Grandparents and (Genetic) Information

I have always loved my grandmother and I was not the only family member to do so. She was honoured, loved, revered by all the family. Indeed, my grandmother's high status together with the vibrant, imaginative and loving way my mother took charge of her family formed a kind of matriatrichal cocoon in which I happily spent the first 15 years of my life. The shock I sustained when I finally managed to peep out of this cocoon has stayed with me to this day.

But my grandmother died when I was five. How can she still be so important to me, when I don't remember a single thing she said? I don't know. Moreover, none of this has anything to do with the arabidopsis plant and its paradigm shifting ability to occasionally ignore Mendel's laws of inheritance.

I really can't put it any better than the folks at context:

Contrary to inheritance laws the scientific world has accepted for more than 100 years, some plants revert to normal traits carried by their grandparents, bypassing genetic abnormalities carried by both parents.

So there you have the tender little arabidopsis plants. It is time to develop a flower and all the genetic information we think they have tells them to form tight little balls instead of useful flowers. And 10% of the arabidopsis thus stricken say, 'nah, isn't much use, is it?' and produce nice open flowers anyway.

The scientists at Purdue University who conducted the research wouldn't dream of putting it in such blatantly anthropomorphic terms. What they do say, however, is this:

Our genetic training tells us that's just not possible. This challenges everything we believe.

Does this mean that my suspicion of GM-foods is justified? Again, I don't know, but I hope someone will find out pretty soon.

Malevich Had a Black Soul

And while elsewhere in the world it is religion that reintroduces cencorship, Russia prefers to censor 'unrussian' art. Not least Malevich's suprematist black square. Same difference? signandsight
And here is the black square

Virtual Cultural Holidays

Sick of Schiavo, Summers or neglegted nonmale bloggers? Take a virtual holiday to Germany's cultural issues at the newly launched signandsight. It isn't perfect, I admit. If you follow the links on the site, sooner or later you will be stranded on a German language site. But it is a step. A step towards a much needed globalisation of linking minds or something. I found it on Arts & Letters Daily.

Religious Fundamentalism in Europe

Look at this beautiful photo! It is an ad for a team of French fashion designers. It shows female models as Jesa and her apostelettes in the postures of da Vinci's famous Last Supper. Alas courts in Italy and France ordered the posters down. French bishops, hiding behind the oxymoronically named association 'beliefs and freedoms' won a court order against the campaign on March 10th. You can read about it here. The lawyer for the bishops is afraid the people will use christ on the cross to advertise socks next. Wouldn't band aids be more the thing?

Funnily enough, as yet the only blog to pick up this issue is a Dutch blog (written in English) that claims to be 'the most superficial' on the net. Well, well...

At Home?

This is in answer to one of the three highly cherished comments on this blog (see here). There were two things that made me think. Why was the comment on the situation in the USA while I was writing about Japan where gender equality is much younger and therefore much more vulnerable than in the USA? And what reasons other than religious ones can there be for staying at home?

Let me look back awhile to our gatherer-hunter ancestors. No-one stayed at home there. Home had to be where the food grew. Women provided most of it. And they produced the children. So the men got a little bored, perhaps, and asked themselves, if there were more exiting things to do. Killing big game was exiting, so perhaps killing people could be even more exiting? They invented war.

So on to early agricultural societies. Everyone stayed at home there - in times of peace, that is. I'm rushing things here, but on we go to early civilisation. Cities, artisans and texts. And what do we find in those texts among other things? Reasons, firmly grounded in religion, why women ought to stay at home. Be it the irate god of early jews, working overtime to establish his status as a one and only god. Be it the olympic kindergarten of the greeks or even god's/christ's representative on earth, st. paul, firmly crushing what little freedom women might have glimpsed in earlier parts of the new testament under foot.

As yet however, most of the time men stay at home too. Production is still quite firmly rooted at home or in the fields adjacent to it. Women produce textiles and food. They may have neither rights nor property, but they are working hard and they can see that their work is essential. Men leave the women at home for trade, politics and war. Ah, and war had meanwhile been developed into a fine art. Whole cultures were built around the noble virtues of the warrior. The men may have been traders and politicians, but only as warriors did they feel really glorious.

Basically nothing changes till the industrial revolution. Now there is a growing middle class aspiring to the lifestyle of the nobility. These men are no longer soldiers, but they still fight. They fight in the law courts and parlaments, they fight over markets and companies - and they hate to surrender. They cannot sustain their elevated lifestyle without working, but they can place their womenfolk in the home to show that they are top of the heap. The women do absolutely nothing, but being charming and pretty. Servants do all the rest. Let the wives and daughters embroider ornaments, let them sing a little, but most of all, let them be idle in a busy sort of way.

It is an amazing concept. The world has never seen anything like it. And it only holds true for a tiny minority. Most people are still far too poor to copy this bizarre arrangement. If work can no longer be had at home, women go to work in the mines, in the factories. They only get paid half as much as the men, but what can they do?

After one or two generations the male miners and factory hands are none too pleased about that either. Working women spoil their wages. How to oust women from the workplaces? They know they will get nowhere, if they simply say: We want that work and we want men's, not women's wages for it. So they construct this little argument, knowing that they will strike a chord in their middle class bosses: The women are too frail to work so hard, let us protect them. And where better to do so than at home? Of course the tycoons and political leaders fell for that.

However, even in our global society, this strange and bizarre concept still only holds true for a tiny minority, mostly in the developed world. Most women are still engaged in gruelling hard work on the land, unless, of course they sew our clothes in inhumane sweatshops etc.

The upper middle class wives and daughters were soon bored stiff with their ornamental status and started fighting for equality and got it - on paper that is. Now women can enjoy economic independence and even, to a certain degree, the kind of respect men receive for their status within society.

The backlash is, of course, just round the corner. It says 'Oh, those awful egotistic women who go out into the world and neglect their home and their children. Society will go to pieces, if it does not stop.' Isn't it amazing, that is never the men who neglect their home or their children?
It is no secret that the care for home, children, elderly and sick can be professionalised, but it is also a well known fact that these professions are badly paid and all too often the quality of the work reflects that to a certain degree.

Could this be a reason for staying at home in the modern world? My children are not cared for well enough by paid nurses, teachers, childminders, so I better do it myself. Without pay and even if it means there is no chance of professional carers ever being paid an adequate wage while there are such as me who do it for 'nothing'.

Then again it might be the remnants of the war-like atmosphere out there in the markets, the parlaments that keep women at home. They may fear contamination. They may have glimpsed the strange unwritten rules that guide male behaviour (I'm talking gender, not biology here) and may have thought that they are as ridiculous as they are awful. So better stay out of it, even if that means scraping together what little self-esteem can be got in this screwy society from hazy, idealistic notions, not from cash or status.

I'm almost surprised myself that there seem to be non-religious reasons for staying at home after all. They are paradox-ridden and not exactly attractive, but religious they are not.

So much for the impersonal, historical part of my answer to your comment, Lynn. But what about the personal? The only full-time stay-at-home woman I know was/is my own mother. She stayed at home till I was 17. Then I went to boarding school for a year. Although my younger brothers and my father remained, none of them talked with her as much as I did. I never checked this with her, but she must have been bored stiff all of a sudden. So when I came home after a year she was a full-time personal assistant after a brief part-time stint in the typing-pool. Now let me make this clear: Nothing and no-one could have prevented my mother from being the wonderful person she is (and I'm sure it's the same with you), but working had changed my mother. She was happy. Now, at 71, she still works 4 days a week. She does not have to (financially), so I suppose she is making up for those lost 17 years.

(Among others Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex, Bonnie S. Anderson/Judith P. Zinsser A History of Their Own and most of all Virginia Woolf Three Guineas are behind this.)

Conversational Muse

Apparently I have spent two weeks away from this place. I think I was doing extremely superficial things with textiles. However, I listened to a BBC Worldservice programme today: Masterpiece - The Art of Conversation. You have a week from two hours ago to listen again. I would strongly advise that. Or you can go straight to the Oxford muse.

The aim of this organisation is to get people to really talk to each other. So they organise dinners at which complete strangers are placed at tables for two. Then they are given a "menue" with topics to talk about, such as 'Who are you?' or 'What is your sixth sense' All this is in aid of talking about things that really matter and of creating real connections between people. According to the Oxford Muse this is - eventually - in aid of a more peaceful world. But for the time being it makes for much more interesting evenings.

Because I am so awfully superficial my answer to the first question will vary from day to day. Tuesday, March 1st it is: I sit in the dentist's chair. He has a new kind of x-ray machine. The dentist comes in, says hello and asks me what I'm looking at. I tell him I am shocked by the criminal boredom of a name such as dens-o-mat. Ah, March 1st is gone now. I hope I shan't be as freakish on March 2nd. But I'm happy to report that my dentist has a great sense of humour.

And my 6th sense? Well - the same as yours, of course! The sense of proprioperception tells you where your body parts are situated in space. That is why the humdrum, literal minded German language speaks of the 7th sense. I don't know what my 7th sense is, something to do with textiles I think. But check out Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, his 6th/7th sense was universal boredom detection. The ghost of Lucky Jim tells me to stop writing this entry. NOW!

Cryo-Zoology

Why haven't I seen this on boingboing yet? Apparently last week a small town near Sydney was literally pelted with frozen chicken. Two of those birds - amazingly still flying - crashed through the roofs of not amused householders. So now we know that chicken can do more than cross the road. Here are some details

Passion II: Yma Sumac

It is only very rarely that I feel the urge to buy any music. Then I go straight up to a salesperson and try and make them understand my strange music needs. Make it exciting. Make it full of joy - and passionately so. Not exactly easy, you will admit. My last foray got me Yma Sumacs album Mambo. So I was pleasantly surprised to read about Sumac on boingboing yesterday. It gave a link to easydreamer which in turn points you to the first authorised Yma Sumac site. Easydreamer now has an update with a little mp3 taster of Sumacs amazing voice. Listen to it by all means.

And if you are able to direct me to contemporary artists who perform with such an immediate joie de vivre I'd be enormously grateful.

Procrastination II: Reverse Astrology

If you are looking for something to do to prevent you from getting your stuff done you can check your star sign by reverse astrology. The inimitable Esther Wilberforce-Packard put me on to it. As always when doing such tests I tried to be as truthful as possible. Still my analysis was nowhere near my real sign and I was requested to check my real birthday with my parents.

Passion I: Happy Birthday Macbeth

I nearly missed the 1000th birthday of the real Macbeth, but the Scottish parliament did not. As part of the commemoration it was claimed that the historical Macbeth was not half as bad as Shakespeare made him, and the BBC reported it.

Well, good or bad I always had a huge soft spot for the Scottish play. It was the first Shakespeare drama I read and the first I saw acted - at a highly impressionable age. I was swept away by its passion.

So happy birthday great Glamis! worthy Cawdor! Even though it is to be feared that the world will fail to celebrate you and will instead give solely sovereign sway and masterdom to Einstein's puny 100 years.

The Wasp in the Cauliflower

It is winter. I hate winter. You lug kilos upon kilos of clothing around with you. It takes ages to get dressed. It is dark for too many hours every day. I used to think that no matter how horrible winter was, at least you are not bothered by wasps. When it comes to wasps, I am phobic.

Preparing my purple cauliflower before steaming it, I saw my insectoid attacker. It had survived a trip from Spain to Germany and 3 days solitary confinement inside a plastic bowl - but it was alive. Mercilessly I butchered it with the knife I was holding and threw it in the bin with some cauliflower stems.

I should have told you right from the start that this is no harmless fable in the style of Aesop or de la Fontaine, but a gruesome monster movie. Yes, just before I had to leave for work, I saw something moving near my rubbish bin. It was the brute crawling about on my floor, dragging its mutilated body along. I put on my monster crushing protective clothing (rubber glove) and squeezed it in wads of toilet paper.

Do not tell me that such things just happen. These organic farmers are sinister types who will do anything to protect their cauliflowers from pests - even set those nightmarish monsters on them.

Procrastination

As you might guess from the title of my blog, there are not too many things I go into thoroughly. However, if this is a rule, it must have an exception: procrastination. So while I delve into that a little deeper, have some fun with this animation? documentary? I know it has been all over the blogsphere. I saw it first on boingboing.

Global Dimming

I found this BBC article via kottke. It seems global warming would be much higher, if it were not for small particles of soot etc. which seed more clouds. Clouds in turn reflect heat away from earth. And although these clouds cause some nasty flooding in some monsoon regions perhaps all the filtering of exhaust particles might not be such a brilliant idea after all, unless CO2 production is reduced simultaneously.
What more can I say? Happy commute, everyone!

Simple Sums

The BBC points out 100 things we did not know at the end of 2003. (via del.icio.us)

13. Smoking killed nearly one million people worldwide in 2000, according to the World Health Organisation.

89. Continuing in this cheery vein, more than 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents worldwide each year. The first was Bridget Driscoll, knocked down by a car travelling at 12mph in London on 17 August 1896. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, and warned: "This must never happen again."

Yes, I am a smoker, but I'm also a cyclist... Ah, this is enough for one post, so I shall refrain from pointing out the increased health risk for 300 million obese people who might not all be so fat, had they not stopped smoking?

Dietrich Schwanitz R.I.P.

Looking for a German professor with with a well developed sense of humour? A (German) university teacher who was not ashamed of writing a commercially successful novel? A man interested in useful knowledge who does not care for disciplinary boundaries? Alas, you will not find him anymore, for he died last month. His name was Dietrich Schwanitz (for short obituaries see here or here).
During the first year of my degree course in English literature I was on the brink of despair, because all the knowledge on offer seemed to come out of neat little pigeon holes while I wanted the whole world explained. Then I attended Schwanitz' lectures. He did not do hommage to the holy shrine of literature. He used literary theories as tools for explaining phenomena, instead of teaching them as ends in themselves. He was a fearless, refreshingly reckless intellectual. And he introduced his students - and everyone else who would listen - to Luhmanns Systems Theory.
And although this may not be immediately obvious from this blog - systems theory has kept me sane ever since.
Indeed, it is a great boon to have known Dietrich Schwanitz.

Was giving up Tetris a Mistake?

A doctor specialised in laparoscopic surgery claims that playing about three hours of nintendo weekly helps with your work as a doctor. Now I wonder, will also help my sewing, crocheting, cooking - hairstyling even? Is it a gentle hint, that I should turn into a borg as soon as humanly possible?
Via boingboing.

Gender Equality in Japan and Elsewhere

Did you know that homemaking was a compulsory subject for Japanese school girls till the mid-90ies? After that it became compulsory for boys too. So if you are a Japanese man driven to be a househusband by economic changes or inlination you know all about the business of home economics. And you can watch your fictional colleagues on tv. You may think, gender equality in Japan - sounds too good to be true. And you are probably right. As in so many other societies, independent women are blamed for all sorts of social evils. So now the LDP proposes to change the article on gender equality in the Japanese constitution, stressing traditional family values.

Ah yes, the Japanese may be obsessive neophiliacs when it comes to technical gadgets, but change their society and conservatives start to panic like everywhere else. Don't they know that social change is driven by technology more often than not? No moveable type, no reformation (I'm thinking Gutenberg, not blogging software) and hence no capitalism. No washing machines and reliable birth control, no careers for women.

We are comfortable with thinking that changing from flint to bronze to iron tools caused massive changes in culture. At a pinch we may even admit to having passed the ages of transportation and (digital) communication. Yet when it comes to women they leave their 'traditional' sphere from mere egotistical spite? How utterly ridiculous; no spinning jenny, no Wollstonecraft; no sewing machine, no Pankhurst; no 'pill', no feminism. Whoever wants women back in the home will have to persuade the industry to stop producing these things.

The Beauty of the Human Mind

The small contraption is encrusted with shells. Lost to the world from around 80 B.C. till about 1900, the Antikythera Mechanism stayed under water for about a thousand years (via boingboing). The technology for differential gears was lost with it and had to be reinvented in the 19th century. In the early 70ies of the 20th century the Antikythera mechanism was gamma rayed and scientists found out that it is a geared device to simulate the movements of sun and moon across the zodiac. You will find a java animation to give an idea how the machine might have worked. I blame light pollution for not knowing anything about the star signs. And the technical drawing looks just like wheels within wheels to me, but if you wish to know about gears, look here. What did it mean to the ancients to be able to simulate the flow of time at the crank of a wheel - apart from obvious benefits to their navigational skills? But I am just as much in awe of the scientists who figured it all out with nothing but blurry black and white photos. Now it won't be long till someone trys to build an approximation of the instrument. And then they may get the little ASIMO robot to turn it for you (via Kottke).

The Inscrutable Offside Law

Yes, I love to write about things I don't know anything about. It's because I'm hypersuperficial, but you knew that all along. Today news about the arcane offside law in soccer tickled my fancy. It is just about possible that I know even less about soccer than maths. Perfect. Now it seems that soccer referees may know this rule, but a scientist claims it is humanly impossible to keep track of five moving objects at once.
Whatever next? Will the (five?) referees of future soccer matches be cooped up with cameras and pronounce their decisions like gods from a machine? Do we desperately need hovering cameras such as 'Colin' in Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams? Strictly confined to soccer pitches, of course!
I, for one, was simply invigorated when I found out that it doesn't matter two straws whether you know the offside law or not, because it cannot be implemented properly.

More Beautiful Maths

The other day my extremely significant other and I were talking about the beauty of maths or otherwise. He doubted that mathematicians were able to see the beauty of their subject. I'm quite convinced they do. Not least because I happened on this amazing site: the evolution of a Lorenz system - done in crochet (via the nearnear future). You'll find some lovely animations of similar equations and the crochet instructions plus a picture of the lovely object if you click on the 'Intelligencer'.

And while I'm at it... For all those who thought the Fibonacci Series was hardly more than a teaser: Here is some more stuff on them - complete with further links and a 30 minute bbc programme.