Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
As an unwitting Northern Hemisphere chauvinist, I forgot that although yesterday was the first day of spring up here, it was the first day of fall below the Equator. So let me make amends by presenting the Google Doodle showing this year’s advent of fall, whose first day, by my calculation, ends in roughly 45 minutes.
The Doodle, designed and animated by Kirsten Lepore, features not only autumn squash but a lovely animated squirrel. Click on the screenshot below to go to the animation.
BTW, how do you keep from falling off down there? 🙂
And the Google Doodle celebrates it with a stop animation of flowers growing and a bee coming around; click on the screenshot below to go there:
I’m told that there’s an eclipse Doodle in the UK, which differs slightly from the above; reader Grania sent in a screenshot. It’s animated, but I don’t think US readers can access it:
This is my 9,970th post, which means that within the week we’ll get to post number 10,000. I’m still pondering the 172 comments on the thread following “The 10,000th post: what shall it be?“, in which readers suggested way to celebrate this landmark. If I decide to use one of those suggestions, that reader gets an autographed copy of WEIT with a cat drawn in it. Given that there will probably be nearly ten posts today, as there’s a lot to say, I expect the Big Day to be Thursday or Friday. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot below to go there) celebrates Anna Atkins (1799-1871), a British botanist and photographer. Today would be her 216th birthday, and her distinction was to be the first person to publish any book that included photographs. In fact, she may have been the first woman to take a photograph. The Doodle gives an idea of what her photos looked like:
Anna Atkins
Here’s the title page of that pathbreaking self-published book, which appeared in 1853 (the first commercially published book with photos, by William Henry Fox Talbot, appeared 8 months later). This and all photographs are taken from the British Library’s site.
The captions were in her Atkins’s own handwriting, and the book went through three editions. According to Wikipedia, only 17 copies still exist, and they’re extremely valuable: one was auctioned off for £229,250 in 2004. But you can see the whole book for free, as the British Library has most of it scanned in (go here).
Here’s one of the pages from the table of contents, in Atkins’s handwriting:
From Vox we have some information about the process she used (their text indented):
Early photographers struggled with a problem: they couldn’t easily develop their pictures because the existing techniques were slow, expensive, or required dangerous chemicals. Herschel came up with a solution: using an iron pigment called “Prussian blue,” he laid objects or photographic negatives onto chemically-treated paper, let them be exposed to sunlight for around 15 minutes, and then washed the paper. The remaining image revealed pale blue objects on a dark blue background. This was a cyanotype — a new way to print photographs permanently.
Herschel primarily used cyanotypes to copy notes, but when Atkins heard about the opportunity, she leapt at it. Though she’d shown herself to be a capable artist, she realized instantly that cyanotypes were a better way to capture the intricacies of plant life and avoid the tedium — and error — involved with drawing. As importantly, her passion for botany allowed her to see a new application of the exciting technology.
So, in 1843, she began making a photographic book of algae.
Atkins’ British Algae was the definition of a labor of love. Published in piecemeal over a decade, from the 1840s to the 1850s, the book was made at home using her own materials. From what we know, she collected the algae with the help of her friend Anne Dixon and dried and pressed it, the same way you might press flowers. Then, she identified it using William Harvey’s Manual of British Algae. Finally, she made the cyanotype by laying each piece upon the paper (that’s why, technically, her pictures are called photograms, not photographs, because they didn’t use a camera). The book’s text appears in her own elegant cursive.
The book wasn’t a profit-making enterprise for Atkins, but it was an important one. It stands as the first book illustrated with photographs, and it brought together photography and botany for the first time. Atkins took the most fleeting and unusual of subjects — British algae — and made it timeless.
You have to really love algae to do something like this.
Usually the Google Doodle celebrates an accomplishment in science or literature, but today’s is an accomplishment in food. If you go to the Google page (click on screenshot below), you’ll see an animation of someone enjoying a steaming bowl of noodles:
and there’s another, too! I think it’s random which one you get:
What is this? If you’ve been an impoverished college student, forced to consume mass quantities of cheap ramen noodles (as I did), you may recognize this as a commemoration of Momfuko Ando, born in this day in 1910 (died 2007)—the inventor of instant ramen noodles and the famous Cup o’ Noodles.
Wikipedia tells the tale:
With Japan still suffering from a shortage of food in the post-war era, the Ministry of Health tried to encourage people to eat bread made from wheat flour that was supplied by the United States. Ando wondered why bread was recommended instead of noodles, which were more familiar to the Japanese. The Ministry’s response was that noodle companies were too small and unstable to satisfy supply needs, so Ando decided to develop the production of noodles by himself. The experience convinced him that “Peace will come to the world when the people have enough noodles to eat.” [JAC: Hasn’t worked.]
On August 25, 1958, at the age of 48, and after months of trial and error experimentation to perfect his flash-frying method, Ando marketed the first package of precooked instant noodles. The original chicken flavor is called Chikin Ramen (チキンラーメン?). It was originally considered a luxury item with a price of ¥35, around six times that of traditional udon and soba noodles at the time. Ando began the sales of his most famous product, Cup Noodle (カップヌードルKappu Nūdoru?), on September 18, 1971 with the masterstroke of providing a waterproof polystyrene container. As prices dropped, instant ramen soon became a booming business. Worldwide demand reached 98 billion servings in 2007. As of 2007, Chikin Ramen is still sold in Japan and now retails for around ¥60 [50 cents U.S.], or approximately one third the price of the cheapest bowl of noodles in a Japanese restaurant.
The Independentadds this, accounting for the second Doodle above:
In 1957 Ando discovered that by flash-frying ramen noodles in tempura oil, tiny holes would appear in the noodles, causing them to cook almost instantly once they are covered with hot water.
Ando continued to develop his discovery and in 1971 created Cup Noodles, before eventually inventing “Space Ram” – instant noodles to be eaten in space – when in his nineties.
I’m surprised that Google would celebrate the inventor of instant ramen, but then I remembered the kind of person who gets a job at Google!
(From USA Today): Momofuku Ando displays the instant noodles for astronauts called “Space Ram” during a July 2005 press conference. Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP/Getty Images
Today’s animated Google doodle (click on screenshot below to see it go) celebrates the beginning of the lunar new year with a cute sheep whose head-butting sets off fireworks that spell “Google.”
In China it’s the Year of the Sheep, ergo the ram, but some say it’s the year of the goat. This has led to consternation, according to the New York Times:
For English speakers, it is a can of worms.
“Few ordinary Chinese are troubled by the sheep-goat distinction,” Xinhua, China’s main state-run news agency, said in its report on the debate. “However, the ambiguity has whipped up discussion in the West.”
The reason is that the word for the eighth animal in the Chinese zodiac’s 12-year cycle of creatures, yang in Mandarin, does not make the distinction found in English between goats and sheep and other members of the Caprinae subfamily. Without further qualifiers, yang might mean any such hoofed animal that eats grass and bleats. And so Chinese news outlets have butted heads for days on what to call this year in English, recruiting experts to pass judgment.
. . . The prevalent theory goes that because Han Chinese culture developed in regions where herders and goats prevailed, the zodiac talisman must be a goat. The animal is indeed common in traditional New Year art. But sheep have their proponents, and they have become more common in cutesy cartoonish decorations for the celebrations.
Zhao Shu, a folklore expert at the Beijing Institute of Culture and History, said in a telephone interview that the debate was silly. The creature in question arose as a general symbol of plenitude and good fortune, partly because the Chinese character yang shares roots with the one for auspiciousness, he said.
You should know your animal, and Professor Ceiling Cat has kindly found this chart to tell you what your sign is (note that it’s goat, not sheep):
If you want to see how your birth year and iconic animal affects your personality, go hereand click on your animal.
The Ox is a person who will often find themselves in the same place or situation for longer periods than others. Whether it is in a relationship, a job, or just a phase of their life, the Ox is built to both endure and succeed. Part of this is that they will tend to favor those things that they are already familiar with. This allows them to make the most of what they can do, and in many ways to eliminate the chaos from their own world that seems to control so many others.
As someone who holds out for what they want, the Ox is also someone for whom discipline is second nature. They can maintain a level of work and a state of mind far beyond many of their peers, both in their personal and professional lives. It can be hard, however, to endure sudden changes in their life, at least for the first few days. As the Ox slowly refocuses their mind, though, they will soon return to a more stable and happy state. It simply takes them a little longer than others to figure out what is the best path for them. Though once they do, they are strong and determined.
Spot on! I’m also told that I’m compatible with Rats, Tigers, and Snakes, but not with Rabbits, Sheep, or Pigs. The site also tells you about your romances, your interpersonal relationships, and what kind of year you’re gonna have. You can’t resist clicking on it, can you? Feel free to describe in the comments its accuracy with respect to you.
Alessandro Volta, born on this day in 1745, is credited as inventing the battery, and of course gave his name to the unit of electrical potential. The Google doodle today, which lights up and flashes (click on screenshot below to see it) honors his 270th birthday.
Over at Google, the artist, Mark Holmes, explains how he researched and then made the doodle, rejecting several designs. But in a Guardian piece called “Alessandro Volta, a welcome but misleading Google doodle“, Charlotte Connelly carps that the doodle falsely implies that Volta invented the light bulb. (To be fair, she spends most of the piece recounting Volta’s story.) But Jebus, if you click on the doodle, which you should always do, it takes you to a whole pile of information on Volta. Don’t people want to know more than gawk at the lights?
I have to admit that I never read Little House on the Prairie, or the seven other books in the “Little House” series, nor did I ever watch the t.v. show; but I’m sure there are sufficiently many readers to be impressed by today’s Google Doodle honoring Laura Ingalls Wilder (click on it to go to a bunch of articles about her):
Wilder was born in 1867, and died 90 years later (that’s right, she lived during many of our lifetimes) on this date, February 10. Surprisingly, Wilder’s autobiography was published only last November, and by the South Dakota Historical Society Press, for crying out loud. But good for them, as it’s cleaning up: Pioneer Girl is #713 on Amazon, a very good show.
The Google Doodle depicts characters Laura and older sister, Mary, made through needle felting.
The figures were made from a wire armature which was then sculptured using a process called ‘roving’, in which loose wool is stabbed through with a needle.
