Placebo

Living in Hyde Park can be challenging. It's hard to get to the rest of the city, the restaurants are somewhat mediocre, and after a while you feel like you know absolutely everyone. One thing I do like about it: Jackson Park. It's a magical place.

I think part of the magic of Jackson Park is that it's not very well kept. Take the Japanese garden (above). It's kind of been left alone -- brownish water, crumbling stone statues, very few flowers. Sometimes it feels more like a ruin of a Japanese garden -- a forgotten place. It's what might happen in Chicago more generally if all the people suddenly disappeared.

I also like to imagine that this is where the Hyde Park coyotes spend most of their time. They keep an eye on the Museum of Science and Industry, which lurks behind the brushy, weedy landscape.

This is the first time I've seen evidence of beaver activity. Some serious tree nomming occurred here. It seems kind of unneccessary though, this place is already dammed. (And possibly damned?). I guess beavers just can't help themselves -- like a cat attacking a toy mouse, or a fruit fly chasing a stripe. Beaver's gotta dam. 

Jackson Park is the closest to nature you can get in Chicago, at least as far as I know. It's kind of a placebo wilderness. It's not real, but it still kind of works. 

Coffee gods

Matt makes a giant pot of coffee every morning. He has this fairly ancient coffee machine, which almost never gets washed. The accumulated coffee really adds to the flavor, but sometimes I feel a little embarrassed when outsiders catch a glimpse of it.

Dad and Madonna are in Chicago for a visit, and this morning (after Matt left for work) we decided that we wanted more coffee. Madonna volunteered to make it. I warned her about the state of the coffee machine, and she said that she would try to hold herself back from cleaning it. She was bustling around in the kitchen when she suddenly exclaimed, "Joanna! There's a man in the coffee machine!"

My dad and I raised our eyebrows and looked at each other skeptically, but I went to have a look.  I discovered, to my amazement, that the god of coffee had left a sign in our disgusting, cherished coffee machine. Clearly, he approves of Matt's coffee making methods. I snapped a picture of it and showed it to my dad. "Hmmm," he said. "Jesus."

Here's the picture, with a splash of photoshop:

WHY ...

... DO I WANT TO EAT IT SO BADLY????

More photos from a melting Chicago

When you study brains, you start to see neurons everywhere. For example, you see them in puddle reflections.

 Here's some sweet branching effects to rival the show put on by a purkinje cell.

Fractals. They are rad.

Astrology and the Scientific Method

As a teenager eager for popularity, success in school, and love, I turned to various new-age ways of predicting the future. One of my best friends and I borrowed books on palm reading, Ouija boards, and tarot cards from our local public library. We loved the occult, and were inspired by the many movies about witches and vampire hunters popular in the 1990s. It was fun, and I think we both wanted to believe there was something real in it, but I don’t think we ever did. It was simply a nice escape from the mundaneness of our suburban lives.

Today, I still sometimes go to free online tarot websites, especially when I feel anxious about the future or am stressed out about the whole finishing the PhD business. It’s just so delightfully and unapologetically unscientific, and it feels a little reassuring to think, even for a millisecond, that the stars “care” about my existence.

The other day, I was looking through some of these kooky websites, and I came across a particularly aggravating one (http://www.premiumastrology.com/). The astrologer, “Norah,” is this wise-looking, friendly elderly woman who describes “herself” as a “clairvoyant and empath”. (“Empath?” Really? Is she half Betazoid?) The website also throws around confusing language, borrowing cultural terms that might sound vaguely exotic to a westerner (like “Namaste”). This website really pissed me off, so I decided to do a little experiment.

The website offers a free astrology reading. You input a little information – your first name, birthdate, career, and relationship status – and “Norah” emails you her insights. I created three characters, each with different Hotmail accounts (i.e. “megadeath123456789@hotmail.com”). “Peter,” the first character, was born on January 31, 1975 in Boston. The second, “Dahlia,” came into this world in London, England on October 27, 1955. For the third, I used my own first name and birthday.

For each case, “Norah” presented a video assuring that “Astrology is ‘THE ONE TRUE SCIENCE’ common to all civilizations on Earth.”  Indeed.  We’ll see about that. “Norah” also said that she wasn’t using her psychic powers for monetary gain.  Oh no, she wants to help me (and Peter and Dahlia) live up to our true potentials, and that is reward enough for her. 

Well, all three of us got the same first email.  Here’s Peter’s copy:

“Hi Peter,
 
First of all let me congratulate you for taking the initiative and requesting your complimentary Mini-Reading.

After a quick initial assessment based on the items you filled out on my website Peter ...  I must tell you, I can’t remember the last time that I have had such a startling reaction.

It is clear that you are about to enter a very important time in your Life Path, Peter – a time known in the astrological world as your Transit Period. It is a time of magnified fortune, if you know how to navigate through it properly.
 

Typically I'd have some quick tip or piece of advice at this point, but once in a while I encounter someone like you who has more significant energies at play in their charts. I just want to make sure that what I am seeing is actually true before you receive your reading.
 
I'm sitting down in my study right now and won't get back to you until your reading is complete around this time tomorrow.”

The next day: we all got exactly the same reading – even down to our “lucky numbers!”  (They were 4, 6, and 11.) There was a lot of nonsense about, “you’re in your transit period!  You need day-to-day predictions or SOMETHING TERRIBLE MIGHT HAPPEN TO YOU!  You are a wise soul, and have the capacity to become psychic yourself!  Just click this link!  Come on, click it!  Click it, I tell you. CLICK IT!” (I didn’t click it.) Then she would switch her tone and call me/Dahlia/Peter “dear ones,” telling us it’s a shame we didn’t contact her sooner, but that it wasn’t too late to turn our lives around.

So there are two possibilities. Either “Norah” somehow knew it was me the whole time and, as a result, she gave all three characters the same prediction. The other possibility is that they have some truly unsophisticated robots running this site. I mean, I’m no computer programmer, but how hard would it be to change the lucky numbers? Psychologically, “Norah” was a little more compelling. Alternating between praising our unique specialness to warning us that we are in grave peril seems like a sound way to take advantage of people who are stressed out or unhappy.

I think the most parsimonious conclusion (tested with the scientific method, n = 3) is that you really shouldn’t trust Internet psychics. “Norah” will simply take your sweet cash (if you let her), but won’t even trouble to randomize your lucky numbers.  Well, thank you very much astrology, but I think for now I’ll stick to a less “true” science.  Bah, humbug.