Ringneck Snake

This is a baby ringneck snake, about 4 inches (10 cm) long. Every late summer time we find 3-4 of these little guys in the house. How they get there, we have no idea. We chase them and grab them, to deposit them outdoors. I did some internet research, to find that adult ringsnakes are nocturnal critters, and thus seldom seen. We have never in 30 years spotted one, yet every year we chase down the babies and place them outdoors. How does their momma get her babies inside the house? The mystery remains.

Click to enlarge.

Focus on the Negative

The words of the 1944 pop song by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, “Accentuate the Positive,” came to mind recently, as I mentally hummed the tune and remembered a few lines. The song was written after one of the composers listened to a preacher giving the advice, “Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.” The first two verses of the song are:

        You've got to accentuate the positive
        Eliminate the negative
        And latch on to the affirmative
        Don't mess with Mister In-Between

        You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
        Bring gloom down to the minimum
        Have faith or pandemonium's
        Liable to walk upon the scene

The tune suggests that life can be happier if we put attention to those things that are useful, beneficial, and constructive. It's sort of like a pop sermon. It's a message that both ancient sages and modern psychology agree with.

Many things happen to us each day—a mixture of good, bad, and neutral. It's our choice how we respond to them: we can dwell on the negative things and allow them to darken our mood, or we can point to the positive things and let them lift us. We can curse the harmful things or be thankful for the good stuff. When we do the latter, we can “spread joy up to the maximum.” It's a sentiment that few of us would oppose.

Despite the common-sense message of “accentuate the positive,” it seems to me that humans have consistently paid greater attention to the negative. Violent and harmful actions in the world happen too often and garner inordinate attention. Our news media are biased strongly towards featuring blameworthy events, while giving scant coverage to praiseworthy things. The evening TV news is a litany of gruesome and brutal events—often appropriately described by the phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Our entertainment media—TV, films, songs—stress violence and negativity. You've got to dig way back in the newspaper to find an article that accentuates the positive, or wait patiently for a “good news” movie to come to the local cinema. (Those examples date me. Today's newspaper is found online and movies are streamed directly into your living room. But the point is still valid.)

Why is this? Why are we fascinated more by bad behavior than good? It seems to be the human condition: we tend to focus on the negative. While we talk of wanting peace, we glorify war. It's ironic, if not lamentable.

There is endless debate on whether the violent nature of our entertainment is contributing to the violent behavior of so many people. Many studies have suggested that young people are particularly influenced by the negativity, yet little is done about it. It's hard to believe that the negatively biased media and entertainment industries don't have some unhelpful influence.

It causes me to wonder if inordinate attention to bad behavior helps to make some people feel better about themselves, because they can then point to somebody else whose behavior is worse than theirs. Does this process allow one to whitewash one's moral shortcomings? Every one of us knows that our behavior could be much better than it is, so it can ease our conscience a bit, if we can point to someone else's reprehensible behavior.

It seems to be rather boring for many people to “accentuate the positive.” Maybe the phrase can cause one to hum the tune, but it seems to be nowhere as exciting as focusing on the negative, or giving attention to bad behavior. It's far easier (and fun?) to be naughty than nice.

Tis the Season

Curious Cat

There's an old dictum that is periodically dragged out, in order to warn someone not to be so inquisitive or prying into others' matters: “Curiosity killed the cat.” Its origin is so old that most people are not aware of how it came to be. It's interesting advice, but I tend to think that it's often used inappropriately. What's wrong with curiosity? Sure, we might be going too far if we're meddling in other people's private affairs, but curiosity—defined as a strong desire to learn something—is an admirable trait, for the most part.

So where did this metaphor of warning about the potential problems of being curious originate? As usual, an internet search quickly guides me to Wikipedia—wherein I find that the expression goes back to Shakespeare and his 16^th century cohorts. (Doesn't everything in the English culture stem from him?) The word used by these authors, rather than curiosity, was “care,” which, at the time, meant that something like “worry” or “sorrow” killed the cat. But then, Shakespeare's metaphors are often a stretch for modern people to comprehend. In time, the saying evolved to having the cat get killed, not through worry, but by snooping.

I discovered a very different take on curiosity recently, that is more appealing to me. Researchers at the University of California, Davis conducted an experiment which showed that people learn better when their curiosity is stimulated. Now, this result may not be all that surprising in itself, since no student can learn effectively when bored stiff. When our curiosity is piqued, however, when we are interested in a subject, it's logical that we'll do a better job of understanding it.

No surprise there. What's interesting about the UC Davis study is that the researchers were able to show why people learn better when they're curious: it's because curiosity fires up the brain's dopamine reward circuitry. In other words, the brain responds to curiosity in a similar way that it does when we yearn for chocolate and other such pleasures.

Students' curiosity was stimulated in the experiment by posing certain intriguing questions, and then comparing their brains' reactions to when rather boring questions were posed. Their brains were simultaneously scanned, to show that when when they were curious, brain activity rose in those regions that transmit dopamine signals. When questioned again at a later time, students' memories were one-third better for those questions that lit up their brains' curiosity centers, than for the tedious questions.

The researchers concluded that they were best able to boost students' memories on those questions for which they had some previous knowledge, but were then purposefully presented with a gap in their understanding. Just like going for another piece of chocolate, the study's subjects were driven to find the answer. Their curiosity pushed them to find out.

I believe that good teachers innately understand this, when they stimulate interest in their students. It's less a question of entertaining them to try to capture their attention, than it is finding ways to engender a spirit of inquiry in them... helping them to see the deeper wonders of a subject. Purposefully leaving gaps in a presentation and then asking students what bit of knowledge could fill that gap can stimulate both curiosity and learning.

Now, I don't think that cats have the cognitive ability to be stimulated by unusual questions aimed at increasing their dopamine levels. But they do seem to be constantly poking their noses into places where they have no right to. On the other hand, if they get into deep trouble, they can rely on another old dictum; knowing they have eight more remaining lives if they lose this one.

Fall Colors

A maple in its full glory.

Web Wonderings

A spider begins spinning its web by crawling up to some choice vantage perch and reeling out a test line—a sticky silk thread that a breeze will carry to a distant stationary object, to which the silk adheres. Once the far end of the line sticks to something firm, the spider slides down the silk, thickening and strengthening it as she goes. This strong line then becomes an anchor thread that will later support the web, after the spider similarly constructs a couple of other anchor lines.

It's a rather haphazard process, as the spider cannot control where the opposite end of the anchor lines will attach. Thus, the orientation of the web is determined more by fickle breezes that waft through, rather than the intent of the spider.

Smart, successful spiders try to establish their webs in locations where many tasty insects will be flying—to be suddenly trapped in the silky snare. I would assume that evolution has taught a web spider to pick a high traffic zone—otherwise it starves. I doubt that evolution, however, has yet endowed spiders with ways to manipulate the wind, so there is a definite degree of chance to the process. Specifically, the orientation of the web is not within the spider's purview. 

 

So even a smart spider may end up fashioning its web in a direction that has little chance of capturing many bugs. For example, I am sitting in my outdoor tub tonight, looking above me, and seeing a spider's web that is nearly flat against the wall. I don't think that many insects will be intending to fly into the wall tonight, so this web strikes me as one that will see minimal bug traffic. Had the breeze blown that first anchor line in another direction, the spider may have been able to orient its web perpendicular to, or protruding out from the wall—much more likely to snare passing insects. Ahh... the vagaries of the wind.

Another intriguing aspect of spider webs I often ponder is the fact that birds can see into the ultra-violet (UV) range of the light spectrum, and since a spider's web reflects UV light, a bird can see the web and avoid flying into it. This capability is an advantage to both the bird and the spider: the bird doesn't get its feathers coated with sticky silk goo and the web is not destroyed. So if birds have UV vision, I wonder why some insects—locked into a perpetual evolutionary arms race with spiders—have not also developed UV vision. There's another area of research for someone.

(As an aside, a recent development in window construction is to glaze windows with a UV-reflective coating. Birds are far less likely to fly into these windows and kill themselves, because they see the glaze and it stops them, but humans cannot see the coating and thus view the window as transparent. And some of us walk into them.)

Yet another web wondering I have: As I walk through the woods in summer, along the many paths I have created, I keep wandering through spider webs and having them splay themselves across my face or along my bare arms. I'm constantly struggling to wipe off these sticky structures. It can cause a pleasant stroll through the woods to degenerate into a yucky dance, in which I'm striving to wipe off web particles that I can't even see. I hate to destroy a carefully-crafted web, but I can't see them—not having been blessed with UV vision like birds.

This makes me ponder the fact that many of my paths that wander through the woods are also used by deer, since they are smart enough to see that it's easier to follow my paths than forge their way through the tangled underbrush. Deer must also at times find themselves wrapped in spider web strands. How do they deal with it? Does it irritate them as much as it does me? Might they get distracted by the damn spider webs and lose crucial alertness to their predators?

I would be grateful if deer were as tall as I am, since they would then clear out many spider webs for me and make my walks nicer—but they are just not tall enough to sweep away the webs at my face level. They're too short. Hmm.. I wonder if I could breed deer with giraffes, to create a tall, long-necked deer, that would clear out spider webs for me. That sure sounds like another kind of ground-breaking research that would benefit mankind... at least this man.

Farm Sitting

This week we are farm sitting for friends on a sheep farm in Virginia's Allegheny Mountains.