Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 26, 2019 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Welcome to Tuesday, hope it’s a good one wherever you are.

In history today:

Notable birthdays:

  • 1873 – Dorothea Bleek, South African-German anthropologist and philologist (d. 1948)
  • 1875 – Syngman Rhee, South Korean journalist and politician, 1st President of South Korea (d. 1965)
  • 1881 – Guccio Gucci, Italian fashion designer, founded Gucci (d. 1953)
  • 1905 – Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist (d. 1997)
  • 1930 – Sandra Day O’Connor, American lawyer and jurist
  • 1931 – Leonard Nimoy, American actor (d. 2015)
  • 1940 – Nancy Pelosi, American lawyer and politician, 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

From Poland we have a moment of complete and utter hubris.

Hili: The background is only an addition to highlight the beauty of the photographed object.
A: What are you talking about?
Hili: About me.

In Polish:

Hili: Tło jest tylko dodatkiem dla podkreślenia piękna fotografowanego obiektu.
Ja: O czym mówisz?
Hili: O mnie.

From Twitter for your delectation (or detestation):

Some articles worth reading, the first about the media’s abysmal dive down the rabbit-hole, written just before any details from the Mueller investigation were published.

The second refers to this breaking news about Avenatti.

Contender for stupidest dog on the planet, Ra bless its cotton socks.

Not the brightest doggo from AnimalsBeingDerps

On Brexit – for those who don’t know DAG is a EU-skeptic and an English lawyer and writer. Even he thinks Remain is the saner option.

Big Brother is watching you.

More pleasant stuff:

https://twitter.com/LlFEUNDERWATER/status/1110134360332632064

Less pleasant stuff:

The newest Disney princess, and probably the best one ever.

No Comment (you’ll have to click through on this one)

And just to redeem your faith in dogs after seeing the eejit above. Well, one of them, anyway.  #NotAllDogs

https://twitter.com/freak1ngawesome/status/1109600714114977792

 

Amsterdam: food

March 25, 2019 • 12:00 pm

I’ve been here but one day but have already sampled some of the culinary delights of this city. More are to come.

After arrival we asked where we could find a good place for Dutch pancakes, and it turned out one was not far away: the Pancake Bakery in the Canal District (scroll on the menu at link to see the pancake selection). These are substantial pancakes, especially when drizzled with molasses served with a wooden spoon from a giant open crock of the stuff at each table. It turns out that even the “savory” pancakes, like the two below, benefit from a little sweetness.

Ham, cheese, and pineapple pancake:

Apple and bacon pancake:

Dutch cheese in a local grocery store (I need to try some aged Gouda):

The French Fry (frites) are kings in Holland and Belgium (by the way, the Dutch I’ve talked to here call it “Holland” rather than “The Netherlands”). Anthropomorphized french fries are everywhere, like this one:

When I was here about five years ago, I stayed in a cheap hotel in the red-light district and every day would go to this big frites operation on the Damrak, the main street running south from the Central Station. I’m pleased to report that it’s still in operation (though not the most famous frites stall in the city), and churns out a fresh, hot product covered with the topping of your choice.

There’s always a line after it opens. Note the name: Mannekenpis, which can only refer to the eponymous “pissing cherub” statue in Brussels (Belgium is of course the epicenter of frites).

The pile of frites in the middle must be faux-frites, as they don’t use them (they might be a big plastic display); here all the frites are freshly made in oil on the side, and served with the dressing of your choice. Those choices include ketchup, “frites sauce” (mayo, the favorite), curry sauce, peanut sauce, and about ten other toppings. I got the classic: mayo. There are enough fries in a “large” serving to fill up three people! Hot fries are tossed with salt (below) right after draining, and the topping ladled on.

The goods—a cardiologist’s nightmare:

There are many hot dog stalls as well as raw herring stalls; I’ll eschew them both but noted that one hot dog stall here used the superfluous greengrocer’s apostrophe, as well as a dash between “hot” and “dogs”. And what are the scare quotes around “cold drinks”? Is this code for marijuana, or do the drinks only purport to be cold? Such are the mysteries of the Netherlands.

Tonight: a 23-course Indonesian rijsttafel, culturally appropriated by the Dutch from the Indonesians.

Lagniappe: The first live cat I saw in Amsterdam (I haven’t seen any dead ones). It was lying on a table by the window inside a restaurant. I wonder if they clean that table before they open the restaurant.

Tomorrow: a visit to the Poezenboot, the world’s only floating cat shelter!

Remarkable new Cambrian fossils comparable to those of the Burgess shale

March 25, 2019 • 10:00 am

Greetings from Amsterdam!

I want to call your attention to a remarkable new fossil find in southern China; a rich group of soft-bodied animals, the “Qingjiang Fauna”, from about 518 million years ago. It’s comparable in importance to the Burgess Shale fauna popularized by Steve Gould’s book Wonderful Life, and to the Chengjiang fauna China from China. They’re of comparable age, too: The Burgess fauna is 508 million years old, and the new Qingjiang finds are 518 mya, the same age as the Chenjiang fauna. Yet the animals of the two later finds, despite being similar in age and marine habitat, are very different (see below).

You might be able to read this new paper if you have the legal Unpayall application, or you can try getting the pdf here. (I’m in the Netherlands and unable to send pdfs.) There’s also a News and Views piece by Allison Daley, “A treasure trove of Cambrian fossils,” that gives a one-page overview.

The paper:


The fossils are soft-bodied, preserved as exquisitely detailed carbon films on gray “claystone”: sediments interspersed between non-fossil-bearing black claystone. The fossil layers are seen as the light gray bands on the right side of the following picture (site of fossil finds in China are on the left).

From paper: Fig. 1 Locality map and early Cambrian stratigraphy of the study area. (A) Lithofacies map of the Yangtze Platform during Cambrian Stage 3, with type localities of the Qingjiang and Chengjiang biotas. (B) Geological map of the study area, showing the distribution of Cambrian outcrops and the location of studied sections with characteristic couplets of background and event claystone beds within the middle member of the Shuijingtuo Formation. (C) Composite stratigraphic column for the study area. (D) Stratigraphic column at the Jinyangkou type locality.

The fossils were formed in a manner similar to those of the Burgess-Shale fauna. They were one-off gravity flows”, or avalanches, of shallow sea sediments that carried animals and algae to a deeper, oxygen-poor location where they were rapidly covered up and then remained undisturbed by waves above. The animals’ body impressions weren’t replaced by minerals, but were turned into carbonized films that show exquisite detail.

And what detail, and what a variety of animals! Sponges, coelenterates (cnidarians), algae, ctenophores, kinorhynchs (“mud dragons”, found only once before as an early fossil), arthropods, brachiopods, priapulid worms, and even a chordate, a member of our own phylum, resembling the remarkable Pikaia fossil found in the Burgess shale.  There are also a number of tiny larvae, and these aren’t easily placed as to the group because they metamorphose into something that looks very different.

Remarkably, 53% of these fossils belong to previously unknown taxa, making this truly the “treasure trove” described by Daley. Look at these fossils! Note the chordate, possibly along the lineage to our own ancestry, in F.

Fig 2 (from paper). Fig. 2 New soft-bodied taxa from the Qingjiang biota. (A) Medusoid cnidarian, showing radially symmetrical body plan, exumbrellar/subumbrellar surfaces (Eu/Su), manubrium (Ma), and tentacles (Te). (B) Polypoid cnidarian, showing oral disc and mouth (Mo), tentacles, column, and pedal disc (Pd). (C) Ctenophore, showing that comb rows and oral-aboral body axis have a biradial symmetry resulting from sheathed tentacles. (D) Branched alga, showing quadripartite thallus. (E) Sponge Leptomitella sp. (F) New chordate. (G) Yunnanozoon sp.

Look at the remarkable arthropod Leanchoilia in (A) to see the detail of these fossils. Every leg and feeler is preserved.

More details of the above; you can see every bristle on the kinorhynch (right). The cnidarian is on the left and the ctenophore’s in the middle.

Curiously, the fauna isn’t all that similar to that of the Chenjiang fauna that was preserved about the same time. This new fauna, for example, has far more cnidarians (jellyfish, anemones, etc.) and far more kinorhynchs than does the Chengjian samples. As the authors note, “Only a small number of species (n = 8) are shared with Chengjiang (materials and methods), and the most abundant taxa, Kunmingella and Maotianshania, as well as the iconic Fuxianhuia, are absent from the Qingjiang assemblage.”

The authors suggest that these differences represent not different artifacts of preservation but a real difference in the nature of the fauna between the two areas. They could be from different depths in the ocean.

Here’s a reconstruction of the fauna from the original paper:

Fig. 4 from paper. Artist’s rendering of the Qingjiang biota showing characteristic early Cambrian taxa from the Lagerstätte.

The potential of this find is immense, but of course not yet tapped. It could help reconstruct the history of life and the potential of various suggested group—like the ctenophores—to be part of our own ancestry.  And of course there’s the new fishlike chordate above.  Daley sums up this potential in her news and views piece:

One of the most remarkable findings reported by Fu et al. is that 53% of the animals and algae in the Qingjiang biota represent previously unknown taxa. When these taxa are described in detail, the Qingjiang biota will help to illuminate the reasons for faunal variation between localities. The Burgess Shale and the Chengjiang biota, for example, have some similarities in the overall type and abundance of animals found at each site, but only 15% of genera are found at both localities.

. . . Fu et al. convincingly demonstrate that the Qingjiang biota represents an assemblage of organisms that was preserved nearly in place, providing a snapshot of a real animal community 518 million years ago. The treasure trove of the Qingjiang biota provides an exciting opportunity to explore how paleoenvironmental conditions influenced ecological structuring and evolutionary drivers during the Cambrian Explosion.

Now, on to the Poezenboot!

h/t: Barry

___________

Fu, D., G. Tong, T. Dai, W. Liu, Y. Yang, Y. Zhang, L. Cui, L. Li, H. Yun, Y. Wu, A. Sun, C. Liu, W. Pei, R. R. Gaines, and X. Zhang. 2019. The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale–type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China. Science 363:1338-1342.

Monday: Hili dialogue

March 25, 2019 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning and welcome to the new week.

In history today:

Notable birthdays:

As it’s Elton John’s birthday, here are two of his most famous songs, Your Song and Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.

Hili is being contrary this morning. Well, it is a Monday.

A: Look at the beautiful crocuses!
Hili: I don’t want to.

In Polish:

Ja: Patrz jakie piękne krokusy!
Hili: Nie chcę.

 

From Twitter today.

A very fluffy caterpillar

If this were a dog I would think that playing fetch with a ball was adapted hunting play. I don’t know how this happens in a herbivore. Maybe Cows With Guns is real.

I asked Matthew about this and he said:

It’s just a young cow having fun. May have been trained, perhaps accidentally (moves towards ball, gets loves/treats, touches ball, gets more loves/treats, etc etc).

https://twitter.com/wouterhoetink/status/1109457014386774016

You learn something every day

An iridescent bee

A dog after Jerry’s heart

When you really love your food

https://twitter.com/CuteEmergency/status/1109672437803819010

Another thylacine photo.

Panda MMA

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1109886468061908995

The incredible problem-solving ability of parrots.

There’s a weird thing on social media lately where parents throw slices of cheese on their baby’s face (and are still allowed to be parents afterwards). But this was genuinely funny.

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1109531728014647297

And finally, the fearsome hunter instincts of the cat.

https://twitter.com/welcomet0nature/status/1109507602164137990

Ceiling Cat is watching you

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1109681019609739264

Hat-tip: Matthew

UK rejects asylum for Iranian Muslim who converted to Christianity, saying that Christianity isn’t a peaceful religion

March 24, 2019 • 11:00 am

UPDATE: Reader Chris called my attention to a video about this asylum situation. A video featuring the woman’s letter, which includes excerpts from the UK’s letter of refusal and an interview with the refugee’s lawyer, is on Channel 4 and can be seen here.

______________

This has been reported in several British papers, but one went behind a paywall and so I’ll give a screenshot of the free Torygraph article.  I’ve written before about how Asia Bibi (Aasiya Noreen), a Pakistani Christian who was imprisoned for blasphemy and then freed, was apparently denied asylum in the UK because it would incite unrest in “certain quarters of the population” (read: Muslims). She was offered asylum in France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Australia, but her whereabouts at present are unknown.

If the UK really did that, and the evidence is that it did, it bespeaks a disgusting cowardice on the part of the British government. In the case below the cowardice is redoubled, though, as there’s no doubt that what is reported is true (click on screenshot):

An excerpt:

The Church of England has attacked the Home Office for using Bible quotes to argue that Christianity is not a peaceful religion in a bid to reject an asylum seeker.

The Iranian national, who has not been identified, claimed asylum in 2016 but his application was rejected after government officials said his conversion from Islam was “inconsistent” with his claim that Christianity is a peaceful religion.

In order to reiterate the point, the Home Office wrote a lengthy and “unbelievably offensive” refusal letter referencing six Bible passages and claiming that the book of Revelation is filled with “images of revenge, destruction, death and violence”.

The Home Office rejection, below the quoted verses concludes: “These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.”

This is absolutely unbelievable, but it’s been verified by several sources. It seems as if the Home Office is merely confecting an excuse to keep a Muslim apostate out of the country, as they tried to do with Asia Bibi. They are more afraid of unrest from Muslims than they are committed to upholding democratic principles, which include accepting refugees from persecution.

An unwelcome sidelight of this mess is that now Christian pastors are arguing with the government, asserting vehemently that the Bible is NOT violent. (By the way, you don’t have to cite Revelation to show that; just cite Deuteronomy or any number of Old Testament passages).

The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, who leads for the Bishops in the House of Lords on matters relating to immigration, asylum and refugees, likened the refusal letter to a government report on climate change advocating global warming.

“I am extremely concerned that a Government department could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts and practices of faith communities,” he said.

But really, who cares? Yes, the Bible is violent but, by and large, Christianity has been defanged while Islam has not, even in the UK. The UK should step up and stop refusing asylum to religious refugees from Islamic countries.

h/t: Chris

Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 24, 2019 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning, or <insert time-appropriate greetings here/>. Jerry’s winging his way to Europe and will check in with us when he can.

JAC addendum: I arrived in Amsterdam about 1.5 hours ago. I’m exhausted, but it’s a beautiful city.

In history today:

Notable birthdays:

  • 1874 – Harry Houdini, Hungarian-Jewish American magician and actor (d. 1926)
  • 1883 – Dorothy Campbell, Scottish-American golfer (d. 1945)
  • 1901 – Ub Iwerks, American animator, director, and producer, co-created Mickey Mouse (d. 1971)
  • 1912 – Dorothy Height, African-American educator and activist (d. 2010)
  • 1921 – Vasily Smyslov, Russian chess player (d. 2010)
  • 1962 – Star Jones, African-American lawyer, journalist, and talk show host

Today Hili is trying her hand (well, paw) at classification.

Hili: Is a snake a head with a long tail?
A: Something like that.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy wąż to głowa z długim ogonem?
Ja: Coś w tym rodzaju.

From Twitter today:

Further evidence of the gracefulness of cats

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1109504011953016837

You may want to not watch this one, it cannot be unseen.

An historical note

A good thylacine photograph:

Trying for a Darwin award:

https://twitter.com/L0vingnature/status/1109537897034776576

The Brits are not happy about Brexit.

Mason Bee nests:

Snails eating (high speed version):

Every kid’s going to want one of these for Christmas. Start saving now.

https://twitter.com/MichaelGalanin/status/1108947952146382849

And finally, a happy canid.

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1109252152524865536

Hat-tip: Matthew

Talks in Belgium: April 1 and 2

March 23, 2019 • 11:00 am

If you’re in Brussels on April 1, I’m giving a public talk on the evidence for evolution. It will be delivered in English but simultaneous French translation will be offered through headphones, and the slides will be in both English and French. Admission is free.

Here’s the announcement (click on screenshot):

On the next day, April 2, I’ll be giving a science talk on the last decade of my fly work at Louvain, and that announcement is below: