Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> (02/03/90)
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1001. Friday, 2 Feb 1990. Date: 2 February 1990 From: Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: intoxication To commemorate Humanist's 1001st message in its 3rd year of life, I thought I would share with you, on this gloomy Friday evening, a humorous piece from my favourite periodical, the Times Literary Supplement. The review in question is "A Universal Urge" by Michael Gossop, who is Head of Research, Drug Dependence Unit, Maudsley Hospital, London, and author of *Living with Drugs* (1987). Dr. Gossop essays to review Solomon H. Snyder's *Brainstorming: The Science and Politics of Opiate Research* and Ronald K. Siegel's *Intoxication: Life in Persuit of Artificial Paradise*. In the course of discussing the latter book, Dr. Gossop has the following to say: `Insects and birds, rats and mice, cats and dogs, apes and elephants have all had their moments of intoxication. Here you will find robins stoned on Pyracantha berries, reindeer on hallucinogenic mushrooms, elephants on opium, even earthworms on LSD. "Earthworms become disorganized after receiving LSD and aimlessly crawl and burrow through the topsoil." How can he tell? To me earthworms generally look disorganized and aimless, but then this is not my field. One of the stars of Siegel's show is Marty Mouse, who lived in the police department vault in San Jose. Confiscated bags of marijuana had been broken into and the contents were scattered or missing. The suspect was captured by a marijuana and butter trap and taken to Siegel's laboratory for further investigation, prompting student protest on the UCLA campus complete with "Free Marty" T-shirts and bumper-stickers. One of Siegel's oddest stories is that of the insects which in 1545 attacked and destroyed the wine grapes and vineyards of St. Julien. A formal complaint was made against the insects and they were duly brought to trial. The prosecution argued that lower animals should be subject to the laws of man, and the defense argued that the insects were merely exercising their biblical right to be fruitful and multiply. The archives show that the judge deliberated for a long time but the final decision is unknown -- the last page of the surviving records was destroyed by weevils.' In case someone should think that this message has nothing whatever to do with humanities computing, let me add something from Clifford Geertz's essay, "Religion as a Cultural System": `The perception of the structural congruence between one set of processes, activities, relations, entities, etc., and another set for which it acts as a program, so that the program can be taken as a representation, or conception -- a symbol -- of the programmed, is the essence of human thought.' Yours, Willard McCarty