Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"

We’ve all read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  But what is Frankenstein’s monster? Is he a mad beast? Or he simply a representation of something else?

Perhaps even more interesting than the novel itself was Mary Shelley’s story of how the idea of the monster came into her head. Mary Shelley (at the time, Mary Godwin), her boyfriend (later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley, their son and Claire Clamont went to Switzerland to stay at Lord Byron’s villa in Geneva. The group was talking one night about Erasmus Darwin, a man who could give dead matter life, and if it would ever be possible to re-animate a human body. After that, they all read German ghost stories and decided to write tales of their own.  That was when Mary Shelley came up with for Frankenstein, an idea she could not forget.  

Based on Mary Shelley’s introduction, the creation of Frankenstein’s monster could represent an artist’s creative process. The artist inevitably puts parts of himself and his own life into his creation. Once an idea has begun forming in the artist’s mind, he has no choice but to follow through with it, even if he cannot follow his idea’s path through to fruition. Finally, because an artist doesn’t have complete control of his output, he can either reject or accept what he has made.

Mary Shelley believed an artist put a part of herself into her creation. Regarding Frankenstein and his monster, these parallels between the created and the creator imply the creator puts something of himself into his creation and therefore the creation and the creator are alike. Mary Shelley’s assertion also supports this claim—she cannot write about something she hadn’t yet experienced herself.

This inevitability of putting oneself into one’s work also leads to another assertion that the artist cannot always control what he creates. In Frankenstein, Frankenstein gets so wrapped up in his own creative process, he doesn’t even seem to realize what he actually has created until after he has finished. Shelley echoes a similar feeling, saying when she conceived of the idea of Frankenstein. Once the idea was planted in her mind, she had no choice whether or not to write about it—the idea would not leave her and she could control the inroads it had made in her mind.

The artist’s inability to control the finished product makes sense in relation to the theme the artist can decide whether to embrace or reject what he has created. Both of these statements support both the claim artist don’t have complete control of their output—because if they knew exactly what the finished product would be, why would they think it miserable?—as well as the claim the artist can reject or embrace his finished product.

Frankenstein’s creation and the monster himself can be read as a representation of an artist’s finished product. An artist puts a part of himself into his creation, he doesn’t always know what will be the result of his toils, and he has the choice whether to embrace or reject what he has created. The similarity between Shelley’s description of creating the novel Frankenstein and the creation of the monster in the story reinforce these claims.

Feng Shui

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of rearranging your furniture, which became unaccountably popular in the United States during the 1990's. I can't argue with the basic precepts of feng shui, the existence of qi energy that flows through your home. That belongs in the same category of religious beliefs, and I've seen some pretty amazing stuff in my life, myself.
However, I have a lot of qualms about the idea that you can affect the flow of this life force by putting three coins over here, or changing the color of your area rugs.
I do think there are a lot of good psychological observations lying within feng shui. For example, you are always urged to move your desk so that you don't sit with your back to the door. You shouldn't have your couch against a window. It's important for rooms to feel bright and well-lit, not dark and dank. These rules seem obvious, but it often takes an outside observer to look around our homes and point out the obvious.
Part of the problem with feng shui is that it is so contradictory. I have at my elbow a little book on feng shui that I picked up on a whim off the bargain table last week. It features no fewer than three systems for mapping your home, with little advice on which mapping system to use.
It also offers a bewildering array of advice. Too much for any one person to digest, much less follow. As an example, to improve your Wealth corner (whichever corner you decide that it is), it recommends: a bowl with goldfish, three coins wrapped in red tissue paper, plants, wood, the color light green, the color tan, the color gold, oranges, pineapples, and not using metal.
Naturally if you consult any other source, you will find advice which is just as confusing as well as contradictory. I skimmed a page online which recommends the color purple, and a collection of gold coins (despite the other book's strict dictate against metal).
Feng shui is, in my experience, the thing people turn to when they know there's something wrong with their life, but they can't quite bring themselves to face it. Instead of grappling with the real issue, they turn to a religion which promises that your life will change for the better if you just sprinkle some trinkets around your home.
Conspicuously missing from any feng shui resource are stories of feng shui successes. Wouldn't you expect at least a few testimonials? I haven't heard a single one.
 

Electrical Shocks to the Brain Can Improve Your Math Skills

 

Frankenstein lore--and other science fiction--dictates that all you really need to bring the dead back to life is a well-harnessed lightning bolt. Unfortunately, there's more to being dead than the absence of electricity in your body, as no one has quite made Frankenstein's monster work as planned yet. But using electricity on still-living people can have some fascinating effects that are still being discovered.

 

Electro-shock therapy has been used, with ambivalent success, to treat all sorts of mental disorders. It doesn't always work, but when done correctly, it does seem to make something tick in there. Now, scientists from the University of Oxford are using similar techniques to make people temporarily smarter. 

It sounds almost childishly simple, like something a third grader would come up with while penning her first short story. Give someone a good shock to the head, watch them suddenly transform into a super genius. The results may not be that dramatic, but applying electricity to a person's brain has been found to help them improve their math skills. And not just while they're being shocked, either: the duration of the improvement has been shown to last up to six months.

They don't even need to open up your head to zap your math skills. The scientists have been using transcranial direct current stimulation, aka TDCS, which simply passes a low level of electricity into the skull to increase or decrease neuron activity. You only need to be mildly shocked for less than 15 minutes for the effect to take place. The process targets the brain's parietal lobe, the part that takes care of processing numbers. The test subjects in the experiment were asked to learn a new set of symbols representing quantities while receiving TDCS. They demonstrated an increased ability to organize the newly learned numbers with their electrically stimulated brains. What surprised scientists was how long the effect lasted; subjects reported increased math skills for months after the experiment. 

The subject of this particular experiment had no significant difficulty with math to begin with, but scientists hope the same procedure may be used to aid those who struggle with numbers. The next step in testing would be to use TDCS on people with learning disabilities and see if it helps improve their math skills. 

Any area of the brain near enough to the skull could potentially be stimulated by TDCS. The procedure could aid people in subjects other than math. It could even ease chronic pain or lessen the after-effects of a stroke. Once scientists know more about how it works and how best to use it, it could become a common therapeutic practice. 

Most scientists don't exactly get to say they spend their days shocking people's brains in their line of work. These Oxford professionals are lucky in that they get to actually fulfill their childhood dreams of becoming mad scientists--in a roundabout way, of course. They're zapping heads for good and not evil, but I'm sure they got their laughs in about the nature of their experiments nonetheless. 

Orbs in Photographs: Dust Particles or Ghosts?

Orbs in photographs are probably pieces of dust. Little, floating white dots that radiate from a deep, white center to a lighter colored outer ring.  Dust. But then, I can’t help but wonder, why aren’t there orbs in every picture? Dust—and pollen and flying seeds or whatever you can imagine those white spheres to be—are everywhere.

So then I turn to a less likely explanation—ghosts. Some people say that the white dots are ghosts making their presences known to the living. Orbs are speedy and follow a pattern that isn’t regular—pollen or spirit? Which is why orbs are so prevalent in graveyards, perhaps. Let’s learn a bit more about the orbs phenomenon:

Naturalistic school.  The naturalistic school claims that the orbs in photographs are created from the specific conditions of refracted light on dust, insects or moisture in the air. Even most ghost hunters agree that the majority of orbs captured on films are probably floating dust particles.

Non-naturalistic school. This schools sees the trails of light off of orbs and calls paranormal activity. This school says that the reason that orbs are more common in certain places are not because that location is more dusty or filled with more pollen, but because it’s filled with more ghosts. These ghosts are attracted to human activity, especially children’s activities, and are more likely to be found in places with a lot of action.

This group also thinks that the presence of many orbs in photographs prove that ghosts travel together in ghost packs. They are drawn to certain places because those places were significant to them when they were alive. Psychics and ghost hunters claim to encounter or talk with spirits in places where orbs are common. Orbs are supposed to be spirits who cannot or will not go to the next phase in life—they are tied by some force to stay connected to their earthly lives. Some say the orbs are only nature spirits or microorganisms similar to microscopic cells found under microscopes.

The questions of why spirits take on a spherical shape, rather than a version of their human form, is that it is much easier for them to do so. Assuming the orb form takes less energy for spirits, while assuming apparition forms taxes them to a greater degree. However, during the colder part of the year, spirits can more easily take on other forms aside from the orb. Orb activity is heightened during the warmer months.

Orbs have limited power and can do little else than appear in photographs. Some ghost hunters say that lifestyles or attitudes can draw ghosts to the living for reasons that they may not understand.  Some ghost hunters say the Ouija board can bring unwanted ghosts or open spirit portals. Spirits also have been said to be recorded on film or video in the shape of a vortex or a misty or foggy appearance dubbed an Ecto-Mist.

Alien school. Some people think that orbs that show up in photographers are alien devices used to monitor human activity.

What do you think photographic orbs really are?

People Born Without Fingerprints

In the common imagination, the crafty criminal goes through an arduous and painful process to remove his fingerprints. (It's always a "he," I don't know of any scenarios where a female criminal removes her fingerprints. I wonder what that says about the genre.) Off the top of my head I can recall criminals burning their fingerprints off with acid, sandpapering them off, and gradually building calluses at each fingertip which obscure the fingerprints.
Of course, there are two problems with these methods: you can still be identified based on the pattern of scarring (like John Dillinger!), and in most cases your fingerprints will eventually grow back. They grow back because your fingerprints are determined at the genetic level.
Unless you have a mutation in your SMARCAD1 gene, that is!
An incredibly small percentage of the population is born without fingerprints, a condition known as adermatoglyphia. These people have eerily smooth fingertips, which starts with a mutation in the SMARCAD1 gene, and relies on a long chain of events in the womb to be expressed.
The genetic link was provided by a Swiss family where half of the family members are born with adermatoglyphia. Researchers from Tel Aviv studied the family's genetics extensively before being able to identify the gene that caused the issue.
Scientists don't yet understand all of the biological processes which rely on adermatoglyphia, but I imagine there are some less-than-ethical doctors who are pondering the question. Imagine how much money you could make if you were able to offer a successful "fingerprint removal" genetic surgery!
Sure, your new fingerprint-less fingers would still be identifiable. But you would not be able to be connected to your past crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. (Not on fingerprint evidence, at least. Our increasing reliance on DNA evidence would no doubt make this procedure a moot issue.)
Fingerprints typically develop in the womb, between 6 and 13 weeks. Your fingerprints remain the same throughout life, the only difference being that they grow larger as you age from a child to an adult. Fingerprints are remarkably persistent, and according to this forensics lab, they are "one of the last features to decompose after death."
Fingerprints have been used as unique identifiers since ancient times. They were used as signatures in ancient Babylon in the second millennium BCE. They were also used as signatures in ancient China as early as 246 BCE. Fingerprints have been taken by the police to help solve crimes since the time of Hammurabi, who lived from 1792 to 1750 BCE.

Is There Really A "Walking Cactus"?

watched Rango last night, and was intrigued by its reference to a particular cactus that (legend has it [according to the movie]) can walk. If you're quiet, and you watch carefully at night, you might be lucky enough to see the cacti walking.
Beans: "That's a Spanish Dagger. But around here we just call them the Walking Cactus […] there's an old legend they actually walk across the desert to find water."
My first challenge in researching this topic is that there is something called a "walking cactus," but it's actually a prehistoric arthropod. The Diania species was recently discovered in China, and is one of the earliest examples of arthropods. But even though it's called a "walking cactus," it's not what we're looking for.
I wasn't able to find any evidence of actual legends regarding cacti that walk across the desert at night. In this case, I think the legend was just a convenient fabrication by the script writers in order to tie in to a key event near the end of the movie. (I won't say which one, to avoid spoilers.)
However, there is a cactus known as the "walking cactus." And there is a cactus called the Spanish Dagger. But they aren't the same thing.
The "walking cactus" (Stenocereus eruca) is a truly unusual form of cacti. It lives on the Baja peninsula, and is also known as the "creeping devil."
Picture a cactus shaped like a single long tube, about six feet long. The cactus has a recumbent form, which means that it just lies there on the ground. It grows from its top end, and its bottom end is constantly dying off. Thus, as it grows, it maintains its same length - but it moves, ever so slowly, across the desert floor.
In its ideal climate, the Creeping Devil can "walk" as far as two feet a year.
The Spanish Dagger, the cactus featured in the movie, is not actually a cactus. It is a type of yucca plant, Yucca gloriosa. Also known as the Spanish Bayonet, this cactus grows in a single tall column. As it grows, new leaves form at the top, and older leaves die. This give the Spanish Dagger a characteristic shaggy appearance, as seen in the movie.
The Spanish Dagger is actually native to coastal American sand dunes, from North Carolina through Florida. Although they have been transplanted across the country for use in yards and gardens, they are not native to the desert terrain where Rango is set.
 

Mysterious Orange Alaskan Goo Washes Ashore

On August 6th, the remote Alaskan village of Kivalina awoke to find itself besieged by a bright orange goo. This sludgy orange residue was found floating on the surface of the lagoon and washing up on the village's beaches. Kivalina's 374 residents could only gather and speculate as to what it might be. The village is primarily Inpiat Eskimo, and no one could remember ever having seen such a sight, including the village's elders.
As the goo washed on shore, it dried up in the marine winds and turned powdery. This is presumably how it came to be found in the town's water cisterns and rainwater barrels, some of them located several miles from the lagoon where the orange substance was first found.
Samples of the goo were gathered up in canning jars and sent to Anchorage for analysis. The word came back from NOAA scientists: the goo was actually billions of eggs from an unidentified crustacean. A tiny dot of lipid in the middle of each egg both made it float, and gave it the bizarre orange color.  
Although it is somewhat reassuring to learn that the bright orange goo has natural origins (and isn't, for example, some kind of bizarre toxic waste), NOAA scientists are still unable to state whether the eggs are toxic or non-toxic. That's a big problem, because like many remote Alaskan villages, Kivalina often experiences water shortages during the summer months. Kivalina's residents rely on their water barrels in the late summer months, and if this goo has poisoned their water supply, the village will be in big trouble.
The airborne orange powder is also raising some concerns regarding the village's food supply. Kivalina is a subsistence village, and August is the month for berry-picking. What if the orange powder has filtered onto the blueberries and salmonberries that are currently ripe? These berries aren't just a tasty addition to dessert; they are a key component of their summer diet.
It wasn't too long ago that a giant blob of a black goopy substance drifted past Wainwright on the Chuckchi Sea. That particular blob turned out to be a massive bloom of filamentous algae that had partially decomposed by the time it was observed and collected.
First an unprecedented huge bloom of algae, then an unprecedented huge shed of crustacean eggs. What's next for Alaska's shores? And are these strange occurrences connected to climate change? Stay tuned…!
 

Rumors of the Amero Resurface

Conspiracy theorists have been grumbling about the Amero for years now. It seems like whenever things take a turn for the worst, the rumor resurfaces.
What is the Amero? It's a hypothetical currency that would be used by Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Think of it as the American version of the Euro (hence the name). The fundamental argument against the Amero becoming a thing is that, put simply, it wouldn't do any of us any good.
The Euro created a single currency which is good throughout Europe. Europe's collective economy was made vastly more difficult by constantly having to perform currency conversions. And each currency fluctuated wildly, both against itself and other currencies. The introduction of the Euro brought stability to the European Union, and is widely considered a rousing success.
But that's Europe. Here in the New World, both Canada and Mexico would benefit somewhat from uniting their currency with that of the United States. But in a very real sense, from our perspective, this has already happened. United States dollars are accepted worldwide, and certainly in Canada and Mexico. The United States has almost nothing to gain from adopting an Amero.
Truthfully, even if we did adopt the Amero, things would not really change. The objections against the Amero seem largely to stem from two quarters:
1. Biblical
End Times, Mark of the Beast, one world government, return of the Antichrist, etc etc.
2. Tax-Dodging
People who have been avoiding paying their full income tax by hoarding up large stashes of cash are understandably upset by this plan. And in fact, many people suspect that if the United States does start pushing the Amero, it will be to bring these people out into the light.
3. ???
The Constitution comes up a lot in these debates. A lot of people seem to believe that if we move to a united currency, the Constitution will be negated? And/or "they" will come in the night for our children? I don't really know what's to blame, here, except the usual overheated paranoia.
You'd better believe that if you show up at the bank with a wheelbarrow of cash and ask to have it converted into Ameros, there would be a lot of questions being asked!
Obviously it only fans the flames when, for example, a coin-designing artist posts pictures of his design for the Amero on his website. When designer Daniel Carr made an Amero coin as a sort of personal art project, I doubt he had any idea what would happen. Pictures of his Amero are widely in circulation among conspiracy theorists as being legitimate proofs put out by the U.S. Treasury Department - which they resoundingly are not.

So What If The Moon Landing Was Faked?

This morning I watched a bit of the "Fact or Faked" episode where they tried to replicate the moon landing. And I found myself once again pondering a question that's downright heretical in some circles: so what?
It has been well established that the government had, in the parlance of murder investigations, the means, motive, and opportunity to fake the moon landing. It is at least credible to suspect that the moon landing was faked. (Credible enough for the Mythbusters to take it on!) And given the circumstances at the time, it's frankly more plausible that the landing was faked than that we actually launched a successful moon mission.
Personally, I'm convinced that the moon landing was real. But I respect the opinions of those who believe otherwise, because it's certainly plausible.
But again I ask… so what?
Let's assume for the moment that the moon landings were faked.
So what?
Our space program clearly continued to proceed. I don't hear anyone grumbling that the ISS is fake, or the Hubble telescope, or the Mars rovers. The moon continues to exist. We either went there or we didn't. What does it matter either way?
I suspect a lot of people cling to their belief that the landing was fake because it cements their overall world view, which is that no government agency is ever to be trusted. That's fine, I suppose, although it's a somewhat limiting way to live your life. And even if it turns out to be true, so what?
If NASA made a public announcement today that they had faked the whole thing, would you like to know what would change? Not a single thing. The world would keep spinning, the dishes would still need washing, and you would still have to figure out what to have for dinner tonight.
The conspiracy theorists have really been coming out of the woodwork with the end of NASA's space flight program, and recent announcements that we will never return to the moon. They assume that it's to cover up the fact that we never went there in the first place (i.e. that we would land and NOT find footprints, a discarded feather, and the other signs of former American occupation).
There is one way in which their closely-held beliefs may be valuable: if they spur someone to encourage or develop private space flight. Private space flight is clearly going to be the way to go, and the X Prize brings that goal a little closer every day.
In other words, why not figure out a way to get up there and see for yourself?
 

Will Our Sun Send Out A "Killer Flare"?

Last night I watched a movie that ends with the complete destruction of Earth at the hands of a "killer solar flare." (To avoid spoilers, I won't mention which movie. Google "2009 movie solar flare" if you simply must know.) Naturally I was curious: could this really happen?
(Actually, "curious" isn't really the word. As a child, when I learned that 5 billion years from now the sun will expand and swallow the Earth in a fiery death, I didn't really understand what "5 billion years" really meant. I had nightmares about it for months - nightmares much like the one the little boy has in the movie. Accidental childhood terror alert: triggered!)
I was also concerned, because the movie kept using the phrase "coronal mass ejection" to talk about this extinction-level event. But coronal mass ejections, while rare, do happen - and without destroying the entire planet. So what's the deal, here?
First, we have to define our terms. A lot of people are throwing around the phrase "killer solar flare" and "extinction level event" when what they really mean is a Carrington Event. This is a solar flare so extreme that it wipes out all electronics on the planet. That's pretty extreme! But it would knock us back to the stone age. It wouldn't knock us off the planet, much less burn the planet to cinders.
Killer flares have been observed in other suns. In 2006, NASA observed a killer flare happening 135 light-years away, as the star II Pegasi blasted out an explosion the equivalent of 500 million trillion atomic bombs. A flare that size would indeed destroy the Earth, but comparing II Pegasi to our own sun is like comparing apples to oranges. II Pegasi is a "violent red giant star with a binary partner in very close orbit." Calling II Pegasi is "unstable" is the understatement of the solar system.
Our sun, on the other hand, is a nice stable yellow dwarf.
Coronal mass ejections happen when an unusually strong solar flare kicks a chunk of plasma off the sun and flings it out into space. When these super-flares are timed just right, they can intersect with Earth. We recently saw a coronal mass ejection happen on August 1, 2010. It created an impressive light show of aurora in the night sky extending (in North America) as far south as Utah.
A coronal mass ejection was also responsible for the aforementioned Carrington Event. It caused a lot of problems with our infrastructure on the time. But destroying all life on Earth? No need to worry!

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