I expected my acquaintance to express surprise that such a video existed. Instead, I got a 30 minute lecture on the subject of oarfish. It turns out he might be the single most oarfish-knowledgeable individual on the planet. He didn't seem thrilled about the possibility that I'd blog on his knowledge, possibly because some of his opinions haven't been thoroughly vetted by the science community, so I won't offer his name. But here's what I recall:

The video shows the oarfish in a vertical position. Mr. Oarfish expressed skepticism that the fish, Regalecus, actually spends sizeable amounts of time in that position; it might be reacting to the unmanned submersible taking the video or to its environs (which include the massive vertical risers of an oil rig). At the same time, he theorizes that the oarfish may drift vertically in a catatonic state for thousands of kilometers.

I had read that the video was special because previous footage of Regalecus had been taken near the ocean surface; in such a state, the creature would tend to be near death. Mr. Oarfish replied that there's no reason to believe that healthy oarfish don't spend sizeable periods of time near the surface.

Perhaps the single most famous oarfish shot is the following:

The pic is well-known in Thailand. The Thais seem to think we're looking at Vietnam vets somewhere along the Mekong. This notion ties in nicely with the belief that dragons, the Phaya Nak, abide in the Mekong. Mr. Oarfish points out that the uniforms aren't from the Vietnam era. The pic was taken in 1996 near San Diego.

What's more, I had heard the soldiers dined on the serpent following the photo shoot. No, says Mr. Oarfish, the fish was far too decomposed. In fact, he only knows one person who has tasted Regalecus, and that individual was none too impressed with the result. A lousy cook, perhaps.

Some of the maximal lengths are exaggerated. Anything over 8 meters is suspect. An oarfish can actually lose or shed large chunks of its distal region, gecko-like. The resulting sawed-off appearance might lead one to extrapolate wrongly.

Strictly speaking, the species we're talking about here is Regalecus Glesne (Glesne being a town in Sweden). But Mr. Oarfish says there is certainly more than one species that is commonly labeled R. Glesne; there were some fairly large differences in mitochondrial DNA sequences (around 12%) taken from oarfish in Japan and in the Atlantic. What's more, there are significant morphological differences (e.g. in the number of vertebrae).

The evolutionary history of the creature is somewhat murky. One partial fossil from Italy exists, dating back about 1.5 million years...not long enough to display clearcut trends in evolution.

A couple final tidbits...dogs seen oddly attracted to the scent of the fish. And...there's very little evidence of the sorts of predators the oarfish may have to deal with. Sharkbites are rarely, if ever, seen on the creature.

GT200 Update

2010-02-16T03:43:00.000-08:00

For some background, here's my first post on the GT200. Following up...

The Science Ministry here in Thailand has conducted tests on the widget. It failed. It seems that extreme caution was followed in minimizing loss of face (sia na), red faces (na daeng), stepped-on-shoes, and so on. Phase I of this delicate operation consisted of banning the public and press from the actual tests.

Face-saving phase II consisted of some twisty phrasing on the part of the prime minister. He said the device "detected" concealed C4 in only 4 of 20 tests, for a 25% success rate. Ignoring the PM's cruddy math, if this $30,000 dowsing rod performed no better than random chance, it can't be said to have "detected" anything. As us farangs say, even a broken watch is perfectly accurate twice per day.

The PM also says that existing GT200s will have to be used in conjunction with other devices, again avoiding hurting the feelings of sensitive generals.

One can really sense the divide between scientists and politicians here. Most of my compadres would like to see all the culprits investigated and outed, with the failure of superstition on vivid display, an opportunity for public education properly exploited. On the other hand, I imagine the politicians saying, "Look, we've canceled future purchases, now it's time for you guys to shut up and go back to your labs." I've no doubt as to who would win this little battle.

Pseudo-scientist Pornthip, mentioned in my original blog on the subject, offered the following piece of warped logic upon learning of the GT200's failure: ""I know it's not scientific equipment, but forensic scientists can use it effectively."

Through the entire hoopla, not a single company rep appeared in the media to defend the GT200. It's funny how a company with such amazing salespeople can have such lousy post-sale support, isn't it?

By the way, there are perfectly legit bomb detection devices out there. They're hugely expensive, require real training, electricity, and upkeep, and can't detect all bad substances known to humanity at a distance of four kilometers. They work, however:

Note: I'm not sure of the source of the Harry Potter image. It's the sort of thing that amplifies quickly via mass e-mailing amongst Thais.

Bad Branding?

2010-02-06T06:18:00.001-08:00

Dowsing Hits Thailand

2010-01-27T06:58:00.001-08:00

Yikes! The Thai military has purchased at least 500, and as many as 2,000, of these widgets at better than $30,000 each. Do the math. According to the brochure, they detect just about any bad stuff you can name...bombs, drugs, ivory, currency, whatever. "Poppy, cocoa, and marijuana planting areas." Detecting chocolate is nice, but what about coca, from which cocaine is derived? No mention. Hmmmmm. Distance is not an issue..."any thickness of wall can be penetrated, whether concrete, metal, brick or lead." No batteries too!

Similar devices have been used in Iraq, apparently. I'm guessing locales like Iraq and Thailand are good targets for the woo-meisters. Thailand is a world leader in woo, but dowsing has no tradition here; the device looks and feels like any other high-tech mystery box from the West, and few are aware of dowsing's very questionable history.

It was disappointing to see Thai media-darling/forensic scientist Khunying Pornthip defending the device. She gets trotted out every time there's a high-profile murder here in Thailand. Ask a Thai to play word association with her name, and the result is inevitable: "big hair."

I had assumed she was perfectly competent in her craft, but after her assessment of the glorified dowsing rod (well, it's not 100% accurate, it needs to be operated by someone in good physical condition, blah, blah, blah), I now have doubts. Having used the divining rod in the past as a means of detecting bomb residues on corpses, it seems she is now forced to defend its viability or risk humiliation and the wrath of victims' relatives. The military pu-yais ("big people") who ordered the device are in a similar predicament. If they actually recognize the error of their ways, one shouldn't expect a public retraction, but a quiet discontinuation of usage of the "GT-200."

At least in the case of the military, corruption is a reasonable assumption. Let's be generous to the generals, however, and give them the benefit of the doubt. How then, could numerous public figures claim that they've used and validated the device to their own satisfaction? Well, Buddhists (better than 90% of the Thai populace) are familiar with the power of the mind, but sometimes forget that its greatest power may be in its capacity for self-deceit. Witness a gaggle of dowsers exuding supreme confidence in their talents in a double-blinded test, performing no better than chance, and offering up the usual rationalizations (sun spots!) for their failures. It's a five part series, and highly entertaining:

Finally, here's a wonderful BBC expose of a near-identical widget. The company owner doesn't even deny that the ADE651 is, essentially, a dowsing rod.

In all seriousness, it's likely that lives are being lost over this dressed-up medieval artifact.

More on the travesty of the GT-200 here and here and here. It's no surprise to find that the purveyors of this scam have interesting relationships with the law, with the same concept reincarnating under a new name (e.g. "the MOLE", the ADE651, etc.) after the authorities clamp down.

Creating an Auspicious Environment for Biochemical Research

2010-01-17T03:22:00.000-08:00

This is the 12th floor of the "Adulyadejwikrom" Building at Sirirat Hospital in Bangkok. Serious research is conducted here in the areas of dengue, thallasemia, and other maladies, making this scene a bit incongruous from my perspective.

Make no mistake, the goal here is to increase the level of good luck in the research facilities for the next year. The ceremony ends with the abbot touring the lab, sprinkling holy water on everyone and everything.

I gently questioned the lab director who organized the affair. Isn't this mix of science and superstition a tad odd? I didn't get a satisfactory answer, though he points out he's also organizing a weeklong meditation retreat that will be entirely devoid of superstition. He refers to meditation as a science of the self. I don't have a big problem with that, though I'm aware of various objections (e.g. in what sense are your "research" findings reproducible/falsifiable?) and would be interested to hear Acharn Pa-Thai's responses.

In fairness, if superstition is ever warranted in a science lab, this might be the place. Floors 3-6 of the building are a morgue. Students report seeing ghosts on the elevator. And floor 2 is a museum where, amongst pickled fetuses, you find the mummified remains of "See Uey", the legendary, cannibalistic, liver-eating, psycho-killer of 1940's Thailand.

Big Hand = Small Banana ???

2010-01-16T23:34:00.001-08:00

The Seven Things You Can't Doo in a Thai Taxi

2010-01-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

Alternatively, this post could be titled, "Just as I was about to crap in the taxi..."

In case you're wondering, image #6 is a durian fruit.

The Seductiveness of Crystals

2009-12-04T15:53:00.000-08:00

That's one DnaC protein sticking to another DnaC protein . The dotted lines detail the interactions down to .01 Angstroms (1/1000000000000 meters). Never mind the fact that the actual data on which the image was based has a "resolution" of 2.6 Angstroms.

Your typical protein contains several thousand atoms. To generate these images, the coordinates of all these atoms must be known. That information is normally painstakingly acquired by crystallizing the protein in question, followed by X-ray analysis. There's an element of karma/luck/art involved in generating a crystal; crystallographers can regale you with tales of how they worked fruitlessly for years to coax proteins into a repeating structure, with a drop of spilt coffee proving to be the catalyst that finally gets the job done. A recent Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to an individual, Ada Yonath, who stubbornly devoted more than 20 years to obtaining her crystal.

More than 60,000 protein structures can be found at the Protein Data Bank. Human DNA only codes for a tad more than 20,000 proteins, but a crystallographer need not fear for his career. You can crystallize proteins interacting with other proteins or ligands. You can crystallize various "isoforms" of proteins. You can mutate your protein strand and recrystallize it. Once you've got the atom-by-atom coordinates in hand, your software can zoom, rotate, label, and color the image. You're an artist. And an explorer, flying over and through the ridges and chasms that might be essential to catalysis.

The work can be important. If you've got a high resolution image of a disease-related protein, it's possible to design drugs that clog it up. It's arguable, however, whether "rational drug design" has come anywhere close to living up to its early promise.

But does this sort of work deserve a Nobel? Does it push boundaries and alter paradigms? Are we talking about extraordinary acts of intellect and creativity? Or just perspicacity?

The questions above are personal, believe it or not. It was flattering to have a professor pursue my services, offering financial inducements, and even pointing out my future lab bench, currently unoccupied. I practically begged for reasons to get excited about the work. I was told of the beauty of meticulousness, the wonders of knowing a subject from the bottom up.

But what about "top down?" Synthesis, integration, binding principles, systems, dynamics, interactions?

The research in question involves a bacterial protein, Cry4a, that is presumed to form a channel in mosquito guts, causing deionization (i.e. death); "presumed" because 20 years of research in labs around the world has failed to prove the point. It would be nice, of course, to benefit humanity by wiping out disease-carrying critters, but...

*Assuming we can engineer a deadlier protein, who's to say it won't get rejected by the bacteria after, say, 1000 generations? The assumption seems to be that a deadlier protein confers greater fitness on the bacteria. Quite naive.

*Assuming a competitive population of bacteria, who's to say the mosquito won't develop resistance to our protein?

*Assuming that resistance doesn't evolve, are we clear about the environmental impact of wiping out a species of mosquitos?

These are "top down" questions. Their answers inform us of the odds that the research might actually be of benefit to humanity. I didn't like the odds. It's possible that some world-beating toxinologists could change my mind. It's surprising, however, that a number of highly respected authorities at my own institute couldn't. There are no vendettas or personal gripes being aired here. I simply wonder a bit about the real state of science in institutes around the world.

Flora and Fauna in Salaya

2009-10-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

You can see some more images of my environs here. It's a "photobucket.com" slideshow. I strongly advise against saving pics on photobucket's incredibly counterintuitive, ad-laden website. I do it simply because that's where I've already uploaded a fair number of other pics. It's reasonable to assume flickr.com would be a better choice.

More pics to come...

Alternative Dwellings in Bangkok

2009-09-22T01:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a strange dwelling just off Phaholyothin Road, near the Mor Chit Skytrain Station:

Passing by at night, the lights are on. Somehow, just a sliver of a former apartment was preserved in the process of demolition. A parking lot surrounds the structure.

I wouldn't mind living there. Deck it out with vines, potted plants, and eerie lighting.

Here's another joint I've long eyeballed as a possible dwelling:

Cinderella's Castle at the old "Din neramit" Amusement Park. Several generations of Thais have fond memories of this place, as elementary schools would bus their students here for a day of enjoyment. It was hardly world-class and became redundant following the opening of "Dream World."

The park closed about a decade ago, with virtually all the attractions being shuttled off to wherever antiqued attractions get shuttled. Only the castle remains. In the background, you see unfinished condos, victims of the 1997 Southeast Asian currency crisis:

My solution to this double boondoggle:

In the course of a day of studying...

2009-07-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

...I stumbled across a couple of oddities.

First, there's a web page devoted to documenting instances of left-handed DNA in the media and technical publications. "Handedness" is not a difficult concept. Every nut and bolt and spiral staircase is either left-handed or right-handed. Viewing a spiraling structure from an end (either the top or the bottom), you'll see that the rails spiral away from you in either a clockwise (right-handed) or counter-clockwise direction (left-handed). If a spiral is left-handed when viewed from the top, it will also be left-handed when viewed from the bottom. You can verify that in 20 seconds by twisting up a piece of paper.

The DNA in your cells is right-handed, so any depictions otherwise are in error. The aforementioned website lists almost 700 instances of left-handed imagery, some of which appear in technical papers. The first instance, dating to 1964, was a minor national embarrassment:

(from http://www.ccrnp.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/icons/stamp.israeli.1964.jpg )

If you want to be finicky, you can point to the rare left-handed form of DNA known as "Z-DNA." In that case, however, half of the "bases" (say, all of the orange and pink strips) would have to be depicted outside the black and white rails, not inside.

The second oddity was this video:

This is farrrrrr from the level of detail I desired. What's more, the video is quite lame from any number of perspectives. But something about the speaker's accent, cadence, focus, and who knows what else, set my brain a-buzzing.

The buzz. Does that ever happen to you? For myself, it occurs when I watch or listen to a person who is intensely wrapped up in whatever he or she is doing. I can recall a couple of instances where the feeling was particularly strong. The first was in watching a cook prepare a hamburger...grilling the buns, treating them with mayo and sauce, gently squishing the oil out of the patties, etc. All accomplished with the utmost TLC. My new-age friends would probably expect such a burger to be especially tasty, with the normally unwholesome, fatty, and carcinogenic properties of various ingredients being negated by the purity of the chef's consciousness.

Another instance was in listening to a speech on the part of a vice-presidential candidate perhaps 20 years ago. Searching the net for third-party candidates at that time, I'm thinking it was Sonia Johnson of the Peace and Freedom Party. Whoever it was, she spoke with strange urgency. If she felt that the audience hadn't fully grokked her message, she'd pause, shift her feet around in little increments, and try to find a new angle of expression. Her gestures were odd, too. Again, a new-age type might see her as a channel for the Truth, with the Truth feeling a tad uncomfortable in that particular body and those particular garments. I wondered if she wasn't a tad nutty. It didn't matter, though, as most of my mental energy was focused on enjoying the buzz.

Anyway, you might want to view the video and see if it produces any odd feelings.

Gratawn, Santol

2009-07-08T02:03:00.000-07:00

Here's an amazingly delicious fruit that's difficult to find outside Southeast Asia.

The closest thing to an English name for the fruit would be "Santol", from Tagalog. The Thais call them "gra-tawn". You gotta say the first syllable staccato-like.

How does it taste? That's a difficult question. No other fruits come to mind as a reference. Looking at its lineage, you can see why:

Species: Santol Tree (Sandoricum Koetjape)
Genus: Sandoricum
Family: Meliaceae
Order: Sapindales

The Meliaceae family contains about 575 different shrubs and trees, but the Santol is one of the few that produces a fruit of distinction. So, unless genomics proves otherwise in the future, it seems that the Santol is somewhat evolutionarily removed from run-of-the-mill fruits in your supermarket. Moving to the broader category of "order", you do find that Sapindales include ordinary citrus fruits, lychees, and more.

Another Meliaceae that produces edible fruit would be the Lansium Domesticum. The Thais call these fruits "longkang" and the Philipinos "langsat". This is a source for eternal confusion, since "langsat" in Thai refers to a particular variety of longkang. What's more, there's another fruit that we call "longan", but Thais call "lomyai". Not to be confused with loganberries. Longkang and longan look similar, but belong to different botanical families. Longkang are tasty. Somewhat woody. On occasions when I have the will to peel and de-seed the little fruits, I mix lime, longkang, sugar, and gin in a blender. I don't see the appeal of longan, though...they're kind of radishy.

You can see a few similarities between longkang and gratawn. They both have yellow, leathery skin, and a handful of seeds inside. In Thailand, the two fruits come into season in the same brief period...usually June and July. But gratawn are much bigger and taste different. Longkang resin will stick to your hands even after you soap them off, and the pulp will occasionally squirt in your eye. If you let a gratawn ripen fully, however, the flesh is custardy. The seeds are big and tough, so you cut a circle around them, twist the two hemispheres apart, and dig into the flesh with a spoon. The sweetest pulp surrounds the seeds, so you suck on the seeds.

The flavor is...still difficult to describe. Bear in mind that Meliaceae includes frankincense and myrhh and mahogany. There's something spicy going on. I'm guessing that the pulp is loaded with interesting terpenes like linalool, the distinctive fragrance of Froot Loops. When I worked as a chemist at a winery, we had bottle of linalool in the refrigerator. I'm not sure why, actually. Perhaps because the winemaker desired to make illegal midnight flavor adjustments, dripping a few drops into the tanks. Opening a bottle of pure linalool was something like finding yourself in the midst of an exploding Froot Loops factory.

A couple papers suggest the presence of catechins and proanthocyanidins in gratawn...these are more typically found in teas, fruit skins, cinnamon, cocoa, and tree bark.

I just cut a gratawn open...there's something banana-ish in there too.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to dig up a full profile of the flavor components of gratawn in the academic literature. There are plenty of papers focusing on possible medicinal qualities of the bark and leaves, but no in-depth analysis of the qualities that make the fruit distinctive from an olfactory/gustatory perspective. Sounds like a decent Masters or Ph.D. thesis for someone interested in natural products chemistry.

Transformers and Michael Jackson

2009-06-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

Normally I refrain from commenting on pop phenomena. This week, however, my brain has reached a state of pop hypersaturation, so I'll blog in the name of self-help.

In college, a friend of a friend (and a distant friend at that...let's get this straight!) was a big Jackson fan and bought tickets for a number of his concerts on the West Coast. Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. She reported that the show included a segment where Jackson began a song and then ordered the band to stop playing after maybe 30 seconds. You see, his emotions were bubbling over, and he absolutely needed to express them via a different tune. That's nice, but it turns out that Jackson went through this routine at every concert. Offhand, I can't think of a more extreme example of feigned spontaneity.

Some call this sort of behavior "showmanship." Mick Jagger is supposed to be a great showman. When the 40-up crowd (of which I'm a member) ventures out to see a Rolling Stones mega-concert, they inevitably return with high praise - Jagger still has "got it." Then, of course, there are the obligatory comments about Keith Richard's appearance and longevity. To me, it feels like the concert-going fogeys are simply rationalizing their existences; see, us old farts can also prance around a stage. We might just still "have it." Hell, in high school, my circle of friends felt that the Rolling Stones began a downward spiral in 1967, when Brian Jones died. In the early 90's, I was pleased to hear that a decent chunk of the younger portion of the audience walked out on the Stones after a couple tunes. Pearl Jam, it seems, was the opening act, and the contrast between Eddie Vedder's genuine spontaneity and Jagger's rehearsed "professionalism" was too much to bear.

Oliver Sacks relates an anecdote from the aphasic ward of a mental hospital. Aphasics have a difficult time formulating and understanding concepts, so Sacks initially found it odd to see a group of them laughing hysterically at President Reagan's televised speech. As Sacks says, though, "It was the grimaces, the histrionics, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients." Perhaps I lean a tad toward the aphasic end of the spectrum, as Michael Jackson always seemed too cartoony to take seriously. For those who perceive him a master showman, you're entitled to your own personal mix of neurotransmitters.

Regarding pedophilia, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Did he fantasize about becoming white?...no, it seems like he really did have a hangup with vitiligo. I know because I've been dowsed with spam e-mails that prove the point with attached photos. What bothers me, however, is the praise he has received as some sort of music pioneer. Sly Stone and Hendrix were crushing racial boundaries when the Jackson 5 was a generic (but good) Motown act. One might argue that Jackson's transformation into whiteness, like Emperor Leto's transformation into wormness, was an act of sacrifice, designed to carry all sentient beings to a new degree of awakening. But the vitiligo spam disproves that theory.

Then there's the idea that Jackson was responsible for MTV. There may be some truth in that. In which case, the need for a successful musician to have a pretty face, dancing and acting skills, and to be on the cutting edge of fashion and personality - a 30 year trend away from actual musicianship - is Jackson's doing.

*********************

Now, let it be known that "Transformers II" is dreck. I just have few observations. In the spirit of the film, they're disjointed.

Following release of the excellent, "Elephant", Gus Van Zant predicted the demise of the "narrative format." No more linear story-telling. That's what you got in "Transformers II", which willfully discards plot and continuity. I say "willfully" because it's impossible to believe that these myriad discontinuities (a robot busts through the wall of the Smithsonian...into a remote jet airstrip) went unnoticed in production. Van Zant's vision, of course, is one intended to challenge the audience. "Transformers II" is the ugly, cynical side of the "non-narrative" format.

In fact, it feels as if recent films like "Star Trek" and "Transformers" operate on the principle that there's no limit to the degree of "suspension of disbelief" that the human brain can tolerate. "Suspension of disbelief" has now been expanded to include much more than run-of-the-mill violations of the laws of physics. We're talking about slashing through a coherent plot and timeline.

I found the first Transformers film notable for its ability to invoke a sense of wonder. That's a rare quality in a film. Somehow, you've got to mix nature, the right music, a sense of connection to the deep past, the grandness of the cosmos, paradox, and death and suffering, in just the right proportions to pull it off. This sense was totally lacking in the second film, a testament to the slipperiness of awe and wonder.

We poke fun at Bollywood productions. Singing, dancing, and fighting. There's something for every audience sector...slapstick for the kids, sex and violence for the teenage boys, true love for the chicks, and family values for mom and dad. But films like "Transformers II" run the risk of falling into the same "variety show" trap. You've got robots speaking with ghetto accents, plenty of slapstick, militarism, and the family pulling through in the end. Unnecessary skits. When Megan Fox's foxiness is the focus, the music changes suddenly, the film slows, and the camera zooms...very Bollywood!

On the positive side, I hope that this piece of garbage forces a number of critics to reassess Star Wars Episodes I-III. Lack of humanity?

Undoubtedly, the execs are rolling in the dough and lighting Gran Coronas with critics' reviews. Prediction: they'll be puzzled when "Transformers III" fails to meet box-office expectations. Hmmmmm.

Pigasus

2009-06-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

Google "Pigasus" and you'll find it's a well-used pun. It's unlikely that the Thais at "Satapon Plastic" company were aware of that when they created their logo, however. One wonders what inspired them.

Western Baggage

2009-06-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

He'd already visited me twice, but this time was special. I accepted the sacred text with both hands, briefly leafed through it, then pulled up a chair to place the text on the sahn. Looking back, Khun John began breathing faster and his eyes bulged more than usual. Young farangs are quite excitable. But he smiled and gestured to continue. The little jasmine wreaths were already fresh, so it was only necessary to light the incense and recite a quick prayer. The atmosphere in the room changed.

What did you pray about? I told him that I wanted good luck for my family, refraining from mentioning the means by which this was to be obtained (the lottery). In fact, a glance through the Bible suggested new possibilities for number-selection.

He spoke Thai. Do you believe in God? I reminded him of our English-only agreement. His tone was quite direct today, but the gift entitled him to that. I answered "yes". The flitting motions of his pupils slowed. This was the correct answer. If Tom Hanks had responded this way in "Angels and Demons", he'd have spared himself a lot of trouble.

****************

My respect for the boy had been growing. He was not birdshit farang. His grooming was immaculate, he knew when and how to wai, and sat straight on his two-stroke motorcycle. He had taken vows of sobriety. He worked without hope for material reward in a land far from his own. Our own monks lack such conviction.

It was odd, then, to discover the weakness of his semati. As had become habit, he initiated our session with prayer. It was clear that he was speaking the language of the pra, so there was no point in trying to understand. Instead, I silently repeated a mantra. He had already finished his own incantation, but I felt compelled to continue, as stopping on the fourth recitation would be inauspicious. Khun John stood patiently, exercising the perfection of khanti. The telephone rang. With my eyes only half-shut, I could see him flinch.

What did you pray about (as always)? I really couldn't say, of course, since the syllables were in Pali. I had learned the mantra in my childhood in Isan. We'd take jam-packed song-taews to the wat on auspicious occasions, regardless of the weather. The women would gossip and sing on the way. I salivated over the kanom in their bags. The men hung off the vehicle's railing, still managing to light and maintain cigarettes. Inevitably, the ceremonies had already begun. Everything changed instantly as we shed our shoes and passed through the door. Important work was being done. Oh, I digress...

"You pray and you don't understand the meaning of your prayer?"

A difficult question. Was it a "prayer"? I tried to keep things easy: "Yes, I don't."

"Yes, you do" or "No, you don't"? He muttered something about bananas.

A discussion of English grammar ensued. We agreed that "No, I don't" was the response I had intended. It was difficult to understand the logic behind this mode of speaking, so we both agreed it would be better to memorize the structure and dispense with analysis. "Leave it", as we say.

****************

On our next appointment, he returned to question of belief in God. This time, however, it was "God, creator of the universe." I got the feeling that he conferred with a higher pra; restating questions from previous sessions was one of his patterns. Over time, it had become apparent that believing in this and believing in that was essential to Khun John, so I answered his question as directly as possible:

"I don't know."

From the time of my youth, I had been taught that these sorts of questions were best left to science. He seemed unsatisfied with the response. In some esoteric texts, Mt. Meru is considered the center of this particular universe.

"Do you actually believe that?"

"No."

Khun John had the mind of a scientist. He concerned himself greatly with beginnings and ends, sizes and locations, logic and contradictions. He thought a lot.

He had positioned himself directly beneath the sahn. A little chunk of incense broke off and landed on his scalp. The heat was spent, but he sensed a disturbance as he spoke, attempted to remove the particles, but wound up smearing them on his nose and left cheek. For the rest of the session, it was difficult to suppress a laugh. You'd have to have been there.

*******************

"What did you pray about?"

This time, I had practiced semati, not prayer. My English was improving. "It wasn't a prayer."

"Well, what did you think about?"

"I try not to think."

"That's impossible."

********************

As it neared time for Khun John to complete his mission, I began to understand. This was a powerful god, capable of creating universes in a fraction of a kalpa. Yet the ten rules and other scriptures showed this god to be subject to the three poisons of attachment, aversion, and ignorance. Jealousy was his strongest attribute; this explained why Khun John would never wai my spirit house, even with his impeccable good manners.

Perhaps this god was a rudra. 6,000 years offer a fraction of the lifetimes needed to reach full awakening, especially via slow paths, so one shouldn't be particularly critical. If, on the other hand, this rudra had a timeless existence (as is sometimes implied), there was really no excuse. Another possibility was simply that this being had incarnated at a high position in the sixth realm, explaining his flamboyant ego.

My English had improved, but I was sad to say goodbye to Khun John. He vanished down the soi, necktie flapping over his shoulder.

A 40+ Farang Going for a Master's

2009-06-01T03:32:00.000-07:00

I've been enrolled at Mahidol University for more than a month now, going for a Masters (and possibly a Ph.D) in Genetic Engineering. I had assumed that the relative novelty of a 40-something farang pursuing a degree in Thailand would make for some interesting, bloggable experiences. Unfortunately for this blog, university life has proceeded with few hitches, thanks to the well-organized administration at Mahidol, as well as the mostly 22-24 year old colleagues who don't find my presence the least bit perturbing. 99% of professional travel writing revolves around the pursuit of frustrating, risky, intractable experiences, so I guess I'm a lousy travel writer.

Quitting work has meant cutting back on the luxuries I enjoyed just a couple months ago. No fancy dinners. For the most part, I take the bus or skytrain to downtown Bangkok, something I hadn't done in a decade here, opting for taxis instead. I'm now a "farang kee nok" (birdshit white guy), I guess.

In the name of frugality, I canceled cable TV today. No big deal. It's mostly Korean pop culture, Japanese folks trying to complete some bizarre challenge, Chinese historical dramas, crude CGI flicks involving giant snakes, lanky female humans walking to and fro in garments that are never seen on the street, German language news, endless analysis of soccer, Mexican soap operas, and American professional wrestling. I'll miss the MMA and K1. Boo hoo.

The new routine means a long walk to the Skytrain, dropoff at Victory Monument, and a short bus ride to Mahidol's Phayathai campus. Street vendors. Beggars...mostly blind folks singing with the aid of a cheap amplifier. One dude plays an electric guitar most impressively...I've seen him at Central Mall Lad Prao in the early afternoon many times in the last decade; our routines now intersect more than ever. Others are purely pathetic, victims of mishaps involving electricity or motorcycles. Thais usually don't protest the results of karma.

Coming home means taking the legendary #8 bus. Again, I had no idea about this facet of existence until a month ago. Like most other buses, it's public transport, but somehow this particular number has a special reputation for accidents, folks falling out the doors into busy traffic, and the like. Last month some old guy was hit and dragged under the bus for a couple kilometers before the money-collector noticed thudding noises that seemed out-of-place in the money-collecting realm.

The tour books teach of etiquette on the Thai buses. As usual, the books are nonsense. Seating is mostly first-come first-serve. Unless a patron is obviously frail, few folks will offer their seats. In fairness to the Thais, I don't think the thought process is purely selfish. It's more like this: if I get up and offer a seat, I'll be making myself conspicuous, someone might feel obliged to thank me, and I wouldn't want to trouble anyone that way.

At the Phayathai campus, perhaps 95% of the students are Thai. My first class was something of a prep class for all sorts of bioscience-related graduate programs, so I'm guessing there were 250 students in the room. Four caucasians, myself included. The others come from locations like Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia, Burma, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Ethiopia. It took maybe 10 minutes after the first class session before a dude named Muhammad was offering his views on the role of women (they shouldn't travel), the stupidity of Shiites (versus Sunnis), the decadence of Buddhism, and the amazingness of the Koran. The Muslims, bless their hearts, seem determined to prove that they're reasonable folks and the terrorists are mutants. I already know that, and it's fun to chat with them, but I would also like a chance to chat with the owners of the amazing legs that are only seen at a tangent.

Sarbast, a Kurdish Iraqi, is a fun dude. He doesn't hate the American soldiers, but does find them odd. Why, he laughs, do the soldiers purchase so much Viagra from his pharmacy when prostitutes are fairly scarce (though hardly nonexistent) in the region? The massive consumption of anabolic steroids is more understandable.

I'm mostly impressed with the education I'm getting so far. The profs are Thai, but their English language skills range from adequate to flawless. Acharn Prapol speaks with a fairly strong English accent. As might be expected, there's a slightly heavier emphasis on memorization and testing than you'd probably see in the West, but it's not as if the profs don't understand the importance of communicating broad concepts.

Below...9 of my 15 compadres in this year's Genetic Engineering program, eating noodles near Victory monument.

oo (อุ)

2009-04-19T16:49:00.001-07:00

That's a ~~bottle~~ pot of "oo", an alcoholic treat from the Northeast of Thailand. I paid 160 baht for it...about $4.

"~~Susan Boyle~~ Mother Tong Yaem" brand. Don't drink and drive. It's illegal to drink if you're under 18. Expiration date. Etc.

You've got to bust through the plaster seal before you can drink. It's a pain in the ass. It was the second time I tried the stuff, so I knew what to do...bring it down to a local eatery and let management deal with it.

Rice husks. I'll have to do some more research on the topic of "oo", as the stuff is still a mystery to me. Alcohol is a liquid, but it seems like the contents are not the least bit moist. You add water, wait 5 minutes, punch the wooden straws through the mass (difficult!), and suck.

Tasty stuff. Sweet and sour. You might compare it to sweet sake or, if you're already familiar with Thai alcohols, "sato". I'd say that it's more complex than either, however. I detected hints of cinammon and/or coconut, though I doubt any was added. Apparently, you can get "oo" in pineapple and watermelon flavors too.

It's not easy to find oo in Bangkok. This pot was acquired in roundabout fashion: a couple weeks ago a taxi driver and I found ourselves chatting on the subject of oo. He actually went out, bought a pot, and stowed it in his trunk, waiting for our next encounter. I threw in a 40 baht tip for the effort. He told me he found the stuff at an "OTOP" (one tambon/village, one product) shop in Bangkok.

Befriended taxi drivers, by the way, are awesome resources. I can't count how many times I've hopped in a taxi, told the driver to "take me to a good Thai restaurant", and had a great meal.

The Mantra of Avalokitesvara

2009-03-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

How does a denizen of the Nepali Himalayas become affluent in a non-touristed region? Join the Indian army. Send the money home to your devoted wife, who purchases a TV and satellite dish, solar panels, Tibetan carpets, thangkas, and various adornments for the shrine. A large poster of an English manor and flower garden...true paradise. A sink and an improved hearth. Copper pots. A comfy bed. And a high quality sound system.

Thus it was that I found myself in a surprisingly clean and well-managed tea house in the non-touristed Ganesh Himal. In the early evening, hail pounded down on corrugated metal roofing, a good time to slurp Tibetan tea and rakshi.

At 6:00 AM, I was blasted out of a cozy sleep via the above Mantra of Avalokitesvara, piped directly into the sleeping quarters. The reaction was irritation. I paid good rupees for my sleep. Those feelings dissipated quickly. The sky was clear, the Himalayan foothills green, prayer flags flapping in the breeze, and the villagers were an hour into their routines. This rendering of the Mantra is mind-blowing, as far as I'm concerned.

Some folks, mostly Westerners, describe this take on the Mantra as "new-agey" or "inauthentic" or "over-produced". You wouldn't have heard this melody wafting out of Himalayan gompas 15 years ago, much less a century. The instrumentation is not entirely Tibetan. That doesn't stop lay Buddhists, and even some Hindus, from dropping the cassette into cassette players (no iPods as yet) as they trod through the mountains, rewinding every 23 minutes and 55 seconds. The tune, if it can be called that, emanates alongside juniper and pine incense from shops in Boudhanath, Thamel, and elsewhere in the Kathmandu valley. I feel a tinge of pity for anyone who fails to be transported.

On the Falsifiability of Evolution

2009-02-24T16:19:00.000-08:00

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.

Charles Darwin (in a letter to Charles Lyell)

********************************
To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself.

Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

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One of the websites I most love to hate, "Uncommon Descent", has a post regarding the falsifiability of evolution. Many "intelligent design" proponents (IDiots) are sophisticated enough to claim to concede "common descent", so the poster argues that biologists can't simply invoke Haldane's "rabbit in the pre-Cambrian" argument to drive a wedge between evolution and ID (as the discovery of a rabbit in the Cambrian would falsify both views).

What numerous ID proponents seem to argue for is "common descent with meddling", the meddling being of a conscious nature. But is that really common descent? Such a view suggests discontinuity, which could/should manifest in the fossil record. When arguing with "common descent with meddling" advocates, why shouldn't a "rabbit in the pre-Cambrian" be invoked as a falsification of evolution and a confirmation of ID? The rabbit is admittedly a dramatic example of discontinuity, but it differs with myriad other possibilities (e.g. a mammoth in Australia) only in degree. When an IDiot says that evidence for common descent can never refute ID, an appropriate response may be, "what bizarre version of common descent are you imagining?" Ordinary sexual/asexual reproduction plus occasional/constant creative input from a third/second party designer is quite a distortion of the historical concept. Visualize a "tree of life" with disconnected branches held up by skyhooks. Alternatively, you can place a fairy on every fork.

Another ID view, the front-loading view, is that evolution was somehow programmed from the very beginning to be driven, or accelerated toward some end; a single, primordial instance of meddling. Here, a "rabbit in the pre-Cambrian" would clearly falsify both this view of ID and evolution. So how does a researcher falsify either of these views? I'd say that the IDiots are playing a sneaky game here: they do their damndest to conform to standard theory, sprinkle in a tad of supernaturalism/teleology, and then ask biologists to falsify one view over the other.

Obviously, the more closely a parasitic view wraps itself around the other, the harder it is to falsify one view while leaving the other intact. Given a choice of views, it seems eminently reasonable to opt for that which is supported by peer-reviewed research, practicing biologists, and which dispenses of superhuman entities. Tediously, the "Uncommon Descent" crowd spends a great deal of energy refuting this, invoking worldwide academic conspiracies, the wisdom of engineers who aren't constrained by mere biology, and the Designer Without Inferable Motives or Identity.

Above, one sees that ID takes a number of forms. The rabbit in the pre-Cambrian falsifies some versions, but not others. But proponents like Dembski and Behe fastidiously avoid formulating specific theories of ID, preferring to harp on every perceived weakness in standard evolutionary theory. They wouldn't want to favor the frontloaders versus the tinkerers versus the constant interventionists versus the creationists. At the same time, when arguing that evolution is difficult to falsify over ID, the IDiots can conveniently pull out the version of ID that best makes the case.

Given the fact that some versions of ID are hugely parasitic on standard theory, piggybacking, free-loading at every opportunity, biologists are sometimes challenged to show how evolutionary theory provides any practical benefits that competing "theories" couldn't. The responses of biologists run the gamut, from Dobzhansky's famous "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", to Coyne's recent argument that evolutionary theory, like cosmology, need only expand human knowledge to justify its existence.

Personally, it does seem that hardcore biologists sometimes exaggerate the case for evolutionary theory's utility in a clinical setting. A compartmentalizing creationist crystallographer could conceivably concoct cofactors (sorry, couldn't resist) that inhibit enzyme function, believing all the while that the active site was the result of conscious design. However, it occurs to me that one area that ID, in most of its incarnations (we can never say "all", given ID's aforementioned slipperiness) would fail horribly is in that of "ultra-selfish" DNA. We're talking about transposons, retroviral sequences, etc., that function solely to perpetuate themselves through the host's DNA. These sequences are problematic for ID, as they confirm an abundance of "junk DNA" in the genome, something most IDiots dispute with great tenacity. At the same time, these entities are strongly implicated in cancers and other maladies. Certainly, modeling and proposed treatments for such disease pathways should be influenced by whether the sequences are primarily "selfish" or "functional". To simplify, in one case it might be possible to "attack" the sequence and its [selfish] activity; in the other, one would expect any number of side effects.

My own dogma is that scientific insight arises in the minds of those who are already strongly grounded in correct views. Is it any surprise, then, that "ID theorists" contribute nothing to biological understanding?

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Below, I'll try to collect articles that do support the utility of evolutionary theory in medicine:

On the Utility of Evolution in Experimental Biology and Medicine

Hacking Evolution

Of What Value is Evolutionary Biology in Medicine?

Evolution as Policy, not Symbolism or Critical Thinking

Does Evolutionary Biology Make Predictions?

Of course, I understand that the poobahs of "Intelligent Design" may not be impressed. They'll argue that they don't deny "microevolution", so evolution of antibiotic resistance is no proof of standard theory's superiority to ID. They'll tell you that experiments in synthetic biology are an example of design, not evolution. And, of course, medical inferences based on "common descent" are taken to be "exactly what ID predicts".

The lack of creativity of ID proponents is sometimes mind-blowing. In addition to the aforementioned inability to come up with their own theories and research, there's the consistent flow of arguments that boil down to incredulity...I can't imagine it, so it can't be true. There's also this childish tendency to try to parrot back the criticisms of their opponents: evolution is a religious belief, evolution requires too much faith, blah, blah, blah. This is the tact adopted by children who, having been insulted, can't conjure up a decent comeback.

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Click here for a more artful "rabbit in the Cambrian" image.

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Samak's Nose

2009-02-15T04:53:00.001-08:00

Above is a shot of former Thai Prime Minister and Bangkok Mayor Samak Sundaravej. He had some highly lampoonable quirks, as you'll see.

Amongst numerous segments of Thai society that reviled him were the artists. That's largely because of his efforts to open a shopping mall/car park where an art museum had been planned. To Bangkok's benefit, the artists ultimately got their way. Way back in 2001, however, things were up in the air, and the artistic community staged a protest event. Participants were given canvas and paint. You can now see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of their efforts on the top floor of the art museum.

Samak was a cat fancier. The fish represents the museum. "Cats eat fish; the mayor eats the art museum". In English, we don't really have a slang word for "eat". In Thai, however, the word "daeg", used in the work, is considered quite nasty. These artists weren't pulling any punches.

A five minute browsing of a guide to Thai etiquette informs you that you should be careful where you point your feet. Samak is represented as the red foot above, squashing hopes for a museum. How do I know that the red foot represents Samak? Read on and take a second glimpse at the pic.

The above pic actually takes a swipe at foreigners: "Black head [like a real Thai], face like a foreigner". Apparently, a Japanese consortium was behind the shopping mall efforts.

The pic above references Samak's TV cooking show. The translation is a bit tricky...something like "we want an art museum; don't eat it you stupid man".

"Evil mind, Evil thoughts, Evil culture".

Now, if you haven't already noticed, all the pics target Samak's distinctive nose.

More nastiness. The nose, which needn't even be embodied anymore, is also given the attributes of a buffalo. More so than any other animal (with the possible exception of a water monitor), you shouldn't liken a Thai to a buffalo. It's the sort of offense that could earn you a punch.

Adding another level of abstraction, the nose takes the form of a rampaging rose apple!

Above is just a small selection of the works.

Google "Samak's nose" and you'll find that TV sign language interpreters simply touched their noses to indicate "Samak Sundaravej". Though the translation had persisted for a decade, some of Samak's supporters caught on and protested. To quote one article: "Stung by the controversy, the association [for the deaf in Thailand] has been examining other ways to indicate Mr Samak, for instance a reference to his passion for cooking."

I'm not sure how sign-language interpreters now refer to Samak.

3,2,1 Buddhas

2009-02-07T05:23:00.001-08:00

(The last one is a friend's pic, actually)

Tom Yum Poong Plah (Thai Fish Maw Soup)

2009-02-06T06:34:00.000-08:00

My dinner Thursday night!

Below you see "Plah Deuk Foo"...shredded and deep fried catfish. Properly prepared, it's not nearly as greasy as you'd expect. It's standard fare. Often, it's served with mango yum, which cuts through the oiliness. This time, though, there's a kind of curry sauce. A nasty, cheesy aroma wafted off it. They actually added milk to the sauce...a bit unusual in the country where the populace has the lowest lactose tolerance in the world.

The next course is "Yum Gorp". Chilis, spices, and frogs! The blackish blobs are the frogs. In a Thai restaurant in the USA, where the waiter might ask you to specify your spice-tolerance on a scale of 1-10, this would rank 100.

Next is "Gratai Put Pet". Rabbit. The green spheres are fresh black peppers.

Take a moment to grok that pic. It appears primed to spontaneously ignite. I've been here long enough to derive honest masochistic pleasure from extreme spiciness; nevertheless, it would be nice to actually experience the rabbitness of that rabbit. You can slosh some beer around in your palate and launder the remains of the critter, but it won't help much.

Here's the real treat. It looks innocent enough as it's placed on the table....

But there are some jewels under the placid surface...

Tom Yum Poong Plah...Thai Fish Maw Soup (ต้มยำพุงปลา). That veined, maggoty entity is an egg sack. I think.

Just to be sure, we asked the waiter if everything in that bowl was edible. "Mai mee kee", he said ("no have shit"). Reassured, we dug in.

For foreigners who straddle the border between novelty-seeking and health concerns, Thais almost always remove the shit from the fish they serve. The exception would be small fish, where the diner must perform the "shit-ectomy" with fork and spoon.

It's not subtle. It's not French cuisine. But it IS gamy, spicy (to an extreme, if you're unaccustomed), complex, and intense. You sweat and drink beer at a high flow rate. It's hard to imagine legally available food products eliciting more sensation per neuron.

It would be all the more amazing accompanied with, say, some trance-inducing "Mor Laem" music. But, of course, management sees the farang enter the joint and promptly whips out a selection of Abba and Carpenters tunes. Oh well.

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I just showed these pics to a Philippino friend. She then proceeds to tell me about cow testicle/penis soup. Apparently, you simply ask for "Soup Number 5", and everybody knows what you're talking about. Of course, it's supposed to increase virility. Sometimes they even throw in a sea cucumber for extra phallicity. Are there any dishes that perform the opposite function? Boiled eggplant?

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On second thought, maybe the choice of music wasn't entirely inappropriate.

Mud Muse

2009-01-20T04:54:00.000-08:00

In the early 70's, my parents dragged my siblings and me off to a kinetic art exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In retrospect, it's surprising that this opportunity ever arose, as my parents aren't exactly connoiseurs of this scene.

On arrival, we were greeted by a giant, undulating ice bag. It might have been 20 feet high. (Note 5/31/2009: click on the link and you'll see that it's not 20 feet high...so much for childhood memories). Bearing in mind that my memories are dim, I certainly wondered "what's the point?", and probably didn't get any satisfying answer.

Inside the museum, the first piece was a snooker-table sized tub of slowly gurgling, bubbling glop. A plexiglas window prevented most of that glop from going splat on the art aficionados. There were occasional major eruptions, however; the evidence was all over the floor.

I didn't want to leave that room. "What's the point?" didn't have much point at that point. You'd just strain your little head to catch the next explosion, mesmerized by the whole messy affair.

Onward to a pre-laser light show. After that, I don't recall. I assume we ventured into other, more permanent exhibitions. We may have passed by Van Gogh or Picasso. Or Warhol, for that matter. The art that left a lifelong convex-shaped impression, at least until I go senile, was that tub of mud.

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A few years ago, I got to wondering what exactly I saw. Turns out, it's "Mud Muse" by Robert Rauschenberg. He died just last year! Quite a famous figure, if you know your modern art. Along with Jasper Johns, Warhol, Twombly (friends and/or lovers, actually), the stereotype of the whacked-out modern artist.

I asked my father about that exhibition. He retains a sort of catalog of all the pieces at the event. More than 200 pages. The construction of "Mud Muse" is covered in a fair amount of detail. The "mud" is actually bentonite, known best to me as a protein-removing substance in winemaking. The gurgling was caused by some sort of vibrating action under the table, not a conventional system of pumps.

Google "mud muse" and you'll read the art critics a-cooing. According to one, it's "the interactive work of art conceived as the perfectly responsive lover." OK. Others make note of the fecal texture and color of the work. Even as a toddler fresh out of his anal expulsive phase, I don't think I saw things in that light. It was just the essential, amplified, glorified gloppiness of mud.

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Below is a video of "Mud Muse" in action. I don't recall any soundtrack, and have a strong recollection of the mud being far more viscous. Perhaps someone over-diluted the bentonite on the day the video was shot.

Yum Kai Mangda

2009-01-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

An American friend once described a horseshoe crab as culinarily useless. Not true, as you can see. Those orange globules are the eggs of one of the critters, served up with onions, chilis, mangos, and the other sorts of ingredients you typically find in Thai "yum".

The experience is something akin to eating little nuggets of candle wax. That's not a complaint, actually, as the resulting texture is unique. As with any number of other Thai dishes, there's an element of "sanook" (fun) involved in the gustatory process. It begins when the appalling form of the "mangda" is presented on the table, continues as you endure the spices, and nears completion with those little spheres rolling about in your palate.

Now, don't start combing the nearest beach for these buggers. For one thing, there are some conservation issues. More immediate, however, is the fact that the eggs of certain species are loaded with tetrodotoxin, the same poison found in fugu, the famous Japanese pufferfish. A Mahidol University paper counts 280 cases of poisoning, including 5 deaths, between 1994 and 2006. In Thailand, the culprit is the species C. Rotundicauda, as opposed to the edible Tachypleus Gigas. The appearance of the two is quite similar.

It's a tad difficult to hunt down this dish. A couple of the aforementioned deaths were fairly recent and well-publicized, so restaurants and customers are a bit wary. You could start by avoiding the sorts of joints that have large numbers of tourists. Also, smallish eateries probably won't have the kind of customer volume that justifies purchasing fresh horseshoe crabs on a daily basis.

Did you know the mouth of a horseshoe crab lies between its legs? Another interesting factoid: the beasty is more closely related to spiders than crabs, shrimps, or lobsters.

Photoshopped Satun Rocks

2009-01-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

South of Yecheng

2008-12-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Let me continue to recall a voyage in Western China, into Tibet, picking up where I left off in a previous post.

Mani and I had busted out of the hotel compound and were now walking southward, out of Yecheng. Being Sherpa, Mani could pass as a Chinese national, but not me. Fortunately, I had picked up a hat made of black sheep's wool back in Kashgar, which hid my western features, afro-like. It was early morning, there was a moon, and the road was lined with poplars. Folks were hauling goods on donkey carts, mostly toward the city, but nobody paid special attention to me. That's my memory.

After a couple hours, we caught a convoy of truckers heading south. We traveled perhaps 200 kilometers before we stopped. Word was, a bridge was washed out, and we'd have to wait in a small Muslim town. Here's a map. You'll find Yecheng in the lower left. You'll also note that there aren't any towns worthy of being marked on the route that leads into Ali, in Tibet.

As things go in this part of the world, it's bad form to immediately busy yourself with issues like food and lodging, gesturing into your palate and the like. You hang and let the locals feel you out. That's what we did. It was 1987 and the velcro on my backpack was the object of fascination for local children, and later, the adults. Those hooks and loops were put to the test for better than an hour, I'm sure.

A Tibetan man was stranded in that town. On his truck were hundreds of watermelons, destined for Lhasa, several thousand kilometers away. He figured the Tibetans would shell out major renmibi for the novelty fruit. His plan was now shattered, but he didn't seem fazed. I imagined that the adventures of that Tibetan, who faced disruptions and weirdness (e.g. me, as well as the local Uigurs) with equanimity, would make a nice low-budget movie. "Lhasa Watermelon Run". Black and white.

So, we ate watermelons while the bridge was being repaired south of the village. We ate so many watermelons, we shat red. There were also these very long noodles ("la mian") served as soup or stew, a regional specialty.

Mani and I played gin rummy constantly to pass the time. If we had another encounter with the police, it's possible that the penalties would be stiffer, so there was always some lingering fear. Mani began to see me as an obstacle. He was a professional photographer looking for novel shots in this part of the world, but my presence screamed "trespassing foreigner". We'd been together a couple weeks now, and he had decided that we our luck was better when he won the card games. In the end, nobody contacted the police to rat on us...I suspect that local dislike of Han authorities benefited us.

After maybe four days we were able to continue. Heading south toward Ali, the memories are dim. In the distance, a convoy of trucks winding slowly up a pass, like ants traversing the edge of a taffy ribbon. Little outposts serving noodles. I got the feeling that the workers in these regions, all male, had been sent out here as punishment. Things were cold and desolate in the Takla Makan desert...beautiful for a traveler, but probably incredibly tedious from the point of view of a companionless grunt. At one stop, however, two pairs of female legs emerged from a truck, and the workers lost any semblance of composure. I assume the women were prostitutes...fairly good-looking, and dressed inappropriately for the cold.

One thing I'll never forget is the golden mountain. It was perhaps 9:00 in the morning and this pyramidal peak must have been dusted with mica or some other reflective mineral. It really gleamed. I urged Mani to take a photo, but he knew that the effect would be lost...it was simply a monstrous chunk of gold. So, that intense goldness must be added to the list of amazing things that can't be photographed...

*a deep, blue, cloudless sky

*pure blackness in a cave

*the intense, encompassing whiteness you get when you're walking on the snow, in the clouds, with the sun threatening to break through

Supposedly, K2 could be seen from that region. Nobody was there to point it out amongst the other distant peaks, however.

Toilet paper isn't sold in that part of the world. I found a communist youth magazine that sufficed, however. The right, absorbent texture; nothing glossy. Yes, those pages were endowed with pics of all the revolutionary heroes.

At some point, we were traveling a narrow one way road, to one side a steep bank, to the other a lake. We encountered a convoy traveling in the opposite direction. Neither convoy seemed interested in reversing course. I'm not sure how this conflict was settled. Rather than slugging it out, it seems that both parties decided to relax and snack near the lake; a very sedate game of "chicken". We might have hung there for 2 hours. The incident brought to mind Dr. Seuss's tale of the Zax.

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Above is a photo of postcard. Mani made postcards as his livelihood. That's Mt. Mustagh Ata in China. Despite the gentle slopes, it peaks at 7500 meters...one hell of a footprint. Actually, the pic was probably taken from the Karakoram Highway on the way to Kashgar, a week or so prior to the travels described above. I'll have to write about that later.

Cover for "Understanding Intelligent Design 2008"

2008-12-08T02:49:00.000-08:00

Yeccccchhhh...A Smiling Face in the Sky

2008-12-02T05:07:00.000-08:00

Last night, my good friend Kan called, said "look at the moon", and hung up. With the greatest of compassion, she didn't inform me that I was supposed to see a smiley face.

Tonight, the moon has risen another 12 or so degrees higher, placing that smile above the two eyes (Venus and Jupiter). Rotating your head, or your photo, by 180 degrees gives you a frowning face. Hooray!

This astronomical episode sets the geek in me a-spinning. They say that you won't see another smiley-phenomenon like this for another 44 years or so. So how often is it possible to see a be-nosed smiley with a third planet, Mars or Saturn? Well, if you take 50 years as a rough average for the frequency of last night's performance, and you figure that nose only has a couple of degrees leeway between the eyes and the smile, you can multiply those 50 years by 180 (360/2) and get 9,000 years. That's awfully rough, and the frequency is probably even lower if you restrict the nose to a narrow left/right region across the face.

My inner geek also got to wondering about the logistics of seeing a frowning face without rotating head or photograph. I don't think it's possible! To see a "real" frown, the sun couldn't be far off the earth-moon line (otherwise, the moon would be closer to being full, and the smile would be replaced by a gape). The sun would also have to be above the moon from an earthbound perspective. That's necessary to get a frown. But if the sun is slightly above the moon, it'll wash out the planets! It doesn't matter if you're looking at the pre-dawn or post-dusk sky.

It's possible to imagine another solar system with planets that are visible in the daytime. Then you might see a frowning formation. Or, to get really sci-fi, you can imagine a universe with suns that spew rays of blackness into the otherwise ever-brilliant heavens. That would work. Hmmmmm.

I'm in a good mood now, and hereby donate this observation to the "intelligent design" crowd as evidence for a loving creator. Take it before I rescind the offer.

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To be clear, the geek only emerged after a good solid gawk. Not once did a smiling face impinge on my consciousness. In "A Beautiful Mind", mathematician John Nash displays his talent for connecting the dots and inventing new constellations on demand. You can call my story, "An Ugly Mind".

Honestly, what's the point of overlaying an awesome display of the night sky with...something else? Even worse is something as banal as a smiley.

A nice candlelight dinner for two couples back in University comes to mind. The food was great, and the company wonderful. And then there was Rachmaninoff's extraordinary Piano Concerto #3. I recall getting horribly tweaked when my company felt compelled to verbalize and reify the imagery that the music stirred in their brains. Noooooo!

Embellishing the already-astounding, be it music, sex, or a celestial display. Just a longstanding pet peeve of mine.

Obamasattva

2008-11-26T03:48:00.000-08:00

Hey, I voted for the guy. But read the following editorial commentary from the Bangkok Post:

Looking at Obama's historic campaign, what strikes us most is how consistently mindful this candidate has been. By mindfulness, Buddhism refers to the ability to be totally aware of the nature of things as they are, in the present moment, without pre-formed judgment or emotional partiality...

...From a Buddhist point of view, it is because Obama has a firm grasp on the fundamentals of dhamma, the nature of things, as well as karma, the law of cause and effect of action. Obama himself stressed throughout his campaign that he himself was not perfect and that he expected to make mistakes as president. This is a fundamental understanding of human nature and of dhamma...

...Want to be like Obama? It's not beyond our human capacity. To be able to achieve this level of maha sati, Great Mindfulness, Buddhism prescribes vipassana practice with a detailed step-by-step guidance for anyone who cares to learn.

The entire article is here.

On one hand, I can't say I'm entirely bothered by the Obamasattva perspective. McCain and Obama debated thrice, with neither side gaining a huge advantage in the process. McCain is no ninny, but even his strongest supporters must concede that Obama offered something McCain couldn't...a fresh start with the rest of the world. Does anyone imagine for one moment that the above superlatives would be flowing from Thai pens if McCain had been elected?

On the other hand, the author might want to step back from the whirlwind of recent events, gather up his own mindfulness, and put things in historical, emotional, and spiritual perspective. Jimmy Carter may have been a saint, but he won't go down as a great president. Oil prices and nefarious actions in Iran conspired against him, but it doesn't look like Obama will have it any easier. For every leader who cuts Obama some initial slack, there will be another trying to push the boundaries.

Above: Profound absorption or ordinary languor?

I just hope the world's expectations for Obama aren't too high.

More over-the-top gushing is found here.

Human-Chimp DNA Similarities: Truth, Distortions, Lies

2008-11-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy (Shakespeare)

And for every minute thing in heaven and earth, Hamlet,
An infinitude of lies and distortions regarding it await (Me)

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If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field. (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne)

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So many percentages are floated around regarding human/chimp DNA similarities. Despite the essentially non-existent contribution of creationists to biological science, google "human chimpanzee DNA similarities" and you'll be bombarded with creationist tracts. For every fact-based statement about biological reality, you'll find creationists offering a near-infinitude of lies and distortions.

DNA can be compared to a book, written with only four letters. If your task is to assign a percentage value to the similarities between two books, how would you do it? It's tricky! If you simply try to line up two otherwise identical books, letter for letter, the deletion of a single letter on page 1 of one text will result in a very low similarity score. How will you treat alternative spellings? In such a case, no meaning is lost...shouldn't a text riddled with alternative spellings receive a higher similarity score than a text riddled with spelling errors? If, oddly, one version tells exactly the same story two times, is it really fair to say that this version differs from the other by 50%?

Needless to say, good, intelligent, earnest, truth-seeking scientists have devised all sorts of measures to compare DNA strands. Needless to say, creationists accuse these scientists of various anti-god conspiracies. Needless to say, given a choice between two different comparison methods, the creationists will opt for the method that offers the lower percentage.

What are these percentages?

99.7%: This is the percentage of similarity in protein coding regions when "synonymous" substitutions are ignored. Imagine two cookbooks. Much of the two books are drivel...expositions on the author's intimate relationship with fennel, for example. However, a portion of both books actually offer recipes that you can try out. A taste-test of consumers finds that the end products of the two books are 99.7% similar.

98.4%-98.8%: These are the most commonly cited measures of human-chimp similarity. Most of the relevant studies here simply seek to match up letters to letters (as opposed to words to words, or paragraphs to paragraphs). Mary-Claire King's 1973 study of chimp/human differences in a handful of proteins extrapolated a 99% similarity, and the figure hasn't change much since. Since better than 80% of mutational events involve letter/letter substitutions, the 98.5% figure is probably the one that best gives a sense of the degree of divergence between humans and chips.

95%: This is the 2002 similarity estimate arrived at by Roy Britten at CalTech. His method of calculating similarities between books differs from that of most other researchers, though all parties are using the same books. Britten includes deletions or insertions of words, sentences, and paragraphs in his work, a somewhat controversial tactic. To quote Carl Zimmer:

Suppose a stretch of our DNA 6,000 base pairs long disappeared a million years ago. Britten would count that as 6,000 separate changes, yet other geneticists would count it as a single evolutionary event.

And isn't the counting of evolutionary events the truly important measure when we consider the divergence of humans and chimps?

83%: This is the percentage of coding sequences on human-chimp chromosome 22 whose corresponding proteins show any differences at all. To simplify, imagine two cookbooks. The proportions of ingredients in 83% of the recipes differ very slightly (say, one part in 300), with the end result being that consumers usually can't even taste a difference. The remaining 17% of recipes are exactly the same. Shall we conclude that the two cookbooks are "83% different"?

76%: For various reasons, including the fact that the chimpanzee genome was not fully sequenced at the time of the study in question, scientists chose to "align" 76% (2400 gigabases out of 3100) of the human and chimp genomes and then proceed to ask questions based on this alignment. See the 48.6% figure below for a book-based analogy. The figure, of course, has been propagated by agenda-bearers (in particular, one Richard Buggs) as an example of the progressive lowering of human-chimp homology estimates. Never mind that the same paper goes on to reaffirm previous estimates of homology, based on the 76% of usable, high-quality sequences.

To look at it another way, one can imagine a study where scientists choose to compare human/human DNA. Due to budget constraints, only 10% of the sequences are deemed of high enough quality for comparison. Do we conclude that humans are only related to each other by 10%?

Buggs argues that 76% is a conservative, purely scientific derivation, but that's bunk: it's like reading the first 76% of two books, finding they're extremely similar, and then stating there's a 50/50 chance that the remaining pages will diverge in content.

48.6%: This refers to Fujiyama's 2002 comparison of chimp and human DNA. In addition to the fact that Fujiyama employed stringent comparison requirements, the human genome sequence was not completed until 2003, meaning that Fujiyama was working with a draft. It's as if you have two similar books, but one is incomplete. You cut out text from the finished book and try to match it to text in the other. The degree to which the two books match up will then largely depend on the extent to which they're finished. The difficulty of comparison is increased if one book is being written by constantly adding sentences in random locations, as opposed to tacking successive paragraphs to the ends of the last.

Does the above mean that Fujiyama was wasting his time? No. He simply continued his analysis and made inferences based on the text sequences that did line up reasonably well (the ones with minimal "valid alignments"). In those cases, the letter-for-letter similarity came in at 98.77%, confirming earlier studies.

29%: To simplify a bit, assume two books of 20,000 paragraphs. If 29% of all paragraphs are precisely the same, and most paragraphs only differ in one or two letters, would you conclude the two books are hugely different? That's what the creoids do after "reading" 2005's monumental "Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome".

25%: If your books contain four letters, with each letter randomly appearing about 25% of the time, chance dictates that two letters will line up 25% of the time. A fool will then exclaim that no two books can ever differ by more than 75%. Never mind that no credible comparison methods are this simplistic. A single letter may match up 25% of the time, but two letters will only match up 6.25% of the time (etc.)

6.4%: This is a recent estimate of difference in "copy number" between humans and chimps. To simplify, assume that one book has duplicates of 6.4% of its paragraphs and the other hasn't. If the two books were previously thought to be 98% similar, does this new information now mean that we can subtract 6.4% from 98% and get a revised estimate of 91.6%? Not really. It's a simple matter to copy and paste a paragraph to a new location in your text, but it takes some serious effort to write a new paragraph. To make the fallacy even more obvious, consider two books that are precisely the same, except for the fact that one book duplicates all paragraphs 100 times. Is it really fair to say they are only similar by 1%?

I'm not critiquing the paper per se. However, if humans find some comfort in the 6.4% figure, mice should take deep solace...they differ from their dirty, unrefined cousins, the rats, by a full 10% in copy number.

0%: This is the frequency with which the creobots, when given a choice between two homology measurements, choose the larger. It's also tempting to offer this percentage as the contribution of these ninnies to biological understanding, but that would be generous...I'm not being facetious when I say that a negative number would be most appropriate.

Images on the Way to Mera

2008-10-31T03:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a pic from Kare, on the way to Mera. It was actually distilled from my old video camera in "super-nightshot" mode.

I'm a bit pissed that I wasn't more liberal with the camera up there, but you can see another handful of pics here (in slideshow format...give them time to load).

Mera Peak, Amazing Sherpas

2008-10-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a jaunt up Mera Peak. "Jaunt" is a fair describer of the climb...there were really no technical challenges on the way up. The last 50 meters or so is a bit steep, so they've got a line onto which you can attach a jumar, if you wish. The line is interrupted by a snowbar or ice-axe or something at some point, so it's necessary to detach and reattach your jumar at that point. Never mind, though...they've got a Sherpa stationed right there, ready to take care of those pesky details for you. The immediate impression I got was that of being on a scary amusement park ride, where operators check that you're properly harnessed before the ride proceeds. Honestly...that's what passed through my mind at 6,450 or so meters!

The lines disappear quickly over a course of days or weeks. A mountain like Everest must have thousands of ice screws, pitons, and snowbars embedded in her rock and ice. The really dangerous work is to re-establish a grip on these mountains. These days, that work is accomplished almost entirely by Sherpas. With the lines already set, the clients need only be bright enough to make sure their jumars are simultaneously attached to their lines and harnesses. Hmmmmm.

From my own count, few folks failed to make the summit. Some of those who made it did not have the most impressive physiques. The speed at which one can adjust to the altitude does not seem to be easily gauged beforehand. One pleasing fact: older folks seem to handle the altitudes better than young folks. Hooray! Where else does age give one a physical advantage? A mid-aged German guy spoke with joy of his encounter with a super-fit young Canadian climber who needed assistance down to a lower camp.

I don't mean to poo-poo the experience of climbing Mera. Having woken around 3:00 AM, you walk up a decent slope with less than 50% of the atmospheric oxygen available at sea-level. Depending on your speed, it could take 3-5 hours from high camp. Even my Everest-conquering guide Nima vomited on the way down. Rust-colored. I think it was the canned tuna fish our porters fried up for us. In the week we spent trekking toward the peak, it was obvious that the climb had taken a toll on many folks via seriously chapped lips, sunburn, a gimpy gait, whatever.

The weather is a huge factor in your chances of success. We enjoyed perfect weather on the summit. With the sun reflecting off the snow, I could have shed a layer of clothing. The next day was sour, however, with one Czech dude suffering frostbite on his toes. He was worried that the docs might have to do some snipping in Kathmandu, though I do believe he'll be OK.

More than anything, the appeal of Mera is the view. Everest and Makalu are right in your face. Kanchenjunga, the 3rd highest mountain in the world, looks like a fortress in the distance. There's Cho Oyu, beautiful Ama Dablam, Pumori, and more. Hopefully, you'll retain enough consciousness to appreciate it all in the rarefied atmosphere.

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Unbeknownst to the morons at TITV here in Thailand*, there are good reasons why folks don't climb Everest in October. The lack of action on the monster peaks at this time of year means that you'll meet some really amazing Sherpa climbers guiding expeditions on the lesser peaks. Let me tell you a bit about these guys:

Most impressive was Dawa Sherpa. If you watch the Discovery channel, you know that your typical Everest expedition requires a base camp and four higher camps. The whole process might take 2 months for a foreigner, who shells out as much as $100,000 to reach his dream. But Mr. Dawa simply began his adventure at the base camp on the Tibet side of Everest, reached the Summit, and traversed down to the Nepali base camp in a total of 20 hours. He told me he was a bit disappointed, since he was shooting for 18 hours. All told, Mr. Dawa has summited Everest 8 times.

Then there was Danu Sherpa. Our trek paralled that of Danu and his two wonderful clients, Christian and Chantal (sorry, no photos), so we had plenty of chances to interact with Danu. Not only has he summited Everest 11 times, and Annapurna I once (which is enough, given a 50% death rate), but he's also a radiantly friendly individual.

I shouldn't neglect my own guide, Nima. At the age of 22, he organized and led a Nepali team up Everest.

Finally, there's the story of a Sherpa whose name eludes me who loaded up on Nepali rakshi (a hard alcohol that Sherpas sometimes refer to as "oxygen"), left his home in Pangboche, summited Everest, and returned home to Pangboche in a span of 30 hours.

High altitude climbing, not to mention high-altitude portering, will never be an Olympic event, but I find the accomplishments of these Sherpas to be truly mind-blowing. It was about 30 years ago that Tenzing Norgay surmised that Reinhold Messner must have cheated on the way to the first ascent of Everest without bottled oxygen. Since then, however, it seems that the Sherpas have discovered their almost unhuman high altitude talents, and I'll be a bit surprised if any non-Sherpas come close to duplicating the above feats.
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*The Thai TV station TITV sponsored an Everest expedition in October-November of 2007. The unusual timing was supposed to honor King Bhumibol, whose birthday falls on Dec. 5. You could see updates and live reports amidst bombastic music nightly on TITV. The team failed about 800 meters below the summit. In May of 2008, the first Thai reached the summit. He had failed to attract any sponsors whatsoever, but later managed to minimize his costs by joining a Vietnamese team. The accomplishment was met with surprisingly little fanfare in Thailand.

Despite the comparative ease of climbing Mera, no Thais have done it! We scoured the records! Below, I attempt to advance the cause. Pardon the fractured footage...apparently, Nima found my video camera to be more challenging than Everest.

Plane Crash in Lukla

2008-10-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

We took the third flight out of Kathmandu, bound to Lukla, on the morning of Oct 8. I knew something was a tad haywire when, after 30 minutes or so, the plane began circling around some cloud-obscured location below. Shortly thereafter we found ourselves on the rarely-used landing strip at Lamidanda.

In Nepal, information passes through several filters before it reaches a foreigner's ear. First, it was confirmed that visibility was poor in Lukla. After awhile, word spread that an accident had occured. Was anyone hurt? The pilot is alive. What about other people? The pilot survived. I guess that's the Nepali way of saying, "everyone else died".

It turns out that [the doomed] flight no. 4 was about 2 minutes behind us. If the gossip on the ground is to be believed, our pilot warned the tailing pilot not to attempt a landing. The pilot of the ill-fated craft is quoted in Nepali papers as blaming Kathmandu-Lukla communications on the disaster, and Yeti Airlines officially claims that the airport was "suddenly" cloaked in fog, but the word at Lamidanda was simply that this guy, Surendra Kunwar, decided to play daredevil. He survived, apparently, because he was thrown through the cockpit windshield onto the runway, while everyone else had to endure the airplane flipping and then falling back 50 meters down the hillside.

In my life, I've met not one, but two sole survivors of bus accidents in India. Anyone who has spent anytime in this part of the world can regale you with tales of whisky-sotted bus drivers who, at 100 kilometers/hour, play "chicken" with the oncoming traffic on narrow mountain roads. Point is: the "daredevil" theory is not particularly far-fetched.

After a couple hours, we flew back to Kathmandu. I had encouraged my guide Nima to consider the possibility of trekking from Lamidanda to Lukla. It would take about five extra days, but being an American, I feared an FAA-style investigation that would shut the airport/airline down indefinitely. Not to worry...it turns out that a few October 8 flights landed after the crash.

I'm always the last guy to propose a "moment of silence", but the blase reaction of the Lamidanda passengers surprised me. Perhaps we just had trouble believing any Nepali -> foreigner information that came our way. Maybe the news was just too much to integrate into our morning at the pleasant, grassy landing strip, where locals showed up to offer tea. It wasn't "shock". Far from it. Nobody sensed a disturbance in the force as those 18 lives got snuffed out.

Back in Kathmandu, I was told that someone was looking out for me. I resisted the impulse to ask where this "someone" was with regard to the passengers on flight 103. If I was spared, were the others punished? Not the time for a lecture on the shortcomings of theism. One friend e-mailed me with another sentiment: the devil wasn't quite ready to accept me into hell. That view might be .0000001% more accurate than the former.

Nima's family had already gone into mourning when we returned to Kathmandu. Somehow, they were convinced that he had taken the doomed flight.

Despite my cynicism when the events of the day got mixed up in supernaturalism, there was still some sense of amazement at my continued existence, and it's interesting to consider all the little circumstances that led up to me NOT being on Flight 103. For example, I hate the chaos at the domestic terminal in Kathmandu, so I insisted on arriving at the airport as fast as possible that morning. We were there at 5:00 AM, before the airport doors even opened. What little behind-the-scenes bureaucratic adjustments might have spared our lives? Why had the passengers chosen Yeti Airlines, and not another? (for my own part, I refuse to fly Sita Air, another carrier, because they wouldn't accept responsibility for lost baggage on a previous excursion to Lukla).

Of course, it's not a done deal that everyone would have died had I been on Flight 103. Consider the following scenario: I hop on the flight. 10 kilometers from Lukla, I cough loudly, causing the pilot to reflect on his sick daughter back in Kathmandu. A conservative, family-oriented, risk-averse state of consciousness ensues, and the pilot returns to Kathmandu.

It's also eerie to consider that we had, most likely, smiled and interacted with the doomed parties. Undoubtedly, they were thrilled in anticipation of their upcoming Himalayan adventures. That's how everyone feels when they hop into that "Twin Otter"...chances are high that some amazing experiences are just around the corner, but you're not really sure when/where/how they'll manifest. At Lukla, the landing arrives suddenly...in that mountainous environment, where the plane must be flying upwards at an 11 degree angle upon touch down, you don't have the usual indications that you're about to land...so the ill-fated passengers probably carried those happy feelings until their last seconds.

When we finally made it to Lukla on October 10 (the weather was bad on October 9), I walked down to the crash scene to take some video. As "luck" would have it, I bumped into my former super-porter on the way. I dragged him back up to the main strip of Lukla and asked Nima to consider him as a porter for our upcoming jaunt up Mera Peak. That was fine with Nima, and it turned out to be a great decision. Anyway, Mr. Super-Porter related that he heard a boom, visited the crash site, and was greeted with the sight of bodies with burnt-off faces, and some strange, unpleasant odors. That's pretty much the story you'll hear from all the denizens of Lukla.

The Enigma of Hitler

2008-10-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

Above is a Dali work called "The Enigma of Hitler". I espied it while browsing through an online art gallery. For whatever reason, the pic grabbed my attention, and I decided to google around and try to learn about the context of the concoction.

The piece was created in 1938. It can be a waste of time to interpret Dali's creations, but the viewer should know that the umbrella is Neville Chamberlain's. The telephone, a common motif in Dali's works at that time, hangs on an olive branch. You've got the gloomy weather, which might either be dissipating or gathering into a storm. It's fair to speculate that Dali had some sense that global destiny hinged on communications between Hitler and Chamberlain.

Even at that time it was uncool to refer to Hitler without a qualifying epithet. Despite the unflattering depiction of Hitler, mixed with beans, with a tenuously dangling wad of sputum nearby, the surrealist community was appalled that Hitler might merely be referred to as an "enigma". It wasn't the first time that Dali tweaked the surrealist outlook, which extended far beyond techniques on a canvas. "Enigma of Hitler" was probably the last straw, however: Dali was effectively excommunicated from the group.

Dali went on to renew his Catholic practice. In utter contrast to Picasso, he also became an ardent supporter of Francisco Franco. He would write fawning letters to Franco, praising him for various political executions. The two met on at least one occasion. Despite Franco's very conservative cultural leanings, the Spanish art scene managed to survive, if not prosper, relatively unshackled during Franco's 35 or so years. I say "relatively" in reference to artistic freedom under dictators like Hitler and Stalin.

Dali's modus operandi was to shock, and be incessantly creative and contrary. He invented the Chupa Chups logo, worked with Disney and Hitchcock, and interacted with hundreds of aspiring artists on pilgrimage to his residence. As recently as 2003, Elmer Fudd pursued Bugs Bunny through the "Persistence of Memory". One has got to wonder if the world might look a bit different now if Dali had named the pic a tad differently ("Hitler, Beans, and Sputum"?) , if the surrealists had not possibly provoked a counter-reaction from Dali, or had Dali not heaped praise on a fascist dictator's ego.

A Tibetan Buddhist Scolding

2008-10-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

The above video was taken in May of 2007. The kid had just killed a bird with his slingshot, and was now getting an earful from the monk. I believe the monk's name was Rinchen, so we'll call him that.

My porter and I met Rinchen in an obscure, dusty Himalayan town by the name of "Turke Bajar". The ambience of the place was more Hindu than Buddhist, and Rinchen certainly received no special deference from the townspeople. He seemed a bit out of place in his robes. In a nook that could generously be called an apartment, we joined him in his puja, which was otherwise attended only by a handful of children.

Rinchen was enthused about showing us a fledgling monastery being built a couple day's walk from Turke. Having no serious itinerary to abide by, we agreed to the diversion.

Somewhere along the way, the above encounter took place. Rinchen, at perhaps 19 years old, took his monkhood quite earnestly, as you can see. In fact, to my eyes, he played the role to the hilt. He spoke with great excitement about the hardships he would endure in his upcoming three year retreat in the mountains (no human contact, no exiting the meditation hut except at night, etc.), and made sure I photographed him in various meditative postures.

An hour or so after the above exchange, Rinchen produced the slingshot and made sure I witnessed him tossing it into the forest. I'm not mocking his zeal, not at all. Young Americans might model their personalities after sports heroes or celebrities, and it seems that Rinchen wasn't so different. His heroes were the various Buddhist Lamas whose photographs adorned his shrine.

My porter, Janu, did the translating.

Regression via Music

2008-09-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of YouTube, I toured some of my earliest musical memories today. Several hours of this nostalgia is truly mind-altering. The experience is available to virtually anyone. Just plug the names of your favorite childhood bands/songs into the search box on YouTube, and let the memories wash over you. If you have a hard time drawing out these names from your failing hard drive, check out Wikipedia's list of pop hits via year.

Music is ubiquitous, but what was the first tune that really evoked something for you? For me, it was George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord". As best I can recall, I was in a YMCA van in the San Fernando Valley, on an excursion to Canoga Park. That must have been around 1970 or 71. The song is hypnotic, spiritual, trans-cultural, and boundary-breaking. If you believe in "imprinting", that one song might explain a bit of my personality.

Shortly thereafter, the family up and moved to the East Coast. My fourth grade teacher would allow students to bring their favorite 45's and play them on occasion. A few years later I'd be able to apply words like "sappy" or "pretentious" or "hollow" or "gutless" to music, but not at that time. The Partridge Family was popular, and I'd be lying if I said that some of those tunes don't still touch me. "I Can Feel Your Heartbeat" was my fave.

There were pop songs by singers/groups like the Turtles, Paper Lace ("The Night Chicago Died"), Three Dog Night ("Black and White"), Grand Funk Railroad, Looking Glass ("Brandy, You're a Fine Girl"), Tony Orlando ("Knock Three Times"), and Loudon Wainwright ("Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road") floating around the room. I wouldn't expect a 2008 pre-teen to dig that stuff...much of it lacks the dense "wall of sound" that we now expect. Too rinky-dink, too much bubblegum. Ballads, high concepts.

For whatever reason, you didn't hear the Beatles or the Rolling Stones in that room. Perhaps it just boiled down to the particular tastes of the older siblings of my classmates. Maybe it was one dominant classmate who always managed to get his K-Tel hit album pushed to the front of the cue. Don't recall.

One song that holds up really well, though, is the Raspberries' "Go All the Way". Up to today, I had thought the title was "Don't Go Away". Try not to get hung up on the early 70's fashion and mannerisms:

That clip was from the "Mike Douglas Show". There's a longer version of the clip on Youtube where the band meets Billy Jean King, fresh off her whipping of Bobby Riggs, following the performance. Issues of race and gender permeated the culture. Hell, you can even find a YouTube clip of the entirely un-controversial Partridge Family playing "I Think I Love You" under a "Woman Power" banner.

As I write, I've segued into the Partridge Family's "Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque". For quite a while, my 9 year old brain (and a very naive 9 year old brain at that) interpreted the song as an ode to Thanksgiving..."Point Me in the Direction of Our Turkey". Anyway, I can't say I dislike it. The lyrics are derivative in the sense that every other songwriter was already tinkering with the theme of hopping into a bus or a car or a train, or hitchhiking, with or without a dog, and sucking in the grandeur of the USA. What happened to those tunes? Gas prices, I guess.

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Now, fast-forward through progressive rock, disco, punk, new-wave, grunge, etc., to Bangkok in the mid-90's. It's odd how certain tunes find popularity here in Southeast Asia, when it eludes them in their countries of origin. Everyone here knows "Love Me Love My Dog" by Pete Shelley. Dig it up. Lobo is popular ("Me and You and a Dog Named Boo", "I'd Love You to Want Me"). Have you heard Dan Fogelberg's "Sutter's Mill"? A lot of Thais have.

Another song that met some success in Southeast Asia was "Knife" by a dude who went by the name "Rockwell". He'll be remembered as a "one hit wonder" in the States for his "Somebody's Watching Me", with Michael Jackson singing backup. He's also the son of Motown founder Berry Gordy. "Knife" is a tender, heartfelt, tuneful breakup ballad...it deserved some success back home.

With a cassette of these Southeast-Asia-only hits playing endlessly in the background, my (ex) girlfriend Noina and I spent a tearful night together. I had to fly back to the States, and couldn't say when I'd return. The lights were off, all words exhausted, but neither of us could sleep. We just snuggled, all sweaty in a one room apartment with no air-conditioning. Thus these tunes, composed in the 70's and early 80's, were stamped in my brain in the 90's. Hearing them in 2008, memories of those feelings, that time, and that place come flooding back.

A Culturally Biased Number Puzzle

2008-09-11T03:29:00.000-07:00

Below is a number series puzzle. I'll give the answer midway through this post.

1
11
21
1211
111221

What's the next number in the series? It's not as easy as it looks.

I'm guessing that Thais would find this puzzle more difficult than would English speakers. Here's the version that would probably be easier for a Thai, and more difficult for a Westerner:

1
11
12
1121
122111

Much ado is made of "cultural bias" in various psychometric tests. I don't have strong opinions on the issue. It seems reasonable to think that steps can be taken to minimize, if not remove, cultural bias. It should also be possible to make post-test adjustments to account for such bias. Sparks start to fly when someone implies that one ethnic group is brighter than another; this accounts for the intense academic interest in the subject.

I'm no linguist, but it seems that many languages in this part of the world make heavy use of "counters". The Thai language has about 200 of these words. Indonesian language has many. I've been told that Chinese does as well. English language has a few commonly used counters as well. If you say, "I'd like two loaves of bread", the word "loaves" is the counter. For many objects, English speakers forego the counter (e.g. "She has three stamps"). The Thais, however, use counters for virtually everything. In Thinglish, you'd say "She have stamp three flat thing". There's a special word that helps you count small flat things. In Thai, at least, the counter always follows the thing you're counting, so you wouldn't hear "She have three flat thing stamp".

So, coming back to the puzzle, if you ask a Westerner, "What do you see below?"...

1

...he would say "I see one one".

11

Ask him again, and he'll say, "I see two ones".

21

Etc.

But, try the same game with a Thai:

1

In Thinglish, he'd say, "I see one one tua". ("tua" is the Thai counter for letters and numbers)

11

Now he'll say, "I see one two tua".

12

Etc.

By now you probably understand the puzzle. The final number you see in the Western version of the puzzle is 111221. The number has three ones, followed by two twos, followed by one one.

312211

The final number in the Thai version is 122111. That number has one one tua, followed by two two tua, followed by one three tua.

112213

Interestingly, if you reverse the Western result, you get the Thai result!

Another question: given a "seed number" of 1 through 9, will any of the strings eventually converge? For example, if you start with 2, will these strings eventually merge with with the strings you get if you start with 3? If you use the Thai counting system, it will be easier to realize that the answer is "no"!

In any case, it seems reasonable to believe that one version of the puzzle would be easier/more difficult for Westerners/Thais, given their linguistic habits. A test maker could easily be ignorant of these differences.

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A Westerner might find the Asian use of counters to be inefficient. It certainly is, if you're talking about compressing information into the shortest possible sentence. But there are plenty of inefficiencies in the English language. Why say "This is a table" when you could simply say "This table", as you would in Thinglish? Language is not simply about compressing information. It's about offering up information in ways that other brains, with limitations on speed and capacity, can understand. Different languages deal with these limitations in different ways.

*

Eating Lethocerus Indicus

2008-09-05T02:34:00.000-07:00

A perusal of this blog provides ample evidence that culinary sqeamishness isn't one of my weaknesses. I've gobbled many a six-legged creature here in Thailand, to impress, shock, satisfy a dare, or possibly to fill my stomach. The usual mode of preparation is to fry the critters. The (presumably) gooey innards are lost in the process, so you wind up with a clear plastic bag full of crunchy exoskeletons. The vendor has a spray bottle of soy sauce on his cart.

The giant Thai waterbug is different. The males, at least, don't meet their destinies in hot oil. Instead, their reservoirs of pheromones are removed. The pheromone is then used in various sauces. I've tried these sauces.

It's difficult for me to see the appeal. Nail polish remover, ethyl acetate, is the closest comparison I can make. Others claim that the notes of gorgonzola cheese offer similarities (olfactory perception is sooooo subjective). The prime scent components of gorgonzola, however, do not include hexenyl acetate, the waterbug's love juice. You may not be repulsed at the odor of nail polish remover, but you don't mix it in your hollandaise sauce either. Some Thais might claim that essence of waterbug is a taste that only true gourmands can appreciate. For me, however, the real gastronomical delights on this planet are all united in one characteristic: complexity. But pheromones are, by nature, simple, a single chemical that interacts with a single receptor on your amour's antennae.

Thais call the waterbug "mangda". This is not to be confused with horseshoe crabs, whose eggs truly are a delicacy, which also go by the name "mangda". The Thai word for "pimp" is also "mangda"...it seems that male horseshoe crabs are lazy creatures that often get around by hitching a ride on the backs of females.

I'd post my own photos of the waterbug, but the following, awesome video by an honest-to-goodness zoologist is all you really need.

How many times in history has a Thai waterbug found itself on a $2 bill?

Missionaries in Thailand

2008-08-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

โดยปกติแล้วคนไทยที่นับถือศาสนาพุทธนับถือพระเยซูเป็นที่เคารพบูชา ดังนั้น จึงทำให้เขาใช้คำว่า “พระ” ก่อน “พุทธเจ้า” เพราะว่าโดยปกติแล้วคนที่นับถือศาสนาพุทธจะไม่ทำตัวเป็นศัตรูกับศาสนาอื่น ๆ

นั้นนับว่าเป็นสิ่งที่ดี แต่คนไทยควรจะรับรู้ว่า บางศาสนามองพุทธศาสนาว่าเป็น คู่แข่ง โดยส่วนมากแต่ก็ไม่ทั้งหมด คนคริสเตียนเชื่อว่าคนที่นับถือศาสนาพุทธหรือคนที่ไม่นับถือคริสเตียนจะไปสู่นรกเมื่อตายไปแล้ว

แล้วอีกอย่างคือ คนคริสเตียนส่วนใหญ่เชื่อว่านั้นเป็นหน้าที่ที่จะชักชวนคนพุทธให้กลายมาเป็นคริสเตียน บางครั้งอาจจะเป็นเพราะว่าในคัมภีร์ไบเบิลพระเจ้าท่านได้สั่สอนผู้ติดตามของเขาให้เป็น “ผู้ตกคน” ความเชื่อเหล่านี้ได้เผยแพร่ไปทั่วโลกเพื่อที่จะพยายามชักนำคนที่ไม่เชื่อให้กลายเป็นคริสเตียน คุณสามารถพบเห็นบุคคลเหล่านี้ได้ทั่ว ๆ ไป ในกรุงเทพ และที่ ๆ คนจะได้รับการศึกษาและอาหารโดยปราศจากค่าใช้จ่ายเมื่อเปลี่ยนศาสนาเป็นคริสเตียน เช่น ภาคอีสาน บางครั้งคณะผู้สอนศาสนาจะเชื่อเชิญคุณให้ร่วมงานเลี้ยงด้วย (โดยปราศจากแอลกอฮอล์) เพื่อที่จะชักชวนคุณให้กลายมาเป็นคริสเตียน

ผมไม่ได้เขียนบทความนี้ขึ้นมาเพื่อที่จะต่อต้านคนคริสเตียนและศาสนาอื่น ๆ แต่บ่อยครั้งที่คนไทยมักจะหลงเชื่อความจุดประสงค์ของผู้สอนศาสนา คนไทยจึงควรตระหนักถึงอันตรายที่จะเกิดขึ้นต่อศาสนาและวัฒนธรรมไทย จากคนที่คลั่งไล้ศาสนาเหล่านี้

ถ้าคุณไม่ได้อยู่ในประเทศไทย คุณจะรู้ว่าบางคนดูหมิ่นพุทธศาสนามาก แต่ถ้าคุณอยู่ในประเทศไทยจะคุณไม่สามารถรับรู้ เพราะ บางครั้งคุณไม่สามารถซื้อหนังสือ หรือรับข่าวสารที่ดูถูกดูหม่นพุทธศาสนาได้นี้คือเวปไซต์ตัวอย่างที่ที่ดูหมิ่นพระพุทธศาสนาเป็นอย่างมาก ผมจะให้ลิงค์กับคุณเพื่อที่จะพิสูจน์ประเด็นนี้ของผม

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Thai Buddhists usually accept Jesus into their pantheon of holy figures. That’s why they put the word “pra” before “Jesus”. That’s because Buddhists don’t usually see themselves as being in conflict with other religions.

That’s very nice, but Thais need to know that some religions definitely do see Buddhism as a competitor. Many, though not all, Christians, believe that Buddhists and other non-Christians go to hell when they die.

What’s more, many Christians believe that it is their duty to convert Buddhists. Perhaps this is because, in the Bible, Jesus instructs his followers to be “fishers of men”. These believers travel around the world trying to convert non-believers. You can see some of these people in Bangkok, but there are more of them in places like Isan, where people can get free education and food if they change religion. Sometimes, these missionaries will simply invite people to a “party” (no beer!) in order to convert you.

I’m not writing this to bash Christians and other evangelicals. But Thais are often very naïve about the intentions of missionaries. Thais should be aware of the threat to Thai culture from these religious fanatics.If you have lived outside of Thailand, you may know that some people are very insulting to Buddhism. If you live inside Thailand, you probably don’t know this, because you can’t buy books that insult Buddhism. Here’s an example of a website that insults Buddhism and Thai culture. I give you this link to prove my point.

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No, I didn't translate myself!

The sentiment is earnest. Most Thais don't seem to have a clue about the evangelical, viral nature of some belief systems.

In a weird sense, though, the tolerance of most Buddhists toward other religions may actually provide some immunity to these viruses. When evangelicals begin their Jesus spiel, the Thai Buddhist reaction may be, "bring him on...give me a pic and I'll add it to my shrine".

In the future, I hope to add some photos to this page. I've been told of several fanatical Thais in Bangkok, wearing placards, sporting mini speaker systems, and warning of Armageddon. If you have any such photos, please send them my way!

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Dec 26, 2008: Oooh, Santa has granted my wish! With permission from the photographer, below are a couple shots of an aforementioned loonie. You see "Jesus is the Redeemer" in the first pic, and "The Result of Evil is Death" in the second.

Jan 28, 2009: More!

Bolt Versus Phelps

2008-08-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

As much as China's attitude towards Tibet digusts, there's no denying the successful, spectacular nature of the 2008 Olympics.

Imagine some new sprinting events. One would be a "chicken sprint", where the athlete is required to insert his hands into his armpits for the duration of the run. In another event, the hands must be held over the head with elbows locked. A locked-knee sprint could be included. How about one in which the athlete is required to raise his knees to the level of his sternum on each step? All of the above would have 100, 200, and 400 meter categories, as well as relays and medleys.

Perhaps a "silly sprinting" event would be overboard.

In any case, if such events were ever to be seen, would anyone be surprised to see a character like Usain Bolt walk away with, say, eight gold medals around his neck?

As absurd as the chicken sprint seems, isn't that what we have in the swimming events? There's the breaststroke, the butterfly, and the backstroke, with medleys and relays. Judges eyeball the contestants, prepared to disqualify any of them for breaking form. There's also the freestyle event. In the end, though, there's nothing freestyle about freestyle...the fastest stroke is clearly the American crawl, so that's what all freestylers inevitably use.

I don't doubt that hardcore swimming afficionados would be indignant about my take on the butterfly stroke. It's a uniquely challenging form with a long history (?), they'd say. But c'mon...when an Olympic athlete comes home with a hoarde of medals, he/she is most certainly a swimmer. Phelps broke Spitz's record for medal haul, which Ian Thorpe had threatened in Sydney. Isn't it obvious that there isn't any great separation of skillsets between swimming events?

As much as I like to see Phelps padding the American gold medal count, I'll cast my vote for Usain Bolt as the superhero of the 2008 Olympics. In the event that displays the rawest, most touted, most sought-after athletic skill (speed!), he easily annihilated the competition and the world record. Given his relatively poor explosion from the blocks, it's fair to speculate that somewhere around the 60 meter mark, he was propelling himself faster than any of the roughly 100,000,000,000 humans in history.

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Gymnastics is another sport where multiple medals are frequently seen. Here, the above complaint (of large overlap between skillsets in different events) applies, but perhaps less strongly. The problem with Olympic gymnastics is the fact that the athletes can only receive medals in particular events if they've already displayed competence in all four gymnastic events. To take this logic to an extreme, imagine that you can't enter the shot put competition unless you've already demonstrated that you're an elite decathlete. The talent pool of potential shot-putters is then slashed dramatically, and it would then be no surprise to see an individual medaling in both the shot put and the decathlon.

Gymnastics is spectacular, but can there be any doubt that it would be even more so if gymnasts were allowed to specialize in one event? In other words, an athlete could specialize entirely on the floor routine, foregoing the training required for the vault, balance beam, and parallel bars. In addition to an increase in the mind-bogglingedness of the performances, we might see a decline in some of the alleged abuses of young female gymnasts, who must maintain an insane training regimen to prepare for four events.

Frontloading, Freeloading

2008-08-23T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today's organisms are phylogenetically descended from others which were vastly simpler than they are, so much simpler, in fact, that it's inconceivable how any kind of description of the later, complex organisms could have existed in the earlier one. John Von Neumann

There are numerous grades of creationist arguments, from those that willfully ignore the convergent evidence from multiple branches of science, to those that make every effort to conform to available evidence without dispensing of that added element, the cosmic designer. The notion of "frontloading" falls into the latter. The idea seems to be that:

*Evolution did indeed proceed from a primordial common ancestor.

*Further tinkering may not have been necessary, but the potential for all sorts of otherwise impossible complexity was built into the DNA from the very beginning. Over geological time, organisms unfold into more complex, higher forms. Evolution, in other words, was directed from the very beginning.

Typically, a frontloader gets excited if/when some journal reports on a gene that serves no immediately obvious function in a creature that resides in a low position on the evolutionary tree, but is important for higher organisms. An example would be precursors for nerve tissue found in some sponges. Unlike the folks who do the research and write the articles, these frontloaders are quick to speculate that the gene in question was somehow embedded for future generations and is worthless for the sponge.

Despite the attempts to move the ID goalposts right out of the stadium, there are big problems with frontloading:

1) Exactly how many genes needed to be loaded into the primordial organism to encompass all of life's diversity over the last 4 billion years? Presumably, any genes that IDers typically label "irreducibly complex" (e.g. those for the blood clotting cascade) must be included here.

Michael Behe takes a particularly, uh, nuanced view on the subject. Some of his remarks seem to suggest he's not averse to a frontloading scenario. And he claims to endorse "common descent". On the other hand, he also argues that the majority of the 10,000 or so protein/protein interactions in a typical mammalian cell exhibit irreducible complexity. That's just one species! For a Behe-frontloading scenario to work, tens of thousands of different protein coding sequences would have to be packed into the primordial organism.

2) How were these useless genes preserved over 3 billion years or more? Useless genes, of course, have a habit of getting excised from the genome, so we should see evidence of some sort of mutation-checking system that is so powerful that a wide variety of genes can be passed through trillions of generations without so much as a single base pair substitution. We don't see that, and it's not for lack of trying...biochemists would love to get their hands on enzymes that copy with such fantastic fidelity. It's funny to see the same folks who have offered up so much blather on the topic of "genetic entropy" reverse course and speculate that certain useless genes have been passed through lineages unscathed for eons.

Then again, there seems to be another breed of frontloader who argues that none of these ancient genes were actually useless. They simply served functions other than what we see today. That's great...it's the same argument that biochemists have offered the IDiots to dispute "irreducible complexity" for the last 20 years (e.g. on its own, the spring mechanism of a mouse trap won't catch mice, but it will serve nicely as a tie clip).

3) Where are all these buried genes now?

I can see some "outs" for the above questions. As for the buried genes, IDers can wiggle out of that dilemma by fantasizing that we've reached the evolutionary juncture where all such genes have been jettisoned and are thus, conveniently, not available for study. With the advent of humanity, you might say, all biological innovation pooped out. Awfully sci-fi.

It's possible to imagine some sort of DNA or RNA software package that compresses a huge diversity of genetic outcomes into relatively few base pairs. I'd call this program "evolution", but the frontloaders must also explain how their pet examples of "irreducible complexity" get compressed and maintained in the primordial .zip file. If you respect the authority of Von Neumann, that's one hell of a hurdle.

Should I try to make that bacterium sweat, or grunt with effort?

The Tedium of "Uncommon Descent"

2008-07-21T03:40:00.000-07:00

I've been eyeballing William Dembski's "intelligent design" website, "Uncommon Descent". Speaking only for myself, there definitely is an enjoyment in sneering at these folks. It's not only a concern for the future of science education in the U.S. that compels me, all too frequently, to see what these folks are up to.

There is yet another motivation for visiting these sites. On some level, I honestly do hope that somebody could arrive at an argument for "intelligent design" that is compelling, or actually challenges some evolutionary views and forces good scientists back to the blackboards. I'm all for weirdness, whimsy, complexity, surprises, and strange twists. More than anything, I enjoy the attempt at honing in on reality. If science blows expectations, more power to it. Contrary to what many creationist ninnies seem to believe, there's no "anti-god" motivation behind my disdain for their philosophies, and that's probably true for most scientifically-minded people.

Unfortunately, these compelling arguments never seem to emerge. Visit the site, and it's highly unlikely you'll find anything of scientific value. Currently, what will you find?

*Philosophical proofs against anything that tweaks the Abrahamic mindset...abiogenesis (how can non-life beget life? huh?), artificial intelligence, morality (if there's no absolute lawmaker, people can just run amuck, right?), etc. Didn't these sorts of arguments lose credence 400 years ago?

*Disputation of the global warming consensus. This, of course, has little or nothing to do with the site's stated charter (to dispute "materialism"), but it's not in the least surprising to see where these folks stand on the issue.

*The "Darwin is the Jesus of Atheists" argument. Constant attacks on Darwin's character and intelligence.

*Praise for the way in which ID has subtly infiltrated society.

*A repeated argument that science requires more faith than religion. (Scientists assume that if you feel pain in your foot, you've hit a real rock, but religious folks don't need that assumption, blah, blah, blah). Ho-hum.

*Complaints about PZ Myer's threat to desecrate communion wafers.

*Praise for a journal article titled "Design Principles of Photosystem II and Hydrogenases". Like infants, it seems the IDiots are merely thrilled at the inclusion of the word "design" in the title, since the actual body of the paper contains no succor for them. This isn't the first time that the term "design" in a paper has incited an orgy for these fools.

*One of the main contributors arguing, in effect, that mutational hotspots somehow disprove evolution (according to him, they're entirely non-random, which is anti-evolutionary, blah, blah, blah). Tedious. Similarly, there's an emerging ID-based argument that epigenetics == Lamarckism != Darwinism, so evolution is false.

*Endless repetition of the "evolution is in its death throes" mantra. In the next paragraph, of course, you're likely to hear these dunces complain that they have no representation at all in academia because of one conspiracy or another.

*Interminable proclamation that any slightly perplexing biological mechanism is "IC" or "irreducibly complex", and thus impossible to arrive at by any means other than conscious design. The current example is the Venus Flytrap. At first glance, it is a tad imagination-defying that that such a mechanism could evolve. After all, what use is a half-flytrap? Five minutes of internet research, however, reveals that the flytrap is related to the sundew, a carnivorous plant that doesn't snap shut, but traps flies via a sticky goo. It's then fairly simple to imagine some gradual evolutionary steps...1) the sundew better captures prey by folding around it, albeit slowly, 2) the folding mechanism improves, and 3) the goo is eliminated. My initial failure of imagination is remedied with some simple background on the flytrap's relatedness to another species.

Where's the bloody science? What is a pro-ID scientist to do in a research environment? Shall scientists cease work on abiogenesis because an IDiot has a cutesy philosophical refutation of its possibility?

The UDers are known to imply that a number of their scientists are forced to work in stealth to avoid the bigotry of "big science". If huge numbers of biologists are indeed being expelled for their unorthodox views on evolution, it only makes sense that there should also be a sizeable number of scientists working stealthily on pro-ID science. You'd expect a slew of anonymous but science-literate posts over at "Uncommon Descent". But the tone of the posts over at UD make it clear that there aren't any such stealthy biologists contributing to the site. One of the head honchos at the site, in fact, is in the habit of announcing that he only has access to the abstracts of journal articles (i.e. he doesn't have the passwords that any university academic would).

One of the hallmarks of pseudoscience is a lack of willingness to entertain third explanations. If we can't explain the lights in the sky, then an alien visitation is the only possibility. Even if we grant the dubious premise that known mechanisms of evolution (e.g. point mutations) can't account for the complexity of some proteins or protein complexes, why not speculate on mechanisms by which evolution can proceed at an accelerated pace? I hint at a few here. Here's a prediction: if and when new explanations are validated, they'll come from real biologists. The findings will then be greeted with excitement by most academics, but will be pooh-poohed by the IDiots.

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By the way, don't even attempt to post a comment on "Uncommon Descent". They'll ban any real scientist who evinces the slightest hint of snideness, though they're more than happy to let young earth creationists roam amuck on the site. In this sense, the site is all the more anti-evolution: the bright folks get weeded out, and the morons survive.

Yadong

2008-07-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

Quick. How many balls are in the jar?

Two!

It's a tiger phallus.

We're not in a museum. And the clear liquid is not formaldehyde. We're in a country shop near the Mekong River, and the preservative is good old ethanol. The Thais call this stuff "yadong"...local distilled alcohol (usually from sticky rice) plus, say, a snake, a venomous centipede, herbs, whatever.

Presumably, a sip is supposed to do your sex life good. Being scientifically-minded, I put this theory to the test. The results came out negative. Given the rarity of this particular item, who knows how long ago that phallus had been separated from its owner? After untold dilutions that would make a homeopath proud, one can only speculate on how many tiger molecules actually flit about in a shot glass.

Dancing Shrimp

2008-07-20T01:46:00.001-07:00

Above is a Thai dish known as "goong dten" or "dancing shrimp". They're dancing because they're not particularly thrilled at finding themselves in a styrofoam "to go" box mixed with mint, chilis, onions, and other ingredients you'd expect in a dish of "larb". Add a dash of lemon and they get extra-frisky.

You can catch a sense of Thai-ness here. Note the accompanying blue dish. It's not a bowl. Sure, some of your dinner might hop off the table, but that's the fun of "goong ten". Children, little sadists, get a special kick out of the treat.

Gastronomically speaking, there's nothing profound going on here. You bite into the critters and experience a little "pop" as their guts seek the most efficient exit route through the exoskeleton. Otherwise, it's larb.

A True Thai Ghost Story

2008-07-19T23:07:00.001-07:00

Sometime in November or December of 1999 some Thai friends dragged me off to Ayutthaya for a nighttime "sound and light" show. The show was nice enough. On the drive back to Bangkok, talk turned to ghosts. It often does with Thais.

In brief, there's an old temple back in Ayutthaya, "Wat Tagrai" (ตะไกร), where masses of Thais were executed during one of the Burmese invasions in the 1700's. The Burmese would bind a Thai to a pole, slit the neck, and methodically repeat the process with the next victim. It's this sort of history that, of course, makes for a haunted temple.

For quite a while I'd had an ambition for New Year's 2000. It was this: toss my watch, and go alone to a place on the globe where nobody celebrates New Year's. The Himalayas were high on the list, but that wouldn't have been practical. When told of Wat Tagrai, it was clear where I'd spend the last night of the old millenium, and the first morning of the new. Being shit-scared of ghosts, Thais would steer far from the temple as midnight approached.

I arrived sometime on the afternoon of the 31st, located a cheap hotel near the temple, and then sauntered off to Wat Tagrai. As you can see in the background of the pic above, it was more of an archeological project than a well-preserved relic of old Ayutthaya, once considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. There were three large statues in front of the temple. The one you see is "Pra ReuSee", the archetypal forest hermit.

Around 10 pm, I situated myself on the pedestal of one of those three statues (I forget which one) and occupied myself with simple meditation. Feral dogs wandered around. With my eyes half-open, I swear one of those dogs stared at me, head a-tilt, doggy brain thrown for a loop by the new statue on the scene. The great forest monks of Thailand were known for their ability to sit sublimely even as tigers sniffed their robes, but that's not me. I considered making a move to scare the critter off, but imagined that this might set off a very undesirable howling spree. Eventually, the dog hopped off, uninterested.

When I tell the story to Thai friends, it's at this point I ask them, "do you know what happened next?"

Absolutely nothing. No ghosts.

Unfortunately, of all people on the globe, Thais are most likely to find any excuse for a party. They celebrate Chinese New Year's, Thai New Year's, and Western New Year's with full intensity. I could hear the sound of fireworks at some point, and it's likely that point was precisely midnight. Around 2 AM I dragged myself off the pedestal and walked back to the hotel.

Is "Spiritual Rationalism" Even Possible?

2008-07-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

Where do rationalists stand with regard to non-banal experiences that are typically referred to as "religious" or "spiritual"? You know...meditation, bliss, oneness, zeroness, whatever. Do practices of phowa, tummo, chod, yidams, yoga, etc., shed any light on questions of being? There actually seems to be quite a variety of views:

A. such experiences are reserved for elites, and thus shed no light on the driving forces behind religion.
B. such experiences are delusory or, at least, worthless. Check out PZ Myers
C. such experiences can indeed be powerfully transformative and may be worth pursuing (Sam Harris).
D. I can enjoy all of these experiences myself without engaging in religious woo. Here, you have Richard Dawkins emphasizing that he can enjoy a sunset (it's usually some celestial phenomenon) as much or more as the next guy.

These categories aren't meant to be mutually exclusive. They're just intended to reflect the dominant responses you'd expect to hear from various rationalist personalities when you play a game of word-association and blurt out terms like "neurotheology".

I've avoided the term "atheist" for my argument. Theravadan Buddhist purists (who often are Westerners re-projecting all that they thought they had rejected in Abrahamic religion) might spurn some of the aforementioned practices as superstitious or "degraded" or untrue to the original scriptures, and embrace others. Here, you get a mix of all the above categories. These Buddhists would probably self-identify as atheists, but might not be thrilled with the geeky "rationalist" tag. Rationalists are not known to seek out the spaces between thoughts. However, in many cases, especially in the West, the two terms can be used virtually interchangeably.

Regarding A), at best it's a simplification to say that the experience of meditation is reserved for religious elites when, even today, a large percentage of the male population in places like Thailand is expected to engage in an extended retreat at least once in a lifetime. To then argue that the religion "in itself" can do without meditation seems rather silly.

I'd like to add my own category E). It goes like this: Yes, these experiences may be worthwhile and transformative, but rationalists can't have them. Or, to be less dramatic, they may be somewhat handicapped when seeking them out.

I recall Phil Plait arguing that he might view the night sky with more awe than less educated folks. With his trained eye he, after all, can make determinations as to whether stars are retreating or not. Their colors tell him something about the heat they produce. He knows their stories. That's very nice, but he's playing right into the hands of the folks who claim that a scientific view dulls the moment to moment appreciation of life. For many, this dunderhead included, awe arises when one is left thoughtless, and dissipates as a conceptual overlayer gets re-established. That's the vaunted Zen "beginner's mind" to which contemplatives aspire, as opposed to Plait's "expert mind".

Blathering about spiritual experiences is a dangerous road, but I've done enough meditative tinkering to know that the quality of sights and sounds that impinge on consciousness are hugely variable. In the Tibetan tradition, you may identify with a "yidam". Depending on the yidam you focus on, your post-meditative perceptions might be altered in interesting ways. Meditate on Tara, and you may find the soft curves of your coffee cup to be unusually prominent and compassionate. Meditate on a heavenly realm, and you may find every object glistening, imbued with sacredness. Meditate on a wrathful deity, and a confident, sharp clarity may be felt. Other times, the world is saturated with a dreamlike quality. There's really no reason to find these gestalts to be any less "real" than that of ordinary, tedious, ego-focused, samsaric vision. But you're not going to "get it" if there's a big internal debate going on as to whether these deities have objective existence or not.

There's a bit of a paradox here. Rationalists identify strongly with the logical, thinking mind ("sem", in Tibetan, if I recall). They believe in its eminence. And yet, they often don't seem to fathom the extent to which this mind can exert its power right down to the level of perception and sensation, where a deity's presence may be felt vividly and organically. "Sem" may be more or less isolated from the realm of the senses for some folks. There are indications that religiosity, suggestibility, etc., may have genetic components. Point is: maybe some folks are simply cut off from certain experiences.

Another Tibetan practice is "guru yoga". Here, you summon up intense devotion for your teacher. You see him as no different than Buddha. It's something that's awfully difficult for me (superhuman authority figures on thrones are problematic, to put it mildly). Rationalists have an understandably difficult time suspending disbelief and logic in this sort of situation, and it's all the more difficult when the supposedly venerable guru figure spends massive hours watching TV, seeking out his next fuck, and micro-managing the financial affairs of the organization. But here in the West we have psychologists who are supposed to free us of neurosis. Imagine, for a second, that you viewed your therapist as no different than the Buddha. You'd probably carry out his instructions especially intensely and dutifully, and results might be quick in coming. Of course, this sort of relationship can and does lead to abuse, but that's another issue.

As far as I can see, these feelings of intense devotion are hugely emphasized in virtually all religious traditions. They enable certain experiences. What object of intense devotion can atheists claim?

Various traditions emphasize the importance of creating an "auspicious" environment to facilitate prayer or contemplation. We might simply be talking about lighting some incense, or we could be talking about a very elaborate ritual. How might rationalists quicken various "spiritual" experiences? What venerated implements are available?

Next, there's the issue of "self knowledge" for rationalists. Being of a scientific bent, they may disregard any information gathered via self-reflection, since it's 100% subjective. In other words, because you believe that you can't probe your mind via the scientific method, you're not even going to try. I say "believe" because I'm not at all convinced that the mind can't be investigated, and subjectivity can't be minimized via the structure offered by meditative techniques. You attempt to focus solely on your breathing, but repeatedly get distracted in discursive thoughts. You then realize that you're not quite as "in control" as perhaps you thought. Is that not insightful? Is this not an experience that can be shared with and confirmed by other meditators? Perhaps Westerners are somewhat burdened by the impression that "self-knowledge" necessarily involves stuff like recalling and playing out the historical chain of events that culminated in a rubber boot fetish. There's also this very Western notion that "self-knowledge" involves selecting out the traits that make you especially different from the next guy, not the traits that bind you.

Rationalists reject views that are not based on sound evidence. That's nice, but 24/7 we're faced with the existential dilemma of constructing/maintaining/abiding-by a self-perception that is based on...what? Many scholars of the early texts of Buddhism remark on the radical deconstruction of self going on in these works. It seems, however, that many rationalists would prefer to avoid this particular exercise in deconstruction. Or, perhaps, they think that Ellis, Maslow, and the like have rendered these approaches moot. Laughable, really.

Rationalists focus on logical and evidentiary errors. But what of perceptual errors? A classic Hindu/Buddhist example is that of an individual whose fear causes a rope to be seen as a snake. Are rationalists less prone to such effects? Perhaps more prone. Mistaking a rope for a snake may occur once in a lifetime, but the unjustified reification of self is near-constant and worthy of examination, according to the Buddhists.

In science, anomalies often spur insight. It's rather odd, then, that an apparently large subset of rationalists have concluded that meditative self-experimentation is necessarily a fruitless endeavor. Science isn't mere application of logic and statistics. It's about going out and finding and manipulating materials and circumstances. No?

Ask rationalists why religion endures and they often unwittingly offer up a sharp reflection of their own cognitive biases: it's there to explain the cosmos. Or, perhaps, it's there to offer a legal/moral/social skeleton for society. For the politically inclined, it exists as an elitist power structure. I'm reminded of a classroom of well-indoctrinated schoolchildren. Ask them why people take drugs. You might be surprised at the sophistication of the responses, but isn't it odd that nobody chimes in, "because drugs make you feel good"?

Folks spend a good deal of effort justifying their own propensities. A musician may pity those who can't "get" Coltrane. For the literate, it's lamentable that some humans never experience the genius of Joyce or Shakespeare. You may be seen as pathetic because you're clueless about the gritty reality of the inner city. Or because you're out of touch with nature. Because you've never gone for a real adrenaline rush. Because you've never experimented with S&M. Because you've never studied martial arts and can't defend your own body. Because you've never been through cancer. Because you've never had children. And of course, you may be pathetic because you haven't had a "born again" experience. Or because you're deluded enough to believe that you've been touched by a sky fairy. And it's pathetic that some folks don't seem to appreciate the diversity of mental states that they encounter in interactions with others.

******

In fairness to Phil Plait and PZ Myers, they've got awesome, provocative blogs. Plait has indeed spoken of the purely visceral power of heavenly imagery, and PZ, when he's not thrashing creationists (which is enjoyable in its own way), can write incredibly evocatively and lucidly. He's sure as hell not autistic.

Chimborazo

2008-07-09T00:15:00.000-07:00

Quick! What is the highest place on earth?

If you say Mt. Everest, you're kinda wrong. Mt. Everest is highest above sea level. However, the earth isn't a perfect sphere, which means that the distance from the center of the earth to the surface is greatest at the equator. This distance isn't entirely trivial...6357 kilometers from the center to the poles, and 6384 kms from the center to the top of Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador. A basketball with these proportions would probably bounce a tad unpredictably.

From this perspective, Everest is 2.4 kms lower than Chimborazo! Furthermore, the Mariana Trench is quite a bit "higher" than some areas on the ocean floor near the North Pole. I say "some areas" because scientists, believe it or not, have yet to pinpoint the exact spot on the earth's crust that is closest to the center.

For the weight-conscious, Chimborazo is also the world's best place to stand on a scale. If my numbers are right, you'd weigh about 1% less on Chimborazo than at the poles. Not noticeable, though I wonder if somebody with a highly trained sense of gravity (a juggler? a high jumper?) would perceive a difference. The greatest high jump in history occurred in Salamanca, Spain at 40° latitude, and the second highest actually occurred in Stockholm (59°), which argues against any significant effect.

The diminished pull of gravity, however, is significant enough that it makes good sense to launch large rockets near the equator.

There was a time a couple hundred years ago when Europeans believed Chimborazo to be the highest point on earth! They were correct for the wrong reasons. I presume they arrived at this judgement via triangulation, just as they later arrived at a measurement for Everest, with sea-level as a reference point. Alexander Humboldt (of Humboldt Bay and Humboldt Current fame) attempted the summit in 1802.

Three other peaks are actually further from the center of the earth than Everest: Huascaran, Cotopaxi, and Kilimanjaro. Given the difficulties in making precise measurements from the absolute center of the earth, there's some debate, in fact, whether Huascaran might actually be a tad taller than Chimborazo. For me, all this ambiguity points to the illusoriness of pursuing the world's "highest" summit. Given the relative ease of climbing Chimborazo, one wonders if some anonymous, bored Incan nomad (did Incans have nomads?) scampered up the peak 1,000 years ago, leaving the goats to fend for themselves.

Another item to add to the "things to do before you croak" list. It'll go somewhere above "hear the roaring sands" and below "see a really intense aurora".

A Wedgie for Creationists

2008-06-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

The creationists have got their panties in bunches over Richard Lenski's recent paper on bacterial evolution and evolutionary contingency. In brief, over the course of 44,000 generations, Lenski's lab of e. coli acquired the ability to metabolize citric acid. It appears that at least 3 mutations were involved.

Now, on one hand, you have Andrew Schlafly (of Phyllis and "Conservapedia" fame) demanding a right to Lenski's data and bacterial cultures. Lenski was partially funded by the government, and Schlafly is a taxpayer. It appears that Schlafly sees the paper as a severe affront to his beliefs, and strongly suspects some kind of fraud. Never mind that he is not qualified to read such technical papers, much less analyze the bacteria for himself. The whole brouhaha is detailed here and here.

On the other hand, you have Michael Behe, an intelligent design creationist, poo-pooing the paper. After all, he says, the machinery to metabolize citric acid was dormant in e. coli's DNA. The only mutations required were those to allow it through the bacterial membrane. A handful of point mutations (most likely) over 20 years is nothing to get excited about, according to Behe.

Obviously, there's quite a disparity between Schlafly's and Behe's views. Is the paper such a blow to creationism that it surely must be fraudulent? Or are the results entirely ho-hum?

Now (July 9), we've got "Answers in Genesis" chiming in with an interpretation that Lenski's results are neither ho-hum or fraudulently evolution-affirming, but pro-creationism. Such disparities are fairly commonplace in the world of creationism, where the only guiding principle is to attack evolution on every possible front. In the spirit of fraternity, it seems that debate between the various schools of creationism is supposed to be minimized. But the logical chasms are huge.

I'm not only referring to creationist arguments against evolution, but also to their own religious dogmas. It seems, for example, that these folks are rather divided over the existence of satan, and/or his role in evolution. There was a time, though creationists have conveniently forgotten it, when satan was accused of planting un-biblical dinosaur bones in the soil. Remnants of this view can still be found on the net. Unfortunately, it seems that flimsy creationists tracts that may have existed in laundromats 40 years ago have gone the way of soft-bodied pre-Cambrian worms. Now, of course, you've got a "creation museum" with displays of folks saddled on the behemoths, and satan is normally left out of creationist arguments against evolution (Lewis Black on creationists: "these folks think the Flintstones is a documentary").

My point: scientists should make a point of questioning the creationists, a tactic that is normally ignored. Of course, there's a good argument to be made that scientists should never debate these buffoons in the first place. But if we must debate, then the scientist needn't merely play the role of creationist error correcter. My own experience is that, given a quasi-earnest nudge, these folks are foaming at the mouth to spew the most ludicrous supernaturalisms. Such a process may reveal inconsistencies in their views toward both evolution and religion, leaving them to fend off not only the scientists, but other believers.

Some other questions for the creos:

*How often has the Designer interceded? While most young-earthers would say "once", and others might say "always", creationist darling Behe implies that he does so intermittently. (Question for Behe: do you think your "science" could pin down when these intercessions occured?)

*If you claim that ID is a science, could you offer up a handful of experiments that might falsify it?

The Thailand Bowling Resort

2008-06-25T05:20:00.000-07:00

About three years ago, I had this notion of putting together the "Thailand Bowling Resort". Enthusiasm for my latest brilliant idea normally wanes within a week or two, but I was hyped for several months. I put together the graphics (see the bowling balls in the coconut trees?) and a five page business proposal, and even made some meager attempts to contact folks with big bucks.

I envisioned myself as the Willy Wonka of global bowling. Given the relatively cheap costs of bowling in Thailand, you could send members of your league over here, toss a few games, and then drink cocktails on the beach. There'd be 200 foot lanes, and lanes with Evel Knievel style "loop the loops". Banked, race-track style lanes. Lanes with 15 or 21 pins. For the serious bowlers, you'd be able to choose from any number of lane conditions, and actually toss all sorts of balls...not just cheap plastic house balls. Video would be available so you could check out your form. Etc.

It never happened, of course. All you venture capitalists can feel free to grab the idea. But you gotta give me rein to mysteriously wander the premises in the wee hours, with tuxedo, top hat, and cane.

*******

Actually, I haven't tossed a bowling ball for nearly half a year now. My new focus is on Himalayan climbing...I'd really like to get up over 8,000 meters someday. More on that later. But it's not like all my bowling balls are going to waste...I build leg strength and endurance by stuffing the balls into my backpack and "trekking" up and down the stairs in the condo.

Not quite ready to compete with the guys below, though...

Fun with Gene Expression (for Bio-Nerds Only)

2008-06-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

Hop on over here and you'll be greeted with an awesome gene expression resource. It's a database of about 33,000 cDNA sequences that correspond to virtually every gene in the body. You could type something like "204285_s_at" (that's how these cDNA sequences are identified) in the search field. Alternatively, you could type something like "top2a" (which happens to be the symbol for topoisomerase 2A). Then you hit enter, and you see all sorts of expression data for that gene. You might see that it's heavily expressed in the pancreas, but not in the brain. You'll see links for papers that reference that gene. Etc.

Folks gawk at the achievement of sequencing entire genomes. Impressive, but personally I'm astonished with these DNA microarrays that tell you which genes, out of 20,000 or more, are being expressed in the tissue sample. Biochemists have been sequencing DNA for something like 50 years now, with various increments in efficiency along the way. But these microarrays required a whole new approach. Specifically, biochemists had to collaborate with experts in semiconductor lithography to create these "gene chips".

"How much would you pay for your own genome sequence?" is a question sometimes offered to various scientists. Currently, it would cost a few million dollars, I would think. But a fairly affluent individual can have a tissue sample analyzed via microarray right now, and the results would probably be quite a bit more useful (at this junction in history, at least).

It also amazes me that so many of these genes and their protein products have been analyzed in depth. Choose any of 20,000 genes. Which diseases are connected with its mutations? What sort of protein family/structure are we talking about? What is its function? How heavily is it expressed in any of 100 different tissues and cancers? Who has written papers on the subject? Nobody will win a Nobel prize here, because tens of thousands of researchers have contributed to this huge knowledge-base. And much of the data is freely available to anyone nerdy enough to probe it.

I'm one of those nerds. Having downloaded the aforementioned database, transformed the data, and squished it through my own statistical sausage machine, I now offer up the winners of the "Gene Expression Awards". Before continuing, I should make it clear that I'm taking the expression data at "face value", ignoring error bars, and the simple fact that heavy/light mRNA concentrations don't necessarily translate into heavy/light protein concentrations.

First, the award for Most Consistently Expressed Gene. Here, we're talking about a gene that is expressed across all sorts of tissues, not just a few. The winner is...Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 6! You find it everywhere in the body. Runner-Up candidates include "proline arginine-rich end leucine-rich repeat protein", "phosphoinositide-3-kinase, class 3", and "glypican 4". Special mention should go to proteins like "gelsolin" and "growth arrest-specific 6", which are not only consistently expressed, but also heavily expressed.

How about the Least Consistently Expressed Gene? Here, we'll go with "myosin, heavy polypeptide 7, cardiac muscle, beta", found almost entirely in muscle tissue. Another good candidate would be "protamine 2", which is only expressed in testis tissue.

How about "Most Overexpressed in Cancer Cells"? Let's go with "phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate-induced protein 1" as the champion. Runner ups include "neuromedin U", "topoisomerase (DNA) II alpha 170kDa", "phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate-induced protein 1", "DNA replication complex GINS protein PSF2", "ribonucleotide reductase M2 polypeptide", "activator of S phase kinase", and more.

There are plenty of proteins that are essentially unexpressed in cancer cells. There's always a slim chance that these proteins must be actively suppressed in order for cancer cells to proliferate. Some examples: clusterin, fibronectin 1, v-fos FBJ murine osteosarcoma viral oncogene homolog, and insulin-like growth factor binding protein 7.

"Most Overexpressed in Adult Tissue" (i.e. least expressed in fetal tissue): "major histocompatibility complex, class II, DP alpha 1", followed by any number of other immunoglobulin-related proteins. "Prostaglandin D2 synthase 21kDa (brain)" should also figure in the list.

Conversely, there's "Most Underexpressed in Adult Tissue": "alpha-2-HS-glycoprotein", "glycophorin A ", "hemoglobin, gamma G", and more.

Some Trivia...

*genes that are generally heavily expressed tend not to be expressed in testis germ cells. Rather odd.

*want to know which genes are heavily expressed in the appendix? Look for genes that are also heavily expressed in the superior cervical ganglia. Why in hell should there be a relation between these two tissues? Heavy expression in the ovaries also correlates strongly with expression in the appendix...low expression in the ovaries correlates with low expression in the appendix.

*Heavy expression in the Spinal Cord correlates overwhelmingly with expression in the Olfactory Bulb. More reasonably, heavy expression in the Prefrontal Cortex and Hypothalamus also correlate strongly with with Olfactory Bulb expression.

*Various brain tissues cross-correlate very strongly. Strong expression in the whole brain is very well correlated with heavy expression in the amygdala, followed by the prefrontal cortex, occipital lobe, etc. The differences between these tissues are fairly subtle, apparently.

*Gene expression in the prostrate is strongly correlated to expression in the lung! Huh?

*Despite the proximity of the organs, expression in the prostrate is negatively correlated with expression in the testis.

*Heavy expression in the atrioventricular node (of the heart) corresponds to heavy expression in the skin!

*Heavy/low expression in the blood is negatively correlated with heavy/low expression in the brain. There are also inverse correlations between testis expression and whole blood expression.

*Low expression in the adrenal cortex is correlated with heavy expression in the Medulla Oblongata.

*If it's heavily expressed in smooth muscle, it's probably expressed in low quantities in skeletal muscle. This correlation isn't strong, but it's a bit surprising nevertheless.

*Proteins heavily expressed in adipocytes (fat cells) tend to be expressed in smooth muscle. Collagen and collagen binding proteins, for example, but also "melanoma associated gene" (ds2448), laminin, and more.

One-Step Woo Identification

2008-06-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

Who are the woo-meisters? They're easy to identify. Given two sides, they're the ones that cite conspiracies.

Creationism: Here, it's the "Expelled" play. Legions of brilliant ID/creationist scientists are supposedly being fired or denied tenure. The possibility that these folks are simply inept, inane, or insane is not explored. The fact that this entire issue seems restricted to the U.S.A. is also ignored...no other country in the world would waste as much time and effort debating whether all viewpoints under the sun should be offered up for scientific debate. It's a democracy, we've got Oprah, and even the illiterates are "entitled to their opinions".

Below, the trailer for "Expelled". Check it out...eminent game-show-host/Nixon-speech-writer Ben Stein doesn't waste any time (16 seconds, to be precise) blaming "BIG SCIENCE" for the world's ills.

Global Warming: As above, thousands of institutions have conspired to shut the gates on the aspiring Einsteins of global warming denial. This argument is momentarily suspended, of course, when the denialists cite academic polls that supposedly show that large numbers of scientists agree with their point of view.

Anti-Vaccine Nuttery: Here it's Big Pharma. The multinationals want to poison our children and turn them autistic because...because...actually, I'm not sure why. It's not like the drug companies have expensive, existing treatments for autism. Maybe they're working on some. Perhaps Big Pharma is attempting to create a new generation of savants who can be employed by Big Pharma, churning out ever more insidious malady/treatment combos.

Given my tongue-tiedness, let's hear eminent scientists Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy elaborate...

The Moon Landing Hoax: Here it's NASA. Thousands of scientists, government officials, and Hollywood types were hired to fake six moon landings. Toss in one failure (Apollo 13) for realism, and the chance for future sequels. Kill off anyone who shows signs of whispering the truth to the public. Kill off all the NASA scientists who weren't aware of the absence of wind on the moon, too. And punch out the intrepid sleuths who are honing in on the truth....

9/11: Again, huge volumes of government officials conspired to 1) cause four large airplanes laden with Laden zombies (and a lot of fuel) to crash into various structures which 2) wouldn't have toppled without the assistance of planted explosives in order to 3) cause world-wide hatred of Muslims and sympathy for America, ushering in a new Golden Age for democracy. Forgetting about the tendency of metal reinforcement to weaken, if not melt, in high heat, George Bush's response...that of taking any and all actions that might inhibit expressions of sympathy...makes it clear that he had no foreknowledge of these sinister schemes.

HIV Denial: Again, Big Pharma with a malady/treatment combo that.....targets babies!!! Ingeniously, they cause AIDS with a cheapo drug called AZT, brainwash both the scientists and the public into believing the killer drug is actually the cure, and sell more of the drug. Fortunately, one progressive and enlightened society has seen through the lies...Thabo Mbeki's South Africa.

Suppression of Alien Technology: Who is behind this conspiracy? Is it the Russians? The Chinese? It's certainly not a traditional society where ghosts have long been engrained as the spooks of choice (Q: Why aren't there any aliens in Thailand? A: Because the aliens are afraid of the ghosts). It's the Americans, of course, who have appropriated and reverse-engineered all sorts of black technology from the myriad alien vehicles that never seem to crash-land outside the homeland. With the extraordinary efficiency of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, how could anyone really doubt the presence of an alien assist?

A "Penalty Decision" from China, 1987

2008-06-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

My father dug up this little treasure and sent it to me. Seeing it, I chuckle. It's a "penalty decision" for trespassing into off-limit areas in China.

The town was Yecheng. It's about 200 kilometers south of Kashgar, and maybe 1,000 kilometers north of Tibet. My goal was to get into Tibet from Kashgar, and passing through Yecheng was the only efficient way to do it. The alternatives might have added 5,000 kilometers to the trip.

My traveling partner, Mani, and I found a hotel in Yecheng. It wasn't long before a policeman arrived and roused us (I feigned sleep when he entered the hotel room...somehow that wasn't an effective strategy). We were donkey-carted off to the police station where we were hit with the above penalty, which didn't amount to much by Western standards. Nobody could speak English, but the police were able to communicate by opening a little notebook in which handwritten explanations of various offenses were available in English. The manual was quite detailed...they even had foreseen the various objections that offenders might offer, with rebuttals following.

I was also asked to write an "auto-confession"...an apology to the People's Republic of China. I could have written just about anything, given the total lack of English skills. I wrote that my ancestors would be ashamed of me.

Back out on the street, we purchased bus tickets back to Kashgar for the following day. If the police accosted us, we could simply show the tickets as proof that we certainly planned to head north. Of course, we didn't. Around 4:00 in the morning, we exited the hotel. Unfortunately, there was a chain link fence surrounding the hotel, and we had to quietly bust open the gate to get out.

We wandered south for a couple hours before catching a truck heading into Tibet. That's another longggg story....

Some Video From Nepal

2008-05-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

Below are a few clips from my aforementioned trek in Nepal. The scenery is fairly generic Himalayan trekking territory. The twist that might make these clips a tad different is the presence of my ebullient traveling partner Kanchana. Check her out as she takes over a Nepali kitchen, dances, gets exhausted, and generally absorbs Nepali culture with wide-open eyes.

I've got a total of nine such clips over on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ngongmahk .

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Kan left a bubbly impression on everyone in her path, with the exception of one Nepali guest-house owner who was stupid enough to incur her wrath by offering up his impressions of Thai prostitutes he encountered in Germany. Kan responded with a profanity-laced harangue which I enjoyed immensely as I downed my rakshi. It seems that his wife, lingering over the stove, savored the exchange as well....she certainly didn't attempt to intercede. Regretfully, there's no video.

My own approach, as usual, was more introspective. The mountains are amazingly beautiful, but the beauty only seems to register in nanosecond bursts. As soon as you start thinking "it's so amazing", it all begins dissipating. You call your compadres over to share the experience. You pull out the camera and seek out the most postcard-perfect angle possible. And if you actively refrain from pulling out the camera, the act of trying to hold onto the moment will probably kill it as well. It's a bit of a koan that I carry in these sorts of mind-blowing places.

When I first trekked in Nepal in 1987, I didn't even bring a camera. That's how strongly I strived to extend these moments. But then, there are family members and friends who would sincerely like to see what you've been up to. So the policy has changed.

Even now, though, you'll notice that I rarely point the camera on myself. That's not a case of camera-shyness. I just want to show a decent approximation of what I'm seeing and experiencing.

Some possibilities for novel mutation-checking mechanisms

2008-05-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

Nature has set up a number of well-known mechanisms for keeping mutations in check. The first that comes to mind is the one by which mismatched base pairs are recognized, with the older, methylated strand serving as template. Despite these mechanisms, mutations do slip by at the rate of about 1/10^8 to 1/10^9 base pairs per generation¹ in the human population.

Stepping into the realm of science fiction, one can try to imagine improvements. One could imagine an organism utilizing triple-stranded DNA. If such an organism actually existed, mismatches would easily be recognized because only 1 of the 3 strands would contain an error. The two consensus strands would be assumed to be correct, and the error in the other would be repaired.

More realistically, one might imagine a system that somehow compares DNA strands in cases where a gene has two or more copies. If a mismatch is found, the cell might be directed to apoptose. Up until recently, the comparison of two strands seemed a bit fanciful. However, with "RNA interference" and "RNA activation", we know of mechanisms whereby two strands from disparate locations in the genome may be compared.

In the case of RNAi, an mRNA that pairs with a smaller RNA strand (miRNA or siRNA) may be degraded or otherwise "silenced" in the cytoplasm. An RNAi mechanism that seeks out slight mismatches (via a single base pair difference) and then instructs the cell to self-destruct or fail to thrive is unknown. Such a mechanism is not horribly fanciful...it is well-understood that perfectly matching targets, imperfectly matching targets, and non-matching targets can have different fates.

In the case of RNA activation (RNAa), however, we have a known mechanism by which strand comparison can occur...instead of silencing, two properly matched strands interact to promote translation². Mismatched strands result in poor translation, which may then hamper cell viability.

Should such an error checking system become established, what consequences might result? In addition to negative and neutral mutations, positive mutations would be minimized. On one hand, organisms inhibited from positive mutations will tend to be outcompeted over the long haul. On the other hand, genes love to be replicated with full fidelity. We have a battle, worthy of mathematical modeling, between the drive for fidelity and the need for improvement. Is it possible that the extinction of some species is being driven by such overactive strand-comparison systems? Conversely, rapidly evolving species might see a dearth of such mechanisms.

It has been documented that the deletion or alteration of some ultra-conserved DNA results in no obvious negative effects to the organism³. This seems odd, until one considers the possibility that the extraordinary persistence of such DNA may be due to an efficient strand-comparison system, not because it has any particular function, or because the existent version is tremendously better than any others. Such mechanisms do not benefit the organism and may be thought of as "ultra-selfish".

Determining whether ultraconserved sequences might be targets for "strand comparison" might be a tad tricky. When knockouts of ultraconserved sequences result in no apparent harm to the organism, strand comparison is a possibility. Computationally, in the relatively few cases where an miRNA targets an exon, one might expect that every third base pair in a reading frame would have a lower mutation rate than would be ordinarily expected. Conversely, sequences that are ultraconserved via the importance of various protein domains for which they code would tend to have a higher mutation rate in the third base pair.

Known cases of RNAi/a are restricted to relatively small strands of mature RNA (19-23 nt). Thus we have no means of ensuring the copy-fidelity of an entire gene via a single miRNA. There are cases, however, where multiple miRNAs target different areas of a gene.

In animals, miRNA's are often found in ultra-conserved introns⁴. This conservation may be explained as simply as follows: if a mutation forces a mismatch between the miRNA and its target, the germ cell fails to thrive. Note that the mutation may actually be beneficial, but is eliminated. Again, this points to the possibility of "ultra-selfish" RNAi/a.

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Another sort of hypothetical mutation-detection system might involve tying sperm function to proteins that are used in other tissues. Imagine, for example, that a protein necessary for brain function is also necessary for sperm motility. The brain disfunction associated with this mutation is never seen because sperm carrying this mutation never reach their destination.

Proteins that have important functions in a wide variety of tissues might not be under pressure to be tied into sperm function. Why? Because even if the sperm reaches its destination with these lethal mutations, the embryo will not be viable. Little parental investment has been lost. On the other hand, genes whose effects might only manifest later in development might be candidates for "sperm function pleiotropy".

Genes tied to brain function, then, would seem to be likely candidates for this sperm function linkage. A good deal of parental investment may have been incurred by the time it is understood that a child is mentally handicapped to the extent that his/her chances for reproductive success are strongly diminished. It's interesting to note that some computational studies have shown a high overlap between brain mRNA and testis mRNA⁵.

Other studies have not shown a strong brain mRNA/testis mRNA overlap. My own perusal of gene expression data leads me to believe that "sperm function linkage" occurs only to a limited extent. Some of the inferred overlaps between testis and brain expression may be more related to the fact that neither tissue is particularly secretory, and both tissues maintain degrees of immune privilege and blood barriers. In other words, many of the observed similarities may be more a matter of what isn't expressed, than what is. Good candidates for "sperm function linkage" might be transcription factors, which needn't be expressed in large quantities, or miRNA's, for which no public tissue-specific data seems to be available at the moment.

One might object that males are typically profligate with sperm, and would not be under any additional evolutionary pressure to screen out, say, DNA that carries a brain-development mutation. This is, however, only true to the extent that the male of the species does not invest in the child's upbringing.

The linkage between sperm function needn't only relate to, say, the construction of flagellum. It could also involve all sorts of proteins involved in spermatogenesis. In fact, we only need to overlap one important early function with a later developmental function to reduce the likelihood that a mutation would be preserved in further generations . Here, we have a pressure that would tend to favor reuse of proteins, rather than the creation of novel ones. Sperm would be under particular pressure to adopt these overlaps because we here have a mechanism whereby mutations are eliminated before any parental investment.

Some candidates for "sperm function linkage":

206581_at: basonuclin
209443_at: serine (or cysteine) proteinase inhibitor, clade A (alpha-1 antiproteinase, antitrypsin), member 5
220744_s_at: WD repeat domain 10
207144_s_at: Cbp/p300-interacting transactivator, with Glu/Asp-rich carboxy-terminal domain, 1
220110_s_at: nuclear RNA export factor 3
214183_s_at: transketolase-like 1
206310_at: serine protease inhibitor, Kazal type 2 (acrosin-trypsin inhibitor)

The extent to which sperm cells are subject to apoptosis is notable, with apoptosis sometimes occuring in "waves"⁶. The most common explanation of this phenomenon is that the apoptosis maintains a crucial ratio of Sertoli cells and pre-meiotic germ cells, but the issue is far from settled⁷. Of the 50 genes under strongest positive selection in the human genome, a good number code for sperm functions"⁸. Could some sort of "weeding out" process be involved here? With somatic cells, mutations can be masked via diploidy. Conveniently, this isn't the case with spermatids, which are haploid. The task of mutation-checking is thus simplified.

Note that, unlike the "strand comparison" system surmised above, beneficial mutations aren't necessarily entirely eliminated in sperm-function linkage. However, it is known that testis-specific mouse genes do evolve quite a bit more rapidly than testis genes that are also expressed elsewhere⁹. In other words, these genes may have more freedom to mutate because of the absence of pleiotropy.

The overlapping proteins might have structural importance for sperm function, but they might also simply activate other enzymes in a chain. Oddly, in sperm function linkage, we have a mechanism by which evolution may favor a degree of complexity that would otherwise seem unnecessary. Complexity is favored because the individual enzymes in a long chain are "tested" along the way. Here, some proteins or substrates necessary for sperm function are only produced through Rube Goldberg contraptions. However, the gun that's fired as part of a ludicrously long chain of events that results in the garage door being opened is perfectly useful when you want to shoot a thief. Including the gun in the Goldberg device means that it's likely to function correctly when you need it.

As a side note, it's interesting that "intelligent design" proponents are fond of citing cilia as an example of the sort of assembly that couldn't possibly be a result of natural selection. In addition to the usual, powerful arguments against this position, I'd argue for the possibility that evolution is doing its damnedest to make the process of creating functional sperm as ridiculously complex as possible.

One PLOS paper details a study of pleiotropy in C. Elegans, finding that 50% of genes involved in embryogenesis are pleiotropic. What's more, these genes tend to occupy central (rather than initial or final) positions in protein pathways¹⁰. Pleiotropy, when viewed in the light of evolution, is usually discussed as a constraining factor. That is, a single mutation may be beneficial or neutral in one tissue, but harmful in another, increasing the likelihood that pleiotropic gene mutations would be selected against. The effect of pleiotropy needn't always be one of constraint, however. For example, in the case of parsimonious pleiotropy¹¹, "knowing" that a mutation that fails to harm sperm is also unlikely to harm the brain, the sperm may relax strict mutation checking controls a tad. Note that evolutionary pressures favoring pleiotropy tend to negate the popular notion of "modularity" in gene expression.

1. Rates of spontaneous mutation: http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/148/4/1667

2. RNAa: Small dsRNAs induce transcriptional activation in human cells http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0607015103v1

3. More than 1 mb of non-coding DNA, much of it conserved between mice and humans, knocked-out: http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3767&context=lbnl

4. Ultraconserved elements in insect genomes: A highly conserved intronic sequence implicated in the control of homothorax mRNA splicing. http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/15/6/800

5. In silico analysis indicates a similar gene expression pattern between human brain and testis: http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?doi=10.1159/000076290

6. An early and massive wave of germinal cell apoptosis is required for the development of functional spermatogenesis. http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal/v16/n9/abs/7590214a.html

7. Involvement of apoptosis in the control of Sertoli and pre-meiotic germ cell numbers in the developing rabbit testis. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1439-0272.2002.00464.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=and

8. A Scan for Positively Selected Genes in the Genomes of Humans and Chimpanzees. http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030170#JOURNAL-PBIO-0030170-B33

9. Rates of Protein Evolution Are Positively Correlated with Developmental Timing of Expression During Mouse Spermatogenesis http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/22/4/1044

10. Systematic Analysis of Pleiotropy in C. elegans Early Embryogenesis. http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000003

11. Seven types of pleiotropy. http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/web/paper.php?doi=9654038

Mera Peak, Trekking, Maoists in Nepal

2008-04-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

Above is my favorite pic from a trek in the Everest region. For a few more nice, if unexceptional, pics, click here: http://s219.photobucket.com/albums/cc143/ngong/trekking1/?action=view&current=b63d4c70.pbw

The initial plan was to climb Mera Peak, perhaps the 2nd highest non-technical (i.e. no serious climbing skills required) summit in the world. Aconcagua in South America is probably 1rst, though the distinction between "technical" and "non-technical" is, naturally, fuzzy.

Unfortunately, we were hit with heavy snow after just one day of trekking. You can trek on rock, you can trek on heavy snow, you can trek on ice (with crampons), but there's no easy way to trek a steep, rocky, snowy, icy trail. Our porters clearly didn't want to continue.

We settled for an "ordinary" trek in the Everest region. Having done it before, it was a bit of a disappointment. I was mentally and physically primed for a fairly serious challenge, a new experience, and a first hand view of the amazing postcard pics of Mera that initially inspired me. On the other hand, it's difficult to complain about this part of the world...you've got to be awfully dense to be un-amazed simply because you've seen it once before. I remember very little of the initial trek 15 years ago. I guess that's a blessing.

**************

While we were trekking, Nepalis were voting. The mountain folks were glued to their scratchy-sounding radios for a number of days (results poured in slowly). When things were sorted out, the Maoists had won a plurality of parliamentary seats, against most Western predictions.

I'm puzzled by the Maoists, and those who voted for the Maoists. Prachanda and his disciples are supposedly responsible for 13,000 deaths over the last decade. I've spoken to folks who have lost relatives via a Maoist's kurkri knife to the neck. I've spoken one-on-one to a Maoist who sought to eliminate religion, the opiate of the masses, from Nepal. Just below, in my previous post, you'll see an ancient mani stone defaced with Maoist graffiti. Though trekkers weren't killed, they were forcefully asked for "donations" (typically around $100) in the days when Maoism was more underground.

So how could the Nepalis vote Maoist? Some have claimed a "Stockholm Syndrome" of sorts. Others claimed voter intimidation...though Jimmy Carter and friends monitored the election in big cities, the myriad smaller villages were supposed hotbeds of manipulation. Less conspiratorially, it seems that the Maoists simply offered better slogans, were better funded, more motivated, and more PR-savvy. And they offered bigger promises, right on up to a $3,000/year standard of living. That's awfully hard to deliver in a country where the average income comes in at about a sixth of that.

Finally, the Nepalis dislike their King. Polls showed that this dislike was limited to roughly 50% of the population, but you've got to wonder about the accuracy of such a poll in a country where, not so long ago, anti-monarchists were persecuted. This time, none of the four major parties supported anything other than a ceremonial monarchy, but the Maoists were clearest on this issue...they seek to remove the King from the palace and dismantle the monarchy in its entirety. There seems to be some debate as to whether the King should receive some sort of yearly stipend or not.

In any case, I didn't meet a single Nepali who seemed horribly concerned about the result. Perhaps that's because, in terms of promises/policy/platform, this "Maoism" seem to have little
in common with historic Maoism. You know, MAO Zedong, government control of land and wages, loony agricultural policies, cultural revolution, suppression of human rights/religion/voting, one-party state, etc. The Nepali "Maoists" have yet to show the slightest inclination toward totalitarianism, socialism, etc. So either the Maoists really have nothing to do with Mao/Maoism, or the Nepali people will be seen to be the victims of a supreme con. Or something in between. We'll see.

The tendency is to suspect a Chinese hand behind all this. The Nepalis deny this, and there aren't any known links between Prachanda and the Chinese. On the other hand, I was surprised to run across Chinese folks on trails and buses. I have no memory of ever meeting a Chinese national in my previous travels to Nepal. Perhaps I'm just seeing the result of increased Chinese affluence and the freedom to travel beyond Chinese borders. Perhaps not. Even if there's no Chinese version of the CIA manipulating events in Nepal, it'll be interesting to see if Prachanda and crew attempt to strike deals with China in an attempt to raise the living standard in Nepal.

The Tibetan Situation

2008-03-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

Above is an ancient Mani stone defaced with Maoist graffiti in the Ganesh Himal region of Nepal.

Scour the message boards and video sites, and you'll find a very polarized take on the riots in Tibet. The Chinese government point of view is surprisingly well-represented in these nooks and crannies of the internet, possibly because of a PRC-organized spam campaign. When this viewpoint is expressed in video, it is generally accompanied by bombastic, militaristic music.

Given the polarization, it's difficult to discern any middle ground in these debates. There's an order of magnitude difference in death toll estimates between the sides. The Chinese cite the Qing Dynasty's presence in Tibet from 1600-1900; the Tibetans say the presence was minimal. The Chinese refer to pre-1950 Tibet as a society of slaves, but others describe the division of labor as broad and reasonably egalitarian. The "Free Tibet" crowd cites 1.2 million deaths and 6,000 destroyed temples in the initial invasions of Tibet; the Chinese government calls these figures gross exaggerations.

Etc.

I'm trying to hear out the Chinese viewpoint. However, there is one series of arguments that continually strains credulity, and thus casts doubt on all the Chinese contentions: to quote China's communist party chief in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, the Dalai Lama is a "wolf in monk’s robe, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast". He sat contentedly on his throne, overseeing a slave society that worshipped him as a god. Currently, he has no interest in practical solutions for Tibet, since the strife enables him to cavort with Hollywood darlings like Richard Gere. The CIA funds his operations in Dharamsala. Blah, blah, blah.

There is no evidence for these claims. Search YouTube and you'll find myriad videos of the Dalai Lama. He preaches only non-violence. Unbeknownst, apparently, to the Han Chinese who flood the message boards, the Dalai Lama has had harsh words for Tibetans who resort to violence. The violence instigated by monks demonstrates that these Tibetans certainly are lacking a traditional grounding in Buddhism, courtesy of the Chinese.

The argument that the Dalai Lama was a repressive God-King is absurd. He was a mere teenager when the Chinese army swept into Tibet. In fact, his early exposures to foreigners and his fascination with science/technology gave reasons to suspect that he might well have transformed Tibet, if given the chance.

As far as I can see, the arguments for CIA funding are real stretches. It's true that the CIA funded Tibetan paramilitary training more than 50 years ago. I've yet to see the scantest evidence that it's true today. One thing for sure: if some anti-Western politician in the Congo has a car accident, you can be certain that someone will accuse the CIA of masterminding it.

I'm hardly a fan of the Bush administration. But Condoleeza Rice expressed the current situation succinctly: "There has been a kind of missed opportunity here for the Chinese to engage the [Dalai Lama]”. The Chinese propensity to demonize the Dalai Lama is utterly out of touch with any evidence. The last Chinese leader who met with the Dalai Lama was Mao himself, who had some words of praise for the 15 year old. Since then, one has got to wonder if China's succession of leaders fear that the incarnation of Chenrezig will place a whammy on them if close physical proximity is allowed.

*****************

The Hans seem rather astonished that the Tibetans would revolt. They are allowed 2 or 3 children, unlike ordinary Chinese. University entrance requirements are lowered for Tibetans, and many other minorities. The Tibetans receive funds and medical care that they never saw 50 years ago. Roads and trains now access Tibet. Etc.

When debating the situation in Tibet, the Chinese are quick to invoke the historical treatment of American Indians (not to mention the English treatment of Scots!). One might be tempted to point out that these crimes were committed 150 years ago, that Americans can and do express regret at their government's actions in these realms, etc. This is sometimes a mistake, however. The Chinese, you see, are not necessarily arguing that American actions were criminal or regretful. They are arguing that the American actions were necessary for the progress of the Indian population. Why, then, should Americans criticize the Chinese for the advancement of the Tibetans? Stability, harmony, and "progress"...the Chinese find it nearly incomprehensible that some folks have other priorities.

I'd ask the Han to see things from the Tibetan point of view. Not only did the Chinese flush the Tibetan's revered leader into India, but they denounced him in the harshest terms. They still denounce him. Not only do they denounce him, but they attempt to redirect Tibetans' feelings of reverence to new authority figures (e.g. Mao) and doctrines (Maoism) in the most fustian manner imaginable. Witness the Chinese efforts to select and groom new, Maoist-friendly candidates for the positions of certain incarnate lamas. A new-generation Dalai Lama who promotes the view that religion is the opiate of the masses! Truly bizarre!

Until the Chinese adopt a reality-based attitude toward the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism, they should not be surprised at the Tibetan's lack of "gratitude".

************************

In one online discussion, a defender of the Chinese approach did suggest that the venom directed at the Dalai Lama may be intended to focus Han Chinese anger off the Tibetan people, and onto a single scapegoat for the "good of the nation". Not entirely implausible. Oddly tantric. If so, however, the Chinese may be forgetting that the focus of their anger is the also the focus of Tibetans' aspirations.

Thai-ness

2008-03-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

I need to replace my watch's band and battery. Normally, the watch repair guys operate off a cart, but my soi has a glass-enclosed shop. It's way small (say, 6' X 4'). Even so, the purveyor has managed to air-condition the joint.

I show the guy my watch, and ask him how much. Not more than 200 baht. How many minutes must I wait? 10 minutes. I tell him I'll have lunch, cross the street, and find some "Kao Soi Gai". Delicious Northern Thai cuisine, though it'd be even better in a place like Lampang or Chiangmai. The noodles are key, and nobody seems to get them right in Bangkok.

I slurp down the Kao Soi, and return to the shop. The guy hasn't begun the repair. That's to be expected, so I'm not irked. He invites me to sit on a stool in the shop. "Songs for Life" music is playing, and he begins the repair.

He interacts with a number of folks via a little sliding window. First, there's a boy who opens the window and asks a question. The purveyor closes the window without an answer, and the kid smiles. Second, a guy has an issue with his leather watchband. He gets redirected to a shoe repair shop. Another guy has some kind of question. He gets ignored, walks away, shows up again a couple minutes later, exchanges a sentence or two, and stays.

The cost is 180 baht. Opening the door, the music segues into myriad voices, and the temperature soars. There's a woman chatting on her mobile phone, blocking the way to the soi. She's not aware of me. There's no reason to be aware of me. No sane person would care about such a momentary impediment.

Shambu Gurung

2008-03-07T18:59:00.000-08:00

Last year around this time, I was planning for another foray into the Himalayas. Hoping that my old porter and friend Shambu would be game for more trekking, I e-mailed the trekking agency where he worked. Here's the response:

Sorry to tell you that Shambu Gurung who live at Pokhara and was working with us (Mandala trek) is dead 4 years before by heart attac in mid night in his house at Pokhara near airport. Please you can contact us at address below (mandala Trek) if you need more information .

This sucked. I'm not one to get melodramatic, or reflect on the afterlife, but it would be nice to immortalize the guy a bit...so here goes...

We met 20 years ago in Pokhara, Nepal. I was looking for a porter, and he happened to be around, dragging a cheap cigarette. He was 19 at the time. That means he was about 35 at his death.

So we did the Annapurna circuit. It took about a month. Shortly into the trek, he pointed out his village...wayyyy up one of those terraced hills. There was nothing there for tourists, and the village was slowly withering away cuz the young people preferred life in Pokhara city. But those were his roots...a "gurung" somewhere between the city and the deep Himalayas.

His English was good, and he enjoyed talking philosophy. He didn't seem to hold any special respect for the Tibetan Lamas, or formal religion, but he was impressed with the spiritual attainment of his bosses at Mandala Trekking....he said, "you can feel it".

Along the trail, we befriended a number of folks. Most casual trekkers have about the same pace, so you wind up seeing them in the guest houses night after night. Mostly, there were the Japanese...nice people, all of them. One was named "Shingo Awaji". There was a European couple whose travels paralleled ours for a week or so. They would have loud sex at late hours. At one point, Shambu pounded on the "wall" (if it could be called that) and I muttered some epithet about Germans. The response: "veee are not Germans, veee are Austrians". One wonders how their bodies were entangled at that exact moment.

There was a nutty, marijuana-smoking woman on one of the stops, babbling away in English, French, and German. I decided to sleep in a little hut outside the guest house, and Shambu got pissed at me for that. But why?...it's not like there were dangerous animals or humans at that particular, isolated place.

That woman claimed she was going to climb the Annapurnas solo. We never saw her on the trail again...speculating on her whereabouts became a running joke for us.

At the Thorong-La pass, he got altitude sickness, so I carried the backpack. He didn't protest at the time, but I never let him, the professional porter, forget it. Still, we got in a game of gin-rummy at the top of that pass (we played gin rummy constantly).

When we made it to the guest house, there were two Tibetans having a heated discussion. It was all in Tibetan, with the exception of an occasional "sense" or "nonsense". Shambu explained they were debating the meanings of these English words. It was hilarious, actually, if you can imagine the setting.

At some point, he got married. It was a bit odd...she was maybe 8 years older, of different caste, and with a child via some previous relationship. I'm not sure what the real story was there. He alluded to another woman he impregnated along that trail (in Manang, perhaps), so maybe he has a child.

I returned to Nepal in 1995. I wanted to go to Everest with him, but he had some kind of hangup with Sherpas, and never ventured into that region. So he hooked me up with his friend "Issing". Issing was an excellent porter, though his lack of English and his traditional ways meant that there wasn't much communication.

After Everest, we did a short trek to the Annapurna sanctuary. There's no need to speak of the wonders of trekking in the Himalayas....you can read that elsewhere. But it was good to experience that stuff with a guy like Shambu. It was his job, of course, but there's no doubt he understood that he lived in a special place, and there were facets of his life that were charmed.

We also went to Lumpini, where the Buddha was born, with his wife. His father and brother lived in that area, renting wood that was used for concrete forms. It was actually a decent living. His family somewhat disapproved of his low-status job, so I loaned him a big wad of rupees, and we played "high-stakes" rummy with the whole family looking on aghast.

Of course, I only saw a small piece of his life. He mentioned his friends/customers in Taiwan fondly. He also mentioned one situation (near Manaslu, I think) where he worked all night to free up a snowy trail for his clients...he repeated that story a number of times...it must have been a big deal. I mention all this on the off-chance that one of these folks stumble across this blog.

I had thought that we would meet every 10 years or so. We'd be 75 years old, drinking rakshi, and talking about whatever. We might even hobble into the mountains for a short trek...I never considered that it might work out differently.

************************

I wrote the above in April of 2007. Upon arriving in Nepal in May, it was pointed out to me that it's not entirely implausible that Shyambu is alive and well, and his former bosses were lying about his death. He did speak about quitting the agency and starting his own, in which case his employers may have "disowned" him. There would be some potential financial incentive in fibbing about his death, as I might then be inclined to pay Shyambu's former agency for trekking services.

Most likely, he's dead. But there's a bit of a mystery now, and perhaps I can look into it on my next visit.

squished things

2008-03-02T05:22:00.000-08:00

That's a jazzed-up cockroach.

A couple years ago, I made a point of photographing squished things in the streets of Bangkok. Not a difficult task.

My girlfriend tells me she was in a taxi when the driver pointed to a farang: "That farang is ba (crazy). He rides a unicycle and takes photographs of dead of animals." She didn't bother to inform him that the farang in question was me, her boyfriend!

These creatures are caught, frozen, in pretty much the position they were in a millisecond before they met their fates.

For more immortalized critters (and a banana!), check it out: http://s219.photobucket.com/albums/cc143/ngong/squished/?action=view&current=3605f7e7.pbw

Lad Prao Road, Sunday Afternoon

2008-03-01T04:17:00.000-08:00

lad prao road

Here's a mile or two of Lad Prao Road in Bangkok on a Sunday morning, 2006.

In case you're wondering how the animation was done, it was like this:

1) Make stills of every frame of the video. There's shareware for that.
2) Alter the stills as you wish with Photoshop. You can automate that, so it's not as if you're manually editing 3,000 .jpg files.
3) Reassemble the new .jpg images into a video. Again, there's shareware for that.

You can alter ordinary video in some interesting ways in a single step with Premiere Pro and other video editing programs. In this case, Premiere Pro didn't give me the result I was after, so I opted for a more laborious approach.

Increased Happiness for Trekkers

2008-02-20T05:47:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that a couple of my experiences in the Himalayas could be of benefit to a handful of people who might actually plug the proper keywords into a search engine. So here's today's meager contribution to world happiness:

I've had Achilles tendonitis for a number of years. Not a huge deal...at worst it forces me to hobble, and to refrain from high-impact sports for fear of exacerbating the problem. Most of the time it goes unnoticed. When considering a jaunt into the Himalayas last year, the Achilles was my biggest worry. You don't want the tendonitis to flare up when you're a week's trek away from any transportation.

I'm happy to report that the Achilles was a total non-factor in two weeks of fairly intense trekking. I even wonder if the trekking was somehow therapeutic...a year after the trek, the tendonitis seems less problematic than ever. Some non-medical advice based on one guy's experience: don't let a mild case of Achilles tendonitis inhibit a Himalayan adventure.

****************

About 15 years ago I busted up my knee in a motorcycle accident. The PCL and ACL ligaments were severed, and the MCL torn. Surgery ensued. A year later, I was back in the Himalayas. Favoring my weak knee, I quickly incurred a fairly nasty case of "trekker's knee" in the strong knee. Worse than the pain was the frustration and humiliation of having to hobble through this amazing region. After three weeks in this state, I stumbled into a clinic located just a day's trek from Everest itself. The doctor, a Westerner, supplied me with ibuprofen for the inflamed joint.

I want to report that the result of taking this commonplace, over-the-counter drug was downright miraculous: within 30 minutes, I was walking normally, with only a dull reminder of the pain that had been stifling me for weeks. World-happiness-enhancing advice #2: bring plenty of ibuprofen along for any extended trek. Even if you're fairly confident in the ability of your knees to endure a pounding, you'll probably run into other folks who have a clear case of trekker's knee.

I can recall one case where I offered up the drug to some gimpy dude who had wrapped a t-shirt around his bum knee. Perhaps my enthusiasm for the miracle-inducing powers of ibuprofen was too intense, though, since he shunned me like a smack dealer ("I don't do that"), and hobbled away to another two weeks of pained trekking.

Of course, avoiding trekker's knee would be preferable to dependance on any drug, no matter how innocuous. The obvious advice would be to enter the trek with well-prepared knees. Less obvious is the following: take it easy on the downward slopes, particularly on the early stages of the trek. There's no need to rapidly bound from stone to stone, incurring repeated impacts to the joints, even if gravity seems to be on your side. If you have a history of weakness/injury in one knee, try to be mindful of whether you're favoring the stronger leg or not.

In terms of preparation, there are a lot of suggestions on the web. My own wisdom, for what it's worth, is to mimic trekking as closely as possible. If your preparation is restricted to the fitness club, don't assume that the stairclimber approximates the real thing. You'll be taking big steps in the mountains, stressing your gluteus maximus far more than you do on the stairclimber. You'll probably find that the cycling machines, set with high resistance and a low seat, do a much better job of stressing your glutes.

Your knees will take a pounding in the mountains. Question is, will a pre-pounding help "innoculate" them from various maladies (e.g. trekker's knee), or are you better off sticking with low-impact routines in the fitness club? I'm not sure about the medical literature, but there does seem to be anecdotal evidence that a pre-pounding might be worthwhile. In that case, don't avoid the treadmill. You want to give your knees repeated jolts, something they won't get on the stairclimber or cycling machines. The problem there, or course, is that you could injure your joints. With that in mind, you could begin to lay off the really heavy impact routines as your flight to Kathmandu draws nearer.

Recollection from a Tongba Bar

2008-01-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

Something like 2,000 people have summitted Mt. Everest, with 200 or so deaths. It would be interesting to know how many of the survivors have lost parts of fingers, toes, ears, and noses along the way¹.

The typical modern Everest climber has got enough money to pay the government for the necessary permits, and an agency to supply Sherpas and equipment. Depending on the arrangement, the cost could go as high as $100,000 for one shot at the summit.

Certainly, the experience is a huge challenge, and anyone who pulls it off is worthy of some respect. On the other hand, there are any number of summits that offer greater tests of athleticism, technique, perspicacity, and courage. Annapurna boasts a 50% death rate, and K2 isn't far behind. So one has got to suspect that, for many, the urge to conquer Everest derives partially from a need to acquire bragging rights, write a book, or present a slide show at the Rotary Club².

Anticipating a future jaunt up Mera Peak, not far from Everest, I recollect a tongba bar in Kathmandu in 1995. The memory is rough, but there might have been four rickety tables, with peeling veneers, and a fat old Tibetan woman preparing the drink. Unlike the pic in Wikipedia, the tongba would be served in plastic buckets. There were only a handful of folks in the joint, but one of them was Ang Rita Sherpa. He was a bit of a celebrity, as he held the world record for most Everest summits at that time. Impressively, none of the summits required supplemental oxygen. My gurung friend Shyambu translated his words for me, and it seems that Ang Rita, national hero, was being stiffed out of a promised pension for Nepali national heroes. I'd guess that the stiffing somehow related to the ever-changing political landscape in Nepal. The guy appeared aged, but he was 47 years old at the time, dousing his woes.

Perhaps the guy finally got his pension. But I find the contrast between Ang Rita and the Rotary Club PowerPoint heroes to be conspicuous.

By the way, Tongba is unique and tasty. The fermentation goes on inside millet seeds. After the appropriate period of fermentation, you put the seeds in a container (usually the aforementioned plastic bucket), pour hot water into the container, and drink the brew through a bamboo straw that filters out all the seeds. The alcohol content is low (3%?), but you can get plenty pissed when you imbibe from a bucket, ordering refills as necessary.

1. Searching "climbing boots" on E-bay, I found one entry for "Millet Everest" boots offering the following enticement for dishing out the $300 bid: You'll keep your toes.

2. Here's a website that specializes, apparently, in hooking your organization up with an "Everest Speaker": http://www.everestspeakersbureau.com/ !

Thai Kanom

2008-01-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

Here's a four minute video wherein Thai teenagers are asked, "what is your favorite Thai kanom?" In case you're not aware, "kanom" would be the Thai word for "dessert". Following the response, you see the kanom in question.

Frequenters of Thai restaurants in the West are probably unaware of the huge variety of native Thai desserts. At best, you'll get coconut ice cream, fried bananas, or lychees in syrup. But in Thailand, you'll find large shops devoted entirely to these treats. A favorite location would be between Bangkok and some nearby vacation spot...don't you dare return home to your sweetheart or family empty-handed.

In all honesty, the visual usually eclipses the gustatory. Most kanom are based on coconut and sugar, and this becomes repetitive. Even the ice cream is based on coconut milk. My fave would be "mor gaeng", but that's because it reminds me of a poor man's creme caramel.

Hong Kong Cigarette Packs

2008-01-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I blogged on the, uh, imagery of Thai cigarette packs. It seems that Hong Kong packs have entered the fray. So, while the Thais can never have their pioneering status shanghai-ed, they do have competition.

Below...Smoke cigarettes and develop the complexion of a Tibetan goat herder. A particularly horrifying prospect for Hong Kong and Bangkok dwellers.

Things People Don't Say

2008-01-08T03:46:00.000-08:00

*This photo is an accurate depiction of my true self.

*It has a beautiful flavor.

*Why don't I have naval lint today?

*In this campaign, we're strong believers in the power of polls.

*The stock doubled overnight on takeover news. Why weren't the insiders buying?

*Don't eat this herb before sex.

*I put two pairs of socks in the wash, and three came out.

*I'm just an actor. Why are you asking me all these political questions?

*This sunset looks like a bad watercolor.

*I'm still waiting to get born again.

*That mosquito I just killed...I wonder what it was doing at this time last week.

*By comparing performances against the same opponents, I've concluded there's a 78% probability I'll get knocked out by the fourth round.

*I used to think I was spiritually enlightened. But it was just arrogance.

*I just can't seem to get this shit smell off my hands.

*Hell, if I were 8 inches shorter, I couldn't have made a high school team, let alone a professional one.

*The doctor gave him six months to live, but he died in four.

*I'd drop belief in a biblical creation in a second if there were evidence otherwise.

*The power went out at 4:00. Fortunately, I saved all my work at 3:59.

*The enemy claims that they're not targeting civilians. Actually, it's true.

*Yes, I used to take steroids. Now I'm clean, and you can test me anytime.

*This tsunami is god's punishment for, for...well, I'm not sure what it's for.

Stream of Wikipedia-ness

2007-12-17T03:58:00.000-08:00

Not being a connoisseur of classical music, I had thought “The Planets” was written by Mahler. Far from it. Mahler was quite the devoted Christian, while the actual composer, Gustav Holst, was heavily influenced by Hinduism and astrology. Imagine the wondrous works of art that would never have transpired without…….astrology.

In “The Planets”, Holst offers his impressions of seven planets, excluding earth and Pluto, which was undiscovered at the turn of the 20th century. While several composers were later commissioned to create a “Pluto” composition in the style of Holst, Pluto has now been decommissioned as a planet. The best known of the seven pieces is “Jupiter, though Holst’s favorite was “Saturn”. I found “Neptune” enjoyable. Supposedly, and unbelievably, it’s the first piece of music (ever?) to feature a “fade-out”.

“Uranus” is mentioned as an apparent homage to Dukas’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Dukas, it turns out, was a perfectionist, in the habit of destroying his own works. Barring a Frank Tipler-like resurrection of everything at the end of the universe, we'll never know what other works of greatness flitted in and out of existence in the space of his studio.

Dukas was a friend of Claude Debussy, another French romantic composer. It turns out that Debussy was one of the very first people in the history of the world to undergo a colostomy! Though modern colostomies are no longer a stinky affair, one wonders about poor Debussy, whose music was so ethereal. He lived another two years after the procedure.

Except in rare cases where the intestine can be attached to the anus (!), colostomies necessitate a pouch for collecting feces. Wikipedia offers a broad view of feces, including chemistry, biology, ecology, sexual kinks, hygiene, and more. One of the major stink-components, hydrogen sulfide, is chemically quite similar to water, but oh the difference another shell of electrons can make. Under “hygiene”, it is mentioned that Muslims wash their anus with water using the left hand, while Indians wash their anus with water using the left hand, which is then washed with soap and water. Shall we infer that Muslims don’t wash the left hand?!

What do “feces” have to do with “scissors”, “nanchakus”, and “dales”? They’re plural tantums! Or, more properly, pluralia tantum. These are words which only exist in the plural form! Apparently, the Swedish word “inalvor” (intestines) is also a plural tantum, despite the fact that English speakers refer to “the small intestine”.

The Swedish language can be traced back to Old Norse language. It has a heavy Germanic influence, which is one characteristic that distinguishes it from western Scandinavian languages such as Faroese, Icelandic, and Norwegian. Apparently, modern Swedish (“nusvenska”…New Swedish) has been largely shaped by some influential Swedes. Wikipedia lists “controversial writer” August Strindberg as one of these figures.

Why was Strindberg controversial? He dealt with anarchy, misogyny (in a favorable light, apparently), the hypocrisy of traditional sex roles, socialism, and more…all around 1870. I’m embarrassed to say I knew nothing of Strindberg, who has been referenced in Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander”, Mel Brook’s “The Producers, and Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”.

Carl Eldh sculpted a large Strindberg which can now be seen in Tegnerlunden Park in Stockholm. I’m curious why he would be portrayed as nude, sandaled, heavily muscled, with splayed legs. Eldh’s most famous work, however, is the equally heroic “Branting Monument”, erected in Stockholm in 1952. Branting, a social democrat, is portrayed prominently with clenched fist, with other social democrat luminaries and anonymous workers in the background. The work was bombed in 1992, leaving a hole in Branting’s belly. It would be natural to suspect political motives, but it turns out that the culprits were mere teenagers, with a history of random vandalism.

Iconoclasm is a subset of vandalism. Specifically, it refers to the destruction of religious icons. The word “iconoclast” is now taken to mean a merely unconventional individual, though originally it meant a destroyer of icons. The opposite of an iconoclast would be an iconodule. The most prominent recent example of iconoclasm is, of course, the Taliban’s destruction of the two monumental Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan.

These Buddhas were described by the Chinese monk, scholar, and traveler XuanZang in A.D. 630. They were decorated with gold and jewels at the time. After a millennium of neglect, the Taliban accelerated the process. Even with engineers, shells, and dynamite, the destruction took a month. XuanZang described a third, larger, reclining Buddha in the area, and this remains something of a mystery.

XuanZang was a devotee of the Yogacara, or “mind-only” philosophy of Buddhism. Yogacara is sometimes seen as opposed by the Madhyamikan school, which (to keep things simple), denies the inherent existence of anything at all. I recall one prominent Rinpoche stating that his philosophy is that of Madhyamika, but his actual meditation practice is that of Yogacara. My interpretation is that it’s simply more difficult to sit on your ass and wrap your consciousness around a view which doesn’t even espouse nothingness. Despite his association with Yogacara, XuanZang wrote a text called “The Non-Difference Between Yogacara and Madhyamika”.

The Ganesh Himal

2007-12-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

Above is a clip from a 2007 trek in the Ganesh Himal region of Nepal. It's a fairly obscure trek...we didn't see any foreign faces for almost 2 weeks. The locals told us there were a couple of Japanese dudes a few days ahead of us on the trail.

The Ganesh Himal is sandwiched between two more popular destinations, Langtang and Manaslu. You lose a bit in terms of challenging trekking (we never got over 14,000 feet) and spectacular views, but you do get the chance to experience Tamang culture that has had very little exposure to foreigners. Some of these areas are accessible by bus...we found ourselves crossing over dirt roads on a couple of occasions, which does diminish the sensation of being utterly isolated. On the other hand, adventurous travelers could cover a lot of ground via mountain bike in this region of the Himalayas, something that would be near-impossible on the more popular treks (Annapurna, Everest, Helambu, etc.).

Opening the trekking guides, you see some very well delineated travel plans for particular regions. That's nice, but the truth is that the mountain villages are hugely interlinked via trails, and there's usually no reason you can't espy a particular location in the distant mountains, go there, and then plot a new route back to Kathmandu. It's all subject to time limitations, your trekking permit, and safety considerations, of course.

D'Souza and Pascal's Wager

2007-12-03T03:08:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I praised Dinesh D'Souza's debating skills. He defends the existence of an invisible entity about as well as anyone could hope to. Nevertheless...

Unlike many apologists, D'Souza is careful not to trample on science. He concedes evolution and the big bang. He does seem to concede that at least some portions of the Bible are now irrelevant, or are purely metaphorical. He employs common sense, stating that every effect has a cause, and then defining "God" as the ultimate cause. His god is skilled at dodging metaphysical attacks. One does suspect, however, that D'Souza holds the usual array of inane beliefs, and is simply smart enough to avoid getting shot down.

D'Souza employs Pascal's wager in the debate. This is simply the notion that it's better to believe in God than disbelieve, because:

1) If God exists, you'll be infinitely rewarded for faith.
2) If God doesn't exist, believing in him has done little or no harm to your life.

Typically, this argument is refuted by asking, "which God?" If you place faith in the wrong God, you might well wind up in hell. Daniel Dennett refrained from summoning this argument...perhaps he just finds it boring.

In any case, those who invoke Pascal's wager do have a very specific vision of God. Those who "believe in" him get some kind of reward, while the others don't. These others may have performed any number of good works in their lives. They may have lived in constant awe at the beauty and complexity and vastness of nature. But they're shut out of the cosmic sweepstakes because they don't carry a particular set of beliefs. So, while D'Souza won't offer many overt hints as to the specific qualities of his god, his invocation of Pascal tips his hand.

In his incessant quest to appear "reasonable", D'Souza states that one can't know that God exists. One can simply believe. I find this bizarre. If God broadcasts himself on every TV and radio wavelength, in every language, as Lex Luthor has been known to do, we wouldn't believe...we'd know. And what does "believe in" mean anyway? Does it mean that I've managed to shut out every last doubt? (wouldn't that be "knowing"?) That I try my damndest to spread the meme? That I repeat a particular prayer a certain number of times? That I believe I believe?

D'Souza spent a good deal of time shouting, for no particular reason. I'd guess he's emulating some preacher who made a big impression at some point. Dennett seemed far more mellow, conciliatory, and cuddly. More sane, actually. Yet we're supposed to believe that there's some ineffable difference between these two men that will cause D'Souza to experience union with his maker, and Dennett to be eternally shut out.

Capital "A" Atheism

2007-12-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

ScienceBlogs.com is a wonderful diversion for rational-minded folks. Something like 70 different scientists have individual blogs over there. Besides blogging on cutting-edge research implications, there are plenty of forays into history, politics, philosophy, and religion. In fact, "Pharyngula", the most popular blog over there, devotes more time ridiculing creationists and "intelligent design" proponents than actually talking about science. That's fine with me...the result is often very entertaining.

Another scienceblog that takes occasional swipes at creationists is "Respectful Insolence". A recent topic dealt with the definition of design. The accusation is that the ID crowd tosses words like "design" and "information" around without any rigorous, scientific definition of these terms. In jest, I posted the following....

You evilutionists are so smug and arrogant, thinking your opponents can't list the requirements for a definition of design

*Interchangeable parts. That's obviously a hallmark of virtually all known cases of design.

*We should see an excess of right angles, circles, squares, and the like. Structures like pistons fit with extraordinary precision in cylinders.

*Designed things have easily identified purposes. Cups are for drinking, cars are for going from place to place.

*Designed stuff is almost always labeled with patents, copyrights, logos, etc.

Eat that!

The joke, of course, is that while my response meets the challenge of defining design, it also tends to negate the notion that biological organisms are the results of conscious design.

Apparently, though, the ruse wasn't transparent enough. One response: Ever notice that anti-thinkers (oh, sorry, anti-evolutionists) frequently cannot even manage rudimentary grammar, orthography, or syntax? (to criticize my misspelling of "evolution").

Another response impugned my emotional stability: like ngong up there, they often seem very spiteful, angry and childish ('evilution' - doubt it's a Freudian slip, but rather an immature outburst, just like 'eat that').

These responses come from the bright sort of minds that are drawn to scienceblogs. For the folks above, I'm inclined to believe that their devotion to capital "A" Atheism, and their shark-like aggression to the faintest scent of creationism, dampens their powers of discernment. My post is knee-jerkedly seen to be a challenge to some folks' identities, not as the ruse it is.

On another occasion, I responded to a Pharyngula post regarding some truly pathetic anti-evolution e-cards: You atheists think you're so superior. I challenge you to develop an e-card of your own that is less creative than the ones you're mocking. Just try!

I was rather proud of that post. It's an odd challenge to imagine e-cards that are more mind-numbingly inane and amateurish than the ones you'll see on that site. Yet here's a response that followed: We've been challenged... by a xtian? Oh puleeze! "ken" needs to start surfing more than just the xtian and the porno sites! "ken", when you graduate from grade school to middle school, perhaps you will be old enough to comprehend what you think you know versus what you are being told to know.

Not only does the writer fail to see the sarcasm of my post, but he seems to be inciting the herd to react to my "challenge". Grab the pitchforks!

Run over to YouTube and search for "atheism". In addition to refutations of atheism, and some very erudite endorsements of it, you'll see plenty of snot-nosed teenage boys who seem to think that disavowing religion is primarily an exercise in machismo.

One final example. Daniel Dennett and Dinesh D'Souza recently debated on the subject of God's existence. Atheist blogs were rife with posts proclaiming D'Souza to be a moron. That's not what I saw at all. Given the absurdity of his position (the existence of an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient, supernatural Christian God to the exclusion of all others), I thought he did a fine job. He managed to put student questioners on the defensive in some rapid-fire give and take sessions. He rarely stumbled in his speech. Meanwhile, Dennett missed some rather glaring opportunities to go for the jugular (easy to say, of course, when you're not in the spotlight). And he mumbled a lot.

I must say, an identity based largely on the rejection of God(s) is a rather pathetic one. Be an atheist, take an occasional swipe at creationist ninnies. That's fine. But supplement that identity with...something else. And lighten up a bit in the name of maintaining a bit of rational, scientific objectivity!

Thai Cigarette Packs

2007-11-20T03:20:00.001-08:00

As you can see, the Thai government requires that all cigarette packs carry a bit more than the usual words of warning. Specifically, 50% of the pack must carry an image, selected by the health ministry. Initially, there were six images, but that has expanded a bit.

Put them all in a case and sell the collection at Jatujak market, next to the pinned rhinoceros beetles and walking sticks! A truly unique gift, though it appears that China and New Zealand are considering similar regulations.

Questions arise. Are the images correlated with the flavors (e.g. American blend vs. "rich, distinctively smooth")? Can we assume that all images appear with equal frequency? After all, brown M&M's occur 30% of the time, far more frequently than blue, orange, and green. I'd swear the bottommost man-on-respirator pic appears with greater-than-chance frequency in the gutters of Bangkok. Do consumers actually prefer/reject certain images?

There's no need for translation on most of these packs. That, in fact, is one purpose of the images...illiterate folks can still get the message. One image, however, deserves an explanation. It's the one showing one hand sprinkling water over another. That's actually part of a Thai Buddhist funeral ceremony, and the rightmost hand is supposed to be that of a corpse.

I'll try to post the entire collection.

Crucified Kroot

2007-11-16T06:28:00.001-08:00

These are Garudas. In typical fashion, Thais chop a syllable or two off of a Sanskrit word (karma-->gum, guru-->kru) and you get "kroot". In the old myths, their wings darken the sky and cause hurricanes. Sandwiched between the facade of a bank and myriad cables, though, they lose their bravado.

Some Gripes with "The God Delusion"

2007-11-14T17:11:00.000-08:00

A year after the hubbub, I finally picked up a copy of "The God Delusion". In Thailand. While Western bestsellers are often translated into Thai (even Stephen Hawking's books), "The God Delusion" hasn't been.

Many of the arguments against God would strike ordinary Thai Buddhists as irrelevant to their religion. At best, a Thai might read the book and find himself all the more convinced that Christianity, as my friend Suvit says, is an "unreasonable" religion...hardly a good reason to spend 400 baht for the soft cover. The Thai Buddhists I've known have never shown any antipathy toward evolution or physics. An old universe is no big deal when you measure time in kalpas . Some might even claim Buddhism bends over backwards to befriend science, knowing that its competitors are at odds with science.

Flipping through the pages, you've got the 747 that spontaneously assembles in a junkyard. Irrelevant to Buddhism. Proofs of the existence of God via Aquinas. Irrelevant. Irreducible complexity. Irrelevant. The book seems largely a critique of Abrahamic religion, but Dawkins usually omits "Abrahamic". This has got to be irritating to thoughtful Buddhists, Hindus, etc.

It's hardly a large chunk of my identity, but it would be fair to call me an atheist. I'm part of the choir that Dawkins is accused of preaching to. Atheists are known to be independent thinkers, even compulsive contrarians. Dawkins likens organizing atheists to herding cats. In this spirit, let me take a few more swipes at "The God Delusion".

*Of all Dawkins' arguments against God's existence, his favorite seems to be the idea that God must be hugely complex, and therefore must have simpler origins. When creationists argue that the events of evolution are improbable, they're merely begging the question, since God is the most improbable entity of all. Dawkins doesn't, however, dismiss the possibility of aliens that are so advanced as to appear God-like in their powers. He doesn't even dismiss a matrix-like scenario, where our universe might be a mere computer simulation, overseen by a snot-nosed teenaged geek-God.

Dawkins points out, reasonably enough, that such Gods would be the results of evolutionary processes. Is this really important? The geek-God would still be, for all intents and purposes, omniscient and omnipotent. He could intervene and answer prayers. He could get pissy and conjure a hurricane to punish homosexuals. He could change the laws of physics after an argument with his mother (who complains that he should step out of his room every now and then). He could demand praise, and punish those who fail to offer it with an eternity in hell. All this...but his powers are supposed to be diminished because he did, after all, have his own evolutionary roots.

The geek-God is a bit absurd. The point: does it really matter so much whether the God-figure is evolved or not, complex or utterly simple? When God, 5 kilometers tall, bearded and robed, surrounded by a retinue of cherubs, starts stomping on your cities and demanding prostrations, do you confront him with the notion that he is "merely" evolved?

* Why would anyone go to war for an absence of belief? (pg 316)

Dawkins rails against religion in the preceding sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, and finishes Chapter 7 by hailing the virtue of all absence of belief. Dawkins is pulling a bit of sleight of hand in omitting "religious" before "belief". And then, if we're referring only to religious belief, it's perfectly imaginable that an atheist could go to war over some silly racial beliefs (Hitler?), or in the belief that he is hastening inevitable evolution by culling certain weak individuals, or in the belief that his particular political system should be spread. What's more, a hawkish atheist might instigate war against a religious society if he feels those religious memes are particularly insidious to his own way of life. Here, you're forcibly defending your right to non-belief. Christopher Hitchens seems a bit inclined in this direction.

Dawkins points out that while certain historical nasties may have been atheists, their atheism wasn't necessarily the cause of their unpleasantness. What's more, it's fairly easy to cite cases where religiosity absolutely was the cause of unpleasantness. Atheism would seem to have the moral upper hand here. However, it's just a matter of time before some loony atheist mass murderer or dictator emerges, citing a liberation from absolute morals as his incitation. Given such an event, atheists would be left saying, "he wasn't a real atheist"...this sort of logic is, at best, unforceful. At worst, it's an outright fallacy.

One might even imagine a nutjob Christian committing a heinous crime, purposely getting caught, and then claiming that atheism was his inspiration. Admittedly, this is an unlikely scenario...message boards are rife with posters claiming "I used to believe in atheism" or "I used to be an evolutionist", who are quickly revealed to know nothing of either subject. These folks are lousy at faking atheism.

Atheists, however, are often rather effective at faking religiosity. In many cases, they've been forced to feign piety simply because they don't want their heads to be separated from the bodies. Any number of outwardly religious despots may have been closet atheists. And who is to say that non-belief in absolute morality wasn't a factor in their crimes?

My point here: atheists should be careful about this claim that evil never flows from atheism. A more accurate thought might be, "atheism that emerges from careful inspection of religious belief rarely causes unpleasantness in this world." Not a good sound bite. Any number of street criminals are atheists in the sense that they aren't believers in any particular religion. But I doubt many of them have seriously examined questions of religion and morality.

Dawkins isn't nearly as extreme as Hitchens in this area. Though Stalin himself was an atheist, Hitchens will tell you that Stalinism was prepped by centuries of authoritarian Christianity. Such a view lets atheism off the hook for just about any crimes imaginable, at least for the next few centuries.

* Dawkins argues against the brainwashing of children into the dogma of a particular religion. It would be better to educate them as to all the possibilities, and let them make up their own minds when they're mature enough. Dawkins, of course, provides horrifying and extreme examples of such brainwashing. But there are very liberal believers who argue that it's flat out immoral to raise a child without a grounding in morality. Atheists then counter that morality doesn't need religion. Practically speaking, though, most folks see morality as being grounded in religion.

Though he doesn't state it outright, Chapter 9 intimates that Dawkins wouldn't be entirely unsympathetic to a government that actually stepped in and prevented childhood religious indoctrination. Imagine, then, the difficulties that would arise as an earnest, religious, not particularly well-educated couple struggle to raise a child properly. Like it or not, morality is inseparable from religion in their own minds...how could they possibly provide a moral foundation without a religious one?

My own intuition is that Dawkins would do better to continue to grind away at the silly dogmas that infest the minds of adults who may become parents, than to hope that religious folks might allow their children to explore a menagerie of belief systems before "deciding", or to hope that legislation might be enacted that prevents childhood religious brainwashing.

To summarize:

1) Very little of TGD applies to Buddhists. Hindus too, I assume. So Dawkins should make it clear when he's really referring to Abrahamic religion.

2) If there's a Creator, he must have evolved. So what?

3) There are plenty of ways atheists can screw up the world. Give them a fair chance first.

4) Fact is, a moral foundation and religious upbringing are inseperable for many folks. Let's chill out on the notion that a bit of religious indoctrination is akin to child abuse.

Sok Lek

2007-11-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

sok lek

Here's a Thai dish called "Sok Lek". Actually, it would more properly be called an Isan (northeastern Thai) specialty, as urbane Bangkokians usually disavow this sort of cuisine. Basically, it's pig guts, spices, and blood, eaten raw. You can boil up the guts if you're wimpy.

Seriously, Westerners are certainly playing culinary Russian roulette when they ingest this sort of stuff. If you do, don't skimp on the spices and cheap Thai whiskey...they're your last defense against parasites.

While Sok Lek is a bit of a turn-off for city dwellers, the eating of blood isn't. Kill a pig, drain the blood into a pan, and quickly add a tad of fish sauce or vinegar to make the liquid congeal. You can dice the end product up like tofu and sell it at the market. In fact, if you ignore the red/brown color, congealed blood has a texture and bland flavor that is similar to tofu's. You'd serve it up in some spicy curry or soup to add variety to the mix.

Thai Sports Commentary

2007-11-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

The Thais don't have much of a concept of egalitarianism. Maybe it's connected to the belief in karma, where one guy can definitely be born with superior baggage to the next. So there's no major hangup in discussing racial differences, IQ differences, gender differences, etc. It can be refreshing if you're accustomed to California-style "political correctness".

It can get a bit ridiculous, though. I've heard Thai sports commentators make the following remarks:

"White people are too hot-tempered" (explaining why a Chinese guy beat a "farang" in a ping-pong match).

"That player looks like a man" (at a women's volleyball match).

"That's the first time Mike Tyson was beaten by a white man" (the FIRST thing that came out of the commentator's mouth after Tyson threw in the towel in his most recent match).

Imagine the uproar if you heard this stuff on American TV.

Shots from the Ganesh Himal

2007-11-11T06:32:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to see a slideshow of more pics from the Ganesh Himal, a rather offbeat trekking destination in Nepal, click here

In the future, I'll upload some video clips of the trek, which do a good job of explaining this little adventure without additional prose.

This particular shot might be the best of the lot, though. Those two girls are carrying chiseled rocks, used for roofing. There's a sense of desolation, though you'd probably catch the distant reverberation of a mallet if you were there.

Bowling in Bangkok

2007-11-11T01:45:00.000-08:00

Here's a subject I know a fair amount about. There are probably 20 different alleys in Bangkok, and most are quite modern. Probably more modern than the average alley in the States, actually. There are even alleys in the boonies, like Udon, HatYai, Korat, Khon Kaen. Surin, where the average denizen grows jasmine rice, used to have one.

You can bowl a game for as little as 30 baht (about $.75), depending on where you go. The most expensive I've seen is about 120 baht, at Major Bowl, where they've got the black lights and a DJ (and crummy lane conditions!).

The differences? Well, the Thais seem less restricted by concepts of the "correct" way to bowl. There aren't so many really great Thai bowlers, so there's nobody to really mimic. No reference points. Thus you can go to a lane and see an amazing variety of styles, and I'm not just talking about newcomers. My favorite is the guy at Columbia Bowl (Rangsit) who goes through these Tai-Chi moves as part of his follow-through...he releases the ball and finishes in something like a flamingo position after another couple seconds of gyrations.

You'll see plenty of backspins here. There's that "helicopter" style that started in Taiwan...it can actually be effective, as much as I hate to say it. You see lofters, who might do better if they took up shot-putting. There are fairly experienced bowlers who have concluded that a "brooklyn" shot is a more efficient way to strike. And of course, the teenage boys, who would rather generate a radical curve than a high score...they place their arm in a corkscrew formation and "unwind" as they approach the foul line.

There's a coach at Ramkhamhaeng who actually trains his bowlers to come to a near full-stop at the foul line, raise the ball to a perfectly vertical position over their heads (their backs are roughly parallel to the floor), and only then begin the downswing...you can see his students ("casualties" might be a better word, as I've yet to see one of these guys come anywhere near winning a competition) all over Bangkok. Word is, that coach was actually a decent bowler himself, and his style was quite conventional.

In the States, bowling is often thought of as a working class sport. Quite different in Thailand...a good ball costs about a month's wage for an average Thai, and a couple games could easily be a day's wage. You go to the lanes to be seen and socialize. You'll see a lot of very well-dressed (with the exception of the shoes, of course) women who toss the ball, turn around and giggle without bothering to see whether the ball actually hits the pins.

Of course, the issue of broken fingernails prevents a certain percentage of women from playing at all.

I recall bowling at Rangsit next to this Thai guy who proudly told me he had already thrown 27 games that day...with his wife holding the baby all the while.

Sometimes the whole extended family shows up. That happened today...about 12 family members, most of whom didn't bowl, on two lanes. There's the stroller and the toddler. The pregnant woman wandering around the facility in the altered state that pregnant women find themselves in. Constant flashing of the camera. Abundant applause for strikes and spares. They brought their own food in plastic containers.

Gambling is another issue. We're not talking about little wagers between bowlers...we're talking about guys who supplement their income by eyeballing the lanes for splits, and then offering odds to the bowlers. On a league night at RCA or Ramkhamhaeng, there might be 6 or 7 of these vultures on the prowl. You don't even need to verbally communicate with them to place a bet...the odds on a particular split are usually the same for everybody, so you just hold up your fingers and tell them how many baht you'll wager.

Being a logical sort of guy, I'd never place a bet with these gamblers...if they didn't profit, you wouldn't see them at the lanes. They know what they're doing, despite their easygoing demeanor and big smiles. Personally, I can't stand them...they got quite nasty when a former member of my team (a gambling addict, admittedly) fell into debt with them. He dropped off my team and I haven't seen him for several years now. You might consider calling the police to clean these guys off the lanes (after all, gambling is illegal)...problem is, a lot of these guys ARE the police.

One word that isn't frequently associated with Thais is "competitive". They've got this game called "nine-pin strike" where (if I'm not mistaken...I only played once) a one-pin leave counts as a strike, so it's fairly easy to walk away from a competition with a 300 score and a few thousand baht...a high skill level isn't essential. In the leagues, handicaps are quite high, so even the crappiest of teams can win on a given night. In my own 18 team league, the members of the team that finished SIXTH all receive trophies. AND there's a "booby prize" for finishing second to last. AND, since no team is allowed to win more than one prize, there are still trophies remaining for high game, high game handicap, high series, and high series handicap. Virtually everyone walks away from awards night with a goody in their hands.

Googling Won't Answer these Questions

2007-11-11T01:06:00.000-08:00

*Did Howard Cosell ever utter "pusillanimous" and "indefatigable" in the same sentence?

*Has anyone bowled a 300 without anyone else ever knowing?

*What is the simplest sentence that has never been spoken? The smallest integer? The smallest integer that has never been used in a computer calculation?

*In the course of your life, how many large invertebrates have crawled over your slumbering body?

*How many kilometers was the longest chain reaction of howling dogs in history?

*How many movies have been made in which a vehicle runs through a vegetable stand? What is the ratio of car chases that do and don't involve a vegetable stand?

*In the history of humanity, how many folks have died by getting lost in a cave?

* What was the sequence of events that the luckiest ant in history encountered as it sojourned from one side of a busy street to the other?

*What percentage of the world's population turns on a TV within 1 minute of returning home?

*Of all the humans on earth, which individual has the greatest proclivity towards standing in the way?

*What is the most trivial recorded event that occurred on Feb 12, 1848?

*How many folks have successfully staged their own deaths?

Douglas Adam's Puddle

2007-11-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

If many universes beside our own exist, then the anthropic coincidences are a no-brainer. Victor Stenger

Richard Dawkins has supposedly remarked that of all the arguments for the existence of a designer deity, the "fine-tuning" argument is most intriguing. According to some percentage of physicists, there's a very narrow range of physical constants that allow for life in the universe. If you take these physicists at their word (not everyone does), you're forced to either conclude we're here as the result of a hugely improbable coincidence, or there's some god-figure tweaking the controls.

Douglas Adams took on the debate. He imagines a puddle snuggled into a pothole, waking up and concluding that the universe was designed for puddles, since the fit is so marvelous. This is obviously an egocentric and deluded puddle, but it's a bit difficult for me to summarize exactly what Adams was trying to say. Adam's puddle seems to be pointing out that it's a fallacy to ever look at our existence and conclude that it was improbable.

But it does seem that some physicists, who don't show any signs of holding a god-proving agenda, believe that it is possible to ascertain that our universe is indeed an improbable one. That's not "improbable" in the silly sense of drawing 5 cards and then marveling at the odds that you drew that particular hand. It's "improbable" in the sense that the hand you drew is
one of just a few that could support life.

If we assume that our universe is indeed exceedingly improbable, does that point to a cosmic designer? You could also ask the same for replicators or consciousness or any other hurdle along the road to humanity. If we find that replicators are exceedingly difficult to design after 1,000 years of trying, what should we think? What if SETI never hears anything whilst probing the heavens? In my view, such scenarios don't improve the odds for a god-figure. Not much, anyway.

Why? Well, let's assume that our universe is indeed improbable. There are then two kinds of universes that are possible. One is the incredibly coincidental one in which conscious life arises (and inevitably marvels at the improbability of existence). The other one is a lifeless, chaotic universe, incapable of supporting simple molecular bonds or any kind of complexity at all. But the mindless plasma in such a chaotic universe never gets the opportunity to consider the ordinariness of its situation. The things that are capable of pondering existence only arise in improbable universes.

So, if you have a near-infinite number of universes, you're bound to get some conscious life every now and then. But what will that conscious life do? It will do physics and calculate that the universe is improbable and must therefore be designed. The conclusion of improbability would be correct, but the conclusion of design would be incorrect.

There's no argument for a creator if multiple universes are allowed. However, let's assume that 1) our universe is indeed improbable and 2) it's the only one that has ever been. What should we then think? I'm not sure.

It should be pointed out, again, that not all physicists have decided that life can only arise in a very small fraction of possible universes. Victor Stenger argues that a large fraction of configurations of the constants of physics still allow for life. But then he goes on to make the case for multiple universes, saying that they don't violate Occam's razor (as creationists have argued). So he seems to be covering both bases, saying that life is not improbable, but even if it is there's no incentive to lean toward a creator. Nothing wrong with covering both bases.

You could almost turn the fine-tuning argument on its ass and use it to argue for the existence of multiple universes. Like this:

1) There's no Cosmic Designer (see Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al for thousands of pages devoted to this topic).

2) The universe is improbable.

Therefore, there must be multiple universes.