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.
My beloved Philomena has returned to television. Apparently there’s a series of five episodes of “Cunk on Earth”, all of which are online. According to the BBC, this is what the “mockumentary” is about:
In this deeply profound and important mockumentary series from Charlie Brooker, Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) tells the entire story of Human Civilisation from prehistoric times to the present day, covering all the main bits of History, Science, Culture and Religion.
So this really is the last documentary you ever need to watch.
Along the way, Philomena asks experts hard-hitting questions about humanity’s progress, and stands on or near impressive old ruins and inside museums, before the shot cuts away to some archive of the bits that don’t exist anymore or were too expensive to film at.
In this opening episode Cunk travels the world, heading down caves and up mountains in her search for Mankind’s first moments, and with the help of a variety of experts she explains how the earliest societies were formed: from the easier ones to spell like Rome and Greece, to the ones that are harder to spell, like Egypt and Mesopotamia.
All the videos are a bit shy of half an hour. The one on religion is next, and it’s a hoot. I’ll post one per day. But you have to watch them all!
Here’s Episode 1: “In the Beginnings”. Like the other episodes, it features Philomena interviewing academics and experts, and surely most of them must know that this is a spoof!
Today’s photos come from reader Tony Eales in Queensland, and they’re lovely pictures of spiders. Tony’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Here’s a grab bag of spiders I’ve photographed recently.
Arkys speechleyi. These are relatively common in the right habitat but I haven’t seen this colour form before. The reddish-pink cephalothorax and legs are new to me. I like how it looks like it’s offering me some of its wasp(?) meal.
The other Arkys is A. cornutus, a species I haven’t seen in a few years. They are wonderfully colourful spiders in the 5-6mm range.
I recently found my first Carepalxis sp., a genus I’ve been hoping to encounter for a while. I find their bulbous faces quite mournful. They are rarely encountered spiders, hiding in the day and making a small orb web at night. The genus is present not just in Australia but also South and lower North America.
I also found a nice all-green member of the Araneus circulissparsus species complex. These are some of the prettiest small orb-weavers around. They often have yellow orange and deep red patches that look rather like a sherbet lolly we have called a fruit tingle.
The all-green one:
A more colourful one.
One I see commonly at night in the rainforests is the colourful Copa kabana in the family Corinnidae. The spider was described by Robert Raven in 2015. The genus name Copa already existed and I just think Robert Raven couldn’t resist the joke.
Another rather recently described spider from the family Lamponidae. This is a Gondwanan family with most species endemic to Australia but also found in New Guinea and New Caledonia. Two species have been accidentally introduced into New Zealand from Australia. Most members of this family are specialist spider-hunting spiders. I found this one, Centsymplia glorious, hunting through the moss on a tree trunk in the rainforest. This montotypic genus and species were described in 2000 from a specimen collected at Mt Glorious which it is named for and where I found this one.
I watched some interesting behaviour from this pair of net-casting spiders, Menneus sp. The female, on the left, was trying to hunt but constantly had to put down her net to chase off the amorous male, right. She’d pick the net up again, stretch it out, only to have the male come up and disturb her again.
Lastly, a cute little jumping spider that I encounter in the rainforest fairly regularly. Probably an undescribed member of the genus Tara. And when I say “small”, they are small!
Today is Christmas, the third full day of Hanukkah, and the first day of Coynezaa: a perfect trifecta of holidays on this Wednesday, December 25, 2019. Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) wishes you all a Happy Trifecta and hope that you are in the presence of presents, family and/or good friends, and, of course, good noms. (Please report on your Christmas victuals below.)
I’m still suffering a bit from my bug, and so will spending most of the day in bed—Jews shouldn’t celebrate Christmas, anyway—but I’m feeling much better. I have some Christmas posts lined up, but don’t expect much that is substantive today. Have a big dinner and a nap instead!
It’s very warm in Chicago, with a predicted high today of 53° F (12° C); I don’t think I’ve seen as warm a Christmas since I moved here in December, 1986. Tomorrow may well get to 60° F, which would beat the all-time record for December 26 by two degrees.
As for food, it’s National Pumpkin Pie Day (good, but only with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream; sweet potato pie is better). It’s also “No ‘L’ Day”, a pun on the holiday but also a day on which you’re supposed to remove that (l)etter from speech and writing. Good (l)uck with that.
Today’s new Google Doodle celebrates the season, and, as Google is fighting the war on Christmas, leads to a bunch of sites about the “holiday season” (click on screenshot):
Matthew sends this Merry Xmas tweet, with “X” being especially appropriate here:
To celebrate the Jewish holiday, we have a special song: Boyz II Menorah singing their smash Hanukkah hit “A Week and a Day”, which is very good for a spoof song (h/t: Merilee):
Stuff that happened on Christmas Day include:
0 AD-Jesus was born. [I added that one]
333 – Roman Emperor Constantine the Great elevates his youngest son Constans to the rank of Caesar.
Remember that Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity.
336 – First documentary sign of Christmas celebration in Rome.
800 – The coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.
1066 – William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy is crowned king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.
1758 – Halley’s Comet is sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch, confirming Edmund Halley’s prediction of its passage. This was the first passage of a comet predicted ahead of time.
1776 – George Washington and the Continental Army cross the Delaware River at night to attack Hessian forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.
Here’s the most famous painting of that event: “Washington Crossing the Delaware “by Emanuel Leutze, done in 1851:
1809 – Dr. Ephraim McDowell performs the first ovariotomy, removing a 22-pound tumor.
1831 – The Great Jamaican Slave Revolt begins; up to 20% of Jamaica’s slaves mobilize in an ultimately unsuccessful fight for freedom.
1914 – A series of unofficial truces occur across the Western Front to celebrate Christmas.
1950 – The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951.
1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine’s referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.
Notables born on Christmas Day include:
0 – AD Jesus was born [I added that here, too]
1642 (OS) – Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician (d. 1726/1727)
1821 – Clara Barton, American nurse and humanitarian, founder of the American Red Cross (d. 1912)
1876 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Indian-Pakistani lawyer and politician, 1st Governor-General of Pakistan (d. 1948)
1884 – Evelyn Nesbit, American model and actress (d. 1967)
1887 – Conrad Hilton, American entrepreneur (d. 1979)
1899 – Humphrey Bogart, American actor (d. 1957)
1907 – Cab Calloway, American singer-songwriter and bandleader (d. 1994)
1924 – Rod Serling, American screenwriter and producer, created The Twilight Zone (d. 1975)
1946 -Jimmy Buffett [JAC: I added this because I heard it on NPR]
1949 – Sissy Spacek, American actress [JAC: only five days older than I!]
1950 – Karl Rove, American political strategist and activist
1954 – Annie Lennox, Scottish singer-songwriter and pianist
Those who began necrosis on this day include:
1946 – W. C. Fields, American actor, comedian, juggler, and screenwriter (b. 1880)
1977 – Charlie Chaplin, English actor and director (b. 1889)
1983 – Joan Miró, Spanish painter and sculptor (b. 1893)
1995 – Dean Martin, American singer and actor (b. 1917)
2005 – Birgit Nilsson, Swedish operatic soprano (b. 1918)
2008 – Eartha Kitt, American singer and actress (b. 1927)
2016 – George Michael, British singer and songwriter (b. 1963)
Miró painted many cats in his life; you can see some of them here. Here’s a good one, “Jumping Cat”:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants her Christmas although she’s a secular Jewish cat, and she always gets treats on the holidays:
Hili: Where are the presents?
A: You ate them yesterday.
Hili: That’s not the right answer.
In Polish:
Hili: Gdzie te prezenty?
Ja: Wczoraj zjadłaś.
Hili: To nie jest właściwa odpowiedź.
In nearby Wloclawek, Mietek and Leon also seem to be worried that they haven’t had their holiday noms yet.
Leon: Did we miss something?
In Polish: Coś przegapilismy?
Reader Pliny the in Between posted this Christmas cartoon at The Far Corner Cafe:
And seven tweets from Matthew. First, the Christmas Day egress from the Marsh Farm barn. The animals are especially excited as they get extra treats, and there’s also a Christmas scarecrow. Once again, Cuthbert the Goose, who has privilege, gets a special mention:
Finally, Philomena returns to tell us the true meaning of Christmas. (And note this; “Cunk On Christmas is on BBC2 on Thursday 29 December at 10pm.”)
Parsnips are a cross between carrots and medicine. Brussels sprouts are what happens when a pea and a cabbage get married and have a fat baby. https://t.co/eVrkyDmuW0
I believe I’ve posted the first two episodes of Cunk on Britain, Diane Morgan’s very funny take of the history of Old Blighty. I’m surprised that the episodes are still up (#1 here and #2 here), as the BBC tends to take these things down. Well, watch them soon.
This episode covers the nineteenth century, and there are some real gems. There’s of course a bit on Darwin (from 12:49 to 15:25). You get to hear Philomena say her best word, “monkey” (pronounced “mahn-kee”), five times, and hear her description of Darwin’s classic book The Oranges of the Peaches.
The second installment of the BBC “Cunk on Britain” series is up, and watch it while it’s there. (There will be five parts.)
Surprisingly, Part I is still up (here) though perhaps in a different incarnation, so maybe the BBC will for once let us Yanks watch the whole thing—at least for a short while.
I haven’t yet seen this, but wanted to give people a chance to watch while they could.
I’m truly surprised that this is still up, as the BBC relentlessly removes most of its purloined videos from YouTube. So far, this one—the first of Cunk’s five-part BBC Two series—is still up. I mentioned it this morning, but you might have missed it. Have a look at this 30-minute show, which is classic Cunk, before it’s gone.
You’ll be amused at King Arthur of Come-A-Lot and the Baywatch Tapestry.
Several Brits have written to inform me that the first episode of “Cunk on Britain”, Philomena’s series on her beloved land, plays tonight on BBC Two. There will be five episodes, with two scheduled. The first is this evening at 10 pm England time (don’t ask me what it’s formally called)—about an hour and a half from this posting; and the second episode is in a week:
Little do the people who wrote me know that I won’t be able to SEE this, which makes me unspeakably sad. (BBC shows are embargoed in the US.) It’s like telling me they’re giving out free glasses of 1982 Petrus at a bar in Mongolia.
Here’s one clip, which makes me want to watch it even more (click on screenshot):
