Restorative work

The first screen shot I shared.

Not everything related to my journey is specifically about emotions, though everything is connected in some way or other. Obviously time doesn’t “care” about my feelings: It marches on regardless, and I need to adapt. Over the past 37 weeks, adaptation has been a major part of what I’ve been doing; that’s actually obvious, but also an important part of that is restoring what I can of the life I used to have. That’s been surprisingly easy.

Awhile back, I decided to work on restoring the technological stuff that Nigel set-up for us, and I’ve succeeded with a lot of that. For example, I got our VoIP phone system running, I got our robot vacuum running again, and this week I got our weather station running again. All of that is stuff that Nigel found and maintained for us, and I had little to do with it, apart from using it. That’s all changed now.

A month ago, I said:

Among other interests, Nigel loved technology and was always coming up with new ways to use technology to make our lives better (like the solar powered gate I talked about back in October). He was often changing things so they’d be “better, faster, stronger”, as I sometimes put it to him. He smiled when I said that, with his little cheeky grin that showed me he was in on the joke.

…I was happy to let Nigel tinker away with stuff as much as he wanted to because it made him happy. He enjoyed it so much, and if I’m honest, I felt it was kind of cute how passionate he got about things that many of us would’ve thought of as boring (like a phone system).

All of which means that I didn’t need to know about all the technology stuff I used because Nigel took care of it all. I relied on him because I could rely on him. Now I’m learning to rely on myself.

It still surprises me sometimes that I can figure this stuff out on my own, thanks to finding stuff out through the miracle of the Internet, not for the first time (whenever Nigel would wonder aloud about something, I’d say, “If only we had a global network of interconnected computers!” In fact, I still say that).

Along the way, I’ve found out stuff that he either didn’t know or didn’t mention. That weather station is a good example. It has an outdoor module that records temperature, humidity, etc., and the initial batteries would last a couple years (according to the product literature). They eventually failed, and when we replaced them they’d last a few days, a week at most, before going flat. Nigel thought it was because the unit had been in water at one point, but I found out that it’s a known and often complained about thing. Nigel probably did know that, but never said anything, which led me to think he just never got around to fixing the problem.

Nigel bought the system’s rain gauge and wind gauge, but never hooked them up. He 3D-printed some brackets to attach them to posts, but never did. Part of that was because he wanted to fix the problem with the outdoor module, but it was mainly because he’d moved on to two new interests, a video surveillance security system first, then wind turbines to generate power (he wanted to be able to run our computer servers from wind power so our electricity use would be no more than any other household—less, ideally. Before he died, Nigel gave the wind stuff to our brother-in-law because, living on a more rural property than we did, he could use it; Nigel also knew I never would.

So, I set up the weather system’s base unit, and got it working with the App on my phone. Next, I put batteries in the outdoor unit to get it set-up, too, and I later got rechargeable batteries to use in it when the current ones fail. If I was clever at electronics, I bet I could set up a solar system to power it in the day and charge the batteries for the night, but I’m not that clever. Yet.

I also looked at how to get the wind and rain gauges set-up, and I’ll soon get them running, too. It’ll be one of the first technological things where I’ve gone beyond—improved, even—what Nigel left behind.

The security system is a similar thing. Nigel got a system with three wireless cameras, and was so proud of himself because he got it for at most 20% of what NZ retailers charged for the same thing. He always found great deals like that. We only used one camera, pointed toward the front gate, but he had plans for the other two—him having plans to do something is a theme running through all this.

When I was packing up the house I removed the camera and shut off the base unit. The camera batteries had gone flat some time before that—in fact, probably before Nigel died, or shortly afterward. Whatever video that had been recorded was automatically deleted after a few days (as it always is). This was a good thing: Because the camera was off, it didn’t record the ambulance that took him away for the last time, nor the hearse bringing him back or taking him to his funeral. If I’d had those videos, I know I wouldn’t have been able to avoid watching them, and that probably wouldn’t have been helpful.

What all of this has in common is that I was faced with technological challenges because Nigel always maintained the bits and pieces, and I just used them. I got used to using those things, but the bigger issue is that I wanted to restore some of the comfortable aspects of the life I had with Nigel, and the technological stuff we used to have would help do that for me.

What I’ve learned through this is that I can figure stuff out (eventually…) for myself, that I can rely on myself in at least some of the ways I used to rely on Nigel. This was a huge surprise to me, and a really good thing to find out.

I still can’t even imagine what life without Nigel could be, but at least I now know that, as he hoped for a lot in his last couple weeks, I’ll be okay. Regaining some of the technological things we had together will definitely help with that.

It turns out that such restorative work pays bigger dividends than merely getting stuff working again. It gets me working again, too. Win/win.

50 years ago: TV from the moon

The Apollo 11 mission patch:
No American flag.
No space hardware.
No Astronaut names.
In that regard, unique among space emblems.

Affirmation that walking on the Moon was an achievement of the human species, to be shared by all. pic.twitter.com/Fw7Y7EWR1m

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) July 20, 2019

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I remember very little of the broadcast, since I was ten at the time, and it was 9:56pm out time when Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. But I do remember watching it on our black and white television, and I know other family members were with me, but I can’t be sure who: I was transfixed by the pictures on the TV. Much of the world was, too.

I grew up in the space age, and watched the space launches from as far back as I can remember, starting with Project Mercury. I even had a toy Project Gemini Titan II rocket and capsule (the capsule, which survived longer than the rocket, was red plastic). I also had a plastic model kit to make replicas of the Apollo 11 craft, LEM which was meant to sit a bit of plastic resembling, more or less, the lunar surface, and the Command Module “orbiting” on a plastic arc.

So, I have a long history with the space programme, and have always been fascinated by it, so it made perfect sense that I’d watch the live broadcast. I can’t remember for sure, but we may have watched the entire broadcast of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.

The Tweet above is from Neil deGrasse Tyson and talks about the Apollo 11 insignia, which was designed by Michael Collins. Tyson later acknowledged that Apollo XIII’s insignia. But the lack of a flag was deliberate, as was the olive branch. If only the promise had been fulfilled.

The space programme and the moon missions were very important for science and to advance our species, however, the promise of peaceful cooperation among all nations was never going to happen then, and it’s no more likely now. That’s the great tragedy of the space programme: It didn’t usher in an era of peace.

Still, the Apollo 11 trip to the moon was a magnificent achievement, an event that suddenly advanced humanity farther than it had ever been before—both figuratively and literally. And it was something that people all over the world got to watch together. Maybe we were temporarily joined after all.

50 years ago, like much of the world, I was transfixed by the live TV pictures from the moon. I would love to feel that way again, but even more, I’d love for the world to feel that way again.

Internet Wading for June 2019

Pop music and culture, history, interesting (or just odd) stories in the news, science, art—those are the things that get into these Internet Wading posts. And since I share a lot of pop music, why not start there?

“Hit Charade”, a 2016 story from The Atlantic talks about “the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts”. The article says: “ If you flip on the radio, odds are that you will hear one of their songs.” And most of us would never know that.

When Dr. John (the stage name of Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack died earlier this month, I read the obituary on the NBC News site and was surprised to learn that he sang the Popeyes Chicken jingle ("Love That Chicken From Popeyes"). That was one of those things I never knew, but also something that was so obvious once I knew. But, then, I seldom pay attention to music used in commercials, unless it’s a current pop song, so there’s that. Like most people, I probably know him best for his biggest hit, “Right Place, Wrong Time” [Listen to the official audio on YouTube], a 1973 song that seemed impossible to avoid—or bop along to—in its day.

What about Movies? “Remake My Day” compares movies with their remake(s). There are many ways of looking at it: What critics thought, what audiences thought, and their profitability. They also compare rankings and then divergence in opinions.

On to history! Runner’s World (appropriately enough…) published “The Surprising History of Streaking (Yes, the Naked Kind)". Because we should know our history, right?

Similarly little known history is that of Joan Jett Blakk, the story of a performer and activist who ran for Chicago Mayor and US President. A new play, Ms. Blakk for President, has opened in Chicago and tells one of the many LGBT+ stories not often remembered these days—though I do because I was still in Chicago during the first two campaigns. As the Windy City Times review puts it:

“Whether the effort was performative or real, Chicago witnessed history in the early 1990s when Joan Jett Blakk, an African American drag queen who was the creation of activist Terence Smith, ran not just for Chicago Mayor, but in 1992 ran for president of the United States.”

“The Extraordinary ‘Cookbooks’ Left Behind by Prisoners of War and Concentration Camp Victims” is about what the title suggests. It’s also fascinating.

Similarly interesting is "40 Years of New York City Captured Through a Taxi Driver's Photos”, which combines history and photography. Can’t go wrong with that.

Interesting, sure, but also kind of alarming is “When 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City”, a 2017 story from The Atlantic, about a short film (up top), about that evening. I knew about that night, and about the American “bundists”, but it’s still disturbing to see so many Americans gleefully embracing Nazism. These days it seems it could happen again.

Some science, history, and pop culture all in one! “The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years", which is both not what I expected, and fascinating all at the same time. Obscure history, science, and pop culture all rolled into one—what’s not to like?

Speaking of pop culture and history, The Atlantic’s 2016 story, “The Hot New Millennial Housing Trend Is a Repeat of the Middle Ages”, seems likely to have overstated its case a bit, but there are millennials who do similar things—just most don’t not necessarily due it to the extent or in precisely the way the article suggests. On the other hand, it’s been suggested as something that would be good for senior citizens. They might actually be more likely to embrace it.

About older people, sort of, how about ”The rise of granny panties”? “High-waisted underpants made a huge comeback”. We all needed to know that.

“Forget fast fashion: slow style pioneers on the clothes they've worn for decades” from The Guardian. There was even a Kiwi in the mix. There’s nothing I’ve had for decades (apart from a couple things from my childhood that I keep for sentimental reasons), but I do have some shirts I’ve had for maybe 15 years. They’ve lasted because they’re seasonal (I only wear them over the course of a few months), and because I take care of them. There’s an advantage in this: Clothes that one buys from a big retailer are everywhere when first purchased, but unique a year or two later when everyone else has moved on to The Next Fad. Being thrifty has fashion advantages, it turns out.

Fads are something that come and go all over the place, including, these days, in health and food. “There’s no such thing as ‘bad food.’ Four terms that make dietitians cringe”. This Washington Post story covers terms that I can’t stand, either. Don’t be get started on “detox”!

Technology is sometimes hard for people to wrap their heads around, especially if science isn't their "thing". Lately I’ve seen a lot of utter nonsense about the upcoming 5G cellphone spectrum and its supposed harm to people. Yeah, social media helping to spread disinformation and misinformation yet again. Surprise! Well, it turns out that there was one story that was actually worth reading: “Debate rages over 5G impact on US weather forecasting” from Physics World.

On another technological note, “The Catch-22 That Broke The Internet” from Wired. In early June, “Google couldn’t fix its cloud, because Google’s cloud was broken.” Oops.

Space’s final frontier—madness! I always thought it was a joke, often perpetuated by satirists, but apparently believers in “lizard people aliens” are real: “It looked like a simple domestic murder. Then police learned about the alien reptile cult.” It's from The Washington Post, so it’s apparently for real—though for a story like that, I wish it was real “fake news”. It’s kind of disturbing to know that people who believe in that are real and walking among us.

Well, maybe a real story about actual space instead: “Views From Above: The Past Eight Months in Orbit”. Earth is pretty awesome, really.

• • •

That’s it for this wading adventure. Time to get back to winter and hibernating—I mean, um, wading around.

Internet Wading for April 2019

President William Henry Harrison (ca 1841)

So, after an unplanned break, and some not-very-interesting technical problems, Internet Wading is back, and it’s a mixed bag, as usual. First up, some pop music.

A piece in The Guardian, “Giorgio Moroder – his 20 greatest songs, ranked” has pretty obvious subject. I don’t actually know a lot of the songs the article talks about, and I think that calling the soundtrack to Metropolis “overblown” is somewhat unfair, but “Arthur’s Law”, and all that.

Another article talking about music that was more peripheral for me was “Deciphering the Mystery of Joy Division” in The Atlantic. I had only one Joy Division song, on a compilation of songs from MTV’s 120 Minutes, which was one of my favourite TV shows back in the 1980s. The song was “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, which was released in June 1980. Wikipedia describes it very matter of factly: “Its lyrics were inspired by lead singer Ian Curtis's marriage problems and frame of mind before his suicide in May 1980.”

I was much more familiar with, and a fan of, Joy Division’s successor band, New Order. I bought several of their albums—and later re-bought them through iTunes.

Speaking of pop culture, and consumerism, I was intrigued by “Welcome to my high-fashion, trash shopping mall”, a story about “a stylish shopping mall in Sweden, where everything is second-hand.” That concept is intriguing—and a way to close the final loop in reusing stuff rather than burying it in a landfill. Here in New Zealand, we have much lower-key shops around the country located at a few tips (“dumps” in Americanese), and technically called “waste transfer stations”. One such example is “Tipping Point”, the shop at Waitakere (West Auckland). It was only re-named that last year, and is a pun. It’s also a good example of what can be done.

Language and food? Why not? “Foreign Foods You Might Be Pronouncing Wrong”. And, just by the way, mostly I’m not. Well, not the ones I know, anyway, but maybe a couple others that have different local pronunciation here.

Speaking of language, “Did German almost become America’s official language in 1795?” I couldn’t possibly spoil the story, but we all know what language “won”.

Speaking of US history, “’His Accidency’: The first president to die in office and the Constitutional confusion that followed” tells the story of President William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, who died a month after his inauguration, and the man who succeed him,Vice President John Tyler. I grew up hearing my mother talking about their 1840 presidential campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too”, so I was pre-disposed to learn the story. These days I bet most Americans don’t know it.

And finally, a little science: “Snapshot of extinction: Fossils show day of killer asteroid”, though we all know that, er, um, certain people will dismiss this story out of hand. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course. And, sharing stuff that certain people will dismiss out of hand is just part of the service I provide. You're welcome.

That's enough wading for now. Water's getting cold.

The photo of President William Henry Harrison is by Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811–1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808–1901). Edited by: Fallschirmjäger [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

What 2019 may bring

These two videos from The Economist list what the editors think will be the biggest stories of 2019. Predictions are always interesting when, as in this case, the source is reputable. So, it’s not whether the predictions prove to be right or wrong, it’s The Economist’s take that’s interesting. But they definitely won’t be right about everything.

The first part, above, includes glowing, breathless predictions about driverless cars. I think they’ll be flat out wrong about the predictions. Elected officials are always cautious about unleashing new technology like this, something that can kill people, and the people who elect them won’t be clambering for them to act faster. Indeed, I think it will take years before the technology establishes a good enough safety record—probably at least 10% less dangerous than human-driven cars—before they’ll start to be accepted by politicians. Besides, there’s zero evidence that people actually want driverless cars, even though transport companies obviously do.

The predictions in the rest of the first part is are less problematic, though I’m far less optimistic about global progress on LGBT+ human and civil rights in a word with expanding fascism. I hope they’re right, of course.

Part two, below, has similar predictions that will have varied results. The use of augmented reality itself won’t suddenly take off, however, I do think research into it will progress, since the usefulness of it is probably obvious when the technology gets far enough advanced. But that won’t happen in 2019, even if progress does.

The bits about Japan were particularly interesting. The upcoming Rugby World Cup has been news here in New Zealand ever since it was announced Japan had would be hosting the Cup, and not all of that news was good. For example, it was announced that the New Zealand All Blacks will be required to cover up their tattoos to cater to Japanese culture (apparently, they associate tattoos with organised crime syndicates). Since then, some relaxation of the requirements were announced, which is good: LOTS of rugby players from many countries have tattoos, and forcing them to cover up their tattoos is a bit over the top.

As outsiders, their look at US politics was good. The USA is so deeply divided politically, and the current regime controlling the White House is so unpredictable that anyone who declares they know for sure what will happen in 2020 is delusional.

The look at Europe was also good. The spread of far right and fascist politics in Europe poses a grave threat not just to the world economy, but also to world peace. An unstable Europe has caused two world wars, and if fascism continues to rise in Europe, another could be unavoidable.

The first video was released on December 27, and I thought the second part would be released on or before December 31, so I planned on posting the two together when both were posted. Unfortunately, it turned out that Part 2 was released on January 2, a time when I was too busy celebrating the holidays to check out YouTube videos. I finally checked last night, and Part 2 had been posted. Oh well, at least I didn’t count on them to meet my quota for 2018.

Predictions are always interesting, and whether The Economist’s predictions prove to be right or wrong, their take is still interesting. But they definitely won’t be right about everything.

And neither will any of us.

Hang on a minute

The healthcare profession is a noble one, and we entrust our very lives to doctors, nurses, medical and lab technicians, pharmacists, researchers—and more I’ve forgotten at the moment. However, doctors aren’t perfect, and one particular flaw has reared its head again in my Health Journey, though I’m probably most annoyed that I didn’t see it immediately.

I’ve had a gout attack for more than a month now, one that began, I thought at the time, over stress about “something that happened [that] week that upset me, because stress is my major trigger of gout attacks.” Three weeks later, the attack was waning when I injured the same ankle, and the attack flared up again. Or, so I decided.

It was nearly over when I went on my big day out a week later, and then the next day I ate turkey for lunch, and my attack roared back with a vengeance, and it’s still going on. Naturally, perhaps, I assumed the turkey caused the flare up, even though that’s never happened before.

I now think I was wrong, at least partly, about all of that.

Nigel reminded me this morning that we hadn’t considered my drug changes. Last September, when I was in hospital for evaluation of atrial fibrillation, they put me on what they called “a powerful anti-coagulant” called dabigatran.

What Nigel reminded me of was that when I had the stent put in, they put me on a drug called Clopidogrel, and I had several weeks of unrelenting gout attacks, some severe and even crippling. I learned, thanks to my own research, that “there are studies that indicate that it can cause gout in 1 to 2.5% of patients.”

Yet whenever I’ve mentioned this to doctors since, they have all told me firmly “that’s impossible”, or “it can’t do that”, or any number of similar things. This has annoyed me to no end. As I said a couple years ago:

Too many medical professionals are locked within their blinkered world in which nothing exists that isn’t backed by overwhelming research. So, 1 to 2.5% of people getting gout from a drug would, to them, be totally insignificant—to the point of not existing at all. That’s easy for them to smugly believe: They’re not the ones having to deal with chronic pain, often severe, often crippling.

The stand-off here is that I know what I went through, doctors have consistently denied it was even possible, and I get pissed off at them. Despite that, I always listen and take what they say to heart. Which is why it never occurred to me that my current anti-coagulant, dabigatran, might also cause gout.

Surprise! There’s evidence it does. Medsafe (New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority) is a part of New Zealand’s Ministry of Health. Among other things, it’s tasked with tracking “adverse reactions” to prescription drugs, and they’ve noticed reports of gout attacks among people on the drug. They said on their site:

Gout is not a known side effect of dabigatran and is not included as a side effect in the data sheet. A search of the WHO’s pharmacovigilance database VigiBase to date, revealed 71 reports worldwide of gout or gout-like symptoms, suspected to be associated with dabigatran use. This is a higher number than expected, making this association a safety signal. As always these are reports of a suspected link between dabigatran and gout and it is likely that other factors are also involved. This is why we are seeking more information. [link and emphasis added]

I realise that 71 cases worldwide may not seem like many (unless you’re one of the 71, of course), but it was enough to convince Medsafe to do some monitoring. Between January and July of this year, Medsafe had 8 cases reported to the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM):

Two of the patients were female and six were male, and the mean age was 70 years. Of the seven patients with gout, two had a history of gout while the other patients either did not have a gout history or the history was uncertain. The onset of gout or gout like symptoms was within 10 weeks after starting treatment with dabigatran for five patients while it was up to over a year for the other patients.

They also note that:

Cases have also been identified in other countries. Six new reports were added to VigiBase during the monitoring period of which three are from New Zealand.

So New Zealand reported around 10% of the total worldwide cases, which seems improbable. This suggests that there could be a more than casual link (and a lot of underreporting—do doctors not report cases because they think it's impossible?). The problem is in the details:

Review of this safety concern highlighted that other conditions experienced by the patients may increase the risk for developing gout, common risk factors such as atrial fibrillation and difference in methods used to diagnose gout. As gout is a disease that is characterised by flares, it is difficult to pin point the cause of development of the disease as well as reasons for improvement.

I was prescribed dabigatran because of AF, as many others have been, and there seems to be a link between AF and gout, which muddies the waters a bit. But whether the drug causes or aggravates gout all by itself is kind of beside the point: There is some sort of connection we don’t fully understand, and patients deserve to know be told about it. Medsafe don’t want to because the link hasn’t been conclusively proven, and the specific mechanism for how this might happen isn’t understood so it can’t be properly investigated. I get all that, but not telling patients what IS known is not acceptable.

At this moment, neither New Zealand nor the manufacturer list gout attacks as a possible side effect.

It is possible, maybe even probable, that if I mention this to my doctor she’ll tell me that dabigatran can’t cause gout attacks. The problem being that to most doctors, lack of clear proof equals lack of ANY evidence.

So, I don’t know where this will go from here. Maybe they’ll raise my dosage of allopurinol; the Medsafe review mentioned that controlling uric acid levels in the blood is important. Well, duh! I’ll try to insist that the doctor reports my experience with the drug to CARM, but I can’t force her to, obviously.

What I know is this. My gout was reasonably stable since they raised my dosage of allopurinol, with only one severe attack I can remember. This current attack began around 6½ weeks after I began taking dabigatran, and it’s lasted 4½ weeks (so far), with some days worse and some better, but it never actually ends. The length of this attack is also unusual.

What I don’t know is whether the dabigatran is the specific cause of this attack, or just an enabler of sorts, helping other triggers—like the stress I thought started this, the injury, or the turkey—to do their worst. Nevertheless, I clearly need to take action, and that’s where this particular journey will be headed.

It would be nice if doctors helped in this process, but maybe they just can’t. That’s okay, I can do it for them. And, I will.

Important note: This post is about my own personal health journey. My experiences are my own, and shouldn’t be taken as indicative for anyone else. Similarly, other people may have completely different reactions to the same medications I take—better or worse. I share my experiences because others may have the same or similar experiences, and I want them to know that they’re not alone. But, as always, discuss your situation and how you’re feeling openly, honestly, and clearly with your own doctor, and always feel free to seek a second opinion from another doctor.

Internet Wading: Numbers, words, food, and art

Another month has passed, and the links to random, interesting, and randomly interesting things have piled up. The list is varied, as always, with numbers, words, food, and art. And history, of course. Gotta have some of that.

I’ve often said that these posts are the catch-all for things I see on the Internet over a month that will never make it into their own post, but I realised recently that making a list of such things may imply something about me, and it does: I’m as random in what I find interesting as this list is.

But sometimes I find things interesting that I don’t even fully understand, like the video above, or the article, “Numberphile Explains the World's Most Evil Number Named After One of Hell's Princes”. What I don’t understand is anyone thinking numbers are creepy, or the whole devil thing. Maybe one has to believe in hell and satan and all that to see creepiness in the numbers.

Well, maybe some numbers we can all hate: Time. “A brief history of (New Zealand Standard) time” tells the story of how New Zealand was the first to adopt a universal time for the entire country. New Zealand has always been ahead of time. You’re welcome.

Well, maybe some art: “The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture” talks about what it sounds like, and I’d heard all this before, the pictures were helpful.

Talking about the real colour of Greek sculpture is moving into science, so may as well talk about real science, what archaeologists have been up to. For instance, “Archeologist Discovered Evidence Of Ancient Chemical Warfare”. People being cruel in warfare is nothing new, apparently. And speaking of warfare, “Archaeologists Discovered vast medieval Buildings buried under prehistoric fortress at Old Sarum, England”. It may have been built by Henry I.

Food—or, food history: “Great Depression Grub – 5 Makeshift Meals People Made when Food was Scarce”. My mother made the first one all the time. It was okay. She also made green bean casserole: “Dorcas Reilly, 92, New Jersey woman who invented green bean casserole, is dead”.

More specifically contemporary history also came my way this past month. For example, “They were a gay, interracial couple in an age of relentless bigotry. The two Harolds didn’t flinch.”. This was a nice story of a sort not told often enough.

Contemporary life also features a lot in posts that I find. For example, “How to write the perfect sentence”, which looks at what famous writers thought about sentences. Probably interesting mostly to the writer hidden inside me somewhere or other. The blogger in me found this list interesting when I was double-checking a quote: “The Top 10: Misattributed Quotations”.

Recently, anthropologist David Graeber spoke to Radio New Zealand on “Why bullshit jobs are booming”. There’s audio at the link, but the article is pretty thorough.

Finally, a problem we don’t have in New Zealand: “Discarding Halloween pumpkins adds to greenhouse effect, so take advantage of drop-off site or a Pumpkin Smash”. I applaud the effort—and it’s certainly not something anyone worried about when I was a kid, though clearly we should have. New Zealand doesn’t have the orange pumpkins, and what they apply that name to are what Americans call squash. The remains are are usually put in home compost, and the stereotype is the plants growing out of some gardener’s compost heap. I should add, I don’t now how common that really is. We’ve certainly never had that happen, but, we’ve always had bins, not heaps.

Well, that’s it, so it’s time to pumpkin catapult this month’s Internet Wading post.

Internet Wading: August 2018 edition

This month’s Internet Wading collection of links is mostly serious topics. It happens.

Let’s get the politics out of the way first, shall we? Okay, let’s! First, Catherine Price tells us “How to Break Up with Donald Trump”, which isn’t necessary for most people, of course, but it’s actually for people who oppose the current regime. Short version: Walk away from the screen.

Cheap, often silly, shots sully political debate, and David Shariatmadari took on one: “'Virtue-signalling' – the putdown that has passed its sell-by date”. Apparently it passed that date in 2016, when The Guardian published the piece, but it’s still true. And one of the most annoying of the slurs the rightwing loves so dearly. Yawn.

Meanwhile, a truly important Internet Rage, “'Elitist': angry book pirates hit back after author campaign sinks website”, which is about as dumb a reason for “outrage” as it sounds. I laughed at the Internet Outrager who fumed, “writers are the most pretentious pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. I’ll find another way to pirate your books assholes.” So, people expecting to be paid for their work makes them “pretentious pieces of shit” and "assholes", but refusing to pay someone for the work they’ve done does not. Okay, then.

Get away from the keyboard! Because “Good Things Happen in Book Stores”. Well, duh! But don’t stay too long or you may buy too much and have a new problem: “Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them”. I actually heard about that quite some time ago. And, no, I do NOT have that problem, no siree!! [quietly hides piles of unread books…]

There are REAL problems in this world, of course, including one that people are ridiculed over constantly. But, it turns out that gluten intolerance is “Not just a fad: the surprising, gut-wrenching truth about gluten”. This was actually a fascinating new (to me) look at a problem that people in my life have been affected by.

Combining tech issues and culture, “Japan's Emperor Is Stepping Down Soon, Which Could Cause Major Headaches for Computer Calendars”. This isn’t a problem in the West, but it did remind me of the “Y2K bug” that wasn’t, but this apparently really is a problem.

History! “How One Woman Brought the 'Mother's Curse' to Canada” talks about the filles du roi in 17th Century French Canada, and so, one of humans’ best understood genetic mutations.

“Sulphur, Sicilians, and the Exodus to the USA” tells us about sulphur mining in Sicily, men who eventually migrated to the USA. I never knew that sulphur mining was done naked. Actually, I never knew anything about sulphur mining. Or that any mining was done naked. So, it was a new information gold—sorry, sulphur—mine.

Going back even farther, “Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans?” In this article on The Atlantic, Adam Frank takes “A look at the available evidence”. The article tells us about how speculation can help us understand the cycles of civilisation.

And, there has to be at least one non-serious thing: “5 Stupid Things You Won't Believe Have Been Around Forever”. This is actually more interesting than the click-baity title would suggest.

And finally, Roger Green wrote recently about old posts that keep getting read long after they’re published, and he said of the post: “It’s sort of like drunk tweeting, only in a longer form. And without the alcohol, but WITH sleep deprivation.” That could probably explain most blogging, to be honest. In that post, Roger also talks about how he keeps track of ideas for blog posts, something I talked about at the end of my July Internet Wading post. And, as it happens, this is my 31st post for August, so my goal for this month has now been met. Yay, me!

And that’s another month done. Happy Wading!

Internet Wading: Devices, aliens, and a birth

Time to wade into the wonderful warm waters of the Internet for some more interesting, quirky, or annoying things I ran across this month, things that would never make a blog post of their own. If, you know, I was actually blogging regularly. Still, here we go with anotgehr outbreak of worryitis.

There was a lot of hoopla in the news in NZ recently, as there is from time to time, about device addiction. Much of it comes across as the news media obsessing about some health condition they just heard about (or, maybe, made up?) or sinply forgot they already obsessed about that same topic many times before. The graphic up top about “America’s device addiction” clearly represents survey data, but it also nevertheless carries the feeling of the original survey’s silent handwringing and pearl-clutching, the sort of thing the newsmedia feeds off of.

The NZ Herald held up a moral champion in a story “Teen's smartphone addiction: 'I only slept three hours a night'”. The Herald gives us a warm, fuzzy anti-device ending to the story. Whew! But hey, we mustn’t worry about phones and tablets alone! “Gaming addiction declared a mental disorder”. The bottom line, though, is that some people do, indeed, struggle with over-dependence on electronic devices and technology of one sort or another. But the newsmedia seems incapable of separating them from people who may use technology “too much”, but who can just as easily move on. An honest discussion of the issues is good, moral panics are not, and neither is demonising people because someone somewhere thinks they use their electronic device “too much”.

Now on to some real science: “New Scientific Theory For Origin Of Octopuses: They’re Aliens”. Well, of course they are. Duh! Or, how about “NASA Releases 4K Video Of The Moon Ending The Moon Landing Conspiracy”, because nothing stops a conspiracy theory as effectively as facts and evidence, right?

On to the Arts! “21 Books You’ve Been Meaning To Read”, because who doesn’t need to feel inadequate about something else in their lives? On the other hand, “Ivan Albright’s meticulous attention to the human body continues to be an inspiration to young artists” talking about a painter and his works. Fascinating, even though I’d personally never heard of him before.

This one defies categories, really. It’s just kinda interesting-ish: “27 Perfect Coincidences That Were Luckily Captured on Camera”.

June is LGBT+ Pride Month in the Northern Hemisphere, with all the related talk about history and culture, such as this article about Baron Von Steuben: “The American Revolution’s Greatest Leader Was Openly Gay”. What fascinates me about such stories is the extent to which historians will work hard to downplay the reality of historic figures’ lives and the reality—or even possibility—of their homosexuality. I first became aware of that when I was reading about Walt Whitman and saw that historians denied the obvious homoeroticism in his poetry, or the evidence about Whitman’s sexuality.

There were others, too. For example, many years ago I saw a workshop of a play about England’s King Edward II and his relationship with Piers Gaveston. It was the first time I’d ever heard of any gay kings. Since then, I’ve read about King William II, King James I (who was also James VI of Scotland), and others. Related: “The secret history of the gay Kings and Queens of England”.

What all these people have in common is the need that some heterosexual scholars have to “de-gay” people in the past. It denies LGBT+ people our history and our culture, but, worse, by erasing us from history, it also perpetuates the political myth that LGBT+ people are something new, and it’s some sort of fad.

Some politicians clearly don’t get it. In New Zealand, Judith Collins, widely expected to challenge Simon Bridges for the leadership of the National Party sooner or later, got in trouble for “liking” a Tweet that mentioned gays as a negative thing: “Judith Collins apologises for liking 'hugely disappointing' tweet about Labour's 'gays'”. Thing is, Judith has a history: She voted in favour of marriage equality, but she also voted against all three readings of the Civil Unions Act in 2004. In March, 2005, she voted to re-legalise discrimination against LGBT+ New Zealanders. In December of that year, she voted to define marriage as being one man/one woman (I talked about the 2004/5 votes in a post in 2011). She appears to have evolved in recent years, which is great—sincerely. But this incident suggests she’s not all the way there yet.

But forget all that, the biggest news of the month (Year? Millennium?) is that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has had her baby! “'Welcome to our village wee one': PM Jacinda Ardern gives birth to a baby girl”. The way things are going in the world, and especially certain parts of it, it’s nice to have something nice to focus on, if only for a moment. [See also: “Birth of PM's baby makes international headlines”].

So, with the Prime Minster’s (and New Zealand’s) waiting over, that’s enough wading, too.

The graphic up top is a "Chart of the Day" infographic from Statista.

Aging, dying and not doing either

Over time, most of us become keenly aware that we are ageing, and that means that, ultimately, that the years ahead of us are fewer than the years behind us. It could be knees that don’t work as well as they used to, receding hairlines, serious health problems, or anything else that brings the reality home to us. And then some us will think, what if we could stop all that nonsense? What if we could stop ageing? What if we could be immortal?

Earlier this week I watched some related videos on this subject. Together they talk about the state of research and, based on that, what is currently believed to be possible in “curing” ageing and, perhaps, stopping death itself. I was reminded of these today when TVNZ’s ONE News broadcast a BBC story on how gene therapy has seemingly reversed haemophilia Type A. It was one of the most extraordinary medical science stories I’ve seen in a long time. And it got me to thinking, if scientists could find a way to repair that defective gene, what other ones, genes related to ageing, might they also figure out how to fix?

The first video was from a YouTube Channel called Kutzgesagt – In a Nutshell:



The next video in the series is from CGP Grey:



Since then, Kurtzgesagt has released another video on the topic:


Together, these three videos give some glimpses about what may be possible to “cure” ageing, maybe even death. The latest news about successful gene therapy suggests that at least some of these brave new ideas may actually come true. I hope I live to see any of it, even if it’s too late to help me personally. I’d like to know that humanity will endure and that in the future life will be a better. But, then, that's always true.

Daffodil Day

Like the boy in the TV commercial, "I wear it for my mum." Cancer killed my mother, and today I get to help return the favour: It's Daffodil Day in New Zealand to raise money for the NZ Cancer Society to fund research, provide education, and help people. I wear the daffodil for my mother, but I donate so one day no one will need to wear one. 💔#daffodilday2017 #nzcancersociety #nzdaffodilday #fuckcancer

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Aug 24, 2017 at 6:54pm PDT

Today was Daffodil Day in New Zealand, the major annual fundraiser for the New Zealand Cancer Society that’s been running since 1990. It’s such a small thing, really: People spend a few dollars for an artificial daffodil to pin on their jackets, and together that money adds up into some serious dollars. And it’s all so very worth it.

It’s been nearly four decades since cancer killed my mother, but one day that result will be rare. Science is making discoveries all the time that are already saving people’s lives and improving the quality of life for those who cannot yet be saved. I’m utterly sure that one day science will conquer cancer.

This is one of those causes where a little donation can go a long way, helping people now and into the future. But it’s one of those good causes that I fervently hope will one day will be gone because it’s no longer needed. But until then, I’ll buy my daffodil every year, and I’ll give more when I can. No one could save my mother, but I can honour her by helping, even in my tiny way, to hurry the day in which no one will lose someone they love to cancer. I’ll never stop hoping that we’ll win, and soon.

This is the TV commercial I was referring to in my Instagram post, and the boy I mentioned specifically is the first person to face the camera:

A story that just wasn’t true

As children, we all learn stories that aren’t true, sometimes they’re intended as stories or fables, other times they’re presented as fact. And then there are the stories we take to be real, regardless of whether they were told to us that way, and when we learn they’re not actually true, it can be disorienting. One such non-truthful story, a bible story I learned as a kid, was back in front of me this week.

As a kid, I learned the bible story of the battle of Jericho from the Book of Joshua. Somewhere along the line I also learned the song “Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho” (the verison above is by Mahalia Jackson). As a child, and for some time afterward, I believed the story. Even though there’s not a shred of evidence to support the biblical story.

These days I can see I may have been a bit gullible. The Wikipedia article has a good summary of the bible’s account:

Joshua sent spies to Jericho, the first city of Canaan to be taken, and discovered that the land was in fear of Israel and their God. The Israelites marched around the walls once every day for seven days with the priests and the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day they marched seven times around the walls, then the priests blew their ram's horns, the Israelites raised a great shout, and the walls of the city fell. Following God's law of herem the Israelites took no slaves or plunder but slaughtered every man, woman and child in Jericho, sparing only Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute who had sheltered the spies, and her family.

There is SO much wrong with that story. The Israelites said they’d been promised the land of Canaan by their god, but ended up slaves in Egypt instead. After their release, they set about conquering and slaughtering the people living there.

Except, they didn’t in this case.

The account was written as much as two and a half millennia after the battle was supposed to have happened. Moreover, extensive archaeological work at Tell es-Sultan, as Jericho is now known, have proven that none of the wall structures date from the time of the supposed battle. For this and other reasons, scholars discount the Book of Joshua as an historic record, and instead suggest the story was written for political reasons.

We can also now prove that the Israelites did not, in fact, slaughter the Canaanites, as the story claimed, and they were a people the Book of Joshua had marked for extermination by the Israelites. An article published by New Scientist, “Bronze Age DNA helps unravel true fate of biblical Canaanites” says that the DNA of the Canaanites still exists in the region.

This story's not really important, nor is the fact that it's not true. The fact that fundamentalist religionists probably still believe the story is true as isn't all that important, either, except insofar as it's bad to reject fact and evidence in favour of believing a false story as if it was true. But there's nothing particularly unique about that, either, and it persists in cultures all around the world. And, in any case, for the religious, religious stories are more about adhering to their religion, and reasons/examples for doing so, than they are about any historic record, despite occasional claims to the contrary by those who have demonstrated a disregard (or, too often, contempt) for actual evidence.

This story is, however, an example of something else: The need for scepticism. When I was a child, I accepted all bible stories as unassailable fact, and it was only as an adult that I learned there was absolutely no supporting evidence for many of the stories I'd once held as factual, other stories (like that of the Battle of Jericho) had been proven untrue, and plenty more that had no conclusive supporting evidence.

Scepticism was a large factor in my development of religious doubt: If so much I had been taught wasn't true, was any of it true? I still haven't finished working through all that, but there was one more positive result of all this: I learned to be sceptical of whatever someone was trying to sell me—not just religion, but also politics, news, even products and services. It's simply not good enough for someone to claim something is true, they have to be able to prove it with fact-based evidence.

So, in this case, I was long ago taught the story of the Battle of Jericho, eventually learned it wasn't true, how they knew that, as well as theories about why the story was invented. And now I know what really happened to the Canaanites (who seem to have been hated by a lot of the peoples in the area). All of that is based on fact-based evidence that anyone can learn about.

Learning what happened to the Canaanites fascinated me this week and captured my attention. The memories of former beliefs, and that song, just came along for the ride.

Options, choice, and woo

It’s human nature to want to fix things that are wrong with us—disease, conditions, even just things we don’t like about ourselves. Science and medicine give us many tools to help with disease and health conditions, but sometimes we want something more or different. Most of the time, that’s okay, but sometimes it’s quackery. I found that out in my own fight against gout.

Rationalist sceptics of all sorts (especially in the areas of religion and science) have a name they use for nonsense: Woo is a word used to describe any belief for which there’s no supporting evidence, or insufficient evidence, and that’s unscientific or even anti-scientific. It was derived from woo-woo, which I’ve often heard was coined because of the mocking spooky sound of the word. It definitely IS insulting, intentionally so, I think, and I don’t have a problem with that: Sometimes it takes a little push to get people to confront their irrational beliefs.

Over the years, I’ve searched for solutions to gout, things that could help prevent attacks as much as possible. This was because of my stubbornness in avoiding all prescription drugs, something I managed to do until this year, though it wasn’t a good idea, obviously.

Still, part of the problem I faced was that doctors wouldn’t give definitive recommendations, a problem I wrote about last year. I wrote:

Without any real help from the medical establishment, people will often go looking for “alternative” answers, which can cause problems or make their condition worse. It also doesn’t help when actual medical advice is given with a declaratory nature, as in, “avoid this thing”, when gout is highly individual and some things just won’t bother some people.

Not long ago, I heard a sceptic of anti-science say that there’s no such thing as “alternative medicine”—there’s either medicine, or there’s quackery. Her point was that medicine is evidence-based and results can be proven, predicted, and reliable. So, the implication is that anything that isn’t those things isn’t medicine, it’s woo.

But, is it really?! Well…

The problem is that lack of proof is not the same thing as lack of evidence, and something that isn’t proven isn’t necessarily ineffective. As long as something isn’t actually harmful, there’s little reason not to try something unproven, and if there’s any evidence it might be beneficial, there may be good reason to try it.

Tart cherries are a good example of this. There’s evidence that tart cherries help fight gout, especially when combined with allopurinol. It’s thought that substances in tart cherries, particularly the Montmorency variety, helps break down uric acid in the blood. That substance is also what gives cherries their dark reddish colour, and it’s higher in tart cherries than in other cherry varieties or in berries.

Researchers at Otago University are studying the efficacy of tart cherry in reducing the frequency and severity of attacks, partly because so many people would rather not go on the drugs. Tart cherry seemed to help me, however, my circumstances changed and I needed stronger weapons.

Not all cherry capsules are the same. For the past few years, I’ve been taking Redd Remedies’ Gouch, which I only recently learned contains ordinary cherry. It also contains ginger (about which, more in a bit), among other things. Before that, I took Radiance’s GoutEze, which contains tart cherry, but much less of it than Gouch has of ordinary cherry, and it has a lot more ginger, plus baking soda, which made me burp too much, leading to me changing brands. Both cost roughly a couple dollars a day.

The problem is the ginger—and the baking soda, and all the other stuff added. Most of it has no evidence of efficacy, but the use of ginger and baking soda are both nothing but woo.

Fans of including it claim that ginger “warms the blood”, and that keeping joints warm is critical to avoiding gout attacks (I saw a recommendation that gout sufferers should wear socks to bed). The fact, however, is that ginger does not “warm the blood”. It absolutely has warming properties—in the mouth and stomach alone. Once consumed, ginger is eventually neutralised in digestion and it doesn’t—and can’t—“warm the blood”. I knew this, but ignored it because, at the time, I couldn’t find tart cherry pills without ginger.

The use of baking soda and similar compounds, fans say, “alkalinises the blood” making it less hospitable to uric acid and the crystals they form. This is utter nonsense, and can even be dangerous.

The human body is designed to operate within a very narrow pH range: If the body becomes too acidic or to alkaline, we die. Because of that, humans have all sorts of natural mechanisms to control the pH balance (for example, respiration). The foods we consume DO increase the acidity or alkalinity of the digestive system—for a while. There, too, the human body naturally intervenes to keep the pH balance in the normal range, and if our bodies can’t do that, we need medical help, but unless that’s the case, nothing we consume can change the acidity level of the blood—nothing.

This particular woo can become dangerous: I saw advice that gout sufferers should consume baking soda directly to “alkalinise the blood”. Trouble is, consuming too much can be fatal in some circumstances, and it’s adding extra sodium, one of the leading causes of hypertension, to the body.

So, sceptic that I am, I want to see some evidence that something may be effective, as is the case with tart cherries. But even I have been desperate enough to try full on woo: Apple cider vinegar.

I tried it many years ago, and suffered a gout attack shortly after I started. However, in my recent misery, I was desperate enough to give it another go, and I read up on it.

All the advice was that it must be organic apple cider vinegar (ACV). This was my first red flag: There is no chemical difference between organic and non-organic ACV, since they're both acetic acid solutions. Also, organic ACV can actually have higher levels of pesticides because organic-approved ones have to be used more often and at higher levels than non-approved ones.

Fans of ACV said that it works because the acetic acid is “alkalinised” in digestion, and then lowers the acid levels of the blood. There’s an element of truth in this, in that the body does alkalinise acids in digestion, but, as I’ve already said, that doesn’t and can’t “alkalinise the blood”.

So, I wondered if the effective part might actually be the “mother”, the cloudy, stringy-ish stuff in organic ACV that’s the bacteria that produces the acetic acid. We know that certain bacteria can be very beneficial (for example, the bacteria in yoghurt can help restore bowel health after a course of antibiotics), so I thought that possibility was enough to give it a go.

I had zero benefit from ACV. Despite claims that a gout attack would end in hours or, at most, a few days, ACV had absolutely no effect on my attack, and I ended the experiment after a couple weeks. What DID work was increasing my dosage of tart cherry and drinking tart cherry juice, too: Once I started that (well after the ACV experiment), my symptoms finally eased, and I finally went into remission.

So, how could all those people who claim such miraculous results be so wrong? There are a lot of reasons, starting with the “it worked for me” fallacy. Trying a substance on ourselves without controls or strict observable regimen means we can’t possibly know if it worked or not. Instead, it could just be confirmation bias—essentially, we got the results we expected. This is a form of self-deception, sure, but for most people it’s most likely to be a placebo effect, a real phenomenon in which people believe that a substance has helped them when it hasn’t.

For people like me, who want evidence—not proof, necessarily, but verifiable evidence—that something is safe and effective, we are perhaps a bit less likely to believe that something “worked” when it didn’t. Fans of woo dismiss our experience with a special pleading fallacy, arguing that something wasn’t done right—we didn’t take enough ACV, we didn’t take it correctly, we didn’t use it long enough, etc. But without controlled studies, there’s no verifiable evidence, and that fact beats their confirmation bias, whether they want to admit it or not.

The bottom line for me is that extraordinary claims require evidence—it doesn’t have to be proof, just verifiable evidence. People can talk about their own self-described wonderful experience, but that’s not evidence.

Which brings me back to tart cherry. There is evidence that it's effective, though we don’t yet know how effective or whether prescription drugs are needed, too. I’m well aware that my own seemingly positive experience using tart cherry is not evidence, and I don’t claim that it is. People must always do their own research, talk to their doctor, and listen to their own bodies.

In my opinion, we must all trust our intellect and judgement, and follow the facts and evidence, not blindly follow the latest woo. If we do, we’ll save time, trouble, and probably some money, too.

Still, people have the right to make their own choices, even ones some of us may consider irrational. However, they don’t have the right to preach their choices unchallenged. No one does.

And that is definitely a fact.

John Glenn

I was sad to hear that John Glenn died yesterday, though 95 is a pretty long life. Like a lot of Americans, I admired him for his achievements in his first career, but I also appreciated his Senate career and his candour in politics. I can’t always say one, let alone both.

I was too young to know about his historic flight at the time, though I certainly heard about it many times as I grew up. I wrote about all that back in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of his historic space flight in earth’s orbit. I also wrote this about his political career:

On the whole, I thought Glenn was a good Senator. However, there was one incident that cemented his image in my mind as a good guy. A Washington lobbyist told me in the early 1990s about an incident in which Glenn found himself in an elevator with the vile, disgusting and repugnant Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. Glenn was reported to have said, “You know what the real problem with abortion is, Jesse? That it’s not retroactive.” In the case of Jesse Helms, I couldn’t possibly have agreed more. [emphasis and link in the original]

I have no idea whether Helms knew that Glenn’s remark was aimed at him, but either way it’s one of my favourite US politics anecdotes. And, no, I have no independent verification that it’s actually true, but it could be, and is typical of the sorts of directness that marked Glenn’s political career.

Glenn was good on a number of issues, and he was pretty good on civil rights issues. He did vote for the infamous “Defense [sic] of Marriage” Act (DOMA) in 1996, but he had a lot of company: All up, 85 US Senators voted for it and only 14 voted against it. That same year, he also voted to prohibit job discrimination against gay people, which demonstrates he wasn’t a reflexively anti-gay politician as so many others were at the time, and some still are.

John Glenn was unique: There aren’t that many people who achieve hero status in their career, let alone then go on to have a distinguished second career. On the whole, Glenn was a good man who did good. He’s another one who's like we’ll not see again.

Godspeed, John Glenn.

Metric matters

One of the most jarring things I had to deal with when I moved to New Zealand was abruptly switching to the metric system. While I’d been taught the metric system in school, it all fizzled out when the USA backed out of conversion. It still hasn’t fixed that failure, and it still causes problems, as the TEDed video above mentions.

As the US was beginning the process of conversion, I heard many people—including classmates—say, “why should we convert to the metric system when the rest of the world is converting to our system?!” The truth is, many of us really believed that, in the pre-Internet age when it wasn’t easy to debunk bovine excrement passed off as fact. As we all now know, the truth was the exact opposite.

Actually, I said, “we all know”, but that’s not entirely true: The truth is that even now there are Americans taking to the Internet to declare the myth yet again (I’ve seen it myself). Instead, of course, the United States, Liberia, and Burma are the only countries on earth that don’t primarily use the metric system.

Metric conversion took off in 1975 with the passage of the Metric Conversion Act. We saw road signs with speeds in MPH and KPH, highway distance signs giving dual distances, speedometers in both MPH and KPH, and millilitres and grams began appearing on consumer packages.

On July 25, 1991, President George H.W. Bush signed Executive Order 12770, which, among other things, ordered the US Federal Government to use the metric system in procurements. It was a major step in the right direction, but not one ordinary Americans followed.

Even so, we were taught a lot of equivalencies when I was growing up: A metre was roughly the distance from the floor to a doorknob. A paperclip weighed about a gram. And, a soft drink company—7Up, I think it was—ran commercials for their new litre bottle, declaring “it’s a litre bit more than a quart”. Obviously those all worked, because I remember them to this day. I learned another here in New Zealand: A pound is roughly 500 grams, and I first learned that because butter is sold in 500 gram blocks that are the same size as a pound of butter in the USA.

Because of all this background, I had an easier time than those born before or after me, as I wrote nearly ten years ago, in October 2006:

Adapting to the metric system was easy for weights and measures, a little more difficult for temperature. If someone told me it was 21 outside, I had no idea if that meant it was time to bundle up or strip off.

With both language and metrics, it soon dawned on me that the only way to learn them and make them second nature was to just completely switch and not be tempted to make any conversions…

Even so, I made a little business card-sized chart with common temperatures in both metric and the US system, and I carried around it around so I could double-check the temperature when I was in doubt—which, for quite awhile, was often. Now, after more than 20 years of total immersion in the metric system, I still don’t automatically know what a given temperature feels like, but I’m better than I ever used to be.

I was reminded of all this last week when I was making my pumpkin pies: I had to convert the baking temperatures to Celsius, and I had to pour the evaporated milk into a measuring cup with ounces because the metric can sold here holds more than the 12 ounces I needed. If the USA had adopted the metric system all those years ago, I wouldn’t have had to do any of that. Maybe someday I won’t have to.

Related

As it happens, Veritasium has just released a new video, “What the Fahrenheit?!”, below:



And, earlier this year, he produced a video about the Celsius system called, “Celsius Didn’t Invent Celsius”, which is interesting as history and as science:

Internet Wading for November 2016 – Looking and listening

I like sharing things I find on the Internet that I think are interesting for whatever reason, and that’s the point of these Internet Wading posts. One might think that since I missed doing one of these posts last month, I’d have a whole lot of links to share this month. Turns out, that would be an incorrect assumption.

Still, what I have this month is a typically mixed bag—a small bag, but mixed, nevertheless, beginning with the video above from Wired: “The Psychology Behind the World's Most Recognizable Sounds”. The YouTube description sums it up well:

Two sonic branding experts explain the thinking behind some of the world's most recognizable sounds. Featuring: Andrew Stafford - Co-Founder & Director at Big Sync Music. Steve Milton - Founding Partner at Listen.

Well, that’s a bit of sound, about some vision? “17 stunning photos of black Victorians show how history really looked”. It says:

All too often, the movies and media and books that retell the stories of our past err on the side of all-white casting unless it's something that's explicitly about race. And all too often, they use "historical accuracy" as an excuse for that same whitewashing — regardless of the easy-to-find evidence presented above.

They say that "history is written by the winners." But I think it might be time to set the record straight.

I haven’t shared anything from Upworthy on this blog, I don’t think, and I stopped sharing anything on Facebook quite some time ago because it was all clickbait with no substance (typical headlines often ended with “…and you won’t believe what happened next”). But the site started to post more substantive things and began focusing on video. As part of that, not only were posts bylined, they were also dated—previously one of my pet peeves about the site. In any case, this post was interesting—maybe others will be, too.

How about something that crosses the Pacific? “Faith Fraud: the story of Arthur Worthington” tells the story of Arthur Worthington, who was “a con artist who travelled the USA, marrying rich women then abandoning them and stealing all their money.” He fled to New Zealand, started a religion, and when the law started to catch up with him again, caused a riot in New Zealand. The Radio New Zealand podcast available at the link asks not only why he did it, but also “Was he a common crook? Was he psychopathic? Was he a true believer?”

Part of the reason I didn’t do an Internet Wading post last month is that I was posting a lot about the election, including a series of posts that are similar in some ways to these posts—but a bit more serious and completely political. This posts are called “Political Notebook”, and I’ve decided to keep doing them, though I don’t know if they’ll be on any sort of schedule or not.

In any case, the election didn’t go well, and it took some time to decompress. Maybe something otherworldly would help? Roger Green tells us about being hypnotised and a realisation he just had about the experience. I have a small mention in that post; full disclosure and all that.

Maybe some pretty pictures would help. Jason shares fall colours and the last of summer flowers, which I appreciate even though it’s Spring here. It was another nice distraction from the election unpleasantness.

Okay that’s enough Internet Wading for this month. Even that short dip was making my skin pruney.

Internet Wading for September 2016

These Internet Wading posts are all about sharing: I share links to things that catch my eye in a given month, things that would almost certainly never end up in a blog post otherwise. They may be interesting, profound, silly, or even stupid, but they’re all unique enough for me to check them out, and then share them.

I’ve noticed that these Internet Wading posts have recurring themes, especially history, art and creativity, and pop culture, among other things. That’s probably because outside of politics and religion, they’re the topics I’m the most interested in. Obviously.

Let’s begin this month with something topical: “Battling billboards” talks about the billboards/signs used in Auckland’s local government elections, casting a critical eye over the design, layout, and even colours. I know the author in real life, and I think he does a good job critiquing the various efforts. I do the same thing less formally whenever I see the signs, and have had very similar conclusions.

I have to admit, titling an article, "Smooth": 7 questions about the song you were too embarrassed to ask” didn’t exactly draw me in. While I liked the song (video above), I wasn’t aware of having any questions about it, but, even if I had, I doubt I’d be embarrassed to ask them. Nevertheless, it turned out to be surprisingly interesting—not the first time that’s happened to me.

Was Oscar Wilde’s "De Profundis" “one of the greatest love letters ever written”?. Maybe, but the treatment of Wilde was certainly a sad tale.

Speaking of marginalised people, Rob Tannenbaum tells us a long form story of “The life and murder of Stella Walsh, Intersex Olympic Champion”. It’s certainly a story I’d never heard, and it's one that deserves to be known.

Tannenbaum himself, meanwhile, recently became the focus of social media attention when he published a series of Tweets  talking about shady dealings of the Trump Foundation, the first person to do so. Since then, journalists began taking an in depth look—as he'd urged in his Tweets.

Jonathan Shaw wrote in Harvard Magazine that human beings may have been “Born to Rest”. This could explain why do many people have trouble exercising regularly.

On the other hand, a “Study suggests exercise can offset perils of alcohol”, which is a pretty good reason to exercise. Once we’re done resting, of course. Or drinking alcohol.

We know that humans and Neandethal’s had sex, because their DNA is present in modern humans (my own DNA is about 2% Neanderthal). But the question some researchers are trying to work out is, “Was it for love?” Apparently, part of the answer may come from working out the direction that the genes were transferred. There’s even some conjecture about Neanderthal penises, something that I’d never actually wondered about.

In more “recent” history, scientists have been learning a lot about “Otzi”, the 5300 year old frozen mummy discovered in the Alps 25 years ago this past week. In a Daily Mail article reprinted by the NZ Herald, I found out several things I didn’t know, like the fact that an arrow was found in Otzi’s shoulder in 2001, and that’s likely what killed him, or that scientists hope that bacteria found in his stomach may help cure modern diseases.

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That’s it for this month’s potpourri of stuff from the Internet.

Internet Wading for August 2016

This month’s collection is about language and pop culture, two of my favourite things that aren’t politics. At least, not usually. As usual, a little history, science and creativity makes the mix, too.

When we talk about the evolution of the English language, Latin is an important part of the story. The video above tells us “What Latin Sounded Like – and how we know”. Decoding the evolution of languages is always a bit of a detective story, and the story in this video is no different.

“Proportional Pie Chart of the World’s Most Spoken Languages” tells us a bit about the state of languages on the planet, while “20 misused English words that make smart people look silly” shows that even native speakers can mess up (fewer v. less is one of my own pet peeves). And, while we’re trying to fix that, “Can’t quit saying ‘um’ and ‘ah’? Just learn how to use them better”. Sounds reasonable.

Speaking of Rome, “Pompeii: Incredible images, unprecedented detail laying bare their bones and have perfect teeth” tells us about discoveries made in examining the remains of some of the victims. The story includes this:

“So far, only around 100 of the victims have been captured in plaster. The total number of bodies to be found is approximately 1,150, and that’s with a third of the city left untouched by archaeologists.”

Also from the distant past, “10 Insane Stories That Didn’t Make It Into The Bible” shares stories that I’d mostly heard. Mind you, many of the stories that did make it into the bible are pretty “insane”…

Not related, exactly, “21 Signs That Story You're About To Share Is Secretly B.S.” can help people avoid sharing so much nonsense on social media—and what a wonderful thing that would be.

“Jack Davis, 'MAD' Magazine Cartoonist, Dies at 91”. Davis, who died July 27, was one of my favourite artists at MAD. Roger Green included him in one of his July “Rambling” posts, which are remarkably similar to these Internet Wading posts, almost as if I stole borrowed the idea or something.

Speaking of Roger Green, he wrote about visiting the Lucy Desi Museum in Jamestown, New York. He and the family did not, however, get to visit the statue of “Scary Lucy”. And, of course, “Lucille Ball's 'Scary Lucy' replacement statue unveiled”. And in the comments people criticised the new statue, too. Of course.

And finally this month, for no particular reason except it’s related to my profession, “7 Graphic Design Documentary You Should Be Watching”. Even I haven’t gotten through all of them yet.

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That’s some of what caught my eye over the past month, things that didn’t make it into blog posts—and most wouldn’t have, of course. But that doesn’t make them any less interesting to me.