Hakuna Matata, We're F***ed

I'm depressed.

Like all good liberals, I'm a firm believer in recycling. At work, I've even been known to fish recyclable plastic items out of the trash, brush off the crumbs and coffee grounds, and put them in the recycle bin, where they belong. ("Damn it, Karen! The recycle bin is right next to the trash bin. Right next to it, Karen!")

But what's the point? This week I learned that China, which in the past would take our recyclables, sort through them, and use them to make more plastic goods to sell back to us, has decided that it is no longer profitable to do so. Not only have they refused to take any more of our recycling, they are sending boatloads of it back. All of that plastic waste is just going to end up in a landfill—or worse yet in the ocean, to be eaten by fish that will in turn be eaten by us. As a matter of fact, it's already happening. You could call it "The Circle of Plastic Life."

But, hey—hakuna matata! No worries, because our president doesn't believe there's a problem. In fact, while more and more places are banning single-use plastic items like drinking straws, he is selling them online to raise money for his re-election campaign. Which means that, sooner or later, someone will be eating a fish that ingested a drinking straw with "TRUMP" printed on it. (There's got to be a joke there, but I'm too depressed to think of one.)

"But wait," as the TV hucksters who sell such crap would say, "There's more!" This week I also read a BBC article that says scientists are now giving us just 18 months to do something about global warming.

18 months.

Again, not a problem for our president, who once famously tweeted that, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." Besides, even if it's not a hoax, it would be far too difficult and expensive to do anything about it at this point, right? Hakuna matata!

We're f***ed.

Or maybe not.

Fifty years ago, we put a man on the moon. It was an incredibly difficult, incredibly expensive task, but we had a president who believed it could be done and was worth doing, and he convinced our country that it could be done and was worth doing.

"We choose to go to the moon," he said. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."

Just imagine what we could do if we had a president who believed we could save the planet.

Science Matters

“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson

Without science I would literally not be here. I know the word “literally” is often misused by people who actually mean “figuratively,” but in this case I literally mean literally. When I was born I had a severe allergy to milk and had to be given soy formula. Without it, I doubt I would have survived. At this point, I would like to have given a shout-out to the scientist(s) who invented soy formula. Unfortunately, I could not discover their name(s). The only information I could find was a paragraph on the National Institutes of Health website, which states: “In the 1920s, scientists also began developing nonmilk-based formulas for infants allergic to cow's milk. The first nonmilk formula was based on soy flour and became available to the public in 1929.” Whoever those scientists were, I thank them.

Science has saved me in other ways, too: from the decongestants, antihistamines, and antibiotics that got me through countless respiratory infections as a child, to the three-point safety belt and curtain airbag that protected me in an automobile accident last year. Let’s face it, without science most of us would not be here. Those few of us with the fortitude to survive would still be living in caves, chewing on bloody hunks of raw meat. Because the first scientist had to have been the person who discovered fire. I can just imagine the scientific paper he/she might have written in support of his/her theory. Of course, it would not have been an actual paper, as paper had not been invented yet. It would likely have been pictures drawn on a cave wall, the translation of which would be something like:

Fire
by Ogg
University of Cave

Abstract
Fire burn. Make meat tasty.

After peer review, fire would have been patented and marketed to the general public, and that early scientist would have no doubt gone on to invent other important things, like the wheel and beer.

My point is, science matters, and I'm sure that most of you reading this agree. But, as difficult as this may be for us to comprehend, there are quite a lot of people in America—supposedly one of the most advanced countries in the world—who reject science. They are the people who steadfastly refuse to believe the scientific evidence that vaccinations are a good thing, or that continuing to burn fossil fuels will give future generations the choice of living in an arid wasteland or under water.

Ironically, many of these same people believe, unquestioningly and without a shred of evidence, all manner of pseudoscience, from colon cleansing to conversion therapy. There are even an alarming number of Americans who reject evolution in favor of a theory that states, despite all geologic and paleontologic evidence to the contrary, that the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, and that human beings rode around on dinosaurs. (Admit it, you are thinking how cool would that be? and humming the theme from The Flintstones.)

I blame the Internet. There have always been crackpots, but most of us knew they were crackpots and ignored them. Now, thanks to the Internet, crackpots have a platform for their theories and a way to network with other crackpots. Pretty soon, you have a consensus of crackpots. Then other people—people who are not necessarily crackpots but who are unable to discern between science and pseudoscience—start to take notice. These undiscerning people think, "By golly, if that many people agree about this, there must be something to it!"

None of this matters to the rest of us until, thanks to special interest groups, gerrymandering, and undiscerning voters, we end up with undiscerning elected officials who make undiscerning decisions that affect us all.

In 1970, Richard M. Nixon, a very bad president (I used to think the worst I would see in my lifetime), did a very good thing: he established the Environmental Protection Agency. In a message to Congress he stated: "The Congress, the Administration and the public all share a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment, and the preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man." Unfortunately, our undiscerning current administration and congress do not share that "profound commitment." Both the EPA and the NIH (whose web page I referenced in the first paragraph) are slated for massive cuts in the president's proposed budget.

Of course, a budget cut will make no difference to the EPA if the agency is terminated, as a house bill introduced in February proposes to do.

I'm sure the president's new EPA administrator would have no problem with that. While Attorney General of Oklahoma, he filed fourteen lawsuits against the EPA to block the enforcement of clean air, clean water and climate regulations. Unlike the president, he has not gone so far as to claim global warming is a hoax. He has, however, stated that "there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact" of human activity on climate change. In fact, there is virtually no disagreement. There is a 97% consensus among climate scientists that human activity—specifically the release of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels—is a major contributor to global warming.

In a 1983 Playboy interview, appalled by a secretary of the interior whose idea of conservation was to "mine more, drill more, cut more timber," photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams said, "It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."

The time has come when those who care about the environment must fight again. That is why today, on Earth Day 2017, Loretta and I will be joining the March for Science.

Don't Laugh

For years we have been told (principally by Reader's Digest) that "laughter is the best medicine." However, I recently read about a scientific study in the British Medical Journal which suggests that this may not be true. I tried to read the study, but it was a bit too sciency for me. I suspect that it may in fact be an elaborate joke, but it's difficult to tell. I have the utmost respect for scientists, but they really shouldn't attempt humor. Have you ever heard a science joke? It's usually some variation on the old "walks into a bar" joke, featuring an element, a particle (Higgs boson is popular just now), or Schrödinger's cat. Even if you are able to comprehend it, it is almost never worth the effort, as it is hardly ever funny.

A Typical Science Joke (See what I mean?)

As I was saying, I couldn't quite get through the study itself, but the article I read about the study included the following quote:

[L]aughter is no joke—dangers include syncope, cardiac and oesophageal rupture, and protrusion of abdominal hernias (from side splitting laughter or laughing fit to burst), asthma attacks, interlobular emphysema, cataplexy, headaches, jaw dislocation, and stress incontinence (from laughing like a drain). Infectious laughter can disseminate real infection, which is potentially preventable by laughing up your sleeve. As a side effect of our search for side effects, we also list pathological causes of laughter, among them epilepsy (gelastic seizures), cerebral tumours, Angelman’s syndrome, strokes, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or motor neuron disease.

I must confess that I have no idea what some of the above words mean, and I didn't bother to look them up. One of the words I did understand, however, was "syncope." It means "temporary loss of consciousness caused by a fall in blood pressure."

I know all about laughter and syncope.

Several years ago we were having dinner with Loretta's brother Rob and our niece Jenny in a very nice restaurant in Paris. (Actually we were at Epcot, but I have been to Paris, and frankly Epcot is just as nice—in many ways nicer.) Jenny is a scientist, and she is an exception to the rule about scientists' sense of humor. She doesn't tell jokes about Higgs boson or Schrödinger's cat. In fact, she often complains that other scientists don't understand her humor, which should give you an idea of how genuinely funny she is. She can always make me laugh—often at the most inappropriate times, such as when I am at a very nice restaurant in Paris (or Epcot) drinking a glass of fine French wine.

I don't remember what Jenny said on this particular occasion, but trust me, it was funny. I began to laugh. Then I began to cough. Fine French wine came out of my nose.

Everything went black.

When I came to, I was being pulled, prodded, and shaken by Loretta one one side and Rob on the other. Convinced that I was choking to death, the two of them were attempting to pull me out of my chair and administer the "hug of life." I was bruised and sore. I was disoriented. There was wine on the front of my shirt. Worst of all, everyone in the restaurant was looking at me.

"Someday," I thought, "this will probably be funny."

I was right, of course. It's funny now. But please don't laugh.

I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Clean

I was a child of the space age. Sputnik went up when I was a two years old, and I was six when Alan Shepard became the first American astronaut in space. I eagerly followed the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and I remember the thrill of watching Neil Armstrong make his "one small step for man." Like most kids from my era, more than anything else I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.

Space Boy, circa 1959

Science fiction movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where terrible things happened in space, didn't scare me because that was science fiction. Even real-life disasters like the destruction of the Challenger space shuttle didn't discourage me. I knew that some day, I would have the opportunity to go into space—to be a Rocket Man, like the guy in the Elton John/Bernie Taupin song (though hopefully not as lonely).

Then I saw Gravity.

If there is a piece of debris on the road—the tiniest piece of debris—I am sure to hit it. That's just the kind of luck I have. The worst case scenario when you hit the tiniest piece of debris on the road is that you end up with a flat tire. Now, thanks to Gravity, I know what the worst case—or, in fact, the any case—scenario is when you hit the tiniest piece of debris (or the tiniest piece of debris hits you) in space.

You die.

Astrophysicist (and second coolest "Neil Something Something" after Patrick Harris) Neil deGrasse Tyson found plenty of flaws in Gravity, but one of the things he thought the film got right was the danger of orbiting space debris. According to Wikipedia, NASA is currently tracking "about 19,000 pieces of debris larger than 5 cm...with another 300,000 pieces smaller than 1 cm below 2000 km altitude."

Computer-generated image of stuff orbiting our planet, approximately 95% of which is debris. (Wikipedia)

After seeing Gravity, you couldn't pay me to go into space—at least not until somebody goes up there and does some cleaning. And why don't we? We have scores of brilliant people working in the field of space exploration, and probably just as many equally brilliant people working in the field of cleaning. (Okay, I can think of two: Heloise and that Dyson vacuum cleaner guy.) Surely, they can put their heads together and come up with a solution.

Then, and only then, will I dream once more of becoming a Rocket Man.

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no, no, no, I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone*
—Bernie Taupin

*Until I looked up the lyrics for this post, I never knew what that last line actually was. "Burning off his face, I'll never know?" "Burning all the things I've ever known?" I have a similar problem with the lyrics of other Elton John/Bernie Taupin songs. For years, I thought that Daniel was "a star in the felt of the sky," that Yellow Brick Road was "where the dogs are society's hounds," and that Benny, of Benny and the Jets, had "electric boobs."

Summer School

Believe it or not, the happiest memories of my high school years in the Chicago area are of summer school. I loved how cool, quiet, and peaceful the school building was during the summer. It was practically deserted, with only a small fraction of the thousands of students who crowded its halls during the school year. And the courses were actually fun.

First, there was driver's education. Yes, when I was in high school, you had to take driver's education. And if you couldn't get into one of the classes during the school year, you had to take it in summer school. (Apparently they don't teach driver's ed in high school anymore, which may explain why these days nobody seems to know what a turn signal is for.)

We didn't have video games back then, but the driving simulators we used came pretty close. Step on the gas pedal, and the movie goes faster; step on the brake, and it stops. A ball rolls into the street: if you don't hit the brake in time, an alarm goes off. You idiot, you could have hit a kid! At the very least, you probably destroyed his ball.

The simulators were fun, but even more fun were the Volkswagen Beetles we got to drive around the parking lot obstacle course. Then there were those great horror movies that showed in gory detail what happened if you didn't keep your eyes on the road, or if you drove when drinking. The only part I didn't enjoy was when we actually had to go for a drive. The surface streets weren't bad, but the expressways scared the hell out of me.

The other summer course I had to take was biology, which was probably my all-time favorite course in high school. It's one of the main reasons I decided to major in biology in college (although I soon discovered that college science courses were nothing like high school science courses, and I changed my major from biology to theatre, then from theatre to English).

We spent most of our time in the classroom, of course, performing mad-science experiments such as stimulating frogs' hearts with caffeine and giving testosterone injections to male chicks. (I sure hope no one from PETA is reading this. If you are, please keep in mind that this was over forty years ago. I'm sure that today's high school biology classes are much more enlightened, and only perform such experiments—if they perform them at all—on consenting frogs and chicks.)

The best part of biology class was the field trips: to Chicago's wonderful museums, and across the state line to Indiana Dunes State Park. At Indiana Dunes, we explored the many ecosystems that can be observed within a short hiking distance. As we passed through a wooded area, our teacher told us to keep an eye out for a rare red salamander that could only be found there.

Of course, this wouldn't be much of a story if I wasn't the one who spotted the salamander. Not only that, I captured it, and offered it to my teacher to keep in the classroom terrarium.

Yes, I was a terrible brown-noser.

Now that I think about it, what we did—transporting a rare, possibly endangered species across state lines—is almost certainly illegal. (Again, I hope no one from PETA is reading this.)

Fortunately the statute of limitations, like that salamander, must have expired a long time ago.

If you want to read more about the ecosystems of the Indiana Dunes, Wikipedia has a nice entry. (Unfortunately, they don't mention my salamander.)

Magical, Amazing, Firefly Lights Are Magical and Amazing!

There is something magical about fireflies. When I was a kid back in Indiana, they were as essential to summer as the ice cream truck, trips to the lake, and drive-in movies. We called them "lightening bugs," and my friends and I spent many a summer evening catching them and imprisoning them in empty peanut butter jars to keep by our beds at night.

Magic in a jar.

As I grew up, I lost interest in fireflies and magic. Grown-ups don't have time for such things. Then, thirteen summers ago, while in Indiana for a celebration of my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, I saw hundreds, maybe thousands of them, dancing and twinkling along the shore of a lake at night. Never in my life had I seen so many.

Talk about magic.

In that moment, I realized how much I missed fireflies. We don't have them here in Southern California—at least I've never seen any.

Two weeks ago, while in Chicago, we toured a bioluminescence exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History. There were fireflies in the exhibit, of course: one real, dead firefly (which produced no light at all), and lots of electronic fireflies (which produced the same slowly pulsing, greenish-yellow light as real fireflies). As we left the exhibit, all I could think was, "I have got to get some of these things!"

When we got home, I got on the computer and found the Firefly Magic website, with the following description of their product:

Fireflies, also called Lightning Bugs, light up a magical evening and are truly 'Magical Fireflies'. Welcome! You've just discovered the amazing Firefly Magic® Firefly Lights that have been developed to accurately recreate the life-like flashing, flickering, and fading of Mother Nature's real fireflies in your yard or garden, all year long. So special and realistic are these patented firefly lights that they're used by Universities for conducting their firefly research. In addition, Firefly Magic® Firefly Lights are used in theme parks, natural science museums, zoos, hotels, restaurants, on stage, and in movies to accurately replicate the look and feel of Mother Nature's real fireflies. 

I ordered a set, and they were delivered within a couple of days. I installed them last weekend, wiring them into our low-voltage lighting system and strategically placing them in the shrubbery and lower tree branches in one corner of the back yard.

I could hardly wait for the sun to go down.

And I am happy to report that Firefly Magic® Firefly Lights are every bit as amazing and magical as advertised. In fact, I think I'll order myself another set. After all, you can never have too many fireflies.

Or too much magic.

(Photo from www.firefly.org. Visit their website for more information about fireflies, including some disturbing news about their dwindling numbers.)

Dino Lives!

Remember the pink plastic dinosaur toy somebody stuck in front of a webcam trained on a New Zealand volcano several years ago? In case you'd forgotten, or in the unlikely event that this is the first time you are hearing about it, "Dino" first mysteriously appeared on the White Island Crater webcam in May of 2004. Here's one of the earliest pictures:

Scientists in charge of the webcam claimed they did not know who put it there, but they decided not to remove it. They said the acidic atmosphere near the volcano would destroy it in a matter of months.

Scientists can be wrong.

For a long time, I checked the webcam periodically, to see how Dino was doing. Here's a picture from 2008:

As you can see, four years later he was still there, although his bright pink color had become a bit faded.

After a while I forgot about him, although apparently others didn't. He became a sort of unofficial mascot for New Zealand. He even has his own Facebook page.

I thought of Dino yesterday and decided to take a look at the White Island Crater webcam. I hadn't been there in years. He was still there, although he and the camera had both been moved to a new location. Here's the link, if you want to see for yourself. (Although you won't see much now; while I'm writing this, it's the middle of the night in New Zealand.)

I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned from the stubborn refusal of this little plastic dinosaur to be destroyed by the most corrosive chemicals in nature, but I'm not sure what it is.

Is it a warning about the persistence of plastics in the environment and the importance of recycling?

Or is it a reassuring metaphor for the endurance of the human spirit and sense of humor under even the harshest conditions?

I suppose it's all in the way you look at it.

Isaac Newton Was a Bully

Yesterday, as so often happens when I'm looking up something on the Internet, I stumbled across something wholly unrelated and infinitely more interesting, causing me to completely forget what I was originally looking for. It was a list Sir Isaac Newton made of "sins" he committed in 1662, when he was young and full of beans, and had yet to discover gravity or invent the pet door.

I won't list them all, but here are some of the juiciest:

Making pies on Sunday night
Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them
Wishing death and hoping it to some
Striking many
Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese
Punching my sister
Calling Dorothy Rose a jade
Peevishness with my mother
Falling out with the servants
Beating Arthur Storer
Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter
Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne
Twisting a cord on Sunday morning
Vsing Wilfords towel to spare my own
Lying about a louse
Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot

I grant you that most of the above transgressions seem pretty tame by today's standards. For instance, who among us has not lied about a louse or denied our chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot? And, let's face it, Dorothy Rose is a jade, and everyone knows it.

However, a number of items on the list are seriously disturbing. They paint the extremely unflattering portrait of an obnoxious jerk who punched his sister, beat one guy, stuck a pin in another, wished and hoped death to some, struck many, and threatened to burn his parents' house down with them in it.

In short, Sir Isaac Newton was a bully with a streak of cruelty to rival that of the Marquis de Sade. And if any further proof were needed of that fact, I remind you that this is also the man who invented calculus.

Q.E.D.

iVomit

Nearly everyone has experienced the literally gut-wrenching horror of the norovirus, otherwise known as the "stomach flu." It doesn't last long—usually less than twenty-four hours—but while you are experiencing it, you feel like you are dying. Dying, in fact, seems like a preferable alternative.

The norovirus is highly infectious. You hear countless horror stories of it decimating schools, retirement homes, and—worst of all—cruise ships. (The plumbing in cruise ships is notoriously sensitive. Imagine the strain put on it when everyone on board suddenly begins spouting from both ends. Talk about horror stories.)

I have personally encountered the norovirus a number of times over the years, and, while my memory is not the best, I remember each encounter in vivid detail: fever, chills, aching joints, and miserable hours spent in the bathroom.

There was, for instance, that time when I was about thirteen. Our family was living in a big, old, two-story house in Goshen, Indiana. Behind the house was a detached, two-story garage that had once been a stable. My Aunt Vonna was visiting from Fort Wayne, and she had taken us kids to Olympia Candy Kitchen—an old-fashioned, family-owned diner/soda shop/candy store on Main Street—and allowed us each to pick out a bag of our favorite homemade candy. I chose chunks of white chocolate, which I immediately devoured. It tasted delicious going down. It was nowhere near as good when it came back up a couple of hours later.

We were just sitting down to dinner when it hit me. I asked to be excused and raced to the bathroom. I did not receive much sympathy at first—the general opinion was that I had simply eaten too much candy—but when it became apparent that I was really sick, my mother put me straight to bed. I spent a feverish, hallucinatory night filled with strange noises—loud voices, banging doors, the wail of sirens. When I arose from my sick bed in the morning, weak and shaky, I discovered that our garage had burned down during the night. The fire department had been called; everyone had gone outside to watch; the entire neighborhood had turned out. It was positively, hands-down, the single most exciting thing that had ever happened to our family.

And I missed the whole thing.

Not only that—to this day, I cannot stand the taste of white chocolate.

There is no cure for the norovirus, and there is no vaccine against it. You simply have to ride it out. However, there is some good news. Some extremely clever scientists have devised a robot to help them study the way the norovirus is spread. The video below shows the robot in action. They call it "Vomiting Larry."

Much as I admire scientists, I will never understand them. Here they have the genius and imagination to build something as marvelous as a vomiting robot, and the best name they can come up for it is "Larry."

Did none of them think to call it "Ralph?"

Mad About Science

 

This week, I'm going to talk to you about science. Now I know what you're thinking: "Are you kidding? This is an election year. The Republican National Convention just ended. The Democratic National Convention is next week. Why on earth aren't you discussing politics?" I have two very good reasons. First, in my opinion, science is a much more interesting topic than politics. Second, it's definitely a safer topic. These days, if you take a position on anything even remotely political, you can be sure that at least half the country will jump down your throat. Besides, I'm pretty sure that there are at least twice as many blogs about politics as there are people who read them.

So let's talk about science.

Science has accomplished some pretty amazing things. Only a month ago, it gently and precisely landed a vehicle the size of a minivan on the surface of Mars. But, as amazing as that is, it's still only rocket science. And rocket science, when you get right down to it, is just everyday, humdrum, run-of-the-mill science. And I'm not talking about everyday, humdrum, run-of-the-mill science.

I'm talking about mad science.

When I was a kid, my grandparents gave me an old microscope that had belonged to my father. I used to love looking at stuff through that microscope: bugs, leaves, pond water. It wasn't a very good microscope. In fact, the only thing I could ever see was the reflection of my own eye in the lens. But that didn't matter. When I looked through that microscope, I imagined myself to be a scientist—and no everyday, humdrum, run-of-the-mill scientist, either.

A mad scientist.

I never saw myself as Dr. Frankenstein. Even in my imagination, I never had the hubris to believe that I could create life. I would have been perfectly happy to be one of those minor mad scientists who accidentally grows a giant lizard in his laboratory. Then, when the citizenry came to me for help because "Stompy" was devouring the city, I would tell them why he was so big (radiation), and how to stop him (flamethrowers, a large dose of electricity, and lots of explosives).

I have tried to ignore all of the political brouhaha this week. Instead, I have been reliving the happy, mad scientist dreams of my childhood, while catching up on episodes of Dark Matters. A friend recently turned me on to this trippy, Ripleyesque program on the Science Channel, and now I'm hooked. In each episode, John Noble (who brilliantly portrays one of the greatest mad scientists of all time on Fringe) presents three "Twisted But True" reenactments of real-life mads gleefully going about the business of building death rays, transplanting monkey brains, reanimating corpses, and otherwise "tampering in God's domain" (as Ed Wood so eloquently put it).

If, like me, you're tired of politics, check out Dark Matters. It's more entertaining and more educational than any political speech—not to mention more factual.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must get back to my laboratory. "Stompy" is getting hungry.

Cat in a Box

One of the biggest news stories this week concerned the discovery of what may turn out to be the smallest thing in the universe, the "Higgs Boson." It sounds like something nautical, but according to one network news site, it's "a subatomic particle so important to the understanding of space, time and matter that the physicist Leon Lederman nicknamed it 'the God particle'." (By the way, I did a little research and discovered that this isn't true. According to Peter Higgs, the physicist after whom the particle was named, Lederman meant to call it the "goddamn particle." His editor changed it to "god particle.")

Apparently, scientists have been searching for this elusive particle for decades. That's why they built the Large Hadron Collider a few years back. (You know—that thing in Switzerland people were saying would cause the end of the universe when it was switched on.) Scientists knew that, in theory, the Higgs Boson should exist, but they couldn’t prove that it did exist—until now. And now they are positively peeing themselves with excitement.

Frankly, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. But that could be because I have difficulty wrapping my head around the atomic, let alone the subatomic. Once upon a time, I was a science major in college, and I was doing fairly well at it—until the professor started talking about atomic bonds and something called "valence," which I always thought was a thing that hangs above a window. I just couldn't grasp it (the concept of atomic bonds—not the thing that hangs above a window), and so I ended up changing my major to English. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives—these I can understand. Protons, neutrons, and electrons? Forget it.

But protons, neutrons, and electrons weren't the end of it, apparently. After college, I started hearing about smaller, subatomic particles and something called "quantum mechanics." I figured I ought to at least try to learn something about the subject. So I picked up a book called Schrödinger's Cat, which was supposed to explain all this stuff in layman's terms.

The title comes from an experiment proposed by a physicist named Erwin Schrödinger, way back in the 1930's. You put a cat in a box with a source of radiation and a flask of poison rigged to a Geiger counter. (A horrible idea, if you ask me. I say if Schrödinger was going to put any living thing in his big box o' death, it should have been himself.) Anyway, according to Schrödinger, when you open the box, you will find either a live cat or a dead cat, depending on the behavior of certain subatomic particles. But until the box is opened—and this is the important part—the cat is both alive and dead. To me, this can only mean one of two things...

The cat is a vampire, or the cat is a zombie.

Either way, if a physicist hands you a box and tells you there is a cat in it, do not, under any circumstances, open it.

Grasshopper from the Future

When I was in fifth grade, my friends and I believed in everything. We had absolutely no doubt concerning the existence of ghosts, aliens, big foot, or anything else that was marvelous and strange. (One or two of us still believed in Santa Claus, but I won't mention any names.) We were encouraged in our beliefs by our fifth grade teacher, Mr. Harmon, the Fox Mulder of his generation. "Nothing is impossible," he told us. And why not? It was the space age. In just a few years, America would put a man on the moon.

One of our most cherished beliefs was the notion of time travel. We were all huge fans of the Irwin Allen TV series, The Time Tunnel, in which two scientists traveled back and forth in time each week, meeting famous people in history like Davy Crockett, and trying unsuccessfully to prevent such disasters as the sinking of the Titanic. (I'm talking about two separate episodes, by the way. I don't mean to imply that Davy Crockett was a passenger on the Titanic, although that would have certainly made an interesting story.)

We even built our own time tunnel, using a coffee can, several feet of wire, and a six-volt lantern battery. When we showed it to Mr. Harmon, he was impressed. "How are you going to test it?" he asked. We hadn't thought of that. Obviously, none of us would fit inside a coffee can. One of us could put a hand or finger in there, but that might be risky. We had to find a test subject—a small test subject.

A couple of us had pet mice or hamsters, and we considering using one of them. In the end, however, we decided to go with a grasshopper. There were plenty of them around. And there was no danger of forming an attachment to a grasshopper; if it did disappear into the space-time continuum, it would be no great loss. We captured the largest one we could find and put it into the coffee can.

There must have been a moment of hesitation before Thomas Edison flipped the switch to send current to the first light bulb, or before Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words into a telephone. So must there be a moment when all great inventors pause at the brink of destiny, posing the fundamental question: “Will my invention work, or will it fail?” This was such a moment.

What if it worked? What if our grasshopper disappeared, and somewhere—some when—reappeared out of nowhere? “Wow!” people would say. “A grasshopper from the future!” (Or “past”—we weren’t really sure which direction he would be traveling.)

We connected the battery, and...

Nothing happened.

As I recall, we weren’t very disappointed. It was a long shot at best. But I have to say I am a little disappointed now. Nearly fifty years have gone by, and we still haven’t solved the mysteries of time and space.

On the other hand, there are plenty of grasshoppers around. Who’s to say one of them wasn’t sent back in time by some kids in the future?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Year of the Locusts

Recently, I watched the movie Lucas, starring the late Corey Haim as a troubled teenager in the Chicago suburbs by the name of—you guessed it—Lucas. To most people, it's a bittersweet, coming-of-age comedy-drama. To me, it's a horror story.

In the first scene, we see Lucas fascinated by the sight of a cicada—often incorrectly referred to as a "locust"—molting. The scene is a metaphor, of course; as the insect leaves its exoskeleton behind, so will Lucas, by the end of the movie, leave his childhood behind. As if the metaphor weren't obvious enough, we have the similarity of the names: "Lucas" and "Locust." Cute, huh? It makes my flesh crawl just thinking about it.

Later, there's a scene in which Lucas and several other teenagers are riding in a convertible driven by a young, pre-tiger-blooded-and-fire-breathing-fisted Charlie Sheen. Something smacks the windshield, a girl begins screaming, Charlie loses control, and the car goes into the ditch. Lucas, who is, among other things, an amateur etymologist, explains that they have run into a swarm of "locusts," and that the insects are "harmless." (How many times have we heard those words in a horror movie, just before everything starts to go wrong?) The girl begins screaming again when she realizes that one of the insects is in her hair. I couldn't blame her. I felt like screaming, too. As a matter of fact, I think I did scream.

David Seltzer, who wrote and directed Lucas, was born in 1940 in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. That would make him about the same age as Lucas when the Northern Illinois Brood of Magicicada septendecim, or seventeen-year-locust, emerged in 1956. The next emergence was in 1973, my senior year of high school. My family had moved from Indiana to the Chicago suburb of La Grange, Illinois, just a few years before that. We had no idea what was coming.

Sure, we had cicadas in Indiana. Every spring they emerge from the ground in their nymph state, shed their skin, and fly off to mate, lay their eggs, and die by the end of summer. You rarely see them, but you might find an empty exoskeleton stuck to a tree trunk, and on lazy summer afternoons, you might hear the soft, soporific buzz of their mating call.

We knew all about common, garden-variety cicadas, but we knew nothing of periodic cicadas, or Magicicada. In certain parts of the country (including Northern Illinois), every thirteen or seventeen years (depending on the species), enormous broods of insects emerge at once—up to 1.5 million per acre. It's nature's way of triumphing over predators by sheer force of numbers.

Technically, Lucas was right—they are harmless. They don't bite or sting. They won't even eat your plants. However, they will seriously freak you out.

I was walking home from a friend's house late one night when I saw my first. While waiting to cross 47th Street, I noticed several exoskeletons clinging to the street light pole. When I looked closer, I saw something emerging from one of them—a strange, pale thing with beady red eyes, about the size of the end of my index finger. Like Lucas, I was fascinated.

It wasn't long before fascination turned to horror.

Within days, we couldn't go outside the house without being dive-bombed by what looked like giant, red-eyed horseflies from hell. We couldn't leave the dog out in the yard, for fear the insects would drive him crazy. We couldn't even leave the windows open, because the roar of their mating call was deafening. When my aunts came to town to attend my high school graduation, we ran out to their car with umbrellas to shield them from attack. At the graduation ceremony, there were quite a few uninvited guests buzzing around the auditorium.

Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, they began dying. By the thousands. They covered the ground. You couldn't drive down the street without running over them. You couldn't walk down the sidewalk without stepping on them. And everywhere there was this weird, sickening smell—the sweet, organic aroma of hundreds of thousands of squashed, decaying cicadas.

Not long after that, my parents moved away from Northern Illinois, and I am happy to say that I have never witnessed another emergence of Magicicada septendecim. The next appearance of the Northern Illinois brood will be in 2024. I understand that Deerfield, Illinois, will be celebrating with a "Cicadia Mania" festival. Maybe I should go. They say it's good to confront your fears.

On second thought, maybe I should try to get through Lucas without screaming first.

Magicicada septendecim

My Best Shot

I do a fairly good job taking pictures of things that don't move—buildings, flowers, cats, etc. However, I will be the first to tell you that I am not a good wildlife photographer. For example, here's a picture I took of a bird in our back yard last summer:

See what I mean? It looks like a fuzzy pear with a face.

In July of 2006, Loretta and I took the Prairie Home Companion cruise to Alaska. It was the vacation of a lifetime. When we weren't admiring the spectacular Alaska scenery, we were enjoying the shipboard entertainment provided by Garrison Keillor and the many talented actors, singers, and musicians from our favorite radio program. As usual, Loretta, took most of the pictures. However, at a salmon bake near Juneau, I grabbed the camera from her to take this photo of a conspicuous pile of bear scat that we nearly stepped in:

Last November, I received the following e-mail from Kristy Sholly, Chief of Interpretation at Kenai Fjords National Park:

Kenai Fjords National Park, located in Seward, Alaska, is in the process of developing exhibits for the Exit Glacier Nature Center. We are interested in using your bear scat photo for use in an exhibit about "Life In, On, and Around Exit Glacier".

Please let me know if it would be possible to have permission to use your photo.

My photo on display at a national park! How cool is that? I mean, sure, it's crap—but it's good crap! And in case, like me, you were wondering just how many pictures of bear scat could be on the Internet, Kristy added:

FYI - I chose your image out of the 1,157 images labeled as "bear scat" on Flickr!

By the way, here's a picture of the bear that produced the scat. Loretta got this shot of him cleaning out the barbecue pit after our salmon bake:

If you want to see more pictures from our trip, here's a link to the album on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrlogue/sets/72157602743376786/

And if you're interested in reading more about the cruise, here's a link to The Ballast, the cruise newsletter written by APHC staff members, with contributions from some of the passengers (including yours truly): http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/cruise/2006/ballast.shtml