Spring suffering

I was out for a walk, reveling in the greenery. Pure green is actually quite rare in the Bay Area-- a treat we get for just a few months between bare and yellow/brown (both of which have their own beauty). Rain has fallen nearly every day for a couple of weeks. Flowers were pushing through the fresh grass, and everything looked lush and hydrated. Wow!

But then.... I spotted the saddest-looking cactus. It didn't look lush; it looked waterlogged. Not everyone loves the spring.

Healing and Storytelling

I am experiencing something that most people won't in their lives: the reconnection of a nerve that hasn't worked for several years. Or more precisely, it's not the peripheral nerve itself, but the way the signals are processed in my spinal cord and brain. Things I couldn't sense before are now getting their signals through, and muscles I couldn't control before are now "awake."

This led me to wonder how common it is for the CNS (central nervous system) to heal like this. It turns out that in animals, it's not so uncommon. Even a severed spinal cord can come together again, allowing movement in the affected limbs of rats and cats. I bet Christopher Reeve could have used that (although, of course, he had much more extensive damage than comes from a clean cut with a researcher's scalpel).

I wonder if one reason animals can heal like this is that they lack the ability to tell stories about what is happening to them. Of course they have memory, but they don't put it together into a narrative of their life like humans do. Our narratives are amazing-- we have stories about how our parents created neurotic tendencies in us, about how our spouse is driving us nuts, about how an injury will "ruin our life."

Lacking all of this grants some element of freedom. Perhaps it allows the space simply to heal as much as biologically possible, without all the psychological complications that humans can add. Of course, we also get the benefit of having a mind that can tell stories-- perhaps this enables the doctor to explain what is happening, provide hope, etc. Certainly animals are prone to panic because they cannot see the larger picture of what is happening to them.

Still, I bet healing is simpler among our furred, feathered, and finned friends.

Beef. It's what's for dinner.

I don't eat much red meat. Not for reasons I can state clearly. Mostly I just don't like it much, and it sits kinda heavy in my stomach. But about twice a year, I get a serious craving for it. I usually slake this with about 1/3 pound of rare-cooked roast beef, and that does it until the next time.

Aaaaaahhhhh. I did it tonight. I can feel the carnitine oozing into my blood as I write. I'll let you know if I run out and slaughter a few rabbits too.

Most likely, I am growing muscle. For obscure reasons, I am needing new strength in my low back and one leg, and the raw materials have to come from somewhere.

Udder variations

I'm not sure I want to know the details, but I have certainly noticed the variation in cow udders.

I bought a certain brand of organic yogurt a few months ago, and found it pleasantly creamy despite being nonfat, as well as just the right consistency (between gelatinous and nearly liquid). Yum. So I bought it again this week, only to find that it had the same flavor but a totally different consistency such that it was basically drinkable.

And on a recent trip to Michigan, I noticed that the yogurt-- no matter what flavor-- had a lemony taste. There was lemon-vanilla and lemon-strawberry, for instance, although my mother didn't notice because she lives there all the time. Also, there is a difference between the taste of dairy products in the summer, when the cows eat grass and clover, and the winter, when they eat hay.

Cow chemistry! I love it. Human milk does the same, you know. Perhaps your little baby tastebuds were shaped by these early meals such that certain foods have certain flavors to you that they don't have to me.

I'm waiting for someone who claims they can identify cow types, or countries of origin, or diets, simply by the taste of their milk. They could figure in a good mystery novel...

The merchants of Japan

Today I went to an exhibit and docent tour of Japanese art from the Edo period (1600 - 1850). The fascinating part was that it didn't focus on the Tokugawa ruling clan or the honorable samurai class. Oh, no-- it was about the merchants.

This is significant because the merchants were the bottom of the totem pole, behind the samurai, the farmers, and the artisans. (Rather a change from the capitalist culture of today, ne?)

The exhibit featured textiles, woodblock prints, and tansu. The textiles were mainly indigo dyed. The merchants wanted to have a distict "look," but needed not to use bright colors lest they look like they were usurping the honorable reds, oranges, and purples of the ruling classes. All the three lower strata wore indigo, but the merchants-- always a saucy bunch-- tended to include a red undergarment (for women) or some red artwork on the inside of the kimono (for men). Sometimes the women's red piece would flash as she walked, in that ever-tantalizing, subtle Japanese way.

The indigo work is amazing. Apparently indigo is grown in China, imported to Japan, then bundled into cubes and allowed to ferment underground (like Korean kimchee? my mind wonders...). Then it is mixed with water and various chemicals in a big vat to serve as dye. The interesting thing is that the dye is green-- cloth dipped in it turns blue only after it dries out in the air, due to oxidation. The strength of the dye and the length of the dip allow colors ranging from pale aqua to nearly black.

Next we saw woodcuts that were made to celebrate various occasions, like a birthday, Children's Day, New Year, etc. They were some kind of a picture or scene with a poem written on it. The paper was the classic washi paper, and the printing was the coolest part. The woodblocks were carved with what needed to be printed, spread with paste-like ink, and pressed to the paper.

But the thing is, these were color images. Each color had to be applied separately-- say, red, green, blue, and yellow (sometimes fewer, sometimes more). The trick was that each application of color had to be aligned to the others. Remember how awful color pictures in newspapers looked until they figured out how to get the separate parts aligned? Japan figured it out a few centuries ago.

To get purple, red might be overlaid with blue on that section. Imagine how tricky it was to figure out what shape to carve in the woodblocks for each separate color when they were going to be combined like this. Furthermore, some of the prints had color that faded, say from blue to white continously. Apparently this was done by careful application of the ink to the block so that it was thick on the blue part, then got thinner so the printed color came out paler. Wow.

I also smiled to myself seeing these because I work in the display analysis business. It's common in displays to construct color the using red, green, and blue portions of the image. It seems the Japanese have a long tradition of it-- no wonder they're good at making LCDs!

The tansu were totally cool also. Tansu means "dresser," which in this case refers to a wooden chest in which the merchant kept his goods. It typically was lacquered wood, and had drawers like a familiar dresser. We saw large tansu with wheels so that urban merchants could get them out of the house quickly in the event of a fire. Fires were really common in the wood-and-paper Japanese architecture of the Edo period (recall, no electric lights...). But eventually these rolling ones were banned because in big fires, there would be so many jamming the streets that people were dying, unable to escape the fire.

Then there were the sea tansu for merchant seaman. They were built with many hidden drawers that were left empty so the thing would actually float! Then the important goods could be recovered in the event of a shipwreck.

But the neatest were a couple of "backpack tansu." These were wooden chests with two straps so they could be carried by a person on foot. Perhaps he was selling haircuts, or medicines, or something else small. These, like all the tansu, featured gorgeously carved ironwork around the wood.

So even a few hundred years ago, the Japanese were designing clever little containers that somehow combined perfect functionality with intricate beauty. Truly an amazing exhibit.

Digging beneath the surface

Remember Bamiyan? The site in Afghanistan where two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues were destroyed in Feb of 2001?

It seems that there might have been a third... buried beneath the sand. There's an archaeologist named Zemaryalai Tarzi who intends to find out.

It seems that hatred and destruction don't probe deeply beneath the surface. And if you start digging carefully, you may find buried treasure.

Nature's opportunism

Here in Northern California, we are in the eye of the storm. We are having luscious, springlike weather in a small respite from the rainstorms and damp chill of winter. It's dry, brilliantly sunny, and softly warm (although under the warmth is the subtle hint of cold, because in fact the sun is not quite committed to providing its heat at this early date).

Nature is revelling in it. Birds are singing, trees are blossoming, even a few flowers are waking up. At first I felt some incredulity-- don't they know it's only February? And then some sadness-- they will be stunned and possibly hurt by the return of winter, for it will return.

But now I am feeling some appreciation, even awe, of nature's actions. How wonderfully audacious to proceed confidently with spring behavior in light of the sunshine and 70-degree temperature. It may last a few days, or a week, or even two weeks, and that time can be used! Rather than sitting dormant in winter mode, why not take advantage of the conditions, responding to the reality of the situation rather than carrying some knowledge of how things "ought to be" in February?

Accordingly, I am going to hang my hummingbird feeder today.

Controlling brain waves

Here's an interesting tidbit on controlling brain waves. It is strikingly naive about what might be done with the ability to, much more quickly than with drugs, "slow down, speed up, or stop" any brain waves-- after all, those are your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions!

But for me, this highlighted how malleable the mind is. Buried within those brain waves is each of our perception of the "I", of the self. And they can be so easily modifed! The amazing thing about being human is that these factors of the mind can be modifed by choice; we can, through our own intentions, wreck great changes in the very way our brains process chemicals, and hence respond to inputs.

Don't get tangled in the metaphysics of that. Just contemplate it in your peripheral vision.


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CONTROLLING BRAIN WAVES. A new study conducted at George Mason
University confirms predictions that electrical fields can be used
to modify waves traveling through brain tissue. This is perhaps the
first example of electric modification of neuronal thresholds to
control wave movement. Indeed, it is one of the first times waves
have been controlled in an excitable medium through changing
thresholds. The researchers begin with a section of rat brain; the
tissue consists of 6 layers of 2-dimensional sheets of neurons. A
neural wave is initiated at one end of the network and the signal is
observed at the other end. By using electrical fields, the
excitability of individual neurons can be modified. Doing this can
slow down, speed up, or stop any wave propagating through the
sample. Previously neural waves had only been modified by
pharmacological means. This action can be negated only by washing
out the drug used, which takes seconds, whereas the electric method
takes only microseconds to have an effect. One potential
application for modifying brain waves would be in mitigating
epileptic seizures.