The Last Word On Nothing | "Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

Leading the Bedtime Rebellion

By: Cassandra Willyard | February 27, 2018

Yesterday at 8:23am, my husband texted me a link. No note, just a string of random letters and slashes and dots. I clicked and landed on a research article titled “Why don’t you go to bed on time?”

The manuscript begins like this: “Most people do not get enough sleep on work days despite sleep’s importance for well-being, performance, and health. A phenomenon held responsible for promoting insufficient sleep on work days is bedtime procrastination. Bedtime procrastination is defined as ‘going to bed later than intended, without having external reasons for doing so’, that is, ‘people just fail to [go to bed].’”

Ah, bedtime procrastination. I had never heard the term before, but I am intimately familiar with the concept of failing to go to bed. If bedtime procrastination had a poster, I would be that poster’s child. My husband, on the other hand, does not procrastinate. He is a bedtime anticipator. A bedtime enthusiast. A bedtime yearner. He would go to bed right now if you let him.

The texted link was clearly the latest passive aggressive salvo in our years-long battle to define an appropriate bedtime. Me: 12-1am. Him: 9:30pm or, better yet, immediately. Continue reading →

Baby Steps With Baby Words

By: Erik Vance | February 26, 2018

Having a baby is a miracle. Everyone tells me so, so it must be true. It’s also an adventure – again, according to pretty much everybody. I’ve had a lot of adventures and spent years searching for miracles and I have to say, those words don’t really fit.

It’s more like one long psychology experiment. Sample size of one, with the option for follow-ups to test reproducibility. The latest stage of my own research has been language acquisition. My son’s first word was “mommy.” Second was “kitty.” (Daddy was in the top ten though. I think.) Ever since then it seem like he’s just been collecting words and sticking them in his pockets like shiny pennies.

And in two languages. I’m raising my son to be bilingual because I live in Mexico and also because apparently it’s the hip thing to do these days. Studies suggest that a second language promotes things like problem-solving, attention, and seeing things from multiple points of view. In addition, it also increases the ability to, you know, speak a second language.

(My own research also suggest that when your baby is bilingual you can lord it over other parents at Gymboree because you are so culturally sensitive and they are total parenting failures. I’m not judging, that’s just science.)

But not all research supports teaching second languages. Some studies have shown that when a person grows up with two languages their vocabularies in each is lower than in those who speak just one. Now, the margins are small, and they might not even be real. But to a secretly highly insecure parent like me they are enough to freak out about. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Jessa Gamble | February 24, 2018

February 19-23, 2018

My g-g-uncle Norman experienced an early wilderness death by charismatic megafauna: eaten by a lion. Nevertheless, he was deemed to have died for King and Empire.

The open secret of the lies of professional wrestling have been generalized into the political sphere, economics, and even scientific discourse, says Sally. Are you in on the joke?

Jenny’s dog is dying, and her family tries to guess what will make him comfortable and give him a few more happy moments. All while wrestling with the question of when to decide this day is his last.

Guest Wudan Yan’s ethnicity serves as a lock-pick in her investigative reporting. In Indonesia, it means she can get into the palm oil plantations without arousing suspicion, and form a different type of rapport with her sources.

Helen and Michelle were in the focus group that author Catherine Price used to test her 30-day method for emancipating yourself from your phone’s enslavement. A hilarious comparing of notes ensues.

Guest Post: Ethnicity and Entrée in an Environmental Wasteland

By: Wudan Yan | February 22, 2018

Riau, Indonesia looks nothing like the white sand beaches, impenetrable rainforests, or volcanoes that tourists might typically associate with the country. Instead, palm oil plantations blanket the province’s hilly landscape. Thick black pipes outline the cramped, two-way roads that connect towns, pumping petrol from the ground. Rubber, acacia, or eucalyptus plantations begin when the palm oil ends. Chimneys of black smoke are often visible in the distance. They signal that someone, somewhere, is setting the land ablaze.

In the fall of 2016, I left my home in Seattle for three months to investigate Southeast Asia’s palm oil industry. As my flight started its descent into Jakarta (my first destination), I looked out the window to see neat grids of shrubby looking trees carpeting other Indonesian islands that were unmistakably palm oil plantations. Although I couldn’t see workers from above, I knew they had to be there, shielded by the towering trees.

I was most interested to dig into the palm oil industry’s labor issues. And according to a trusted source who I met that evening, the angle I was investigating could make my job especially dangerous. Because of the economic value of palm oil, the plantations are often guarded. And the palm oil industry has been known to cast a blind eye to the widespread labor abuses and didn’t want more journalists into plantations to expose them. My source also told me that plantations are often guarded, which meant that managers or security officers must never know that an outsider, much less a journalist, was on their turf. Otherwise, I could be arrested.

“But you’ll be fine,” he added, after he examined my physical features and noticed the growing look of anxiety on my face. I am Chinese, but my skin is more brown than yellow, and because there are still Chinese people living in Indonesia, I’d blend in seamlessly. “Don’t wear that t-shirt, though. I’ll have my wife find some traditional shirts for you to wear.”

Continue reading →

Last Days of the Dog

By: Jennifer S. Holland | February 21, 2018

\Here, as this Year of the Dog begins, we are the deciders, choosing which day will be the last for our 15-year-old Korean Jindo, Waits.

How does one know when it is time? Is his life still a good thing, to him, if he cannot easily rise to drink water, if he cannot control his bodily functions? Many consider the latter as the mark of the end—or at least the time for owners to stop the progression—but it seems of no matter to him whatsoever. He tolerates the diaper, doesn’t flinch at his own messes and our clumsy attempts to keep him clean. Some food still tastes good, apparently: He cherry-picks what he likes best from the kibble—we add shredded chicken or crumbled hamburger to each plate, plus a sprinkle of tumeric for all that must hurt. His mouth full of soggy bits, he still manages to spit out the tiny orange pill, swollen with saliva, that regulates his thyroid (the least of his problems at this stage).

His kidneys are failing. His legs are failing. His body is diminished, down from more than 75 pounds to somewhere in the low 50s. We keep a heating pad on him because, well, I would want one if I were dying. My husband lifts and cradles him to take him outside where he’ll balance, barely, on legs as wobbly as a fawn’s. Within minutes his strength is gone and he is crouching, then sitting, until we help him back inside; he is all too happy to go back to bed. We guess when he is thirsty and bring water to his mouth, proud of our attentiveness when he laps it up. We scooch him from one position to another, rearranging his legs and tail, presuming what might be comfortable and hugging him in apology for getting it wrong. In fact, we apologize to him over and over, for everything. For it coming to this.

Then, a good day happens, and much of the above doesn’t apply. He stands outside solidly, even getting momentarily playful with the other dogs. He climbs a few steps with little support. He sniffs at the edges of things. He cleans his plate. He looks alive again.

We’re lucky: He’s mentally still himself, and he’s not fearful. He lets us touch his paws. He used to hate that.

Bad day or good, he never cries out, never complains. And sometimes he still gives us happy grunts when we pet him just so. He was so troubled when we adopted him; he came so far by our love over the years. His winter fur is thick and luxurious and he still has the look of a puppy, big dark eyes against a face that’s kept its creamy whiteness. His age is in his hips, his spine, his organs. Maybe in his eyes when he watches us watching him.

Waits in his favorite place, where he’ll spend his last days.

He’s rolling with it, and it’s hard to be the choosers of his fate. He could have another fine day tomorrow. He still responds when we kneel down to tuck him in or when he smells that burger on the grill. Yes, we’ve always agreed it’s better to end it too early than too late. And yet, here we are changing diapers and mashing up food. His suffering is so silent. Are we terrible owners for taking our time? Because if, suddenly, he starts to act confused or, worse, afraid, it will become an emergency, and we’ll wonder, why did we wait this long?

Within a few weeks, less, we will no doubt give in and put the plan in motion—time in the sun in his favorite place, a meaty meal, a great deal of petting, a pair of shots from someone he knows, hopefully a quick nod to sleep in our arms.

These last days are for questioning ourselves and asking his forgiveness, and for burying our faces in his thick neck and holding him tight.

Photos by the author

When life hands you fake news, make Kayfabe

By: Sally Adee | February 20, 2018

What scientific concept would everyone be better off knowing? When the magazine Edge asked mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, he described the following:

What rigorous system would be capable of tying together an altered reality of layered falsehoods in which absolutely nothing can be assumed to be as it appears. Such a system, in continuous development for more than a century, is known to exist and now supports an intricate multi-billion dollar business empire.

Oooh – which transcendent scientific concept is this? Weinstein is an economist, so you’d be forgiven for thinking he was cracking open a pint of behavioural economics. Is Weinstein about to introduce us to a new insight from Nobel prize-winning doyen of nudge Richard Thaler?

Not quite. The business Weinstein was talking about is professional wrestling – Hulk Hogan, the Undertaker, the actor formerly known as The Rock – and the system it has developed, the one Weinstein thinks we should all get cozy with, is called “Kayfabe”. Continue reading →

Redux: N is for Norman, eaten by a lioness

By: Jessa Gamble | February 19, 2018

This post originally appeared in March 2012.

“It is with the deepest sorrow that I have to inform you of the death of your son Norman. He died after an encounter with a lion near the Keito River in Portuguese West Africa 10/5/15. He made a very gallant fight and killed the lion with his knife after a severe struggle. He was serving as scout in the N. Rhodesian forces to which I also belong.”

So begins a letter from the closest friend (and executor, of which more later) of my great-great uncle Norman Sinclair. Having fought through the Boer War and stayed on in Africa as a hunter, the Scotsman was still in his twenties when he met his unusual end during WWI. A collection of his letters, along with the Dead Man’s Penny — made for all troops who died in the war, and ironically bearing the image of Brittania and a lion — were kept by Norman’s grieving mother and came into my own mother’s hands a few years ago. She was able to trace the story through official and informal accounts, all the way to his twice-exhumed and reinterred grave, now in Dar Es Salaam.
Continue reading →