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Sea Monsters on Maps

The rise and fall of map sea monsters

Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance exotic sea creatures were sometimes included in the watery regions of world maps. Many of the monsters were hybrid creatures – the top half was some land animal combined with the bottom half of a fish. This was in keeping with a long held idea from the ancient Greeks that anything on land had an aquatic counterpart in the sea. Sea rams, sea elephants, sea pigs, sea humans were all real possibilities. Over the centuries as explorers and traders traveled further abroad, they brought back tales of other strange creatures from around the oceans. Some of these beasts turned out to be real animals (such as whales) but others were just mistaken identity or entirely fictional stories. Either way, they ended up in maps.

Two kinds of maps

Generally speaking there were two kinds of maps in use during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: nautical maps and general maps of the world (mappae mundi). Nautical maps were more utilitarian and typically did not include sea monsters as it cost extra to include them and the illustrations were generally not very useful when sailing a ship. As such, most of the maps that included sea monsters were world maps for home use to learn about the world beyond your home town/city and the possible dangers at the borders of our knowledge.

Sea monsters were frequently found at the edges of the map which showed that the world beyond what had been mapped was unknown & possibly dangerous. They illustrated in a real sense the wonders of the world. They were also a way to hide gaps in the cartographer’s knowledge by taking up space with big animal illustrations (rather than big empty areas). Sea monsters also helped the marketability of these maps which was good for business.

A detail of a 1587 map of Iceland by Abraham Ortelius

A detail from the 1539 *Carta Marina* by Olaus Magnus

Another detail from the 1539 *Carta Marina* by Olaus Magnus

Eventually, the more sailors traveled the oceans the further out on maps the sea monsters were pushed. By the end of the 16th century much more of the globe had been explored & documented. The scientific knowledge of the flora & fauna of the world had grown and started to disprove some of these sea monsters. The more we learned, the unknown corners of the world in which to place these fantastical monsters eventually disappeared. By the 17th century instead of sea monsters on the margins there were illustrations of whales, other real life animals, or ships. This left us with more accurate, if a bit less interesting, maps of the seas.

Added info: Some sea monsters were included with ulterior motives. It is believed that Olaus Magnus’s 1539 map of Scandinavia included sea monsters in the Norwegian Sea to scare away potential foreign fisherman, and thereby protect the waters for the local fishing industry. A very Scooby Doo villain plan.

For more sea monsters, check out Chet Van Duzer’s Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps.

Saddam Hussein’s Romance Novel

Zabibah and the King is a romance novel written by Saddam Hussein

When former president/dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein wasn’t busy ruling/committing genocide, he found time for the arts. Between 2000-2003 he published four historical novels, all fiction, all written either by Saddam or written by ghostwriters under his direction. Three of the novels take place in the distant past of Iraq while 2002’s Men and the City takes place in the near past telling a fictionalized history of Saddam’s relatives fighting the Turks.

Zabibah and the King

It is 2000’s Zabibah and the King that is of particular interest. Zabibah and the King is a romance novel written by Saddam Hussein. On its surface the book is about King Arab of medieval Iraq, a beautiful commoner woman named Zabibah, and Zabibah’s abusive husband. The book is written as if an elderly woman is telling the story to a group of children, but there are large sections where Saddam is clearly airing his personal grievances that seem out of place if an elderly woman is telling them to children. As for the plot, when the King and Zabibah meet they mostly just talk about political theory, religion, and the best way to rule a country.

Eventually the abusive husband gets jealous that his wife is spending so much time with the King. He exacts his revenge by raping Zabidah and eventually teams up with the ruler of an enemy kingdom to wage war on King Arab. In the end Zabibah and her husband die in battle against one another, King Arab dies later, and when he dies he leaves the kingdom in the hands of a democratic council (which had been Zabibah’s idea) and the country prospers. Oh and also there is a whole section about bestiality between a bear and a herdsman which, again, is supposedly being told by an old woman to children.

Thinly veiled is the fact that Zabibah and the King is an allegory. The King represents Saddam himself, Zabibah is the people of Iraq, Zabibah’s rapist husband is the United States, and the enemy kingdom who help to wage war is Israel. Also the bear involved in the bestiality might represent Russian forces in some way. The book is Saddam laying-out his worldview, it’s about the United States’ 1991 invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War, and ultimately it’s a soapbox for Saddam to complain about things.

The book is not good but “remarkably” it was a bestseller in Iraq. Also Saddam used a 1998 painting titled The Awakening by Jonathon Bowser for the book cover, but never got permission from the artist.

Added info: Be sure to check out Saddam’s Goodreads author profile for more of his work and a very generous biography of him. Also there is a great Behind the Bastards episode on Saddam and his erotic literature.

“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better”

The 11 word psychotherapy mantra of the early 1920s that actually sort-of works

Émile Coué was born in Troyes, France in 1857. He became a pharmacist and when handing out prescriptions he noticed that when he praised the efficacy of a medication to patients, the patients tended to respond better to their treatment. He found that the patients who got this pep talk tended to do better than the patients who did not, despite both groups taking the same drug. Today we call this the placebo effect but for Coué it demonstrated the incredible power of our imagination and how it can manifest itself in our conscious reality. This was the beginning of his journey into psychotherapy, hypnotism, and autosuggestion.

Autosuggestion

Coué believed that our unconscious mind governs all of our thoughts. He believed that our willpower always yields to our imagination. If you are trying to quit smoking but your mind is imagining the good feelings of smoking, you’ll be in self-conflict and the imagination will win. Therefor you have to change what you are imagining, you have to make your imagination think negative thoughts towards cigarettes, then quitting will be easier. He felt the road to conscious change was to first change the imagination, to change the unconscious.

To change the unconscious he developed a psychological technique he called autosuggestion. In autosuggestion you give a self-induced idea to, well, yourself, in the attempt to try and change something about your life. He saw it as a way to recondition the mind and in particular the unconscious. Left alone, your unconscious can develop negative thoughts that can persist unchecked for years affecting your mental and even physical health. Coué felt that with simple conditioning you could reprogram your mind and thereby improve your quality of life.

To help people use autosuggestion he created the The Coué method. He told patients to repeat a phrase twenty times just before falling asleep at night and twenty times just when waking up in the morning, in the hypnagogic and the hypnopompic states of semi consciousness. It is in these states that we are particularly susceptible to suggestion. The phrase Coué gave his patients to repeat was:

“Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better”

Coué opened up a clinic in Nancy, France where he taught this method to tens of thousands of patients free of charge. In the 1920s he documented his method and published Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion which became an international bestseller. The simplicity of his method was in stark contrast to other psychoanalysis methods of the time. Here was something you could do for free, on your own, in just a few minutes each day. It created a Coué craze. He was written about in the papers, he spoke to excited sold out lecture halls around Europe and the United States, and his 11 word mantra was used in advertisements, on bracelet medallions, and included in songs.

So, does it work?

His ideas weren’t without critics. For some it was just too simple to be real. To others it sounded too mystical and not based in science. In response to this criticism Coué specified that his method of improvement only works within the realm of reality. If you’re blind you can’t change your unconscious mind as a way to gain sight. You also have to be open to the idea of change. If you judgmentally throw up a wall at the start of the process it will never work.

That said there is scientific evidence that supports his ideas. Harvard Medical has shown that not only does the placebo effect work but incredibly it can work even when you know you are taking a placebo. It’s the unconscious mind affecting the body even when you are fully aware of the trick being pulled. Further, in 2014 Harvard published a study showing how patients responded better to a medication when they were given positive information about it, just like what Coué did almost a hundred years ago. The Rosenthal-Jacobson study of 1968 demonstrated the Pygmalion effect where teachers were told a group of randomly selected students had above-average ability. This affected the teachers’ behavior who then paid more attention to the students which resulted in those students performing better on IQ tests. Otherwise ordinary students who were given positive messages & made to feel special actually did better than they would have otherwise.

Added info: Even though Coué-mania mostly died out shortly after he died in 1926, his mantra has carried on. You can find a nod to Coué and a modified version of his mantra in the Beatles’ 1967 Getting Better. It also shows up again later in John Lennon’s 1980 Beautiful Boy.

The Beatles’ Getting Better has a modified method of the Coué method.

Dante’s Hell

Dante’s fictional ideas of Hell are largely responsible for what most people think of as Hell.

Completed in 1320, the Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Italian Dante Alighieri. It is divided up into three sections:

Inferno / Hell
Purgatorio / Purgatory
Paradiso / Paradise

Making himself the protagonist, the Divine Comedy tells the story of Dante’s journey to the underworld (Hell) and his eventual ascent to paradise (Heaven). It’s the first installment of this story, Inferno, that most people are familiar with. Inferno follows Dante down through nine very organized levels of Hell where each level down is for more terrible sinners. In the lowest level of Hell we find the devil along with the very worst sinners (those guilty of treachery).

What is Hell?

The Bible is fairly silent in regards to describing Hell. The specific word “Hell” is nowhere in the Bible. As far as a place in the afterlife full of punishment & suffering, the Old Testament doesn’t have one. The Old Testament has Sheol but everyone goes there – the good and the bad. It isn’t until the New Testament that a place of damnation is established with a few sketchy details. When someone dies, if they were righteous their name is in the book of life and they get eternal reward in Heaven. Those who don’t make the cut get a one-way trip to suffering city. While not given a name we’re told that this place has an unceasing fiery lake, that there is gnashing of teeth, and eternal suffering. There aren’t many more details than that. Enter, Dante’s Inferno.

Pop culture Hell

Dante’s Inferno creatively fills in the blanks left by the scant Hellish details of the Bible. For starters, Dante puts Hell underground (which is never specified in the Bible). The idea that there are different kinds of punishments for different kinds of sins is also invented by Dante. Similarly, the idea that there are different levels of Hell, each more awful than the previous, is also his literary creation. Interestingly Buddhism has places in the afterlife for punishment that are a lot closer to Dante’s idea of Hell than anything Christianity has ever created.

In the Inferno’s ninth and lowest level of Hell Dante finds Satan, but the Bible never says Satan is in Hell. Similar to the idea of Hell, Satan isn’t created/introduced until the New Testament. Satan’s origin story is convoluted with lots of retconning, but one way or another Satan is cast out of Heaven and sent down to Earth where he must live until the second coming of Jesus. Only on Judgement Day will he be cast down into what we now call Hell as a final punishment. Until then Satan is presumably wandering the Earth, causing trouble, but he is certainly not ruling Hell as we tend to think of him. Further, Dante depicts Satan as a giant monstrous beast with 3 faces and large bat like wings. It makes for a scarier story, but none of it is in the Bible. Of course if Satan could have at one point been a beautiful fallen angel, but also have potentially been a serpent, maybe he could also turn into a monster. The Bible is silent on the potential shape-shifting super powers of Satan.

Gustave Doré etching of Satan in the *Inferno*

Ultimately, when we think of Satan ruling over the administration of various punishments in a stalactite & stalagmite cavernous underground Hell we are thinking of the influence of Dante’s Inferno. None of this is in the Bible. After hundreds of years and untold number of other works of fiction, what we think of as Hell is more influenced by popular culture than the Bible. Add to this that most people have never read the Bible, and it’s easy to see how Dante has done more for Hell than scripture.

Added bonus: Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in the Florentine Tuscan dialect of Italian instead of Latin (which would have been the literary language of the time). Because it was written in the language of the people, the Divine Comedy was more accessible to more people which only increased its popularity. This helped popularize the Florentine Tuscan dialect of Italian which eventually became the standard Italian language that we know today.

Venomous vs Poisonous

Venomous species are aggressively toxic while poisonous species are defensively toxic.

The difference between venomous and poisonous is a difference of evolutionary strategies. It’s a difference of offense vs. defense, actively toxic vs. passively toxic.

Venomous

Venomous species use an active strategy to inflict toxins. As such they always have some sort of toxin delivery system such as fangs, barbs, stingers, spurs, etc. as a way to inject their venom. They are predators that use venom to incapacitate their prey.

Poisonous

Poisonous species defensively pass on their toxins when they are touched or eaten. This passive approach is why toxic plants are categorized as poisonous because, well, most plants don’t actively move around trying to attack prey.

As for poisonous animals the poison is frequently secreted through their skin as in the case of the poison dart frog (who got their name because their poison was sometimes used by indigenous tribes of Central/South America to make poisonous blow darts).

Poisonous species use their toxin to deter predation. Sometimes a predator only needs to be poisoned once to learn to never attack that poisonous species again. For others, a particular poison doesn’t leave the predator with the option of a second attack as the result is death.

In Short:

Venomous: when something toxic bites/touches you
Poisonous: when you bite/touch something that is toxic

Added info: While generally mutually exclusive, there are a few species that are both venomous and poisonous. One example is the Tiger Keelback snake of East Asia. It has fangs to inject toxin but more frequently it employs a defensive strategy and stores toxin in nuchal glands. Any predator that bites into the snake’s neck will be poisoned. The toxin they use for either strategy is not produced by the snake, but rather it’s acquired by eating poisonous toads.

The Tiger Keelback is a rarity in that it is both venomous and poisonous

Dog Days of Summer

When the dog star Sirius rises with the morning sun, it marks the most uncomfortable time of summer.

The “dog days of summer” are traditionally some of the hottest most uncomfortable days of the year (running more or less from July 3 through August 11 in the northern hemisphere). The ancient Greeks associated this time with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, and bad luck.

They are called the “dog days” because it’s at this time the star Sirius (which is actually a binary two star system) begins to rise at dawn along with the sun. Sirius is known as the “dog star” and is a part of the constellation Canis Majoris (Latin for “Greater Dog)”, all of which puts the “dog” in the “dog days”. It was thought that the morning appearance of Sirius, which is otherwise the brightest star in the night sky, added extra heat to the days making them more uncomfortable.

Potential spoiler: Sirius being the dog star is also the hidden-in-plain-sight reference with the character Sirius Black in Harry Potter, whose animagus ability is to turn himself into a dog.

Girl Scout Cookies

Most Girl Scout cookies go by two names because the cookies are made by two different bakeries.

The Girl Scouts of the USA were formed in 1912 as an organization for young girls to learn skills and build friendships. As a fundraiser in 1917 the Mistletoe Troop of Muskogee, Oklahoma began selling homemade cookies. Selling cookies was so successful troops nationwide began to do the same. In 1936 the Girl Scouts organization began to use commercial bakeries to produce the cookies more efficiently that the scouts would then sell, which is how it’s still done today.

Depending on where you are in the United States, your cookies are made by one of two commercial bakeries:

ABC Bakers (a division of the Canadian corporation George Weston Limited), or
Little Brownie Bakers (a division of the Italian Ferrero Group)

Because of the two bakeries the cookies have different recipes and different names. As a result, what some know as Samoas, others know as Caramel deLites. What some know as Tagalongs, others know as Peanut Butter Patties. The newer cookies retain the same name regardless of bakery, as does the classic Thin Mint. As for the most popular Girl Scout cookie, at 25% of sales, it’s Thin Mint.

A comparison of just some of the cookie names between the two bakeries

Also: The Girl Scout logo is framed in a shape known as a trefoil (basically three overlapping circles) but with an additional stylized tail at the bottom to emulate the look of clover. The Little Brownie Bakers have labeled their version of shortbread cookies Trefoils as a nod to this branding. In the ABC Bakers version of the cookie, named Shortbread, the cookies’ form is less trefoil and more quatrefoil as it is basically four overlapping circles.

Where is the “Orient”?

The Orient refers to places east of Europe, but where exactly depends on when you are asking.

Pinning down the location of the Orient depends on where you are and when you are. The word “orient” comes from the Latin for “east” so it generally means “the east” but more specifically it has meant “east of Europe.”

As Europeans traveled further abroad, the lands they considered “the East” aka “the Orient” was progressively pushed further east. For the Ancient Romans the Orient started as basically anything east of modern day Italy. The Eastern Mediterranean Levant area, Egypt, even along North Africa (which isn’t even east, it’s south of Europe) all became part of the “Orient.” These areas eventually became the “Near East” as the Orient came to include what is now the “Middle East” because eventually Europeans were interacting with people in the “Far East” coasts of Asia. All of these areas were at one point included in what was considered the “Orient.”

Because of this non-specific generalized term, things that are “oriental” can be from a pretty wide variety of cultures. While the Orient Express train line only went as far east as Istanbul, Oriental Medicine generally refers to medicine from much further away in East Asia. Oriental spices can range from the Middle East to the Far East of Asia, but Oriental rugs have an even wider range across two continents from Morocco to the Pacific coast of Asia.

Orientalism

As Europeans traveled to these “new” lands, western artists seized the opportunity to create exotic works of art based on these little know worlds. Orientalism was a movement especially present throughout the 19th century in music, literature, and the visual arts where these distant cultures were represented to varying degrees of authenticity. At best it was an opportunity for artists to create something exotic and new, but at worst it was an exploitative way to get attention. Orientalism could be an excuse to paint fairly salacious scenes of Muslim harems or Turkish baths with little accuracy.

*Inspection of New Arrivals* by Giulio Rosati who specialized in orientalist paintings

Like defining exactly where the Orient was, orientalized art ranges from North African motifs, to Turkish, to East Asian and everything in-between. Egyptian orientalism was kickstarted by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, a fascination which also made its way to the United States (which is why the Washington Monument is, essentially, a massive Egyptian obelisk).

*Bonaparte Before the Sphinx* by Jean-Léon Gérôme

As European powers pushed further eastward, such as the forced opening of Japan in 1858, orientalism turned more towards East Asian cultures. One example is the Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Mikado which was set in Japan but had no real interest in accuracy to Japanese culture. Gilbert & Sullivan were looking to capitalize on England’s latest fad for all things Japanese.

Loosely borrowing from Japanese culture, *The Mikado* by Gilbert & Sullivan

Problems with the Orient

The lack of specificity is just one of the problems with the term “oriental”. Oriental is also European-centric at the exclusion of other cultures. Further, as the term “oriental” came to include not just lands & cultures but also the people of those cultures, the word developed a long racist history of being used in anti-Asian propaganda.

As such the term has mostly fallen out of favor. The best advice is to be specific to where/what/who you are talking about.

Scam Email Spelling “Mistakes”

The spelling mistakes in email scams are intentional.

Upon receiving a scam email with spelling mistakes your first instinct may be to think “Idiots, they can’t even spell correctly.” The truth however is that those spelling mistakes are most likely intentional as a way to remove false positives. The mistakes are part of the scam.

In order for a scam to be profitable, the scammer wants to maximize their time by only interacting with people who are the most likely to pay them. To interact with someone who will never commit & pay is a waste of time. So the spelling “mistakes” are there to filter out people who are clever enough to see the mistakes and realize it’s a scam. They are a filter to find only the most gullible people, perfect for scamming.

Added bonus: The Nigerian Prince email scam is a lot older than you may think. While it is an email scam now, this “Advance-Fee Scam” operates much in the same way as the “Spanish prisoner scam” which goes back to at least 1898.

the 1992 Lithuanian Basketball team & the Grateful Dead

The 1992 Lithuanian mens basketball team had tie-dyed uniforms because they were financially supported by the Grateful Dead.

In 1990 Lithuania gained independence from the Soviet Union after 50 years of communist occupation. As a new country they had nationwide economic problems and funding their Olympic team was low on the priority list. So to try and raise funds for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Lithuanian basketball star Šarūnas Marčiulionis (who also played for the Golden State Warriors and eventually made the NBA hall of fame) went on a campaign to get sponsors & donors wherever he could. Enter the Grateful Dead.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle about Marčiulionis and the Lithuanian team was brought to the attention of San Francisco based Grateful Dead who had Marčiulionis come to meet them at their rehearsal space. As drummer Mickey Hart said, “We’re always for the underdog, and this wasn’t just a basketball team. This was a struggle for life, liberty and freedom.” They cut Marčiulionis a check for $5,000 and supplied the team with tie-dyed uniforms in the colors of the Lithuanian flag with a slam-dunking skeleton on the front. When the Lithuanian team made it to Barcelona their tie-dye uniforms were an international sensation. While their actual game uniforms were fairly traditional, they did take the podium to receive their bronze medals (after a symbolic 82-78 victory over their former Soviet team) wearing their Grateful Dead tie-die.

An added bonus: Through the Grateful Dead’s charitable organization, the Rex Foundation, they sold Lithuanian tie-dye shirts to the public, with proceeds going to the Lithuanian basketball team and Lithuanian children’s charities, raising over $450,000. You can still buy a copy from the artist who designed them.