Settling In Part 2

Snow globe representing Virginia.
(Courtesy of Cassy W. Philipson)

Welcome back. This move-to-Wisconsin-and-settle-in stuff is getting serious. Our house in Northern Virginia is no longer ours. Houses aren’t supposed to sell that fast. It was winter.

Don’t misunderstand. It’s not like I haven’t been…well, settling in. I know it’s more than a fantasy visit to a snow globe.

Official Settling-In Actions

I traded my Virginia driver’s license for a paper that’s supposed to serve as a license until Wisconsin finds a machine that can produce something more plastic like. My Virginia license was good for 10 years. The Wisconsin paper is good for 3 years, which is either a boast about the relative privilege of driving in the state or recognition that paper won’t last as long as plastic.

Not to belabor the differences but, unlike Wisconsin, Virginia is too genteel to include the license holder’s weight on the license. Virginia didn’t even include my hair color. That might just be Virginia’s prediction that I soon won’t have any hair.

The Wisconsin license trade-in process was so pleasurable we returned the following week to confess that we were not only planning to drive but that we had cars. We were thrilled to be assisted during part of the car re-titling process by the same woman--a single mother of six!--who came to know us during our earlier tête-à-tête. (It was somewhat embarrassing the way she elbowed other staff aside to be with us.)

Our urgency to obtain drivers licenses was to facilitate opening a local credit union account. Residing at your father-in-law’s address with nothing in your name but forwarded mail hampers your ability to prove you actually live in the state much less within a credit union’s community. Fortunately, we had the right forwarded mail to sway the mother of six.

Querying local credit unions by phone, I sought to confirm they had ATMs that would disperse from and also accept deposits for our Virginia credit union. The first credit union responder chuckled, That’s not how ATMs work. You cannot use an ATM to make a deposit to another credit union. So much for Misinformation Central. 

Unofficial Settling-In Actions 

Snow globe representing Wisconsin.
(Courtesy of Cassy W. Philipson)

After years and years of cleaning full-fledged houses, I am jubilant to be back in an apartment. As the always well-dressed, immaculately coiffed homemakers in the black and white TV commercials used to say, What will I ever do with all the spare time?

Do you remember me writing about the cellphone that resided in my car’s glove compartment (see Technology Update )? We’re foregoing a landline, so now I keep the cellphone in my pocket. And it’s turned on--I think.

Living on the farm requires that we drive farther than I’ve ever driven to shop for food in the U.S. The selection is similar, of course, though having only 2 competing supermarkets at a distance can’t compare with having 5 or 6 competing markets close by. (I almost gave up on tofu.)

Since our apartment hadn’t really been used for 10 years, we decided to have the well water tested. Results thus far are acceptable, though we’re waiting on arsenic. (This may yet be categorized under Plumbing Curse.)

Wrap Up

As you can tell, I’m trying. I even started looking at volunteering opportunities. Before moving here, I was supporting three programs. The volunteers I worked with were inspiring, and the kids I helped under one program were super. There don’t appear to be comparable programs nearby, but there’ll be something. If you’re not volunteering, why not try it? Thanks for stopping by.

Scroll Photo Addendum

Thinking about unrolling and deciphering Curse Tablets described in last Friday’s post, I remembered a gift that was neither a curse nor ancient. Amazingly, I found it in one of our neatly stacked unpacked boxes.

Thirty years ago, while supporting a UN project in China, I was invited to present a guest lecture at Beijing University (aka Peking University). The hosts graciously presented me a gift to commemorate the event, and I was most grateful.

The gift, draped in unrelated paper.

Unwrapping the gift, described in Mandarin by the label.

Unrolling the gift: a commemorative Chinese scroll
painting. According to a reliable source (and confirmed
 by “Grandma”) that’s my name on the right.

P.S.

Whistle if you’d like higher resolution photos of the text.

Curse Tablets

Welcome back. Today, instead of jangling your serial senses by beginning an entirely new topic, I will take this opportunity to build upon my last blog topic.

Last week, I owned up to my plumbing curse, and in the accompanying photo addendum, I showed borrowed photos of ancient Roman plumbing (i.e., toilets). Put these posts together and what have you got? Curse tablets of course!

Have you ever heard of curse tablets? I hadn’t before seeing a write up last August. (See my P.S.) That ancient Greeks and Romans would go to such lengths to put a curse on someone is both frightening and fascinating.

What Are They?

Aptly named, a curse tablet is a curse or binding spell--defixio, if you’re up on your Latin-- inscribed on a thin small sheet usually of lead or a lead alloy. These tablets have been found throughout the Greco-Roman world. They apparently began with the Greeks as early as the 5th century BC and continued with the Romans until the 6th century AD or later.

Curse tablet related to a judicial process.
Written in Doric Greek on lead,
5th century BC, 6cm x 10cm with 4 folds.
(www.schoyencollection.com/greekbkscr.html)

Though only fragments may have survived, the tablets are typically 1.5 to 3 inches wide and 2.5 to 5 inches long, rolled or folded with the writing inside and the ends possibly folded over, and placed--sometimes nailed--in graves or tombs or on temple walls or thrown in wells or pools. Unrolling or unfolding the ancient tablets is a challenge, especially if they’ve been nailed.

Although the message varies with the cause of the curse, the tablets are from individuals generally asking one or more gods, commonly from the underworld, to punish or influence the behavior of one or more individuals, either named or unknown (e.g., whoever stole my…).

While some curses have erotic motives aimed at attracting a person from his or her spouse or lover, those seeking punishment can be downright brutal:
- consume by fevers which are likened to him wrestling with another man
- twist their tongues to the point of uselessness
- total inability to function, in particular her ability to reveal secrets
- crush, kill…may he dilute, languish, sink and his limbs dissolve.

Wording of Special Interest

Much of the interest in curse tablets derives from their actual wording. Whereas our knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman world is from writings by the elite, the aristocrats, curse tablets carry the voices of noncitizens, women and slaves. Roman Britain is a principal source of new tablet discoveries and has thus become a center for study of the tablets.

Wrap Up

My addressing this topic is not to imply that I’ve traced the source of my plumbing curse to any ancient tablet. I have no idea if my curse is ancient or if it began with me. Unlike my experience, I don’t recall my father being particularly burdened by or having any special problem changing faucet washers or the like. I’m not too sure about my mother’s side of the family. Growing up, I do remember seeing her father, my grandfather, with large washtubs in a kitchen, but he was only making dill pickles.

Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

The article that got me started--“Roman Curses Appear on Ancient Tablet”: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/curse-ancient-roman-lead-scroll-120821.htm

“Curse Tablet”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_tablet

Johns Hopkins University Archaeological Museum collection:
http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/a-roman-lead-curse-tablet/

 “Curse Tablets of Roman Britain”: http://curses.csad.ox.ac.uk/

“A Corpus of Writing-Tablets from Roman Britain”:
http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/rib/ribiv/jp4.htm

Facts and Details about Ancient Greek Curses: http://factsanddetails.com/world.php?itemid=2026&catid=56

Plumbing Photo Addendum

Having featured self-closing toilet seats and other water closet advances in earlier blog posts and having announced our leaking toilet in last Friday’s post, Plumbing and Me, I was confident you’d appreciate a more in-depth view.

A “before” view of the leaking toilet drain pipe.
(Vicki removed a ceiling board and took the photo.)

An “after” view of the plumber-replaced toilet drain pipe.

Since I’m on the topic and since our apartment is in a rather old structure, I thought you might like to see some really old toilets.

Ancient Roman toilets. (multiple websites)

Ancient toilets at Ostia Ruin near Rome.
(multiple websites)

Latrines along Hadrian’s Wall in Roman Britain.
(multiple websites, including Wikipedia)

Plumbing and Me

Welcome back. I knew something had to happen. After all, it is my new home. When this started long ago, I thought it was just bad luck. I learned it’s much more. It’s hard to believe, but I have a plumbing curse.

It’s not like electricity, which I fear and find unfathomable. Plumbing doesn’t frighten me. I mean you can look at it and know what’s supposed to happen--water in, water out. For me, though, the water often comes out when and where it’s supposed to stay in. Or it doesn’t go anywhere. Or, to really test me, it goes everywhere.

Early Encounters

You may recall an earlier blog post, House Sound Check, in which I blamed dripping valves and faucets as well as a kitchen geyser on the house hating me. That attribution was true, yet the overriding cause was the curse.

In that same post, I also wrote about the basement of another house flooding whenever rain was forecast. When the Roto-Rooter serviceman tried unsuccessfully to snake the basement drain, he concluded that we had a clogged French drain (gravel rather than a pipe). He recommended a sump pump.

If that were the end of it, I too would scoff at the idea of a curse. (I know you’re scoffing.) The first rainfall after a sump pump was installed, other areas of the basement flooded. Although we added a second sump pump, it was always touch and go.

I’ll skip over a failed shower drain seal, faucet leaks and the usual plumbing problems homeowners deal with, albeit less frequently than I did. I’ll even bypass our son’s scissors episode, which required a fiber optic probe of the toilet drain. Fast forward to our recent move.

Plumbing for House Sale

The house we left has three and a half bathrooms, each of which had well-functioning though visibly well-used faucets. In my spruce-up- the-house-before sale spree, I thought, Why not replace the faucets?

Hearing no negative response, I scheduled a highly recommended plumber who suggested that I buy the faucets myself. Searching online, I found excellent faucets with solid brass bottoms, and I bought four units.

In his 30 years of installing faucets, the plumber had never encountered a faucet base too short to reach through the counter tops to connect with the locknuts--the curse.

My New Home

This brings me to our Wisconsin garage apartment, built as a barn well over 100 years ago. Though I accepted that our faucets must be connected with plumbing somewhere, I would not have had the close encounter if Vicki hadn’t mentioned an old clothes washer and dryer downstairs, whose slightly overflowing floor drain Nelson had checked.

Pipes in the first floor “laundry room.”

I had never met Nelson but she assured me that he understands these old structures and their plumbing and electrical systems.

If it weren’t for the windows, the “laundry” room could pass for the boiler room of the old ship, where the crusty engineer vows, “I don’t know how, Captain, but I’ll get it going.” Rusted pipes, dials, large tanks, gurgling drain… it’s all there, along with large farm equipment and the hardtop of an old convertible.

The clothes washer has no control for load size or water temperature (as if I needed controls); and though the drain overflowed, it was mainly soap suds. The dryer has lots of controls and it worked fine.

Wrap Up

Transferring the laundered clothes to a basket, I was brought back to reality. I noticed dripping from the ceiling. Once I had narrowed the source of the leak to a toilet, I relaxed. I felt wanted but protected. “Yes, Curse, I’m here!” I shouted. “But so is Nelson.”
 
Thanks for stopping by.

Anteater Photo Addendum

I’m sorry. The ants I hired to pose for the photo addendum on last Friday’s blog post, Ant Crowdsourcing, were eaten. But thanks to Mehgan Murphy, Image Collections Manager of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, in Washington, DC, I’ve got a handful of photos of the giant anteaters that ate them.

You can find more of Ms Murphy’s photos of the anteaters at the Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=26357527@N05&q=anteater and many more of her phenomenal animal photos at her website: http://www.mmurphyimaging.com/

You can also find a write up on the birth of the anteater pup at ZooBorns:
http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2011/01/national-zoos-anteater-pup-thrives-after-rocky-start.html

The National Zoo’s giant anteater,
carrying her new pup.

Closer view of the giant anteater pup.

Note the giant anteater pup’s claws.

And you can't miss the
giant anteater pup’s tongue.

Riding his mother, the giant anteater
has his tongue ready.

The giant anteater mother
and her growing pup.

Ant Crowdsourcing

Welcome back. Before you walk through a doorway and forget everything about last Friday’s blog post, Crowdsourcing and Science, I thought I’d highlight a somewhat related research study. The study was also on crowdsourcing, though the crowdsourcing was by ants--insects, not your parents’ sisters.

Researchers at Arizona State University found that, when faced with too much information about where to locate a new nest site, the ants relied on the wisdom of the crowd.

Ants (multiple websites)

Finding a New Nest

The ant species studied, Temnothorax rugatulus, dwell in relatively small colonies--seldom larger than a few hundred workers--in rock crannies in forests in western U.S. and parts of Europe.

If for whatever reason the ants have to move to a different nest, they execute a highly structured home-finder search, sending scouts out to examine possible nest sites. But since their habitat offers a huge number of possible sites, each scout assesses only a small subset of the sites.
 
If a scout is happy with what she finds (e.g., size of the entrance and cavity), she returns to the colony, announces her finding via a pheromone chemical, and is accompanied back to the site by another ant.

If that second ant agrees that the site has potential, she will return to the colony and replicate the process with a third ant. If, on the other hand, the second ant isn’t impressed, she goes back and in essence keeps her thoughts about the scout’s taste to herself. If enough ants eventually approve of a site, the colony adopts the new home.
 
Nest-Finding Experiment

Although T. rugatulus’s nest-finding process does not require individual ants to compare sites, the experiment assessed the nest-comparing ability of single ants versus that of whole colonies. Single ants and colonies were induced to choose between two possible sites, one good, one poor; and also choose from eight possible sites, half of which were good, half poor.

Individual ants did well choosing the better of two sites but often selected a poor site when choosing from the eight sites. In contrast, when colonies were allowed to act as a crowd and send out more than a single scout, they did equally well selecting from two sites or from eight sites.

Wrap Up

The investigators concluded that the individual ants experienced cognitive overload--more options led to worse decisions. By sharing the assessment, the colony avoids overburdening individuals, selects well and survives.

The report extrapolates from ants to humans, noting that with the increase in data for decision-making, cognitive overload is becoming an issue for humans. I’ll accept that, though I thought we accepted it over 15 years ago. I recall managers begging for better tools to manage and integrate data to improve decision making to prevent cognitive overload. Crowdsourcing certainly helped. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Study report in Current Biology. 22:19:R827-R829 (9 Oct 2012):
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812%2900883-4
Write up of study in Inside Science (5 Nov 2012): http://www.insidescience.org/?q=content/when-ants-get-together-make-decision/834

Crowd Photo Addendum

Last Friday’s blog post was on crowdsourcing, not crowds. But photographs of crowds are much more interesting than those of crowdsourcing, especially when they were taken by Rachel. (Take a look at Rachel’s recently updated website, www.rachelphilipson.com).

Crowd in the stadium for a Cornell University graduation.

Crowd at the Chili Festival, Ithaca, N.Y.

Crowd at the Farmers’ Market, Ithaca, N.Y.

Crowded pet portion of the Ithaca Festival parade.

Crowd at the Ithaca Festival booths.

Crowd at one of the concurrent Ithaca Festival events.

Crowdsourcing for Science

Welcome back. Have you heard about crowdsourcing being applied to science? Getting the public involved, actually participating in scientific investigations, is phenomenal!

I learned about the topic while reading the print version of American Scientist in my customary prone position on the couch, but the article also appears in the online edition of the magazine (see my P.S.).

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing? No, just the start
of a flash mob. (photo courtesy of
Rachel, www.RachelPhilipson.com)

To be sure you’re with me, I’ll start with crowdsourcing, the process of outsourcing tasks to an undefined, distributed group of people. The term is attributed to a 2006 Wired magazine article by Jeff Howe, but the process is far from recent.

An early example of crowdsourcing mentioned in the American Scientist article is the Audubon Society’s first Christmas Bird Count, conducted in the year 1900. Instead of shooting the birds in a Christmas Side Hunt that year, 27 birders held 25 counts in locations from Ontario, Canada to California, tallying some 90 species. Wikipedia notes that, even earlier, the Oxford English Dictionary had an open call for contributions and received more than 6 million submissions over 70 years.

Nowadays, crowdsourcing need not be conducted online, though that’s clearly the most powerful, efficient and far reaching approach. And that’s the approach that’s being tapped to enlist the public’s help in addressing specific science project goals.

Science Projects

I’m amazed to learn the extent to which people are willing to contribute time and computing power. In one online science project, Galaxy Zoo, participants were invited to classify Hubble Space Telescope images of galaxies by their shape, and that information was used in characterizing the galaxies’ histories. Only one day after Galaxy Zoo was launched, the site was receiving some 70,000 classifications an hour!

What’s your interest? Space? Climate? Lives of the ancient Greeks? How about whale communication? Oh, I know. You’ve read my blog post on bats and would like to help characterize bat calls. Or maybe you’d be more interested in classifying animals in the millions of images collected by camera traps at Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. You can find science projects inviting your help on these and other topics at the Internet home, Zooniverse.

Wrap Up

This all reminds me of when I was teaching. Enrollment in my classes was upperclass and graduate students from various disciplines. Student answers to my assignments or quizzes were usually right, wrong, right and wrong or somewhere in between. Sometimes, however, student answers were filled with new interpretations, knowledge or insight, and I became the student.

I thanked and gave extra credit to the student who enlightened me and shared the information with the class. Class discussion of those answers would build on that new base. It was a mini, non-Internet version of crowdsourcing, so-called Wisdom of the Crowd, and it worked.

Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Anon 2012. Interface facts. American Scientist. 100:6:463-465:
http://online.qmags.com/AMS17717547?sessionID=627D3AAFBEE914D0273A6D18B&cid=2241017&eid=17547#pg33&mode2
Jeff Howe. 2006. The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired. 14.06: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
Wikipedia write up on crowdsourcing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
Internet home of science projects, Zooniverse:
https://www.zooniverse.org/