Tag: Belief

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The Glastonbury Thorn by Sarah Das Gupta

humble hawthorn bloom
ancient Christmas message
crown of thorns awaits

by Sarah Das Gupta

The Glastonbury Thorn is associated with the Grail Legend and the story of Joseph of Arimathea’s visit to Glastonbury. The legend tells of Joseph climbing Wearyall Hill and planting his staff in the ground where it rooted and grew into a thorn tree which blossomed twice, once at Christmas and once in spring. Written versions of the story did not emerge until the 13th century.  In 1520, a pamphlet by Richard Pynson was published, ‘The Life of Joseph of Arimathea’. In 1647, during the English Civil War, the tree was chopped down and burnt as a symbol of superstition. A tree was planted on the hill in 1951 and again in 2010 but both were vandalised. The same fate has met subsequent efforts.

Trees now exist in the nearby Churchyard of St John’s which were budded or grafted from previous specimens. If grown from the haw(fruit), they do not produce a ‘true’ sapling. A sprig in bud is traditionally presented to the reigning monarch at Christmas. The winter flowers are smaller than the summer blossom.

The hawthorn has long been associated with supernatural and magical powers. Particularly in Ireland, lone thorns are seen in the middle of fields, in hedgerows, near places of religious significance and farmers will not cut them down. They have been associated with fairies and the border between this world and the mysterious ‘other’.

Botanical name:Crataegus Monogyna biflora
Popular names:holy thorn, fairy thorn, hawberry, maythorn, mayflower
Family:Rosaceae
Origin:Native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere- Europe, Asia, North Africa, North America 
Flowering:December and May
Habitat:Undemanding – rocky crevices, exposed sites

Further reading:

‘Glastonbury, Myth and Archaeology’, Philip Rahz, 2003, Tempus Publishing Ltd.

‘Glastonbury, Maker of Myths’, Frances Howard-Gordon, 1982, Gothic Image Publications Ltd.

Author bio:

Sarah Das Gupta is a young 81 year old. Loves writing haiku and most forms of poetry. Is learning to walk after an accident. Main outside interests include equine sports. Lives near Cambridge, UK. Read other sciku by Sarah here: ‘Redundant Ergot‘, ‘Redundant Vets’, ‘Dog’s Mercury’, ‘Bird’s Foot Trefoil’, and ‘Mistletoe’.

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Bird’s Foot Trefoil by Sarah Das Gupta

Trefoil, bright yellow
a field of eggs and bacon
or granny’s toenails

by Sarah Das Gupta

Bird’s foot trefoil is native to most of Europe. It was taken to North America to enrich the grass for cattle and to prevent erosion at the sides of roads. It has a number of  popular names derived from its yellow flowers, tinged with red or the claw shape of the seed pods. It provides feed for caterpillars, bees and butterflies.

‘Trefoil’ is derived from Old French and refers to the pattern of three leaves. For this reason, it was included in Midsummer wreathes, fixed to front doors, as a symbol of the Trinity. Strangely enough, in the Victorian language of flowers, the plant symbolised jealousy and revenge!

Medicinally it was used to treat mild depression and insomnia. Its anti-inflammatory properties were used to alleviate skin conditions. The seed is sold commercially to enrich grazing and forage for cattle. Recently gardeners have planted it to add to the revival of wild flower meadows.

Botanical name:Lotus corniculatus
Popular names:Bird’s-foot trefoil, eggs and bacon, granny’s toenails, baby’s slippers
Family:Fabaceae
Origin:Native to Europe, parts of Asia (taken to N.America)
Flowering:March to June
Habitat:Meadows, rocky-crevices, roadside (Favours sandy soil)

Further reading:

‘Collins Complete Guide to Wild Flowers’, Paul Sterry, 2006, HarperCollins Publishers.

‘Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field’, John Lewis-Stempel, 2014, Transworld Publishers Ltd.

Articles from ‘The Woodland Trust‘ and ‘Nature’.

Author bio:

Sarah Das Gupta is a young 81 year old. Loves writing haiku and most forms of poetry. Is learning to walk after an accident. Main outside interests include equine sports. Lives near Cambridge, UK. Read other sciku by Sarah here: ‘Redundant Ergot‘, ‘Redundant Vets’ and ‘Dog’s Mercury’, ‘Mistletoe’ and ‘The Glastonbury Thorn’.

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Redundant Vets by Sarah Das Gupta

A cat has nine lives
each belongs to an old witch
what need for a vet

by Sarah Das Gupta

“And therof hath come the prouerb as trew as common, that a Cat hath nine liues, that is to say, a witch may take on her a Cats body nine times.” William Baldwin, Beware the Cat.

Cats may have been worshipped in ancient Egypt but by the time of Shakespeare superstitions about cats were largely negative despite their usefulness at hunting rats and mice. In fact, in medieval France cats were burnt alive as a form of entertainment, with some believing that the ashes of burnt cats gave good luck.

In the medieval and early modern period, people believed witches had nine chances of turning into their feline familiars. If a witch turned into a cat for a ninth time then they would be unable to turn back. The first written mention of this comes from William Baldwin’s ‘Beware the Cat’. Written in 1553 and published in 1570, ‘Beware the Cat’ is thought by many to be the first novel ever published in English. The gap between its writing and publication is down to the book’s anti-Catholic sentiments at a time when the devoutly Catholic Mary I was on the English throne.

“Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives.” From Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare.

The idea that witches could turn into cats is tied to the Cat-sìth of celtic mythology – a large black cat with a white spot on its chest that resides in the Scottish Highlands. The Cat-sìth was thought to be either a fairy or a witch, and is linked to the British folk tale ‘The King of the Cats’, references to which appear in both Baldwin’s ‘Beware the Cat’ and William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Tales of the Cat-sìth may actually have been sightings of the Kellas cat, an interspecific fertile hybrid between the Scottish wildcat and the domestic cat.

“A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays and for the last three he stays.” Old English proverb

The origins of the nine lives myth are hard to know accurately, but many cultures believe that cats have multiple lives: in some European countries cats have seven lives whilst in Arabic traditions the number is six. Regardless of the specific number, many believe that the myth of having multiple lives is down to the quick reactions and righting reflexes that enable cats to survive perilous situations.

Whilst impressive, a cat’s ability to survive falls from great heights is not infallible, and neither is our ability to study this achievement. A study by Whitney and Mehlhaff (1987) suggested that the chance of injury from falling increased with falling height… up to a point. A falling cat reaches a terminal velocity of ~60 mph after falling about five storeys. The researchers found that up to this point the numbers of injuries increased but after seven storeys the number of injuries deceased. The explanation given by Whitney and Mehlhaff was that over a short distance a cat tenses and arches its back to turn in mid-air, but over a longer fall the cat adopts a more relaxed body state leading to fewer injuries.

Whilst there’s truth to their findings in terms of how cats behave whilst falling and the different injury types prevalent from different heights as a result, the hypothesis that heights greater that seven storeys lead to fewer injuries isn’t supported by the methodology.  The study was based on cats that had been brought into a veterinary surgery for care but cats that had fallen and not survived were, for obvious reasons, not brought into the surgery and not included in the study’s fall survival and injury statistics. Indeed, a later study by Vnuk et al. (2004) found that falls from the seventh storey or higher were associated with more severe injuries.

Cats may not always need vets but they can certainly help preserve each of their many lives!

Further reading:

‘Beware the Cat’, William Baldwin, https://www.presscom.co.uk/halliwell/baldwin/baldwin_1584.html

‘Beware the Cat’, Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beware_the_Cat

‘Cat-sìth’, Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat-s%C3%ACth

‘A cat that can never be tamed’, Scientific American, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/a-cat-that-can-never-be-tamed/

‘High-rise syndrome in cats’, W. Whitney and C.J. Mehlhaff, 1987, https://europepmc.org/article/med/3692980

‘Feline high-rise syndrome: 119 cases (1998–2001)’, D. Vnuk, B. Pirkić, D. Matičić, B. Radišić, M. Stejskal, T. Babić, M. Kreszinger, and N. Lemo, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfms.2003.07.001

Author bio:

Sarah Das Gupta is a young 81 year old. Loves writing haiku and most forms of poetry. Is learning to walk after an accident. Main outside interests include equine sports. Lives near Cambridge, UK. Read other sciku by Sarah here: ‘Redundant Ergot‘, ‘Dog’s Mercury’ , ‘Bird’s Foot Trefoil’, ‘Mistletoe’ and ‘The Glastonbury Thorn’.

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Digging for Truffles by Professor Michael Hauskeller

In mid-2021 The Sciku Project teamed up with the Literature and Science Hub at the University of Liverpool to run the ‘Research in Verse Poetry Competition’, open to staff and postgraduate research students across the university to submit poems about their research subject. The competition saw poems addressing all sorts of topics, ranging from gravity to slavery to life in the lab.

First prize was won by Professor Michael Hauskeller for his poem ‘Digging for Truffles’:

Digging for Truffles

Do something important, we’re told,
Be a Shakespeare, a Newton, a Plato.
Only greatness can fill
The vast empty spaces.
The little lives are lost.

Cure cancer, make history,
save the world, make it count.
Don’t just laugh and love and live
Like any other
Ordinary person.

If you do, your life’s pointless,
A dog’s life, a pig’s, barely human.
Life’s worth living but for those
Who shine bright and bold,
Saved by the glory of their accomplishments.

You and I, though, we carry on,
Quite content with not being special,
Chasing balls in the fields and
Quietly digging for truffles
That will only last for a day.

Background

Objectivist accounts of meaning in life strongly suggest that nothing is worth doing or desiring that cannot be evaluated on a scale of better or worse, nor is it worth doing or desiring if it ranks low on that scale. It is assumed that a life can only be meaningful if it is good for something other than itself. Objectivist accounts thus accommodate our deep-seated fear of insignificance and our desire to receive some public affirmation of our existence and its value. As a corrective, I am developing a subjective account of meaning that is more democratic and inclusive. More information can be found here.

Prof Michael Hauskeller is Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, with an interest in the broader issues around ethics.

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The Core Correlate of COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance by Dr Michael J. Leach

vaccine acceptance
correlates with a belief
in the greater good

by Dr Michael J. Leach

During 2020 and 2021, acceptance of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) vaccines has been among the most topical areas of health science research. As COVID-19 vaccine availability continues to rise worldwide in a global effort to combat the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, more and more people are faced with the question of whether or not to get vaccinated. Even when an approved COVID-19 vaccine is readily available to a particular subgroup of the global population, a high level of vaccine uptake cannot be guaranteed. For one reason or another, individuals within the population may be hesitant to roll up their sleeves to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a UK population-based study, Freeman et al. (2021) investigated factors related to vaccine hesitancy through an online survey completed by 5,114 adults over September-October 2020. The research team measured vaccine hesitancy within the study population using a specially developed tool—the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy scale. While 71.7% of surveyed adults expressed willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine, 16.6% were very unsure about vaccination and 11.7% showed strong vaccine hesitancy.

Among the various beliefs, views, attitudes, and past experiences considered by the researchers in their analysis, the factor most strongly correlated with vaccine hesitancy was whether or not individuals believed in the collective importance of COVID-19 vaccination. An individual’s belief in the collective importance of COVID-19 vaccination is defined as the recognition that getting vaccinated protects the community and saves lives. This belief is consistent with the critically important field of public health and with the idea of doing something—in this case, getting vaccinated—for ‘the greater good’.

Based on the results of their study, Freeman et al. suggest that public health messages highlighting the societal benefits of vaccination could be broadcast in an effort to increase belief in the collective importance of COVID-19 vaccination and, thus, improve vaccine acceptance and uptake.

The original research article described here is available open access online:
Freeman D et al. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UK: the Oxford coronavirus explanations, attitudes, and narratives survey (Oceans) II. Psychological Medicine 1–15. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7804077/pdf/S0033291720005188a.pdf

Michael J. Leach (@m_jleach) is an Australian epidemiologist, biostatistician, and poet based at the Monash University School of Rural Health. His debut poetry collection is Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020).

Check out more sciku by Michael, including ‘Drug-Induced Hip Fractures‘, ‘The Psychopharmacological Revolution‘, ‘Quality of Life at Seven Years Post-Stroke‘, ‘The Early Impacts of COVID-19 on Australian General Practice‘, ‘The Burden of Bushfire Smoke‘, and ‘Australian Science Poetry‘ with science communicator Rachel Rayner. Michael also has another Covid-19-related sciku published in Pulse which is well worth checking out: ‘flu shot announcement‘.