Pearl of Great Price

“From seeds of doubt grow mighty ideas”

I have been to a couple commencement ceremonies where at least one person takes it upon themselves to inform the graduating class that: “The world is their oyster”. One commencement at the California State University at Long Beach actually had posters made with this idiom presented as the tagline for the ceremony. I was a graduate student in the Microbiology department at the time so the oyster thing made me think of cholera.

“Pistol: Why then the world's mine oyster/Which I with sword will open” --William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives Of Windsor Act 2, scene 2

The idea behind this idiom is that oysters have pearls in them, and the pearls have significant value. A person who knows how to open an oyster can do so with ease. They simply push the thin blade of a shucking knife into the oyster and sever its adductor muscle. Once the adductor is cut the rock-like oyster falls open. If it has a pearl in it then you’ve got yourself a pearl. The oyster idiom refers to obtaining something of great value with relative ease if you know the correct procedure.

Pearls are valuable, but not very useful. Their value is primarily in them being pretty-shiny objects. The value is set by supply-and-demand. If pearls are too common you might need a whole handful to buy even a sickly goat. There is an incentive, therefore, not to divulge the secrets of proper oyster shucking to too many people. The easier a time you have of collecting pearls the more pearls I will need to use for simple trades, and the appearance of my goat herd will suffer.

The subtleties concerning the nature of value, trade, and secret intellectual property to enhance the means of production, are not referenced in the “world is your oyster” idiom mainly due to the fact that the idiom suggests that you only get one, and that one is the whole world.

In common use even more potentially interesting dissections of the idiom are ignored. The pearl is “just there” in the oyster, so "go and get it". Talk of shucking is avoided as well as what must be the single most powerful source of oyster-idiom metaphors. I talk of seeding oysters for pearls.

Perl seeding is a procedure where tiny bits of material are added to living oysters. The oysters then form a pearl around this material. The material acts as a "seed" for the pearl by –get this- irritating the oyster.

With a world-oyster one could form giant pearls by introducing irritable bits of stuff.

“The world is your oyster… Go forth and cause it irritation”

Superficially this sounds like a less-than-optimal message, but what really irritates the world? What is more irritating than change? Could the metaphorical world-oyster be seeded with ideas, or doubt, or art, or expression, or opinion, or constructive activity?

What a cornucopia of delicious metaphors! Why are they so often overlooked?

Of course, if I was pegged to give a “World-is-your-Oyster” speech, I would probably talk about cholera.

Uncle Keith's Condo

Yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of the LDS church’s decision to allow African Americans into the priesthood. This is such an important date that Mormons speak of remembering hearing of it the way many folks recount hearing of 9/11 or JFK’s assassination:

“Those who were there for that remarkable day have said that they can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.”

On the face of it this does not sound like a big deal. There are many churches that to this day have not extended priesthood to anyone who does not have proper racial attributes. In most cases when priesthood is extended nobody really cares. I don’t even know if there has ever been an African American priest for a Korean Presbyterian church, and if someone was to set me straight on this I would have to try a little to care. Before Sammy Davis Jr how many Jewish Rabbis were African American? I don’t know.

The reason it is a bigger deal in the LDS church is that receiving the priesthood is essentially synonymous with what “getting baptized” means in many Christian churches. There is a bit of title inflation in the LDS church. What most people would call lay-priests the LDS church calls “Bishops”. What many might call “pope” or “grand-puba” the Mormons refer to as “the true prophet”. Of course as far as the prophet is concerned his words do carry a weight equal to that of the biblical prophets.

So in normal-speak yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of the Mormons letting African Americans join their church at all. So, with what the church estimates as six million members in the USA, this is a little interesting.

Still…I would not have known about it if an article in the Salt Lake Tribune titled: “Black Mormon defends priesthood ban 33 years after it was lifted” did not catch my eye.

"They" land in temple square

The article quotes Keith N. Hamilton, an attorney, historian, former member of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, and black man. Keith just wrote a book called “Last Laborer: Thoughts and Reflections of a Black Mormon” that is apparently chuc full of quotables.

“Withholding the priesthood from blacks was part of God’s unfolding plan to bring Christ’s gospel to different groups in a kind of progression — from Jew to Gentile to Americans, then Europeans, then finally to all the peoples of the world.”

it was “no man-made policy, no quick-fix solution to mob threats, nor a policy instituted because some white LDS Church leader(s) had concerns about black-white relations. It was done in the wisdom of God, in accordance with his wise purposes.”

While many American churches were built with the principles of racism serving as strong platform planks the LDS church was not. Before Joseph Smith was run out of Kirtland Ohio for shady dealings and ultra-marital promiscuity, the LDS church admitted African Americans into its priesthood.

Elijah Abel, a freed African-American slave from Maryland, was given the priesthood by none other than Joseph smith himself (in 1836). He rose to prominence in the early rag-tag Mormon church. He became a member of the council of seventy in 1839. As an African-American man in the mid 1800s his missionary work must have most effectively targeted potential African-American converts. Elijah served many missions before died in 1884.

Somehow the LDS church received the message that people with Elijah’s skin-tine could no longer be real members of the church. I wonder what form that divine communication came in?

One of the reasons why the LDS church should be important to Atheists in particular is that one of the front-runners for republican candidate for President of the United States is a Mormon. Mitt Romney also happens to be one of the most vocal anti-atheist candidates:

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. . . . Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

"The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust. We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders.”

"I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs "

"The nation does need to have people of different faiths but we need to have a person of faith lead the country."

Romney calls for a faith-test for president; just not a test of his faith. He wants religion analyzed, but only if it is secular humanism.

If Romney (or Huntsman for that matter) were members of a county-club that had excluded people on the basis of their skin color they would be asked about it. If they replied with something as schizophrenically-vacant as “it was a holy and divinely perfect part of god’s emerging plan” we would only stop telling people to not vote for them long enough to laugh derisively.

Eww, pi-water

For the past couple of days I have been dissecting a device designed to enhance water so that it will provide magical benefit.

I like water. I like swimming in water. I like drinking water. I like washing myself in water; though some suggest I do not perform this purifying ritual often enough.

I like mixing things with water. Just this morning I poured hot water over the slightly baked beans of a tropical tree and made magic.

I am mostly water.

The surface of the planet I call home is mostly water.

If I do not drink enough water I will die. If I drink too much water I will die. If I drink water with bad stuff in it I will get sick. If I drink water with good stuff in it while cycling I can go farther and faster.

Water also has aesthetic qualities. Clear water bends or reflects light in pleasant ways. Some water tastes better than other water.

There is room in the totality of our cultural experience with water to make many claims about the interaction of man with water. The device I have been taking apart is associated with several specific claims. The device uses PIMag magic to produce water sometimes called PI-water. PI-Water will supposedly:

• -Eradicate Stomach cancer
• - Decrease of brain tumor
• - Improvement in leukemia
• - Dermatitis improvement
• - Improvement with alopecia
• -Improvement in diabetes
• -Improved liver function after hepatitis
• -Lowered blood pressure
• - Improvement in cardiac output
• -Rapid recovery from stroke
• -Relief of headaches and stiff joints
• -Relief of constipation
• -Improved overall health
• -Improved immunity (intake of pi-water should be increased in the early stages of. A cold, flu or virus
• -AIDS virus reportedly does not seem to multiply in this high-energy environment.
• - Pi-water has been used to store tissue samples instead of placing them in a hormone solution. The structure of the tissues remained intact for over 30 years using this process.
• - soaking meats increases tenderness
• - Fewer spices were needed as the tastes of foods were intensified.
• - Cleaning fruits and vegetables with pi-water removes toxins and prolongs their freshness
• - Unripened bananas can be soaked for 30 minutes to sweeten their taste.
• - Spraying plants with pi-water improves their colors, watering with pi- water increases root growth and foliage. . Pi-water may also prove very useful in preserving our natural habitats.
• - Pets exhibit a higher energy level when drinking pi-water
• - It is also beneficial as an odor remover when simply sprayed by a spray
• bottle or if the pet consumes the water.
• - Spraying their coat with the water will enhance shinier and cleaner fur.
• - Improved hair cleanliness, as well as skin
• - Laundry doesn’t yellow as easily.

Quite an impressive list of beneficial uses! How many other cancer therapeutics are known also to reduce the yellowing of laundry? It is hard to reasonably imagine how one would get that sort of information about other cancer therapeutics.

The patient is frail beyond his years, and almost floats on the cushioning of the comfy chair instead of settling in. It is late in the nurse’s shift, but she still manages a well worn but calming banter while preparing his chemotherapy IV.

“How are we feeling today?” she asks

“I’m a bit tired” the patient responds “Do you think that stuff you’re putting into my vein would make a good laundry additive?”

“Hmmmm?” She asks reflexively while simultaneously uncapping the IV’s needle.

“Do you think, if I sprayed this on cat pee, it would reduce the smell?” Asks the patient.

“Lovely weather we’re having” On “we’re” she pushes the needle into a vein in the bend of his left elbow.

“Ungh” He responds, and then “I would love to dip some bananas in this stuff”

Such an impressive list of positive uses does not grow from typical lines of inquiry. This list grew from the intellectual fertilizer of direct marketing. The manufacturer may never have considered PI-water for constipation, but a quick thinking direct marketer may have believed that one of his customers was cured of the complaint by using this product.

The list positive benefits grows with the popularity of a device. Only if the list gets too long, and gets too much attention does it demand a response from the manufacturer of the device. Then it can be easier to discontinue the device than address the bogosity of the claims. Nikken has discontinued both the Optimizer and its replacement the Optimizer II, and currently Nikken has no functional replacement in its product line (on the US site…It looks like one can still get the Optimizer II on the Australian site).

The sites that make the amplified claims also come and go. I will provide hyperlinks to the sites I quote from, but I doubt they will be operational after a few months.

The manufacturer presents much more conservative claims about its PI-Water, and supplies them in a little story.

Near a small town in Japan is an area with unusual topographical features. A narrow stream flows between two hills. As it happens, one of these hills is largely composed of a mineral called magnetite. The other hill contains calcium compounds. The stream between them courses over a bed of silicates, the material that forms natural crystal. And here, Japanese scientists discovered that the water from this stream had amazing results on the surrounding plants.

What they saw astounded them. They named this substance pi water. Then they set out to duplicate these natural conditions in the laboratory. Researchers found that by using special materials, they could reproduce the environment that led to pi water in nature. These discoveries are incorporated in Nikken PiMag™ products.

 
From there the story grows wild. Various sites provide enhanced information. Pi refers to the Pi meson (or Pion) which is specially enhanced in number or activity in PI-Water. There is also a structuring, or un-structuring of the water. Magnets play a role, as well as special ceramic technology.

The technology is supposed to help replace the need for a water softener, and it works best if one starts with glass-distilled water. It is also interesting to note that there are supposed to be more calcium ions in the PI-Water than in “normal” water.

 I can believe some of the claims. If one does laundry in essentially distilled water there should be fewer yellowing situations.

The claims mentioned in this entry are what I call the “High order” claims. One of the interesting things about PI-Water is that there is an elaborate set of lower order claims concerning its physical structure.

The nature of the lower order claims appears comprehensively intricate from a simple surface scan. There are strange spectroscopic measurements. There is even a rare physical parameter called, and I am not making this up: “Eww”. Delving into this information causes my head to spin slightly on one of its axis. I hope to calm down soon, and spin you up an entry from what I’ve been learning.

Perhaps I should go drink a glass of water, or take a hot shower to help calm down?