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Church's Chicken

201 S.E. 29th St., Topeka

Café Holliday

800 S.W. 12th, Topeka

Herman's Beef and Sausage House

823 N.W. Gordon, Topeka

Herman's Meat Shop is not only a great place to buy the meat you need for the week but also a well-loved lunch spot for the North Topeka crowd. Lunch specials change daily but keep a consistent price that is easy on your wallet. Hours listed are for lunch only. The meat shop opens early and stays open later for your shopping needs. The store hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

CiCi's Pizza

3501 SW Topeka Blvd., Topeka

Cici's Pizza serves a constant buffet of pizza featuring favorites like cheese, sausage and pepperoni juxtaposed with specialities like Macaroni-and-Cheese pizza, Taco pizza and no-sauce cheese pizza. If pizza isn't your style, try the marinara or alfredo pasta and salad combinations on the buffet. For desert, enjoy a delicious brownie, cinnamon stick or dessert pizza. Don't see something you'd like on the line? No problem! Just ask and they'll have a few slices delivered to your table when the next pizza is available. (Updated 5.7.10)

Moose Lodge

1901 N. Kansas Ave., Topeka

Taco Tico

2102 N. Topeka Blvd., Topeka

Taco Tico is a privately held franchise corporation based in Wichita, Kansas, with a unique network of independently franchised, quick-service restaurants known for high-quality Mexican food and first-rate service. (Updated 2/24/09)


Jasper-Hound Gems
Rock and Gem Creations * Fine Art * Literature

Santa Carolina is a moderately affluent scion of Southern California suburbia, within a short commute to the county courthouse and home to a public high school whose students begin to discover the secrets of a cave just on the edge of town. Nestled and hidden amid brambles, sage, and poison oak bushes, the limestone cavern houses a museum quality display of strangely glowing mineral crystals that seem to possess a special power of transformation.

Through a magical, ominous process, three students at Santa Carolina High School change into enviable peers, leaving Kyle Casey nearly alone in facing the results of his selfish and hormonal desires. Within Kyle's web of self seeking, things go amiss when Kyle tries to break out of his existence among the dweebs on campus to become more popular with attractive girls. In a story blending science fiction and fantasy with the budding sexual tensions of high school, just when all seems about to end well for Kyle, a dangerous and irrevocable choice threatens his future.

Kyle Casey must weigh whether to abandon the safe but frustrating life he has had with his loving single mother, a father in prison, and a nerdy rock-collecting friend. The beckoning allures of joining the in-crowd and getting involved with the beautiful Gina Duarte are powerful motivators to explore the cave's powers, as is the persuasion of a new friend who helps Kyle learn geometry. But all choices have consequences, some easy, some difficult ... many unforeseen.

As the story unfolds, the protagonist finds himself enmeshed within a conspiracy larger than he could have ever imagined. All the while, he must pretend during the day (in dealings with friends and family) that nothing is amiss. After some time adjusting to his new situation, he finds that he does not have to pretend so hard. There are helpful allies in his new life, as well as a new love interest easily able to distract him from the drama that is spiraling out of control.

In an effort to claw his way out of his ever-encroaching dilemma, the protagonist faces the ultimate test of loyalty and friendship. As the series continues, he will see exactly what these things mean.


This is “Sociological Perspectives on Urbanization”, section 14.2 from the book A Primer on Social Problems (v. 1.0). For details on it (including licensing), click here.

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14.2 Sociological Perspectives on Urbanization

Learning Objective

  1. List the assumptions of the three major sociological perspectives concerning urbanization.

Once again the three major sociological perspectives offer important but varying insights to help us understand urbanization. Table 14.1 "Theory Snapshot" summarizes their assumptions.

Table 14.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective Major assumptions
Functionalism Cities serve many important functions for society but also have their dysfunctions. Functionalist theorists differ on the relative merits and disadvantages of urban life, and in particular on the degree to which a sense of community and social bonding exists within cities.
Conflict theory Cities are run by political and economic elites that use their resources to enrich their positions and to take resources from the poor and people of color. The diversity of social backgrounds found in cities contributes to conflict over norms and values.
Symbolic interactionism City residents differ in their types of interaction and perceptions of urban life. Cities are not chaotic places but rather locations in which strong norms and values exist.

A basic debate within the functionalist perspective centers on the relative merits of cities and urbanization: In what ways and to what extent are cities useful (functional) for society, and in what ways and to what extent are cities disadvantageous and even harmful (dysfunctional) for society? Put more simply, are cities good or bad?

In essence, there is no one answer to this question, because cities are too complex for a simple answer. Cities are both good and bad. They are sites of creativity, high culture, population diversity, and excitement, but they are also sites of crime, impersonality, and other problems.

Since sociologists began studying urbanization in the early years of the discipline, an important question has been the degree to which cities are impersonal and alienating for their residents. In 1887, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1887/1963)Tönnies, F. (1963). Community and society. New York, NY: Harper and Row. (Original work published 1887) raised this question when he wrote about the changes that occurred as societies changed from small, rural, and traditional cultures to larger, urban, and industrial settings. He said that a sense of community, or GemeinschaftAccording to Ferdinand Tönnies, traditional societies in which family, kin, and community ties are quite strong, with people caring for each other and looking out for one another., characterizes traditional societies. In these societies, family, kin, and community ties are quite strong, with people caring for each other and looking out for one another. As societies grew and industrialized and as people moved to cities, he wrote, social ties weakened and became more impersonal. Tönnies called this type of society a GesellschaftAccording to Ferdinand Tönnies, the weakening of social ties and personal relationships as societies grow and become industrialized., and he was quite critical of this development. He lamented the loss in urban societies of close social bonds and of a strong sense of community, and he feared that a sense of rootlessness in these societies begins to replace the feeling of stability and steadiness characteristic of small, rural societies.

One of the key founders of sociology, French scholar Émile Durkheim, was more positive than Tönnies about the nature of cities and urbanized societies. He certainly appreciated the social bonds and community feeling, which he called mechanical solidarityAccording to Émile Durkheim, the social bonds and community feeling characteristic of small, rural societies., characteristic of small, rural societies. However, he also thought that these societies stifled individual freedom and that social ties still exist in larger, urban societies. He called these latter ties organic solidarityAccording to Émile Durkheim, the social ties that still exist in larger, urban societies, which stem from the division of labor., which he said stems from the division of labor. When there is a division of labor, he wrote, everyone has to depend on everyone else to perform their jobs. This interdependence of roles creases a solidarity that retains much of the bonding and sense of community found in small, rural societies (Durkheim, 1893/1933).Durkheim, É. (1933). The division of labor in society. London, United Kingdom: Free Press. (Original work published 1893)

Contemporary research tends to emphasize that strong social bonds do exist in cities (Guest, Cover, Matsueda, & Kubrin, 2006).Guest, A. M., Cover, J. K., Matsueda, R. L., & Kubrin, C. E. (2006). Neighborhood context and neighboring ties. City & Community, 5(4), 363–385. Although cities can be anonymous (think of the mass of people walking by each other on a busy street in the downtown area of a large city), many city residents live in neighborhoods where people do know each other, associate with each other, and look out for each other. In these neighborhoods, a sense of community and strong social bonds do, in fact, exist.

In 1938, University of Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth wrote a very influential essay, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” in which he took both a positive and a negative view of cities (Wirth, 1938).Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 3–24. He agreed with Tönnies that cities have a weaker sense of community and weaker social bonds than do rural areas. But he also agreed with Durkheim that cities generate more creativity and greater tolerance for new ways of thinking. In particular, he said that urban residents are more tolerant than rural residents of nontraditional attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles, in part because they are much more exposed than rural residents to these nontraditional ways. Supporting Wirth’s hypothesis, contemporary research finds that urban residents indeed hold more tolerant views on several kinds of issues (Moore & Ovadia, 2006).Moore, L. M., & Ovadia, S. (2006). Accounting for spatial variation in tolerance: The effects of education and religion. Social Forces, 84(4), 2205–2222.

An example of the greater tolerance of urban residents (and thus the lower tolerance of rural residents) appears in Figure 14.5 "Urban/Rural Residence and Belief That Premarital Sex Is “Always Wrong” (%)", which depicts the percentage of Americans in the nation’s twelve largest metropolitan areas and in its rural areas who say that premarital sex is “always wrong.” Rural residents are twice as likely as urban residents to feel this way.

Figure 14.5 Urban/Rural Residence and Belief That Premarital Sex Is “Always Wrong” (%)

Conflict Theory

We just saw that functionalism has mixed views about the benefits and disadvantages of cities and urban life and thus of urbanization. In contrast to this ambivalence, conflict theory’s views are uniformly critical. In this regard, recall from Chapter 1 "Understanding Social Problems" that conflict theory assumes a basic conflict between society’s “haves” and “have-nots,” or between the economic and political elites and the poor and people of color. This type of conflict, says conflict theory, manifests itself especially in the nation’s cities, in which the “haves” and “have-nots” live very different lives. On the one hand, the rich in American cities live in luxurious apartments and work in high-rise corporate buildings, and they dine at the finest restaurants and shop at the most expensive stores. On the other hand, the poor and people of color live in dilapidated housing and can often barely make ends meet.

Beyond this basic disparity of city life, conflict theorists add that the diverse backgrounds and interests of city residents often lead to conflict because some residents’ beliefs and practices clash with those of other residents. In one of the earliest statements of this position, sociologist Thorsten Sellin (1938),Sellin, T. (1938). Culture conflict and crime (No. Bulletin 41): New York, NY: Social Science Research Council. who was writing during an era of mass immigration into American cities of people from other nations, said that crime is the result of “culture conflict.” In particular, he wrote that crime by immigrants often results from the clash of their traditional ways of thinking and acting with the norms of American society. As one example, he wrote that a father in New Jersey who had emigrated from Sicily killed a teenage boy who had slept with his daughter. The father was surprised when he was arrested by local police, because in the traditional Sicilian culture a man was permitted and even expected to defend his family’s honor by acting as the father did!

More recent applications of conflict theory to urbanization emphasize the importance of political economyThe interaction of political and economic institutions and processes., or the interaction of political and economic institutions and processes. In this way of thinking, political and economic elites in a city (bankers, real estate investors, politicians, and others) collaborate to advance their respective interests. Thus urban development often takes the form of displacing poor urban residents from their homes so that condominiums, high-rise banks and other corporate buildings, posh shopping malls, or other buildings favoring the rich can be built. More generally, these elites treat cities as settings for the growth of their wealth and power, rather than as settings where real people live, go to school, work at a job, and have friends and acquaintances. Sociologists John Logan and Harvey Molotch use the term growth machine ideology to characterize the view of the city that guides these elites’ policies and practices (Logan & Molotch, 2007).Logan, J. R., & Molotch, H. L. (2007). Urban fortunes: The political economy of place (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Symbolic Interactionism

Consistent with the overall approach of symbolic interactionism, scholars of the city who take this approach focus on the nature of urban residents’ interaction with each other, the reasons for their patterns of interaction, and their perceptions of various aspects of urban life. Their work has yielded many rich, vivid descriptions of the urban life. Many and probably most of these accounts have concerned the lives of the poor and of people of color. The late Elliott Liebow wrote two of the most famous accounts. The first of these two was his majestic Tally’s Corner (Liebow, 1967), which depicted the lives of African American men who “hung around” a particular street corner in a large city. His second account was Tell Them Who I Am: The Lives of Homeless Women (Liebow, 1993),Liebow, E. (1993). Tell them who I am: The lives of homeless women. New York, NY: Free Press. which, as its title implies, depicted the lives of urban homeless women. Yet another classic account is William Foote Whyte’s (1943)Whyte, W. F. (1943). Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Street Corner Society, which examined leadership in a street gang in Chicago, Illinois.

These and other accounts all depict cities as places where various norms and values prevail, in contrast to views of cities that depict them as wild, chaotic places. Building on these more positive accounts, recent work by sociologist Elijah Anderson emphasizes that most poor urban residents are “decent” (as they call themselves), law-abiding people who strongly disapprove of the crime and drug use in their neighborhoods (Anderson, 2000).Anderson, E. (2000). Code of the street: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. He also emphasizes that cities are filled with parks and other public settings in which people from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds gather every day and interact in various ways that help foster interracial understanding. Anderson calls these settings “cosmopolitan canopies,” and says they “offer a respite from the lingering tensions of urban life and an opportunity for diverse peoples to come together…Through personal observation, they may come casually to appreciate one another’s differences and empathize with the other in a spirit of humanity” (Anderson, 2011, pp. xiv–xv).Anderson, E. (2011). The cosmopolitan canopy: Race and civility in everyday life. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. In this manner, writes Anderson, people from different races can at least partly overcome the racial tensions that afflict many American cities.

Types of Urban Residents

Other work in the symbolic interactionist tradition seeks to understand the different lifestyles of city residents. Sociologist Herbert Gans (1982)Gans, H. J. (1982). The urban villagers: Group and class in the life of Italian-Americans (Updated and expanded ed.). New York, NY: Free Press. authored a classic typology of urban residents based on their differing lifestyles and experiences. Gans identified five types of city residents.

Herbert Gans identified several types of city residents. One of these types is the cosmopolites, who include students, writers, musicians, and intellectuals, all of whom live in a city because of its cultural attractions and other amenities.

The first type is cosmopolites. These are people who live in a city because of its cultural attractions, restaurants, and other features of the best that a city has to offer. Cosmopolites include students, writers, musicians, and intellectuals. Unmarried and childless individuals and couples are the second type; they live in a city to be near their jobs and to enjoy the various kinds of entertainment found in most cities. If and when they marry or have children, respectively, many migrate to the suburbs to raise their families. The third type is ethnic villagers, who are recent immigrants and members of various ethnic groups who live among each other in certain neighborhoods. These neighborhoods tend to have strong social bonds and more generally a strong sense of community. Gans wrote that all these three types generally find the city inviting rather than alienating and have positive experiences far more often than negative ones.

In contrast, two final types of residents find the city alienating and experience a low quality of life. The first of these two types, and the fourth overall, is the deprived. These are people with low levels of formal education who live in poverty or near poverty and are unemployed, are underemployed, or work at low wages. They live in neighborhoods filled with trash, broken windows, and other signs of disorder. They commit high rates of crime and also have high rates of victimization by crime. The final type is the trapped. These are residents who, as their name implies, might wish to leave their neighborhoods but are unable to do so for several reasons: they may be alcoholics or drug addicts, they may be elderly and disabled, or they may be jobless and cannot afford to move to a better area.

In thinking about this typology, it is important to keep in mind that city residents’ social backgrounds—their social class, race/ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation—all influence the kind of lifestyle they tend to adopt and thus the type of resident they are according to the typology. As earlier chapters documented, these dimensions of our social backgrounds often yield many kinds of social inequalities, and the quality of life that city residents enjoy depends heavily on these dimensions. For example, residents who are white and wealthy have the money and access to enjoy the best that cities have to offer, while those who are poor and of color typically experience the worst aspects of city life. Because of fear of rape and sexual assault, women often feel more constrained than men from traveling freely throughout a city and being out late at night; older people also often feel more constrained because of physical limitations and fear of muggings; and gays and lesbians are still subject to physical assaults stemming from homophobia. The type of resident we are, then, in terms of our sociodemographic profile affects what we experience in the city and whether that experience is positive or negative.

Key Takeaways

  • Functionalism offers both a positive and a negative view of urbanization. Functionalist sociologists differ on the degree of social solidarity that exists in cities.
  • According to conflict theory, economic and political elites use their resources to develop cities in a way that benefits them. The diverse social backgrounds of urban residents also contribute to certain types of conflict.
  • According to symbolic interactionism, social inequality based on social class, race/ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation affects the quality of urban experiences. In addition to differences in their sociodemographic profiles, city residents differ in other ways. Herbert Gans identified several types of urban dwellers: cosmopolites, unmarried and childless, ethnic villagers, deprived, and trapped.

For Your Review

  1. Write an essay that summarizes the assumptions of any two of the major sociological perspectives on urbanization.
  2. Which of the three perspectives makes the most sense to you? Why?


Affirmations Your Passport to Happiness

Passport 2000+ Newsletter: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Affirmations

Friday, May 05, 2006

By Dr. Anne Marie Evers

Did you know that being broke is a temporary condition; being poor is a state of mind. Now is the time to uproot those old, negative beliefs of poverty. Those fortunate enough to have been born into wealth have developed a prosperity consciousness know that this consciousness attracts more thoughts of wealth and wealth itself, through the Law of Attraction.

Are you broke or suffering from the Money Blues because... oops, you overspent at Christmas, that birthday, holiday, clothes, etc? Imagine that!

We live under the natural laws of the Universe and one of these laws is The Law of Cause and Effect. What you spent was the cause and now having a lack of money is the effect of your spending. Where will it all end?

But now, I don’t want to labour the fact and beat you up for spending your hard earned Money, but I do want to hammer home the fact that we must be responsible for our money management and lives.

Have you ever asked yourself, “Why do I have to buy that very expensive gift for Johnny? Or why does Debbie need that $3,000 computer when she just got a new one 6 months ago?” And I am sure if you asked yourself these questions, you would come up with answers like, “Well after all, it is my money and I have worked very hard for it. We may also be afraid of losing that person’s love or of them being upset and angry with us.

So what do we do, we go out and spend, spend, spend like there is no tomorrow and then when our bills arrive, we groan and moan about all the money we spent and how we will we be able to make it to pay the rent, mortgage, bills, etc. and we add all this stress to our bodies. Is it worth it? Only you can answer this.

Important Note:
It is my hope that you will take some of these ideas and make them work for you to make
your life easier and more financially manageable. Move out of your comfort zone and Do the Money Tree Exercise described later here.

A Bit About Affirmations - Just what is an affirmation, you may ask? An affirmation is simply a positive sentence stating exactly what you desire. To affirm is to state that it is so and maintain this attitude regardless of what is happening all around you—and the answer will come.

Affirmations are similar to wishes, prayers or goals, only they are more structured and specific. To affirm is to make firm. Simply put, the basis of all affirmations is positive thinking.

Just know that any idea that is accepted by your brain is automatically transferred into an action of some kind. It may take seconds, minutes, or longer, but ideas always produce a reaction of some kind. Say to your subconscious mind, "Hey wonderful mind you know how to assist me in attracting, keeping and managing my finances and I now ask for your help, for which I give thanks," Then do an affirmation as set out below.

The power of creation is always present in the now and you are always creating and re-creating. If you have a problem, you created it and you can uncreate it.

Always affirm in the present time. Saying and decreeing, “I deserve and now have” makes it present tense. If you say, “I deserve and will have,” you are putting the manifestation off into the future—perhaps some future lifetime. Your subconscious mind will honour the postponement inherent in this statement. You cannot live in the past, present, and future at the same time.

How Do You React to Money?

When bills arrive in the mail, do you suffer from a money anxiety attack? How long do you postpone opening the envelopes that hold your unpaid bills and invoices? What feelings do you experience when you are purchasing any item? Do you feel you are losing money? Are you exchanging or recycling it? How do you treat money? Do you crinkle it up or do you fold it neatly? Is your chequebook neat, tidy, and balanced?

When you understand how you think about and react to money issues, you will begin to see how to remedy your thinking. Take full responsibility for your financial situation. Use your own positive thoughts and powerful mind to get yourself out of debt and stay debt-free. Respect money, bearing in mind it responds as people do. You can consciously change your mind about your thoughts of poverty and make them thoughts of wealth.

Say repeatedly during the day that you attract money and great wealth. Tell yourself you are on the road to prosperity. Accept the money consciousness. What we envision in life is what we get. Our affirmations, images, concepts, and ideas - whether they are negative or positive, are self-fulfilling prophecies.

Are your debts growing faster than your income? Put yourself on a strict money diet. Start saving small amounts, such as $5, $l0, and $20.

Examine what you say about money:

What are your feelings, beliefs, and emotions about it? How often have you said money creates unhappiness or greed, that money is evil, or money is scarce and that you do not deserve money? Do you believe that to be wealthy, you must be educated? Substitute your negative ideas about money with the following concepts. Love, respect, and approve of money as a divine idea in God’s mind.

· Accept your own divine inheritance of prosperity.
· Be open to receiving.
· Look for opportunities to give and be willing to receive and enjoy, in accordance with Universal Laws.

Money and Mind-Power:

Seed your sleep with thoughts of prosperity. Lull yourself to sleep, saying, “Great wealth, great wealth.” This promotes prosperity consciousness.

Even if you are not wealthy at this present time, when you say “great wealth,” it will not be rejected or cancelled by your conscious mind because you are not saying that you are wealthy or that you have great wealth. You are merely bringing wealth and prosperity into your consciousness.

When you lull yourself to sleep, saying, “Great wealth,” your subconscious mind has all night to locate, assemble, and bring into existence all the material required to make your affirmations materialize. Once you have fully accepted and worked with the successful blueprint in your mind for making money, you will never again be broke or in need of money.

Bear in mind you never actually make wealth. Wealth comes into the life of those who strongly believe they can be successful and wealthy. This acceptance is the consciousness that prepares the way for wealth.

When you doodle, write dollar signs. Fold your paper money in half, face up toward you. One of my students did this exercise and found $2000 dollars in an old dresser he was refinishing. One lady said she had to discontinue this practice because she was getting too much overtime. This additional work resulted in her receiving more money. She reported she was becoming overtired.

I told her to rejoice and start another affirmation that she had an excess of wonderful, healthy energy and was 100 percent healthy, wealthy, and completely balanced. Make your very own 'Money Tree'.

The following exercise can be very powerful in helping you manifest abundance in your life. Purchase a small tree and plant it in your backyard.

If you are limited for space, plant a small tree in a pot in your home or apartment. Place paper money bills on it, using clothespins or paper clips to attach the bills to the branches or leaves. If you are unable to do it with real money, take pieces of paper and write out the amounts you wish to see multiplied: $50, $100, $5000, $l00,000, or more. You can also use Monopoly money. Alternatively, you may visualize your own money tree.

See yourself picking all the money you desire, $10s, $20s, $50s, $100s, $1000s from your very own 'Money Tree'.

Renata was a young housewife who was always short of money. No matter how hard she tried, she could not make her husband’s paycheque stretch far enough to pay all the bills. Tension over the shortage of money resulted in constant quarrels. When Renata came to see me, I could feel the tension and hostility in her. I told her about the Money Tree Method and she said she was willing to try anything.

She bought a live tree and planted it in her backyard. Every morning, she sat for 20 minutes, eyes closed and visualized picking money off the tree. As she brought in all her senses, her visualizations became very clear and real to her. She imagined:

· Seeing the money on the money tree;
· Hearing the crack of crisp $100 bills;
· Feeling the money with her fingers;
· Smelling the new bills and
· Tasting a tangy mint.

She also did the following affirmation.

“I, Renata, deserve to have and now easily pick from my very own money tree in my backyard the sum of $7000 to pay my immediate debts, pay off the loan on the family car, and to use for spending money. I am not concerned about how this happens. I simply release this request with faith and expectancy into the Universe. Divine Intelligence now puts this money into my hands or my bank account. The power of my subconscious mind now brings it to pass in its own way. I get out of the way and allow it to manifest. I know the answer is appearing now, for which I give thanks. I am content and happy, to the good of all parties concerned. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Her Short-Form Affirmation: Great wealth, great wealth.

She lulled herself to sleep saying it. Shortly after she began this process, a friend dropped by for coffee one morning. When Renata served her one of her special muffins, the friend exclaimed, “These are marvellous, you should market them.” Two days later, Bill came home from work and mentioned that his company was searching for a new vending company to provide coffee and goodies during the coffee break. As she remembered her friend’s words, a light came on in Renata’s mind.

The next morning, Bill awoke to the delicious aroma of Renata’s muffins. “I have it all figured out,” Renata told her husband. “I can use the station wagon, rent a coffee-maker from the church, and put coffee into thermos bottles, serve my muffins, and take over the catering business at your office.”

Today, Renata has a flourishing business. She has added soup, salads, and sandwiches to her service and is now catering to several companies. Why did everything fall into place at just the right time? Could it have been because of Renata’s Money Tree affirmation and visualization? By her concentrated thought, action, and focus on money and the affirmation exercise, Renata generated money consciousness and it manifested into her reality.

You will find a money tree in my home. I find it great for borrowing money and, when I replace it, I always add at least five dollars for the earned interest. You will find that opportunities you never dreamed were possible will come to you. You will be offered positions or business opportunities that will make money for you. New ideas will come to you from your subconscious as you hold the thought of prosperity firmly in your mind.

Become aware of money and how you can use it to help family, others, and self. When affirming for money, refrain from attempting to figure out where it will come from. Do not worry about the modus operandi (how it happens). It does not matter. Just be certain all your affirmations contain the safety clause, “To the good of all parties concerned.” You are entitled to all the wealth, health, and happiness you desire. You only have to desire it, be specific in your requests, and do your affirmations faithfully.

Remember that Affirmations When Properly Done Always Work!
(from Anne Marie Evers Books, teachings and website,


Maitland: Historically and Culturally Vibrant

Maitland is one of the oldest incorporated municipalities in Central Florida, making it rich in history. Residents of the city are proud of the city's past and actively pursue the preservation of its historical significance. A "historical corridor" has been established, which encompasses old residences still standing that extend through a significant portion of the city. In addition to honoring its past, Maitland also upholds its culture, housing the Enzian Theater, Central Florida's only full-time independent movie theater, which is home to the Florida Film Fesitval. It is also home to many museums such as the Maitland Art Center, the Maitland Historical Museum, and the Maitland Telephone Museum. Whether your are interested in history or culture, there is something for everyone in Maitland, FL!


Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Surprising Discoveries of Large Carnivore Dietary Preferences on the Pleistocene Mammoth Steppe

May 2, 2015

fig 2

Bocheren, Herve

“Isotopic Tracking of Large Carnivore Paleoecology in the Mammoth Steppe”

Quaternary Science Reviews March 2015

The Pleistocene Ridge and Valley Reptile Corridor

April 28, 2015

Wood Turtle

Bufo terrestris

Holman, Alan

National Geographic Research

Graham, Sean; et. al.

Southeastern Naturalist 9(1) 2010

April 23, 2015

Young Carolina or Sable palmetto.

Salt marsh with a maritime forest hammock in the distance.

Fiddler crabs.  Click on the photo to enlarge.

View of the waterway that separates Pinckney Island from the mainland.

Spring Island Fox Squirrels

Savannah River NWR.

Muddy alligator sunning itself at the Savannah River NWR.

Captain Woody’s in Blufton, South Carolina.

I ate a giant triggerfish sandwich.  It was delicious.

The Schnitzel Shack in Rincon, Georgia.

Lee, James; David Osborn and Karl Miller

“Habitat Use by a Dense Population of Southern Fox Squirrels”

Southeastern Naturalist 8 (1) 2009

My 5 Favorite and 5 Most Disappointing Wildlife Destinations

April 18, 2015

I fantasize about living during the Pleistocene  because I would love to live in a world where I could open my front door and see a mammoth or saber-tooth cat, not just occasionally but often.  The thought of being surrounded by wilderness never fails to relax me. True wilderness no longer exists on earth, but there are still a few places in the world where a man can see an abundance of large wild animals. However, they are far away, and I despise traveling.  I would like to see Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and observe wolves hunting bison, but it would take a week just to drive there from my house, and I refuse to fly on an airline until they stop ordering perverts to feel up all the passengers before they’re allowed on the aircraft.  So that trip will never happen for me.  I have made the effort to see regional wildlife attractions.  Here’s a list of my favorite and my most disappointing wildlife attractions.

1. Wakulla Springs, Florida–This is the only location where I’ve ever seen manatees.  I was also thrilled to see bird species I’d previously known only from books such as white ibis, yellow crowned night herons, wood ducks, and prothonotory warblers.  There are lots of turtles, alligators, and deer here, and the crystal clear waters reveal many types of fish–schools of mullet, black and white sunfish, and gar.

The boat ride at Wakulla Springs made the 7 hour drive from my house worth the trouble.

2. Harbor Island, South Carolina–My parents used to own condos here when the island was first being developed by real estate companies.  There were noisy heron and egret colonies on the island, and alligators swam in the brackish lagoons beneath the rookeries.  Pelicans and black skimmers flew over the shallow ocean water, while sandpipers and sea gulls scurried ahead of human beachcombers.  Sharks and dolphins hunted in the surf.  The species of sharks I saw hunting were probably either Atlantic sharp-nosed or sand, but I did once see a dead blue shark washed up on shore.  Loggerhead sea turtles buried their eggs in the sand.  I never saw a live individual, but did come across a dead specimen.  I witnessed large tarpon spawning in the shallow water.  I caught mullet with a cast net and captured blue crabs in traps.  A large colony of cottontail rabbits lived on this bushy island with few trees.  The adjacent more heavily wooded Hunting Island carries lots of deer and raccoon.

3. Berry College Campus, Georgia–Bald eagles nest here, and I have also seen a peregrine falcon and a swan on campus.  But deer are the most impressive attraction.  Great herds of does take refuge on campus during hunting season.  They must know it’s a safe zone–the campus is adjacent to the largest wildlife management area in the state of Georgia.  Flocks of turkeys abound here too.

Berry College is the only place I’ve ever seen a swan.  Don’t know whether it’s a natural occurrence or an introduction, but swans were widespread in North America during the Pleistocene.

4. Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky–We drove by a herd of bison and saw turkeys and cattle egrets as well.  Deer roam throughout this vast forest of oaks, hickories, and black walnut, but on the day I visited it was hot and I didn’t get to see the elk that must have been hiding in the deep shade.

Up close with a herd of bison at Land between the Lakes.

5. Congaree National Park, South Carolina–I’ve been here twice.  I took a 5 hour hike on my first visit.  Deer and a milk snake crossed my path, and I must have ducked under 10,000 spider webs.  Barred owls hoot during the day and pileated woodpeckers are common in the park.  The splendor of the spectacular old growth trees makes a visit here worth the trip.

Most Disappointing

5. Mount Mitchell, North Carolina–The brochure claims red squirrels and black bears live on the mountain.  I don’t believe it.  I saw not a single mammal and just a couple songbirds.  The forest here is dying.

4. Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina–This is a busy road through a boring stretch of woods. I saw 1 woodchuck.  I can’t believe this crap is part of the National Park Service.  It totally sucks!

3. Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area, Georgia–This holds the last population of black bears in the entire piedmont region of southeastern North America.  Hunters stopped a planned development, so they could continue to enjoy killing the bears, though this population is probably way too low to support sustainable hunting.  I didn’t see a single bird or mammal in the part I hiked.  It was a boring stand of 2nd growth dominated by pine with few oaks, despite the name.

2. Okefenokee Swamp Wildlife Refuge–I expected to see lots of wading birds.  I didn’t see a single wading bird or alligator.  I visited during a drought, so there was no water, and no wildlife at all.  Nothing!

1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park–This overcrowded joke is completely devoid of wildlife.  I saw absolutely nothing, except for thousands of Homo sapiens.  There are 2 areas of this park that are allegedly rich in wildlife–Cades Cove and the Canaloochee.  When I visited, the road to Cades Cove was closed.  A visit to the Canaloochee requires a drive up a steep narrow winding road.  I got tired of driving up this shitty road and turned back.  Wildlife habitat in this park would be greatly improved with selective logging and regular burning.  The do-gooders in charge will never do this.  Having more wildlife would cause more work and conflicts than they want to handle.

Sadistic Hunters Saved what Pitiful Wilderness Still Exists

In 1909 Theodore Roosevelt and his party  went on a safari and killed 44,900 mammals in just 11 months.  He founded the National Park Service so future sadists could continue to enjoy slaughtering animals.  That’s the only reason there is any wilderness left…so humans can continue to enjoy killing the animals that live there.

We can thank sadistic hunters for most of the wild lands that are left.  Theodore Roosevelt founded our National Park Service.  This bloodthirsty sadist went on safaris in Africa and slaughtered thousands of animals for the simple joy of killing.  All of North America’s magnificent animals would be extinct, if it wasn’t for sadists like him.  It’s a testament to the avarice of mankind that the only reason humans let other large wild mammals exist is so sadists can continue to enjoy killing them.

In a recent Facebook discussion I pointed out this ironic historical fact to Rob Pavey, the outdoor editor of the Augusta Chronicle, an extremely conservative publication.  He claimed I was “catastrophically misinformed,” then ended the discussion by barring me from posting any additional comments.  (I think he unfriended me.  Facebook is just silly.)  One has to marvel at the chutzpah of someone who declares they are smarter than you and refuses to continue the discussion.  I asked him to explain how I was misinformed, but he could not.  When someone comes across as misinformed to me, I am more than happy to inform them. I never bar anyone from discussion on my blog.  He seemed particularly defensive about hunting, even before I referred to hunters as sadists.  I doubt most hunters even admit to themselves why they enjoy killing animals. I’m not against killing animals for food, safety, or even to protect valuable property. But I’m convinced there are many hunters who kill animals because they enjoy the killing, yet won’t admit it.  I like to eat wild game meats, but there are many hunters who don’t even like to eat what they kill.  Anthony Bourdain, host of various cable channel travel and cooking series, once went duck hunting with regular duck hunters who admitted they didn’t like the taste of wild duck.  What is the purpose for them killing the birds, if they don’t want to eat them?  Do they just like to blow birds out of the sky for the hell of it?  No wonder Pavey was so defensive, and I might add intolerant of my inquiry.

Blue Crabs (Callinectes sapidus) in Freshwater Springs

April 14, 2015

Marjorie Rawlings owned an orange grove in north central Florida from 1928-1941.  She was not a native southerner but used inheritance money to purchase the property.  Many of the characters she created in her short stories and novels were based on the people she met while she lived here.  Her most famous work is The Yearling, a novel later adapted for the big screen.  I think her most interesting book is her memoir of the 13 years she lived in a farm house next to her orange grove.  The title of this memoir is Cross Creek.  The relationships she developed with the “colored help” and the white “crackers” are entertaining reading.  Though progressive for her time, she clearly viewed black people as 2nd class citizens.  On 1 occasion she spent a week long hunting trip with her visiting brother.  When she returned to the farm she was outraged to discover the live-in “colored” help had spent the week enjoying a drunken orgy (literally…2 men and 1 woman in the same bed) and not a single chore had been completed.  Her brother joined her in chasing the help off the property at the point of a shotgun.  In my opinion Rawlings was at fault for being out hunting instead of supervising.  Moreover, today, her actions would be considered an illegal eviction, and she and her brother could be jailed for making terroristic threats.  However, if I could journey to 1930s Florida in a time machine and suggest this, all the white people there would think I was out of my mind.  How times have changed.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings with her dog - Cross Creek, Florida

Marjorie Rawlings, author of the famous novel–The Yearling.  This dog was accidentally poisoned.  She accused her neighbor of deliberately poisoning her dog, a charge he vehemently denied.  They feuded for a year before reconciling.

My favorite chapter in Cross Creek chronicled the local cuisine.  Bread here meant cornbread, cornpone, hoecakes, hushpuppies, or biscuits.  Meat meant salt pork, known here as “white bacon.”  Pork in 1930s America was much fattier than modern day pork.  White bacon was soaked in water, floured and fried.  The grease rendered from frying the fatty pork was used to season biscuits, cornpone, sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, green beans, and greens.  These were the staple dishes but hunting and fishing supplemented the local diet with many exotic sources of protein such as alligator, rattlesnake, turtles and their eggs, limpkin, blackbirds, bear, and squirrel.  Rawlings accompanied men who went crabbing at night.  They caught crabs from a freshwater spring that flowed into the St. John’s River.  The men stood on boats and located crabs by shining lights into the clear water.  They used 12 foot poles with iron jaws on the end to snatch the crabs.

Blue Crab in Crystal River Spring, Florida. It’s probably a male.  The females stay in brackish water and migrate to waters with high salinity to release their eggs.

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Blue crab life cycle.

I was surprised to learn that blue crabs inhabit freshwater.  Apparently, during spring male blue crabs migrate in enormous numbers to brackish and fresh water.  During mating season the 2 sexes meet in brackish water to mate, and the females carry their fertilized eggs back to the saltier depths.  The larval stage of the blue crab is known as a zoeal.  As the zoeal grows, they shed their shells 7 times in a process known as molting.  Their bodies absorb calcium from the sea water and swell, and this extra calcium forms a hard exoskeleton.  Blue crabs are called megalops during the next stage of their life when  they move into water with lower salinity where they eventually transform into adult crabs.

Blue crabs outcompete and drive away crayfish in the freshwater springs they inhabit.  Both species eat the same foods, scavenging and actively hunting plant and animal material.  Blue crab larva can’t survive in freshwater.  If this species ever evolved that ability, they would eventually colonize freshwater creeks and rivers, causing a decline in crayfish abundance and diversity.  Fossil remains of the Callinectes genus date to about 15 million years ago, and Pleistocene-aged blue crab shells have been found from Massachusetts to the Caribbean and Texas.  It is an incredibly successful species.

Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) and Horses (Equus ferus caballus) Refused to Eat Pawpaws in a Controlled Experiment

April 10, 2015

Some scientists have hypothesized certain fruiting plants were dependent upon now extinct megafauna for distribution.  They believe the fruits were eaten and the still viable seeds were scattered across the landscape in beneficial piles of manure.  The extinction of large mammals that ate the fruits of pawpaw (Asimina triloba) and osage orange (Maclura pomifera) explains why these plant species today have such a patchy distribution.  They are considered anachronistic fruits.  Members of the Hendrix College Biology Department in Arkansas recently tested this hypothesis by feeding these fruits to species closely related to extinct Pleistocene megafauna.  They then planted the defecated seeds to determine viability.  Oddly enough, they also included persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) in their experiment. Persimmon is a common tree, not patchy in distribution, and the seeds are known to maintain viability after passing through a raccoon’s (Procyon lotor) alimentary tract.  I don’t consider persimmon an anachronistic fruit for those reasons.

Asian elephant.  In an experiment they readily ate persimmons and did try osage orange but absolutely refused to eat pawpaws.  This does not convince me that mastodons didn’t eat pawpaws.

Horse eating osage orange.  The experiment suggests horses were not a distributor of osage orange seeds.  No viable seeds survived the horses digestive tract.

Shroom 023

Horses and elephants loved eating persimmons.  Viable seeds survived elephant digestive tracts but not the horse’s.

Pawpaw Fruit

Scientists were surprised that elephants and horses didn’t eat pawpaws, a nutritious sugary fruit.  This doesn’t mean mastodons didn’t eat pawpaws.  Mastodons were not the same species as the Asian elephant and evolved in the same region as this fruit. I believe they did eat them.

Asian elephants are closely related to extinct mammoths and distantly related to extinct mastodons (27 million years of evolution separate them from the latter proboscidean).  Modern horses are arguably the same animal as 1 of the species of North American horses of the Pleistocene.  The scientists involved in the study fed persimmons, osage orange, and pawpaws to Asian elephants and horses to gauge how effective they would be as seed dispersers.  Persimmons seeds sprouted and grew well in elephant dung but failed to survive horse digestion.  One elephant ate osage oranges but refused to retry them given a 2nd helping.  Some osage orange seeds sprouted and grew in elephant dung.  But again, none survived horse digestion, though horses really liked this fruit.  Elephants and horses surprisingly refused pawpaws.  At first the horses tasted them but spit them out and visibly grimaced (known as a Flehman response) as if they tasted bad.  Pawpaws are sweet and nutritious, so it is puzzling why neither species ate them.

The results of this study suggest mastodons and mammoths could have been effective dispersers of fruit seeds, while Pleistocene horses were not.  The study doesn’t prove mastodons didn’t eat pawpaws.  Though related, mastodons are not the same species as Asian elephants and likely had different tastes.  Mastodons evolved in North America for  millions of years alongside pawpaws, and I suspect some time during that span of time the species learned to like pawpaws. Persimmons grow in Asia but pawpaws do not.  Perhaps this explains why Asian elephants were so willing to eat persimmons but not pawpaws.  It is a fruit that occurs in the region from where they evolved.

The Hendrix College Biology Department should expand their study to include other close relatives of extinct Pleistocene megafauna such as tapirs, pigs, peccaries, llamas, and tree sloths.

Boone, Madison; et. al.

“A Test of Potential Pleistocene Mammal Seed Dispersal in Anachronistic Fruits Using Extant Ecological and Physiological Analogs”

Southeastern Naturalist 14 (1) 2015

Cloudland Canyon State Park in Dade County, Georgia

April 8, 2015

The intersection of 2 creeks eroding through sedimentary rock formed the spectacular Cloudland Canyon located in the northwest corner of Georgia.  For tens of millions of years Bear Creek and Daniel Creek cut through layers of shale and sandstone.  Both of these types of sedimentary rock formed here during the Pennsylvanian Age (320 million BP-286 million years BP) when this region was sandy shoreline and muddy shallow sea.  Sand buried under pressure conglomerated into sandstone, while shale is simply fossilized mud.  A continental collision caused the uplifting of the Appalachian Mountains raising the elevation of this area with its layers of sedimentary rock.  Shale is a soft rock and easily eroded, but sandstone is more resistant to erosion.  The creeks have eroded through the shale causing the overlying sandstone to collapse into the valley.  This ongoing process has been continuously widening this canyon.

View of the eastside of Cloudland Canyon from the west rim.  There are at least 4 waterfalls on that side of the canyon.

The canyon walls consist of layers of erosion resistant sandstone on top of layers of shale.  As the shale erodes, overlying sandstone shelves collapse into the canyon, widening it.

Lookout Valley is beyond Cloudland Canyon.  Sand Mountain can be seen in the distance.

All the rock in this location dates to the Pennsylvanian Age when this locality was at the bottom of a shallow sea.  It was then uplifted by the collision of continental plates.  There’s reportedly fossilized wood in some of these rocks, but I didn’t see any.

I walked along the overlook part of the West Rim Trail.  By far the most common trees were rock chestnut oak (Quercus montana) and Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana).  White pine, shortleaf pine, red cedar, southern red oak, post oak, sand hickory, rhododendron, and mountain laurel are also present.  Reportedly, serviceberry grows here.  I’ve never had a chance to try this blueberry-like fruit, but it doesn’t ripen until June.  There are 3 types of natural communities in Cloudland Canyon State Park–acidic oak/pine forest, acidic cliffs, and calcareous cliffs.

Black vultures soaring. Click to enlarge. Cliff ledges make excellent nesting sites for vultures, eagles, falcons, swallows, and other smaller birds.

Another view of the rounded peak.

Trees are hiding this waterfall.  The intersection of 2 creeks–Bear and Daniel–created Cloudland Canyon.

Most cliffs are pristine environments because there is little industrial use for them, and they’ve been left unmodified by man.  Cliffs are fascinating environments (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/piedmont-cliff-ecology/).  They provide nesting habitat for many species of birds.  During the Pleistocene teratorns, California condors, golden eagles, the extinct Grinnell’s crested eagle, and ravens probably nested on the cliffs in the above photographs.

Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park

April 6, 2015

William Sherman’s advance across a broad front through Georgia was a strategy borrowed from Napoleon.  I don’t understand why Napoleon is considered a great general–he lost 3 entire armies.  He lost an army to the plague in Egypt, wasted another army while campaigning during a Russian winter, then was finally outmaneuvered at Waterloo.  Nevertheless, Napoleon’s strategy was effective against outnumbered troops, and Sherman had 100,000 troops vs. 65,000 Confederates on this front.  If the rebels made a stand, the numerically superior Union forces merely had to outflank their line, threatening to surround them.  The Confederate forces were continuously forced to retreat to avoid encirclement, a scenario that would have led to the surrender of the entire army group.  Joe Johnston, the Confederate general, had no choice but to form a defensive position on Kennesaw Mountain during June of 1864, even though he was aware of Sherman’s strategy.  He did send a force to outflank Sherman’s flanking maneuver, but it ran into a fixed Union position, and the Confederates lost 1000 men.

Sherman decided to take a chance at Kennesaw Mountain and ordered the only frontal attack of his campaign through Georgia.  He believed it was worth the risk because a) a change in tactics from flanking maneuvers to a frontal assault could surprise the Confederates, b) by pressing the Confederates he could prevent them from dispatching troops to the Virginia front where Grant was struggling to defeat Lee, and c) a breakthrough at Kennesaw Mountain would split the Confederate forces in half and lead to the immediate capture of their supply depot.  However, the 2 pronged attack by 3 divisions of U.S. federal troops failed with a loss of 2500 men.  The Confederates lost 800, mostly to artillery bombardment.  Sherman wisely rejected his subordinate officer’s plans to renew the frontal assault.  Instead, he resumed his flanking actions forcing the Confederates to retreat to the Chattahoochee River on July 2nd.  Jefferson Davis unfairly fired Joe Johnston soon after this battle.  He was replaced by the inferior reckless Hood who also could not stop the inevitable Union advance.

View of metro Atlanta from the top of Kennesaw Mountain.

Confederate cannon.  There was a hell of an artillery duel at Kennesaw Mountain.

Path to the top of Kennesaw Mountain.  The park also protects an oak/hickory forest that is much like the original environment here.

View of Little Kennesaw Mountain from the main Kennesaw Mountain.  The Confederates cut a path through the woods and hoisted artillery to the top of this mountain, using rope.

Though I’m interested in military history, I really visited Kennesaw Mountain to enjoy the natural history of the park.  Kennesaw Mountain is a rare natural area located within the sprawl of metro Atlanta.  Almost 3000 acres of protected forest, field, and wetland are surrounded by heavily wooded suburbs, providing habitat for 538 species of plants and 175 species of birds.  There are 3 types of forest land in the park–oak/hickory, rocky slopes, and rocky outcrops.  The oak/hickory forests are dominated by white oak, southern red oak, mountain chestnut oak, and post oak, along with 3 species of hickories.  Beech, sweetgum, and tulip trees are also present.  The shrub layer consists of dogwood, hackberry, beauty berry, holly, black cherry, blueberry, honeysuckle, and several other species.  Trees and shrubs found on rocky slopes include hickory, American plum, blackjack oak chestnut oak, blackberry, blueberry, and others.  Shortleaf pine, American plum, blackjack oak, chestnut oak, elm, blackberry, and blueberry grow around rocky outcrops.  Wetlands within the park host buttonbush, grass, sedge, rushes, cattails, and arrowleaf.  There are also a few swamps where red maple, buttonbush, basswood, dogwood, tupelo, willow, and ferns grow.

I was excited to see a chipmunk (Tamias striatus) in Kennesaw Park.  Chipmunks don’t live in my hometown of Augusta, just 180 miles southeast of this locality.  Kennesaw Mountain provides ideal habitat for chipmunks, and I predicted I might see 1 here.  Chipmunks like to live in crevices under boulders and rock piles.  Rocky forest lands, their favored habitat, cover most of the mountain.

The chipmunk I saw at Kennesaw Mountain scurried away too quickly for me to photograph it, but I did see several playing around this pile of old wood in my mother-in-law’s backyard the following day.  She lives in Lafayette and has a view of Pigeon Mountain from her backyard.  Click on the picture to enlarge, and 2 sitting together can be seen.

Due to the elevation Kennesaw Mountain was likely the 1st locality to host spruce trees at this latitude during the Ice Ages.  Following the end of Ice Ages, this locality was probably the last at this latitude where spruce trees grew more abundantly than oaks and hickories.

Note all the granite and granitic gneiss.  It is resistant to erosion.  Kennesaw Mountain is composed of this granite, explaining why it hasn’t eroded like the surrounding region.

Lichen-covered granite boulder.

Kennesaw Mountain is a monadnock–an isolated erosional remnant standing 700 feet above the surrounding terrain.  It is 1808 feet above sea level. The granite and granitic gneiss that compose the mountain are resistant to erosion.  Granite is common in the Atlanta area, but much of it is fractured.  Kennesaw Mountain and Stone Mountain are solid and less fractured and therefore stand by themselves.  The mountain consists of a  mixture of igneous and metamorphic rocks.  Some was directly spewed by volcanic action, while others were transformed deep under the earth and uplifted.  Gray migmatite is a common mineral found here.  It has alternating light and dark bands.  The light bands are composed of quartz and feldspar, while the dark bands are made of bratite and hornblende.

Gore, Pamela; and William Witherspoon

Roadside Geology of Georgia

Mountain Press Publishing 2013

Hart, Liddell

Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American

De Capo Press 1993

Zomlefer, Wendy; David Giannasi, and S. Lee Echols

“Vascular Plant Flora of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, Cobb County, Georgia”

Southeastern Naturalist 9 (1) 2010

March 31, 2015

Porcupines lived in southeastern North America during the Pleistocene.  (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/the-extended-pleistocene-range-of-the-porcupine-erethizon-dorsatum/) Remains of this species dating to that era have been found in Florida and South Carolina.  Presently, the porcupine is absent from this region.  The porcupine’s extirpation from this region is a relatively recent occurrence–skeletal remains of this species dating to younger than 9000 years BP have been found at numerous localities in the south.

Modern range map of the Porcupine.  During the Pleistocene it also inhabited the southeast as far south as Florida.

Map of North Carolina highlighting Watauga County

Watauga County, North Carolina.  Porcupine skeletal remains have been found in a rockshelter located here.  They date to 7500 BP.  Porcupine skeletal remains even more recent than this have been found in Colbert County, Alabama, and southeastern Tennessee.

Archaeologists from Appalachian State excavated the Charles Church Rock Shelter in Watauga County, North Carolina, and they found the remains of at least 10 porcupines along with stone and ceramic artifacts, burned plant material, burned rocks, and human skeletal material.  The porcupine remains included jaws, cheek bones, and teeth.  Some of these bones had been burned–possible evidence the Indians cooked the porcupine.  Porcupine remains dating from the early to late Holocene (from 9000 BP-1500 BP) have also been found at 6 other southeastern sites including Eastman Shelter and the Tennessee River in Tennessee, Daughtery’s Cave in Virginia, Little Bear Cave and Stanfield-Worley Cave in Colbert County, Alabama, and Russel Cave in Jackson County, Alabama (which borders the Georgia state line).  Evidently, porcupines still occupied the southern Appalachians until at least 1500 years ago.  There is no evidence of permanent human settlement in the higher elevations of the southern Appalachians until the medieval warm period between 900 AD-1300 AD.  Perhaps, not coincidentally, this seems to be when porcupines disappear from the archaeological record in this region.

In  my previous blog entry about southeastern porcupines, I suggested they were unable to survive the hot prolonged summers of the modern day south because of excessive exposure to mosquito-borne disease.  I’ve reconsidered that notion, since I’ve become aware of the porcupine’s Holocene survival in the region.  The  mid-Holocene climate from 6000 BP-4000 BP was hotter and drier than that of the present day, yet porcupines were still extant in southeastern Tennessee and northern Alabama until at least 2000 BP.  Warmer climate alone can not explain the disappearance of the porcupine, a species that ironically originated in the tropics.  Instead, I agree with those who believe human overhunting led to the porcupine’s demise in the south.

I’ve long been convinced humans were responsible for the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna, but I didn’t think humans were behind the extirpation of porcupines.  I didn’t realize porcupines, like larger species of mammals, reproduce quite slowly.  Porcupines do not reach sexual maturity until they are 2 years old.  The females are fertile for just 8-12 hours once a year.  Pregnancy lasts for 7 months, then only 1 or 2 young are born.  By contrast, rabbits reach sexual maturity in 2 or 3 months, gestation lasts about 1 month, and they can produce 7 litters a year of up to 11 young each.  This explains how rabbits can withstand human hunting pressure while porcupines can not.  Porcupines have few natural predators because their quills protect them so well.  Only the occasional cougar or fisher learns to flip them on their back, exposing their unprotected belly.  Before man appeared on the scene, porcupines had no need for a rapid reproductive rate.

Audubon’s painting of a porcupine.  I believe this is 1 of his better portraits.  His colleague, John Bachman, claimed porcupines made good pets.  They rub up against a person’s leg, just like a cat.  The quills only stand up when they are threatened.

A major reduction in hemlock forests during the mid-Holocene is an alternative explanation for the porcupine’s disappearance from the region. A pollen study of 2 kettle lakes in Canada showed that 5800  years ago hemlocks declined from 30% of the forest canopy to 5% within a few decades.  Previous researchers believed an insect pest, the hemlock looper (Lambdina fusallaria) was responsible for this decline, but this study implicates the mid-Holocene hot dry climate phase.  Hemlock trees have shallow roots and can’t survive prolonged draughts.  Porcupines like to eat the inner bark of hemlock trees, and a single porcupine can kill as many as 100 hemlock trees in a single winter.  However, I doubt the decline of 1 species of tree is what doomed porcupines in the south.  Pleistocene porcupines lived in Florida and the South Carolina coastal plain where hemlocks were uncommon, even during the Ice Age.  And porcupines survived in the southeast well after the  mid-Holocene decline of the hemlock.  I think we can squarely put the blame on hungry Indians.

Porcupines appear to have been cooked at 2 of the 7 southeastern Holocene sites where their remains have been found, including the Charles Church Rock Shelter and the Tennessee River.  Though not a big enough data base to be statistically valid, this is suggestive.  Reportedly, porcupine flesh tastes like “flabby pork.”  A book entitled Rattlesnake Under Glass provides a recipe for porcupine based on an old Indian method of preparation.  I doubt the author actually tried the recipe, and it sounds like a terrible way to cook any small animal.  The unskinned and uncleaned porcupine was covered with a 2 inch layer of clay and placed on hot coals for 2 hours.  When the clay was baked hard, it was cracked open, and I suppose removal of the clay also removed the quills.  I would never cook any kind of meat without first removing the entrails.  Otherwise, the meat is likely to literally taste like shit.  Leave the porcupines alone, but if faced with starvation and forced to eat 1 individual, I recommend removing the guts before cooking.

Eastlake, Martha

Rattlesnake Under Glass

Simon and Shuster 1965

Haas, Jean; and John McAndrews

“The Summer Draught Related Hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis) Decline in Eastern North America 5700-5100 years ago”

Proceedings: Symposium on Sustainable Management of Hemlock Ecosystems in Eastern North America

Whyte, Thomas

“Erethizon dorsatum (American porcupine) Remains from the Charles Church Rock Shelter, Watauga County, North Carolina”

Southeastern Naturalist 9 (4) 2010

The Lubbock Lake Fossil Site

March 25, 2015

Lubbock Lake was a natural 10 acre body of water located within the city limits of Lubbock, Texas.  Wind blown sediment formed a barrier that choked the flow of a stream, creating this lake.  Springs fed the stream and were part of the headwaters of the Brazos River system.   During the 19th century Lubbock Lake served as a favorite watering hole for cowboys and their cattle, and Indians had utilized these wetlands for at least 13,000 years.  But during the 1930s too many residents had dug wells in the vicinity causing the water table to drop and the lake to dry up.  City workers dug into the dry lake bed in a failed attempt to establish a reservoir.  However, vertebrate fossils and artifacts were found in the spoil piles of dirt dug by the engineers.  Scientists began studying this locality.  Material from this site was the first ever to be radio-carbon dated.  It’s the only site where evidence humans butchered giant short-faced bear and pampathere has ever been found. In 1987 Eileen Johnson published an extensive study of all the data compiled from this site.  That’s the source for the information I write about in this blog entry.

Location in the state of Texas

Location of the Lubbock Lake Fossil Site.  There is a museum administered by Texas Tech near the site which is also known as the Lubbock Lake Landmark.

Scientists looked for fossil pollen throughout the 300 acre area around Lubbock Lake.  They wanted to determine what the environment of the area had been like over the past 13,000 years.  They had a hard time finding enough pollen to establish a statistically valid pollen data base.  Some pine and spruce pollen was found in Pleistocene-dated samples, but scientists can’t agree on interpretations of the meager data they do have.  Some plant macrofossils were found in Pleistocene-dated sediments–bulrush, spike rush, seepweed, and netleaf hackberry.  This indicates the immediate vicinity of the stream was a brushy marsh.

Fossil remains of netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulate) were found in Pleistocene-aged sediments at Lubbock Lake.  It is a small tree adapted to arid climates.

One scientist analyzed the composition of snail species to determine how the local environment has changed over the past 13,000 years.  Pleistocene-aged strata held 46 species, including 29 land and 17 aquatic snails.  All of the aquatic species can still be found in the region, but 3 species of land snails no longer occur here.  The silky vallonia (Vallonia cyclophorella) and the moss chrysalis snail (Pupilla muscorum) no longer range this far south.  Vertigo gouldi basidens (a snail with no common name) is currently restricted to high elevations in Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico.  The retreat of these 3 species from the Lubbock Lake site suggests a cooler moister climate existed here during the Late Pleistocene.

Pupilla muscorum 2.png

The moss chrysalis snail (Pupilla muscorum).  Shells of this species were found in Pleistocene-aged strata at this site.  It no longer ranges this far south.

The composition of the vertebrate fossils found in the Pleistocene-aged strata indicates the southern high plains environment was mostly grassland and desert with some brush and wetland habitats.   There are no representative species definitively representative of woodland or forested habitats, so I doubt pine and spruce trees were present in significant numbers.  Mammoth, bison, horse, camel, pronghorn, prairie dog, ground squirrel, jack rabbit, desert cottontail, burrowing owl, and tortoise prefer arid prairie habitat.  Herds of bison and pronghorns drank from Lubbock Lake until the end of the 19th century.  Based on this faunal composition, I believe the environment has changed little at this location since 13,000 years ago, though summers have gotten much hotter than they were during the Ice Age.

Eight species of extant vertebrates that lived near Lubbock Lake during the Late Pleistocene no longer occur here.  Meadow voles, southern bog lemmings, and prairie voles can’t tolerate the present day summer temperatures that can reach 100 degrees F.   Richardson’s ground squirrels have retreated to higher elevations.   Box turtles and common garter snakes can’t endure high heat without the shade of trees.  Eileen Johnson believes late Pleistocene summer temperatures here were on average 10 degrees F cooler than those of the present day.  There was also more frequent cloud cover.  I agree with this assumption but disagree with her assumption that Ice Age winters here were frost free.

She bases this belief on the presence of giant tortoise and pampathere (a species of giant armadillo) in the fossil record.  She assumes neither species could have survived a frost.  She stated they both were too large to have dug burrows that would have helped them escape freezing temperatures.  This is a curious assumption–grizzly bears grow larger than pampatheres, and they dig dens.  Since Dr. Johnson’s study was published, evidence pampatheres dug burrows has been found in southern Brazil, demonstrating they could have survived freezing temperatures by digging burrows.  And on previous blog posts, I’ve challenged the widely held assumption that giant tortoises couldn’t survive subfreezing temperatures. (See:https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/the-extinct-pleistocene-giant-tortoise-hesperotestudo-crassicutata-must-have-been-able-to-survive-light-frosts/)  The giant tortoises were closely related to gopher tortoises, a species that does dig burrows; and I’m unaware of any anatomical studies that determined whether or not the giant tortoises were capable of digging.  Moreover, giant tortoises could have utilized burrows dug by giant ground sloths or pampatheres.  I believe winter temperatures at Lubbock Lake during the Ice Age were the same or just slightly milder due to greater cloud cover than those of the present day.

The most unusual vertebrate fossil found at Lubbock Lake was a specimen of the gray-breasted crake (Laterallus exilis), a bird that is presently restricted to parts of Central and South America.  During the Ice Age large lakes were abundant in southwestern North America because glacially cooled air collided with hot desert air, resulting in increased precipitation and cool cloudy conditions.  The gray-breasted crake prefers grassy marshes adjacent to lakes.  This bird along with many other species of waterfowl occurred in great numbers along these lakeshore habitats.  Wandering flocks and individuals of these species also populated the more meager wetlands found on the southern high plains, the region adjacent to the land of great lakes.

Laterallus exilis

Remains of gray-breasted crake were found at the Lubbock Lake site.  This was the most surprising faunal find at this site.  Today, the range of this species includes parts of Central and South America.

Map of Pleistocene lakes in southwestern North America.  Cooler summer temperatures meant lower evapotranspiration rates, resulting in these abundant lakes then.  This probably explains the  occurrence of several aquatic bird species found in Pleistocene-aged strata at Lubbock Lake.

Several areas within the Lubbock Lake site have been interpreted as megafaunal meat processing stations. A station buried in Late Pleistocene sediment was used by members of the Clovis Culture.  They apparently butchered mammoths, bison, horse, half-ass, camel, giant short-faced bear, pampathere, turtles, and turkey here.  They butchered a 25 year old mammoth along with 2 juveniles.  A camel leg bone was broken and gouged for marrow.  Ribs of bison, camel, and horse showed evidence of de-fleshing.  A bear bone had knife cut marks on it, and the Indians actually made a tool from a bear bone. Eighteen shells of a large extinct subspecies of box turtle found here show evidence of human modification.  I should note that not all anthropologists agree with Dr. Johnson’s interpretation.  Some think stream action rolling bones against rocks can mimic the marks made by humans using stone blades.

This is the only known evidence that humans exploited Arctodus simus–the giant short-faced bear. There are knife cut marks on this bear’s leg bone. From the below referenced work.

Assorted Bison antiquus bones.  This was the evolutionary predecessor to the modern bison.  The Lubbock Lake site has been interpreted as a game processing station used by  paleoindians as well as archaic, ceramic, Apache, and Comanche Indians.

These are radio-carbon dates of associated organic material where these Paleo-Indian arrowheads were found.  Add about 2000 years for actual calendar year dates.

There is also plenty of evidence that later Folsom, Plainview, Highview, Archaic, Ceramic, Apache, and Comanche Indians also used this site to process game.  The Lubbock Lake site has long been the only reliable source of water for miles.  This explains why it’s an excellent archaeological site with representative artifacts from every culture that’s lived in the region for the past 13,000 years.

Below is the list of vertebrate species found here in strata dated to between 13,000 BP- 10,000 BP.

garfish–Lepisosteus sp.

quillback–Carpoides cyprinus.  This is a type of buffalo fish.

bullhead catfish–Ictalurus amieurus

black bullhead catfish–Ictalurus melas

channel catfish–Ictalurus punctatus

white bass–Morone chrysops

green sunfish–Lepomis cyanellus

warmouth sunfish–L. gulosus

unidentified darter–Percina sp.

tiger salamander–Ambystoma tigrinum

Couch’s spadefoot toad–Scaphiophus couchi

unidentified spadefoot toad–plains or western, Scaphiophus bombifrons or S. hammondi

cricket frog–Acris crepitans

plains toad–Bufo cognatus

woodhouse’s toad–B. woodhousei

bullfrog–Rana catesbiani

pickerel frog–R. palustrus

leopard frog–R. pipiens

snapping turtle–Chelydra serpentine

pond slider–Chrysemys scripta

Wilson’s tortoise–Geochelone?  wilsonii (extinct)

extinct giant tortoise–Hesperotestudo sp.

extinct subspecies of eastern box turtle–Terrapene Carolina putnami

ornate box turtle–T. ornate

soft-shelled turtle–Trionyx sp.
Texas horned lizard–Phrynosoma cornutum

Great plains skink–Eumeces obsoleteus

black racer–Coluber constrictor

worm snake–Carphophis amonus

corn snake–Elaphe guttata

western hook-nosed snake–Gyalopion canum

western hog-nosed snake–Heterodon nasicus

king snake–Lampropeltis getulus

milk snake–L. triangulum

unidentified water snake–Nerodia sp.

red bellied water snake–N. erythrogaster

unidentified snake in the Elaphe or Pituphis genus

patch-nosed snake–Salvadora sp.

ground snake–Sonora semiannulata

checkered garter snake–Thamnophis marcianus

common garter snake–T. sirtalis

lined snake–Tropidoclonion lineatum

rough earth snake–Virginia striatula

copperhead snake–Agkistrodon contortix

western diamondback rattlesnake–Crotalus atrox

eared grebe–Podiceps nigricollis

pied-billed grebe–Podilymbus podiceps

Canada goose–Branta Canadensis

snow goose–Anser caerulescens

mallard duck–Anas platyrhincus

gadwall or pintail duck–A. streptera or A. acuta

pintail duck–A. acuta

northern shoveler–A. clypeata

green winged teal–A. crecca

blue-winged teal-A. discors

cinnamon teal–A. cyanoptera

ruddy duck–Oxyura jamaicensis

marsh hawk–Circus cyaneus

unidentified galliforme–either a prairie chicken or sharp-tailed grouse

turkey–Meleagris sp.

Virginia rail–Rallus limicola

clapper rail–R. longirostris

sora rail–Porzana Carolina

gray-breasted crake–Laterallus exilis

common gallinule–Gallinula chloropus

coot–Fulica Americana

mountain plover–Charadrius montanus

burrowing owl–Athene cunicularia

common nighthawk–Chordeiles minor

northern flicker–Colaptes auratus

horned lark–Eremophilia alpestris

common raven–Corvus corvax

mockingbird–Mimus polyglotis

red-winged blackbird–Agelaius phoenicus

brown-headed cowbird–Molothrus ater

vesper sparrow–Poocetes gramicus

unidentified shrew–Blarina sp.

desert shrew–Notiosorex crawfordi

pampathere–Holmesina septentrionalis

desert cottontail–Sylvilagus audubonii

blacktail jackrabbit–Lepus californicus

Richardson’s ground squirrel–Spermophilus richardsonii

13-lined ground squirrel–S. tridecemlineatus

Mexican ground squirrel–S. Mexicanus

blacktail prairie dog–Cynomys ladovicianus

valley pocket gopher–Thomomys bottae

plains pocket gopher–Geomys bursarius

hispid pocket mouse–Perognathus hispidus

Ord’s kangaroo rat–Dipodomys ordii

plains harvest mouse–Reithrodontomys montanus

cactus mouse–Peromyscus eremicus

unidentified field mouse–Peromyscus sp.

northern grasshopper mouse–Onychomys leucogaster

southern plains woodrat–Neotoma micropus

white-throated woodrat–N. albigula

cotton rat–Sigmodon hispidus

meadow vole–Microtus pennsylvanicus

prairie vole–M. ochrogaster

muskrat–Ondatra zibethicus

southern bog lemming–Synaptomys cooperi

coyote–Canis latrans

timber wolf–Canis lupus

kit fox–Vulpes macrotis

giant short-faced bear–Arctodus simus

badger–Taxidea taxus

bobcat–Lynx rufus

Columbian mammoth–Mammuthus colombi

horse–Equus ?

half-ass–Equus ?

flat-headed peccary–Platygonnus compressus

yesterday’s camel–Camelops hesternus

llama–Hemiauchenia sp.

extinct pronghorn–Capromeryx sp.

pronghorn–Antilocapra Americana

upland bison–Bison antiquus

whitetail or mule deer–Odocoileus sp.

Johnson, Eileen

Lubbock Lake: Late Quaternary Studies on the Southern High Plains

Texas A&M University Press 1987


Tuesday, 1 September 2009

Confused about Davidson #2

Whilst I still lack a resolution to the earlier worry, this one was merely a momentary post-pub anxiety. A couple of people have given me a good slapping (thanks Daniel, for one) and the fact is that, whilst my attention was on the non-individualist account of epistemology, the necessary addition of a plausible innativist account of content (rather than syntax) is not anything I can begin to believe in. I’ll leave it to mark a moment of madness whilst I sit in the corner with a dunce’s hat on.

One might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. So whilst I’m having sudden doubts about Davidson, let me add another. I am not sure about the underlying argument for the constitutive principle of rationality. (I put this up with the hope that I will be able, in all conscience, to take it down again in a couple of days.)

I have always assumed it went something like this. Let’s start thinking about the metaphysics of meaning from a mundane third person point of view. (The justification for this will be partly by results and partly because none of the other starting points has been so very successful.) What would be the constraints on the radical interpretation of speech and action?

Well an interpreter could use evidence of what prompts utterance but what a speaker says will depend on what he or she believes. But to determine that depends on knowing what they mean. Hence we have two interconnected unknowns but only one sort of evidence. Radical interpretation can, therefore, only get off the ground if the interpreter adopts the principle of charity. She takes beliefs and utterances to be largely true and rational by her standards. But given that there are – by assumption – no facts about meaning unavailable to this stance this suggests that truth and rationality are constitutive principles of beliefs and meanings. They govern ontology as well as epistemology.

Two further moves:

1) Although the example suggests desert islands and grass skirts, radical interpretation begins at home. My only grasp of my native English depends on my original radical interpretation of parents and carers.

2) Against a student who objects that learning his native language didn’t seem much like this, I press the point that this is a rational reconstruction. His only justification for his knowledge of the meaning of words in English would be a description of such radical interpretation.

This second move has always seemed both crucial and plausible to me. Radical interpretation isn’t simply a description but a kind of idealised justification. Thus it isn’t closely tied to actual empirical details. There is, however, an echo of the epistemology of Descartes’ Meditations about this. Whilst for most people, most of the time, the actual groundings of interpretation can be ignored, a Descartes in his study can undertake a particular project. Further, the justifications implicit in radical interpretation are those that an interpreter could offer him- or herself.

Against this background my nagging worry is a quite different response to the question of how one might break into the interdependent circle of belief and meaning. Suppose that the Chomskians were right and that the poverty of empirical evidence especially refuting evidence for hypotheses about one’s surrounding linguistic culture is best explained by an innate universal grammar. We get language almost for free. If so, the background for radical interpretation is quite different. We can break into the circle of beliefs and meanings because aspects at least of the meanings are not so holistic. ((Of course I am simplifying grossly: UG is merely a grammar of syntax not semantics so much more will in fact be needed to pin down actual meanings. But let me press on for the moment with the fantasy on the assumption that we might think of a more sitable innativism about the grammar of contents.))

Now a first thought will be that this is merely a comment on the context of discovery not justification. To justify a claim for knowledge of meaning would require radical interpretation again. That’s the point of point 2 above.

But note how individualistic that picture of justification is. How about the idea that, relative to our human predicament, the interpreter need do much less by way of justification than such a full blown reconstruction? She can say that such and utterance probably means that so and so and, given UG, that amounts to knowledge.

My worry is that the full argument for the principle of charity and hence for the constitutive principle of rationality turns on an appeal to what would be necessary to constrain interpretation in radical interpretation but construed in such a way that the interpreter does her work as free as she can be from mere worldly favours. But if one adds together some appropriate innativism about contents and a less individualistic conception of earning the right to knowledge, won’t that undercut the rational reconstruction and hence the need for rationality?


Xenon 1.7: even more unbreakable than before!

March 15, 2012

Well after experimenting with strong encryption with Xenon 1.0 I realized the XOR one-time pad encryption was not going to cut it because many files nowadays have headers/footers/repetitive byte patters that may be able to be guessed by an attacker. This may give the attacker knowledge of a few bytes of the key and that may translate into knowing about half as many bytes of an updated key. Then with dedication, brilliant guesswork, and immense computing power, they may be able to figure out something around 10 bytes of some future message. That is why this type of security won't cut it - if my intent is for it to be unbreakable this is not adequate.

I made a few necessary improvements so that now it is possible to send the plaintext directly with the ciphertext - give it away to the attacker! - and the attacker will still not know a single byte of the updated or current key. That is much better. Of course I do not advise sending plaintext along with ciphertext for real-world uses.

This update keeps the same general code structure and file format, so I did not do a full 2.0 version change. 1.7 seemed sufficient. Same keys are compatible with 1.0 and 1.7, but obviously they will be handled differently.

That brings me to the next point - all of this newfound security had to come at a price of increased computing time and a requirement for a key to be seven times larger than the plaintext. However, remember that the key can be reused indefinitely with no risk of pattern detection (I would not advise sending the same exact message over and over, but if you did it would not be detectable). For indefinite use, it is recommended to have a key about 20 times larger than a regular message though. After that, you should be safe from all prying eyes.

Technical Info

What makes the new algorithm so much more secure? What happened in Xenon 1.0 was that a file was XOR'd with a one-use pad, and the contents of the plaintext file were used to update the key (after being put through a randomization algorithm). With the assumption that the attacker knew nothing about the message plaintext, this is effectively unbreakable.

However, as I mentioned above, many files that may be desirable to send for communications, such as word documents or html, have required header/footer contents which may be guessed by an attacker - thus for those bytes, the attacker would know both the key and the plaintext through guesswork, and if the attacker knows enough bytes of both key and plaintext they may be able to figure out the outputs of the randomization algorithm and thus the updated key. Admittedly, this does not do much for the attacker and requires immense guesswork, but still I believe this sacrifices the ideals of Xenon as unbreakable encryption.

Thus I decided that it was necessary for the encryption to have another step that makes it impossible to guess the original key values even if the plaintext is known. A good way to do this is by 'shuffling' the ciphertext after it has already been XOR'd - that is, moving the bytes around while keeping their values the same. It is a very powerful technique to obscure the original message because the factorial function (number of permutations) overtakes the uncertainty in message (ways to XOR message) after about 1000 bytes. Shuffling in such a way as to create maximum uncertainty while using a key is actually pretty difficult to do algorithmically. An ideal shuffle algorithm (in my view) would need to perform multiple list-sorting and searching (unsorting in a sense) operations, one for each byte. So a megabyte file would require sorting a list of more than a million indices and then searching through that list for each byte's location. It is very computationally intensive, so I did not implement the algorithm that way. Using an incremental offset presents another problem in that it is more structured (less possible permutations), but it is computationally realistic and effectively solves the original problem of preventing the attacker from knowing which key byte corresponds to each plaintext byte.

I have done lots of testing of multiple shuffling algorithms to find one that offers the most uncertainty for an attacker and Xenon 1.7 contains the one I found to be best. It offers 4 bytes of uncertainty in the location of each individual byte of the plaintext - even if the location of one byte is known, the location of the next one still has 4 bytes of uncertainty (technically that minus one). Most likely, this will be more uncertainty than the size of your message (if it is under 2 gigabytes) in which case the size of your message will be the effective uncertainty. It is pretty secure, considering that even 1 byte of uncertainty per byte of plaintext already makes it impossible to figure out the key with any assurance. As a result of this security, the key has to be 7 times larger than plaintext, the difference being used purely for shuffling the message.

If you have not used Xenon 1.0, check out the project page for details about Xenon keys since they act differently from keys you might be used to.

Download program file here. Code file is available here (and still as messy as before!).


Teach Me How to Dutchie

Lately I’ve been learning Dutch. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m currently at the point where I can read a newspaper article with a dictionary and mostly find my way. Some elements of Dutch, like the slippery word order, are basically intractable and are simply going to have to be internalized over time with practice. There is one element, though, that I’ve become annoyed enough with to do something about: vocabulary. Since I’m really very lazy at heart, I wondered:

What’s the optimal way to learn vocabulary?

Knowledge of vocabulary doesn’t confer knowledge of a language, far from it, but you obviously can’t know a language without knowing vocabulary. Moreover, facility with vocabulary should help the language learner to pick up new grammatical constructions and idioms from context as well as to reduce overall cognitive burden. Most importantly for the purposes of this blog post, vocabulary is easily quantifiable: you know it or you don’t.

Spaced Repetition

It turns out that we know a lot about how to efficiently study knowledge like vocabulary. The process of forgetting is well-modeled by simple exponential decay, by which I mean that the probability $p(t)$ of successfully recalling an item at time $t$ can be adequately captured by:

$p(t)=e^{-\lambda t}$

for some rate $\lambda > 0$. If we are bad at remembering the item, $\lambda$ is high; if we are good, low. The spacing effect tells us, as a matter of empirical psychology, that the best way to form a long-term memory is to recall the desired item just as you’re about to forget it. This leads straightforwardly to the conclusion that, given a fixed allotment of time for study, the most effective study regime is one that spaces repetitions of the material. The superior efficacy of spaced repetition is robust and well-known to memory psychologists; see Gwern for a nice overview.

Incidentally, the fact that spaced repetition (a) definitely works and (b) probably bears no relation to anything you did in school is something to think about.

Spaced repetition is exactly the sort of task that one would prefer to automate as much as possible: given a collection of material to be learned, one would like to have a machine that creates a model of the learner and schedules the material so as to maximize the learner’s long term recall. There is a lot of software out there that promises to do roughly that; I’ve heard good things from many people about Anki.

In the specific case of language learning, however, there’s a statistical (or really, decision-theoretical) issue that I’ve never seen addressed. To appreciate it, we first need to consider the zeta distribution, better known as Zipf’s Law.

Zipf’s Law

Words in a language are not used with equal frequency. Some words are quite frequent, and others extremely rare. As it happens, words in all known human languages obey a Zipf distribution, in which the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to some power of its rank. More formally we have:

$p(w)\propto \frac{1}{r(w)^\alpha}$

where $p(w)$ is the probability of observing word $w$ with rank $r(w)\geq 1$, and $\alpha$ controls the rate of decay. To normalize this distribution, we would sum:

$Z = \displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^N\frac{1}{i^\alpha}$

which is just the generalized harmonic number $H_{N,\alpha}$. If the number of words is infinite (mathematicians, always thinking ahead…) then the series is still convergent for $\alpha > 1$. This series is so central in mathematics that it has its own name: the zeta function, written $\zeta(\alpha)$. Hence this distribution is often known as the zeta distribution even though its most celebrated application, Zipf’s law, pertains to languages with a finite number of words. It’s also the discrete counterpart to the Pareto distribution, with which it is often confused.

The upshot of all this is that words in a language are zeta-distributed, and whenever someone mentions “Zipf” or “zeta” or “Pareto”, you really just want to think “frequency goes inversely with a power of rank” and work the details out at your leisure.

Spaced Repetition à la Zipf

What import does Zipf’s law hold for language learning? First, consider the following learning goal:

Maximize the probability of recalling a word drawn at random from a natural corpus.

Formally, we want to maximize $\textrm{E}[p(w)]_{w\sim \mathcal{Z}}$, where $\mathcal{Z}$ denotes the natural zeta distribution for words in the target language. This seems like a plausible utility function for study– it simply formalizes the truism that words that occur more often are more important to know, and assumes the simplest possible relationship between frequency and utility that could make that so. Knowing that words are zeta-distributed allows us to determine exactly how much effort we should spend memorizing the 10,000th word versus the 10,001st.

This seems like a worthy goal, but what are we maximizing the expectation over? We are maximizing over training regimens, which we can think of as functions of the type:

$f:(W,T,B)^Q \rightarrow (W,T)$

The idea is that the training regimen should take the user’s training history of $Q$ questions and answers $(W,T,B)^Q$ listing all previous words presented, time presented and binary response (correct or incorrect), and return a word to be presented at some future time $(W,T)$. The training regimen must also take data about words and ranks as a fixed parameter. Exercise: must the optimal strategy be greedy? If not, the optimization problem isn’t well-posed until we specify some bound on the amount of training left.

So, I think that’s enough to think about in one sitting. In the next post we’ll consider how to construct such a training regimen, and see how it works in practice.


The aim of the course is to take a closer look
at the recent debate about and in international law and practice. The students
will be asked to examine and reflect on the concepts that explain international
law as law. These include legality, validity, legitimacy and enforcement. In
this context the students will discuss the so-called distinction between
national law and international law. The students are required to have a good
grasp of main events in the world history.

During the course particular attention will be paid to the following international organizations and institutions: the United Nations and the International Court of Justice and the International Law Commission, the Council of Europe as an example of a regional organization, and the UN Specialized Agencies such as UNESCO and UNHCR.

Course Outline - International Law 2016.pdfCourse Outline - International Law 2016.pdf