Dangerous Toys

For recreational reading this week I indulged in some escapist fare. Long before his mainstream success as a novelist and in Hollywood (e.g. Jurassic Park), the overachieving Michael Crichton while still a Harvard med student wrote pulp crime fiction novels on the side under the pseudonym John Lange. They aren’t bad. In the 1972 novel Binary a domestic political extremist hijacks a nerve gas shipment and plans to release the gas in San Diego. The title refers (primarily) to a safeguard in the most advanced chemical weapons stockpiled by the US at the time: two components of the nerve gas were kept separate. Neither was deadly on its own; they were lethal only when mixed and they would be mixed only when used. Sometimes, as in binary artillery shells, mixing would occur when the projectile was in flight. Now that I describe the plot, it somehow seems less escapist.

One of the more enlightened decisions of the Nixon Administration, by the way, was unilaterally to eliminate US stockpiles of lethal chemical and biological weapons. Nixon stated that nuclear weapons were a sufficient deterrent to all forms of weapons of mass destruction, which was a clear implication that any attack on the US or its allies with any type of NBC (nuclear/biological/chemical) weapon would be grounds for nuclear retaliation. Eliminating the stockpiles safely took time, however, so they really were being transported on highways to facilities for processing and disposal under dubious security arrangements at the time the Crichton/Lange book was written. They didn’t require a lot of expertise to use. Short of acquiring a functional and armed nuclear warhead intact, on the other hand, terrorists would be unlikely to be able to do anything with hijacked nuclear materials other than, perhaps, contaminate an area by dispersing them. The most realistic nuclear danger always has been and still is from governments.
 
The US has never declared a definitive “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons. The Soviets did, but nobody believed them. Official Russian military doctrine (English source War on the Rocks) promulgated in 2014 more honestly states,
 
“The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
 
The Congressional Research Service 2021 report titled Russia’s Nuclear Weapons: Doctrine, Forces, and Modernization concludes the unofficial (real) doctrine may be less cautious: "When combined with military exercises and Russian officials’ public statements, this evolving doctrine seems to indicate that Russia has potentially placed a greater reliance on nuclear weapons and may threaten to use them during regional conflicts." This is sometimes called a policy of “escalate to de-escalate.” The report’s conclusion is supported by commentary in other Russian official documents such at the 2017 naval doctrine, which states that deterrence can be achieved during an escalating conflict by “demonstrating the willingness and determination to employ force, including non-strategic nuclear weapons.”
 
This isn’t much different from US policy. (Nor is it much different from that of the UK, France, North Korea, Pakistan, and India; China officially has a “no first use” policy, though unofficial policy is anyone’s guess; Israel doesn’t admit to having the 100 or so weapons everyone assumes it has, so it can have no official position; South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons in 1989.) Accordingly, the risk remains what it was during the Cold War: misjudgment of an opponent’s response either to a threat to use or to the actual limited use of tactical nukes with the result that events escalate out of control. This is just something to keep in mind while playing brinkmanship games in places such as Ukraine.
 
I’m of an age to remember the height of the Cold War. There was a weird sort of dark humor about the whole thing that was prevalent at the time – a way of coping with what was beyond our control. I posted some years ago about my memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis: see 22 October. I remember well the civil defense drills in school. Recalling them does not evoke nostalgia. Schools are scary enough these days without having cause to restart them.
 

Sheldon Allman – Radioactive Mama (1960)

On the Nose

I grew up in the town where I currently live. My mother grew up in the same town. My family operated businesses (all in some way real estate related) in this town since the 1950s. Accordingly, quite a few locals know me, at least in passing. Most don’t anymore to be sure, especially relative newcomers. (I closed my Main Street office in 2014.) To the overwhelming majority of residents I’m just another anonymous face. But enough do, especially old-timers, that it is rare for me to go the market or to lunch or some other local public place without getting at least one nod or wave or “Hi Rich” from someone other than the staff. The reverse, of course, is true as well. Among the many strangers in those places there is always someone I know at least in passing. (Fewer each year, truth be told. I sometimes joke that I know more local residents in Hilltop Cemetery than I do above ground, but the “joke” is very nearly true.) On the occasions when conversations happen in such encounters (as when someone familiar sits at the same lunch counter and says “Hi Rich!”) I am likely to hear gossip about other old-timers of the “Did you hear what happened to so-and-so?” sort – mostly because I probably know who so-and-so is whereas a newcomer would just respond with a bewildered shrug. (I’m not above offering gossip, btw; I just don’t have much on tap anymore – that I care to share anyway.) In turn I’m likely to get an occasional mention in similar conversations among others – again, not as much as in the past, but it still surely happens.
 

My mom at 13 in the center of town 1941

Gossip gets a bad rap, but anthropologists and psychologists argue that it is normal, human, and an evolutionary benefit both to the species and the individual. Some argue that humans owe their primo advantage (language) to gossip. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar for one writes, “In a nutshell, I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.” A hunter-gatherer group will max out at about 150 people (it generally splits when it gets any bigger), which are few enough that everybody knows everybody. Navigating the very complex and constantly shifting social structures within this community (knowing who is doing what with whom and how that affects your status) is crucial to personal and reproductive success. Not many of us live in groups and villages of 150 people anymore. We might not even know our own neighbors. (I know my own neighbor’s name only because of mis-delivered mail.) So, modern gossip (masquerading as news) instead tends to be about public figures we all recognize (strangers though they may really be), but the old fashioned personal type within social cliques and subsets still occurs too.
 
Theophrastus in his list of character types (c. 300 BCE) wonders at the motives of the Gossip: “It is a standing puzzle to me,” he writes, “what object these men can have in their inventions.” I suspect Theo was just feigning ignorance in order to seem less like them. The motive, whether self-acknowledged or not, is and always has been social status. This is most obvious when gossip is weaponized as it so often is in the workplace… and the damage it can cause is the source of its bad rap. None of us wants to be targeted in this way. It is why we recoil from nosy questions from would-be gossipers. It is why we consider some questions to be nosy. (Alternate spelling: nosey.) Financial questions are always sensitive except among close friends and family – sometimes even there. We often learn the hard way how answers to “How much do you earn?” or “What was your bonus?” can be used by others in the workplace for their own negotiations – often to your detriment. Even in a nominally non-competitive social context (in reality there is no such thing among any species of primate) nosiness can be off-putting because of its potential social harm to us. What question is nosy and what isn’t depends on how close and confidential a relationship is, of course. Just a few examples of ones I have gotten in the past year from casual acquaintances include:
 
            What did you get for that property you sold?
            Do you have a mortgage on your home?
            [Those two are public record, if anyone really wishes to check.]
            Why aren’t you married?
            [I usually answer this one with “Because hell hasn’t frozen over.”]
            Why don’t you have kids?
            [Just lucky, I guess.]
            Since you don’t have kids, who are you leaving your estate to?
            [I get this one repeatedly and usually answer with “I plan to spend every

            cent.” This might be true.]
            How much is on your credit cards?
            [Yes, this was a real question.]
            Did you do a lot of drugs in the 60s?
            [The 1960s or my 60s?]
 
I actually don’t mind these inquiries: I don’t answer them seriously but I don’t mind them. I long ago (not as far back as high school regrettably, but long ago) learned to deflect them. I find nosiness irksome only when it crosses over into active busybody territory, e.g. the person who asks if you bought a new boat and, if the answer is yes, then calls the police because the boat trailer in your back yard violates some obscure zoning ordinance. It is the person who confronts a neighbor because a “Yard Sale” sign violates a homeowners association code. It is the person who calls social services on parents who let their kid walk to school. A woman once called the police on me because my car broke down in a No Parking zone; they arrived while I waited for a tow truck, but didn’t write a ticket. I won’t tell the name. That would be gossip.
 

Bull Moose Jackson - Nosey Joe (1952)

 

The Glad Seed

Nostalgia can be evoked by the smell, sight, or taste of almost anything familiar, but food is definitely a big trigger. Often we like something for no other reason than its familiarity. Take root beer, which I have in my pantry at this moment. Watch reaction videos of non-Americans trying root beer for the first time. Few like it. Most think it tastes like cola gone seriously wrong somehow. It is similar to the reaction of most Americans on their first exposure to kvas, a Russian soft drink that tastes something like liquid carbonated rye bread. It’s weird to newbies, but I fully understand why Russian expatriates get nostalgic about it. So too with other flavors. Childhood memories of home cooking are often the strongest source of food nostalgia.

                                            

In my case the nostalgia is not from home cooking per se – not from my parents’ home anyway. My mother was a remarkable woman of many talents but cooking wasn’t really one of them and she didn’t pretend otherwise. “Like mother used to make” to me means off the shelf and probably from the frozen section: nothing really wrong with it, just generic. (This describes my own present-day cooking, too, by the way.) The memorable home meals from my childhood were memorable for reasons other than culinary. My paternal grandmother on the other hand was a phenomenal cook who always worked from scratch. We’d go to her house on holidays or just the occasional Sunday, and I’m experiencing taste-memories of some of her dishes right now just by writing about them. My grandfather was from Budapest and my grandmother’s family hailed from Bratislava (both Austria-Hungary at the time), so much (by no means all) of the fare on their table was very Central European: things like stuffed cabbages, stuffed peppers, and goulash. Don’t spare the paprika. One of her signature desserts was a poppy seed swirl cake: heavy enough on the poppy seeds for a single slice to make one fail drug tests for a month.

 

Poppy seeds are what brought the whole subject of food nostalgia to mind for today’s post. I get a yen for them occasionally, but nearby markets carry only poppy seed muffins, lemon cake, and bagels. These are fine but don’t stir any childhood memories. There is a Hungarian bakery about 40 minutes from my house that sells baked in-house poppy seed swirl cake, but a 1 ½ hour round trip (including in-store time) is a long way to go just for a cake, so I always talk myself out of it unless in the neighborhood anyway. However, I happened upon an ad for home delivery of Stern’s poppy seed cake a few days ago. I rarely order anything food-related online. Food shopping is just something I prefer to do in person, but on this occasion I decided to make an exception. The cake was delivered by Amazon to my door and I’ve been nibbling at it since this morning. OK, it’s not grandma’s by any means, but it really isn’t bad. It’s close enough to evoke the strong case of food nostalgia that I was after.

Poppies (Papaver somniferum) are among the earliest domesticated crops. Poppy seeds have been found at over 40 Neolithic archaeological sites from Anatolia to France. The oldest sites precede 5000 BCE, and for good reason. The seeds have excellent nutritional value. They are high in fiber, omega-6 fatty acids, zinc, magnesium, and thiamin… and of course the dried sap from the poppy flower pod has its own attraction. It is the source of opium, from which morphine, codeine, and heroin are derived. The ancients across Eurasia were well aware of the sedative and pain relieving qualities of opium. Greek and Roman writers (including Pliny and Galen) describe its narcotic effects. Yet the seeds themselves contain very little of the drug. Even if one were to eat an entire cake like the one pictured at a single sitting, the only high would be from the sugar. This is why poppy seeds are legal in the US even though opium is not.

 

There is just enough related chemistry in the seeds however to give false positives on tests for opiates. This is not just a rumor or some plot device for a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine fails a company drug test. The Mythbusters ran an experiment on the “myth” by eating poppy seeds (a relatively small amount at that) in one episode. They confirmed that they tested positive for opium afterward.

 

Poppy seeds are a versatile ingredient and they turn up in a variety of baked goods. Nearly all of them are good but the swirl roll remains my favorite, no doubt because of my early experience with it. It continues to be popular in Central Europe today: especially (but not limited to) Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. It goes by many names: makowiec, Mohnstrudel, mákos bejgli, et al. But whatever one chooses to call it, I suspect I’ll be ordering another one soon. Maybe next time I’ll have it after stuffed cabbage… but not before a blood or urine test.

                                                                                                                

 

Seinfeld – Elaine fails drug test

 

Laughing in the New Year

Today finishes the first week of 2022. “Happy New Year,” I’ve been bidden all week, as you no doubt have been as well. We’ll see how that goes, though happiness is notoriously hard to define. It is why the Declaration of Independence wisely proclaims only the right to pursue happiness, not attain it. Happiness in general is a lot for which to ask – maybe too much. It is probable that a constant state of happiness is unattainable. Even Dr. Breuning in her self-help book 14 Days to Sustainable Happiness: A Workbook for Every Brain warns of the biological necessity of contrary states. The body’s feel-good chemicals, she says, “are designed to do a job, not flow all the time.” Accepting feeling bad now and then, rather than trying to correct the feeling by interventions that provide short term relief but long term harm, is part of her definition of “sustainable happiness.” We can, however, she tells us, escape ruts of feeling generally miserable (whether or not in 14 days) and that is something. So, by happiness she means something more like contentment than giddiness.

We certainly have moments of giddiness though. On the first day of January I giddily laughed at the cat. He leapt from the floor with an intent to land on the counter but had forgotten the sink was located at the spot he had chosen. He jumped back out of the sink with a feline “I meant to do that” insouciance. Laughter is a pretty good indication of at least momentary happiness. Humans are famously the only animals that cry, probably as a social display adaptation; other animals do have lacrimal glands, but they just keep the eyes moist, not express emotion. But what about laughter? We are less alone on that one. An article in Bioacoustics last April claimed that at least 65 mammal and bird species laugh. Their definition of laughter is broad. It includes the voiced pants that lots of mammals make as a social indicator of play – as when two dog pals are roughhousing but not seriously fighting. Human laughter is thought ultimately to have evolved from this, but some argue it is qualitatively different. Great ape laughter, unsurprisingly, is the closest to our own.

Whether there is a qualitative difference depends in large part on whether other animals have a sense of humor. This in turn depends on how you define humor, which is tricky. “Enjoying an outcome contrary to what is expected” is an old definition of what is funny, but it has obvious flaws: you can know the “Who’s on first” bit by heart – no surprises – and still find it funny. Nietzsche’s surmise (copied by Freud) was that humor is sublime cruelty. This unpleasant definition has stood the test of time better. Even puns, after all, are painful. Humor is “sublime” to the extent it is life and friendship affirming: good-natured teasing, for example, shows a confidence that the person is strong enough to take it with equal good nature. It is to this extent respectful. (Trouble can occur – as it can with roughhousing dogs for that matter – when one or the other party doesn’t recognize where the line is between play and serious aggression.) We even can laugh at our own pain – at the cruelty of life as it is – which is a self-affirmation. Support for this view (though often reluctant) is found in much modern research. Sadists, of course, dispense with the sublime part – hence the “evil laugh” of storybook (and real) villains. But even the best of us laughers apparently indulge at bottom in Schadenfreude – just more obviously on some occasions than others.
 
If our great ape relatives are amused at existential ironies they keep it to themselves. They would laugh at the cat though. They do appreciate pratfalls and will laugh at them like any human, so I think it is fair to say they have a sense of humor though it lacks subtlety. Typical chimpanzee humor is swatting another chimp with a branch and then running away laughing to indicate he is just playing around. It’s a risky prank. Just as not all humans can take a joke, not all chimps can either. It’s probably not a stretch to suppose some other animals are jokesters, too.
 
So, 2022 started for me with at least one laugh. That’s at least a dollop of happiness. I’ll see what I can sustain for the remaining 11+ months, and will try to keep any cruelty on the sublime side of the line. Heh, heh.
 

Beau Brummels – Laugh, Laugh (1964)