The Experiment

The Experiment

Day 1: Our test subject seems both enthusiastic and relaxed about the experiment, reportedly looking forward to peace and quiet for the next few weeks. We shall see.

Day 2: Our test subject has become a bit irritated, complaining of general malaise and specific itchiness. He asked if he could use the phone to call his family. I feigned ignorance but said that I would ask. Meanwhile, I am beginning to get concerned with the condensation inside the jar and the potential for it to impede my proper observation of the subject. 

Day 3: The subject looks haggard, primarily due one of the younger members of our staff shaking his enclosure. I have observed some abrasions, but it is not clear if this was from the shaking or something more serious. Needless to say, if this were an episode of The Walking Dead, we would likely ask the subject to leave our group, at the end of a shotgun.

Day 4: The subject has begun his transformation. He asked again about using the phone to call his family, and, again, I had to lie, stating that my supervisor was on vacation, returning next week. He also asked if there was some kind of medicine I could give him to relieve his headache and nausea. I let him know that I would talk to the medical staff. As I watched him there, lying in his own bodily fluids, with a thick, white, moldy foam growing on his side, I recalled social experiments that tested the limits of authority bias, wherein subjects were told to deliver increasing levels of electric shock to a participant in the next room, and did so even to dangerous levels when the experimenter demanded it. I wondered what this experiment says about me, but I have to provide for my family, and this is steady work. I dread the next few weeks and can only hope that the subject does not plead for mercy.

Day 5: The subject looks very tired and unshaven today. He has been quite still and has taken to staring at me, though, thankfully, has not been speaking. He has witnessed me eating a fair amount of fruit during my lab breaks, so I half-wonder if he has any concerns in this regard. I told him that he was as safe as an Alter Boy in church, but then immediately regretted the analogy. Needless to say, you would need to pay me $1 million (or even more) to eat this particular subject at this point. Even though I continue to feel empathy towards his suffering, he thoroughly disgusts me.

Day 8: Through unfortunate circumstances, the subject was left unattended all weekend. I thought that my colleague was working the weekend shift, and she thought the same of me, so when I breezed into the lab this morning with a cheery "Hello! How was your weekend? Did so-and-so take good care of you?", the subject flashed me a look of utter disbelief and disdain. It was as if he thought that my morning salutation was meant to excuse the neglect. Of course, an empty lab has no material impact on the subject, given that nothing can be added or removed from his enclosure, but, still, we like to make him feel as though he is being looked after, to prevent any attempts at suicide. There was just such an unfortunate incident with a banana at an Illinois lab back in the 1990s, and when that information leaked into the public sphere, there was a complete work stoppage in Cost Rica for six months, which is the very reason my colleagues and I still hoard banana chips to this day. I will try to establish a better rapport with the subject today, though, again, it is hard to hide my utter disgust with his moldy filth.

Day 9: The subject is starting to flatten and liquify. I have started wondering, when is a strawberry no longer a strawberry? Will it still be a strawberry when it is just a brown, moldy disc? How about when it is just a thick, moldy soup? How about when it completely evaporates? I am no Plutarch, and this particular strawberry is not my “Ship of Theseus”, most especially because nothing is being replaced here. I am no Alan Watts either, and this particular strawberry is hardly a flower, nor is it going through transfiguration. Entomologists used to believe that a caterpillar completely liquified in its chrysalis prior to transforming into a butterfly, but then they developed a detailed understanding of histogenesis and the imaginal disc cells that survive histolysis and actually feed off of the nutrient rich soup produced by that process. I have no hope of this kind of transformation for this particular subject, nor has any prior strawberry magically transformed into a red flower from its primordial soup, but there is always a chance, so we press on with our experiments. My only regret is that our subjects do not read the fine print on the back of the flyers that we post in the quad. After they voluntarily jump in the enclosure, however, my conscience is clear. I am just glad that they clean enclosures in a separate department. I am able to tolerate this job, only because I draw the line there.

Day 10: It is customary to administer a brief survey to subjects on their 10th day. All depending on the constitution of a particular subject, this can be an easy or difficult task. In the case of my subject, it was quite difficult. For starters, the only response he was able to muster to my initial set of questions was a faint moan, so I attempted to work out a different method for him to provide his answers: 1 tap for yes, 2 taps for no. However, when I tested this method, I got indeterminate results. I asked if he was a papaya, 2 taps. I asked if he was an orange, 1 tap. I asked if he was a strawberry, a long, drawn out moan. The survey had to be administered regardless, so I just pressed on. I did not, however, leave the CSAT questions to chance, opting instead to fill them out myself, as I had no intention of putting my bonus in his moldy, filthy hands. At this rate, I am not sure if I will even be able to administer the 20th day survey, as the subject appears to be deteriorating at an accelerated pace. I know this is going to sound horrible, but I hope he is gone before I go on vacation, as I would really like to finalize his paperwork before I leave for Bermuda, so I don't have to think about him while I am there. I am really looking forward to some much needed rest and relaxation. Lab work is hard work, after all. Just ask my subject. Just kidding.

Day 11: As I was evaluating the subject today, my supervisor stopped by to congratulate me on my perfect CSAT score from my recent survey. I could see the subject trying to motion to her with his eyes, but I quickly turned her attention to some of the numerical data I had compiled on the buildup of methane gas in the subject's enclosure. After she left, I had a quick pep talk with the subject: "Are you some kind of rat?" 2 taps. "Did you hear me talk through the buildup of methane in your enclosure?" 1 tap. "Do you want me to drop a match in there with you?" 2 taps. 2 taps. 2 taps. "Then keep your mouth shut and your eyes averted when my supervisor is around, got it?" 1 tap. After a while, I started feeling bad about what transpired between us, so I let the subject know that he was actually doing very well, and that I hoped to have him out of the lab very shortly. Of course, "out of the lab" means something quite a bit different to me than it does to him, but he was rather bliss in his filthy, moldy ignorance. I then commented on how surprised I was that his leaves were holding up so well. He flashed a half smile and attempted to brush them aside, but his arms were now fused with the rest of his body. This is a bad sign. The last time that happened was with a kiwi in 2020, and he subsequently went insane after developing a rash on his neck which he had no possibility of scratching. I am hopeful that won't happen here, or at least not until I am out of the office on vacation, so that my personnel file stays clean.

Day 12: TGIF! I can’t wait to get out of here for the weekend! I tried to cheer up the subject by letting him know how beautiful the weather was supposed to be for the next few days, but he seemed a bit ambivalent about it. I really can’t figure him out at times. Around lunch time I passed the loading dock to take a look at the new volunteers. I spotted a really cute red pepper standing in the intake line. She caught me gawking at her, and I thought I saw her blush, though it was pretty hard to distinguish one red from another. Needless to say, I would love to get her in my jar. But I digress, because, for the foreseeable future, I am stuck with this ugly, filthy, moldy strawberry. I am planning to attend a champagne tasting event on Saturday, so I might give him a thought as I pair expensive champagne with a fresh strawberry, but only just a thought.

Day 15: Well, the weekend went way too fast. I arrived this morning to find the subject quite sunken in and grizzled. The liquids within his enclosure are starting to turn a dark brown. This tells me that the subject was vomiting bile over the weekend. I’m glad I wasn’t here to see that. I asked how he was feeling, but he only responded with a long groan, at which point I asked him if that was good or bad, to no avail. As a researcher, one always wonders when the tipping point will be reached. I think the subject is just about there. It won’t be long now, I suspect.

Day 16: In the 1980 cult classic 'Altered States', William Hurt's character, Dr. Edward Jessup, is obsessed with understanding the nature of human consciousness. He conducts a series of experiments using a sensory deprivation tank and powerful hallucinogenic drugs to explore altered states of consciousness, until, finally, he begins to experience strange and terrifying transformations that blur the line between reality and hallucination. Everyone in the lab loves this movie. In fact, we used to watch it all the time in the lab, in full view of our test subjects, until we received a letter from the Society for the Humane Treatment of Apricots asking that we cease and desist exposing their constituents to disturbing images. We have always suspected that, similar to the movie, the near total sensory deprivation and the development of natural hallucinogenic substances within their enclosures could cause subjects to experience regression to a more primitive, ancestral form. It is the very reason why, in addition to keeping them in an enclosure, we do not simultaneously keep them in a dark closet, lest we find a broken jar and a missing test subject one day. It is also why we study the ancestral lineage of our test subjects, and how I know that strawberries are descendent from Fragaria Virginiana (aka Virginia Strawberry) and Fragaria Chiloensis (Chilean Strawberry). I am a bit concerned about the subject's increasing resemblance to this latter ancestor, which has a reputation of being violent and vengeful. I've taken to calling him sir while taking his measurements and have apologized profusely for the 'methane incident', citing troubles at home as the pushing me over the edge. I've also been checking to make sure his enclosure is secure, but only when the subject is sleeping, as I do not want to give him any ideas, though I do believe that he was feigning sleep on one occasion. I am not sure that a regression to an ancestral from will do anything to un-fuse his arms from his side, but one must never underestimate epigenetics, and I am the last person who wants to be strangled in his sleep by a bitter fruit, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. 

Celebrate

A young Monk gets assigned to a monastery whose sole purpose is the production of Bibles. This is before the advent of the printing press, so the production process consists of 20 or so Monks hand copying from copies of the original. After a while, this new Monk notices that his copy differs from his neighbor’s copy, which differs from other copies, and so on and so forth. He raises this concern to the Abbott, who, after thinking about it carefully, decides to take his personal copy, which all other copies are based on, down to the vault to compare it against the original. After about two hours, the Monk becomes concerned that the Abbott has not yet resurfaced from the vault. He goes down to the basement and finds the Abbott in the vault banging his head on the table, with both Bibles open before him. The Monk asks, “What are you doing? What is wrong?” The Abbott replies, in a somber tone with a tinge of lifelong regret:

“The word was celebrate.” 

:-|

-- Taken from a Tara Brack talk years ago. She did not name the original author, so neither can I

Who's in the Zoo?

An unemployed Biologist responded to an ad for a “Gorilla Team Member” that the local zoo posted in a local paper. He called in, provided his credentials, and was asked to come in for an interview. During the interview, the Gorilla Team Leader described the role. “We’ve had a severe drop in attendance at the zoo these past six months. In an effort to try and lure visitors back, we want to have a team member wear a Gorilla suit and exhibit more interesting behaviors, so that word spreads and more visitors come to see this more interesting Gorilla.” The Biologist was a bit aghast. “You want to put a human being in a Gorilla suit in the same space with the other Gorillas?” “Of course not”, said the Team Leader, “You would be in your own, separate enclosure.” 

The Biologist was not too keen on perpetrating such a ruse, but as he had been unemployed for more than 6 months, he decided to give it a try. After a few weeks of training, he finally made his way to center stage: A cage with real Gorillas on one side and Lions on the other. For the first few days, the Biologist was rather meek in his performance. He would feign interest in visitors, offer them bananas, and make funny sounds for small children, but his performance did not impress his manager, and after a few days he was called to a meeting where he was told that he would need to step up his performance or they would need to find another ‘Gorilla’. 

The next day, the Biologist endeavored to provide a more elaborate performance. He did somersaults and handstands. He primitively waved at passersby. He threw objects up in the air and caught them. A large crowd started to gather. Feeling as though he had to take it to the next level, he climbed a tall tree and swung around a high branch like a pole dancer. Unfortunately, the gloves on his Gorilla suite were not conducive to maintaining his grip, so he slipped from the branch and fell flat on his back in the Lion cage. 

The largest male Lion stood up suddenly and roared at this intrusion. The Biologist lost his nerve and screamed out “Help! Help!” The Lion pounced on the Biologist, covered his mouth with his paw, and whispered “Shhh. You fool! Do you want to get us all fired!”. Security rushed in and started clearing the crowd as the ‘Lion’ pinned the unfortunate ‘Gorilla’ to the ground and continued to roar. After the crowd was dispersed and the zoo gates were locked, one of the Gorillas in the other cage shouted: “Nice job. Jackass”. 

As security escorted the defeated Biologist out of the zoo, he passed by a Llama sitting on a rock with a cigarette in one hoof and a smartphone in the other.

For anyone who suffers from imposter syndrome: Underneath our titles and our roles, we all struggle with the same ambiguity and anxiety, and we all wonder how others see us and our vulnerabilities.

Note: I adapted and extended this story from a Tara Brach talk, but she did not quote the original author, so I cannot credit it appropriately. Suffice to say that I wrote the story, but the concept is not mine.

Remember the Forgetful

An ER doctor in a busy inner-city hospital was performing rounds in the early morning when she noticed a man in his mid-60s in one of rooms, constantly checking his watch, and looking around impatiently. She asked a nurse, “What is that man waiting for?” The nurse responded, “He got stitches last week and needs to have them removed.” The doctor noticed a long list of other patients slated to be seen before the man, so she decided to try and quickly attend to him prior to getting swamped with the other patients. She went into his room, introduced herself, took a look at his wound, and removed his stitches. As they were wrapping up, she asked, “I noticed you checking your watch a few times while you were waiting. Are you late for another appointment?” The man replied, “Kind of. I try to have breakfast with my wife every morning, but I have to be there by 8am or else they won’t let me in to see her.” “Where is ‘there’ and who are ‘they’?”, asked the doctor. “Oh”, said the man, “She has been in a long-term care facility for the past ten years. She developed Alzheimer's in her early 50s.” The doctor was impressed, “Wow. And you have breakfast with her every day, huh?”. “Yes”, replied the man, “Dinner as well. Every day.” The doctor was touched, “She must really love that you spend time with her like that every day”. The man replied, “Oh. She doesn’t know who I am. She hasn’t known me for at least 5 years now. Sometimes it takes her 15 minutes to stop calling out for the attendant to protect her from this ‘strange man’”. “Oh”, said the doctor, “I am really sorry. It must be tough for you to make such an effort every day when she doesn’t even know who you are”. The man patted her on the hand and said: “It’s okay honey. She may not know who I am, but I know who she is.”

.

.

.

Note: I adapted this story from a Tara Brach talk, but she did not quote the original author, so I cannot credit it appropriately

Bats

We’ve had two encounters with bats here in the Benedetti household, and neither encounter has ended well for the bats.

On the first occasion, we had a bat that somehow got into our HVAC room and then managed to get himself stuck on a spider trap (that sticky paper) on the floor. Upon hearing a shrill noise coming from the HVAC room, I opened the door to take a look. Without the benefit of my glasses, I thought an enormous (and vocal) beetle got stuck on the trap. Val instantly recognized it as a bat. The poor little fellow was flat on his back, with the entirety of his wings stuck to the paper. There was no coming back from that, so I had to put him in a trash bag and leave it at that.

The second occasion was this evening, when, as we sat at the kitchen island, a rather large bat circled our heads. Val screamed and immediately ran out of the kitchen, but this cannot be interpreted as panic, as she immediately ran to the double doors between our family room and the rest of the house, closed the doors, and lined the bottom with towels to make it an airtight, bat-proof seal ;-) Meanwhile, I manned the other door with the electric racquet (for mosquitos), to make sure the bat did not get past me into the rest of the house, as Maggie, our dog, who is quite fearless, tracked the bat through the air and at every stop, waiting for her chance to pounce on it.

My first call was to a grade school friend of mine, Joe, to see if he had any advice or knew of someone who specialized in this kind of thing, as I was not too keen on killing the bat, but nor was I too keen on getting bit by it. You might wonder why I would call Joe for something like this, but I would not be able to offer you a logical answer. Let’s just say that if I ever happened upon Bigfoot in my backyard, I would call Joe on that occasion as well. He did, in fact, have a good idea. Get a large bedsheet and walk across the room with it fully extended to capture the bat, after which time we could let it go outside. It was a great idea, for two willing participants, but by this time Val had sealed off the other doorway with a sheet, leaving me alone in the Kitchen / Family Room with the bat.

Thus, with the sheet in hand, extended as far as I could manage, but with the racquet in my dominant hand as a fallback, I endeavored to cast the net. However, before I even took a step, the bat started circling the room, and, as I recounted to Joe, I had to pull a Serena Williams on him. I executed my best approximation of an overhead serve, sending the bat into the wall, after which he lay perfectly still on the floor. Val quickly dumped a few pickles from a large pickle jar into the kitchen sink and provided me with the jar and a cut out piece of cardboard, which I then used to maneuver the bat into the jar and sealed it accordingly. We found a small passage from the fireplace into the family room that we think the bay traversed through, and have temporary sealed it with rags and a 10lb weight.

The biggest lesson learned for me: I might want to take up tennis :-)

Vacation Report

My little Nicholas, six years old, is Autistic.

These days they call it Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is an apt name, because the kids we meet at the center where Nicholas goes for therapy range from not speaking at all to barely presenting as Autistic.

In his case, Nicholas is affectionate and social, has a strong vocabulary, though is not yet speaking in more complex sentences, and is not yet eating solid food, due to severe food texture issues. He has other quirks that will become apparent as this story unfolds.

One of the first things a parent of an Autistic child needs to do is dispense with expectations. I’ve never had expectations of normalcy myself - too many bad, made for TV movies while growing up, I suppose - but there is a lot more in the domain of expectations that one has to let go of when it comes to an Autistic child.

For the past few months, we prepared Nicholas for a trip to Niagara Falls. We called him an ‘International Traveler’, talked to him about his first long road trip, first stamp in his passport, first time in a hotel, first time sightseeing, and he was very excited to go.

The whole drive up, roughly 8 hours, Nicholas was very happy to see the sights and stop at the rest stops. He was excited to cross the rainbow bridge, check into the hotel, get settled in the hotel room, and look out of our hotel window on the falls.

After an hour or so, however, he became inconsolable with the idea that Maggie, our dog, was home alone, even though he knew that our daughter, Natacha, 22 years old, was home with her. He wanted to go home right away. It was more than just the dog, of course, as he was no longer able to follow his normal routine at home.

He cried himself to sleep that night.

I figured that after a full day of sightseeing the next day, Nicholas would have a different point of view, so I remained hopeful about our vacation plans. The next day we walked along the falls, went down into the tunnel behind the falls, took a ride on a boat right up to the falls, and walked through a lot of the sites around the main concourse.

As the day ended, I started to prepare Nicholas for all the plans we had for the next day.

Like a Baptist Pastor, preaching to his flock, each time I told Nicholas what we were going to do next, he would reply “…and then go home?” Thus, I started, “tomorrow we can go see the big whirlpool”, he replied “…and then go home?”. I continued, “and then we can go see the flowers”. He continued, “…and then go home?”. I persisted, “and then go see the butterflies”, he persisted, “…and then go home?”. In fact, he asked when we were going home about 300 times during the day.

Part of Nicholas’ condition entails repetition, most predominantly in the form of asking the same question over and over again. I don’t mean like how normal kids ask the same question over and over again. Nicholas is an order of magnitude above that.

Towards the end of her life, when my grandmother was suffering dementia and asked the same question 100 times, I was always surprised how it did not bother me, even as it drove my mother insane. I always figured it was because I only experienced it during my brief visits, whereas my mother was living with it every day. Living with Nicholas every day, I realize that I am just impervious to the agitation that might normally accompany such a phenomenon, though I am not sure my wife feels the same way ;-)

Needless to say, we drove back home the next day, so our vacation consisted of one day driving up, one day sightseeing, and one day driving back.

I was actually happy to go home, as was my wife, and I love to drive, so it all worked out in the end, but what do you think happened as soon as I pulled into the driveway?

Nicholas started crying that he wanted to go back to Niagara Falls!

He cried his way into the house, walked right by Maggie without giving her a thought, and then he cried himself to sleep. These days, I field 200-300 questions per day about when we will be going back ;-)

Supreme Court: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

I listened to the Oral Arguments for the 303 Creative LLC vs Elenis Supreme Court case. 

This is the case where a Web Designer was asserting her right not to create a wedding announcement web site for a same sex couple because it would compel speech from her that was against her beliefs. 

My first take is that the Supreme Court should have never taken up this case on a pre-enforcement basis. There was no actual case to be heard, so all parties had to deal with hypotheticals upon hypotheticals, and, meanwhile, the plaintiff had yet to be asked to provide the service that her complaint was in reference to.

My second take is that the attorneys on both sides were pretty bad, and not just because the definition of 'public accommodations' is exceedingly grey when it comes to creative services and 'speech'. 

Each party seemed to have a very hard time holding a clear line during questioning. So, for example, if an opposite sex couple asks for a wedding announcement web site that has nothing more than their names, pictures, the date and location of the event, and links to the registry and hotel, and a same sex couple asks for the exact same site with an update to the underlying information, i.e. such that we can infer that 303 would not be creating any new 'speech', 303 asserts that the same 'speech' applied to the same sex couple creates a message that they object to, while the government asserts that 303 is objecting based on the characteristics of the customer, which is fatal to the case in this example, because sexual orientation is a protected class. 

The problem here is that hypotheticals can go to the kind of extremes that everyone can agree to. Can an African American Web Designer be compelled to create a rally site for the KKK? Can a Trans Web Designer be compelled to create an anti-trans site for a Religious organization? If you answer 'no' to these questions, then even if the counter-examples are abhorrent to you, the basis is the same: Individuals should not be compelled create 'speech' that is not in alignment with their beliefs. 

But where does this lead? Will Businesses pre-screen customers to make sure that their services are only used in a way that conforms with their beliefs, and will they have a legitimate case for walking away mid-stream if they discover that this will not be the case? Can you imagine a wedding band that arrives to discover they are performing for a same sex (or even opposite sex) couple and simply turning around because they do not sanction the marriage? 

That is not what Business is about. If a Business is going to claim that it has the artistic degrees of freedom to create 'speech' then it should pursue its 'art' with excellence, regardless of the customer. That means the best possible wedding announcement web site for a same sex couple, and the most compelling rally site for the KKK. Money is exchanged, services are delivered, live and let live. Even this is not so great, especially for the latter example, but it is better than the alternative, IMHO.