Whimsy

Teetering between its medieval past and the “Age of Reason,” early 18th-century London was an environment in which the ancient practice of astrology held wide appeal. No astrologer was more influential than John Partridge, a part-time cobbler and quack whose Merlinus Almanac delivered a healthy sense of impending doom to thousands of discerning readers each year. As with all astrologers, Partridge’s predictions had a habit of being vague, noncommittal, and wrong. Nevertheless, his position as a leading astrologer and physician went largely unchallenged among a London society eager to find order and meaning in its world.

All of that was about to change in January of 1708. In that month, a short almanac under the name Predictions for the Year 1708 was published across the city by a previously-unheard-of astrologer identifying himself as “Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.” The paper was written, the author claimed, “to prevent the people of England from being farther imposed on by vulgar almanack-makers.” Such boastful tirades were nothing new; what made Bickerstaff’s publication unusual was that he seemed to have the results to back himself up. Following his opening rant, he moved into a long list of strikingly bold and precise predictions unlike anything that had been seen before. Beginning the list was this:

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Humanity’s home is far from factory-fresh these days. Frankly, the Earth has received its share of scratches and dents, including large asteroid impacts, megavolcanoes, earthquakes, ice ages, and heat waves. It’s to be expected. There are over four billion years on the clock, after all.

Though it has long been clear that Earth 1.0 is in need of an upgrade, it was not until a few years ago that someone began to take the notion seriously. In 2004, at a respected international design exhibition called the Venice Architecture Biennale, a young artist and architect named Christian Waldvogel displayed his plans for total global annihilation and the creation of Earth 2.0.

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There was a time that I could fly. I jutted my right fist into the air, and launched into the sky. My stomach dropped with the sensation of breaking gravity’s bond, and the summer air cooled as I reached higher. When the roads were so far below as to be an indistinct ashen blur, I halted and curled my legs under me as I was pelted by icy crystals of clouds, and surveyed all below. There was a moment of idle indecision, but in the end it mattered not at all. I picked a direction and dove.

The experience was one of my many brushes with Lucid Dreaming. It is a phenomenon that many discredit, naming it a hoax and naturalist mythology despite the fact that it has strong scientific evidence supporting it as a real occurrence. With a devoted training regimen, most anyone can learn to harness their own subconscious to experience surrealistic events and places. In a controlled dream, one can pursue anything from the cessation of nightmares, to investigating problems, to engaging in sexual fantasies, to my personal choice—jetting around the skies like Superman.

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Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula. Humans have had fistulas; the first human on record as having one was a French Canadian by the name of Alexis St. Martin. He sustained a life-threatening musket wound in 1822, and was marked a terminal case by his physician. However, he managed to heal and was mostly functional again within two years – except for a hole in his stomach that would never close. Through this hole doctors were able to examine inner workings of his stomach.

Nowadays, agricultural scientists learn about the digestive system of cattle by putting holes in cows – and the cows stay alive and well. These cows (fitted with a sealing cover called a “cannula”) each have a hole into their stomach. Through this hole one can extract food caught mid-stream through the digestive system.

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Coffee connoisseurs are known to be willing to shell out large sums of money for a high-quality bean. The high-end beans, such as Kona or Blue Mountain, are known to go for extraordinary sums of money. Then there is Kopi Lowak, reputed to be the most expensive coffee in the world. While price can vary, Kopi Lowak (which translates as “Civet coffee”) can sell for as much as $50 per quarter-pound.

This isn’t particularly surprising, given that approximately 500 pounds a year of Kopi Lowak constitutes the entire world supply.

What is surprising is why this particular coffee is so rare. It’s not the plants that are rare. It’s the civet droppings. That’s right, the civet droppings. Coffee beans aren’t Kopi Lowak until they’ve been passed through the digestive tract of paradoxurus hermaphroditus, otherwise known as the palm civet.

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