Tvindy

Weekly Links

Updates to Previous Posts

Update to Lumberjack: Jenny from Mulubinba Moments reminded me of an earlier post she had done with a link to a huge guide on big things in Australia. Also, Richie referred me to this site about Muffler men in the US. Also of interest is a site entitled Big Things in Muncie, Indiana. It has pictures of the lumberjack as well as many of the other statues here in Muncie. It's a bit out of date, though -- the purple hippo is no more.

Update to Brazil 1990: This article is a wonderful historical followup to my paper.

Blogs of Note

The Best of What Was There -- This is the blog of a music therapist.

The Write Event -- And here is a blog by a handwriting expert all about that field.

The Tard Blog -- This one is highly controversial because of the very unfortunate name. It is by a special education teacher who works with developmentally challenged children. I have to say that after reading most of the entries that I do not feel she is ridiculing or belittling her students, but she really needs to rename the site.

Do Penis Enlargement Pills Work? -- Well, here's a unique idea for a blog! This fellow ordered some size-increasing pills. He's been taking them and doing special exercises, and he blogs about his progress. Judging from the comments (which he recently disabled), he's got a large audience. I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Cool Stuff

Apparently, if you write fake CNN stories and post them (even as a joke), you will get in serious trouble. The fake story was taken down, but Bill Stevenson had the foresight to preserve it before that happened.

Yet another example of how customer service has become a lost art in the United States. (from stupidangrycanajun)

The Catholic Church fights to redeem Halloween.

Here is a great article that argues that to preserve our privacy we need to expose ourselves online. (from eclecticism)

Lumberjack

This statue stands in front of the Timbers Lounge at 2770 W Kilgore Ave. Originally it stood in front of a lumberyard in another part of town. I have no idea how it was moved.

I'm fairly certain that it was built by Dick Kishel, since he has done all the giant statues in and around Muncie. I took some classes from him in elementary and middle school. He seemed incredibly old to me at the time, but apparently he wasn't since he is still living.

I'm unclear as to whether or not this is intended to be Paul Bunyan or just some other generic giant lumberjack.

Most Boring Post So Far

As most everyone who reads this already knows, every Tuesday I put up some old college paper of mine, thereby putting it into the public domain in the hopes that someday someone may find a use for it. (That's why people tend to steer clear of my blog on Tuesdays.)

Earlier today I was going through a stack of old floppies, most of which are no longer readable, and I came across the bibliography for my paper on the French subjunctive, which I posted last month. I had feared it was lost forever. Oh happy day!

Anyway, if you want to check it out (and I can't imagine why you would), you can click below to see it. (Hm, tomorrow's pic-of-the-week day; maybe I can post a photo of the bibliography.)

Me

Okay, this is obviously not a very recent picture of me. It was taken many years ago by a professional photographer here in Muncie by the name of Ruth Chin, who also photographed my parents' wedding. I don't know much about film photography, but the negatives she used were from film that was much larger than 35mm, allowing her to do a lot of cropping, while still maintaining an enormous amount of detail. In this picture, she had my mother hold my hand, and gave my mother the option of choosing a print of me and her together or just of me (by cropping the left side of the print). My mother opted for the closeup of me, and until a few years ago, that was all we had in the family photos.

What was interesting was that soon after the picture was made, Mrs. Chin made a print cropped to show me and my mother's arm, just like the image above. According to my mother, that picture hung in the the window of the photographic studio for many years (along with other pictures taken there).

Some years back I was working on assembling a comprehensive album of all our family photos from the first few years since my parents' wedding. I made an appointment to see Mrs. Chin and get prints made of whatever she had of my family. Amazingly, she remembered me, probably because of this one picture she had taken so many years ago.

She told me that what had really struck her about the image was that when it was cropped that way, anyone looking at it could clearly see that the arm belonged to the mother. I must admit that I really can't see what makes this picture so special, but I probably can't be objective, seeing as how I am the subject of it. But it did make an impression on me that the professional photographer who had taken it was so proud of it. I therefore asked Mrs. Chin to make me a print of it exactly like the one she had made for her window.

I'd be interested to hear what other people's impressions are of this photo. The only thing that really strikes me is my haircut. It seems my mother was trying to make my head look like a bowling ball.

Aquatic Ape Theory

I've long been a proponent of the Aquatic Ape Theory, and it surprises me that it has never really caught on. Even after reading several criticisms of it with a fairly open mind, it still seems obvious to me that it must be true. I've just finished reading Elaine Morgan's most recent work on the subject -- The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. In it she details the core arguments of the theory and responds to criticisms of her previous works.

I've wanted to post on this subject for a long time; I was just waiting to acquire and read this book to refresh my memory. Listed below, in no particular order, are the arguments that I find to be the most compelling:

• We love water. People enjoy going to the beach or a lake. Many have swimming pools behind their houses. And all the finest hotels have a swimming pool. It's not just that we are able to swim. Just about any mammal can do that if it finds itself in deep water. We seem to enjoy it immensely. That would seem to be a very unnatural behavioral trait for a mammal that never had its recent evolution shaped by a dependence on water. Certainly none of the other great apes share this with us. This alone makes the theory plausible.
• We're blubbery and mostly hairless. All of the larger aquatic mammals have lost their hair, just like us. And I really find it hard to believe that all this hair loss occurred as a result of mastering the use of fire. Even mammals that live in very warm conditions still have their hair. As a modern human with a heated home and access to heated buildings, I still experience plenty of occasions where I become quite cold, and it would be to my advantage to have a thick coating of fur.
• Human babies are fat, and they rapidly get fatter during the first few months of life. The other ape babies are born scrawny. If a human baby is placed underwater, instead of panicking, it will make its way to the surface, helped by its buoyant fat, and instinctively float on its back with its mouth and nose just above the waterline.
• Humans dehydrate much faster than other land mammals, and they are unable to store as much reserve moisture in their tissues. That's why doctors are always telling us to drink two liters of water a day. It's as if our ancestors lived most of their lives in a very water-rich environment.
• There are a number of intriguing human facial features that are not shared by the other apes. Most significant is that our nose juts out with the nostrils pointing downward, so we can submerse our heads underwater without the water instantly pouring into our nasal passages. It works like a diving bell. Also, we can flare our nostrils and make them bigger. This may mean that our ancestors' noses were closed by default and were only opened when their noses were intentionally flared. This is the case with sea lions. And it makes sense that we would quickly have lost this adaptation as soon as we left the water, since it would hinder breathing. Furthermore, humans have much more expressive faces than the other apes, who rely much more on posture and body language. That would make sense if we spent a great deal of time in the water with our bodies submerged and dedicated to the task of staying afloat. In that case, early humans would have to rely much more on facial expression to convey feelings and information.
• This is not mentioned by Elaine Morgan, but I think it's significant. About a year ago on PBS there was a documentary by a genetic researcher tracing the migration paths of early modern humans. (Sorry, I no longer remember the name of the program.) According to his findings, the first modern humans to settle outside of Africa followed the coastline eastward across Asia and ended up doing a bit of island hopping to reach Australia and Tasmania. What amazed me was that according to the researcher's interpretation of his genetic data taken from modern populations, this migration never strayed far from the coast. These people traveled thousands of miles over thousands of years and only established inland populations in Australia and Tasmania. How and why would they have done that without some sort of previously acquired aquatic adaptations. I realize that these were modern humans, nearly identical to us, and that the aquatic phase occurred and came mostly to an end millions of years ago in the time of Lucy, but it says a lot that early Cromagnons were so dependent on the sea. I should also say that the researcher did not mention the Aquatic Ape Theory.

Of course there are several additional arguments and further data beyond those listed above, but those are the arguments that I find personally to be the most convincing. Coupled with the fact that I can't see anything farfetched or highly implausible about the theory, I find it strange that so few people take it seriously. Much of that may have to do with the fact that Elaine Morgan does not have much in the way of academic credentials, but shouldn't the theory be evaluated based on its own merits and shortcomings rather than who its proponents are?

Caffeine

I'm often astounded by the power of caffeine, but no more so than last week when I was up for 33 hours straight with no drowsiness and no nodding off. All it took was one 2-liter bottle of cherry coke consumed over a 10-hour period. I'm not in the habit of drinking anything with caffeine in it as part of my regular routine, so, unlike most people, I haven't developed a tolerance to its effects. I normally avoid it, because it interfers with my sleep.

Last year I was taking caffeine pills when I was training for a marathon to increase my endurance. It really helped; I could run faster and further by taking a couple of caffeine tablets before a jog. The problem was that it caused me to go from eight hours of sleep a night to six or seven, which ended up hurting my performance more than helping it. I could fall asleep alright, but I always ended up waking up much too early and not being able to get back to sleep.

Apparently caffeine blocks the neurotransmitter adenosine, which, among other things, triggers drowsiness. So the more the adenosine is blocked, the more awake and alert you feel. Unfortunately, that is the one effect of caffeine to which people quickly build a tolerance. What a shame -- I'd love to have every day be a 33 hour day.

Japan

Widdershins wrote an interesting post reflecting on how inscrutable Japanese culture can often seem to us Americans. He provides a link to an excellent series of articles entitled Tokyo on One Cliché a Day. It reminded me of some of the other interesting Japan sites I've come across.

The Japanese have developed some innovative new ways of using the English language. It's called Engrish.

Clearly sensibilities with regard to flavoring ice cream in Japan are vastly different from in America.

I'm pretty sure that YATTA! is culturally impenetrable to anyone outside of Japan.

One easy way of delving into Japanese culture is by becoming a t-shirt ninja.

Another way of exposing yourself to Japanese culture is to follow the step-by-step instructions in the Universal Guide to Getting Laid in Japan. Doing that will give you a perfect opportunity to visit all the Japanese love hotels.

Weekly Links

Iraq

Now they've opened a Burger King for our troops in Iraq:

"We're lucky if we can get over here once a month, we're so busy raiding houses and kicking down doors in the middle of the night," said Miller, who bought $84 worth of food. (from REDUX: Iraq)

Here is a very interesting essay by an Assyrian-American who went to Iraq to help the people there and demonstrate against the war. After spending time there, some of his views changed. (from joyfulchristian)

Updates to Previous Posts

Update to The Zeitgeist Online: You can use the Touchgraph Google Browser to visualize interrelations between websites.

Update to My Take on iTunes: Here's why iTunes is so expensive: "65 to 75 cents of each 99 cent download goes to the labels"
(from Some of the news . . .)

Update to Mars: Here's a great article on why we haven't gone to Mars yet and probably will not for many years to come.

Cool Stuff

Get a freely hosted Movable Type site. Wow! (from Blackfive)

Don't forget, November is National Novel Writing Month. Sign up at NaNoWriMo today, and get ready to write your novel.

Wanna really scare someone this Halloween? Just slip one of these pacifiers into a passing stroller and watch Mom freak out. (from Amberbamberboo)

Ambulance driver charged with speeding. He was racing to deliver a transplant organ at the time. (from stupidangrycanajun)

Check out the winner of the Smoking Gun's 2003 Legal Document of the Year award. It just goes to show, a really good lawyer can make a compelling case for just about anything. (from Widdershins)

Is trackback harming Google? Poor Google. (from CICS-HFI)

Mantis

The scary thing about praying manti is how they always follow you with their eyes. If you look closely, you'll see that the pupils are aimed off to the side, where my face was, and not at the camera.

Paul Cézanne

Here is yet another old college paper of mine. This was written for a French civilization class. Everyone was assigned a french painter or sculptor. Unfortunately, I missed the class when the assignments were being handed out, so I ended up a choice of a handful of artists that nobody else wanted. Cézanne isn't all that bad, but he concentrated a great deal on still lifes; in other words, many of his "great masterpieces" are pictures of bowls of fruit. You can check out his work here.

I realize this is not exactly one of my more interesting posts, but, for what it's worth, it is historic. This is the first entry I've done that can't be classified into any of the preset categories.