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Longtime readers of this blog probably think that my favorite order of fish are the catfish (siluriformes), a vast order of fascinating freshwater fish which have based their success on mastering sensory perception, or possibly the flatfish (pleuronectiformes) whose predator/prey dichotomy and tragicomic frowns are featured heavily in my elegiac artwork about the decline of the oceans. Readers who have really read closely might suspect the lungfish or the ghost knife fish. Yet, actually, I haven’t written a great deal about my personal favorite order of fishes because they are so eclectic and eccentric that they are hard to write about. The Tetraodontiformes are an ancient order of teleosts (rayfin fish) which apparently originated on the reefs of the mid to late Cretaceous (during the age of dinosaurs). There are currently 10 extant families in the order, but the Tetradontiformes are not closely related to other bony fish.
So what are these ten families of exciting weirdo fish? Wikipedia lists them alphabetically for us!
- Aracanidae — deepwater boxfishes
- Balistidae — triggerfishes
- Diodontidae — porcupinefishes
- Molidae — ocean sunfishes
- Monacanthidae — filefishes
- Ostraciidae — boxfishes
- Tetraodontidae — pufferfishes
- Triacanthidae — triplespines
- Triacanthodidae — spikefishes
- Triodontidae — Threetooth puffer
Triggerfish, pufferfish, boxfish, filefish, cowfish, enormous weird sunfish…there is such a realm of wonder, beauty, and ichthyological fascination among these groups that it is hard to know where to start (although the Mola mola, which I have written about, is a pretty good headliner). The intelligent, colorful, and truculent triggerfish (Balistidae), in particular, are the source of endless delight.
I will write more about all of these in turn, but, before we get into that, it is worth highlighting some shared features of the Tetraodontiformes. These fish tend to have extremely rigid bodies which means they move differently from the quicksilver darting which other fish employ. They rely on fluttering their pectoral, dorsal, anal, and caudal fins to move (comparatively) slowly, albeit with extreme precision. Most Tetraodontiformes are masters of armor or other defensive mechanisms (toxins, spines, pop-up bone locks, and, um, self-inflation). Because of their tropical reef lifestyle and the nature of their defenses these fish often tend to be extraordinarily colorful.
Now is not the time to get into the details of all of these fish. Today’s post is mostly a teaser of things to come…but believe me, it will be worth it. The Tetraodontiformes are truly astonishing. Their colors and patterns do not just put most artists to shame, they put most 1980s artists to shame. And their vivid beauty and astonishing appearance isn’t even the most amazing thing about them. Stay tuned!
I have run out of time today, so I am going to put up the tiniest post. Here is a tiny jeweled charm: a pearl which has been carved into a death’s head. Best of all, the little novelty skull is wearing a tiny silver crown. Not only does this succeed in combining two items from the Ferrebeekeeper category list, it also looks like an apprentice’s magical item from a fantasy novel. At first I thought this was a glorious one-off, but it seems like carving pearls into tiny skulls is big business these days. You could buy a whole necklace and pretend to be Manjushri. A number of the carvers are Japanese, so I speculate that this art descended from the very similar school of netsuke carving (where skulls are also popular), but I really don’t know. If anybody has any insights, I am all ears!
Do you remember when “Thriller” came out? It was electrifying. A gifted young man who can dance and sing extremely well transforms into a nightmarish predatory monster before our eyes.
Alas, that turns out to have been the actual life story of Michael Jackson, who has been back in the news a decade after his death, because an HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” has circled around to shine an unsavory light on the entertainer’s misdeeds. People are honestly shocked by the horrifying abuse described by Jackson’s now grown-up victims. This in turn is shocking, because we pretty much knew all of this back in the early nineties…and then society just sort of shrugged and moved on. It turns out Jackson was simply rich enough and beloved enough (then) to groom and rape children at his weird palace.
What happened? How did the authorities and everyone else mess up so badly?
Obviously, the main problem was Michael Jackson himself, who may have had his own demons, but actively chose to commit these horrible crimes. The remaining blame is nugatory in the face of this prime culpability, but, until there are no more molesters,we must look to society to stop them.
There is plenty of blame to be portioned onto the police and courts who must surely have been able to see what was going on but were unable to bring Jackson down. Likewise we can blame all of Jackson’s enablers who were making money off of him. We can blame the families of the victims who were clearly benefiting in ways which made them close their eyes.
A huge portion of blame belongs to our twisted society which worships celebrities and will let them get away with anything. Why is this? I feel like if we are going to give celebrities infinite license like they are ancient Celtic godkings, we need to finish the deal and sacrifice them in a wicker man or drown them in a bog after a set period of time (although it could be argued that this is exactly what happened to Jackson).
Anyway all of these things problems, but they are difficult to address so I am choosing to vent my spleen at something we could possibly change: non-disclosure agreements. Apparently the estate of Michael Jackson has been making noise about suing his victims for what they said in the documentary because back in the day they (or their guardians???) signed non-disclosure agreements about all of this in exchange for astronomical sums of money. Non-disclosure agreements are the same ilk of restrictive restrictive covenants as non-compete agreements which we find depressing national wages because they prohibit flunkies from jumping from one employer to another.
These are obviously a tool by which the strong abuse the week and flout the law. They are restrictive covenants. They make people into slaves in exchange for money. How is everyone fine with this?
Let’s get rid of these things. There is no reason any non-disclosure agreement anywhere should be binding in any capacity to anyone unless one of the parties is the Federal Government of the United States. Congress should proclaim that all other NDAs are instantly void forever and all of their terms and conditions are dissolved.
As always, important processes and technical know-how would be protected by patents. Creative work would be protected by copyrights. Truly important matters of national security would remain the purview of the vast canon of laws and procedures which govern such things (although if we have Jared Kushner snapchatting and whatsapping our national secrets to his Kremlin handlers maybe we could stand to freshen up those protocols too).
All of the victims of pop stars and crummy billionaires can tell their stories to the police and to the press. People can leave Burger King to work for a nickel an hour more at Arby’s. We can’t stop the next Michael Jackson unless we stop worshiping these people, but maybe we can make it impossible for survivors of sexual abuse to be abused again by restrictive covenants. They can get huge payouts the old-fashioned American way–with lawsuits!
We are living in a glorious new era of super marketing. Usually the results of this are rather hideous: our livelihoods are hostage to “keyword position metrics” and “analytic toolbars”. Every day the press is filled with histrionic drivel about threats which are statistically unlikely to hurt us (but which clearly drive hits). Yet there is a silver lining of a sort: in order to keep people’s attention, quotidian phenomena are being lavished with grandiloquent new names (or old poetic names which have been rediscovered and given new prominence). Speaking of which, don’t forget to check out tonight’s spring equinox super worm moon!
These days, the full moon on each month is given a sobriquet which is reputedly derived from ancient Native American lore. Here is a table of these names:
January: Wolf moon
February: Snow Moon
March: Worm Moon
April: Pink Moon
May: Flower Moon
June: Strawberry Moon
July: Buck Moon
August: Sturgeon Moon
September: Corn Moon
October: Hunter’s Moon
November: Beaver Moon
December: Cold Moon
Now I don’t remember any of this from when I was growing up (although this is possibly because I was playing Pacman rather than hunting migratory elk). The first time I remember hearing anything like this was in Disney’s “Pocahontas”. Yet the names have an obvious and evocative allure which speak to ancient annual rhythms.
The “Worm Moon” of March is called that because the ground softens and worms start to appear (although, come to think of it, the pinkish brown earthworms we all know so well are actually comparatively recent Eurasian invaders), but I like to imagine that it is the WORM moon when Lord Nergal, the God of Pestilence decides whether to winnow the overpopulated Earth. Or perhaps it is the Wyrm Moon, when dragons come out of their winter eyries in the south and fly off to their accustomed fantasy realms…
Ahem. At any rate, tonight marks an unusual occasion when the vernal equinox occurs at the same time the moon is full and at its perigee. This will be the final super moon of 2019 so go outside and enjoy it while you drink traditional spring spirits and discuss beautiful nomenclature.
The Euthydikos Kore, ca. 500 BCE
I have been fretting about the post I wrote last week concerning the polos, a minimally-adorned cylindrical crown which was worn by certain goddesses of the Greek pantheon. One of several mysteries about the polos is how it went from being normal (?) feminine headwear of the Mycenaean world to something worn only by goddesses from the 5th century onward. Mycenaean civilization was swept away by cataclysm around 1100 BC. The 5th century occurred in, um, the 5th century BC. So was anybody wearing these things during the intervening 600 years? It is as though one noted that Western women of the early 15th century AD wore hennins but nobody wears them now except for magical fairytale beings (which, come to think of it, is completely true).
There is no fashion guide of Archaic Greek ladies’ style to answer this question, but we do have a mighty trove of data in the form of korai statues. The kore was a sort of idealized statue of a perfect Greek maiden wearing heavy draperies and an enigmatic empty smile (“kourai” is the plural of the word “kore” which means “maiden”). There are many of these statues in existence, since the Greeks apparently presented them to great temples as a sort of religious tribute (and as a status competition between leading citizens). Additionally the statues were esteemed by collectors of subsequent ages so they didn’t suffer the same level of destruction as some other sorts of statues from two-and-a-half-millenia ago.
Kore of Lyons (540s BC, Athens)
Unfortunately, contemporary classics and art scholars have some big unanswered questions about the korai statues. Were they meant to represent goddesses outright? Some kore statues have garb or items which were later regarded as symbolic of divinity (like the polos, as seen in the “Kore of Lyons” above). Yet, the statues have a somewhat different tone than votive statues of the proud goddesses of ancient Greece. They are softer and less assertive than the goddess statues and, even though the korai represent perfect female beauty as construed by an Archaic-era Greek sculptor, the statues are less concerned with fertility and nudity than are goddess statues. Perhaps they are statues of a transitional goddess such as Persephone or Semele (both of whom had mortal aspects). Another school of thought holds that they are divine attendants which embody general maidenly ideals–as would a group of priestesses or votaries. This explains why they sometimes have divine accoutrements but lack more specific iconography or identification. There is also a school of thought that the statues are simply “maidens” from a time when the more rigorous traditions of the Greco-Roman pantheon were coalescing.
So I have failed to answer any questions about the polos (maybe there is a reason nobody talks about these things), however we have looked at some lovely statues from a looooong time ago and we have learned something about the figurative sculpture of Archaic Greece in the era leading up to the Golden Age. This in turn is relevant, because the Kourai (and their male counterparts the kouros/kouroi statues) are arguably the main antecedent to Western figurative sculptural arts. European Sculptors have lingered for long centuries in the shadow of Ancient Greece. Whatever these statues are, we are indebted to them.
Every year for Saint Patrick’s Day, I have put up a post about Celtic mythology/folklore. In the past these have been about magical beings like leprechauns, the Leannán Sídhe, or the horrifying Sluagh. Sometimes these posts have been complete stories like the tale of Oisín and the princess from Tír na nÓg, the land of the forever young (shudder). These myths are metaphors for the beauty and sadness of life. they focus on the impossible paradoxes of people’s hearts. Yet lately my personal focus has been on fish-themed art which is symbolic of humankind’s increasingly problematic relationship with nature itself–our never-ending drive to consume the world of life that we are inextricably part of. What if there were a tale that combined these elements?
Well…in the most ancient Irish myths there was a figure known as the bradán feasa, “the salmon of knowledge.” The salmon was an ordinary salmon who ate nine hazelnuts which fell from the tree of knowledge and tumbled into the mortal world. The fish knew all of the wisdom of nature: it knew the reason the sun shines, the mysteries of the deep ocean, and the secrets of the green forest…it even knew the hidden truths of people’s hearts and why they do what they do.
For years and years the great sage Finegas fished the River Boyne trying to catch the salmon so he could devour it and gain its knowledge of all things. The salmon (obviously) already knew what Finegas was up to, and it was no easy prey, but alas, it also knew the end of the myth and so, one day, it reluctantly succumbed to Finegas’ hook. Finegas was exultant. Soon he would know all of the hidden secrets of the world. He gave the fish to his apprentice, Fionn, to cook along with explicit instructions not to eat a single bite of the fish. Dutifully Fionn built a great blaze and set about cooking the enormous fish, but as he repositioned the bronze cooking vessel, he burnt his thumb and he unthinkingly popped his finger into his mouth.
Fish Cook (Wayne Ferrebee, 2019) Ink and Colored Pencil
All of the salmon’s knowledge from the divine tree of knowledge flowed through one drop of fish fat into the mind of Fionn. Awakening from his slumber to partake of his repast, Finegas looked into the eyes of his servant and he knew at once that the divine secrets of the universe were for the next generation not for the aged sage. That servant boy, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, would become the greatest hero of Ireland, the eponymous figure at the center of the Fenian cycle. His deeds and his loves were legend and his myth will never die. Indeed, Fionn himself will never die: he sleeps…elsewhere… beyond the turnings of the world. One day, in Ireland’s hour of greatest need he will reawaken and bring back the salmon’s knowledge to the dying world. But that is another story…
So, I had this idea for a video game: “Dino Poacher: The Estate of Lord Humongousaurus Rex!” In the game, your character would get all outfitted with special cool weapons and camouflage gear in preparation to hunt super awesome dinosaurs on the Cretaceous forest estate of Lord Humongousaurus Rex!
However, it is all a ruse, no matter what you do, as soon as you hop over the fence, Lord Humongousaurus’ bailiffs catch you and drag you into the basement of his mansion where they force you to carefully polish antique silver for hours and hours.
As soon as your polishing is done you are free: you can re-outfit and once again try to break into the estate for ultimate dino-poaching adventures…but, as soon as you cross onto the estate, the game wardens grab you and you are back to polishing silver. You have different brushes, rags, and polishing pastes and the sneering butler says unhelpful things like “If you miss your shot you have to buff the coffee pot!” You never do get to hunt dinosaurs (although there are lots of exciting teasers and action clips) but you do get to polish increasingly elaborate and hard-to-polish silver culminating with the Dowager Duckbill’s’ baroque spinosaurus epergne!
The game’s tag phrase hints at the bait and switch. Lord Humogousaurus, in all of his aristocratic theropod glory says “Can YOU polish off all of the monsters?” Then he laughs derisively. I drew a colored pencil sketch of how the game package should look in my little sketchbook today.
I haven’t written very much about the current state of politics lately, not just because President Trump makes me angry & unhappy, but also because the deadlock in Washington (and precipitous national decline) make me sad and anxious. I would like to continue this precedent: paying breathless attention to all of Trump’s stunts and bullying just make him stronger (although I do think it is worth noting that he has been signing Bibles as though he were the author–and his devout Christian followers absolutely love it!). However, the latest enormities fall in the realm of policy and planning, so let’s take a look at the proposed 2020 Discretionary budget which was released by the White House yesterday. Predictably, this budget delivers slight funding increases to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, while stripping safety net and environmental programs fairly drastically. I suppose this is not unexpected under any Republican president, even one such as this one, (although it raises eyebrows after the colossal tax giveaway to the rich). However, what truly raises eyebrows in the budget are the appalling cuts to scientific and medical research. Here are the actual numbers:
Proposed Discretionary Budget Changes
All dollar amounts are in billions.
|
Department Or Agency
|
2019 Budget (Estimate)
|
2020 Request
|
$ change
|
% change
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defense1 | $685.0 | $718.3 | $33.4 | +5% |
| Veterans Affairs | $86.6 | $93.1 | $6.5 | +8% |
| Health and Human Services | $101.7 | $89.6 | -$12.1 | -12% |
| Education | $70.5 | $62.0 | -$8.5 | -12% |
| Homeland Security | $48.1 | $51.7 | $3.6 | +7% |
| Housing and Urban Development | ||||
| HUD gross total (excluding receipts) | $52.7 | $44.1 | -$8.6 | -16% |
| HUD receipts | -$9.3 | -$6.5 | $2.8 | -30% |
| State Department and other international programs2 | $55.8 | $42.8 | -$13.0 | -23% |
| Energy | $35.5 | $31.7 | -$3.8 | -11% |
| National Nuclear Security Administration | $15.1 | $16.5 | $1.3 | 9% |
| Other Energy | $20.4 | $15.2 | -$5.2 | -25% |
| NASA | $20.7 | $21.0 | $0.3 | +1% |
| Justice | $29.9 | $29.2 | -$0.7 | -2% |
| Agriculture | $24.4 | $20.8 | -$3.6 | -15% |
| Interior | $14.0 | $12.5 | -$1.5 | -11% |
| Commerce3 | $12.3 | $12.3 | * | <1% |
| Labor | $12.1 | $10.9 | -$1.2 | -10% |
| Transportation | $27.3 | $21.4 | -$5.9 | -22% |
| Treasury | $12.9 | $13.1 | $0.2 | +2% |
| Social Security Administration | $10.5 | $10.1 | -$0.4 | -4% |
| National Science Foundation | $7.8 | $7.1 | -$0.7 | -9% |
| Environmental Protection Agency | $8.8 | $6.1 | -$2.8 | -31% |
| Army Corps of Engineers | $7.0 | $4.8 | -$2.2 | -31% |
| Small Business Administration | $0.7 | $0.7 | * | -5% |
| Other agencies | $21.3 | $19.1 | -$2.1 | -10% |
Notes
* $50 million or less
1. Includes $9.2 billion for emergency border security and hurricane recovery funding
2. Includes funding for the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, Treasury international programs and 12 international agencies
3. Appropriations for 2019 are incomplete.
Source: White House
Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR
I guess Kudos for very slightly increasing the NASA budget (although even there, there is apparently no money for the new space telescope) but otherwise this proposal contains a lot to be angry about. I suspect you will find your own sources of fury in this spreadsheet (although please remember that this budget will never pass the House), but what jumps out at me are the substantial cuts to the National Science Foundation. Additionally, buried in that Health and Human Services number is a $4.5 Billion (11%) cut to the National Institute for Health, the agency which works to prevent pandemics, eradicate communicable disease, spearhead general research into life saving medicine, and generally keep Americans alive! Not only do Federal science dollars stave off the plague, they support blue-sky research which will lead to the next wave of innovations, and technological breakthroughs. What the U.S. Federal Government spent for scientific research in the past has made today’s most prominent, important (and lucrative) companies a possibility.
To use an overused metaphor, cutting these numbers is like not buying seed for next year’s crops. Additionally we are counting on fundamental research to counteract the impact expected from climate change, agricultural upheaval, forest loss, and energy problems (although, all of those problem will, of course, be exacerbated by other cuts in this budget).
Beyond scientists, environmentalists, and people who would like to see humankind survive into the future, there is another group that should perhaps be angry about this budget: Republican budget hawks. For all of its deep cuts and raw lack of appeal, this budget still blows up the deficit by 40% over the next 10 years, (from $22 trillion to $31 trillion). If President Obama had released this budget proposal (if he had been bitten by a rabid dog or a radioactive Ed Meese or something) I have a feeling that Republicans would have flown into apoplectic rage about the proposed deficit spending.
We will keep an eye on this budget. The 2019 Trump budget proposal was similarly problematic and Republican legislators simply ignored it and passed nice budget raises for the research arms of the government (which Trump duly signed, either because he did not care or did not notice). Yet a budget proposal reveals the priorities and moral choices of its creators, and this budget is blind to the needs of the future in almost every conceivable way.
Figure of Ceres with a Polos on her head (2nd century A.D, Roman)bronze
Greco-Roman civilization featured many objects and icons which are instantly familiar to us today. We know all about cornucopias, tridents, and the fasces (Hey! Why are those on the official seal of the U.S. Senate, anyway?). Yet other common symbols from that world are perplexing to us today–like the lituus which represented augury in classical mythology. Today’s post features a symbol which may or may not have made sense to the Greeks and Romans, but which was instantly understood in the context of their religion—the polos. The polos was a cylindrical crown worn by goddesses of supreme importance: Rhea, Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Artemis (though not Athena, apparently), however it was seemingly not worn by queens or high status women in the real world after the 5th century. We know what it looked like, but we are perplexed as to what it was made of (insomuch as it was an object of the physical world at all).
Archaeological finds from the Mycenaean era (1600BC-1200BC) indicate that living women of the ancient palace kingdoms of Greece and Crete once wore these headdresses. You can see a polos above on a Mycenaean figure—yet by the classical Greek era, these do not seem to be worn in the real world.
Examples from statues of Cybele and Rhea make it seem almost as though it was woven or carved out of some organic material. Perhaps the Polos was a symbol of fertility and abundance (which would expliain why the virginal Artemis of Ephesus wears such a thing yet the virginal Athena does not.
Artemis of Ephesus. Statue from the Amphitheater of Lepcis Magna
It is possible that the polos was a cultural object which came into Greece from the near east (there are certainly equivalent crowns in Mesopotamian and Persian art) and existed in religion but not in common culture (Christianity is filled with such symbols, when you think about it). However it seems more likely to me that the polos was important to the Greeks because it was ancient and mysterious. It had the same place in their culture that their gods and symbols do in ours—a venerable symbol of otherworldly power
Seated Aphrodite wearing a high polos (4th century B.C.) terracotta
I have been trying to spruce up my online presence by building some new web pages (more about that soon) and by fixing the site I already have which everybody loves [crickets], um, which is to say Ferrebeekeeper! Unfortunately trying new things doesn’t always work…so kindly forgive me if yesterday’s post looks a bit peculiar. We will work with the web guru to get it all taken care of. In the mean time, speaking of experimenting with new things, let’s check back in on JAXA spaceship Hayabusa2.
When last we checked in with Hayabusa2, the Japanese spaceprobe had entered orbit around Asteroid Ryugu (a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, which is believed to be composed of pristine materials left over from the dawn of the solar system). Hayabusa2 was deploying tiny 1.1 kilograms (2.4 pounds) hopping droids to jump around the ancient ball of rock and snow and learn whatever they could. These robots would be followed by a larger robot probe, Mascot, which would study the asteroid in depth before Hayabusa2’s glorious showstopping signature move–a descent to the surface in order to fire a projectile into the asteroid (in order to collect an asteroid sample). That’s right: while Americans have been utterly transfixed by the bloviations of our felonious leader, the Japanese have dispatched a spacefaring robot to drop hopping mechanized lice on a primeval space snowball and then to pop a cap in it! Respect to the Land of the Rising Sun!
The probe arrived in perfect condition back in September of 2018, but the next phase of the mission got off to a rocky start…literally! JAXA expected Ryugu to be covered with fine powder, but it was covered with jagged rocks. The tiny hopping bots MINERVA-II1 A and B were really meant to test the conditions for MASCOT, a shoebox like robot-probe with real scientific instruments. On a prior mission these hopping probes were too enthusiastic and, after a single touchdown, they hopped magnificently but suicidally into the infinite void (presumably yelling inaudible robot slogans of honor). Although conditions on Ryugu were not as expected, the second generation Minervabots did a better job this time: they delivered the necessary telemetry, astrionics, and surface conditions to bring the mission to the next phase. Mascot was duly dispatched back in October and it operated faultlessly for 17 hours before its battery ran out and the active phase of its mission ended. [As an aside, I am finding it challenging to describe all of the things happening on a planetoid inhabited entirely by various sorts of robots]
On February 22nd 2019, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft descended to the surface of the asteroid and physically collected a substantial sample of the regolith by shooting the asteroid with a small projectile. You can watch the video of the brief encounter here. There are a lot of pebbles and shards flying around, but apparently the craft was fine and is now back in orbit while the ground crew looks for a final site to sample in April.
This mission is super exciting, but the precious samples aren’t home yet. We will keep you updated here on Ferrebeekeeper (and we will keep working on our own tech project of building a better site).
ferrebeekeeper 