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 I mentioned yesterday, the captain and expedition leader decided to do something unusual: take the ship as far north as it could go before hitting the Arctic icepack. We made it to 82° 00′ 00″, and there we stopped and had a celebration. For this was not only as far north that this ship had ever gone, but as far north as anybody on board, including the naturalists and sailors, had ever gone. I’m told it’s rare, even in the summer season, to get this high. In winter, of course, this is impossible, as the ice is frozen solid as far south as Svalbard.
There was a celebration on the top (helicopter) deck with champagne, a group photo (including one with a drone, as we’re outside the Svalbard waters where drones are prohibited), and some of the guides dressed as seals, walruses, and polar bears.
Well, here’s yours truly as far north as I’ll ever go (click photos to enlarge, though I’ve degraded them by 85%). We’re still several hundred km, I think, from the North Pole (I ask a diligent reader to calculate the distance).
. . . and the sea ice at that latitude. Good for polar bears, which can swim over 100 km, leap from floe to floe, and look for seals (or, on rare occasions, whale carcasses). A blue whale passed by the ship during breakfast, but I could see only the ripples on the surface; it did not breathe while we passed.
I will try posting at least one photo today as I experiment with degrading their quality to enable posting.
This is from Walrus Day: yesterday. We took Zodiacs to the shore where there was a huge pile o’ walruses sleeping. Apparently they do not do this to keep warm, as they’re already too warm (the pink skin in the second photograph was explained as the animals having pumped blood to the skin to cool off). No, they are thigmotropic: they like to touch other individuals. This was my first sight of a walrus, just as the previous photo of a polar bear represented my first view of a bear—any bear—in the wild. Our ship, the Ultramarine, is the in the background of the first photo.
Our expedition leader decided to turn the ship as north as it could go: up to the high floating ice that extends up to the North Pole. We are currently at about 81° north latitude, with the ice rearing up out of the ocean. A dead sperm whale carcass is on our starboard bow, and three polar bears, which I cannot see (but those with good vision can make out), are resting on the adjacent ice floe, delighted to find a Big Meat Buffet.
There is very weak Internet here so I can’t read email, but if you wish to say something put it in the comments.
The trip has been fantastic so far, and I’ve taken tons of photos, but I ask for your patience until I get to a place where we can actually post them. Tons of birds, bearded and ringed seals, and a big pile o’ 30-50 walruses have been encountered, pondered, and photographed. I had hoped to post photos as we go along, but in this Internet-poor zone this is simply impossible.
I am not sure even this can be posted, but I’ll try. In the meantime, Matthew will put up Hili dialogues as he can.
UPDATE: I’ll try to embed one much-reduced photo. The fog lifted and, with my Panasonic Lumix lens fully extended, to took a bunch of photos of the lucky bear with more meat than it could possibly eat. If no photo is below, it’s because it wouldn’t embed. Have patience. .
We are traveling around Svalbard and are scheduled to have two Zodiac trips today, one a cruise along the glaciers where we are, and another after lunch to see WALRUSES (walri).
This far north we have very poor ship internet, and it’s very slow. I am unable to post photos, which is a bummer. But I am taking as many as usual, and will reprise our trip photographically either when I get to Iceland or back to Chicago.
It’s a wonderful ship with, I think, only about 140 passengers (it holds 200) and many amenities. The food is good, the crew is friendly and, at this latitude we have encountered zero turbulence.
Matthew is in charge of posting Hili dialogues for a while as I cannot send photos.
I am off to Svalbard this morning, taking a 3-hour flight from Helsinki to the archipelago’s capital of Longyearbyen, though Svalbard (previously known as “Spitsbergen)” is part of Norway.
Svalbard (/ˈsvɑːlbɑːr(d)/SVAHL-bar(d),[4]Urban East Norwegian:[ˈsvɑ̂ːɫbɑr]), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it lies about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range from 74° to 81° north latitude, and from 10° to 35° east longitude. The largest island is Spitsbergen (37,673 km2), followed in size by Nordaustlandet (14,443 km2), Edgeøya (5,073 km2), and Barentsøya (1,288 km2). Bjørnøya or Bear Island (178 km2) is the most southerly island in the territory, situated some 147 km south of Spitsbergen. Other small islands in the group include Hopen to the southeast of Edgeøya, Kongsøya and Svenskøya in the east, and Kvitøya to the northeast. The largest settlement is Longyearbyen, situated in Isfjorden on the west coast of Spitsbergen.
And Longyearbyen is described as “the world’s northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000″ (the 2023 population is given as 2,395.
Here are the islands (dark green) and their location (all from Wikipedia). Norway is in light green, and our final destination is Iceland
Two views of Longyearbyen from Wikipedia, though we have 3.5 hours on our own after our plane lands before we board the ship Ultramarine (max. 200 passengers), so I’ll take plenty of photos (Note: I’m not sure how easy it will be to post photos from the ship, as its internet may not be able to handle them.)
This one is captioned “These are all the buildings of this kind (“spisshusene”) left standing after the avalanche disaster in 2015.” That avalanche killed one person, injured 9, and buried about ten of the brightly-colored houses.
I think I’ll be able to see the whole town in 3 hours.
Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The town, as you see, is huddled by the sea in a valley: Wikipedia notes that “It stretches along the foot of the left bank of the Longyear Valley and on the shore of Adventfjorden, the short estuary leading into Isfjorden on the west coast of Spitsbergen, the island’s broadest inlet.”
Andre Shutterbird, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Polar bears are the iconic symbol of Svalbard, and one of the main tourist attractions. The animals are protected and people moving outside the settlements are required to have appropriate scare devices to ward off attacks. They are also advised to carry a firearm for use as a last resort.
Yep, our bear-watching sojourns will always have a guide carrying a gun, and at this time of year we have to stay at least 300 meters from a sighted bear. Wikipedia reports that there are onl 300 polar bears resident on Svalbard.
Da Nooz:
*Mostly duck nooz today: yesterday morning’s verbatim report from the duck tender. Esther came back!
Update on the brood! Yesterday in the morning two of the ducklings were around, but Esther was gone, they seemed a bit out of sorts, skittish and not very interested in food. In the afternoon Esther had come back and it was a fairly normal feeding.
This morning [Monday] it was just Esther in the pond. There were some workers doing landscaping, not cleaning the algae but a handful around doing various things so she wouldn’t come too close.
This is just the morning report, and I will of course add updates as I get them.
*Over at Murtadd to Human (a “recovering from Islam” site), author Anjuli Pandavar, whose articles and book Malgorzata translated into Polish, has a nice remembrance of her (our) friend. Click below to read it. In the photo, I believe Malgorzata is wearing the University of Chicago tee-shirt I brought her.
An excerpt:
Many will remember Małgorzata Koraszewska, the strong-willed Polish translator who worked non-stop. I did not know her as her lifelong friends did, but I did know her as a complex, lovable, strong-willed woman who never really dropped her emotional guard, except when she talked about her cat, Hili, when she told me about her childhood flight into deepest, frozen Siberia and how she eventually made her way out of there, and when, mid-sentence, she would vanish into the depths of their house to retrieve yet another book, find the page and complete the sentence. Despite all her accomplishments, she was not someone given to blowing her own trumpet. Only now and then, I got a hint of those accomplishments, such as when she showed me the little books in which she kept a record of all the many, many translations she had done for so many big-name Western writers, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett being but a few. She translated my book, Islam: Faith and Humanity, for publication in Polish, when I could find no English publisher, and made my essays on Murtadd to Human available to Polish readers. But whenever I wanted to share some hearty schadenfreude about someone, Małgorzata was always a good person to call. I’d like to remember her for that.
She adds the first part of Andrzej’s memories of Malgorzata, the bit dealing with how they met and called “Diary Found in an Old Head.” It’s a piece that I’ve already posted.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is angry at what she sees as the widespread antisemitism of Ireland. Andrzej tells me that “Brendan” is Brendan O’Neill.
Hili: The three-leaf clover is a symbol of Ireland – why are those Irish people such scoundrels?
Andrzej: Not all of them. I know some great ones, think of Brendan.
In Polish:
Hili: Trzylistna koniczyna jest symbolem Irlandii – dlaczego ci Irlandczycy są takimi łajdakami.
Ja: Nie wszyscy. Znam wspaniałych, pomyśl o Brendanie.
Maarten Boudry sent me this tweet. Sadly, the original article is in Dutch, but he summarizes it in English. Maarten and I and one other person were “canceled” at the University of Amsterdam (where we were to talk about the ideological infection of science) because we had previously showed too much sympathy for Israel!
Muslims at @UvA_Amsterdam are being intimidated, shunned & threatened. The university tells them to stay home—for their own safety. This is outrageous & unacceptable!
Wait, did I say ‘Muslims’? I meant Jews. Oh well, it’s fine then, those filthy Zionists deserve it, right? pic.twitter.com/zsmpQGRSzw
. . . in Helsinki, the beginning point of our Arctic cruise. I will be here for a day and a half, and then, as I recall, we fly to Svalbard to board the ship. Then it’s on to various islands to see things like puffins, walruses (walri?), whales, and (fingers crossed) polar bears.
Finland is living up to its stereotype today: although it’s not cold, it’s gray and overcast, though not rainy. At 5 p.m. here, as I write this, it’s 58°F (14°C). I’m staying right next to the airport, which is where they put us. I came a day early in case there was flight issues, as Finnair, the carrier I booked, is going through a massive company strike. Fortunately, the work stoppages are sporadic, so I arrived on time and can relax tomorrow. That’s when we check in for the trip, so I have no plans to see Helsinki.
Scandanavians speak superb English, which is something you notice instantly, beginning with the flight attendants on the plane. Most of the signs, in fact, have English as their first language, with Finnish and other European languages below. Here’s a bit of the Wikipedia entry on the language:
Finnish is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland, alongside Swedish. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish) are official minority languages. Kven, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Finnmark by a minority of Finnish descent.
and this:
Finnish belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family; as such, it is one of the few European languages that is not Indo-European. The Finnic branch also includes Estonian and a few minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in Russia’s Republic of Karelia. The closest relative of Finnish is either Ingrian, or depending on the definition, Karelian.
And if you look up Ingrian or Karelian, you’ll find that both of these related languages are endangered, with Ingrian having only about 70 native speakers left, most of them old.
So that you can see what Finnish looks like, and notice instantly that it’s not Indo-European, I’ve used Google translate to convert my first paragraph at the beginning into Finnish:
…Helsingissä, arktisen risteilymme lähtöpisteessä. Olen täällä puolitoista päivää, ja sitten muistaakseni lennämme Huippuvuorille nousemaan laivaan. Sitten suuntaamme eri saarille tarkkailemaan esimerkiksi lunneja, mursuja ja (peukut pystyssä) jääkarhuja.
I’m really glad that English is so widespread here; learning Finnish would be a bear!
Oh, and the Finnair flight was okay, but not outstanding. The movies were a pretty lame selection, and since I can’t sleep on long-haul flights, I watched three on our nearly nine-hour trip: two good HBO bio-documentaries, one about Elizabeth Taylor (based on tape recordings she made with her friend Roddy McDowell) and the other about Faye Dunaway, including a long recent interview in which she recounts and assesses her life. She’s now 84, and that’s hard to believe if you watched her great performanc in “Bonnie and Clyde” when she was just 26. By all admissions, including hers, she’s very hard to work with but a master of her craft. Dunaway is regarded by her fellow actors of one of the best of their group in the last 60 years or so (I’d forgotten many of her outstanding performances, including those in “Chinatown” and “Network”).
I also learned that Taylor was married eight times to seven men (Richard Burton twice), and converted permanently to Judaism in 1959 when she was 27 (she died in 2011).
Finally, for lack of a better movie that I hadn’t already seen, I watched “Gladiator II.” I thought the first “Gladiator” movie (as seen on a plane) was okay, but I recommend that you give this one a wide miss. It’s tedious.
I’ll stay up as long as I can (it’s 5:30 pm here as I write this, and then I’m going to crash—hard).
There is no conference yet (registration is tomorrow), I cannot brain, and so ye shall have food photos. People do seem to want to know what I eat on the road.
Googling the restaurants around my hotel, I found there was a surfeit of ones that sounded good and got high ratings, ranging all the way from the upscale and famous Gage & Tollner, where I will likely splurge on lunch in the next few days, to Dave’s Hot Chicken, only a 2-minute walk from the hotel. (Confession: I’ve never had “hot chicken”, a spicy subspecies of fried chicken that is a specialty of Nashville.)
One of the ethnic restaurants that got good good reviews was the Cuban Shack, only a 12-minute walk from where I’m staying (menu here and also pictured below). Since I adore Cuban food (in truth, the only ethnic cuisine that I find blah is Jewish!), I decided to make my way there. And I had a lovely and authentic lunch.
Well, I don’t know if the famous “Cuban sandwich” that I had is really eaten in Cuba, but it’s ubiquitous in Cuban areas of Florida, and Wikipedia says this:
A Cuban sandwich (Spanish: Sándwich cubano) is a variation of a ham and cheese sandwich that likely originated before the turn of the 20th century in cafes catering to Cuban workers in Tampa or Key West, two early Cuban immigrant communities in Florida centered on the cigar industry. Later on, Cuban exiles and expatriates brought it to Miami, where it is also very popular. The sandwich is made with ham, mojo, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and sometimes salami on Cuban bread
Mine had all the ingredients above (the pork was chopped) save salami, which is superfluous. It came with plantain chips and garlic sauce for dipping, but I decided to order a side dish of fried plantains (they come sweet or green, but they had only sweet), a dish I love, and is usually on tap only in Cuban places.
Here is the inside of the Cuban Shack, which is unprepossessing, but that means nothing when it comes to food.
And my lunch. The portion of fried plantains was huge, and I had to bring half of them back to my room (in fact, I’m snacking on them now).
A close-up of the layered sandwich, with chopped, roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, very thinly sliced pickle, and mustard. One might think this a weird combination, but the flavors meld wonderfully, which is why the sandwich is so popular. The only off-note was that the cheese could have been melted a bit more. Still, I loved it:
The menu (click to enlarge):
Here’s the part of Brooklyn where I am, and of course since I rarely ventured outside of Manhattan when I lived in NYC, I don’t recognize anything. Perhaps some readers do. There is a sign right outside that says “Last left turn before the Brooklyn Bridge,” so I must be close to the East River and The World’s Most Beautiful Bridge. But I am ignorant, and only the dead know Brooklyn.
