{"id":64,"date":"2009-12-03T20:04:37","date_gmt":"2009-12-04T03:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/?p=64"},"modified":"2010-08-09T21:39:18","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T04:39:18","slug":"reindeer-really-know-how-to-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"Reindeer Really Know How to Fly"},"content":{"rendered":"

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People often believe supposedly scientifically based \u201cfacts\u201d that are simply not true.\u00a0 Yet, if you trace things back far enough, you can usually find the grain of truth that started people down the wrong track.\u00a0\u00a0 The point came up in discussions with a friend who said that my position on the actual risks of cell phone radiation sounded pretty logical but they rejoined by asking, given the season, if my hypothesis about an initial truth were correct, I should then be able to explain the scientific facts behind flying reindeer and such.\u00a0 Turns out the answer comes from pharmacology and anthropology rather than the science of flight.<\/p>\n

It seems that in northern Siberia, the reindeer have developed a taste for those colorful red and white mushrooms, fly agaric (amanita muscaria<\/em>), and will eat them till they\u2019re higher than a kite.\u00a0 Anyone eating the meat of such reindeer will get equally high. The village shamen soon figured out how to reduce the toxicity of the mushrooms, while increasing the potency and claiming it helped them fly.\u00a0 Folks in the far north had not yet discovered the art of fermentation, so the fly-in visits from the shaman with his mushroom treats were much anticipated.\u00a0 A further point\u2026many shamanistic arctic tribes such as the Koryaks of Siberia lived in semi underground yurt like structures, whose only entrance was a ladder through the smoke hole, or chimney, in the roof, down which the shamen would climb with his gifts, carried in a sack.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1931, a young Swedish artist named Haddon Sundblom, obviously familiar with the tales, created a jolly round Santa Claus as a Christmas icon for his client, Coca Cola,\u00a0 using the company\u2019s familiar red and white colors.\u00a0 Coke notes with pride that until that time, St. Nick appeared in any number of guises, from a somber man in priestly garb to a green-clad elf, and it was only after Haddon had developed the character over several years that the jolly fat Santa became our Christmas standard-bearer, shown drinking his first Coke in 1934.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a literary connection with Lewis Carroll, a well known experimenter with psychedelics and apparently a friend of anthropologists who studied the Siberian tribes.\u00a0 In Alice\u2019s Adventures In Wonderland, we meet the Caterpillar, sitting on a mushroom,who tells Alice that eating one side makes you larger, and the other makes you small.\u00a0 Size distortion is a characteristic of consuming Amanita.\u00a0 However, with a British sense of propriety, Lewis Carroll\u2019s illustrator showed the caterpillar sitting on a non-toxic, non psychedelic mushroom, rather than risk inspiring the young reader to follow Alice\u2019s trip.<\/p>\n

I should point out that I have not studied this tale of anthropological and mycological lore to the level of looking at the original studies, so the possibility exists that this is a wonderfully collective put-up job by several august scientific bodies such as the British Mycological Society and respected universities like the University of Oslo, but I doubt it.\u00a0 It seems we have almost unlimited precedence for any number of ways to celebrate the Solstice.<\/p>\n

So, here we are sitting on a pretty blue planet, warmed as we circle a rather typical type G star, located in a remote spiral arm of a nice, but unexceptional galaxy, and we\u2019ve made it round one more time.\u00a0 Regardless of your perspective on who, if anyone, really runs the show, it\u2019s hard to find fault with Tiny Tim\u2019 s last hopeful, redeeming and inclusive line from Dicken\u2019s\u00a0 A Christmas Carol<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cGod Bless us all.\u00a0 Everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy Christmas and a Somewhat Logical New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People often believe supposedly scientifically based \u201cfacts\u201d that are simply not true.\u00a0 Yet, if you trace things back far enough, you can usually find the grain of truth that started people down the wrong track.\u00a0\u00a0 The point came up in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-next-to-the-fault-line","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}