Anchored to a Sandbar; or, The Truth is Always Shifting

Plinky asked: "Is it always better to know the truth, even when it hurts?"

Not always. Sometimes (excuse the expression) you can't handle the truth. Are you going to tell a five-year-old that his mommy was raped and dismembered in Central Park? When Grandma has Alzheimer's in the nursing home and every day forgets that Grandpa died five years ago are you going to break her heart every day so she isn't misinformed? What about if you've just moved in with someone, and maybe life isn't that grand because you have to scrape for rent and food but you're happy, but if you tell your dad he'll sweep in and take you away and you'll spend the rest of your life being mollycoddled?

The easiest answer is "yes, the truth is always the best," but that seems very monochromatic to me. Shades of grey means that nothing's easy. Besides (and I promise I'll restrain from expanding on this) but what is the truth? Something you may see as absolute truth - for instance that it is time for you to move away from your family and start your own life - may not be absolute for someone else - like your little sister, who draws strength from your closeness and appreciates that you don't leave her to deal with mom and dad all alone.

The truth can limit a person, too. Sometimes, if you don't know the truth (for instance, your friend's truth that your artwork is dull and unoriginal) it turns out not to be the truth (when you end up having a show in a gallery in SoHo). Truth is inconstant, and as a species we give it way too much credit.

A Lack of Dentary Sagacity: Are Wisdom Teeth Wise?

Got my wisdom teeth out yesterday.  Frickin' wisdom teeth; nothing wise about 'em.  An artifact of evolution.  Adult humans have 32 teeth (including the wisdom teeth).  These wisdom teeth are presumably so-named because they erupt around the late teens, when humans supposedly become "wise" or some such thing.  Maybe naming them that is some sort of wry humor, a rite of passage, as only those with forbearance enough to survive to that [in some eras and some cultures, advanced] age deserve to gain the "wisdom" teeth.

At any rate, they're pretty useless, even detrimental.  For instance, the biggest factor in my finally getting mine out was that my dentist informed me that the lower teeth, now peeking through, left nooks and crannies where food could get stuck and promote an abscess.

The reason they couldn't make it all the way through and make it to the normal, un-threatening teeth stage?  Because I, like the majority of modern humans, don't have a long enough jaw to accomodate them.  "Then why are they there?" you inquire.  Well, they're there because evolution is a process, not a guide; there is no "invisible hand" with some sort of foresight seeing the probability that our faces would get shorter and spontaneously ridding us of those annoying third molars that don't fit.  Some thousands of years ago, those third molars did fit.  Think of a dog's jaw, or some similarly-snouted animal.  32 human-sized teeth in the jaw of a dog with vaguely similar cranial measurements would fit nicely (an oversimplification, I know, but bear with me).  And the dog would have space for those 28 teeth, plus those blasted wisdom teeth because... (wait for it)... he has a long muzzle.  Might not seem like much but consider this: we have the shortest faces of any in the vertebrates (I would venture) and we are the only ones with extra teeth.  Wait, let me check that... yeah, pretty much.  Most telling is that other vertebrates have these same third molars but they fit.  A distinguishing characteristic of primates is the shortened face, especially as you move into the apes.

Just a quick aside; this is not (gods forbid) to cast humans or apes in any sort of "superior" role with respect to the rest of Animalia.  This is simply an academic distinction between mammalian/vertebrate/chordate/animal lineages and one of them just happens to be Homo sapiens.

Still with me?  Good.  In that vein I would like to address creationism (more like rip it apart into itty bitty pieces but ah well, we can't have everything).  I just have one point to make at this juncture: why would an intelligent designer give us these pointless, potentially harmful teeth?  Among other things [that identify us as humans]... bigger brains means bigger skulls, leading to more hazardous childbirth; standing on two legs leads to numerous lower body joint problems, especially spine problems; a specialized laryngeal apparatus grants the power of speech but greatly increases the risk of choking, necessitating the chewing of food which in its turn causes myriad jaw problems, and now we're back to teeth.

So all this boils down to one thing: my mouth hurts and I'm pissed.

Textbooks, and the Acquisition of Them

I hate shopping online.  I am always afraid I'm going to get duped, and you can't hold the thing you're buying in your hands, or see it for real.  Anyway, I am in the process of buying my books for next semester; it's doubly exciting because I am basically flat broke.  My mom's helping me out, but of course I feel terrible about that... She insists it's fine, but I still feel kind of low about it.  So I've been bouncing back and forth between the school's textbook website, Amazon, B&N, and Alibris trying to find the best deal, and it's driving me crazy (*woooooOOOOOOOOoooo!*).  I think I've decided how I'm going to do things (where to buy, what to buy, what to rent) but now comes the paying part.  Some of the books (ie most of them) are used and when they're gone they're gone, so I'm a bit concerned about waiting...  I'm hoping nothing will happen til Monday, because today's a holiday and tomorrow's Sunday, but then I remembered that I'm gonna be sky high on Monday because I'm getting my wisdom teeth out... maybe my mother can order in my stead...

NB barnesandnoble.com's hold music is making me want to punch something

I'm doing the post-a-week challenge!

Hey everyone!  I'm doing the post-a-week challenge!  I would do the post-a-day challenge but I don't think I'd be able to keep it during the semester, so I'm at least going to try for weekly.  So help me out; I look forward to your comments, opinions, and ideas!

Someone Who Deserves More Credit

Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace was a contemporary of Darwin and a collecter of exotic specimens. A few years after Darwin's famous voyage Wallace made an expedition to Malaysia and spent several years there. Unlike Darwin who'd had a top notch education, was from a successful family, and was employed as the Beagle's naturalist and so was paid, roomed, and fed, and well off after he returned to England, Wallace was a self-made man who was funding his own adventures in Malaysia from the sale of the specimens he sent back. Before that Wallace had been in South America for several years, collecting live specimens and preserving others, but on the voyage back to England his ship had caught fire and everyone had been forced to abandon ship, leaving the ship and most of the specimens (Wallace had possessed the presence of mind to save a few sketches) to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic. However his agent had sold the specimens he had managed to ship back to England and with this money and despite this misfortune he had determined to travel to Malaysia. In Malaysia he had lived a tough life, sleeping in a hut on stilts in the humid heat of the jungle, listening to the rumblings of distant tigers in the night. He went out every day collecting insects, and became fascinated with the many flashy butterflies of the area. In the process he developed the theory of evolution /independently of Darwin./ He sent many letters back to England, publishing in minor journals, hoping to gain opinions on his radical ideas. And they were radical, so radical that Darwin had not yet published the ideas he'd been sitting on for some time. Wallace also sent a paper he wrote on evolution to his friend Darwin for academic criticism. Darwin finally published, and though Wallace had independently come to the same ideas and published earlier Darwin was showered with praise and immortalized as the father of the theory of evolution. Still, Wallace never begrudged his friend the fame. For starting over when his ride home from South America went down in flames, for braving the jungles of Malaysia, for publishing without thinking of social consequences, and for his willingness to take a back seat to his friend Darwin I think Alfred Russel Wallace deserves more credit.

To Dream, Perchance To Sleep

Ever feel tired but not sleepy?  How about--immeasurably more vexing--sleepy but not tired?  This is what makes me an insomniac, because I'm pretty certain that I fall into that [vast and ill-defined] category.  Hmmm, categories...  I am led to believe (from sources such as Stephen King novels) that most insomnia is actually just the sufferer's inability to get to sleep and sleep well.  The Mayo Clinic says that insomnia is that and waking in the night and not feeling rested in the morning.  Um, bingo.  I think it's some sort of disconnect between my brain and my body (perhaps my autosomal and somatic nervous circuits) that leads to my autosomal systems gearing down (heart rate, breathing, smooth muscle...) while my brain is a barely contained maelstrom of discordant thoughts, tumbling over each other to escape my head into the tangible world.  I try to write stuff down, get it out, and hope it will be gone, but it is summarily replaced with a new stream of consciousness.  That miscommunication seems the most likely culprit.

Songs in the Key of Dreams

Sorry I haven't been writing lately, but I have been having a rough time of it.  School is wicked and it's Yule season and everything's crazy and such.  Hopefully I will be writing more, as that usually is cathartic for me anyway.

So I've been listening to a lot of Christmas carols and seasonal music.  Yes, I listen to Christmas music, even the sacred stuff.  Well, I grew up with it, and since it's harder to unlearn something than to learn it I listen to a lot of Christmas music.  Besides, music can have different meaning for me; my whole family is all about the music.  I was thinking about this yesterday, about how I grew up with music all around me and as such an important part of every day, whether it be singing, listening, or playing.  I was at my dad's house the other day and though I've noticed the radio in every room before it really occurred to me the reason for a radio (sometimes multiple, and often portable so you'll never be without sound wherever you go in the apartment) in every room.  Yesterday my housemates and I were singing Christmas music in the car and I knew more of the words than anyone else.

What I'm trying to get at is music is just that to me: music.  Yeah, I take issue with the words sometimes (I almost erased all my music with a reference to "God," "Lord," or "Jesus" yesterday because I was so fed up with it), but music is about the music to me, not the lyrics.  And going back to the whole "I grew up with it" thing, a lot of the melodies really resonate with me.  Many Christmas carols are quite beautiful, and if you actually listen to the lyrics they often sound like a hasty translation (which they probably are) and they sound very hurried and artificial, like someone needed to fill space.  Short story: the lyrics suck.  Not all the time (I love "Angels We Have Heard on High) but often they feel forced (first line of "Three Kings");  in the end it's really all about the melody.  And the best melodies (in my opinion) are in a minor key.

As young as 3 I felt the magic of minor (bc I told my mom I liked "Carol of the Bells" because it sounds "sad").  Are you ever listening to something and you get a chill down your spine as all the hair on your arms stand up?  Does music ever make your heart ache and sing along, like you're pining for a perfect home you knew once but not for many years?  It feels like being in love but far away, like seeing your little cottage on the shore while in the surf in a little skiff and the tide is hurrying you out to sea.  I can only compare it to how I feel, and my dreams usually have a faery-tale theme, full of castles and queens and knights and ladies and chivalry and honor and adventures.  And princesses, obviously.  "Gawain and the Green Knight" kind of stuff.

It's not just Christmas music that feels like magic.  It's mostly stuff in minor keys, but pretty much anything Celtic does it for me.  I can see the trees, dappled with emerald sunlight, the colors dark under the canopy, the surety of faeries in the sparkling air.  I listen to music for the chance to hear magic from songs in the key of dreams.