On Division, or, an excuse to throw 10 haiku at you

Dear Gentle Reader,

Division, the process of dividing, is an odd duck.

In math, division makes things smaller.

Simultaneously, however, in biology, division makes things more numerous.

After all, division, as in meiosis, deals with the propagation of the species.

Similarly, though not identically, division, as in mitosis, sees the replication of whole cells, the propagation of a part; one mother cell becomes two identical daughter cells.

Division, like sex, can also lead to many challenges.

Seemingly sidling away from the topic of division, the Heroine, the Hero, and your humble scribe all love cheese, hard and soft cheeses both.

This hardly seems related to division, let alone problems.

Humble scribe, you may say, first, cheese is a mixture, not a separation; no division is required to make cheese, no, things are added. Second, you may say, if you like cheese, then cheese is hardly a problem.

But, gentle reader, you will, I am sure, concede that the hard/soft cheese dichotomy is clearly a categorical division.

And, on closer inspection, cheese is the product of physical division.

Yes, cheese is derived from a protein, fat, and water slurry, but, the special feature of cheese production is how that slurry is modified by dividing, and hence expanding, colonies of bacteria.

Division abounds and division is at the heart of the creation of cheeses (especially soft cheeses, where the bacteria at their centres, their hearts, are frequently most active).

So, where lies the problem?

The problem lies not in the creation of cheese, gentle reader, but in the division of the same.

For most cheeses, most people use knives to split cheeses, to divide them, to share them.

Almost all soft cheeses have to be cut to properly get to the fruits of their constituent bacterial guests' lives' labours, the steamy, fragrant divisional product of bacterial culture.

Now, usually, soft cheeses are cut into wedges prior to further division then consumption.

And, this is where the sexual problems of division begin, or, more accurately, the problems between the sexes, in our house, begin.

One divisional problem, portion equity, is well documented by that great Dane, Piet Hein (1905-1996).

SOCIAL MECHANISM (by Piet Hein)

When people always

try to take

the very smallest

piece of cake

how can it also

always be

that that's the one

that's left for me?

It should be noted that while Piet Hein was talking about (just) desserts, I believe that the same principle can be applied to cheeses.

After all, a savoury cheese platter may precede, follow, or even substitute for a sweet dessert.

It should also be noted that the Danes know whereof they speak, when they speak of division.

In the beginning, Danes acquired by dividing others' lands and things. They then amalgamated these divisions (from others' holdings) to their own holdings.

For a long while, the Danes never saw any problem with this.

It was when the Swedes started dividing Danish spoils, for their Swedish selves, that the joy of division was spoiled for the Danes.

(Here, one could note, is where Einstein's propositions on the importance of the observer, in physical dynamics, and relativity in general, make their application in social dynamics, long before Einstein was even around to observe or remark...)

Back to the present day and to the cheese.

Your Heroine, though of Northern European extraction, is relatively scrupulous regarding portion size when she creates fromage frontiers.

She steers clear of the Piet Hein Problem.

The Heroine's failing, from your humble scribe's perspective, is that she keeps the best parts for herself; she high grades; she takes the central part of soft cheeses.

The central part, the thin edge of the wedge, is, of course, where the bacterial culture, in soft cheeses, has had its strongest and greatest effects on flavour and on texture.

One must remember, though, that the Heroine is German; cultural high-grading is in her blood.

Germans love all things to do with culture; Goethe, Schiller, Cranach, Flanders, France...

Hurriedly skipping back to the cheese plate, your humble scribe has fulminated greatly on divisions, especially as a recipient of the outer, lesser graded sections of wedges of soft cheese.

So, today, I indulge myself and divide my thoughts ten ways to generate ten haiku along the simple theme of division.

For my pleasure, here they are:

If you take your cheese v. seriously...

divorce might be right

this separation? no good.

i want high grade too

Early biological classification

animalia

and vegetabilia

Aristotle's split

*** Humble scribe's note of the use of poetic license.

It was the great Swedish classifier Carl von Linné (1707-1778), better known by his Latinized name, Carolus Linnaeus, who divided living organisms under the specific descriptors animalia and vegetabilia. But, Aristotle (384-322 BC) did separate the world into animals and vegetables, too (and almost 21 centuries earlier).

Aristotle just did it in Greek.

Animalia

multicellular

soft cell walls and motile, too

heterotrophic

Plantae

multicell(s/ulose)

meiosis yields haploid cells

photosynthesis

Innie and outie

100 "k" "m"

lowest earth orbit that works

inner/outer space

Western expansion in the USA, where does it begin?

Demarcation, here.

one hundredth meridian

wet east/arid west

Peace, Order, and Good Government (POGG) versus Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

or, duelling values in constitutional residual clauses

or, communalism (community values) vs. individualism (individual values)

Canada: POGG (rules)

the forty-ninth parallel

US: U. Party

How China, with Hong Kong, or Macau, copies Canada's handling of difference...

deux cultures, un pays

je me souviens, mais oui...

two systems, one state

For the non-Canadian scholars, Canada not only has two languages, English and French, enshrined in the constitution, it also uses the continental legal system in its second biggest province, by population, Quebec.

Much of past-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's testimony in a recenty inquiry was predicated upon a totally different legal regime than what Anglo Canada is used to, and I fear that these legal distinctions were lost on the majority of the populace judging by the polemical online comments on news articles posted in the national, public news media.

A further examples of demagoguery, in extremis...

Political religious divides on the great subcontinent

Hindu/Muslim split

partition '47

nation rent; two form...

*** Author's aside: I prefer this haiku orally when the "two" could equally be heard as "to"...

A division of colonial power alone

African land/lord

uti possedetis; change

lord not boundaries

And ten is more than enough, I am sure.

Tschuess,

Chris

Three-toed lizard hooch, balconies & thirst

Dear Gentle Reader.

Difficulties strike us all from time to time. 

That could be a segue into last night in the bar, but it won't be. 

Instead it is the admission that, as of now, nothing is written yet.  

I think I need to develop a buffer. 

Anyway, we all have our difficulties.

One reader, on examining the picture of your hero, Pommes, and your heroine, Regina, (see update on why we are in Hong Kong) announced that she had difficulties discerning the difference betwixt the two. 

But, as that person comes from the land of Alte Gammel Dansk, this is quite understandable.  

After a bottle of Alte Gammel Dansk, your scribe also has an impaired discernment function.  

Personally, I think Alte Gammel Dansk is why Danes always come out on top in global contentment indices; like their herrings the Danes are too pickled to be perturbed.

But your scribe had no Alte Gammel Dansk last night.  

How could your scribe's forgetfulness to write a post occur? Well, your Heroine is still in China, after the disappointing haircut and unicorn meat incident, and your scribe might have taken the opportunity to go out last night... 

Maybe your scribe's difficulties today are due to much delayed after-effects of three-toed lizard hooch?

What, you ask, is three-toed lizard hooch?  

Well, it is a particularly engaging brew that Tony (not his real name) and I discovered at the end of our undergraduate careers 13 or 14 years ago.  

Maybe I should enlighten you, as it is a Hong Kong specialty...

One school of thought would describe three-toed lizard hooch as a potent alcoholic beverage with a three-toed lizard preserved in the bottle (...mmm, protein snack to go with your drink). 

This school of thought might be made up of boring empiricists. 

A second school of thought might describe it as a foul concoction only drinkable if prescribed to stop you from seeing some horrific vision (as three-toed lizard hooch will surely claim your faculty of sight).  

This school might consist of realists, or maybe stoics. 

The prey of three-toed lizards, reasonably enough, think that three-toed lizard hooch is the greatest beverage commercially available.  

Representatives of the three-toed lizards' major prey species were recently seen in a Hong Kong marketing office trying to work out how to increase sales, consumption, and production of three-toed lizard hooch.  

Their school of thought would consist of opportunists or survivalists, possibly both.

Tony and I, however, might describe three-toed lizard hooch as something that makes swinging your buddy by the ankles over a fourteenth floor balcony not only seem like a good idea, but also seem like a lot of fun to the guy being swung. 

Tony and I belonged to the school of good times. Tony narrowly avoided the school of hard knocks. 

Tony thought it was fun, at the time, at least.  

My chance or opportunity for a turn was rudely interrupted by the girls from a flat across the hall who thought

(a) this was dangerous, and 

(b) that it would be a brilliant idea to try to tear me away from the balcony, whilst Tony was singing "Wheeeee" as he whooshed back and forth, head pointing down, on the nonstandard balcony side.  

Hmm.  University memories.  Or maybe those are three-toed lizard hooch flashbacks...

Anyway, I have not found three-toed lizard hooch yet in Hong Kong (where it was brewed some 13 or 14 years ago), but then, why would I look when there are still chocolate-covered mango margaritas available?

After an introduction like that, dear Reader, you are probably wondering where we are going in the update today.

I can't say that I blame you; I wonder also.

I am thinking that bed is the only option for me.  

Just thinking about three-toed lizard hooch gives your scribe the shakes.

You might as well go to that meeting you were avoiding.  

If things get really bad for you, wherever you are, come visit and we will look for some three toed lizard hooch together.

It is guaranteed to blot out the pain, especially if we practice the balcony trick. 

You first. 

I may concentrate on writing about food from now on, too, and leave alcohol to the specialists who still have livers.  We will see.

All the best (and soft landings)...

Tschuess,

Chris, Regina, and Pommes mit senf

Postscript: 

The attached image at the top shows how dry you will feel after downing a bottle of three-toed lizard hooch with your humble scribe.  

Your scribe was in Dunhuang, near the end of the Silk Road in China, a couple of years ago.  

He was so thirsty, he was flashing back to the full body thirst brought on by attempting to metabolize three-toed lizard hooch.