A good idea gone scratchy

kw: observations, musings, apparel

Several years ago I began cutting the labels out of my undershirts because they irritate my back. One day my wife brought home some new ones that had the label printed inside. I've been wearing some of them for a year or two.

Recently I noticed a drawback. Some of them were irritating my back even more than the old fabric labels. I felt back there, and the ink was very scratchy! Here is an image of the label printed inside the back of the shirt. If you look closely (try clicking the image for a larger version), you can see white lines through the ink. That is spots where it broke. The ink is actually rather thick. Once it breaks, it tends to curl, making lots of sharp edges. I actually developed a couple of sores where the larger letters rub.

Here is a closeup of part of the label. The breaks are quite evident (particularly on the larger version a click will show you), even in the finer type. Prior to the ink breaking, these have been very comfortable. So what did I do about it?

I now wear them inside out. I don't wear thin, light-colored shirts over them, so I don't expect anyone to notice. I wonder if anyone else does this, or is this too much of a throwaway culture for that?!

When options narrow to surviving, or not

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sociology, disasters

I am very thankful that I have not been through any disasters. Maybe I came close a time or two; I do recall almost driving into a tornado a couple decades back. But I've had no experiences frightening enough to make me freeze, or wet myself, or faint, or whatever else it is I might do in, say, a plane crash.

Even in more mildly unsettling events, however, the way different people react can be fascinating. Once we got lost in the woods, my son and I, while walking with two other fathers and their children. The youngsters were all about ten. We'd taken a wrong turn on a path, and succumbed to the "It must be right around the bend" fallacy that keeps you going on instead of going back. I tend to be a natural leader, but once the gentleman who thought he'd been showing us where to go acknowledged he was lost, my son took over. He made the decisions, saying, "Let's try this way" and so forth. We wandered about three hours until, well after dark, we found our way to an open area someone recognized. One of the fathers remarked on how cool my son was, because the other kids couldn't keep themselves from saying things like, "Will we ever get out?". He hadn't really led us out, but the fact that he was leading meant we were kept from getting panicky.

When real disaster looms, as I read in The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—And Why by Amanda Ripley, the body count is usually reduced if someone takes the lead. Even an inept leader is better than none, because most people in a disaster spend too much time milling about, trying to figure out what is happening. Once they realize something bad really is happening, they waste more time deciding what to gather to take with them.

Ms Ripley tells us that any shocking and frightening circumstance causes a three-step response: Denial, Deliberation, and the Decisive Moment (when any Action that one may take finally gets taken). Those who shift quickly through the first two steps are those most likely to survive, and often are those who help others to survive. Thus, most air crews have been trained, if an airplane crash-lands, to shout instructions to the passengers and hound them out of the cabin. Since most people go into a kind of passive shock that can last a long time, the no-Mr-nice-guy approach is designed to re-shock them into action, but also to give them something and someone decisive to follow so they don't just stampede.

Time and again the author marvels that in story after story told by survivors, people typically behaved very decently and quietly. Panic is actually rather rare. Sometimes that very decency makes things worse; people may try to defer to one another when they ought to be quickly making their way through the exit. The key word here is "quickly"; it doesn't have anything to do with stampeding an exit and blocking it with smashed bodies.

A key lesson about surviving is Rehearsal. It is one thing to buy those cool wire ladders you can hook to a windowsill of your second-story bedroom. It is quite another to actually use it a time or two. Only if you have done it before, will you be able to smoothly get out of your burning house. Otherwise you're likely to find that you can't figure out how to use it, and you either collapse in mid-thought, or jump out the window and crash to the ground, possibly carrying the ladder that was supposed to carry you (it is amazing what people bring with them; nobody likes to flee empty-handed!).

A large section of the concluding chapter is devoted to Rick Rescorla, the security chief who guided all but five of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's 3,000 employees out of the WTC on 9/11. He was the only security chief who was able to persuade his company to practice evacuation. Every other company lost substantial numbers. Rehearsal was the key. I am glad my company engages in evacuation drills. Though this site is nearly all 2- and 3-storey office buildings, being trapped by fire on the second or third floor is just as deadly as on the fortieth.

It takes only a few minutes to empty the building where I work, and it usually takes less than two minutes to empty an airplane. Even in the best of circumstances, it takes hours to empty a city. When the city leaders spend a few days dithering, then finally make limp-wristed declarations of imminent disaster, we wind up with a New Orleans that will never be the same (I am of the opinion that it ought to be abandoned, and should never have become a large city in the first place, but that's for another rant).

Some people seem to naturally perform better under stress. All of us can learn to do better. I live in one of the less disaster-prone areas of the U.S., but it is well for me to pre-think what I will do if we get a direct hit by a hurricane; how I might respond to being trapped by rising floodwaters if I am at a low-lying area at the wrong moment (this was particularly relevant when I lived in Houston); or how I'll react when I am awakened by a smoke alarm (yes, I do replace the batteries twice yearly). When I lived in California, my preparations had more to do with earthquakes. Those who think ahead live to think again.

Heading (far) East? Get ready for a shower

kw: observations, photographs, astronomy, meteors

Gonna be in the Eastern Hemisphere a week from now? Be sure to stay up late Tuesday Night, Nov 17, into Wednesday morning. The Leonid meteor shower is expected to peak with 200-500 meteoroids per hour (for someone looking straight up and not blinking), about 2145 UTC/GMT. See this NASA presentation for more details.

This image is from APOD, and is the Astronomy Picture of the Day for 11/27/2002. Taken from Spain, the image is a composite of thirty one-minute exposures (ah, what we can do with digital images now!). The shower was very good along the Atlantic seaboard of the US also, though so late it was still going as the sky lightened for dawn. I watched it for a while, then dragged my family out of bed to watch its last quarter hour until the sky lightened too much. They were sufficiently impressed to forgive me.

Sadly (for me), this year the shower's peak occurs at about 4:45 PM local time. But if the sky is clear, I'll still poke my head out just after midnight (7 hours too late) to see what remnants of the shower there may be.

Wishing, as well as one can

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, spiritual practices

"If wishes were horses, all beggars would ride" underlay Noelle Oxenhandler's skepticism about wishing. In The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, my Soul—a Memoir of Fulfilled Desire, Ms Oxenhandler begins with a disaster she'd brought upon herself, one whose guilt and latent effects she bore for seven years. She begins to hope things can be better, but though she has been a practicing Buddhist for years, her moralistic upbringing makes her feel guilt about hoping, let alone wishing, for anything for herself.

I can sympathize with her in this: well-deserved depression seems to require about seven years to work itself out. It takes longer for most of us to get over what we have done to others than for troubles that came upon us.

I found it interesting to make this short journey through self-denoted New Age practice and philosophy, in which thoughts are more real than things (or at least, that is the ideal to attain). I found, as the author did, a sad juxtaposition between her gradual embrace of "active wishing" and her dying friend George's fervid embrace of Christian Science. His renunciation of medical intervention in favor of CS healing practices, or rather thoughts, may have hastened his death, but may not have: the power of our mind over our own body is well-attested, though not reliable. Her book is in part dedicated to his memory.

What was his faith but a kind of active wishing also? Nonetheless, there is a definite disjoint between CS and New Age wishing. The author was impelled by a somewhat lesser level of desperation: she was in no imminent danger of dying, after all. She just needed three things: Restoration for her soul (and a pity it is that she never once mentions Psalm 23, though she quotes other Bible passages), a home she can afford to own, and a man (she doesn't say "husband", and so far as can be told, her wished-for lover is not yet her husband).

A Pentecostal preacher I know, wiser than most, once preached, "Yes, God may heal what ails you, but you're still going to die." Ms Oxenhandler had surrounded herself with a large collection of books about wishing. She found most of them unsatisfactory, filled with very fuzzy thinking. Yet the worst of them didn't go so far as to advise wishing to live forever. Somehow, we all know that isn't in the cards (Yes, I know that expression refers to Tarot). At least by mid- to late adolescence we realize we're not here forever.

So what do we desire for the time we are here? Is it OK to wish for world peace and for a better stock portfolio also? Why is one frowned upon and not the other? Month by month the author struggles with this, through her wishing year, in which she does indeed attain her three wishes. She also gains a number of new friends, gets a trip to Hawaii partly subsidized, is able to help her mother go through a troublesome transition in living arrangements when others can't, and finds new confidence in her ability to cope with life as she finds it.

Though her wishes come true through a few surprising twists, none is totally unexpectable. It is pretty clear by the end of the book that wishing, while it seems to manipulate the world, really works its magic on the wishing one. By wishing, with strength and in detail, we focus our own minds, and are thus more prepared to recognize opportunities that typically come and go unnoticed. She tells the story of a relative who was a poor salesman; so poor that, when he was poised to ring a doorbell, would say, "Ah, she von't buy anyt'ing" and leave. Maybe a bit of active wishing would have impelled him to at least ring the bell.

Unless we are wishing for the truly unattainable, chances to help our own wishes come true arrive frequently. In another context, Louis Pasteur wrote, "Fortune favors the prepared mind." Whether we pray for our desires, or use wishing (not being the praying sort), the exercise can prepare us to see what we needed when it arrives.

A long day and low vision

kw: local events, musings

I saw a retina specialist today, about a spot in my left eye's visual field, but well off-center. I've had retinal hemorrhages in the past, so a couple months ago that was what I thought it was. They normally clear up in three weeks, but a month passed and I could still see it. So I had my regular ophthalmologist look at it. She could see it, and confirmed it is a hemorrhage, partly cleared. But she thought she also saw signs of retinal separation, so she sent me to the specialist.

Two more weeks had passed. Though I can still see the spot, the specialist had a hard time locating it. It is nearly cleared up. She could not see much that concerned her, and a special photograph doesn't show anything suspicious, but wants to wait another month and then do an angiogram. I agreed.

Today's visit took almost three hours. Afterward, the dilation of my eye lasted a further three hours, which I mostly slept off. So I've had a long nap today, but paradoxically, I'm pretty tired and will head for the sack soon after I finish this post.

I admit I had all kinds of worries about this spot. A friend lost her life to a brain tumor that started as an eye tumor, just a couple years ago. I was glad to find out nothing of the sort is involved here. I hope there's no retinal separation, but the specialist doesn't think so.

Had the spot been even more off center, I might never have seen it. It could have come and gone unnoticed. The first retinal hemorrhage I had was right over the fovea, and really messed up the vision in that eye until it dissolved. I'm told the best thing to do for this is to keep my blood pressure low. Guess I'll step up the exercise regimen!

Even freakier

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, economics, philosophy

Yesterday when I reviewed Freakonomics, I was already halfway through its successor. Why is it that the best books go by so fast? A short while ago I finished Superfreakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The authors will again gain notoriety and fame in equal measure, particularly for the articles behind the subtitle: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. I've added their blog at NY Times to my regular reading list, and to the blog links on this page.

And why should suicide bombers buy life insurance? The company isn't going to pay off, unless one had the foresight to buy it two or more years earlier. It is to make themselves harder to profile. Fortunately, the authors purposely refrained from reporting the strongest profilers' tools.

A couple of decades ago, Lewis Thomas wrote of the three levels of medical care: Palliative (we can't do anything besides perhaps make the patient more comfortable), which is quite costly; Restorative (such as surgery or chemotherapy) that can be hideously expensive; and Preventive (vaccines, for example), which is cheap. Chapter 4 of Superfreakonomics expands this idea into many realms, including polio vaccine, of course (I was one of Dr. Salks thousands of experimental subjects, so this is dear to me), Robert McNamara and seat belts, the failed "remedy" of car seats (seat belts work as well, but you could go to jail for belting up your kid), and a simple hurricane prevention device.

That last item leads to the last chapter, about a company with the initials IV and its solutions to a number of ills, including global warming. I was particularly taken by this analysis:

• Forty years ago we worried about global cooling.
• Soot and smog were blocking enough sunlight to cool the climate.
• As we (the First World) cleaned up the air, the earth warmed.
• This was probably more due to cleaner air than to carbon dioxide.

I can extrapolate as well as the next fool. I expect the advancing economies of China and India to dirty the air again, probably on an even larger scale. The last eight years have seen a cooling amounting to a quarter of the past twenty years' warming. We may wish for a lot of global warming in about ten-twenty more years! Only after Western air-cleaning-and-remediation technologies become widespread in Asia will warming become a potential threat again.

Just by the by, carbon dioxide is not that strong as a greenhouse gas, and its effects are self-limiting. Increasing the CO₂ by a factor of thirty, to a full one percent of the atmosphere, cannot raise global temperature more than 4°C (7°F). The "runaway greenhouse" of the planet Venus is due to an atmospheric pressure of sixty times that on Earth, composed of more than 80% CO₂. That is 180,000 times the amount of the gas that we "enjoy".

The value of these books to me is the way of thinking, based on its premise: People respond to incentives. The incentives can vary from person to person; for example honor, dignity or social status can be a greater motivator for some people. I once read a book in which a scrupulously honest man, one who bent over backward to avoid any taint of corruption, was manipulated by someone who made him think he might be bribed to favor a certain course of action. Naturally, he overdid his zeal to avoid the bribery and was pushed to the opposite tack.

I once exchanged a series of E-mails with a new company president (I work elsewhere now), who had given a speech with the title "A Passion for Profits". I explained how, by exercising my passion for excellence, profits had always followed. His responses made it clear that, not only did he not understand people who are internally motivated, he was deeply suspicious of them, even threatened. Fortunately I was already halfway through my exit strategy to my present employer.

A final thought: where little or no money is involved, our strongest incentive is usually others' good will. This leads to: Avoid people who are adept at making you feel guilty for your virtues.

Welcoming freaky answers

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, economics, philosophy

So can you buy your way into office, or can't you? Ross Perot couldn't, nor Steve Forbes. Most recently, Hilary Clinton came close, but was outvoted by the candidate she outspent (Barack Obama) in the primary. Why? If you ask Steven Levitt, he'll tell you that Obama is simply more likable. Just as Bill Clinton was more likable than Ross Perot in 1992 and as Bob Dole was more likable than Steve Forbes in 1996.

Where does Levitt get the gall to say that? From the numbers. Specifically, from asking the numbers the right kind of question: not "Does money dominate elections?" but "Does money mean more than personality?". Teasing such an answer from the statistics for many elections was done by applying a normalizing technique. Many unsuccessful candidates have run more than one campaign, and in many cases, the same two candidates have faced one another repeatedly.

If Pol B loses to Pol A the first time they campaign against one another, it is very, very unlikely that Pol B will ever win, no matter how much money is spent by either candidate. Once the populace likes Pol A enough to elect him or her, they don't change their mind unless someone even more likable comes along, or they find out that Pol A is really not so nice as was thought. The insight sheds a little more light on the "incumbency effect".

The insight that made Levitt and his co-author Stephen Dubner famous and infamous in equal measure, in their 2005 book Freakonomics, was the discovery that the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973 was the principal cause of the drop in crime rates that began about twenty years later. In brief, for nearly all women, the instinct to care for a baby is so powerful that she needs a strong incentive to choose abortion. Being too young, too poor, and uneducated together often provide that incentive. As it happens, criminals are mostly those who were born to such a woman. It is just such young women who were unable to get abortions prior to 1973, primarily because of poverty. Once legalized, abortion became relatively inexpensive, and abortions subsequently prevented the birth of large numbers of unwanted children. The proportion of young people who tend to become criminals fell, and with it, crime rates fell. I am decidedly not pro-abortion, quite the contrary, but the logic is inescapable.

What I found fascinating about the book—the whole title is Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything—is the notion of asking a question in a particular way to get results that otherwise remain buried in the noise. For example, they examined just those Sumo matches between a wrestler who is assured of an increased ranking and one who needs just one more win to avoid a reduced ranking. The resulting anomaly proved there is some amount of quid-pro-quo occurring.

I stumbled across just such a question more than twenty years ago, when my wife and I had begun to despair of having children. One doctor was proposing a series of painful and costly tests. A move to another state (a well-timed job offer) required getting a new doctor, and this one, within minutes of meeting my wife, noticed she had a lump on her thyroid. Getting the thyroid hormone problem fixed resulted in a pregnancy. I told this to a friend in yet another state, who is also a doctor, and he told me that one-third of "infertility" can be traced to thyroid hormone problems. It is the single biggest cause. When I asked why that isn't checked first, he told me, "It is too cheap."

I'm going to pass this along to these authors, for it is but one aspect of our health care dilemma. They have no doubt put a few other questions to the same dilemma. There has been a lot of talk in the years since most of us were pushed into HMO plans, that medical decisions need to be made by medical professionals, not by insurance company hacks. However, what we really need is that medical decisions be made for primarily medical reasons, at least from the doctors' side. If the patient must make an economic decision, that is up to the patient. To me, the goal of modifying the health care climate in this country ought to be making that economic decision less painful. I'll have to read Levitt and Dubner's next book to see if they tackle this one!

Harking back to my first driving disaster

kw: observations, musings, driving

I just had to comment on this cartoon. Sad to say, I'd already worked the Sudoku on a following page before I decided to scan the cartoon and post it. Luckily the numbers don't show too bad.

On a rainy day in 1963, I was about 15½, and my Dad would let me put the car in the garage or move it out to the driveway. My street shoes had slippery soles, and when I put my wet shoe on the brake, it slipped off onto the gas pedal. The front of the car got about three feet beyond the back of the garage before stalling.

It didn't burst through the wall like Jeremy's Dad's car here. It pushed the back wall loose from the side walls, bending it a little, and just raised it like a big garage door on a hinge. My Dad is the kind of fellow who thinks little of remodeling houses—with our help, he has moved windows or added a room or half room or roof cupola to every house we owned while I was growing up. After the nest emptied and he retired, he, without our help, added an office loft to the newest house he and Mom bought, by walling off a third of the attic and installing a stairway to it.

So, Dad and I proceeded to jack the garage's wall back into place, replacing a couple of pieces of broken siding, and I had the job or repainting the outside. I wonder what today's paper will show Jeremy doing…

A hedge halved

kw: observations, local events

The hedge project is finished, and it just about finished me off. Saturday's rain prevented work, which just gave time for my joints to stiffen up. Sunday afternoon was equable enough, so I pressed on and finished about sundown. Now I'm back at my desk job, with a gram of ibuprofen under my belt, so I don't feel too, too bad.

A hedge can be pretty, but it is sure a lot more work than a fence, which you can just paint every few years and be done with.

Fire - judging and cleansing

kw: book reviews, fiction, fantasy, magic

Coming of age can happen at any age. The term is mostly applied to the early teens. A later transitions is called "finding oneself" or a "midlife crisis". Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder is her third novel about Yelena, a Soulfinder, and all three have had such learning crises as their theme (I didn't read the first two, I located synopses).

I almost stopped in an early chapter. The book seemed to have a common Disney theme: horribly abused young person turns out to be someone really special who saves the day. I kept reading, though, and the novel soon left my expected formula behind. Ms Snyder is that rare writer who can animate more than one hero/heroine, and bring to life complex characters who are neither all good nor all bad. Yelena is the focal point of the book, but she is recipient of as much help as she lends to others.

As a Soulfinder, Yelena is feared, and expected to become a power-hungry magician. As the story unfolds, she gradually learns what she is actually good at, which isn't magic as it is typically known, other than an ability to heal very grave cases. But she can't start a fire, not even a little one, nor cause even a small object to move, by magical means.

Her soulfinding ability affords her a little protection from a powerful magician who wishes to destroy her; in a fight, she can attach the person's soul and, unless the magician disengages quickly, destroy it or drag it out of the body, killing her adversary. She is just a bit more ethical than the average bear, though, and doesn't resort to such killing until somewhat late in the story, when she learns that her primary skill is helping the soul of someone who has died find its way to the sky.

She also learns that the people's fear of Soulfinders is based on confusion with Soulstealers (I'd have used the word Soulthief), those who kill others to appropriate their magical powers. There is also an alternate way to steal magic that relies on a gruesome ritual, potentially making any person with magical gifts into a Soulstealer, effectively. Once Yelena knows the difference, she learns to liberate the souls enslaved by Soulstealers and send them to the sky, reducing the thieves' extraordinary powers.

She has four primary helpers: her lover Valek, her Story Weaver (kind of a magical psychiatrist) Moon Man, her horse Kiki, and an unnamed bat. Her adversaries are primarily two, the duplicitous Roze and an otherwise unnamed "Fire Weaver" who lives in the underworld. A gift Yelena learns, in a rather dramatic way, is how to pass through a fire into the underworld, and how to return.

But all these are metaphors. None of us matures without learning to confront our greatest fears. Living in denial means living a partial or crippled life. We may not be wise enough to choose the right helpers, but oftentimes our best helpers find us. We all have the opportunity to "entertain angels, all unawares". The best stories help us learn about ourselves.

Half a hedge - better than none?

kw: observations, photographs, local events

When we moved to our current house fifteen years ago, we obtained a hedge for the first time. I would not volunteer to own another hedge, but while we are here, we can't simply ignore it. At the beginning, I saw that it had been badly trimmed for a long time, and was overhanging quite a bit. Hedges need to be slightly narrower at the top, not quite straight up. This was twice as wide at the top, and lower branches had no leaves. I learned that Privet is very robust, so I cut it back to the shape I wanted, and we endured about a year of ugly hedge until it leafed out again.

Since then, no matter how frequently we trim it, it seems to gain on us, and while it has kept a good shape, it is quite a bit thicker than it was. In particular, a 110-foot (30m) stretch overhangs the sidewalk by at least half a meter. I decided to slim it down. I spent half a day at it today, and got half of it cut back. Here is how it looked by midafternoon, looking along the sidewalk to show how the uncut portion hangs over.

I had begun by using a hedge trimmer, but found that many of the branches I needed to cut were too thick for it. I made better headway by using a lopper. At first I was cutting everything upand bagging it, but we soon decided it was better to bundle the long twigs, and just bag small pieces.

I've already let my neighbors know my plans to uglify their view for half a year or so. Luckily, they don't mind. (As I type, the sore muscles and joints of my shoulders and arms reinforce my decision that, whenever we move again, there will be no more hedges! I still have half a day's work ahead of me to finish!!) The upside they all know is, now it will again be possible for two people to walk side by side down that sidewalk.

Here is a panorama of the hedge in its current state: half done.


Preview of coming attractions: This hedge is also troubled by Privet Rust Mites. I've sprayed for them a couple times, but it is quite hard to get to the back sides of the leaves. Come May, just as the leaves begin to grow, I'll be able to spray right through the hedge from the cut side and eliminate the mites.

The close of one long day

kw: book reviews, mysteries, fiction, continued review

So is it here, under Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, supposedly named for the "Rose Line" or meridian upon which it lies? The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, doesn't end in as big a cop-out as I was expecting, but… The attempt near the end to make Bishop Violet (Aringarosa) into a sort of good guy falls flat, and the long-lost missing family reunion was as expectable as an oncoming train.

I mean, it is sort of a nice note that what Langdon and Neveu really find at Rosslyn is a great treasure indeed. But in a turn as much out-of-the-blue as any hairbreadth, nick-of-time escape, it is just too much to have Langdon return to Paris for a "just maybe this is really it" moment.

Does the tip of the lower pyramid signal a bigger structure below? Does it matter? In the end, the author tries to make nice, stating that Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion were "innocent", just pawns of the real villain. The damage is done already.

I went to the Opus Dei website, where they discuss "mortification" as it is actually practiced. By the way, none of their members is a monk, though some are priests. Their discussion includes a paragraph beginning, "Penance and mortification are a small but essential part of the Christian life." The forty-day fast of Jesus is given as an example. I'll simply state this, according to my own study of the Bible: Jesus, John the Baptist and the Apostles called for Repentance. There is no "penance" in the New Testament. Penance means to pay for your own sins, which the NT writers all state is impossible. Secondly, fasting and early rising are the only "mortifications" found in the NT, and both are clearly seen to be for the purpose of closer fellowship with God, particularly when dealing with troubling events. In my experience, effective fasting occurs when you're too busy to eat.

Finally, I just have to present some symbolism that makes it a lot less likely that Constantine "chose" the four Gospels or any other Bible books. He'd called together Christian leaders from all over the Empire, who had been out of contact for long times because of persecution. The conference just ran away with itself, and the Emperor did little but moderate the louder disputes. And it was not at Nicea that the Canon was settled; that was a council at Chalcedon, about fifty years later.

Once artwork began to be added to the fancier Bibles of the early Middle Ages, the four Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—had animal avatars added to icons of them. An angel or man for Matthew, a lion for Mark, an ox for Luke, and an eagle for John. These were chosen, because they were the four faces of the Cherubim of the Old Testament, and of the "four living beasts" in Revelation 4. Interestingly, there is a rationale given for each of these choices in traditional theology, but explanations I have seen do not mention the real reason. In Ezekiel 1:10, the four faces of a Cherub are given in the order Man, Lion, Ox and Eagle. This is the real source of the medieval animal choices, and rationale was later applied to fit.

However, in Revelation 4:7 the four creatures (one face each) are, in order, Lion, Ox, Man and Eagle. This order better matches the character of the four Evangelists, in order:

• Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus, "son of Abraham, son of David". Matthew is written for Jews, proving that Jesus is their King. The appropriate symbol for a king is a Lion.
• Mark has no genealogy. The book focuses on the things Jesus did, much more than on what he said. He is presented as the laboring servant of God. An Ox is appropriate here.
• Luke includes a genealogy of Jesus, this one going through a different son of David, and continuing to Adam. The book focuses on Jesus's teachings, and contains the greatest amount of ethical instruction. Jesus, son of Man, is shown to be the prototype of an ethical man, so the Man is the best symbol here.
• John presents a transcendent Jesus, the divine Jesus. Only in John do we read that Jesus said, "If you do not believe I am, you will die in your sins." Lion, ox and man are ground-bound. Not so the Eagle, the transcendent creature.

The book of Revelation was written late in the First Century, about 90-95 AD. Even the latest of late-daters dare not put its authorship later than 140 AD. In either case, it is not until 250-300 years later that this symbology even matters. There is no hint in the documents that survive that Revelation 4 had anything to do with the choice of four Gospels out of dozens.

By the way, I have translations of a couple of dozen early Gospels. Other than the four we find in the New Testament, they all read like stories from the Arabian Nights or like miracle-adventure stories. The language is overblown. None has the sparse, descriptive narrative we find in our received Evangelists. I see the hand of God, not just in the choice of the books of the New Testament, but in their order of presentation. The writer of Revelation had no idea that his vision of four beasts would have a connection to the Gospels that would be noticed only fifteen centuries later (you'll find much of what I have written above follows documents written after the Sixteenth Century).

And, even more finally, a big point is made that Jesus "could not" have remained single in First-Century Palestine. Every generation of every culture has had its confirmed bachelors. Paul was also single, only half a generation later. Where he catalogs the married apostles, he mentions "the brothers of the Lord" and Cephas (Peter), but leaves out Jesus (1 Cor 9:5). Since he was defending marriage, he'd have definitely mentioned Jesus had He been married.

Of violets and mirrors

kw: book reviews, mysteries, fiction, continued review

I've now made it about 3/4 the way through The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. People claim to have read it in one sitting. The standard hardbound is 480 pages, and this large print edition is 737, so that represents quite a long "sitting"! At least eight hours, at my reading speed.

A central figure is Bishop Aringarosa. Did anyone else immediately think "Ring around the Rosie"? It is too bad that the nursery rhyme's connection with the Plague has been debunked, because Aringarosa is the prototype of a plague on humanity. Considering that so much is made of the Rose and its/her identity in the middle part of the novel, the "rosa" in his name makes me suspect more depth to his character than has so far been shown. The "posies" of the rhyme consist of whatever flowers a child may have at hand, frequently the common, weedy yard violet. I have come to think of the character as "Bishop Violet".

When I saw the graphic of the inscription at the beginning of Chapter 71, I immediately recognized it as mirror writing. While Da Vinci is famed for employing it to (slightly) obscure his documents, it has been used by many much less famous folks.

This image shows some of the text that appears below the Vitruvian Man illustration. I don't know what it says, because I can't read Italian, either reversed or direct. In the novel we find a couple pages of explanation as to why Saunière used English for the mirrored inscription. He was French, after all. Well, he is the creature of the author, so he can have whatever prejudices the author finds convenient.

For that matter, the Leonardo of this book is equally the author's creature. I've had a close look at high-resolution images of The Last Supper, and while the person to Christ's right does look a little too pretty to be a man, and has the longest hair in the scene, I am by no means convinced of its femaleness. Even if the real Leonardo wished to depict a woman, and was convinced that Mary Magdalene was at the Supper, that tells us more about him than about the event.

The scene in the fresco itself is ridiculous from a Biblical perspective. The twelve plus Jesus reclined; they did not sit on chairs. They may have sat around one central serving table, or perhaps there were two or more seating areas, for it was a "large upper room".

Here is the image from above, reversed. In this one it is much easier to recognize the letters. I found out decades ago that it is not hard to write in reverse. Simply use your opposite hand. For me that is the left hand. Once your handwriting using your dominant hand is well developed and well practiced, you can take advantage of a property of the nervous system: your right and left hands are "wired" to use complementary (i.e. mirror-image) motions.

Draw a quick circle with your ordinary writing hand. Then do so with your other hand. It will look best if you draw the circle in the opposite direction! With much less practice than you might imagine, you can learn to write backward with that hand, and the handwriting will be the same (in a mirror) as your major hand. This is easiest to do first on a chalk board, then work toward smaller and smaller script until both hands can write at the same size, just opposite directions.

Well, back to my reading. I have a growing suspicion of the butler, since a couple chapters ago the albino Silas is wishing for a miracle, and the hidden narrator tells us that one will occur a few hours later. That's a pretty big clue, Mr. Brown!

Whose code was it, anyway?

kw: book reviews, mysteries, fiction

This is 243 Lexington Avenue, Brooklyn, NYC, USA, the headquarters building for Opus Dei. The opening page of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown lists this address as one Fact upon which the novel is based. Though I am not pro-Catholic by any means, I recognized from the time the book was published that Mr. Brown is very likely doing quite a disservice to a Catholic service organization. The very secretiveness of Opus Dei does them a disservice, which is why I prefer "daylight in every corner". Secret societies are for mental children (including my grandfather, a Mason).

I didn't read the book in 2003 because I wanted the hype to die down. Most of it has. Now that it is out in a Large Print paperback, I decided to read it. This won't be a usual review; thousands of reviewers have flogged this one. Rather, I'll take a riff now and again as the book triggers them.

Early in the book it is stated that the pentagram, or five-pointed star, is not a symbol of devil worship but of goddess worship, being connected to Venus. Further, that the orbit of the planet Venus traces a perfect pentagram on the sky every four years. The pentagram isn't quite that perfect, but it is pretty good. Every eight years, beginning from an inferior conjunction (closest approach of Venus to Earth), there are five more inferior conjunctions spaced around the ecliptic (or Zodiac). The sixth occurs within two degrees of the first. Two degrees isn't much, but it is four times the width of the moon on the sky, so was easily discernible by the ancients. At the end of the Pentagram article in Wikipedia there is an educational image and explanation of this ecliptic pentagram.

While in the Louvre, Robert Langdon, apparent hero of this tale, has a flashback to a lecture about art, in which he describes the delights of PHI (or Φ), the Divine Proportion, or Golden Section. This number, an unending decimal that begins 1.618, has the property that dividing it into one yields 0.618, or Φ-1. One way to determine Φ to any precision desired is to construct the Fibonacci Series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.), in which each number is the sum of the two prior numbers.

Nature is full of these numbers. This sunflower head has seeds that spiral out from the center. If you trace clockwise spirals and counter-clockwise spirals you get 34 of the first and 55 of the second, assuming you use the most open spiral in each direction. These are the ninth and tenth Fibonacci Numbers. If, for example, you select a more steeply-sloping spiral in the counter-clockwise direction, you'll find there are 21, the eighth Fibonacci Number. 55/34= 1.6176 and 34/21 = 1.6190. Both are within 0.6% of Φ. Numbers further in the sequence get you closer.

In his lecture, Langdon states several ratios found in the human body that approximate Φ, though he uses the word "exact" a little too freely. I got out a tape measure to see just how precise these ratios are. I found the following:

• My height divided by the height of my navel: 1.704, which is +5%.
• Hip height divided by knee height (where on each joint one chooses can make this quite different): Left 1.656, Right 1.644. Both are about +2%.
• Shoulder-to-fingertips divided by elbow-to-tips: Left 1.642, Right 1.616. The latter figure is very close; the other is 2% high.
• The three joints in my Left middle finger: 2.4, 1.5, 1.1 (all inches), which produces the ratios 1.600 and 1.364. Again, where you choose the joint location can make a big difference. A "near-ideal" 5-inch finger would have joint lengths of 2.5, 1.55, 0.95.

I recall reading that swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps, being 76 inches (193 cm) tall, has the torso of a man four inches taller and the legs of a man four inches shorter. That is, compared to some "perfect" ratio, his navel is four inches too close to the floor (4" = 10 cm). His navel-height-to-tallness ratio is thus about 1.77.

Based on the apparent ubiquity of the Divine Proportion, much is made of the Vitruvian Man diagram, in which Leonardo inscribed a human male figure into a circle in two positions. This figure's proportions are all set to Φ, making it the Ideal Figure. It would be interesting to take a tape measure to a few thousand people at random and see if the average value for a number of these ratios really does come close enough to 1.618 to constitute evidence for the Divine.

By the way, 1618/1000 reduces to 809/500. The sixteenth and seventeenth Fibonacci Numbers are 987 and 1597; their ratio is 1.61803445 which is getting pretty close to 1.61803399 (and some change), a more exact value for Φ, and a great deal more accurate than 809/500.

Now, for my title. Being a quarter of the way through the book, it appears that the Code in question is not really by Da Vinci, but by Saunière, the murdered curator. Maybe I'm wrong…