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Snakes Have Feelings Too, You Know!
Erik Deckers
Laughing Stalk Syndicate
Copyright 2003
Scientists call them herpetologists. I call them weirdos.
People who watch snakes, study snakes and even -- ick! -- LIKE snakes all descend on Narcisse, Manitoba every Spring to watch the Great Snake Awakening.
That's when thousands and thousands of allegedly harmless garter snakes -- some estimate as many as 70,000 -- slither out from the cracks in the limestone bedrock and do what snakes like to do: scare the bejeezus out of me.
I hate snakes. I don't just dislike them, I hate them with a white hot passion that's usually reserved for personal injury lawyers. I scream like a girl whenever I see one (a snake, not a lawyer), and I've already checked under my desk several times as I write this to make sure one hasn't snuck in here (still a snake, but also a lawyer).
So why people would want to watch snakes pop out of the ground without beating them with a large stick is beyond me. But starting on Mother's Day, snake geeks begin showing up at the Narcisse snake dens to watch the snakes emerge from their winter slumber to eat frogs and toads, and to mate.
"There's nothing else out here but the snakes," Darlene Herron, a roadside snack seller, told the Associated Press. "I don't know why anyone brings their mother to the snake dens."
We've been through this, Darlene: they're weirdos. And apparently their moms are weirdos too.
When the snakes emerge from their law offices -- I mean, underground dwellings -- they haven't had anything to eat or mate with in seven months, so they do both.
Voyeuristic visitors hike three miles to watch the mating ritual, where dozens of horny male snakes climb onto the back of a single female snake in the hopes of making more snakes. Some of these romantic pursuits are known as mating balls. And because the spectacle is such a popular one, there's even a statue of two mating snakes on the road leading to the romantic reptilian rendezvous.
Young Impressionable Child: "Daddy, why is there a statue of two snakes wrestling?"
Uncomfortable Father: "Uhh, you'd better ask your mother."
After the female has chosen the lucky male, the rejected suitors slither away, and leave their comrade to a lifetime of taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn. Later in the summer, 20 to 50 more law students -- I mean, baby snakes -- are born as a result of the coupling, but happily for snake haters like me, only two percent survive into adulthood.
That's because snakes have a lot of predators, including birds of prey, like hawks and owls, weasels, foxes, and raccoons. So if you're ever looking for a charity to support, please consider making a donation to the Hawks, Owls, Weasels, Foxes, and Raccoons Defense Fund.
Dave Roberts, who is the wildlife technician in charge of the Narcisse snake dens (i.e. the "Head Weirdo"), told the AP that the dens are ". . . a great opportunity to pass on information about these snakes and their stewardship. We try to teach a little more tolerance of the fact these creatures live around us."
You go right ahead and teach snake tolerance, Dave. But I'm staying right here in my own little corner of the world where the lawn mower blade is always sharp, and the snakes are in short supply.
Roberts says that males use their tongues to detect the pheromone that attracts them to the female. However, he wasn't sure why some male snakes also give off the female pheromone. Possibly to confuse rival males, he said.
Sophia Munro, a Grade 5 teacher in Winnipeg, says on her website that these "she-male" snakes are twice as lucky at mating than the non-pheromone producing males. She also agrees that the "she-male" snakes do confuse the other male snakes during the mating season.
However, scientists have shown that it's not uncommon for young male snakes to be confused about their sexuality at times (not that there's anything wrong with that), and that it's all just part of growing up.
The snakes will then travel as far as 10 miles into nearby marshes to hang out for the summer, drink beer, and tell stories about how they're suing McDonald's because their client ate there every day for 20 years and got fat.
In the fall, the snakes who weren't eaten or disbarred make their way back to their limestone offices to sleep for another seven months, and the whole process starts all over again.
The whole idea is enough to give me a permanent case of the willies, and to swear on a snakeskin-jacketed Bible never to set foot near the Narcisse snake dens.
Driving a steamroller is an entirely different matter.
=====
Erik Deckers
(published week of June 6th, 2003)
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Would You Believe A Tornado Did It?
Erik Deckers
Laughing Stalk Syndicate
Copyright 2003
One of the problems with our educational system is that teachers continue to give students bad information. We're not talking small mistakes, but huge epic mistakes that completely undermine American history.
Whenever anyone tells me that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, I always explain how Columbus actually landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492 (what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and then in Jamaica in 1494. I also explain how, despite what we've been told, Columbus never actually stepped on North America.
Never ever.
In fact, it was Viking explorer Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, who landed in Canada around the year 1000, 492 years before Columbus ever set sail into this hemisphere.
However, most historians believe that the Vikings only headed westward, into the United Kingdom, Iceland, and Greenland. What they don't realize is that they actually landed in the South Pacific as well.
According to a story that ran in the Salt Lake City Tribune as well as several smaller newspapers in southern Utah, Viking explorers landed on a coral-based island on April 1, 956. These explorers, sent by King Eric Blodosk, settled the island and named it Himmelsk, which means "Shouldn't there be another vowel there near the end?"
The Vikings lived on Himmelsk for years, until it broke loose from the sea floor, and was carried by a tsunami to North America. The several thousand foot high wave carried the island and her frightened settlers for nearly 750 miles inland until it landed in modern-day Cedar City, Utah.
The settlement remained in place until 1845, when American explorers sent by President James Polk discovered the settlement. And like we did with so many other groups who were there first, our government tricked the Vikings out of the settlement, and destroyed it.
In October 2002, Cedar City Mayor Gerald Sherratt announced the discovery of Viking artifacts in a nearby cave. And based on a number of calculations, it was determined that the US Government owed the descendants of the Blodosks $88.7 billion.
So an agreement was reached with the Blodosk heirs that they could reclaim ownership of the old homestead from April 1st to April 10th, starting in 2004.
By now, you're saying to yourself, "Wait a minute! Since when can a tsunami wave tear a South Pacific island from the ocean floor and carry it thousands of miles to southwest Utah without killing everyone on the island?!"
Well, it didn't really happen. If you recheck the date of the anniversary, you'll see that the Himmelsk festival starts on April Fool's Day. In other words, it's a big joke. The fine folks at Cedar City are hoping that the newly developed Himmelsk festival will become a huge tourist attraction for their fair city. And Mayor Sherratt and his staff have been advertising the festival in local newspapers in southern Utah.
So are you surprised that someone is trying to find a way to get their hands on all that money?
According to the Salt Lake City Tribune story, Cedar City officials have begun receiving calls and letters from residents of St. George, Utah, who claim to be descendants of the Himmelsk settlers, and therefore are entitled to some of the money and treasure.
Cedar City officials explained that the story was just a publicity stunt to promote the festival, and that there wasn't any treasure to begin with. So the St. George Golddiggers (as I now call them) accused them of conspiring in a huge cover up, and still claim they should be given part of the treasure.
Surprised? I wasn't either.
During my research, I discovered a weblog in which a couple of the visitors believed this was a true story, and then wondered briefly if a later retraction in the Cedar City Spectrum was a cover up.
This story is a prime example of the greed and stupidity that run rampant through society today. First, there are people in this world who are so greedy and dishonest that they would lie about a festival that's supposed to bring enjoyment to thousands of people. Second, that people believe there WAS a tsunami that carried a small island for thousands of miles without killing everyone on it. Third, the Golddiggers think everyone else is stupid enough to believe they're descended from a fictitious king, and that someone might accidentally give them the fictitious $88 billion.
So I won't be surprised if the St. George Golddiggers hire a lawyer to try to get this nonexistent money. If it happens, I hope Mayor Sherratt runs them through with a Viking sword.
=====
Erik Deckers
(published week of June 13th, 2003)
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We Knew It All Along
Erik Deckers
Laughing Stalk Syndicate
Copyright 2003
Erik is out of the office this week, so we are reprinting a column from 2000.
Ask any Guy, and he'll tell you the same thing: we don't need to ask for directions!
That's right. We Guys have long maintained that we navigate better, always know where we're going, and never, ever need to stop for directions.
Our wives and girlfriends say otherwise.
However, it's finally been scientifically proven that we were right all along. According to an Associated Press story a study from the University of Ulm (sounds like "Elm") in Germany (sounds like "Austria") found that men who get lost can often find their way out of unfamiliar places better than women.
Before I get any hate mail accusing me of making this up, or spouting anti-women rhetoric, let me remind you that this is a real study done by a real scientist at a real university in a real country.
Really.
So send them the hate mail.
I'm just reporting on what was reportedly reported about the university report, which was published in the journal "Nature Neuroscience."
I was just as stunned as you are: I didn't even know there was a journal called "Nature Neuroscience."
In the study, researchers scanned the brains of 12 men and 12 women as they tried to make their way through a three-dimensional virtual-reality maze. This is the real world equivalent of trying to find a particular place in a new city, or following directions from your cousin Luke that include phrases like "turn right at Rattlesnake Holler" or "if you see the burnt-out Chivvy, you done went too far."
According to the results, men averaged two minutes and 22 seconds to find their way out of the maze. The women took an average of three minutes and 16 seconds. These results are similar to findings of previous studies.
However, unlike the other studies, this one not only researched the idea that men and women use different navigational strategies, they also use different parts of their brains. A major difference involves the hippocampus, a large, sluggish mammal that's the approximate size of a rhinoceros.
Oh wait, that's a hippopotamus. The hippocampus is a banana-shaped structure deep inside your brain that you use for navigation. It also eats underwater plants, submerges itself underwater to breathe through its nostrils, and its natural enemy is the crocodile.
People have a hippocampus buried deep in both sides of the brain, and both sexes use the right hippocampus during navigation. But the Ulm study found that only the men used the left hippocampus during the experiment. On the other hand, the women used an outer part of the brain called the right prefrontal cortex, while the men didn't.
Dr. Matthias Riepe suggested these findings demonstrate the differences in how men and women process information about the space around them.
According to previous studies, women rely mostly on landmarks to navigate, while men favor geometric methods, like a map. Dr. Ripe believes that the activity in the cortex is how women are able to keep landmark cues in mind.
This would also explain how, when a Guy is driving, his wife or girlfriend will say "We're going around in circles. We've passed this gas station five times already. Why don't you stop and ask for directions?" Any Guy who regularly reads "Nature Neuroscience" will then be able to answer, "I don't need to ask for directions. I've got a map, and my left hippocampus is running at full tilt."
Of course, any Guy who regularly reads "Nature Neuroscience" is most likely driving by himself to yet another Star Trek convention, after downloading a 3-D topographical map to his Ford Festiva's "Neverlost" GPS system to make sure he gets there in time for the George Takei autograph session. And he'll probably spend the rest of his life this way.
This whole "left hippocampus thing" also explains why most Guys will look at a map, decide the direction they should go is "sort of East by Northeast," and then drive on any road that seems to be going that direction. This is also the reason Leif Eriksson was the first to discover North America -- he was actually trying to get to his wife's youngest sister's wedding in Denmark, and he took a wrong turn in the North Sea.
And we've never been able to live it down since.
=====
Erik Deckers
(published week of June 20th, 2003)
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My Lawyer Says I'm the Best
Erik Deckers
Laughing Stalk Syndicate
Copyright 2003
There's a word in German, "Schadenfreude" (shodden-froid-uh) which means "finding pleasure in other people's misery."
You feel Schadenfreude when your snotty neighbor is showing off his brand new BMW and his house collapses on it. You feel Schadenfreude when a TV preacher claims to be holier than everyone, but gets caught stealing from his TV ministry and boinking his hot secretary.
You can even feel Schadenfreude when a high school student sues her high school to become the valedictorian, and is then discovered to have plagiarized large sections of articles she wrote for her local newspaper.
That's what happened to Blair Hornstine of Moorestown (New Jersey) High School. Just like two previous wannabe valedictorians I've written about, Hornstine stamped her little feet and threw a temper tantrum when her high school decided there be two valedictorians, instead of just one.
So she filed a federal lawsuit to be named the One And Only. And to show she was serious, she also demanded $2.7 million. She won the crown, but the money issue is still pending.
It started when parents and students complained that Hornstine's grade point average was unfairly weighted, because she didn't have to take certain classes, like gym. Hornstine has an autoimmune disorder that causes chronic fatigue, so she is considered a disabled student. So the school figured, "Hey, we've got an idea that would be fair to everyone."
But Hornstine said she didn't want to be known as The Disabled Valedictorian, so she filed the suit, demanding the high school follow its own rules. But there was such a severe backlash that Hornstine skipped her graduation citing a "hostile environment" at her high school. So, instead of giving the valedictory address, she'll miss the only event where her valedictorian status makes any difference whatsoever.
To make matters worse, there's now an email petition circulating around Harvard to have her removed from the freshman class because some students don't want to be associated with someone who sues over something so trivial. This is ironic, considering Harvard has one of the largest law schools in the country.
Happily for Hornstine, she will no longer be known as The Disabled Valedictorian. Unhappily, she is now known as the Whiny Selfish Brat Who Skipped The Only Ceremony That Would Recognize Her Number One Rank And She Might Not Be Allowed To Attend Harvard Next Year So Ha Ha Ha.
This month, it was discovered that five articles and essays Hornstine wrote for the Cherry Hill Courier-Post had entire passages from speeches and articles written by two Supreme Court Justices and President Bill Clinton.
These weren't just simple phrases, like asking what the definition of "is" is. These were great whacking chunks of political rhetoric that she cut-and-pasted into her stories. In her non-apology apology in a June issue of the Courier-Post, she said she didn't know ". . . news articles didn't require as strict citation scrutiny as most school assignments." She also said "I was a 17-year-old with no experience in writing newspaper articles."
Many Schadenfreude aficionados, including Randy Cassingham of ThisIsTrue.com, have wondered why it's a life-or-death matter that Moorestown High School follow its own rules, but Hornstine doesn't have to follow universally-accepted newspaper rules?
But as much as I'm feeling Schadenfreude-ish about Hornstine's predicaments, I feel sorry for her too.
In researching this column, I learned that Hornstine has done some amazing things. According to a July 2002 Courier-Post article, she has won numerous local and national awards for moot court arguments. She created a local charity that cleaned and distributed 400 prom dresses for girls from low-income families. She raised money to pay for cleft palate surgeries for ten Chinese orphans, and spoke at a world conference of students and teachers about disfigured orphan girls. She was a Winter Olympic torchbearer, she co-founded the Tri-County Food Drive, and she wanted to focus on poverty law when she graduated from law school in 2010.
In that same article, her debate coach said "She really strives to help other people. . . (s)he really cares about other people, not just herself."
But now, in one brief selfish moment, Hornstine eclipsed her past accomplishments by whining about something so frivolous and petty. She stopped caring about other people, and made this all about herself. Rather than allowing someone else to share the spotlight, if only for a moment, she thinks she's entitled to $2.7 million.
She'll make an excellent lawyer.
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Erik Deckers
(published week of June 27th, 2003)
(Blair Hornstine update: According to a story in the Harvard Crimson in July, Blair Hornstine's admissions to Harvard was rescinded, owing to her plagiarism. She'd better hope she wins that $2.7 million, because her chances of being a Harvard law grad are now slim to none.)
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