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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| After yesterday's screed, I find it necessary to emphasize that "deterministic" doesn't imply "predictable." Fortunately, today's random number pulled up this article, from MIT Press Reader, about someone who tried to predict everything. The Blunders of a 16th-Century Physician-Astrologer  Horoscopic prediction is an inherently uncertain field, as Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano had occasion to confirm more than once. "Inherently uncertain?" I'd have gone with some variation of "complete garbage" or "utter twaddle," depending on how many British articles I'd been perusing recently. Some of us will remember that Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy consulted astrologer Joan Quigley before any major presidential decision. In fairness, this probably resulted in some better outcomes than Reagan just going with his gut. That the celestial bodies are not always reliable became evident when no astrologer was able to predict that on March 30, 1981, at 2:27 p.m., EST, President Reagan would be shot in the chest during an assassination attempt. But let's stop and consider for a moment: what if one of them, somehow, did? Would predicting a Presidential assassination attempt (during which other, less obnoxious people actually died) be of any use? I suppose one could say "you will be shot if you stand at point x at time t." So Ronald McDonald, believing unquestioningly in the science and predictive power of astrology, goes to great lengths to not stand at point x anywhere near time t. Then no one shoots at him. This nullifies the prediction. And could anyone, besides the astrologer, say with any confidence, "the only reason you didn't get shot at was because you heeded my advice?" Put another way, I could say, "When you go to the beach this weekend, don't go in the ocean between 2 and 3 pm, because if you do, you'll be bitten by a shark." So you get out of the water at 2, back in at 3, and you can spend the rest of your life telling everyone what a great forecaster I am because you didn't get attacked by a fish. Quigley peremptorily affirmed that she could have predicted the regrettable episode, because it was “very obvious,” if only she had drawn up his charts. Unfortunately, her occupations had precluded her from doing this. Having known several astrologers, when I read this, I laughed. Absolutely something one of them would say. Today, people’s blind belief in the power of astrology to reveal the future strikes us as absurd, because our mental stance is radically different. Who's this "our" person? Plenty of people don't find it absurd. Also, don't disparage absurdity by conflating it with bullshit. (As I've said before, I find astrology interesting as folklore and as the precursor to astronomy; it's still bullshit.) Notable among all divinatory physicians was a man of extraordinary eccentricity and uncommon genius: the Italian polymath from Pavia (some say Milan), Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576); his name is usually transcribed in English as Jerome Cardan, a custom that will be followed here. For context, this was a few years before Shakespeare wrote "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." Or anything else that we know of. In his clinical work, Cardan revived metoposcopy, the art of divination by looking at the lines of the face, especially of the forehead. Okay, that word was a new one for me. Also bullshit, but I wonder how much of that translated into the equally bullshit phrenology. Also, I should emphasize that, at the time, science really hadn't been invented yet, and the practice of medicine in general was more empirical and superstitious than evidence-based. The article delves into an overview of metoposcopy, then: The basic underlying hypothesis is simple: The forehead is the scroll on which God wrote His sublime word. In the legend of the Golem, which has Kabbalistic origins, the animating essence is usually a Hebrew word etched upon the forehead of the creature. I always thought we should do that with humanoid robots just to fuck with people. An aside: the most famous Golem story involved the city of Prague. Prague is a Czech city. The word "robot" came to us from the Czech language. Robots, at least the ones that are vaguely humanoid, are basically techno-golems. Also, the Czech are a Slavic people, and Slav is the root for our word "slave," which is also what "robot" means in Czech. I find these coincidences amusing. Well, except for the part where someone, somewhere, considered an entire culture to be a slave race. That's not so amusing, regardless of which race. Furthermore, divination never lacked fervent followers, as its practitioners thrive under the cloak of infallibility. If the event predicted actually occurs, the prognosticator’s clairvoyance will be deemed miraculous and the clairvoyant a being of preternatural acumen. But if the prediction fails to take place, the diviner can concoct elaborate reasons that will explain the failure, deflect the blame, and, in so doing, flaunt a profound learning in the esoteric art of divination. That trick is hardly limited to divination. Thanks to his international renown, he was called to the then remote and barbarous Scotland... "Then?" Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Please don't play bagpipes at me. ...to provide medical care for His Excellency, Bishop John Hamilton (1512–1571). Then, asked to draw his horoscope, the astrologer-physician predicted that Hamilton would live happily, but would be in danger of dying from cardiac disease. What actually happened was that the bishop was taken prisoner during the capture of Dumbarton Castle, summarily condemned to execution, and hanged at Stirling in 1571, thus achieving the dubious distinction of being the first Scottish bishop ever to die at the hands of an executioner. "Whew, he luckily missed dying of a heart attack!" There are a couple of other examples of his confident predictions that turned out to be, and I'm using the literary device of understatement here, slightly off. There is a tradition that Jerome Cardan had engaged in all sorts of astrological calculations by which he determined the exact date — year, month, day, and hour — of his death. The fatidical moment approached fast, yet nothing seemed to indicate that he was about to breathe his last. Therefore, our man decided to lock himself up, refused to eat, and let himself die. Now that, mes amis, is what I call absolute dedication to one's closely-held beliefs. If it's true. Which it probably isn't. He died in Rome, aged 75, while under the protection of Pope Gregory XIII, who had recognized his outstanding merits. And, though the article doesn't say this, this was the same Gregory who codified the civil calendar that the world uses to this day (and which I rail against from time to time). I guess some things are predictable after all. Like the Earth's orbit around the Sun. |
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