This year we planted our zucchinis in a clay which was only mildly softer than granite and so they have been particularly feeling the heat this year. When we lost our first baby zuchs to the midday sun we realised we had to do something. Then out of nowhere a memory from my halcyon days reasserted itself:

When I was a young whipper-snapper my mum had these bright orange spikes she poked into the ground and then attached a soft drink bottle full of water to the top of. The water would then slowly drain out of the bottle over the course of a few hours directly into the root zone of a plant. Perfect for plants that didn’t cope too well with the midday heat.

Well not having any overpriced bits of orange plastic to hand I improvised and discovered that two little nail holes in the lid of the soft drink bottle works just as well (two are needed, presumably to allow water to go out one and air in the other so as not to get a low pressure build up in the bottle). Bury the bottle (with water in it) so that your mulch is around the top of the bottle’s neck and then sit back and let coke do the watering for you.

Obviously I wasn’t the first to come up with this idea. They cut the bottom of their bottle off so that they can directly fill it with a hose. I prefer my method so you don’t get any evaporation out of the bottle. Of course, if you have lots it will take a little longer to fill them all.

There once was an old Bedouin, who, sensing that his death was imminent, gathered together his three sons and signified his last wishes to them. To the eldest, he bequeathed half his inheritance, to the second one quarter and to the third one sixth. As he said this, he died, leaving his sons in perplexity, for the inheritance in question consisted of eleven camels.

How were they to respect the old man’s will? Should they kill those of the camels whose division seemed prescribed, and share the meat among them? Was this the required filial peity? Did their father really want them to prove their love by accepting this loss? Or had he made a mistake, distracted or weakened by his imminent death? [...] they went to see the old sage who so often plays a role in such stories. The old sage, on this occasion, told them that he could not do anything for them except to offer them what might perhaps help them: his old camel, skinny and half-blind. The inheritance now counted twelve camels: the eldest took six of them, the second three, the youngest two, and the old camel was returned to the old sage

From page 16 of Isabelle StengersThinking with Whitehead.

  1. Take one pair of Sony’s new 3D visor.
  2. Mount two very small digital video camera’s on the visor.
  3. Send the output of ONLY ONE of the cameras to a little Arduino circuit that warps the light spectrum in such a way that 500 nm is mapped to 560 nm (L-cones), 460 nm is mapped to 530 nm (M-cones) and 380 nm (UV) is mapped to 420 nm (S-cones).
  4. Display the unmodified output of one camera to one eye and the warped output of the other camera to the other eye.
  5. Wear the headpiece for a week or so to see if your brain is actually able to make sense of all the new information.
  6. ???
  7. Hexachromacy!

Sony 3D Visor

Apparently a fair number of females (around 1-2%) actually already have tetrachromacy so there must be some way of dealing with extra information which is not fully explained by current trichromatic or opponency models of vision. More here. The advantage of having different channels in different eyes is that you don’t have to worry about labeled lines in the retina itself.

It is frequently said, (although I haven’t found solid original research to back it up) that each cone type is able to discern around 100 gradations of intensity giving a maximum number of hue sensations of about 1 million (100*100*100). With six cones you would have the potential for 1012 discernable hue sensations. For those playing along at home, that’s a metric fuckload.

I see your sea cow and raise you one land shark.

For various reasons, I have recently had my interest piqued in mensuration and female reproductive cycles1. I was particularly surprised, therefore, when I stumbled across the Australian myth of the moon man - after all, what could be more natural than to conceptualise the moon as female. Shakespeare, for example, famously has Romeo personify the moon as the beautiful Roman goddess Diana:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.2

But apparently the Yolŋu people weren’t well versed in Shakespeare since their Ngalindi was not only male but also fat and lazy. Ray Norris:

The Moon-man, Ngalindi, was originally a fat, lazy man (corresponding to the full Moon) who expected others to feed him. His wives attacked him with their axes, making the waning Moon. He managed to escape by climbing a tall tree, but was mortally wounded and died, causing the new Moon. After 3 days he rose from the dead and gradually regained his health, giving us the waxing Moon. After 2 weeks, when he was round and fat again, his wives attacked him, and so the cycle continues to repeat every month. Until Ngalindi first died, everyone on Earth was immortal, but Ngalindi cursed humans and animals so that only he could return to life. For everyone else death would henceforth be final.

These Yolngu stories also explain the connection between the tides and the Moon. The Moon fills and empties as it rises through the horizon, raising the tides when it is full and lowering them when it is half- full.3

Interestingly, the Dhuwa moiety of the Yolŋu people seem to have a different take on why the moon man’s wives were angry:

the women go out to the billabong. It’s turning dark now but they see the fish trap in the water, and they see blood. They pull the trap out of the water and see their two dead sons in there!

They cry and cry. They hit and cut themselves with a rock and stick to express their grief and anger, traditional-way. They know the Moonman has done this to their sons. [...]

Later, Moonman comes back to the hut. It is night time and he goes into the hut to sleep. The women stay up and watch him. The women wait until he is in a deep sleep and then they set fire to the hut at each of the four doors. The hut lights up and glows like a burning moon! Moonman wakes up. It’s like a furnace in there. But its too late and he too catches fire.4

And it’s not just the Yolŋu, the Warlpiri people also envisage the moon as male. Ray Norris again:

Solar eclipses are explained by the Warlpiri people as the covering of the Sun-woman by the Moon-man as he makes love to her. On the other hand, a lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun-woman successfully forces her unwelcome attentions onto the Moon-man, who constantly tries to evade her by following a zigzag path through the sky.5

By way of what I at least felt was a pretty big coincidence, just before I started reading about the stories of the world’s first astronomers I had written a short poem6 a about a woman who climbs a tree and becomes the moon. By pure happenstance the poem marked the point where two current interests, menstrual cycles and aboriginal astronomy, met. It seemed only right, therefore, to dub it Ŋalindi.

Her soft cream sinew cut on cobbled stone
spills crimson life into the starving ground.
And from her seed springs forth a dew drenched tree
that spits her sap and sweat down curling leaves.

Cold captured sunlight rages in her branches
like some small creature played with by a cat,
and Icarus, she climbs her new-born babe
and leaps from verdant spire to dusk’s last breath.

Her legs sink surely into virgin sponge;
her wings soar proudly through the burning rays;
her body, stretched, etches pastel hues;
And sparkling charcoal war-paint scars her face.

The ice kiss of the frigid firmament
rips open wounds and ignites weeping blood.
Sweet flesh is torn apart till all remains of
Diana is a monthly reborn orb.

  1. On which subject I heartily recommend Stein and Kim’s book Flow []
  2. According to Reading About the World: ”Young women were said to suffer from ‘green-sickness’ which could only be cured by lovemaking.” Hence Romeo’s insistence that Juliet “Cast it off.” []
  3. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rnorris/papers/_n220.pdf []
  4. http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/dustEchoesFlash.htm []
  5. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rnorris/papers/_n220.pdf []
  6. I’ve also recently completed another (entirely unrelated) poem called Notes from the small hours []

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