The puzzle of Theseus's Ship is an ancient philosophical head-scratcher, that ask us to ponder this question: over time, all the timbers and parts and pieces of a ship are replaced. Is it still the same ship? (I recall hearing this asked about the ship of Ulysses/Odysseus, but apparently Theseus's boat is the canonical example.)

I've found that if you chase this question around and around enough, you eventually see that it's meaningless. We can agree that it's the same ship, or not, for different purposes. The sailor who says "I've sailed on the same same for twenty years!" is right, but so is the helmsman who complains "This is not the same ship since we replaced her rudder and sails and keel!" "Same" is an idea of convenience, a mental construct for sorting out the buzzy spiky world of sensory experience, not a deep truth.

This is, I think, essentially the Buddhist idea of sunyata ("emptiness").

The famous Heart Sutra tells us that everything is "empty", that Avalokitesvara (a.k.a. Kwan Yin, Kannon, Kanzeon, Kwan Seum Bosal) saw this and "overcame all pain". In his commentary The Heart of Understanding (which I cannot recommend highly enough), Thich Nhat Hahn points out that we have to ask, "Mr. Avalokita, empty of what?" The answer is that all things are empty of a separate self, empty of an existence separate from the rest of the world. The ship does not have a "self" separate from the boards and nails and rigging and crew -- and these elements are always changing.

And -- this is the really radical part of Buddhism, as I understand it -- the same is true for our "selves". This is the idea called anatman, "no self". I go around with the idea that there's a "me" separate from my body and my mind, that remains constant even as body and mind change, but 'tain't so, any more than there's a ship separate from the bits that make her up. If that sounds depressing, trying looking at it from a different angle: if there is no self separate from the Universe, that doesn't mean that you are nothing, that means that you are one with the whole Universe.

Consult your local Zen master for further enlightenment, because I want to move on to a fascinating example of Theseus's ship: that good old boat that every local kid visits on a school field trip, that National Historic Landmark, that Baltimore class-A tourist attraction, the USS Constellation.

There was a frigate, authorized in 1794 and launced on September 7, 1797, called the Constellation. This ship went to the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia in June 1853, where it was "broken down". In 1854, a corvette (or "war sloop") called the Constellation came out of that same shipyard -- according to some sources, using timbers from the broken-up frigate.

Apparently, the question of whether the 1854 ship is the "same" as the 1797 has been tossed around for decades. Defenders of the "same!" theory point out that the frigate was never stricken from the Naval Vessel Register — a wooden, sailing man-of-war called Constellation was continuously listed from 1797-1955. Defenders of the "different!" point of view say that the sloop was a new design and was planned to be built even if the frigate had not been around.

I suppose a salty sea-captain Zen master might say, "If you say these ships are the same, thirty lashes with the cat o' nine tails! If you say they are different, thirty lashes with the cat o' nine tails!"

Just something I posted in a comment thread on Facebook that seems like it has poetic potential for later:

Oh, but I *like* to complain about the weather -- and about my state of mind. But at the same time, knowing it's ridiculous. "I like my anger, my grouchy furious love," says Ikkyu. And I sit melancholy, sighing over lost love, looking out at the rain, marinating in my own mind, knowing that I'm tasting nothing more and nothing less than my own cooking, that the weather just *is* but also so is my mind, that being okay with "things as they are" means being okay with my mind's reaction to "things as they are" because that's part of "things as they are" (and if I'm not okay with my mind's reaction to "things as they are", that also is part of "things as they are", and so on to infinity).

"Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

"This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence." -- Tom Paine, Agrarian Justice

From the "what could possibly go wrong?" department: Russian daily paper Komsomoloskaya Pravda reports that in the glory days of the USSR, oil leaks like the current Gulf disaster were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts. They did it five times with only one failure.

This week's Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem whose lines all end in verbs, around the theme of today being both Mother's Day and the 50th anniversary of the pill

that revolution that chemists birthed
so that each baby might be a choice made
rather than an accident happened
fundamental rules of biology rewritten
women -- and therefore men, too -- liberated

the energy of sex, unchained
the reproductive urge, re-routed
sexual revolution, it is called
but more than sex it encompasses

by those chemists, the nature of families is changed

The science on the question of whether modern Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals, or came out of Africa and overran their cousins, has gone back and forth a few times over the years. In fact, I was just talking about this with someone at the Beltane festival over the weekend. (One gets into the most interesting discussions at Pagan gatherings -- ritual magic, evolutionary biology, BDSM, technogeekery, martial arts...)

When I look in the mirror and see my brow ridge, and feel that bit of an occipital bun on the back of my head, it seems sensible to me that my umpity-great grandpappy might have passed on a few genes from the Neanderthal part of the family tree, but -- I said a few days ago -- the evidence wasn't really there.

Well, now it is. Recent analysis of the Neanderthal genome, from bone fragements, reveals that those of us whose ancestral group developed outside Africa, may have from 1 to 4 percent of their genome from Neanderthal ancestors.

David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, notes that this implies that "Neanderthals aren't quite extinct. [They] all live on a little bit in many of us."

Why is it that when I hear that something truly, truly horrible has happened, it is no surprise to learn that Halliburton is involved?

Just 20 hours after Halliburton finished cementing work on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, the well blew and created the Gulf oil spill that has become one of the worst environmental disasters ever.

According to Robert MacKenzie, a former cementing engineer and current managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets, "The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement." A study of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the most important factor in 18 of them.

And Halliburton has already been accused of a shoddy cement work leading to a major blowout in the Timor Sea last August.

Halliburton delenda est.

Making the rounds: in contrast to the ever-worsening news about the oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico ("spill, baby, spill!", as one wag put it) comes this gem: "BREAKING: Large Air Spill At Wind Farm. No Threats Reported. Some Claim To Enjoy The Breeze."

Yes, there is still snow from Snowmageddon on the ground here in the Baltimore area: a pile behind a BWI parking garage has persisted since mid-February.

Shortly after the storm I predicted that there would still be a pile of snow somewhere in the area as late as April; so to my friends who thought I was crazy for that, ha! :-) But I wouldn't have guessed it would last through to Beltane.

Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook came from Chantilly, Virginia, to see the O's beat Kansas City at Camden Yards. They were having a fine time, until they got lost leaving the stadium on the way home. Unaware of the high proportion of thuggish authority freaks that infest Baltimore's guardians of law 'n' order, they made the mistake of thinking that a cop might help, and ended up getting arrested for trespassing -- on a public street:

Collins said somehow they ended up in the Cherry Hill section of south Baltimore. Hopelessly lost, relief melted away concerns after they spotted a police vehicle.

"I said, 'Thank goodness, could you please get us to 95?" Kelly said.

"The first thing that she said to us was no -- you just ran that stop sign, pull over," Brook said. "It wasn't a big deal. We'll pay the stop sign violation, but can we have directions?"

"What she said was 'You found your own way in here, you can find your own way out.'" Kelly said.

...

"(Brook's father) was in the middle of giving us directions when the officer screeched up behind us and got out of the car and asked me to step out. I obeyed," Kelly said. "I obeyed everything -- stepped out of the car, put my hands behind my back, and the next thing I know, I was getting arrested for trespassing."