John's first art show!

A big "congratulations!!!" to John Ricker, who just got his first art exhibit put up in the Boiler Room Cafe! If you are in Minneapolis and you want to have a very tasty snack in a pleasant setting, surrounded by freakin' crazy awesome photos, then go to the Boiler Room anytime between now and the end of September. Yay for John!

The answer to every question

Recently I've been thinking about how the most recent research on human intelligence seems to indicate that it's decided more by nurture than by nature. Going by the latest studies, it seems that the biggest factor in a child's intellectual growth isn't anything genetic, it's the degree to which the child's mind was stimulated during the first few years of life. Kids whose parents talked to them and played with them a lot as babies tend to end up doing better on intelligence tests.

But the trouble with those studies is that it doesn't really mean anything conclusive when you prove that parents who stimulate their babies' minds end up having more intelligent children. You have to separate the environmental from the genetic: for all we know, the type of parents who do the best job at stimulating their children's minds might be the type of parents who have genes for intelligence, and maybe they're passing the intelligence on through genes rather than through mental stimulation.

To test this, you'd have to do a similar study on people with high IQs who had adopted infants biologically unrelated to them. If the adopted babies' intellectual growth responded in the same way to mental stimulation as that of biological children, you could be pretty sure that the connection was mostly nurture and not nature, and it would be another point against intelligence being mainly genetic.

Unfortunately, you couldn't make as conclusive a deduction if the adopted children's development did not follow that of the biological children, because one could argue that the adopted children's development was stunted by their time in the adoption system before being placed with the family, or that the family subconsciously did a poorer job of stimulating their minds because they loved them less than they would love a biological child. This is the trouble with the nature/nurture debate: it is very difficult to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. The only possible conclusive proof of genetic determinism would be if genes were found that were always associated with high intelligence, regardless of the environment in which one grew up.

However, I find that unlikely, because my own view of nature and nurture is that they're inextricably mixed up with each other. A lot of genes can be turned on or off by environmental factors, and some people seem more ruled by their biology than others, while some seem unable to overcome childhood experiences that shaped their personalities. I think making any blanket statement about what shapes human minds is foolish, because in nearly all cases it's a mix of factors, and individual cases can vary hugely in what part of that mix is most dominant, and how dominant that part is. Once again I have to come to my usual conclusion that the answer to every question is "it depends."

I'm still back

So there's a bill that could cut down on teenage car crashes. Apparently, if this law passes, teenage drivers will face restrictions on how late at night they can drive, how many people they can drive with, and such. States that have implemented these restrictions have reportedly seen the number of fatal teenage crashes go down by as much as 40%.

But before I support such a bill, I would want to see evidence that it's not just pushing the most dangerous age for driving up a few years. One would think that, if you put those restrictions on teens at the age when the most teens die in car crashes, then the teens who survived would enter young adulthood with less experience driving at night and less experience driving with a lot of people in the car, and therefore suffer more fatal crashes later instead of earlier. Inexperienced people are always the most at risk, and unfortunately you always start out inexperienced at the thing you're starting, no matter what age you start at.

So what I want to know is: In the states where 40% fewer 16-year-olds died in car crashes, did the number of deaths actually go up for people over 16? If it did, then I don't see the point of this law.

Now, it's possible that a year or two of restricted driving gave these teenagers enough experience that they were able to become safer drivers in young adulthood, but until the ads plugging this new bill actually state evidence of that, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's the right thing to do. When they're specifically stating that "fatal crashes among 16-year-olds went down 40%," but then conspicuously failing to mention what happened to rates of fatal crashes among other age groups, I've got to wonder.

Personally I'd rather have a bill that bans driving for all age groups, and requires the entire country to have a good rail transit system. I'm sure technology can come up with solutions for the types of situations where taking the train is inconvenient... and if we could pull it off, the number of lives it would save would be rather astounding. (Or maybe not, seeing that a huge percentage of transplant organs come from car crash victims, so maybe the deaths from lack of organ donors would cancel it out. Oh well.)

I am back from the wild North.

Okay, first of all, if you want to stay in Duluth, I highly recommend the Mathew S. Burrows 1890 Inn. Cozy, pretty rooms, good food and good company, and not too expensive. Such a nice house that I had to take a video of it... a movie is worth a thousand pictures. I especially like the roomful of plants on first floor.

Second, I recommend hiking along Chester Creek.





There are plenty of other local outdoor attractions, too, from parks with fancy stone towers in them... to hidden beaches where people build unconventional homes.





Gooseberry Falls can be wonderful, but be careful if it's rainy (information from our last visit, when John broke his leg on a wet wooden bar) and expect huge crowds at major vacation times like 4th of July weekend (information from this visit).



And I don't have pictures of much else, since my camera has been working unreliably, but here are a few other tidbits:

The beach at Lutsen Resort is still my favorite place to find agates. Someone said Beaver Bay had the best agate-picking beach, but it turned out to be pretty inaccessible. We went on a safari through about a mile of brush on a tiny trail, halfway through which there was a threatening "No Trespassing" sign. Once we got to the beach, we saw people there, and didn't know if they were visitors like us or owners who might kick us out, so we turned back. So much for Beaver Bay.

Cascade Falls is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's only 300 feet from the road, in a majestically silent grove that feels like a cathedral, and the only sound is the incredible, powerful rush of the waterfall. Oh, and there's a big swollen tree in there that looks as if it has a giant tumor. Plenty to take pictures of.

Wisconsin Point is only about a half hour from Duluth, but it feels like someplace on the ocean. Sandy beach, tall dry grasses, big silent sky. You feel a thousand miles away from the world... or you would if there weren't a hundred people sitting out there waiting for the fireworks. Dang 4th of July.

Jay Cooke State Park is pretty nice. We went on a long hike in the woods, on a grassy trail that looped around and went back to the main trail, but got more and more overgrown as it got farther from the start point, as if most of the people who had tried to walk on it gave up before completing the loop. It wasn't that long, though, only about two or three miles, all of it pretty much the same in terms of scenery. It was said that we might see ladyslippers, but maybe it wasn't the season for them.

The gulls in Canal Park have always been, and always will be, one of my favorite attractions. Throw a few bits of popcorn at your feet and you will be surrounded by a crowd of them, eating, yelling, chasing each other away from the food. I love how the boisterous ones will stick their heads down almost between their feet for the first few yells, and then raise their beaks gradually up into the sky as they get louder.

I'm not sure what they're communicating. There were moments when I felt like moving into Canal Park and living among them like Dian Fossey among the gorillas, trying to figure them out. There's a fascinating book called "Ravens in Winter," written by a scientist who had been baffled by the social behavior of ravens, and had observed them for years trying to solve their mysteries. Their custom of calling each other when they found food was puzzling to him, since they didn't seem to have a reason to want to share. But as he watched them, he gradually found out lots of really interesting things about their social structure, and about the personality types of individual ravens, that made it all make sense.

I wish someone would do a study like that with gulls. They had feeding behaviors I couldn't figure out, either, which seemed to have something to do with their personality types. The more aggressive ones would sometimes chase the more timid ones away from food, but then ignore the food itself, like a dog in a manger. I'd have to become a gull-watcher for years to figure out why they do something like that.

Oh, and one more thing: John can skip rocks.

Assorted updates

It's been a while since I've posted any actual information about my life, so here goes.

Art fairs went okay, but not great. Bad weather for both of them. Earnings just barely covered expenses. But we learned a lot about running an art fair booth, and we'll be better prepared whenever next time is. Someday soon we'll become members of the Stevens Square Center for the Arts, so we can have our stuff in their gallery and make some connections in the art community. Looking forward to meeting more artists.

Birthday was fun. Spent it with various people, doing various things. Age getting close to 30, but at least it's mathematically satisfying. Goodbye, cube number 27; hello perfect 28, see you soon prime 29.

Going to Lake Superior over 4th of July weekend. Planning to stay in the Mathew S. Burrows bed & breakfast, which looks like a surprisingly nice place for as little as $95 a night. I'll let you know how we like it. But we'll try to spend most of our time outdoors. Hope to get in some serious rock hunting. I'm running low on good agates for my jewelry projects.

Anyway, enough boring real world details. I'll get back to you later when I have something totally weird to talk about.

Penguin parenting

You know how they say that penguins can recognize their babies' calls? How, in an ice field full of hundreds upon hundreds of penguins, mother and baby miraculously find each other by voice alone?

John and I have been wondering something. Do the penguins actually have the auditory acuity to distinguish each other's voices? Or is this all just a by-product of their well-known devotion to the community above all individual interests?

Think about it. In Antarctica, no penguin can survive alone. Cooperation is vital, even if it means putting aside one's own interests for the moment. When penguins huddle together to keep warm, each one takes its turn on the outside of the huddle to keep others warm, as well as taking its turn at the middle to warm itself. If a penguin community ever had a large number of individuals that were, well, individualistic, that community and its gene pool would die.

And it's documented that mother penguins whose babies have died will actually fight over a baby to adopt. They have no problem with raising babies that aren't their own.

So the question John and I are asking is, has anyone actually done a tagging or gene-testing study to determine that the penguins do find their own babies? Or is it possible that they just call out and adopt the first baby that answers?

I mean, that way, pretty much every baby gets a mother, and it happens faster than it would if they took the time to seek out their own young. From the point of view of the community, which is what matters for penguins, it would make sense.

I'm really curious. Any thoughts?

Art Fair!

John and I will be at 2 art fairs this spring. If you want to see our art in person, and maybe buy it, feel free to show up.

Not much in other news. Except that yesterday morning I had a dream that my mom had sent me to Mexico in order to improve my social standing and thus her public image, and I was absolutely miserable, and then I woke up and my brain was like "Ha ha! April Fool! You actually are still in Minnesota and your mom is not actually a horrible person!" and I was like "Shut up, brain."

Anyway, I had a kind of sucky day from then on, but today is a lot better.

Hairectomy

In January 2009, I went from having 21-inch-long hair to having 1-inch-long hair. It's taking a lot of getting used to. I haven't had hair under 15 inches since my teens. But it's much more convenient, much cooler and cleaner-feeling.

I decided to do it after I read that hair can sell for up to $1000. My plan was to sell the hair and donate part of the proceeds to charity, thus accomplishing more good than I could by donating the hair itself.

But it didn't work out so well. It got hopelessly tangled during the haircut, and the person who had offered me money for it on Hairtrader.com never got around to telling me for sure whether he still wanted it. So I think I'm going to send it to Locks of Love and hope they can still use it.

I don't regret it, though. I'm very happy with the haircut. It's versatile-- I can look like my mother-in-law or I can look like a lesbian or I can look like a punk rock star, depending on how I style it. Works for all sorts of social situations I get into.

I keep reaching back to adjust my hair every time I shift position, and then realizing I don't have to. No more pulling my hair through after me every time my head goes through the collar of a t-shirt. John likes it better too-- he says it even used to get in his way. We'd be sitting on the couch and he'd accidentally lean on my hair. But now that, too, is a problem of the past. I should have done this a long time ago.

A fun shop in Minneapolis

Today John and I went into a little store we had seen a whole bunch of times. We'd been curious about it before, but usually hadn't had the time to check it out. Well, today we did, and we're glad.

It's called Sunny Day Earth Solutions. When you first walk in, you may not be all that impressed-- right now it doesn't have a whole lot of interesting things sitting around in plain view-- but if you look closely, you'll start finding stuff.

I got myself a little bowl made out of recycled chopsticks:




that folds up really flat:



John got himself an LED flashlight:



that you charge by pulling a string:



It gives you about a minute of bright light per pull:



and when you're done pulling the string, it clips neatly onto the end of the flashlight:




So, kinda neat. But that isn't the really, really cool thing about this place. When you talk to the people there-- wow, then you'll get interested.

The guy we talked to is amazing. If you've ever been thinking about setting up solar power in your house or apartment, or switching out your light bulbs for LEDs, he can give you more information about those things than you ever knew existed. Take a look at his credentials page to see all the stuff he's done.

And you can buy those things in the store, too-- all sorts of solar panels, and LED lamps that screw into ordinary light bulb sockets.

We're definitely going to try and talk to him some more. Even though we already light our apartment with fluorescents, we could probably cut our electric bill down to a fraction of that by using LEDs instead. They're expensive when you buy them, but they sure pay for themselves. It would be really cool to run a least some of our electric equipment on solar power, too. And after going to this place, that doesn't seem as far out of our reach as it used to.

Trouble is, they're not getting much business lately... so I really want to spread the word about this place. It's Sunny Day Earth Solutions and it's at 1000 26th Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414. Check it out sometime if you're in the area.