Over the past eight years I've posted regular reports on the welfare of local starfish as they endured (and some populations became extinct due to) a mysterious contagion that makes them rot alive. Now American television network CBS has announced that the cause of Sea Star Wasting Disease has been firmly established, and it's not a virus as suspected, but a bacteria.
As noted before, several species have developed a measure of immunity to this pathogen since it first appeared in 2013, but a few have been wiped out, at least in shallower, warmer water. One of my favourites, the sunflower star (Pynopodia helianthoides), once omnipresent on the North Coast, is now basically exterminated; according to the article, less than 10% of the original count still exist, all in cold, deep water. But efforts to breed them in captivity have been successful, so there's hope they might be reintroduced to their old habitat one day.
A little Googling verified that another old friend, the giant pink Pacific starfish (Pisaster brevispinus) also lives on in colder water.
As suspected, the underlying cause of this pandemic is climate disruption, which has allowed the bacteria to flow north along the eastern Pacific Coast, to warming waters where sea stars have no defence against it.
But we've got an important scientific advance in the identification of the pathogen. Together with significant rebounding on my local beaches and location of surviving populations of much-mourned MIAs, I'm taking delivery.
(Photo of pre-plague tidepool crammed with young Pycnopodia courtesy of the US National Park Service and Wikimedia.com)
(The Spokane Regional Health District is an arresting sight, inspired as it apparently was by the architecture of West and Central Africa. I can't remember seeing such a structure anywhere before. And I certainly wouldn't have expected to find one serving as a government building on the Gold Side of Washington – arid though it is. Hats off to an inspired county facilities committee.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
This graphic illustrates the grandfather paradox, a secular koan demonstrating the inability of the human mind to grasp reality.
Alright, it's actually La avo-paradokso, which means "the grandfather paradox" in Esperanto, because it's still July and I'm still licensed to go a bit off the rails. And as we'll see, those rails can be hard to discern, anyway.
For starters, let's acknowledge from the outset that the above premise cannot be tested, because we don't have a tempomaŝino (time machine). But that doesn't stop us using it to challenge our mental faculties.
So, starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding horloĝdirekte (clockwise):
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past.
I kill my grandfather.
My father isn't born.
I'm not born.
I don't invent a time machine.
I don't travel into the past.
My grandfather is born.
My father is born.
I'm born.
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past...
You can see that though the proposition is (science-)fictional, the conceptual challenge is real. It's an example of a reality that the human mind can't perceive:
– It's impossible to kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't exist.
– But you do exist, so if you could go back in time you could totally kill your grandfather.
– Except you couldn't, because if you did, you'd never exist in the first place, so you couldn't kill anybody.
– But you do exist, therefore…
The solution? There isn't one.
Not if you're human.
Because your primitive reason runs on logic, which is why all the Vidyārājas are sniggering at you.
(However, consider that we might come to realise even this concept if we could live it. The human brain has the capacity to pencil out and penetrate circumstances that utterly lack logical sense, if it stands in front of them. I only hope our grandfathers arm themselves well if ever that comes to pass.)
Buddhism has long taught that time is neither linear nor universal; timelines are numberless, each running at its own speed and in its own direction. The variance between the classical reincarnation of Hindu and some Buddhist worldviews, and Zen's messy ad hoc concept of transmigration, originates in this contention.
That's why we developed koans, which are meant to jazz that part of the brain that can't grok the great stretch of reality that lies beyond dualistic perception. ("What was your face before your grandmother was born?" seems an appropriate example.) This also goes a long way toward explaining those wild tales of monastery practice: the decades of mu-pondering, the dharma combat, insight expressed by farting and slapping and barking like a dog. Because extracranial notions exceed language.
You can find an in-depth philosophical exploration of the grandfather paradox, as well as similar thought experiments, at BYJU'S page about it. And while you're there, take a moment to marvel that this page was uploaded by a company that educates children. I've got a feeling India's going to be running this popsicle stand in another generation.
In the meantime, why not just be nice to your grandfather? So maybe you can build your time machine without him, but who decided we needed that more than we need him?
See if you can wrap your choanocytes around that, Spongebob.
(This 20-odd year apple met its end last week, a victim of its own success. In the late 20th century, varieties such as these, bearing heavily but not growing very tall, became all the rage; they really pump out crop and it’s all in reach, at least of picking ladders and apple hooks. Since that time, little else has been planted.
Trouble is, this blueprint results in a top-heavy tree, balanced on a root ball smaller than evolutionary spec. So one good breeze on dry soil, and that’s that.
Sometimes traction and tree surgery can save such casualties. In fact, in the ancient abandoned orchards where I grew up, many of those old heirlooms actually bore from a reclining position, having fallen in some winter storm and retained enough root contact to keep producing.
But those were hardy, full-sized, union-built trees, falling where no-one cared what they looked like, of a wet, dormant season.
And so this beautiful new-guard girl is done for. How sad to lose a thing that gave so generously for so long.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
So it's July again, when Internet readership drops off sharply and strange things happen on this blog while no-one's looking. Arguably the strangest is the annual Offering of Rock Groups Yearning to Be, that yearly list of potential group names posted for the benefit of literally anyone who wants one. (Full details here.)
Included in the deal is permission to reveal to anyone who enquires that your group's name was bestowed by a Zen hermit monk. And that all by itself is worth the price of admission. (Which is zero. Don't ask; it's a Zen thing.)
So once more into the breach. Extra credit to anyone who catches the literary, historical, scientific, and pop culture references that follow. In Google veritas.
Rock Groups 2025
The Window
Holgar
Tsunami Turtle
Der Pfeilstorch
Concrete Animals of Mexico
Einsatz
Exidor
Fala Does Mind
Hyōgaiji (may I suggest that you also take 丂 as your logo)
Vines's Boot
The Offcuts
Morton's Fork
PTT
The Skeleton Men
The Dumb Waiters
Headbolt
Deadbolt
Gasket
The High-Fivin' White Guys
Daily Driver
Harfang
Elon
Musk
Membrane
Jonas Grumbey
The Heat Monkeys
The Luck
Hinge
Plug Ugly
The Roadside Dinosaurs
Pilori
French Club
Uh-Oh Chongo
Gaturro
Motormouse
(Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com and a generous photographer.)
(As I recently pointed out, at high summer you can often raise bread dough outdoors in the shade. An 80 to 95-degree day ought to do it.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
What is zazen?
Just sitting.
What is practice?
Just doing.
What for?
For nothing.
Just do it.
Practice the dharma for the sake of the dharma.
There is no goal to reach, nothing to long for and nothing to attain.
Just follow life in this one single instant, right here, right now – the life that you are presently living.
Be one with reality, that is all.
– From an unsigned teaching given at Antai-ji, possibly by Muhō Noelke.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
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Over the past eight years I've posted regular reports on the welfare of local starfish as they endured (and some populations became extinct due to) a mysterious contagion that makes them rot alive. Now American television network CBS has announced that the cause of Sea Star Wasting Disease has been firmly established, and it's not a virus as suspected, but a bacteria. 
