So there I was, just twiddling my tentacles, trying to come up with something to write about, when the wonderful Ava, from The Reef Tank, emails me to ask if I might be willing to write some stuff for that site. Willing? Delighted! So we kick around some ideas, and eventually settle on the notion of an occasional piece built around the alphabet (though not in alphabetical order!). The first installment, A is for Aquarium, is now up at The Reef Tank (and for once, I am just gonna let you click through to read it!)

Why, then, my title? Well. The verse was ready about a week ago, save for a few minor edits. Then, PZ posts this on Pharyngula, with his concluding line: “I hope we can take better care of it, so it isn’t all confined to a few large tanks here and there.” Yeah, I could have had the first comment, with the perfect verse, but this one wasn’t for Pharyngula, but for The Reef Tank. So I write to Ava, advising her to link TRT to the comment thread… and she was away for the weekend.

Missed it by *that* much.

The message is the same, in prose or in verse (or, most eloquently, in video). The truth is, it is already too late to prevent some of the damage we have done and continue to do. Some of the effects of our current lifestyles will be felt for generations. I want my children, and theirs, and theirs, to have a world where fish don’t have to live indoors.

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Two paths play out in a comic book,
When Archie walks down memory lane
“The road not taken” is the hook;
So now, the writers take a look
And re-write Archie’s life again,

This time with Betty as his bride;
Veronica the woman spurned,
Who once upon a time, with pride,
Was wed to Archie. Thus allied,
They lived while many seasons turned.

With either girl, he could not fail,
And Archie lived a happy life.
No matter which one wore the veil,
They were the toast of Riverdale,
Young Archie and his lovely wife.

Oh, we shall be buying them in the stores,
And looking to see what we shall find:
Two girls, whom Archie both adores,
Are made his mental paramours
Within the redhead’s tortured mind.

The New York Times reports that Archie is getting married. Again. This time, to Betty. Last time Archie made the NYT, he was getting married to Veronica.

In an attempt to be classier than Dallas (“it was all a dream?”), the writers (at least according to the NYT; I would not be surprised if this is their own attempt to salvage respect) claim that one of their inspirations was Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. I’d claim it as one of my inspirations, too, but you would all know better.

Rather, my inspiration is quantum physics. In particular, Everett’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (which, for all I know, got its inspiration from Frost–at least in some branches of the wavefunction), and the popular “parallel universes” framing of the interpretation.

In fact, I wrote a song (many, many years ago, long before I was a cuttlefish) using the notion of parallel universes as a metaphor for our (my? I doubt it) tendency to re-live important conversations (or other interactions) many many times after the only “real” conversation (in this universe, anyway) was long over: “If only I had said this instead of that”; “If only I hadn’t stuttered and stammered so much”; “what if I had kissed her?” These important conversations get one shot in our universe, then get replayed over and over again countless times with small but important variations in our obsessive thoughts.

Or maybe it’s just me.

But I know I am not the only one thinking of many-worlds and being wistful about the wonderful things happening to some other me, some other universe. I am in very good company with Emmy.

I’m sitting at the computer typing, when the dog bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she’s sniffing the floor around my feet intently.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I’m looking for steak!” she says, wagging her tail hopefully.

“I’m pretty certain that there’s no steak down there,” I say. “I’ve never eaten steak at the computer, and I’ve certainly never dropped any on the floor.”

“You did in some universe,” she says, still sniffing.

I sigh. “I’m going to move the quantum physics books to a higher shelf, so you can’t reach them.”

I’ve read the book, so I know that Emmy is going to get a better explanation than I can give–seriously, I recommend it highly. (even wrote a review.) But Emmy is more of an optimist than I am:

“Hey, look on the bright side,” I say. “In the universe where a version of me dropped a piece of steak on the floor, there’s also a version of you.”

“Yeah?” Her head picks up.

“Yeah. And you’re a mighty hunter, so you probbaly got to the steak before I could pick it up.”

“Yeah?” Her tail starts wagging.

“Yeah. So, in the universe where I dropped steak, you got to eat steak.”

“Oooh!” The tail wags furiously. “I like steak!”

“I know you do.” I save what I was working on. “Tell you what, how about we go for a walk?”

“Ooooh! Good plan!” and she’s off, clattering down the stairs for the back door and the leash.

She’s really a very silly dog.

Me? I want the universe with the perfect conversation, and the kiss, to be this one. I don’t particularly care about some other Cuttlefish, even if it happens to be another me.

And I really don’t care about Archie.

(excerpts from “How To Teach Physics To Your Dog” are not actually from the book, but from the blog-post that inspired it. I like the book version better, but I am much too lazy to type it all in.)

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I’ve enjoyed a tasty pizza
With a glass of Kamenitza
In a restaurant on Shipka street, one perfect summer night.
I have had a friend uncork a
Giant bottle of Zagorka
As we argued over politics (we both, of course, were right).
I’ve found arguments intense go
So much better with Shumensko
So I asked my local grocer “can I special-order beer?”
When I told him what I wanted,
Had my fantasies confronted
With the tragic information: “No, you cannot get that here.”

*sigh*

I’m was looking, strictly for educational purposes, to find a place I can buy Bulgarian beer. I know, it won’t be the same here in the US, but over there it was wonderful stuff. At the “O Shipka!” restaurant on Shipka street, it was perfect. At Boyan’s apartment, it was perfect. At Veliko Tournovo, shared with new friends while preparing to watch the light show, it was perfect. In Bourgas. In Plovdiv. It helped that we were near the breweries, and it was always fresh. It helped that it was summer. It helped that we were with friends. But still, it was damned good beer. And I can’t get any here.

So if you are where you can get some, and want to take pity on a poor, thirsty Cuttlefish…

Oh, just for fun, some of the Bulgarian beer ads are interesting. Very different target audiences, I think.

Shumensko
Zagorka
Kamenitza

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In the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, a brief story on a legal compromise; in exchange for church groups being forbidden “to discriminate on the basis of race, age, disability, political beliefs, breastfeeding and physical features“, they will be allowed “to discriminate on grounds of sex, sexual orientation, marital status and parental status“.

My favorite juxtaposition: the opening paragraph and the church spokesweasel reaction.

The Victorian government is expected to announce today that religious groups will be allowed to discriminate against gays and single mothers in a controversial compromise reached on workers’ rights.

Controversial?

The changes have angered critics, but church leaders applauded the decision.

Story.

Good News, Today, for those who hate;
The Church may now discriminate!
(It did, before, and that was bad,
But now it’s good, so please be glad!)
There are some limits, let’s be clear,
For instance, say you’re old and queer:
Age is protected, but as of today,
They’ll kick you out for being gay.
Or if you’re female, and you’re black,
The key’s the penis that you lack—
Discrimination based on race
Is now forbidden. Not the case
With sex, or with sexual orientation,
Parental, or marital situation.

So remember, Church, the change this season,
And cite the appropriate legal reason.
With so many options still left on the table
I’m sure, if you’re willing, you’re bound to be able.
For any employee, just make a list,
And check for any you may have missed,
And something, somewhere is bound to fit
On the list of the sins you’re allowed to commit,
Which will make it all legal—they won’t get to sue

I’m sure it’s what Jesus would want you to do.

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Ack! I forgot! I have an illustration for my Blasphemy Day verse–another brilliant drawing by Michael McRae! So I’m re-posting the verse here, so that it hits the rss feeder again and McRae gets the kudos he deserves. (Thinking about maybe putting a mug up in the cuttleswag, with this pic and this verse…)

The first amendment means, to me,
The right to play at blasphemy;
The right to say “There is no God”
Without the threat of firing squad.
To speak, or sing, or draw, or write
And not be paralyzed with fright.
To mock Jehovah if I wish;
To point and laugh at Jesus fish;
And though the image strikes me weird,
To pluck Mohammed’s silly beard.
To say such things as I may choose
Regardless of opposing views.

About the pow’r of Holy Writ
I proudly do not give a shit.

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The first amendment means, to me,
The right to play at blasphemy;
The right to say “There is no God”
Without the threat of firing squad.
To speak, or sing, or draw, or write
And not be paralyzed with fright.
To mock Jehovah if I wish;
To point and laugh at Jesus fish;
And though the image strikes me weird,
To pluck Mohammed’s silly beard.
To say such things as I may choose
Regardless of opposing views.

About the pow’r of Holy Writ
I proudly do not give a shit.

Context.

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Hmph. PZ gets the emails; I don’t. He gets two-inch putts handed to him; I don’t. So, since he posts his email, I guess I’ll just take the chance and respond to it anyway. “Advice for Atheists” indeed. I refuse to use Comic Sans, though.

1. Stop being so smug.

This “smugness” to which you object
I’d invite you to closely inspect:
Go on, open your mind,
Take a look, and you’ll find
It’s not smugness—we’re simply correct.

Your description’s a bit of a mystery
When compared to a glance at the history—
You know God’s mind so well
You consign us to Hell
And think it’s our rhetoric that’s blistery?

You claim to be humble and meek
Though for God you’re entitled to speak
In that book on your shelf,
Jesus says so himself!
There’s hypocrisy in your critique.

2. Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

Imagine my shock and dismay—
It’s not me that you want? Well, ok…
But we still may collide;
See, I can’t stand aside,
So I’m here—between you and your prey.

“Undecideds” deserve to be free
From your bronze-age mythology, see?
So although you’re upset
That I pose you a threat,
I’m afraid that we’ll never agree.

3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

This is something I’ll surely admit—
One could think that a god was legit,
And may speak through a book,
Into which you may look…
If your presuppositions were shit.

Well, of course the debate is complex—
Why, the rules are designed to perplex!
An omnipotent being
Who hides from our seeing?
Of course such a concept should vex!

I have a book, too, you could buy!
And I’m really a reasonable guy—
If you’d just call me “God”
(I’ll admit, it feels odd)
I would (unlike Jehovah) reply!

4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.

While it’s simple to suss out your aims
As your strawmen are playing at games
An empirical test
Can put questions to rest—
Are there any to question your claims?

You may claim we are one and the same,
Though I think you know better—for shame!
Unless you will admit
Your faith might not mean shit,
Then your challenge is nothing but lame.

5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

Your advice would be all sorts of fun
If, indeed, such a thing could be done!
With cacophonous voices
Of myriad choices
You want me to stay true to one?

Just imagine my terrible plight—
I must find the religion that’s right,
Though the simplest look
In a history book
Shows, for centuries, all of them fight!

It is more than a little bit chilling
When one sees how incredibly willing
The believers in God
From an alternate squad
Are disposed, for His sake, to do killing!

So please tell me, now, which one is true?
I would be as enlightened as you!
I would argue just one
(It would really be fun!)
And I’d do it, if only I knew!

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I have been waiting for this one. There have been hints in the news, then announcements that announcements were to be forthcoming, and finally there are pictures and stories and everything: a huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard has been found! This past July, in a farmer’s field, by a metal-detecting enthusiast, Terry Herbert.

I have used a metal detector a grand total of once, years ago. A friend had made one from a kit, I think, and had planned to make a living (that summer, anyway) walking up and down the beach and finding buried car keys, watches, and other things that tourists would gladly pay him lots of money for. I don’t think anything actually ever came of it. My friend gave up too quickly. Mr. Herbert, on the other hand, has been at this for 18 years! I would love to know what sorts of things he has found in that time, to keep him going.

But back to July’s find. Over 5 kg of gold, over 2.5 kg of silver, and seemingly all of it significant. The metalwork is superb, and the collection large enough to suggest that this belonged to someone of real importance. It includes the gold decorations from sword hilt plates and pommel caps, buttons, cheek plates (or at least one) from a helmet, armbands, crosses, and more (check out the slide show at that link–I don’t know how to link to it directly. Most stunning to me is the photo of a couple of pieces of the treasure sitting on the surface of the field, having been plowed up by the farmer. Just sitting there. Beautiful, historical, ancient, gold). It appears to be primarily if not totally a male collection; trophies from battles (one, or several?), as described in Beowulf. The collection includes “boxes and boxes” of items, literally hundreds of individual pieces. Many, I am sure, would have been significant finds by themselves; taken together, this is staggering.

Terry Herbert took his gear
And set out for the field;
He had his hopes, but no idea
Of what the day would yield.
For eighteen years, he’d searched for coins
Through rolling hill and fold,
When in the field of a farmer friend
This summer, he found gold.

The largest Anglo-Saxon hoard
To date, is what he found.
Five kilograms of gold, and more,
Lay buried in the ground.
Gold fittings from the hilts of swords
Inlaid with precious stones
The trophies of a battle?
There are still a few unknowns.

As treasure, art, and history,
This find is just immense.
The Queen, by law, now owns it,
Though she’ll pay a recompense.
And Mr. Herbert’s place is sealed
In the annals of collectors;
Me? I’m investing in whoever sells
His brand of metal detectors.

I got a few interesting comments after I posted the following comment on Pharyngula:

They put me on committee, which I thought was really nice,
But they never seem to listen to my wonderful advice!
When I tell them that the Word Of God should underlie our laws,
They just smile and nod a second, maybe just an awkward pause,
Then it’s back to what the government can do for us today,
Though it’s infinitely cheaper just to bow our heads and pray.

They look at lots of options, while I know there’s only one;
When will they learn, that only prayer can ever get things done?
Why, what could be supported through the governmental coffers
That could possibly compete with what the Holy Bible offers?
As they fiddle with incentives, and with programs to promote,
I’ll be getting God’s attention, as I sacrifice a goat!

The topic was Obama’s “Faith Council”, and one member’s complaints that this particular government body was spending too much time looking at government-type solutions and not enough time looking at holy texts for inspiration.

Anyway, I read PZ’s post, typed up my comment, and posted. I was as surprised as anyone else to find that it was comment #4. One commenter even suggested that I must have had advance notice of the topic, to write this in under 23 minutes. So I thought I’d just say a couple of things about how I tend to write.

In this particular instance (which was fairly typical), I read the post and opened up the comment box before I had any notion of what I was going to say. I can’t remember whether anyone else had commented yet or not. Given that I get most of my traffic from PZ’s blog, and given that a substantial number of people quit reading the comments after a couple score are posted, I make it my goal to be in the first 50 comments if I can. I usually can’t. More often than not, I open up the comment box, and… wait… and… think… and… realize I have nothing to say. Or if I have something to say that is not in rhyme, I sign a different name. (I use the same email; any blog owners know it is me. I am not trying to hide; I always use the same name, and I have used it for years.) But occasionally, something will come to me in verse. This post was one of those occasions. I made a total of one slight edit (the last couplet was written before the second to last, and I switched them), but other than that, it just came out, pretty much as quickly as prose does–some of it perhaps faster, because rhyme constrains choices so that you have to think of two lines at once instead of just one.

I do sometimes (I never really counted, but maybe half, more or less) take the time to write something out separately from the comment box. More rarely, I work on something for a day or more–usually, those are written longhand, in my terrible handwriting, even if I am at my computer at the time. I find it much more difficult to work on the day-or-more verses; it is almost as if those ones don’t want to be written. Something like the above, though, writes itself.

Oh, and for the poetry purists… I don’t consider what I write to be poetry. It is commentary… that happens to be in verse.

Why?

Hell if I know.

Some day, they’ll do a PET scan, and they’ll peek inside my brain,
And discover things that even Ramachandran can’t explain,
Like connections from my liver to my left prefrontal cortex
Or cascades of hippocampal volleys, spinning in a vortex,
My gyri and my sulci spelling out, as plain as day
(Just as aliens leave circle-shapes in fields of un-mown hay),
In a hieroglyphic pattern that you’ve never seen before:
“Don’t look at us, you moron; we don’t work here any more!”
Yes, my brain is on vacation when I write the things I write;
I pity all the people who can only dream at night.

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Go, blog for me, and be my eyes
And ears, beneath Antarctic skies,
Where colonies of penguins dwell
(Creating quite a rancid smell).

And you will sit upon the ice
And snow, and blog in words concise
By rugged glaciers, icy shelves,
For us, who can’t be there ourselves.

And I will read your priceless posts
And offer you a thousand toasts,
To health and heart, to pen and ink,
Whatever gift I chance to think.

I’ll wish I could be there to see
The wonders that you write for me,
So eloquent your vivid prose
I’ll feel the cold wind as it blows.

Such alien and foreign climes
Are too much work to cast in rhymes:
If you have schemes you would devise
Then blog for me and be my eyes.

The penguins there will sing and dance:
“GrrlScientist has won the chance!”
To friends up North, you’ll say good-byes,
And blog for us, and be our eyes.

To everybody else:

I know that as small fish go, I am a very very very small little tiny little cuttlefish in a global virtual pond. I struggle to maintain just over a hundred readers per day, with occasional spikes a bit higher. Rarely, one of my readers will do something, and I will suddenly get over a thousand readers, and once double that! So, yeah, I am a small fish.

So I need your help. Whatever it is that you do to share one of my posts that you like, please do it for this one. Post it on whatever blogs, forums, newsgroups, tin cans with string, semaphore chains, electronic telegraph machines or smoke signals you have, and get lots of eyes over to GrrlScientist’s blog, or (if you trust me) directly to her entry, to vote. (Yeah, she’s Devorah; no, I’ve never met anyone with that name before, either.) You may, within the rules, vote from two different email accounts if you have them; voting does require registration, but it is simple, and a worthy cause.

That worthy cause is self-interest. See, Quark is sending someone, as my little verse says, to be our eyes and ears, to be our proxy in Antarctica. This is not something for just anyone. Odds are, if you are reading this, you already know that there are better and worse bloggers, better and worse writers (the two are not synonymous), and it makes a difference who you send to observe and report for you. For me, what clinched it for GrrlScientist was her photo series on the mosaics of the NYC subway system. I want someone who does not just passively take in the sights, sounds, and smells, but who actively looks for the beauty (or the beast) in even the overlooked corners. After all, she will be a guest there, and we will be guests there through her; to us, even the things the long-timers have long ago taken for granted, are new and strange, and I (quite selfishly) want someone there who sees the world the way GrrlScientist does.

Anyway… go vote, and please go spread the word in the other places you haunt. There are about 2 weeks left in voting, and she could use your help. And you could use her talent.

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