Science Metaphors (cont.): Touchstone

By: | January 13, 2025

Last Friday, Sarah used “touchstone” as a metaphor. I think she uses the metaphor — you touch a stone and see its landscape in time — in a way that’s poetically off-center from touchstone’s usual meaning. Which is a thing that’s solid, grounded, and reliable and which is the way I’ve used “touchstone,” because I have a long-standing issues around grounding and reliability. A touchstone is what you refer back to when you’ve become uncertain; it’s reliable certainty, isn’t it, a truth in which you can believe and by which everything can be judged.

But touchstones didn’t start out as metaphors, they’re real things, originally dark and fine-grained rocks, like slate. They’re used as a test for the type and purity of a metal. Specifically, gold — like, you’re paying for gold here, is it really gold? is it pure or has it been cut with baser metals? You draw a line, called a streak, on the touchstone with a piece of the metal, then look at the line’s color. If the streak is gold, the metal is gold and the gold is pure. If the streak is black, it’s pyrite, fool’s gold. If the streak is white, it’s silver; copper-colored, it’s copper. The more copper that’s alloyed with the gold, the redder the streak. Alloys of silver and copper, of silver, copper, and gold; and of tin and lead, all have their own streaks.

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Oh Wow: An Exercise in Certainty

By: | January 8, 2025
Watercolor painting of a tadpole-shaped prehistoric sea animal with no fins, staring round eyes, and a silly triangle mouth.
“Oh Wow!” (2024).

Key:
* = Pretty darn sure
** = Scientists are making some educated guesses here

Hundreds of millions of years ago during the Ordovician period, someone blorped and wiggled around in the shallow waters off Gondwana.*

This someone didn’t have jaws or fins,** nor did they have utility bills or shoelaces.* Their name—as assigned by strangers who never even met them—was Sacabambapsis. They had a big ol’ head, front-facing eyes, and a triangular mouth that never shut.** They looked, in short, like an incredibly goofy cartoon,** at least in this model that resides in the Finnish Museum of History.*

I love this someone, partly because I, too, look a bit like a cartoon, but also because they remind me how little true certainty there is in this world, even—or especially—when it comes to science. There’s a reason this blog isn’t called The Last Word on Everything.

Some things (anthropogenic climate change, the benefits of vaccines and pasteurization, the earth being round, bats being awesome) are pretty damn solid. But so many others are educated guesses, our sense-seeking minds drawing shapes in the dark. And man oh man, some of those shapes are hilarious.

*

Watercolor painting by me.

By the wind sailors

By: | January 6, 2025
Velella velella, or by-the-wind-sailor. Credit: Notafly, Wikimedia Commons

This post first appeared in March 2023. I can’t wait to go to the beach again.

Walking south along the beach towards Los Angeles this weekend, my friend and I were talking about all the arbitrary things that can alter a life’s trajectory, like where you’re born or if your parents went to college.

As we walked, we noticed hundreds of tiny sea creatures scattered like dark blue flower petals along the water’s edge. Some were as small as a baby’s fingernail. Others were as big as silver dollars. When we looked at them up close, we saw that each animal had a flat, blue oval disc for a body, joined to a transparent sail.

We prodded the stranded animals gently to see if they were alive or had any stinging venom, since they looked a lot like jellyfish. When nothing happened, we started arranging them in a line on the damp sand, from small to large. All the sails curved in a shallow S–shape, and were angled slightly to the left. They looked like a fleet of ships waiting for a general’s command to launch. Later, we learned that the strange blue discs were called Velella velella, or by-the-wind-sailors.

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Maybe Good Things Will Happen – II

By: | January 3, 2025

Ed. note: Yes, certainly, parts of last year were pretty bad, yes, we noticed that. But not everything is terrible at all times in every way. And maybe, possibly, even probably, in this new year good things will happen.

Craig: A Robbie Robertson song contains some of my favorite lyrics:
Give us the strength
Give us the wisdom
And give us tomorrow

The good thing I’m noticing is that time doesn’t stop. We keep being given tomorrow. It’s not a guarantee, a plug could get pulled on the video game of us, but so far it’s worked. It’s worth a prayer now and then, or mention in a song (“Showdown at Big Sky” by Robbie Robertson).

What more could we ask for than tomorrow, and what is more sure than sunrise?

For the record, the next lyrics in the song are a call to action, so let’s get busy:

Let the bells ring out (ring those bells)
Hear the bells ringin’
Let the bells ring out (all the people gonna)
Keep on ringing, ringing (ring those bells)

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Maybe Good Things Will Happen – I

By: | January 1, 2025

Ed. note: Yes, certainly, parts of last year were pretty bad, yes, we noticed that. But not everything is terrible at all times in every way. And maybe, possibly, even probably, in this new year good things will happen.

Becky: Maybe the Steller’s jays will hop back and forth on the pine outside the kitchen window. Maybe the turkeys will riffle through the fallen oak leaves, which I did not pick up on purpose. Maybe my 3-year-old will draw another picture of her older sister. Maybe the package will arrive from Dnipro on time. Maybe there will be no more death in Gaza, or from rampaging viruses. Maybe the refugees who my friends are helping will arrive before January. Maybe the high natural fluoride in my municipal water supply will be enough? Maybe the wind will bring in more snow. Maybe, if we are lucky, that wind will be at just the right speed to make my favorite sound, whistling through the ponderosas. Maybe the holiday dinner will be low stress. Maybe we will even be happy. Maybe we’ll have our health, too. Maybe we will be together again someday, in some place. Maybe it will be warm when we get there, and we will see blue jays, and hear the wind. 

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Not Everything Is Terrible, Poetry Edition

By: | December 30, 2024
Photo of a battered green overpass above a 2-lane road with cars in either direction. The sky is gray-white and the trees are bare. There is snow on the ground. Red letters spray-painted on the overpass read "KEEP GOIN"
Poem text: If You Were Looking for a Sign, This Is It Yesterday was hard. The day before yesterday, hard, too. Somehow, something about today has made it soft. Not the unrelenting blankness of the December sky. Not the pain in my teeth, or my hands, or my aching heart. Not the electric bill. Not the contagion. But the messages from grocers, snow-shovelers, thanking me for supporting them. Them, who keep my body and home when I can’t push a shopping cart or stand up in the shower. And the pileated woodpecker glimpsed —! through the window of the dentist’s office. The hygienist turning to follow my fingers into the shadowy pines. The rich red brushstroke of the long bird’s long crest. The bright, matching threads of my blood—right quantity, for once, and right reason—gliding down the little white drain. The dentist reminiscing about the owl he saw once. The spindly green overpass graffiti urging us all to K E E P G O I N.

*

Text:

If You Were Looking for a Sign, This Is It

Yesterday was hard. The day before yesterday, hard, too.

Somehow, something about today has made it soft. Not the unrelenting

blankness of the December sky. Not the pain in my teeth, or my hands, or my aching heart.

Not the electric bill. Not the contagion. But the messages from grocers, snow-shovelers,

thanking me for supporting them. Them, who keep my body and home

when I can’t push a shopping cart or stand up in the shower. And

the pileated woodpecker glimpsed

—!

through the window of the dentist’s office. The hygienist

turning to follow my fingers into the shadowy pines. The rich red

brushstroke of the long bird’s long crest. The bright, matching threads

of my blood—right quantity, for once, and right reason—gliding

down the little white drain. The dentist reminiscing

about the owl he saw once. The spindly green

overpass graffiti urging us all

to K E E P G O I N.

*

Photo by me.

Not Everything Is Terrible, Volume 2

By: | December 27, 2024
A faint crescent moon in a blue sky

Ed. note: Now, even more than last year, it’s easy to believe that literally every single thing on this earth is broken, awful, and/or doomed. But it’s not true. Some things (not all, but some!) are good. Here are a few of the things that gave us hope, lifted our spirits, and gave us a more realistic—that is, marginally less doomy—perspective.

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