Tetherd Cow Ahead

Faithful Acowlytes! Imagine my surprise and joy this morning to receive an email from the beautiful Yuliya, to whom I recently wrote on the matter of ‘love and sensations among people’. ((I can’t actually remember doing that, but she seems fairly sure that I did, so who am I to argue?)) Yuliya even included, most thoughtfully, a picture of herself! As you will no doubt have perceived, Yuliya is a professional semiotician, and with this portrait she is using semiotics to reflect her thoughts: the Christmas hat indicates that ‘all my Christmases are about to come at once’ and the object she is holding shows that she has ‘the key to my heart’. The gold handcuff-like bracelet signifies that she wants to be my Eternal Love Slave. Although Yuliya is from Russia, language poses no barrier when your true love communicates with symbols!

Yuliya has obviously been thinking long and hard about how best to convey her intentions to me. To make things absolutely clear, she has also outlined her yearning in words. Taken together, the semiotic subtext of the image and the sincerity of the email are persuasive evidence that Yuliya is completely hot for me. Here’s what she said (I’ve omitted some things, as much of it was boring personal – I’m sure you’ll understand):

hi, dear
Please, do not be surprise – this letter is not a spam one.
You will probably be amazed of the fact that I am writing you an e-mail.
Yesterday I myself was amazed too, when saw your letter in my e-mail box.
The letter was about love and sensations among people. The motto of the
letter was like this search for love and you’ll become happy! I liked
this letter very much.
I would like to know more about you. Providing that it is me who is
the first to write, I want to say some words of my personality.
My name is Yuliya. I am 32 years old.. I from Murom it in (Russia). To me
of 32 years. I the widow. My husband was lost in automobile failure!!
I am cute, calm, kind and sociable.
I think it is interesting to talk with you and discover new features of
yours! Discover you as a person. I am a serious woman and I am looking
for serious relations. For me it means no deception, no double jokes. I
am looking for a real person who will manage to love and respect me. I
hope you are searching for your love, too.
I do not think that in love-relations age and appearance have any
importance. The chief factor for me is ability to love and respect
seriously!
I have lots of hobbies and interests in life. Among them you will find
sport, cooking, books reading and definitely music. I am going crazy
about housekeeping and house holding. I like tiding up and general
cleaning. I am keen on experimenting in my kitchen. I love changes.
I am fond of animals and prefer to lead a healthy lifestyle, thus, I
do not smoke or use alcohol.
Hey, my new pen-friend. What can you tell me about yourself? I want to
learn more about you.
In my future letter I will describe my character and my personality more
precisely.
Definitely, I will send you some of my photographs. It will help you to
understand who I am and where I live. My photos will reveal all parts of
my life – my happiness, my pensiveness and sometimes melancholy.
I am looking forward to your reply. I am really interested in knowing you
better.
Remember of me.
my e-mail – yuliya.b76@gmail.com
Your new friend,
Yuliya

Of course, I wrote back to Yuliya immediately –

Oh Yuliya, my Maiden from Murom!

Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to please you, Yuliya! I am so terribly sad to hear of the automobile failure that claimed your husband’s life. I myself am no stranger to that kind of tragedy, and I can only imagine how lonely you must feel. I am a little older than you, at age 51, but I see that you are not too concerned about that. You sound like exactly the kind of woman I am looking for, and even though you describe yourself as ‘cute, calm, kind and sociable’, I think you are being a little coy by leaving out ‘sexy’, you naughty thing!

I think love and respect are very important also, and, if you wear attractive lingerie, I am sure I can manage to love and respect you, as you desire. Although I also do not hold with deception, I’m not sure I could give up double jokes, which I find quite entertaining. For example:

A man walks up to a Buddhist hotdog vendor, gives him five bucks and says “Make me one with everything”.

The hotdog vendor hands him a hotdog and the man says “Don’t I get any change?”

The Buddhist hotdog vendor looks at the guy, raises an eyebrow, and says “Change comes from within.” ((Actually, this is a triple joke, if you account for the rather philosophical concept of a hot dog seller being Buddhist.))

I think you must agree that a double joke such as that is trés amusing, and it would be a shame not to have some humour in our relationship. Thank you for telling me of your hobbies – they do sound intriguing, although I’m not really very interested in sport (unless it’s of the kind that can be performed in the bedroom). I must tell you that on the first read-through of your letter, I failed to notice the comma between ‘cooking’ and ‘books’ and hence for a moment had the amusing image in my head that one of your hobbies was ‘cooking books’! Hahaha! In my country, that is a slang expression that means ‘to be dishonest with your accounting’ (I know that you would never be dishonest, Yuliya, like so many women from your country who attempt to entrap lonely and desperate foreign men and fleece them of their money).

I understand that you like to experiment in the kitchen, which I find an especially appealing trait, as I’m very fond of science myself. I suppose you have done that great trick with dairy whitener and a candle flame? That usually gets a few laughs at parties. Perhaps if (dare I say ‘when’?) we meet, we can whip up a big batch of methyl glycol on the cooktop!

Yuliya, I would like to go into depth about my interests and hobbies here, but I think just a brief mention will be suitable at this time. By profession I am a religious man and distributor of hessian underclothing. I have to admit that the latter is also a personal interest, along with collecting old enamel buttons, unusual and rare moths, and tags from other people’s luggage. I own a large country estate in Ireland, where I raise baby chupacabras for the cryptozoology industry.

But enough about me! I would very much like to see some more pictures of you, particularly those revealing all parts of your life. Don’t be pensive and melancholy Yuliya! True love is surely just around the corner for us!

Please reply soon!

Your distant friend and admirer (and should I hope… future lover…?)

Reverend Anaglyph
Church of the Tetherd Cow

Of course, I had it translated into her native language, just so there would no confusion. This is how Babelfish says it should appear to her:

Oh Yuliya, my girl from Murom!

Half of what I speak meaningless, but he tells him exactly to if you please you, Yuliya! ((Ha! I bet you never thought of putting it like that John Lennon!)) I am so terribly sad to hear the failure of automobile which it claimed the life of your husband. I itself any stranger to that kind-hearted of tragedy, and I can only represent as lonely you must feel. I a little is older than you, on period 51, but I see that you that not too perturbed about you. You [zvuchaete] as accurately the form of woman I search for, and even if you describe in proportion to `dear, calm, form and sociable’ , I think that you a little shy by way to leave out of ‘ sexy’ , you are capricious thing!

I think that love and respect it is very important also, and, if you bear attractive female [bele], then I are assured I can govern to fall in love and to respect you, in proportion to you desire. Although I also do not hold with the fraud, I am not confident I could give the upward dual jokes, which I consider sufficiently entertaining. For example:

Men goes for a walk to the Buddhist supplier of hot sausage, he gives to it 5 [sametsov] of deer and he speaks that “make me one with all”.

The supplier of [khota]- great dane entrusts to it hot sausage and man speaks that “I obtain no change?”

The Buddhist supplier of hot sausage looks guy, raises eyebrow, and speaks that “change it comes from within. ”

I think that you must agree that dual joke as that is well amusing, and it would be shame not have certain humor in our sense. You for to tell me your hobbies – they [zvuchayut] sufficiently [intriguyushch], although I am not actually very interested in the sport (if it will not be form which can be carried out in the bedroom). I must say to you that on the first of read-through of your letter, I did not know how to note the comma between cooking `and by the books `and consequently for a moment had amusing image in my head that one of your hobbies was `cooking books’! Hahaha! In my country, the expression of slang which means `in order to be dishonestly with your of accounting (I know never that you were not dishonest, Yuliya, as so many women from your country which ask to catch lonely and desperate strange people into the trap and fleece of their [deg]).

I understand that you love to experiment in the kitchen, which I consider specially appealing feature, in proportion to itself very [lyubyashch] of science. I do assume that you it did make that it was large trick with the whitener of dairy and the flame of candle? That usually obtains a little laughter on the parties. Possibly if (laugh I say when’? `) we meet, then, we can shake up upward on a large series of methyl glycol to cooktop!

Yuliya, I wanted would be to go into the depth about my interests and the hobby here, but I think that exactly briefly mention will be [sootvetstvuyushch] at this time. by profession I am religious person and distributor Hessian underclothing. I must admit that latter also personal interest, together with to gather old enamel button, unusual and rare moths, and tally from the luggage of other people. I to have the large property of the country in Ireland, where I raise chupacabras of baby for the industry of cryptozoology.

But it is sufficient about me! I greatly much wanted would be to see still some images you, in particular those showing all parts of your life. No pensive and melancholy Yuliya! True love it is confident exactly around the corner for us!

If you please answer soon!

Your distant friend and admirer (and the lover of hope the I… future…?)
Saint anaglyph is the church of the cow Of tetherd

Not having any great skill with semiotics, I thought it best not to include a ‘coded’ picture of myself in this instance. I am afraid that I might send Yuliya the wrong mesage and scare her off.

Anyway, now I guess it’s a waiting game. Will Yuliya get my letter? Will she be impressed by my obvious wit? Will she get the Buddhist hotdog seller joke? Dear Cowpokes, stay tuned for more news from Murom in future Cow Posts, with the possible added frisson of further pictures of Yuliya – perhaps even a few revealing all parts of her life!

This man is Bernard d’Espagnat. He has a brain the size of a planet. In his extraordinary career, he has worked with other people with brains the size of planets, including Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.*

D’Espagnat has just been awarded the 2009 Templeton Prize, which, in the words of the Templeton Foundation, is bestowed on a recipient for ‘progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities’, and carries with it a useful £1 million in pocket money.

M. d’Espagnat was given the prize this year for his work in quantum physics, and in particular for his assertions that ‘reality’ (whatever that is) can never be truly known by us in any meaningful sense. Crucially, in regard to the Templeton Prize, his conclusions about what he has discovered in his research veer towards the metaphysical.

From New Scientist:

‘Unlike classical physics,’ d’Espagnat explains, ‘quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled.’

D’Espagnat subscribes to the third view and hypothesizes a ‘‘veiled reality’ that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly’. A veiled reality that encompasses what he refers to as a ‘Being’ and ‘a great, hypercosmic God’.

All things considered, I’m happy that the Templeton Foundation is spending their (evidently) vast fortunes in this way (let’s face it – the money could be going to Creationists). John Templeton, the founder of the organization, was the kind of religious person of whom we need many more. As a practising Presbyterian Christian he asked a question that all believers of religion should ask:

Why shouldn’t I try to learn more? Why shouldn’t I go to Hindu services? Why shouldn’t I go to Muslim services? If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more.

Indeed.

It puzzles me, however, that M. d’Espagnat, genius that he indisputably is, seems unable to grasp what is apparently too much of a subtlety of his ‘veiled’ reality; if it exists why must it imply the existence of his hypercosmic God, rather than infer instead that our human brains (planet-size or otherwise) may simply not be capable of understanding the true nature of things? This, to me, seems to be a far likelier explanation than the unsupported jump to the notion of a mysterious and inscrutable creator.†

Perplexingly, d’Espagnat himself seems to be within stepping distance of the same conclusion. He said, on receipt of the prize:

I feel myself deeply in accordance with the Templeton Foundation’s great, guiding idea that science does shed light (on spirituality). In my view it does so mainly by rendering unbelievable an intellectual construction claiming to yield access to the ultimate ground of things with the sole use of the simple, somewhat trivial notions everybody has.

It would appear, then, that he is merely replacing a simple (or trivial) faith in God with a complicated one built on the scaffold of a type of physics and mathematics that very few people understand. Sure, it’s not the thunder-and-lightning enemy-smiting God of the Evangelical Christians/Muslims/Hebrews, but it comes from exactly the same irrational place; the hubris of humans and our belief that the Universe revolves around us.

It seems, then, that in this realm we’ve not really made many advances since Copernicus after all.

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*If those names don’t mean anything to you, they should. They are among the brightest and most insightful scientists we have ever known.

†Which, in any case, is a completely simplistic and futile supposition – as I’ve said elsewhere: if you want to make that assessment, then you may as well suppose that you, your world and all your memories were created by that God yesterday, fully formed and intact – how would you ever know? It’s the same kind of intellectual pursuit. From there, a raft of fanciful worlds become possible and reality unravels like ball of wool in the paws of a kitten.

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Loyal acowlyte JR brings to my attention the slightly scary news that Genki Wear (apparently known for its replicas of science fiction & fantasy jewellery) is releasing this Spring a new set of fragrances: Genki Wear Star Trek Perfume – A Trio of Scents from the Final Frontier.

Although this is spruiked widely on various intertube outlets, there’s no actual news at Genki Wear itself, and since their website doesn’t appear to be selling anything except one solitary Buffy pendant, it’s a bit difficult to tell if this announcement is the real deal or just some clever Borg assimilation plot a trés amusing internet prank.

According to trekmovie.com, Genki’s three fragrances will be called Tiberius, Red Shirt and Pon Farr, names I’m sure will have relevance to all Star Trek fans but seem oddly flat to me (aside from the curious and slightly comical sounding Pon Farr, which is, evidently, named after the Vulcan Mating Ritual*).

As you know, I am wont to muse on things perfumical here on The Cow, so I bring you this news by way of an interest-piquing tidbit, a public service announcement and a health warning.

I also invite you to ponder other film or television landmarks that might be rich for plundering for perfume spinoffs. The Addams Family springs immediately to my mind with Swamp, Cordite and Grandmama being possible candidates for fragrances, and Green Acres would similarly suggest Hayseed Martini, Pitchfork and Arnold Ziffle.

We could be onto a veritable Texas Tea gusher here folks.

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*Which also sounds curious and slightly comical. So I guess there’s some method in the madness.

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The item above is currently up on eBay for $500. Get in quick!

From the Wikipedia entry on Iridium:

Iridium is one of the rarest elements in the Earth’s crust, with annual production and consumption of only three tonnes. However, it does find a number of specialized industrial and scientific applications.* Iridium is employed when high corrosion resistance and high temperatures are needed, as in spark plugs, crucibles for recrystallization of semiconductors at high temperatures, electrodes for the production of chlorine in the chloralkali process, and radioisotope thermoelectric generators used in unmanned spacecraft. Iridium compounds also find applications as catalysts for the production of acetic acid.

~

Annual production of iridium circa 2000 was around 3 tonnes or about 100,000 troy ounces (ozt). The price of iridium as of 2007 was $440 USD/ozt.

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*Note that these applications do not include ‘… the cosmetic decoration of domestic appliances’

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For our first wedding anniversary (traditionally considered the ‘paper’ anniversary), Violet Towne gave me a beautiful book: Visions of Nature: The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel.

Haeckel was a biologist and artist and an early subscriber to Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories. Although he famously made many erroneous assumptions about evolution,* his detailed naturalistic drawings, particularly his intricate observations of the microscopic sea creatures called radiolarians, are entirely accurate and strikingly beautiful.

Haeckel was also fascinated by the obvious mathematical influences that he observed in life-forms, and documented many of their geometrical characteristics in his drawings.

His ornate organic renderings were almost certainly one of the influences that came to bear on the Art Nouveau movement. It’s not hard to understand why – take a look at this beautiful collection of high quality pdfs of some of Haeckel’s astonishing work.

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*Haeckel was a staunch believer in the outmoded ideas of Lamarckism and the now discredited recapitulation theory. Creationists love to wave Haeckel’s name about in reference to errors he made in embryonic illustrations that fulfilled his wishful speculation that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. In doing so they are demonstrating (once again) the profundity of their ignorance; Haeckel was never a believer of Darwin’s idea of natural selection, and in his zeal to advance his own preconceptions, some of his drawings became a little more ‘inventive’ than they had any right to be. Haeckel’s fabrications were never endorsed by Darwin, and in time succumbed to the scrutiny of rational examination, as all bad science necessarily must.

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Reuters, Thursday, January 1:

In what amounts to one of the most extraordinary technical achievements ever to ring in a New Year, scientists from the University of Xuanpu announced today that they have successfully cloned the penis of the ‘mad’ Russian monk, Rasputin. An unusual alliance forged between Xuanpu and St Petersburg’s Russian Museum of Erotica and funded by Russian internet spam czar Sergei Korzhanenk, now promises to be able to literally sell millions of potential customers a bigger penis.

Rasputin’s preserved member was stolen one year ago from the St Petersburg museum by Italian underworld figure Raphael Spinoza, in a daring daylight heist. It was recovered by police in April after information from an in ‘inside source’ led them to Spinoza’s secluded residence in the Italian alps, and is now under heavy security at the museum. The pickled penis was only made available to the Xuanpu science team for their newly discovered cloning technique after extensive intellectual property negotiations.

Korzhanenk says that the planned market release of the penises to coincide with Christmas was delayed by technical challenges, but that they will be available to customers this week, priced at around $US250.

Ah faithful Acowlytes! Another year has veritably rocketed past, and a new one is galloping upon us. I know it’s been quiet on The Cow these last few months, but I can assure you, my loyal readers, that you were never far from my thoughts, and I have been assembling all manner of succulent tidbits to inflict upon you offer up for your amusement in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s wishing yez all a Happy, Healthy & Prosperous 2009!

Oh, and in case it needs to be formalized: let the Festivities commence!