THE BOOK OF POSSIBILITIES

You Could Lose 6 Billion People Down There

Loch Ness in the west of Scotland is justly famous for many reasons.

It is astonishingly long and straight, and very, very deep. Loch Ness contains the largest volume of freshwater in Britain, and holds more water than all other bodies in England and Wales combined – enough water to submerge the world’s population three times.

The silt of the Loch’s deep bottom is a time capsule several hundred metres deep – a record as long as all of human history.

But the reason you likely know its name is because it may -- or may not -- contain the world's best known creature, the elusive Loch Ness Monster.

Nessie, as she's usually come to be known, jumped to public notice in the 1800s, although tales of enormous creatures in the Loch's waters have been passed down for centuries. There was a veritable frenzy of sightings in the 1930s, and photos including the famous "animal periscope" ran in papers around the world.

Unfortunately for Nessie lovers, all the classic photos of her are indisputably either hoaxes or sincere mistakes.

Still, based on the numerous (and impossible to either confirm or deny) eyewitness accounts, two main views have arisen: that Nessie, if she exists, might be either a prehistoric long-necked swimmer called a pleiseosaur, or a huge sturgeon. Sturgeon are an extremely ancient species of fish and have been discovered up to 5.5 metres (18 feet) long.

So just why is it so hard to find a monster in a lake?

First, the waters of Loch Ness are laden with peat heavily enough to make them appear black. While sonar penetrates, you can't see more than a few inches down into it with the naked eye.

Another complication is that the Loch creates mirages, especially in the sun, with light reflecting off its dark water to merge swimming deer into a single beast, or to render a boat invisible but magnify its wake to resemble the coils of a monster.

There's also the sheer size of the Loch--lots of places for a shy monster to hide--and the fact that the Loch can be reached from the sea, although only by aquatic life smaller than Nessie is supposed to be.

And just how big might that be? Based on the available food supply, mostly salmon returning to spawn, Nessie couldn't weight more than 2 tonnes (2.2 tons), which only exceeds actual sturgeon records by about 30%.

Serious investigation of the Loch began in the 1960s and continues today. Large, unexplained objects have been recorded, but none so far have been able to be tracked and confirmed. Nessie remains elusive, even with the best modern equipment brought to bear.

Nessie's reputation makes it hard to have any results considered seriously. As some working out of Drumnadrochit, at the midpoint of the loch's western shore and centre for marine research, say, "Scientific enquiry ends where media attention begins."

Pearls, at the Price of Human Life

Pearls begin life as specks of dirt lodged inside the shell of any of a large number of species of mollusk, the most famous of these being the pearl oyster.

Over a period of years, the shellfish deposits layers of calcium carbonate around the intrusion, creating an iridescent, shining gem.

The pearl's luster has been prized for millennia for the status conveyed by their beauty and rarity. Cleopatra was said to have impressed Marc Antony with her wealth by casually dissolving one in a glass of wine before drinking it down.

But these shimmering, naturally occurring products of the oyster have taken their toll of human life through the ages.

Before the beginning of the 20th century, pearl diving was one of the most dangerous professions going.

Divers, armed with nothing more than a deep breath, descended up to 100 feet on a single lungful of air. To battle the hostile environment to wrest from it the oysters concealing the prized natural gems exposed them to the possibility of brain damage, drowning, attacks by sea creatures and deep water blackout.

The greatest number of these divers were East Asian - from the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, China, and other nations bordering the Pacific and Australian Oceans. Many Aboriginal divers from Australia in the late 1800s were women, because they were believed to have a greater lung capacity and could dive deeper and stay down longer.

A particular form of music has grown up with the pearl divers, called fijiri, and practiced around the Persian Gulf. In this example (above), you can hear and see the way traditional fijiri features a lead singer backed by other singers, clapping, and rhythm instruments.

Although pearl diving is now much safer, and pearls themselves are most often cultured through deliberate seeding by man and not discovered by chance, the traditions of this dangerous way of life are a source of pride.

Cats & Dogs - Egypt-style

Ancient Egyptians loved their animals. Not only are they depicted in wall paintings and sculptures, they were sometimes found mummified as lovingly as a favorite child.

There was even a cat goddess, Bast, who graduated from her status as a local god to become the war goddess and protectress of all Lower Egypt (the area nearest the Delta of the Nile river at the north of the country).

Cats were revered in Egypt like no other animal. Bast may owe her heritage to the Egyptian desert cat, a relative of the wildcat that is commonly considered the ancestor of the domestic cat.

As intriguing is the Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis, who was long considered to have the head of a jackal.

Recent studies have lead many Egyptologists to believe instead, however, that Anubis is actually a far more familiar creature -- a dog.

To be precise, the Pharaoh hound, a leggy, pointy-eared elegant breed that survives to this day.

For your comparison, I offer you the god Anubis, in both his animal and semi-human forms:

and the modern Pharaoh hound:

What's interesting is the characterization of the dog as a god of death -- which makes more sense when you understand the role of the dog in Egyptian society was more as a hunting companion than its role later and otherwise as a herder and domestic pet.

Egypt's pantheon of gods was in constant flux, depending on the ascendancy of different regions and their individual cults and patrons.

Bast went through a change of role as Lower Egypt's power faded. She began as a lioness, and war goddess, and became a housecat, and patron of perfumes.

Most curiously, as Bast became the goddess of perfumes and ointments, and Anubis took on the role of the god of embalming, for a while, the cat was the mother of a dog!

Pablo Got The Blues

When I say Pablo Picasso, you probably think something like this, Picasso's painting of an accordion player. You might be tempted to think that the guy was a little short on the ability required to depict a realistic human being.

But Picasso was not only an innovator, one of the fathers of the Cubist movement, so well exemplified by the painting above, but a master of the human form and a brilliant painter by any standard.

When still in his late teens, Picasso was already creating beautiful works in the styles of the times, and had begun to achieve some success.

But everything changed with the suicide of his good friend Carlos Casagemas, who shot himself in the head at a Parisian cafe. Casagemas had unsuccessfully tried to shoot his girlfriend, Germaine Gargallo, married at the time to Ramon Pichot, another friend of Picasso's.

According to Picasso, "I I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas's death.'"

The Blue Period includes some of Picasso's most melancholy and evocative portraits. A theme of blindness and sorrow runs through many of them, including this, "La Celestina," of a Barcelona madame representing a notorious predecessor in the profession from a 15th century Spanish play.

Note the milky cataract in her left eye.

Picasso also painted a sad portrait of his friend Casagemas on his deathbed, which is considered part of the Blue Period but looks stylistically more like a Van Gogh in its texture and contrast of warm and cool tones.

November 17, 2007

The Storm of Four Centuries

In 1959, Hurricane Vera hit the Japanese island of Honshu, killing 4580 people and doing over $261 million dollars in damage.

Bad as it was, you can hardly begin to compare it to the Bangladesh cyclone of 1970, which took at least 300,000 lives, or the Tsunami at the confirmed cost of around 170,000 and nearly that number again missing.

But the most enormous and powerful storm in our solar system has been seething for at least 400 years, and possibly a lot longer.

It's maybe better known at the Great Red Spot, on the surface of the distant gas giant, Jupiter.

It's probably appropriate that Jupiter is named after the Roman king of gods, Greek Zeus's counterpart, and the father of the god of war, Mars.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, fifth from the sun, and separated from us by Mars and the belt of asteroids that divides the inner from outer planets.

And man, is he a big boy. At 2.5 times more massive than all the other planets combined, it volume about the equivalent of 1317 Earths. Because it is composed mostly of gasses, though, its mass is only 318 times greater.

Still, nothing to sneeze at.

Neither is the Great Red Spot, first noted by astronomers as a blotch or bruise on the planet's surface in the 17th century.

The Spot is actually an enormous storm, spinning like a hurricane in Jupiter's dense atmosphere. It is composed of bitterly cold gasses swirling in a counterclockwise direction, and measures around 15,400 miles in diametre.

It's also twice as large as the planet Earth.

So the next time you have to drive home through a snowstorm, remember: it could be a lot worse.

What kind of creature do you think could live on a planet like Jupiter, made up of layers of superheated gas with a solid metal core? Send your ideas using the comment form above.

November 16, 2007

Knock On Wood

Ever wondered why you knock on wood when you've made a hopeful statement?

Many cultures have traditions dating back to ancient times that trees are inhabited by spirits. In Greek legends, they were called dryads, and each trees was supposed to have one living inside it that prospered or ailed as the tree did, and died if the tree was cut down.

In Britain, the story became that fairies hidden in trees, looking for ways to make mischief, might overhear you talking about your good luck or your wishes and foil your hopes or dreams for fun.

If you realized you had said something a fairy might like to interfere with, you would knock on the tree nearest you to confuse the spirit in hopes it would forget.

The most famous of the mischievous sprites has to be Shakespeare's Puck of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck's tricks are mostly calculated to annoy or embarrass humans -- like pretending to be a stool up until the moment someone tries to sit on it, or taking on the shape of a crab in a bowl of soup and biting the lip of the unsuspecting diner.

But a lot of fairy tricks in stories and legend are more wicked.

The concept of a changeling child reveals a lot about the frailty of human fears.

A changeling was left by a fairy who stole a human child, a fairy in the shape of the child but who would sicken and die, or vanish, or simply prove itself to be not the true child of its parents by its behavior.

It was a way of explaining a child that didn't resemble its parents, or to rationalize away the sorrow of losing a baby to illness.

More insidiously, it was a way to deny the parentage of a child that was too unusual in behavior or predispositions.

To expose a changeling for what it was, it was necessary to trick it into revealing its true nature.

One way, captured in an old tale, involves a mother who believed her baby had been stolen by the fairies. She was advised to put empty egg shells by the hearth, and fill them with water to boil.

She did, and the baby in the cradle nearby began to cackle, saying "In all my five hundred years, I've never seen anything so ridiculous!"

November 12, 2007

Would you... Swallow this!

I always thought bird's nest soup was a yummy Chinese treat made with noodles and broth. Shows you what I know, or maybe just my unfamiliarity with truly haute cuisine.

Real Chinese bird's nest soup is made with, well, an actual bird's nest.

More specifically, it's made with the nest of the swiftlet, a small swallow-like fellow that lives in caves and under the eaves of houses, mostly in Asia and subtropical regions.

These lovely little creatures - here's one on its famous and edible nest:

- these lovely little creatures navigate through the darkness of the caverns and chasms where they live with a form of echolocution, much like bats, certain whales, and blind animals like shrews.

Echolocution, the same principle used by sonar and radar, involves projecting waves of a certain type, in this case a low pitched clicking sound, and calculating the distance from objects and obstacles by the way the sound bounces back.

That, of course, does not explain anything about the soup.

Swiftlet nests are made not of twigs, straw, and other scavenged articles, but of strings of mucusy saliva excreted orally by the bird itself. The saliva hardens and forms a shell in which the swiftlet rears its young.

I don't know who exactly discovered that the nests are edible, but the Chinese have used them for at least 1,500 years, harvested and cleaned, and placed in hot soup to separate into their noodle-like strands.

Imitation bird's nest soup is the likely example on most menus, made indeed of noodles. Real bird's nest soup is very expensive, with a kilo of blood red nest fetching nearly $2000USD.

It's no wonder, then, that the little guys are in danger from over- and illegal harvesting. Although strict measures are in place to stop depletion of the species, the swiftlet is becoming more rare every year.

And just what's the appeal? The legend of how the soup was introduced to China claims that the Emperor to whom it was given was not particularly impressed with it until he was told that it promoted longevity.

The clincher, though, was when he was told it was from Burma, and therefore a rare delicacy. He immediately banned its consumption by the general populace.

And so, its desirability was ensured.

November 11, 2007

Portents of the Poppies

In Commonwealth countries around the globe, November 11th is a day to remember those who died in war, specifically the First World War.

In Canada, the country's oldest veteran is 103 years old and actually fought in that conflict, although he is one of a fast-dwindling number. Even veterans of the Second World War are in shorter supply as time and illness takes more and more every year.

The poppy has been a symbol of the ultimate sacrifice, the image of poppies blowing in the wind on graves marked by simple crosses immortalized in the famous poem by Canadian military physician John McCrae, himself a casualty of war.

Like the traditional red coats of the British military, which could still be reused even if bloodstained, the color of the poppy brings to mind the bloodshed of war. White poppies, worn on this day by some, symbolize instead a commitment to the end of warfare.

Poppies are an interesting symbol for peace, the irony inherent in the choice probably best iconized by Sting in his song, "Children's Crusade," where he places the poppies commemorating the end of world war in context with the ones used to make opium and its derivative, heroin.

A further irony is that the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan has meant an even greater reliance of that country on illegal opium cultivation. Since 9/11, poppy production has doubled, and it's estimated that 3.3 million Afghanis rely on the opium trade for their living.

Another sad legacy for the flower that many of us were introduced to in another frightening context - as the lovely and lethal weapon of the Wicked Witch of the West against an unsuspecting Dorothy.

Did L. Frank Baum mean more than he seemed to?

November 8, 2007

Shoot, Launch, Shop!

QR (quick response) codes are an ingenious development from the Japanese company Denso-Wave - who I mention here both because they deserve credit and because I'm legally obligated to give it to them.

Imagine you're in a subway, and an add for a particularly cool item catches your eye. At the bottom of the add is a black and white image that looks something like this:

QR codes began as a way to track auto parts but have now become almost ubiquitous in Japan. They appear on magazines, food, posters, business cards - on just about anything you as a consumer might want more information about.

The storage capacity for these little babies is pretty impressive too - in their usual size, you can encode over seven thousand numerals, or over four thousand alphanumeric characters, or almost three thousand byes (every byte is 8 bits, if you've forgotten your computer science classes).

And with the capacity to launch and redirect your web browser with the click of a button, it's become an effective marketing and information retrieval technique.

While QR codes haven't caught on yet here, mostly because North American phones are generally not yet equipped to handle them, you can guarantee that advertisers here have heard about them.

The QR invasion will begin shortly, you can be certain.

Oh yeah, and for the record, "QR code is trademarked by Denso Wave Inc."

November 5, 2007

Chill with the Animals

If you want a really wonderful experience, go into a pet store and find the budgerigars.

These friendly little birds, budgies for short, also called parakeets, are one of the most social and sociable of the birds. They're also the easiest to interact with in an appreciable, enjoyable way.

To make contact, get your head on level with the cage, where the birds can see you. Put your arms at your sides, or even place your hands behind your back, mimicking folded wings. (If you've ever wondered why there are always signs in shops telling you not to stick your fingers in the cages, it's because birds carry an instinct to fear and attack snakelike objects, which is why they may peck a finger coming toward them.)

Next, take a deep breath or two, and feel calm. Close your eyes. Move your eyeballs around a bit behind your closed lids, then open them again. Repeat slowly, leaving your eyes closed for longer than they are open.

What you should see, if you haven't already noticed this before you begin among the birds in the cage, is that the budgies will start to do the same thing.

When budgies, and most birds that flock, are comfortable and happy, they will do this eye-closing repetition. You can try it with parrots as well. Most finches and canaries are too energetic to follow along, but you can calm an entire cage or two of budgies with just your eyes.

When they're calm and doing the same, you'll often hear the budgies start to sing as well.

If you can get over your own potential embarrassment, take it from me - it's a lovely thing. So - find yourself some birdies, close your eyes, and chill!

November 2, 2007

Legacy of the "Ancient Alien Ones"

They flourished for over four centuries at the height of their civilization. The span from their emergence as a distinct people to their disappearance and integration into other tribes was more than fiteen hundred.

When the Navajo discovered their abandoned cities, they dubbed them the Anasazi, "alien ancient ones," unable to believe humans could have created these masterworks of stone in the dry canyons of the Chaco River.

I've wondered if it's easier for North Americans to remember the civilizations "modern" America has displaced because, unlike in Europe and Asia, most of the peoples living in the land taken by invaders, explorers, and colonists were nomadic and didn't build permanent reminders of their presence.

The Anasazi were different. They built huge cities of stone, containing multi-family dwellings that weren't matched in size in America until the 1870s. They created a network of more than 500 miles of roads, some wider than modern interstates, and running Roman-road straight between communities.

They diverted the meager water resources of the Four Corners area of America to grow corn, squash, and beans, the basic diet when hunting was scarse. Their only domestic animals were the dog, and the turkey.

Although the Anasazi landbase was greater than the area of California, not much is known about them, and not many of their ruins have been excavated. And more are disappearing every year.

It doesn't help that under their historic dwellings is about a tenth of the world's uranium, as well as coal, oil, and gas. Companies with mineral rights have been more likely to use bulldozers than archaelogical tools to uncover them, destroying the records of the Anasazi in the process.

But these "alien ancient ones" left a rich legacy of ruins, pottery, and tantalizing hints of a complex spiritual life.

When the area centered on the four corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona became too dry for even the tenacious Anasazi, they vanished from the land on which they'd left their mark. Their descendants may be among the Pueblo and Hopi tribes.

And you can't help wondering how history might have been different if Europeans had encountered an established, city-dwelling culture as they moved west across the continent. Would it have been harder to claim territory settled in a more recognizably "civilized" manner?

Except for the failure of the rains in this arid, difficult land, America might be a very different place today.

October 31, 2007

Myths of Halloween Mayhem

It seems a shame to spoil such a potentially fun night like Halloween with warnings about potential harm, and in truth, there's very little need to.

Halloween is a time when we let our guard and our hair down a little bit, and do things - like dress outrageously - that would never happen throughout the rest of the year, unless you are, perhaps, an actor or rodeo clown.

But the spectre of evil householders, little better than fairy tale witches and warlocks, passing out strychnine-laced chocolate or apples with razor blades has become almost as ubiquitous on this night as the one house on the block that stays stubbornly dark, even though you know the owners are home.

Fortunately, the hyped-up danger is just that - hype - and about as genuine as the cat tail and whiskers your bank teller is sporting for the day.

Although the urban legend has been going strong since at least the 70s, there has never been a verified case of any giving out poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters.

You may have heard vaguely about an eight-year old boy who died after eating Halloween candy. Yes, it's true, but sadly that, like a great proportion of child-murders, was committed by his father who was only using the urban legend to cover up a pre-meditated crime.

As to foreign objects in treats? Yes, it happens, but very, very, very rarely, and in my research, I was able to find no one who died or even got badly injured as a result.

So go out, have fun, cut loose. And above all be creative! Let your imagination out of the cubical for the day!

Some suggestions when you're picking a costume:

My favorites from my own past:

Sunken Treasures

The world's oceans cover seventy percent of its surface. Not only that, but it's a three dimensional world unlike the thin crust of dry land we surface dweller inhabit, so the actual space available undersea is even greater. It's no wonder we're fascinated by what all that water may cover.

Not long ago, underwater archaeologists discovered a wealth of statues and buildings hidden in the harbor at Alexandria - the remains of the Palace of Cleopatra. Here the famous queen entertained both Julius caesar and Marc Antony.

As a tourist to modern Egypt, you can tour the area in a glass-bottomed boat to see the wonders only a few meters under the surface, or dive among them yourself.

The area sank beneath the waves probably over a thousand years ago in a combination of earthquakes and storms. Now, the only way to visit Cleopatra's royal marina or the island of Antirrhodos, which was reserved for the queen's personal use, is to follow them into the depths.

The sea has claimed boats, planes, whole cities - perhaps even an entire continent, if the legends of Atlantis are true.

And it attracts treasure hunters, archaeologists, and biologists with its seemingly endless wonders.

Florida-based Odyssey Marine Explorations is in the shipwreck finding business. They'll even let you own your own piece of sunken treasure. One recent find, the sidewheel steamer SS Republic, yielded more than 51,000 coins, many of them rare. The total retail value of the coins may exceed $75 million.

The island of Thera in the Mediterranean vanished almost completely beneath the waves in a spectacular volcanic eruption around 1600 BC, altering the world's climate and possibly contributing to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on Crete.

An old Dutch legend tells of the town of Saeftinghe, cursed by a merman to fall into the see, whose bells still ring out on foggy days, a call for help from a doomed world.

Jules Verne's classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" doesn't seem so far fetched when you consider just how little we know about even what humans have lost beneath the oceans, much less what lives there in the depths.

Using Yellow to be Green

Oil fuels more than our cars; it is processed to create everything from footballs to motion picture film. So sometimes it's a little hard to listen to the lady in line at the supermarket boasting about how she's switched from plastic bags to her own cloth ones from home when she's covered in oil products from the products in her hair to the man-made soles of her shoes.

You may already know that paper isn't the answer - the energy required to make a paper bag overrides whatever environmental benefit may come from using it.

You may know about renewable fuels like ethanol that are made from corn.

And now, when you go shopping, you may be able to use a bag made from corn which is cheaper to make than paper and much cheaper in terms of environmental impact.

Unlike earlier corn bags which still contained some petroleum products, the latest are often fully biodegradable (capable of being broken down by bacteria) and compostable (returning to organic components).

They will fully break down in 12-24 months, depending on conditions. And, in the meantime, you can reuse them.

Now that it's becoming obvious that products can be made economically from renewable, regrowable sources, a lot of companies are looking to corn and other vegetables for raw materials. One produces cutlery made from potatoes that can stand up to a few runs through the dishwasher.

Just think, some day soon you might find yourself driving a car fueled by corn, eating with potato tableware - and relying a little less on oil.

A lot better than waiting another few hundred thousand years for a new supply of petroleum.

October 27, 2007

Be Careful the Stories You Tell

Once upon a time, a group of witches from all over the world convened to figure out once and for all which of them was the scariest.

A contest was begun, during which each witch took his or her turn to show off their most horrific talent. Some turned themselves into wild beasts with slathering jaws and gore-dripping claws. Some became mist and whispered horrendous lies into the ears of gathered throng. Other burned like the sun, or burned like ice, or made themselves shatter or clattered like dry bones.

Finally, there was only one witch left. And this witch took a place quietly in the center of the crowd, and told a story.

And in this recitation of pure imagination, unaccompanied by any fireworks or sorcery, with no sounds beyond a haunting and sonorous single voice, the witches found at last true terror. And the final witch was crowned the victor.

But the other witches, long after the recitation, as the celebration stretched into the night, remained uneasy and frightened. The echo of the story long outlived its telling, and the tale maintained its power even when all memory of the tricks of the others was gone.

"Take it back," they told the witch. "Untell this horrible tale."

But the victor only smiled, and said, "You didn't even know how frightening my story was before, did you? Because I can't take it back. Once a story is told, it is part of the world."

And the witches learned the power of a story, that it can never be untold.

But just as the power of an evil story can hold sway over those who hear it, and those who are compelled to repeat it, so can a wonderful story. Remember - choose what stories you tell carefully. The most powerful people in the world are the ones who tell the stories.