A Repsonse to The Honorable Viceroy Fizzlebottom

Dear Sir-bottom:

I write in response to your recent post “An Open Letter to Geneball.” I have done some research and conducted some critical experiments to address your question of luck, and its containment within fine American Lincoln pennies, amongst other objects.

I agree with you that we must foremost establish if such a thing as a good luck penny exists, and that we can then begin to discuss its degrees and ramifications. I addressed this question quite thoroughly.

I myself am a scientist of the genes, so my knowledge of luck and its containment within objects various and sundry is limited. In fact, aside from some rudimentary problems in Introductory Statistics, one could say that I am a veritable tenderfoot in the science of luck. (Sadly, no one has said that as it is a rather cumbersome statement and I hang out with people more inclined to the lowbrow) So, as a good scientist, I turned to the works of others. Namely, I performed a perfunctory literature search. Posting the inquiry “good luck” to my favorite scientific search engine, I found the following articles to be most pertinent. Salient portions from their abstracts, when available, are also included.

Ann Acad Med Singapore. 2007 Mar;36(3):217-20.
Take a bao if you are not superstitious.
Lim EC, Oh VM, Quek AM, Seet RC.

INTRODUCTION: Singaporeans are superstitious, and medical staff are no exception to the rule. We conducted a survey to determine the prevalence of superstitious beliefs and practices amongst doctors, nurses and medical students in Singapore. METHODS: Internet and face-to-face surveys of 68 respondents, all of whom completed the survey after being threatened with curses and hexes. RESULTS: Sixty-eight doctors, nurses and medical students responded to our survey. Only 11 admitted to being superstitious, yet 31 believed in the ill-fortune associated with eating bao or meat dumplings, 6 in the nefarious powers of black (5) or red (1) outfits on call, and 14 believed that bathing (6 insisting on the powers of the seven-flower bath) prior to the onset of a call portended good fortune, in terms of busy-ness of a call. Twenty-four believed in "black clouds", i.e. people who attracted bad luck whilst on call, and 32 refused to mouth the words "having a good call" until the day after the event. We discovered 2 hitherto undescribed and undiscovered superstitions, namely the benefits of eating bread and the need to avoid beef, for the good and ill fortune associated with their ingestion. DISCUSSION: Superstitious practices are alive and well in modern-day Singapore, the practice not necessarily being restricted to the poorly-educated or foolish.

I particularly enjoy hearing about the various types of ill-fortune Singapese believe in, and of course the concluding line is a real whopper. (Given the statements in the introduction, however, their findings don’t seem particularly astounding) However, no mention of pennies nor Singapese 1-cent pieces (they also call their $$ ‘dollars’; alas, no funny names there)

Harefuah. 2003 Nov;142(11):734-5, 807.Links
[Ingestion of an open safety pin--challenging treatment]
[Article in Hebrew]

DeRowe A, Fishman G, Avni H, Reider I, Ogorek D.

A 9 month old girl at the emergency room appeared with an acute onset of restlessness, drooling and suspected foreign body ingestion. An X-Ray revealed an open safety pin in the child's upper aero-digestive tract. The source of the safety pin was a "Hamsah" good luck charm that was attached to her bed. Open safety pins in the aero-digestive tract are difficult to manage and great care must be taken during removal to prevent further injury. Parents should be counseled regarding the presence of safety pins in the child's surroundings in order to prevent such hazards.

This is included simply as a public service: parents, please keep your Hamsah beads away from your children! One could say, however, that in this case the good luck token did not yield the intended result.

J Reprod Med. 1998 Mar;43(3):196-8.Links
Good luck rites in contemporary infertility.
Kemmann E, Cheron C, Bachmann G.

OBJECTIVE: To explore whether contemporary women use good luck rites in the infertility situation. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective study in a tertiary infertility center where women were asked to describe any type of good luck act performed on the day of critical medical intervention (either intrauterine insemination or embryo transfer) to achieve pregnancy. RESULTS: Four hundred thirty-eight consecutive infertile women participated. Good luck rituals, as defined by patients, included prayer, wearing of objects, fantasies and other acts performed specifically on the day of the medical intervention. While 40% of the study population reported engaging in a good luck act prior to intrauterine insemination of embryo transfer, there was no significant difference in pregnancy rates observed in women reporting utilization versus nonutilization of fertility rituals. CONCLUSION: This study indicated that good luck rites are commonly performed by women undergoing infertility procedures on the day of a critical intervention. The fact of their common presence attests to their importance for the well-being of the individual; however, there is no evidence of direct benefit in terms of higher pregnancy rates. The possibility of secondary benefits needs to be explored further.

In this study, rituals are found to have no statistical effect. They do not, however, provide the results for individual rites in this abstract; it is entirely possible that considered alone the totemic luck objects we are interested in would be seen to have an effect. Nevertheless, I would consider this a null result in that luck did not produce an outcome better than what was seen in the people who weren’t mildly delusional.

MD Comput. 1994 Sep-Oct;11(5):318-24.Links
Cables.
Cushing M Jr.

If you want to control your own computer installation, get the satisfaction of doing your own maintenance, and compensate for an inept or uninformed vendor, the information in this article will help you achieve these ends. Good luck and good cabling!

Another PSA: You can do it! Control your own installation! It’s not too hard! M Cushing Jr. Will show you how! Good cabling everyone!

Vet Hum Toxicol. 1981 Aug
Mexican good-luck charm potentially dangerous.
Sullivan G, Chavez PI.

I cannot access this article, but I’d say the title does not bode well for the presence of luck of this charm.

Med Hypotheses. 1979 Jul
The varieties of chance in scientific research.
Austin JH.

Four kinds of luck can be defined --- one that is pure "blind" luck, and three others that are influenced to some degree by certain behavioral characteristics. The term, altamirage is introduced to call attention to that special personal quality by which good luck is prompted as a result of personally distinctive actions (Chance IV). In contrast, serendipity involves finding valuable things as a result of happy accidents (Chance I), general exploratory behaviour (Chance II), or saga-city (Chance III). The most novel scientific discoveries occur when several varities of chance coincide.

In this report, Dr. Austin discourses about the various types of luck. He omitted Chance V: by carrying a bit of copper about in your pocket, but I reckon he might throw this in with Chance I.

Infirm Can. 1975 Aug
[The child as a good-luck object or the child as a burden]
[Article in French]
Vaillancourt-Wagner M.

I cannot access this article, and I fear this may be our best chance to address your issue directly. Note here, however, that both options are considered- basically pro-lucky or anti-lucky. Perhaps I should collaborate with this individual for further studies.

Tijdschr Gastroenterol. 1970
[Good luck letter to patients with an artificial anus]
[Article in Dutch]
Ceulemans G.

Huh. Yeah, I have to agree with the Dutch guy. Good luck with that.

So it appears that we have learned some interesting things about luck, but unfortunately the literature search was mostly for naught. First, not a single mention of pennies. Second, we have not reached any scientific conclusion on whether or not luck can be bestowed upon any object, penny or otherwise. I refined my search a bit, this time querying “lucky penny.” I obtain a singular hit.

Ulster Med J. 2004 Nov
"The lucky penny"--an incidental finding of hip dysplasia in a child with foreign body ingestion.
Hanratty BM, Thompson NW, Cowie GH, Thornberry GD.


CASE REPORT A two-year-old girl was brought to the emergency department following
the ingestion of a one pence coin. A thoracoabdominal radiograph demonstrated the presence of a coin within the first part of the duodenum.

This report contains two images: first, the X-ray showing the penny. Note also the young girl's bling (necklace and earring oddly left on during the scan).

And the important figure. The issues is that the child's right hip (left side of image) has less bone in the hip socket region than the left hip.

And finally, from the concluding paragraph of this very report:

In this case, a thoraco-abdominal radiograph which was taken to investigate an ingested coin, revealed a previously undiagnosed and asymptomatic dysplastic hip joint highlighting the fact that significant hip dysplasia can exist undetected until complications develop. A reconstructive pelvic osteotomy is planned in an attempt to minimise the associated risk of premature arthritis. The swallowed coin may prove to be this child's 'lucky penny'.

And so it appears that pennies can be lucky! Except, in this case, we are not actually dealing with a penny- this study was reported by a group from Belfast. So we have determined scientifically that the Irish one pence piece is lucky.

As a man of rigor, however, I cannot let this determination slide as a scientific truth. As noted, the result technically says nothing about lucky pennies. So I devised a brief experiment to test this in the confines of my own laboratory.

Design: I have included five subjects: left computer speaker (the left audio channel speaker for my desktop at work), right computer speaker (as above, but the right speaker), box of entropy (I cannot explain this properly in this parenthetical statement), Renaud (the only other member of my lab presently available), and myself. Multiple subjects are included to minimize individual effects. There are three test conditions: without a lucky penny, with a penny which is not lucky, and with a lucky penny. The first two conditions are controls for luck, the third is the experimental condition.

A brief description of the process by which five lucky pennies were come upon specifically for the purposes of this experiment: I set aside one moderately lustrous penny for each subject. Pennies were tossed until the second time they landed heads, as of course only pennies which are heads up should be picked up, as tails up do not give the picker luck. Pennies were then dipped into a fountain to endow with the fullest capacity of luck. As no actually fountain was available, pennies were dragged across my computer screen over five different fountains, depicted below.

Left speaker's lucky fountain:

Right speaker's lucky fountain:

Box of Entropy's lucky fountain:

Renaud's lucky fountain:

Geneball's lucky fountain:

The experiment: if a tail is thrown on a luck-neutral coin (shiny Oklahoma quarter), the subject is shot (flesh wound only). Five survived tosses suffice as thoroughly lucky. (For all objects not sufficiently animated to perform the toss, the coin must strike the object before hitting the desk to count.)

Results (no. of tosses until shot)

No penny/ ‘Neutral’ penny/ Lucky penny

Left speaker 0/ 1/ 2

Right Speaker 0/ 3/ 0

Box of Entropy 1/ 1/ 2

Renaud 0/ 1/ 0

Geneball 1/ 0/ 0

Results: It appears that having a penny at all is preferable to not having any sort of totem, as both ‘neutral’ and ‘lucky’ pennies result in more successful tosses. However, this experiment can say nothing to the end of the validity of lucky coins as of the five results, in two cases the lucky penny was actually lucky, in two cases it was unlucky, and in one case it was ineffective.

In conclusion, I suppose it would be perfectly reasonable for this man to believe his penny to be lucky, as this study shows that having a penny is preferable to not having a penny, if you want to avoid being shot. The significance attached to the individual penny, as opposed to the one he got from the Popeyes around the corner, is not scientifically verified, however.

And now, to philosophize, based on these studies and my highly scientific personal opinions. First, we have clearly seen that pennies can be lucky, as can low-monetary units in other currencies. I would argue that this concept is best left to the low-value units, because I’m sure the Hobo would be able to provide you a detailed luck/benefit analysis wherein the actual value of the currency will, in short order, outstrip its value as a bearer of good fortune. Such a financial analysis is hardly conclusive, however, as it is limited by the scope of the analysis as well as confounding factors such as “what made you actually get the raise, being more competent than high school students at taking movie tickets or carrying around a penny?”- some things just cannot be known, or take longer than his short-term analysis can adequately quantify. All the same, I bet your friend would be quite remiss to show you a lucky $100 bill, because if he’s showing you all the shit he’s got that’s lucky he probably doesn’t have too many c-notes at his ready disposal to not be disposed of.

I would feel confident in then taking this further and believing that other objects might also have money. I see no reason why an object would be more or less lucky just because it is not legal tender for all debts, public or private.

And of course things can carry as much bad luck as good. I cannot believe you did not consult the Johnny Depp epic Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl before inquiring. If Johnny Depp shares the screen with something, it must be true. Note: this does hold for scissor-handed people and cocaine. Yes, cocaine is true.

On your final point: it does seem that more lucky things would find their way to you upon acquisition of the first lucky item. However, this probably depends heavily on the type of luck the initial item bequeaths: if it is luck with acquiring more luck, then goody for you. If, however, it is luck with ladies, I am sorry but you will not be acquiring a rabbit’s foot anytime soon. Go cry to your new girlfriend about it.

I hope this correspondence finds you in good health, etc. etc. and I hope that I have scientifically put to rest some of your questions about lucky pennies and so forth by updating you on the current state of luck research in the scientific community.

Heigh ho!

Geneball

P.S. If you liked my trawling of scientific literature for purposes of entertainment, I suggest you check out this blog, where it is done with some regularity and a good amount of hilarity.

Reason No. 126 Why I Love Chicago

Last Saturday I had the incredible misfortune of having to work. Due to a string of logistics unnecessarily convoluted for this particular post, the Timeless Brigitte dropped me off at work and I planned to take the grand Chicago Transit Authority bus and rail service back to my humble abode in the much more righteous part of town.

The CTA is like any other public transit service: for a meager but not inconsequential fare you are allowed to ride one of their transports, which, pending your knowledge of the system, may or may not get you where you need to be. I tested in the 99th percentile in the critical "Maps" category on my ITBS, so it usually gets me where I need to be, or to a reasonable proximity thereof. (The one exception: the NY MTA, upon which I rode three stops before realizing I was going the wrong direction. I then spent fifteen minutes getting the drift of the system, and am fairly confident that when I return for the New Years occasion, the results will be much better.)

In order to not convey to any other passengers that you might be happier than they are, and thereby irreparably insult them, the custom is that upon boarding, you are to act droll and downplayed. Personal music players are encouraged. Conversations with any fellow riders, be they friends or strangers, are to be held at a strictly sub-audible level. If you have the misfortune of boarding a unit sufficiently full that there are no empty seats to hoard as your own, you are to make NO contact with the person next to you. Also, the buses/cars may or may not be dirty, may or may not have people selling DVDs in unlabeled cases, and may or may not have people passed out in party hats in them. Although the method of conveyance is convenient and reduces the impact of massive amounts of vehicular traffic in the city, the general rule can be simplified as: please do not feel good about life aboard mass transit.

However, for a couple weeks every year the CTA does a Really Great City Thing which flies in the face of typical mass transit etiquette. The story travels is, briefly, as such:

I finished a too long day of work-on-the-weekend at about 5. Reported to the westbound 55 Garfield bus stop at 55th and Ellis.

Watched three buses pass in the eastbound direction in the 25 minutes I waited for the bus. (This is typical. In order to hit their 'one bus every X minutes' mandate, on a X*N minute long route, they put N buses on the route, and they all show up in the span of 3 minutes. That is, if it's supposed to be every 10 mins, they have three buses show up within 3 minutes of each other every half hour. Averages out to a bus every ten minutes, but you end up waiting 27, 1, or 2 minutes for a bus.) While I was waiting, two not very good things happened: it was rainy and I was therefore getting wet, and a bunch of U of C undergrads showed up and pretentiously talked about comic books and other various political and pop-culture topics. The young people at this school drive me crazy very frequently. I am very glad I went to The State School Everyone Is Talking About Now Because Of How Poorly The New Auburn Coach Did There.

I finally boarded the bus in the appropriate asocial mood, thanks to the wait, the rain, and the pretentiousites.

I was rapidly dropped off at the Green Line, or as Chicago people would call it "The Line White People Shouldn't Ever Ride." My personal career rapings on the Green Line (both given and taken): 0. Likewise incidents witnessed: 0. Riders on the Green Line witnessed: maybe 75. Seems sparsely riden and rape-free enough for this honkey.

Wait twice for a net of fifteen minutes for various 'single track' stoppages.

Get to Adams & Wabash station, where I deboard to transfer to the Brown Line, or as Chicago people call it "The Yuppie Businessperson's Commute to Their Downtown Bank Job Line." Net rapings witnessed (including given and taken): 0. However, number of people seen on this train: roughly 25,076. And, more importantly: number of moderately obese people who don't squeeze up so you can sit next to them or people with bags on a seat, rudely taking a seat they don't need: 2,507.6. Verdict: a honkey-friendly but obnoxious transit choice.

Wait roughly five minutes for the appropriate train to show up.

During this period I was listening to my personal music device and reading a book, so I was completely unawares when a high-energy crowd started to basically jump up and down and clap their hands as the next train approached.

And why?

IT WAS THE OFFICIAL CTA HOLIDAY TRAIN!

YES THAT IS SANTA ON A TRAIN CAR! AND YES THOSE ARE REINDEERS TOO! AND A GUY IN A PARKA!
Every year for a month before Christmas the CTA rolls out a special train. One car isn't actually a car, its a flatbed on which Santa and some Elves ride around the rails (yes, even through the subways). All the cars are decked out with candy cane poles where it's usually buffed aluminum. All the nasty fluorescent white lights inside are switched out for red and green ones. Garland abounds. The outside of the car is covered in winter themed items and christmas lights. Each car has a person dressed like an elf handing out candy canes by the handful- when I asked for just one she said, "It's either a handful or none."

It was amazing to ride the Holiday Train. The mood of the passengers was sufficiently raised, in respect to that on the Green Line, so as to be palpable sitting in my seat by the door. Children were excited, adults were smiling. I took my earbuds out to listen to the seasonal music they had playing.

And it struck me: isn't it funny how this kind of little thing can make everyone so happy? It's pretty great that this simple thing makes all these people who would normally be quasi-miserable, or at least completely walled off, smile at each other and enjoy the ride?

And how would the world look if these kinds of little things happened for more than a scant few weeks a year? I get that part of the joy is the novelty of it, merely thinking of the Christmas season brings a lot of good memories to everyone. But there are other causes for some decorum. What if we used them more fully? There's plenty of awfulness and a lot of problems, but I couldn't help thinking as I got off the train that the slight incremental increase in the moods of everyone who rode or saw the train go by just might, if you played it right, improve the way society works.

But at the very least, I was happy walking home in the miserable rainy slush that night.

The Human Condition

Perhaps in part due to my upbringing in Suburbarural Iowa, I find the massive array of the different things people do amazing and amusing. I would not say I have lived a sheltered life. I am not averse to other cultures- I now heartily enjoy, yea, verily, sometimes crave sushi! I am not uncomfortable with opinions other than my own, nor with people who hold such opinions- my brother is a Cubs fan! I often ponder what life-shaping forces lead a person to, say, rape, because intentionally choosing to do such a thing would seem to require influences and thought patterns that I can't possibly fathom. It's not just crimes and ugly stuff either: I also ponder what life-shaping forces lead an oncoming couple to rudely not walk single file when the Magnificent Brigitte and I pass, because we always accomodate by moving over to share the sidewalk. I cannot fathom being so unaware of others, or so disrespectful and rude. I also ponder why some people would like Cheerios. Or prefer Leno to Letterman. I understand that people do these things, but on what life path must they travel to make such bizarre choices?

And so, herein I will describe some recent tales from my purview which to me characterize this grand array of diversity that is The Human Condition (a bit dramatic, no?). There will be more than one thing. I will enumerate them.

[Lest you think I'm just making an overzealous and grandiose introduction for my stories, and think that I'm not actually all that amused and amazed by the things people do, know that when I started graduate school my intention was to study behavioral genetics. I got into genetics thanks to Michael Crichton, yonder back. A less discussed fact is that I was similarly inspired, if you will, by the behavior of Hannibal Lecter (in Hannibal actually, not Silence, and the book, not the movie). I was struck with a thought along the lines of "How can people be so different and think in such diametrically opposed ways?" While this case was fictional, of course the savage, calculating brutality of Dr. Lecter is not exactly unheard of in real life. Because of this my interest in figuring out what kind of biological factors- in addition to environmental ones- could lead to, well, any kind of outlook on life and interaction with the world bloomed. And thus, I somewhat narrowed and formalized my interest thanks to Thomas Harris in high school.]

[A further tangent: I am not currently studying behavioral genetics. Turns out not everything you dream up as a high schooler works out. To be brief, I ditched for practical reasons (I'm not very good at statistics and I really like lab work, but behavioral genetics is basically hardcore stats without any wet work) as well as more philosophical ones (there is so little known about the way the brain works and how personality comes about that to do the kinds of things I'm interested in just isn't scientifically realistic at this point. Don't get me wrong, people are doing some interesting things, but it's far from the fine level of genetics of personality.).]

And now, back to GeneBall's TALES OF THE HUMAN CONDITION...

FIRST, I recently sent the following story to the Hobo (nee Businessman) and our blog-lurking friend GraphicalMasterWizardofKC because it evoked memories of a certain event in our recent shared history (in this case the middle of Jay's San Antonio recap, circa paragraph 12-15). For the second time in the history of my blog, I decided the story that I shared with a limited audience was worthy of mass publication, that is, perusal by three more people. This story looks at the at times wreckless, enjoyable, scandalous, bizarre, trashy side of the Human Condition.

On the radio this morning:

The sound guy for the morning show I listen to was talking about his weekend. On Sunday he went to the Horseshoe Casino in nearby Hammond, IN for some gambling action with a few buddies. Along the way he was picked up by a woman slightly older than himself (he 25, she 33). She came back to his place at the end of the night. They had sex in his doorless bedroom while one of his buddies passed out on his couch. In the course of their shenanigans, he took a few nude pictures of her which are now being seen by everyone in his office.

Before going to the casino Sunday she left her two kids with her mother.

It is now Sunday, and she is still at his place. Her phone is broken; yesterday he convinced her to call her mom to let her know she was OK.

She went back to his place with him, and as such has no car, therefore no way of her own back to South Bend, IN (probably 45 minutes away).

He declares he's in no hurry to get rid of her (and he even likes kids so that's not a deal-breaker) but he doesn't see this lasting too long or falling in love because 'she talks a LOT.'

And the best part? She's an 'exotic dancer'.

Now clearly this story isn't all that shocking- this is the second 'guy getting enamored with a stripper with kids' scenario I've been involved in or heard of nine months. (Perhaps that should suggest I'm doing something a bit wrong.) And in addition to my personal experience with this, it's the way the world works- people hook up all the time. Even strippers need four day retreats involving very few clothes at a stranger's house. However, I'm a bit astounded by how brazen this woman is about the situation, in particular her apparent lack of concern for her children. If I were to understand the mindset of an exotic dancer, however, this might seem a bit less bizarre to me. I nearly threw in the 'well, some people just make bad decisions, there's not much to understand' caveat, but at its heart that's what astounds me about humanity- how many different and at times ill-advised decisions people make.

NEXT, let's talk about ill-advised for a moment. Seeing as it involves one of the fifty governors of a state in what the Hobo calls Go America!, I'm sure everyone has heard of the inanity going down in my neck of the woods. I would like to take a moment, however, to expound on the full magnitude of the ordeal and to provide some entertaining commentary. This story belabors the egomaniacal, corrupt, morally bankrupt, selfish side of the Human Condition.

For those who've spent time abroad, under a rock, or in the land of Ahnold where they may not care or even know about the midwest anymore (I suspect their news is mostly imported via a priority stream from Xenu), Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is officially in Deep Shit. He was arrested yesterday morning in Chicago, and a federal complaint was leveled detailing various and sundry malfeasances during Blago's time in office, starting back in 2001. Most interesting were charges which involve information very recently collected via wiretaps at his home and bugs at a fundraising headquarters. I shall highlight three interesting corruptances.

1) Evidence of extortion in his lawmaking and bill-passing duties. Specifically an instance is described wherein he is willing to give Children's Hospital money if the CEO of the hospital raises fat money (50 grandish) for him. This gets better in two ways. One: a new government ethics law will come into effect in Illinois on Jan 1 which limits the fundraising contributions of persons who benefit from government contracts. Two: wire taps detail conversations with Blago and his chief of staff, John Harris, where they discuss how to put adequate pressure on the extortee to get everything squared away. He's not just corrupt, he's a bully too! (Though if you're going to be corrupt, you might as well do it right, I suppose.) There are also allegations that he's doing the same time-crunch kind of thing to engineering and construction companies.

2) Discussions caught by the bugs covering Blago's feelings that if the Tribune Company fires editors critical of his corruptness (huh, who knew?), he'd be willing to push through some business which would help with Tribune Co's sale of the Chicago Cubs. This particular line is kind of juicy: "our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ‘em the fuck out of there and get us some editorial support." Shocking abuse of authority, Clerks' Randall might say, but in this base be more honest than sarcastic about it.

3) Blago's been shopping Barack's Senate seat (did you hear he's not going to be in the Senate anymore?) around like a Girl Scout with cookies. He's looking for fat positions for himself and his wife, cushy union positions or jobs with various private foundations which will put them in good financial stead when he gets the boot from Springfield. (Thanks to these maneuvers this might just be sooner than later.) In order to put Obama's fave into the seat, Blago was hoping for a cabinet position, supposedly Department of Health. Obama's not about to get involved in this foolishness. What's Blago's take on that? "They’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them." That'll win you some points.

Two things here. First, the man has had a crapstorm going on around him basically since he came into the gubernatorial office. First former governor George Ryan was convicted of various corruptions (Federal inspector's statement "Mr. Ryan steered contracts worth millions of dollars to friends and took payments and vacations in return."). Then bigtime contributor and metaphorical bedmate Antoin Rezko went down early this year for extortion. So, these cases, amongst probably others, say that 1) the government is aware of and able to go after Illinois governors, and 2) that they've been sniffing up alleys right behind Blago's place (you should really check that link- entertaining plus raises the question of how has Blagojevich been doing anything but kissing babies since that case came out??). Sum those up and he should have had a healthy dose of suspicion that he might be under some pretty hefty scrutiny. What is this guy doing talking in a room that isn't swept for bugs weekly and having discussions only on disposable phones or something? Get the the man a burner! Drug lords get away with a ton more than Blago, legally speaking, because they're aware and careful of the fact that they're doing illegal shit. So why does he think he's going to get away with this, why not be more careful?

(Aside: one reason he may not be as concerned is because although this kind of corruption does a huge amount of damage to the financial system, it doesn't carry the same punishment and stigma as selling someone an ounce of mostly harmless marijuana. Sure he risks being thrown in jail, but what, he's going to a white collar joint for six years? Paroled in probably two? With that dim of a shadow, its probably little wonder that the people that do major damage to society are so brazen.)

The second thing tailgates on the first a bit. He's in public office betraying the public trust, and for that matter harming the general public with his 'you help me, then you can help them' tactics. He's not the first and won't be the last, but I ask the questions now because it's at the forefront of my attention now. How does he think he's going to get away with this? Why does he decide to not only keep doing the garbage he's been doing, but to redouble his efforts in order to bag as much buck before those ethics laws go into place Jan 1, 09? What kind of superjesus complex does he have, and, almost as interestingly to me, how did he get it? Flabergasting.

FINALLY BUT RELATEDLY, let's consider a more minor player in the Blagojevich debacle. This story details the lazy, oafish, incompetent, ignorant, foolish side of the Human Condition.

The FBI and DOJ investigative teams held a press conference yesterday, and given the magnitude and ludicrousity of this mess- and my lack of much to do since my stupid fucking yeast didn't grow- I watched the proceedings on my work computer. After the official statements there was a lengthy Q&A with the media types. At one point, one of the reporters said "Well I haven't actually read all this, can you just give us a summary of anything in the report pertaining to money promised to Children's Hospital?" Now, this kindly reporter did us the service of letting us know that the only idiot involved in the story isn't Blagojevich. Here are my complaints about Reporter A, in style to match the glorious 74-page complaint filed against Blago:

1. On December 9, 2008 at approximately 6 a.m. Governor A was arrested with minimal fanfare at his residence in Chicago, IL due to a massive compilation of evidence that he is a slimebag.

2. By 9 a.m. on December 9, news of the arrest was made public by various news outlets. It was specified at this time that a 74-page complaint had been issued.

3. Also 9 a.m., Reporter A, being in the news industry, is presumed to have been either at his place of work, or to have received a notice of the breaking news.

4. From 9 until 11 a.m., the whereabouts of Reporter A are unknown. During some of this time it is known that he was en route from (home/work) to the site of the press conference. Nonetheless, two facts are known: first, Reporter A is employed in some capacity as a news reporter. Therefore it is his responsibility to find, become familiar with, and report on the recent and breaking events ("news"). Second, Reporter A had some amount of downtime, at the very least while waiting for the press conference to begin.

5. By combining factors one and two from paragraph 4, we can see that what the reporter should have been doing, if he was interested in what was alleged, was reading the document wherein complaints were set out, a 74-page public document attainable certainly from his own site of employment, or via simple interweb search for a phrase such as "Blagojevich complaint."

6. At approximately 11:10 a.m. the lead investigators in the case of Rod Blagojevich began a press conference. Specifically, at approximately 11:17 a.m. DOJ investigator 1 gave exact quotes from the complaint and listed the charges put forth.

7. Nonetheless, at approximately 11:30 a.m. Reporter A deigned to waste everyone's good time at a wonderful press conference to ask what quotes were in the complaint and which charges were being set forth.

You can see that it is therefore apparent that Reporter A is a bad reporter who did not do his work, and for that matter who didn't pay attention when the head officiant of the festivies was kindly giving his speech. (end theme)

I suppose my amusement is pretty plain here: how can people do or have a job and pay no attention or interest to the task whatsoever? How does one have so little pride in their job? And additionally, how can a person act so foolishly in a public and professional setting? I presume there's a good reason or explanation for this, but it's beyond my scope.

IN CONCLUSION, I will now present a discussion of my introductory thesis and subsequent tales. In the 2006 Best American Non-Required Reading there is a transcript of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon College. His jist was that one valuable tool (of the graduates in his case, but I will expand to anyone applicable) is the ability to assess and consider a situation from multiple viewpoints. One example involves a person's theoretical reaction to someone cutting them off at the grocery store. He gives two potential responses: to somewhat self-righteously assume that this character is a real jerk, and how dare she get in your way!? Alternatively, one could empathetically consider that perhaps she's in a rush because she was late after a horrible day of work, has to feed the kids, etc. etc. He goes on to say that you don't necessarily need to think one way or the other all the time, but at least you've got the option to make the choice of how you paint those around you in the world.

My point: I'm willing and open to not assume that the stripper and Reporter A in the above examples don't always go home with a stranger for three days or perform very poorly at their job. However, they did do these things, and I'm a bit curious what- whether static or elastic- it is about them that led them to, in those instances, behave in the slightly screwy ways that they did.

On the other hand, I (and the government investigators) have seen enough out of Blago to know that he's a real scum of the earth type. All the same, I wouldn't mind knowing just how he got to be such a slimeball.

At the Zoo

The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago has two large primate facilities. One is the Regenstein Center for African Apes, a formidable facility which houses, at a guess, 20 some gorillas and chimpanzi. (I find it an ironic connection that the ape habitat bears the same name as the giant concrete block facility on the University of Chicago campus which houses a lot of books and nearly as many miserable undergraduates similarly ‘trapped’ by their studies. Despite their very bookish and antisocial complaints to the contrary, the undergrads would actually have an easier time leaving their Regenstein, should they ever choose to. Most don’t. They truly are very miserable people, and make me appreciate having gone to a state school.)

The Center provides some of our closest relatives very ample room to live and interact, both indoors and out. Also, they used to have a really young gorilla- not dead, just older now- who at the time did many cute and interesting things, like ‘fishing for ants with a stick’ or ‘messing with his dad.’ They’re just like us!! There are always massive groups of people watching the apes through the glass, even though they don’t put on much of a show. Sometimes they eat lettuce though. Also, sometimes there are rabbits in their habitats, which is sometimes the most exciting thing going on.

The ugly stepsister of the ape habitat is the Helen V. Brach Primate House, which is in itself actually quite nice. However, it has the unfortunate luck to be positioned right next to the very, very cool ape habitat. It’s kind of the Ashlee Simpson Primate House to the Jessica Simpson Center for Apes, if Jessica wasn’t completely vapid and Ashlee was, well, at least attractive. Is that too much to ask?

(The Primate House was funded with generous support from the Helen V. Brach foundation. Yes, Brach as in the candy. Pretty interesting story about what happened to her…)

The primate house holds probably 30 or so primates of various species- probably these could be called ‘monkeys’ but I’m not sure about the technical ramifications of that term. Seems that it may not be p.c. any more. One monkey of note in this facility is a young male with only one arm. He wasn’t born that way. Rather, no one told this poor monkey that the guy in Arrested Development who George used to teach the kids a lesson never ACTUALLY lost his arm. As a result, to teach the lessons “That’s why you reuse reduce recycle,” “That’s why you clean up after yourself you filthy brat,” and “That’s why you don’t leave food wrappers around or you’ll get ants,” he actually went off and lost it. Sounds like something Jessica might do to me.

Anyhow, one warm summer day some time ago the beautiful Brigitte and I were at the zoo in the Primate House. Whilst we were partaking of a baby monkey-of-some-sort romping about on a branch, an uneducated but otherwise perfectly pleasant couple also partook nearby. Now, why in the world would I jump to the conclusion that these pleasant people were uneducated? Well, usually when dealing with masses of humanity that’s my underlying assumption. However, I like being at the zoo, and the little orange monkey was pretty entertaining, so, in conceptual hindsight I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt and say that I wasn’t being a complete highbrow/arrogant jerkface. What substantiates the assessment then?

They stood beside us for a moment, entertained. Then the fellow said “Just think Dolly, but for one chromosome, that would be you.” Brigitte and I locked eyes and just about split apart laughing. We are scientists. We enjoy the biological-knowledge-based shortcomings of others. However, we contained ourselves because we’re not the “Oh hey everyone did you hear what this idiot just said, what an idiot!” know-it-all jerkfaces. We’re more the reserved, listen to this schmuck who thinks he knows something but he doesn’t jerkfaces.

So why, you ask, is this so preposterous? After all everyone knows humans and chimps are at least 98% the same genetically, but look how different we are, it must come from somewhere, and so why not from an extra chromosome? Well, for one, humans have 23 chromosomes- the molecularly massive frameworks that contain all of our DNA- so if we had a whole SPARE chromosome that right there would be about 4.5% difference. Additionally, chromosome number turns out not to mean much. Humans have 23 and chimps 22, the difference being that the human chromosome 2 exists as two smaller chromosomes in chimps (they’re numbered by size). To illustrate the point better, however, rhesus macaques, a species of monkey, have 21 chromosomes, mice 20, dogs 38, cows 30, chickens 33, fruit flies 6, and yeast 16. Given that this list is in approximate ascending order of divergence time from humans (that is, the last common ancestor that gave rise to humans and mice lived more recently than the last common ancestor of humans and chickens) (well, unless you’re Sarah Palin), you can see that there is no trend over time such as “gain skeleton, add one chromosome, collect $200.” That would clearly be meaningless because jawed fishes clearly wouldn’t have much to do with $200. So, I enter this as my depiction of why a solitary, discrete chromosome is not the reason I did not have orange hair and crawl a branch within 6 months out of the womb. Neither is the reason for me not doing that that I’m not Irish nor was I ever very good at climbing trees. It has to do a bit more with real genetics.

And so, this would allow Mr. Geneball an opportunity to expound on how exactly it is that humans and monkeys come to look and behave considerably differently. There are two factors at play here. One is the aforementioned 98% coding sequence identity. By the mathematical property of subtraction this then means we’re about 2% different. Not much. But when you consider that this is over the span of millions and millions of pieces of information stored in our DNA, this becomes a considerable difference- on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of differences in the code that biology uses to shape its cells, and that cells use to shape tissues, and tissues to organs, and organs to peoples, monkeys, or flies. So, this 2% difference can have a big effect much like a giant retailer like Wal-Mart can make a fat profit while selling things for just over their production value. (At least that’s what I get the impression they do- I read Nature not Fortune)

The second factor is a bit of a trick that lies in the details used above. I referred to our differences specifically as ‘coding sequence identity,’ because that number was determined comparing just the sections of DNA that we know code for a particular something- that is, comparing the genes. Turns out, only a fraction of the 3 billion DNA base genome we tote about in every cell are genes, that is, are used to make a protein, which will do most of the work of the cell. Some of the rest regulate the genes- they interact with various proteins to allow or prevent nearby genes to be made into proteins. Some help regulate getting the giant pieces of DNA into separate cells when a cell divides in two. And some, we don’t really have a damn clue what they do. And all of these sections of DNA vary as well, including not only single-bit changes but also larger scale rearrangements, duplications, and deletions. The net effect of this non-gene, or ‘non-coding,’ material is that the genome becomes a monstrously complicated network of switches and interactions, and alterations in these regions allow very specific differentiation into humans, monkeys, or flies. For instance, splitting human chromosome 2 in two parts, as happens in chimpanzee, likely puts these genes in entirely new non-coding contexts. This change, along with a multitude of others, ultimately adds up to enough subtle developmental differences to keep me on the outside of a thick glass wall, at least as long as I keep the thoughts in my head inside.

The details are as a whole a bit fuzzy still, but those are the concepts by which these things work. It’s a combination of a massive information source which makes a few slight changes cumulatively significant and a synergistic effect where not only gene products but also how they are regulated and what they regulate can produce quite different results with similar starting materials.

But for millions of changes and rearrangements, boy, things would be a lot different.