Sue Lange's Blog, page 17

Weird Science Day 7: Recovered Memory Syndrome–Not

Remember Sybil? That book scarred me. I was too sensitive when I read it. All those personalities. All that missing time in a young person's life. From then on, if I couldn't remember a certain episode in my life, like what I had for breakfast last week, I was sure it was because my mind had been taken over by one of my other selves. But I hadn't been a victim of horrible child abuse. Or had I? Maybe it was something I just didn't remember. My mind had blocked it out. Maybe hypnotism would reveal to me something horrible that had happened to me in my childhood.

Fortunately, I love food, so I don't forget too many meals. And truthfully I don't have periods of lost time like Sybil did. I was more scarred from the horrible depiction of the torture in the book than anything that ever happened to me.

And now I learn that Sybil's story was a fabrication. No abuse, no personalities.

It seems the therapy used to diagnose Recovered Memory Syndrome–the thing Sybil had–is questionable at best, quackery at worst. Someone's recovered memory is often concocted by a misguided therapist. Probably not on purpose.

In Sybil's case, according to Debbie Nathan, author of Sybil Exposed, the whole thing came about when Sybil (not her real name) began performing what she thought her therapist wanted to see: strange behavior. Apparently Sybil had a very active imagination and a difficult, but probably not abusive, mother.

Now, before we go further, know this: there are documented cases of recovered memory, and they've been corroborated. Here's a quick quote from a 1999 article in American Journal of Psychiatry:

"Childhood abuse, particularly chronic abuse beginning at early ages, is related to the development of high levels of dissociative symptoms including amnesia for abuse memories. This study strongly suggests that psychotherapy usually is not associated with memory recovery and that independent corroboration of recovered memories of abuse is often present."

I don't want to downplay the seriousness of child abuse or what happens to people when they are subjected to it. Notice the quote says psychotherapy is NOT associated with memory recovery. What I find strange is that therapists seemed to believe the problem was so widespread anybody with any problem was in need of hypnotism or some other psychotherapeutic method to dredge up horrible memories. Whether or not the memories were of real events or not.

Fast forward to 2010 and we have an article from Psychology Today that points out memories are not ever very accurate and in fact you can easily plant a memory. Here's a good tidbit:

"In one study, she interviewed a mother and her two sons both individually and as a group over a period of several weeks. They were, all three of them, normal subjects that, nevertheless, came to believe in an event that never occurred. Dr. Loftus introduced the idea of the younger son once getting lost in a shopping mall and finally being reunited with his mother and older brother through the efforts of a kindly stranger. Eventually this fabricated story became so real in the minds of the subjects that they offered a physical description of the imaginary stranger. He was an older man with a beard and red suspenders! One must wonder just how much, or how little, in the way of additional suggestions it would have taken to convince the family that the boy had been molested in the period between getting lost and being returned."

And then there's an interesting post at Feminist Philosophers about how it's our culture that's inventing the trauma in the first place. We decide what is aberrant behavior and then decide that anyone subjected to it is going to suffer psychological trauma. In other words if we're told what has happened to us is terrible, soon we suffer from it. If nobody had pointed out how horribly we'd been treated, we'd just go on with our business and maybe even stay, I don't know, happy? It's a controversial idea and well worth taking a look at. Here's a snippet:

"But what if an experience, perhaps a very bad one, is not experienced as abuse at the time?  Seen from the present, it may seem much more abusive than it did in the past.  But if it was not experience at the time as dreadful abuse, perhaps it won't initially be retained as one of our obvious memories.  If this is correct, then people might come to  remember sexual abuse after having forgotten about it."

And of course the very weirdest came from a site that doesn't seem to have any professional affiliation with it, but nonetheless I'm presenting here because it's interesting. The site is called "Apologetics Index," and here's the quote that catches the eye:

"False memories are therapy-induced fantasies masquerading as memories that seem very real to the person being treated. They often involves accusations and allegations of incest, Satanic Ritual Abuse, or cult involvement."

The connection here is that many people with false memories believe them to be real recovered memories. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary, they believe their concocted memory.

One more link. I found an article entitled Christian Therapist Beware of False Memory Syndrome by one Chaplain Paul G. Durbin. He's the Director of Pastoral Care at Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital in New Orleans.

A quick search lists Pendleton Hospital, but there's no web page so I can't check  his credentials. He seems to be fairly active in the hypnotherapy world. He's a chaplain, a hypnotist, a therapist. Who better to weigh in on the religious angle of this memory syndrome?

Here's a quote:

"Some therapist believe that childhood sexual abuse is the specific cause of numerous physical and mental problems which emerge in adulthood. Regardless of the problem, these therapist will began to look for and search for sexual abuse. These therapists are not discouraged to find that the client may not remember any sexual abuse in her history. If given time, they will help client find the memories. I use the female pronoun because of the thousands of patients of Recovered Memory Therapy most are women. These therapists believe that children immediately repress all memory of sexual abuse shortly after it occurs so that it is not available to conscious awareness until it comes forth in therapy. I believe that some sexual abuse is repressed, but I am convinced that generally it is a single event or perhaps a number of events that happen very early in life. I do not believe that a person can be repeated abused over many years including teen years and not remember it."

By the way, the quotes were lifted directly from the listed websites. Teh mispellngs and bad gramir is not mine. I make enough mistakes of my own. I shouldn't have to take the blame for others'.

Anyway, Chaplain Durbin goes on to recount numerous examples of children suing parents, then recanting later and parents suing therapists. It's a mess. It's sad. But if nothing else it illuminates how difficult it is to know the brain. We will probably understand the metaverse (see previous post) before we understand the human mind.

Thanks for reading. Hey, if you've got any leads on weird science, mention them below or contact me through the form. I'll check 'em out.

Sue Lange

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. "It's a wild, good read." Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

Weird Science Day 6: Presenting the Multiverse

There's no image for this post because you can't photograph, or draw, or understand in any way the face of God. And neither can you the multiverse.

First off, a joke.

Set up: I gave myself 45 minutes to figure out the theory of the multiverse.

Punchline: I gave myself 45 minutes to figure out the theory of the multiverse.

What is the multiverse you ask. Near as I can tell, it's one of those things that number crunchers invent to make sure things add up. The Big Bang won't work unless we include an infinite number of alternate universes. String theory doesn't work unless there are a lot of universes. Quantum mechanics doesn't work unless there's a multiverse.

But, dang it, what is the multiverse? It's an infinite number of universes different than our own. Or maybe exactly the same as ours. Or maybe similar to ours: same particles and physical laws, but different arrangements. Or an infinite number of universes that are slightly less similar to ours but still pretty much like it: same particles and physical laws, but different histories. What these infinite numbers of universes are like depends on who you talk to. Just so you can wrap your head around it think of the multiverse as the old parallel universes of science fiction. We suspend our disbelief for that, so why not this?

In science fiction the hero gets to have contact with a parallel universe. Or he somehow finds a window into the alternate space. Sadly we're not so lucky back here in reality. (Would that be out here in reality? Up here? Inside here.)

But that's it in a nutshell, and what makes this concept so weird is that it is quickly leaving the realm of science fiction and entering the realm of reality. Well, the reality that exists in the heads of physicists.

Here's my problem with trying to understand this concept in 45 minutes or less. The explanations make no sense. For instance New Scientist gives us this:  "If the big bang started with a period of inflationary growth, there would be a multitude of universes a lot like ours but with different arrangements of matter." I don't see the logic. Obviously there's some information missing, but searching further you get some mumbo jumbo about the cosmic background radiation, created from the big bang, being uniform across the entire universe.

If you tell me the cosmic background radiation is uniform, I say, hey, I'm with you. No problem. Balmy in every quadrant. I'm lovin' it. But physicists are not content. It's so unlikely, they say. Possible, but not probable. And then of course, being the very embodiment of  innocence and childlike wonder that every physicist is, they must ask why? And then of course, being the short-tempered and easily provoked physicists they are, they set about finding an answer. And they do find an answer. It's: Ta da! The multiverse!

Apparently in the early moments of the big bang, the really early moments–as in 10E-35 seconds after the big bang–the universe expanded so much, the cosmic background radiation became uniform. And that's why we have a multiverse.

Glad that's cleared up.

I know if I keep reading up on this stuff, I'll eventually understand what the smart people understand. Of course I will be on my deathbed at that time, but rest assured, I'll be posting a blog on it as soon as I get my shot of morphine.

I knew I was toast once they brought up string theory. I still don't even get that. I can't understand dimensions beyond the fourth, and string theory has, what? ten? Or more. Or less, depending on who you talk to. Could dimensions and multiverses be the same thing? Er, no. Why not? I don't know.

Okay. I quit.

There's one last  strange thing we must discuss in regards to the multiverse. And even though I said I was quitting, I'm going to mention it because it's bizarre and that's what we're here for. It's so bizarre, in fact, it's in the realm of alien abduction. If someone says they've been abducted, then by golly, I'm going to believe it. How can I argue? I wasn't there. Sure I'm going to smirk as soon as his or her back is turned, but question it? No way.

This final multiverse theory is like that.

They say our universe is a computer simulation running on some brainy civilization's smartphone.

There I said it. With a straining face. I mean, all I can say is, that's what happens when you let physics majors smoke pot.

I'm agnostic on this, this, multiverse thing. Even that last computer simulation could be true. Believing in it, for me, is  no different than believing in God. You have to take this on faith. The numbers don't add up so we invent something? Okay. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Einstein wanted the numbers to add up so he said light speed was the constant, not time. And that has been proven. And it's been proven nothing can go faster than light. Right? I mean, right? See what I'm saying.

As far as I'm concerned the multiverse is the new God. You can't see it, you can't visualize it, and you damn sure can't understand it, not in the Biblical sense.

That's why there's no image up there. We have no conception of God and we have no conception of the multiverse.

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. "It's a wild, good read." Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

Weird Science Day 5: Exploding Ants

There's a term for it: Autothysis. Basically it means some gland inside an organism explodes, rupturing the skin and releasing the organism's inner bliss as well as some toxic green slimy stuff.

So far only termites and ants have this handy capability. It's apparently the most effective way to protect the nest from intruders. The insect explodes releasing poisons to their opponent, killing both the exploder and explodee.

I think the termites and ants learned this trick from each other, actually. I mean don't termites encroach on ants' territory and vice versa? Who else are they battling? I'm picturing all out warfare between these two groups over some hill in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The soldiers are exploding on the left, on the right, in front, and behind. Bits of their sticky selves cling to the grasses on the smoky battlefield. The smell is horrendous, the cries of the wounded heart-wrenching. The fight rages on until one poor, half-crumpled ant with a bloody bandage over its right antenna is left to plant the flag. Another colony survives. Oh the insectity!

The best photo I found on this phenomenon was the one above; it's not obvious to me who is exploding and who is getting slimed. The black ant looks most like a carpenter ant, and since it's a certain species of carpenter that displays this behavior, I assume the little red guy is the one getting blasted. It really doesn't look like either of them has exploded.

In my search for information on this curiousity, I came across the website of an expert on ants:  Mark W. Moffett. That's his photo up there. He's got a book out called "Adventures Among Ants." And he's all over the place. Scientific American, Life Magazine. He even got a mention on Jon Stewart's show. I guess ants are progressive, though they seem downright militaristic to me.

I invite you to peruse his site. It's fascinating, filled with little tidbits. Like how ants invented slavery long before humans ever did. Which is fitting, since they are also agrarian. Somebody's got to pick the cotton.

In perusing his site, I found a link that led me to a quiz about ants. I did poorly (I only got 3 out of 10 right). Guess I should buy his book, eh? It wasn't all a waste of time, though. I Found out that an ant can live for two weeks after its head's been been cut off. I'll be bringing that one up at the next cocktail party I get invited to.

It's a fun site. Help yourself: http://www.adventuresamongants.com/Adventures_Among_Ants/Blog.html

I don't think I'm ever going to hate carpenter ants again. I'm sure they're happily munching through my timbers as I write this, but  think of their entertainment value. Next time I see on scrabbling across the bathroom floor, I'll start tickling it with a pencil to see if it'll explode.

Just kidding. I'm a progressive.

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. "It's a wild, good read." Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

31 Days of Weird Science Day 4: Angry Birds

Take a look at that image to the left. That is not a computer simulation or some mad taxidermist's display. That is an actual photo of a herring gull sitting on top of a white-tailed eagle. I found it in the November 5 issue of New Scientist. It was taken by Markus Varesvuo.  According to one commenter out there in the Internetsphere, the reason the eagle eye looks dead is because it has an inner eyelid that it is using to protect its eye.

Good idea because actually the gull is not sitting on the eagle, it's attacking it. Apparently the gull is protecting its young. Here's the interesting part: "Some gulls also defecate or even vomit on the predator for good measure." Go daddy.

A quick search determined the location of this altercation to be Norway.  Oddly, a further search on herring gulls gave me a bunch of pages indicating the range of the bird to be in North America. Even more freaky was that the herring gulls pictured on the webpages all have nice pink legs. Take a closer look at the gams on the gull in photo. Right. Yellow legs.

This was not making sense so I defaulted to Wikipedia. Aha! There's an American herring gull and then there's a European herring gull. Mystery solved: this is a European herring gull.

But not so fast. Wikipedia says European herring gulls have pink legs too. There is a species of gull that used to be a herring gull, but due to the vagaries of  continuously updated taxonomy, is now considered a separate species. Guess what its name is? Right. Yellow-legged gull.

Do yourself a favor. Do not try and research this further. If you do, you will hurt yourself. You can see why with this sample from the Wikipedia entry:

"The Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis), sometimes referred to as Western Yellow-legged Gull (to distinguish it from eastern populations of yellow-legged large white-headed gulls)… was formerly treated as a subspecies of either the Caspian Gull L. cachinnans, or more broadly as a subspecies of the Herring Gull L. argentatus. It is named after the German zoologist Karl Michahelles."

Thank you Mr. Michahellas. Are we sure that it's not really the gull formerly known as the yellow-legged large white-headed?

I don't even dare to check out white-tailed eagles. I mean couldn't that bird  just as easily be a brown-feathered eagle with whitish tips on its tail. Or maybe the buff-headed, black-winged eagle that is distinguished from the yellow-beaked, brown-headed by the slight upturned tail and devious demeanor. Or something.

And you thought birds were boring.

Sue Lange

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

31 Days of Weird Science Day 3: Artificial Photosynthesis

Er…?

And why would we need such a thing? I mean, I'm envisioning what? some new kind of diet? You no longer eat, you make your own food by using SlimFast's fast-acting photosynthetic day cream. Slather it on, head outdoors on a sunny day, and you'll never need to eat again. You'll have all the glucose your body needs without the messy fat. Slim down the natural way!

The reality is not nearly as fun (and weird) as that, but it is more important.

The point of artificial photosynthesis is to create fuel using CO2 and sunlight, the same way plants create fuel (carbohydrates) using CO2 and sunlight.

In order to propel you on your merry way, your car or truck or personal airplane burns carbohydrates and gives off CO2 in the process. Photosynthesis on the other hand uses up CO2 in the air to create carbohydrates (fuel). Plants do this naturally; it's how they create food for themselves. Artificial photosynthesis would do the same thing.

Since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and in fact, the number one bad guy in the story of climate change, we need to find ways of getting rid of it. Using it up only to produce more of it when we fly our personal airplanes seems like we're just treading water. But treading water is what we want. We crave a cycle that creates no byproducts, that is, excess CO2. Right now we don't have that cycle.  We're creating CO2 from materials that have sequestered it for thousands of years: our oil reserves. That's what oil amounts to: sequestered CO2.

Besides we're supposedly running out of our oil. Utilizing excess CO2 may be the only way to shore up our fast-fading fossil fuel economy.

This seems like a no-brainer; we should have been doing this yesterday, right? Apparently it's not all that easy to do. It's another one of those processes that requires a higher energy input than what you get out of it.

To reduce the energy requirement, researchers have been experimenting with various elements such as iridium and cobalt and something called an "ionic liquid," to catalyze the reactions and make them more efficient.

For those interested, an ionic liquid is defined by wikipedia as "a salt in the liquid state." When they say "salt", they're not necessarily talking about table salt with a melting point of 1,474 °F. Obviously that's not going to be particularly easy to maintain in a liquid state. There are better candidates that are closer to liquid at room temps. Unfortunately they all seem to have obscenely long names. Here's one  that won't be too taxing on the bandwidth: 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate. If you're interested in the chemistry of the more profane ionic liquids head over to wikipedia for details.

Suffice it to say, there are people working on this strange phenomenon called artificial photosynthesis. There are even some cheeky startups jumping into the mix. New companies like Dioxide Materials whose graphic I grabbed to illustrate this post. I wish them luck and a total monopoly when their process gets approved.  Anything to keep Exxon's oily fingers out of the pie.

Hang in there!

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

Weird Science Day Two: Stem Cells, Breast Milk, and Testicles

The stem cell controversy. It's not going away. Whether or not you believe it should is not important. The main thing is that the benefits of stem cell research are vast. Therapies using stem cells may one day cure everything from acute spinal cord injuries to Alzheimer's disease to Sickle cell anemia and other horrendous maladies.  In other words, it behooves us to figure out how to get around the controversy.

In case you've been living under the proverbial rock, I'll update you. Stem cells aren't the problem. Where we get them is. The best source is the human embryo. Preferably about five days after conception.

Harvesting human embryos, even the ones leftover from artificial insemination projects and now scheduled to be destroyed, is akin to murder in some folks' eyes. I personally don't believe that, but I can imagine how horrified I would be if I did. I can understand the passion.

At any rate because of the restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research, scientists are frantically searching for other types of stem cells. Doing a quick search on the Internet, you'll discover that stem cells are being harvested from mice, pigs, human umbilical cords, bone marrow, among other places. There's much work being done to try and get regular cells to turn into stem cells. Anything to keep the work going without the use of human embryos.

I wonder about these other sources. Mice and pigs? Can they actually be used to discover cures for human ailments? Umbilical cords, okay, no problem there, but bone marrow? Who's donating?

The real problem with using non-embryonic stem cells is that nothing is as effective as the original stem cells–the ones that are by definition going to turn into every type of body cell.

How many different types of cells a particular candidate can turn into is called "Potency." There are five levels of potency, starting with the lowest level–unipotent. A unipotent cell can only turn into a cell like itself. Not very potent. The highest level cells are called totipotent. Just under them are the pluripotent cells. These are the rock stars of the stem cell world. They can produce, that is, differentiate into, cells of any type.  They'll give rise to any kind of tissue needed for reconstruction or replacement. You need a new liver, pancreas, or spinal cord? Get yourself a packet of pluripotent cells and you'll be all set. Human embryonic stem cells are pluripotent.

The search goes on every day for other pluripotents. Sources that can be used without infringing on someone's world view. Nothing worse for scientific research than fetters. So no stone is left unturned. Funny thing about turning over stones: you can't believe what you'll find. A couple of strange possibilities considered lately are human breast milk and adult human testicles.

Back in 2008, researches in Germany and the UK began looking at stem cells harvested from "routine biopsies of men's testicles." Everyone was agog. A great potential source! But then in 2009 it was discovered that yes, human testes can be used to gather stem cells, but they're not as potent as embryonic stem cells.  Such are the ravages of the scientific method. The world was abuzz with the testicle/stem cell story in 2008, it's all but gone from the scene in 2011.

Also in 2008, the Australians were hard at it.  Seems they had isolated stem cells from breast milk. Apparently these cells exhibit the same pluripotency as embryonic stem cells. Hurrah!

As is always the case, the jury is still out on this. There is  work to be done to determine just how plentiful these cells are. And as noted in the article, there are skeptics. Are these cells actually embryonic-like or have they been coaxed into exhibiting high potency?

I can see other controversy here. I imagine signs in the hospitals urging women to switch to formula for their babies because "America needs the milk!" or some sick thing like that. And as the article points out, we don't know yet what those stem cells are doing in the breast milk. Quite possibly they are used for the developing baby, maybe providing for some sort of regenerative tissue the infant needs. Maybe the stem cells are one of the reasons why breast milk is the best thing to be feeding your baby.

We'll figure it out. And however we figure it out, I'm sure it will be weird.

Sue Lange

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

Weird Science Day 1: Epigenetic Inheritance

To kick off the 31 Days of Weird Science I wanted to start with a magnificent post. But there are so many interesting things going on in the world of science now, I had a hard time deciding what the quintessential weird thing is that they're all talking about. The faster than light neutrino story would be a good one, but that's already covered all over the place. What can I add to the mix? I've covered the Higgs Boson a couple of times this past year. Probably should skip that one too. Curiousity, the latest Mars probe, just launched last Saturday. Again lots of coverage on that, but nothing happening there until, when, August? What to do? What to do?

Last Friday I read Charles Tan's interview with Athena Andreadis over at sfsignal.com. Athena stated she was surprised that science fiction writers don't write about some of the more interesting stories from current science. Even though she was talking about science fiction, it gave me an idea for this non-fiction-about-science blog. She brought up several interesting topics that were interesting. I picked epigenetics.  It's very weird and appropriate.

In a nutshell epigenetic traits are changes in gene expression (what something looks like for instance) that  have not occurred through changes in the DNA. It's easy to see how environment affects our bodies after we're born. We break legs, contract diseases. These things change the way our bodies look and function. What's weird is that sometimes these changes due to environment can be passed on to offspring. Doesn't that just fly in the face of everything you learned in Genetics 101?

As self-respecting denizens of the 21st Century, we pooh-pooh Lamarck. The Lamarckian model of evolution has the giraffe coming into being after generations of horses slowly stretched their necks through lifetimes of eating leaves higher and higher on the trees. One individual's neck grew slightly longer in its lifetime and that slightly longer neck was passed on to the offspring whose neck also elongated slightly in their lifetime. After several lifetimes of slight neck stretches, voila! we have a long-necked horse.

How silly. Us self-respectors subscribe to Darwin and Mendel nowadays. Inherited change occurs in the genes rather than in the bodies of the gene expressors: the people. Or the animals.

But hold that thought. There is evidence afoot that we CAN inherit changes that come about due to environment acting on the phenotype rather than mutation in the DNA acting on the germ cells. We call that process Epigenetic Inheritance, and to this biology-major, college-graduate, that's just weird.

Here's a quick rundown of the classic example for epigenetic inheritance posted by the Institute of Science in Society:

"In the nest, the mother rat licks and grooms her pups, and while nursing, arches her back to groom and lick her pups. Some mothers (high performers) tend to do these more frequently than others (low performers). As adults, the offspring of high performers are less fearful and show more modest responses to stress in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) neuro-endocrine pathway.

Cross-fostering studies showed that the biological offspring of low-performers reared by high-performers, resemble the offspring of high performers, and vice versa. …

Amazingly, the pups of both high and low-performing mothers start out life genetically the same."

There are other examples out and about. Children of holocaust survivors develop diseases they would not have developed had their parents not been malnourished during part of their lives. Fruit flies exposed to harsh chemicals grow bristly eyelashes (obviously these scientists are working with bodacious microscopes to be able see that) and then their younguns grow bristly eyelashes too.

When details of the methods for inheritance are explained, often I have a hard time deciding if this is something different than regular inheritance via genes. It seems to involve the DNA somehow. The difference between the two mechanisms is too subtle for me to happily accept a Lamarckian model. It begs further investigation.

Regardless, whatever is going on is certainly weird and proves once again that the more we discover, the less we know. It's sort of a built-in feature of science that keeps us coming back for more.

Science Daily nicely illustrates this weirdness that is scientific study generally and epigenetics specifically in the title of their 2009 article, "100 Reasons to Change the Way We Think About Genetics."

Sue Lange

Sue Lange's latest ebook, Tritcheon Hash, is full of lapses of logic and weird science. Get your copy from Amazon or read a couple of free chapters at the publisher's website.

Coming up: 31 Days of Weird Science

My novel, Tritcheon Hash, was first published in 2003 by Metropolis Ink. Next week, Book View Cafe is putting the ebook version out. Yay!

It has been said that the book contains lapses of logic. I agree. Some things in it just don't make sense. And then there's the weird science. That's the part I like. In fact I love weird science wherever I come across it, not just in my own writing.

When it comes to weird though, nothing beats reality. No matter how strange, entertaining, or funny, science fiction is, reality is stranger, funnier, and more entertaining. And I'll prove it to you. Every day in December I'll post a new entry on the weirdest thing I come across in the world of science. I'm not just talking about glow-in-the-dark puppies or downloadable brains. I'm talking about things like scientists manufacturing the perfect-sized raindrops to bomb mosquitoes with. Just to see how they react. (see photo above from the Oct. 29 issue of New Scientist). No science fiction writer can possibly top stuff like that. The world is full of it and you'll find out about it right here, every day in December.

Merry Christmas!

Sue Lange

Tritcheon Hash ebook can be found in the Kindle store, at Smashwords, or at the publisher's site. $4.99. Tritcheon. Rhymes with bitchin'!

The Supreme Court Giveth and the Supreme Court Taketh Away

With the Singularity fast approaching, it will soon be difficult to define what it is to be human. In Vonda N. McIntyre's wicked satire piece, The Supreme Court Defines Personhood, we can see some of the difficulties already. Although this piece was written to protest the Supreme Court's allowing Corporations protection under the Constitution, I think it's a good item for Singularity Watch because you can see how confusing the world of the posthumanist is going to be. This bit of political absurdism is right on time, funny as hell, and reminiscent of the best of Mad Magazine. I hope she can maintain her sense of humor when all this comes upon us.

This short story is available as an ebook from Book View Cafe, but let me give you some of the finer points.

"Organic beings are redefined as unpersons." That would be us.

"The Perfect Union must now be administered as a profit-making organization (Amendment 28 to the Constitution of the United States of America, "National Profitability"). Corporations are the only entities with sufficient financial resources to function as persons and citizens." Yup. The business of America is finally legally business. And it turns out that because biological entities cannot contribute to the profitability of the US, they "are now relieved of citizenship." Thank god we are now relieved of that burden.

Programs benefitting organic entities are required to demonstrate profitability. Most such programs are just a "drain on the resources" so they're basically just deep-sixed. However programs to defend ova, sperm, and embryos are protected under Amendment 29 of the Constitution." You know that one. That's the one called "Personhood of Gametes."

Governance for all the new shit is with "The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Guns, Explosives and Pregnancy."

The Corporation of Incarceration (handles prison construction, maintenance, etc.) is now the richest person in the country. And profits will continue as more and more unpersons are incarcerated because they are no longer part of the system.

And to make sure the kingdom stayes intact, Corporations "sponsor" justices of the supreme court. Oh, and by the way, Shexmoil retains sole sponsorship of the Chief Justice. As is fitting for a person of such stature.

Read the whole thing and weep. Or die laughing.

Sue Lange

Sue Lange is a member of Book View Cafe

Slopes of Vesuvius

[image error]Dostoevsky said the lives of the prisoners were like those of the "settlers on the slopes of Vesuvius." That gave me pause, I tell you. I barely paid attention to the rest of the chapter so taken was I with imagining the lives of the settlers.

It was eight in the evening. I had just slipped into a tepid bath after spending 13 hours on the computer troubleshooting my relationship with Verizon. Well it wasn't all about Verizon. Much of it was about the relationship with the new ISP. I was coordinating between the two, trying to decide which one was going to get the kiss-off. The blame game had been ongoing all day: whose operating system was too old, whose upload speeds were atrocious, whose set up was on the very edge of storage capability. And always running underneath the conversation, a current of competition, a pissing contest about who really understands the mechanism of Internet delivery.

Of course I had a blistering headache as I slipped into that lukewarm bath. I generally like my water scalding but I'm trying to go green, compromise, so you get the picture: bad day, no reward at the end.

I chose light reading to unwind with, hence the Dostoevsky. He hits me with that line about the prisoners lives and those on the slopes of Vesuvius. How could I not jump out of the tub and fire up the Internet? I wanted to know what those slopes were like. Were these prisoners subject to misery that knows no bounds or were they merely daredevils? I so wanted to tap Wikipedia.

I have no doubt there are ten or twenty readers here that instantly know not only the present state of the slopes of V, but what they were like back in the 1800s when Fyodor was coming up with his metaphors and comparisons. But I'm not one of them. I am ignorant of most things, geologically-speaking. And there was no way in hell I was going back on that torture machine, that, that computer!

So I'm left with my imagination. What bliss! All that was required was to, gasp! think. No rules. No undermining. No one else in the world even existing for once.

I imagine, on the one hand, thin shacks made out of tarpaper, clinging to concreted lava, black and painful to walk across even in wooden shoes. The terrain is impossibly steep. Your back breaks as you drive piles into the ground, hoping to create some sort of anchor for your little home of cast off building materials collected from the dumps of southern Italy.

Only squatters live on the slopes that no one owns. No one wants them. No one with a day job anyway. Or small shop. So who lives there? Drug addicts. Village idiots. Foundlings, perhaps. Children dressed in rags. Lepers. Three-legged dogs and cats with tumors on the left side of their faces. Goats of course. They are the only ones living well, but their milk is dry and bitter, their flesh stringy.

Do these settlers have evacuation plans? Emergency drills? How much advance warning do they have before V explodes? Does the Italian government take full responsibility when they are covered in magma and ash?

On the other hand, maybe the slopes are gentle and green. Extremely fertile from the minerals cast up through the years. The soil's a bit thin, so no trees or shrubs, but verdant just the same. When did V last erupt? Have the slopes weathered and eroded and exploded with alpine vegetation since then?

Perhaps those slopes are the best real estate around. Maybe Frank Lloyd Wright or I.M. Pei has designed a neo-modern structure there, aesthetically-pleasing and able to withstand 1000 feet of molten rock on its head. The structure is designed specifically to take advantage of the fantastic views of Naples, to say nothing of the solitude.

Perhaps the slopes of Vesuvius are where it's at for the wealthy Italians. Romans have summer homes there. They go to provide totally mod experiences to their clients and friends. The type of thing the middle class could never understand and so for that reason the visit is elevating and elitisizing. No matter how south the Italian economy goes, everyone wants to own part of V, just for the sheer bodaciousness of it.

I picture nicely-dressed people drinking champagne, stilettos (heels and knives, these are Italians after all) holding them to the slopes as they laugh and ignore the peril.

Soon my headache subsides and my body threatens to fall asleep in the water. To prevent drowning, I reluctantly leave my bath and head for bed. This is the pleasure left to me at the end of the day: thinking and dreaming. It refreshes and soothes. The next morning I will wake up ready to face the next chapter in the house of the dead.

Sue Lange