Rob Reiner Had It All

If you think it would be great to be rich, famous and successful, well, maybe. Or maybe you will end up being stabbed to death by your own son like Rob Reiner.

If you think it would be great to be born rich and handsome and never have to struggle, well, maybe. Or maybe you, like Nick Reiner, will drift into the life of a homeless drug addict by the time you are 15 and then end up murdering your parents with a knife at 32.

Fate cannot give you happiness. Money cannot give you happiness. Fame cannot give you happiness.

Only you can do that.

You do not have problems because of evil billionaires or immigrants or the Elite or the woke mob or the Illuminati. You have problems because everyone has problems. You struggle because life is a struggle. If you think money would fix your problems, consider the Reiners. If you think you just need a break, well, Nick Reiner got plenty of breaks. 

If your heart is sick, no amount of money will cure you. If your mind is sick, success will not fix you.

If mind is healthy and your heart is full of love, then you will thrive.

Wood Ant Purgatory

Weird story from Poland, where biologists recently discovered a strange "colony" of wood ants living in an abandoned concrete bunker. Many years ago wood ants built a large mound over the top of the bunker, but over time the metal cover of the bunker's ventilation shaft rusted through, creating a big hole in the middle of the mound. Thousands of ants fall down the hole into the bunker and can't climb out. They have subsisted down in the bunker in a minimal sort of way, recreating ant life as best they can:

What they found, over two seasons of observation, was a group of almost a million worker ants whose lives are so strange that they hesitate to call them a "colony" in the observations they just published in The Journal of Hymenoptera. Because conditions in the bunker are so harsh, constantly cold, and mostly barren, the ants seem to live in a state of near-starvation. They produce no queens, no males, and no offspring. The massive group tending the nest is entirely composed of non-reproductive female workers, supplemented every year by a new rain of unfortunate ants falling down the ventilation shaft.

I find this to be a perfect metaphor for certain things about life: the impulse to go on overcomes everything else, even for sterile groups that can't possibly reproduce themselves. The worker ants go on doing the things they are programmed to do, gathering and storing what food they can find and clearing waste like dead ants out of their living areas. It's what living things do.

Gilgamesh and Humbaba in Mesopotamian Art

Gilgamesh, the great hero of ancient Mesopotamia, makes surprisingly few appearances in their art. The image above is the most famous, from the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon at Khorsabad, now in the Louvre.

Full image of the above.

This relief of Gilgamesh and two winged demons comes from Tell Halaf in Syria, also dating to Assyrian times.

From earlier times little except for cylinder seal images. Here Gilgamesh assumes the pose of the ancient Master of Animals.

 This one shows Gilgamesh battling the Bull of Heaven.

Here, having defeated the bull, he takes on the monster Humbaba, whose mouth is fire, whose breath is death

There are several drawings like these that show up on mythology web sites. I assume they are made from seals.

One early depiction of Gilgamesh I have found that is not from seal is this Neo-Sumerian votive plaque, now in the royal museum of Belgium, dating to between 2250 and 1900 BCE.

Gilgamesh's friend, the wild man Enkidu also appears on many images. In these two, an Assyrian relief (above) and a Babylonian seal (below), Gilgamesh and Enkidu battle Humbaba.

This relief showing the same scene is of disputed date, but it may be as early as 1500 BCE. It is thought to be from Uurk, but that is also uncertain.

Here Gilgamesh and Enkidu battle separate enemies, side by side.

There may be more surviving images of Gilgamesh's great enemy, the monster Humbabu, than of Gilgamesh himself. They seem to have been charms against bad luck or wards against demons, the kind of magic the Greeks called apotropaic.

The Greeks used images of Medusa to frighten away demons, and the Babylonians used these amulets of Humbaba.

Gilgamesh is one of my favorite traditional stories because of the way it combines adventure with lessons about fate. My favorite part is the conclusion, when Ishtar explains that Gilgamesh's quest for immortality was futile:

O Gilgamesh, whither do you fare?
The life you seek, you will not find.
When the gods created man,
They apportioned death to mankind;
And retained life to themselves.
O Gilgamesh, fill you belly,
Make merry, day and night;
Make of each day a festival of joy,
Dance and play, day and night!
Let your raiment be kept clean,
Your head washed, body bathed.
Pay heed to the little one, holding onto your hand;
Let your wife delight your heart.
For in this is the portion of man.

Eyjafjallajokull and Me

Under normal circumstances I would be enjoying the eruption of the "island mountain glacier" volcano, despite being disappointed over the prosaic meaning of its magnificent name, but it has become a bit personal. See, Lisa and I have tickets to fly to Scotland on Tuesday night. We are planning a week-long adventure away from our children (thanks Carole!), paid for by the check that came with my corporate excellence award. This looks increasingly unlikely. At the moment Heathrow is closed until early Monday morning, and an Icelandic geologist just told the AP that activity at the volcano is increasing.

Funny, I don't feel particularly agitated. I mean, it's a volcano; what can I do about it? So I will get ready for our trip, hope for the best, remind myself that if we don't go this week, we will go some other time, and in the meantime enjoy the cachet of having had my vacation canceled by a volcanic eruption.

The Body is a Strange and Complex Thing

Exercise seems to help the body manage glucose, so doctors routinely tell everyone at risk of diabetes to get more exercise.

Exercise causes the cells to release oxidants, which do lots of molecular damage and may (or may not) be one of the main causes of aging.

So maybe the way to get the best outcome would be to exercise more but also take lots of anti-oxidants, like Vitamin C and E, to curb the damage caused by oxidants.

Alas, a new study seems to show that if you take lots of anti-oxidants, exercise no longer has any effect on your body's ability to handle glucose. The potentially harmful release of oxidants seems to be key to the healthful effects of exercise on diabetes.

Whenever I read that this or that (anti-oxidants, say) is the key to health, I roll my eyes, because our bodies are machines of a complexity far beyond anything we can really understand. Tinkering with one system may cause a whole cascade of changes to others. Better, I think, just to focus on the things we understand from millennia of experience: that an active life, a moderate diet, and a positive attitude all correlate with health and long life.