Flowers and fish

January 8, 2019 • 12:00 pm

First we have some photos from a visit to the University of Hawaii’s Lyon Arboretum, not far from downtown Honolulu. I can’t identify the plants, but some are native and some are not. Readers are invited to weigh in.

First, the source of Hawaiian plants. It wasn’t until about 20 years ago that I learned that most endemic plants on oceanic islands didn’t get there by floating as Darwin hypothesized, but by being carried in bird poop or adhering to bird bodies:

Two views of the Arboretum:

Look at these buttress roots!

Bromeliads. The red centers must be there to attract insects, but for what? To drown in the pool of water in the center? Does that provide nourishment for the plant?

Yesterday was my first beach trip, to the nearby Hanauma Bay, a popular site not far from Honolulu. It’s a quiet bay, filled with coral, formed when a volcanic crater later became attached to the sea. It’s very popular, but we got there early and not many people were snorkeling. And the fish were wonderful: I love snorkeling because you’re entering an alien world filled with great beauty.

Here’s the bay from above: the dark patches are coral, filled with fish.

Professor Ceiling Cat swimming out to the reefs. I’m the one swimming with the snorkel and flipper splashes:

If you want a tropical-fish experience, and don’t mind some crowds, this is a good and safe place to swim. Get there early (you have to watch a 15-minute movie on protecting the reefs and swimming safety); you can rent the gear for $20.

I don’t have an underwater camera but I’ll steal from the web three lovely fish I saw:

The Christmas Wrasse (Thalassoma trilobatum):

Source

The bullethead parrotfish (Chlorurus sordidus), which scrapes algae off the corals. It’s big, too!

Picture from Wikipedia

And everybody’s favorite Hawaiian fish, the reef triggerfish (Rhinecanthus rectangulus), famous for its long Hawaiian name, humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, which apparently means “triggerfish with a snout like a pig.” But it’s a lovely thing and happens to be Hawaii’s State Fish. Here’s one from Wikipedia that was photographed in Hanauma Bay:

This fish, with 22 letters in its name, is not the longest Hawaiian fish name, however. The honor belongs to the “Lauwiliwilinukunukuʻoiʻoi”, which I like because it has a bit of Yiddish at the end! It’s the longnose butterflyfish, Forcipiger flavissimus, which looks like this:

The “humu” features in one of the kitschy Hawaiian songs that has become popular, “My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaiʻi”, written by Tommy Harrison, Bill Cogswell, and Johnny Noble in 1933. Here it is in two versions. The humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa is first mentioned at 1:04:

The Hawaiian words:

Two historic locations on the Big Island of Hawaii are mentioned in the title and lyrics. Kealakekua, where the Fourth of July canoe races took place, is where English explorer James Cook was killed in 1779. The beach at Hōnaunau is now the site of Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, the best known and best preserved ancient City of Refuge.

The Hawaiian phrase in the line “I want to be with all the kanes and wahines that I used to know” means “ladies and gentlemen” (literally “men and women”). The line, “Where the Humuhumunukunukuapuaa go swimming by,” refers to the tiny reef triggerfish, Hawaii’s state fish, by its long Hawaiian name. Poi is a Hawaiian food staple, the “two-fingered poi” in the lyrics referring to a medium thickness of poi that requires two fingers to scoop.

There is one full line in Hawaiian, “Komo mai no kāua i ka hale welakahao,” which literally translates to, “Come into our house while the iron’s hot.” Dolly Parton, in her televised live performance of the song in 1987, shouts out after the line is sung that it means, “Come to my house, we’re gonna party!”

This one’s from the 1934 movie short “Mirrors”,  with Freddie Rich and His Orchestra, featuring Vera Van and the Eton Boys.

More food and fun to come.

Addendum: As you may have guessed, Hawaiian names are often long, and here’s the woman with the longest name on record: Janice “Lokelani” Keihanaikukauakahihulihe’ekahaunaele.  For a while the state shortened her name on her driver’s license and omitted the apostrophe:

The old license was also missing an okina, which as the University of Hawaii says is a way to show “a glottal stop, similar to the sound between the syllables of ‘oh-oh.’ ” (We should note that an okina is often used the state’s name — as in, Hawai’i.)

Under the new policy, the state’s cards will have room for 40 characters in “first and last names and 35 characters for middle names,” the AP reports.

And here’s a video of Ms. K. with her full-name driver’s license. Note how the news anchor pronounces the name correctly at the beginning. It’s a jawbreaker!

 

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 8, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Tuesday, January 8, 2019, which means that Helena’s Restaurant re-opens today after the Christmas holidays. It’s National English Toffee Day, which we’ll ignore because it’s a day of cultural appropriation, and International Typing Day, a skill that’s transferred from typewriters to computers. I had a choice of shop or typing in junior high school, and, to my eternal good fortune, I took typing. Now I can type more than 90 words per minute.

On this day in 1790, George Washington delivered the first (Presidential) State of the Union Address in New York City. Trump will give this year’s address on Tuesday, January 29; as usual, it will be given in the House of Representatives but to all of Congress, the Supreme Court, and a number of other officials. On January 8, 1828, the Democratic Party of the U.S. came into being.

On this day in 1877, the Lakota Chief  Crazy Horse and his warriors fought their last battle against the U.S. Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory. He and his band surrendered and, trying to escape imprisonment, Crazy Horse was bayoneted and died on September 5. He was just 33. As Charles Eastman wrote:

Thus died one of the ablest and truest American Indians. His life was ideal; his record clean. He was never involved in any of the numerous massacres on the trail, but was a leader in practically every open fight. Such characters as those of Crazy Horse and Chief Joseph are not easily found among so-called civilized people. The reputation of great men is apt to be shadowed by questionable motives and policies, but here are two pure patriots, as worthy of honor as any who ever breathed God’s air in the wide spaces of a new world.

Crazy Horse

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. As Wikipedia reports, on this day in 1925, “the All-Woman Supreme Court met for the first time in Texas, the first all-female supreme court in the history of the United States.” On this day in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the “War on Poverty,” which has had mixed success. Exactly 9 years later, the trial of the “Watergate Seven,” accused of breaking into the Democratic Headquarters in that building, began in Washington. Five people pleaded guilty and two went to prison for refusing to cooperate. Ultimately 48 people were convicted in the Watergate scandal.

On January 8, 1975, Ella Grasso became governor of Connecticut: the first female governor of a U.S. state who was elected and not put into position to fill her husband’s shoes. Finally, it was on this day 8 years ago that the attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords took place in Casas Adobes, Arizona. Six people were shot dead (Giffords, shot at point-blank range in the head, survived (!), and the assassin Jared Loughner, was sentenced to life in prison.

Notables born on this day include Alfred Russel Wallace (1823), Wilkie Collins (1824), Walter Bothe (1891; Nobel Laureate), Gypsy Rose Lee (1911), Soupy Sales (1926), Elvis Presley (1935), Robert May (1936), David Bowie (1947), and R. Kelly (1967).

Those who died on this day include Giotto (1337), Galileo (1642), Eli Whitney (1825), George Bellows (1925), Zhou Enlai (1976), and François Miterrand (1996).

George Bellows (1882-1925) was an underappreciated American realist artist. This painting, “Stag at Sharkey’s” (1909), is probably his most famous work. It shows a private boxing match at a members-only club (public boxing was illegal in New York at that time.

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has made a suspicious discovery.

Hili: Snow everywhere. Is it normal?
A: Quite normal.

 

In Polish:

Hili: Wszędzie śnieg, Czy to jest normalne?
Ja: Zupełnie normalne.

Some tweets from Matthew. First, a remarkably camouflaged snake:

No, this is not a psychologically recognized fear; it was invented by Gary Larson (see below):

Nevertheless, it persisted—and succeeded. Don’t tell me you didn’t have a pang of joy when it landed on the feeder!

A lovely cryptic frog:

Tweets from Grania. Snoop Dogg address the “furloughed” government employees (trigger warning: lots of f-bombs).

Some people apparently haven’t realized that Titania McGrath purveys satire:

https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1081715439980474369

This, of course, is a parody of PETA’s attempt to purge language dealing with animals:

Kagonekoshiro (“white basket cat”), the world’s chillest cat, a resident of Japan.

And the “world’s most lovely lioness” (video):

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1070533095072223232

A visit to the Laysan Albatrosses

January 7, 2019 • 12:45 pm

Yesterday’s Big Expedition was a hike to Kaena Point, the westernmost spot on the island of Oahu, which you can see below:

Our goal: to see the nesting colony of Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis). While it ranges widely through the Pacific, it breeds largely on Hawaii: as Wikipedia notes, “The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands [including Midway] are home to 99.7% of the population.” There are 16 nesting sites, and Kaena Point is one of them. It harbors about 150 of the birds.

The Laysan has a wingspan of about 200 cm (80 inches or 6.5 feet), mates for life, has biparental care, and females produce about one chick every two years. It’s remarkable for its lifespan in the wild: it is, in fact, the longest-lived bird known to exist in the wild, with a longevity approaching 70 years (see below).

Here’s one of these magnificent animals in flight. The picture is from Wikipedia:

You have to hike in and out: a hot trail of about six miles. But the trail is fairly level, and the goal well worth it. The albatross sanctuary is surrounded by a fence to keep out predators like rats and feral cats:

This is the western tip of Hawaii:

Albatross nests are marked with pink flags, and the nesting area is roped off to keep people out. In a famous case, one student from Hawaii was jailed in 2017 for killing more than 15 albatrosses in a purely malicious act.  He got only 45 days in jail; I think a year would have been a better deterrent. People can’t go around illegally killing wildlife and getting just a slap on the wrist.

The first sight of an albatross. They are dead obvious in the low vegetation, where they nest, and I was unable to take a “spot the albatross” picture because their white color sticks out even when I try to hide the bird.

A closer view.

A sleeping albatross by the path. They had extended the rope around it to keep people from disturbing the bird, and we tiptoed by.

A pair. Reader Marlene Zuk told me that many of the pairs are female-female pairs, and a 2008 paper in Biology Letters shows that 31% of the pairs on Oahu are “lesbian” pairs (see below for a song). They do rear chicks; presumably one was inseminated and either abandoned its mate or its mate died. Successful rearing is less than that of male-female pairs, but better than that of solitary females (see graph below). I’m not sure if this pair is male-female or female-female. (Ornithological readers may know.)

Here are the data from that paper: open bars are female-female pairs, and dark ones are male-female pairs.

40% of the time two eggs are laid in female-female nests, but only one of these is incubated. I don’t know a lot about this, but the phenomenon of course raises questions. Why do females help other (presumably unrelated) females rear their young, given the time and expense of rearing a chick. Or are they related? One can think of answers, of course (practice in breeding for young females and so on), but I’ll let readers fill me in if there’s more recent research.

Another nesting female (I think; I can’t tell the sexes apart).

A video by Bruce Carlson of what the albatrosses look like at Kaena Point, with some bonding behavior:

Finally, below is the oldest known wild breeding bird known to exist in Nature. It’s WISDOM, a Laysan albatross confirmed to be at least 68 years old when she returned to Midway Atoll last November 29 to lay an egg. She was first banded in 1956, and has gone through four bands since then! She’s also outlived the guy who banded her.

Wisdom has her own Wikipedia page (this photo, showing one of her chicks, is from that site). Unlike most female Laysans, which lay an egg every other year (it’s seven months from laying to fledging!), Wisdom has laid an egg each year for the past dozen years or so. She’s successfully raised about three dozen chicks. And she’s flown between 2 and 3 million miles during her lifetime. What a bird—may she live much longer!

Hawaii: food

January 7, 2019 • 9:30 am

As always, when visiting a place I try to eat what the locals eat. In Hawaii this means plate lunch, malasadas, spam musubu, and a large variety of Japanese-style dishes like udon noodles. All will be sampled and presented here, but in sequence.

In Hawaii, Malasadas are Portugese-style donuts invented in Madeira, freshly fried spheres of dough dusted with crystallized sugar. The traditional ones are unfilled, but they’re sometimes stuffed with substances like coconut or chocolate cream. By all accounts, the best malasadas in Hawaii are to be had at Leonard’s,  which has both a brick and mortar shop and a “Malasadamobile,” which fries them to order.

The truck, thank Ceilng Cat, is situated near where I’m staying. And there’s always a line.

The menu. I’m not sure what ling hing is; “li hing” is preserved plum, Chinese style, but I’m not sure that’s what this is. “Hupia is coconut custard.

I was greedy and got both a chocolate and a hupia donut, both hot from the fryer. They were so filling that I wasn’t hungry again for many hours. Here’s the coconut-filled version:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Hawaiians love the tinned product Spam; the inhabitants have the highest per capita consumption of Spam in America (I believe it’s six cans per person per year here). It was invented in 1937, and contains both ham and pork shoulder.

GI’s were issued the tinned meat their mess kits during World Was II, and some of it found its way to the civilian population as a cheap source of protein. It’s now served many ways: in Chinese dishes, as a form of sushi (Spam musubi, a slab of spam atop sushi rice, bound with seaweed; I had some on our Albatross Hike yesterday), as a breakfast meat, and so on. It’s pre-cooked, so all you need to do is warm up what’s in the can.

And yes, it’s served at McDonald’s here, as a breakfast option.  Here’s more information from Wikipedia:

Hawaiian Burger King restaurants began serving Spam in 2007 to compete with the local McDonald’s chains.In Hawaii, Spam is so popular that it is sometimes referred to as “The Hawaiian Steak”. There is even an annual Spam-themed festival on the island of Oahu that takes place every spring, known as the “Waikiki Spam Jam. Local chefs and restaurants compete to create new Spam-themed dishes, which are then sold in a massive street fair on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki.

In 2017, Hawaii was plagued by a rash of thefts of Spam. Spam had long been a target of thieves in Hawaii, but the magnitude of the thefts ramped up, with incidents in which multiple cases of Spam were stolen at once. Local retailers believe organized crime was involved.[32] This came alongside increases in thefts of some other retail goods, such as corned beef and liquor. The president of the retail merchants of Hawaii attributed the rise in retail thefts to a recent change in criminal law, which raised the threshold at which a theft would lead to felony charges by approximately $400.

Two other marks of Spam’s fame: it’s become, of course, the term for unwanted email, and it was the subject of Monty Python’s famous sketch:

I wanted to see how many varieties of Spam could be had in Hawaii, so I went to a local Safeway. Several of these flavors are available at the Wal-Mart supermarket near where I live in Chicago, but the ones with the asterisks are not:

Regular Spam
Spam Lite
Jalapeño Spam
Spam with bacon
Spam with Portuguese sausage*
Spam with Tocino* (pork belly bacon)
Spam with turkey
Spam with black pepper
Hot and spicy Spam*
Low sodium Spam

I hear they also have teriyaki spam, cheese spam, and garlic Spam, but I didn’t see them.

Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam

Lunch at the nearby plate lunch chain emporium, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. Here’s a small plate lunch consisting of one scoop of rice (there are usually two), a scoop of macaroni salad, and a generous helping of teriyaki-glazed short ribs. It was delicious, and this “tiny” portion filled me up:

This is the place reputed to make the best loco moco in Hawaii. Near Waikiki, the Rainbow Drive-In is a fixture, and there’s always a line.

This is about 11:30 a.m. Service is fast.

Loco moco, also known as “heart attack on a plate”, consists of two fried eggs (mine were over easy) resting atop two hamburger patties, which themselves lie on two generous scoops of rice, all covered with brown gravy. And there’s the ubiquitous scoop of macaroni salad on the side. (Remember, do not food shame me—I don’t usually eat like this. Food-shamers will be banned.)

This is a filling lunch!

Dessert (this is not all in one day): a strawberry shave ice at Uncle Clay’s House of Pure Aloha, not too far from where I’m staying. A mound of shave ice infused with fresh strawberry syrup, a scoop of premium Tahitian vanilla ice cream on top, and surrounded with fresh diced strawberries. It was great, but I like the green tea shave ice better, as it’s served with a lot of sweetened azuki beans, mochi, and, if you want it, ice cream.

A shoyu pork plate lunch from Zippy’s.

Monday: Hili dialogue

January 7, 2019 • 6:30 am

by Grania

It’s a new week, welcome to it! If today marks your return to the office, lucky you.

It’s a busy day in history.

Birthdays of note today:

  • 1911 – Butterfly McQueen, American actress and dancer (d. 1995) Most remembered for the role of Prissy in Gone with the Wind.
  • 1912 – Charles Addams, American cartoonist, created The Addams Family (d. 1988)
  • 1917 – Ulysses Kay, American composer and educator (d. 1995)
  • 1925 – Gerald Durrell, Indian-English zookeeper, conservationist and author, founded Durrell Wildlife Park (d. 1995)
  • 1991 – Caster Semenya, South African sprinter
In Poland, Hili is treating the concept of work with the contempt it deserves.
A: Hili, we are going back to work.
Hili: A fascinating suggestion.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, wracamy do roboty.
Hili: Fascynująca propozycja.

 

Under the sea Twitter

https://twitter.com/DrowningOrpheus/status/1081615608884707328

It’s like God gave the angels the leftovers when he got tired of Creating.

Felid Twitter

https://twitter.com/CrazyinRussia/status/1080969286620008449

 

 

Physics Twitter

https://twitter.com/PhysicsVideo_/status/1081643684368572416

You need to click through on this one to see the whole photograph

 

Magnificent obsession Twitter

Critter Twitter

 

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1081776891772657664

Random Stuff Twitter

https://twitter.com/casigus/status/1081584327253725187

 

 

Determinism doesn’t mean that you can’t change your behavior, or help others to

January 6, 2019 • 10:45 am

I’m a free-will “incompatibilist”: someone who sees the existence of physical determinism as dispelling the idea of contracausal, you-could-have-done-otherwise “free will”, which is the notion of free will most common among people. Many people find my view disturbing and fatalistic, and I’m often posed this question: “If everything is determined by the laws of physics mediated through our neurobiology, what’s the point of trying to change somebody’s mind?”

My response is that no, we can’t choose (via contracausal free will) whether we want to change someone’s mind, nor can they freely choose (in the same sense) whether to change it. But human brains are wired by both evolution and experience in a way that alters people’s behaviors when (in general) they would benefit from those changes. So, for example, if you learn that treating people in a certain way makes them treat you better back, your brain circuits for “better treatment” might be activated, and you might begin treating folks better.  And if you see someone treating others badly, your circuits to give them that advice might be activated. You might then advise them, and their own brain circuits may “take” that advice.

None of this is incompatible with determinism. People learn, often in a way that helps them get along better with others, perform better on the job or other aspects of life, and so on. The possibility of such changes might have been produced by evolution since such malleability might correlate with your status and well-being, which in turn might have been connected with your reproductive success. Or, on the cultural side, we avoid pain and seek pleasure, and our brains are capable of taking in advice or experience that would increase our well being and decrease ill being.

Likewise, advice from someone else can act as an environmental stimulus that activates brain circuits that alter behavior. Again, we have no free choice about whether to render advice to others, but that doesn’t mean that the advice can’t effect changes.

Pacific Standard has an interview with Stanford biologist and writer Robert Sapolsky, the author of the acclaimed book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. (Click on screenshot below for the interview.) Sapolsky discusses a lot of things about tribalism, but I’ll reproduce two exchanges about free will. (Sapolsky’s writing have shown him to be, like me, an incompatibilist who thinks that the notion of “you-can-do-otherwise” free will is an illusion.)

Here he expresses the difficulty in explaining to others why determinism doesn’t entail fatalism. Perhaps his answer is better or clearer than mine, and here it is:

TJ [Tom Jacobs]: You write that you don’t really believe in free will, but we nevertheless have an obligation to try to understand our behavior and make things better. Isn’t that something of a contradiction?

RS [Sapolsky]: I’m realizing how incredibly hard it is to articulate how an absence of free will is compatible with change.

Gaining new knowledge, having new experiences, being inspired by someone’s example—these are biological phenomena. They leave biological traces.

There are all sorts of neuro-pathways that analyze the world in terms of cause and effect. The knowledge that one person—or a bunch of high school students—really can make a difference can be inspiring. That means certain pathways have been facilitated, and, as a result of that, certain behaviors become more likely. Pathways to efficacy can also be weakened if you find out you have no control in a certain domain. Learning to be helpless is also biological.

TJ: So the fact free will is largely illusory does not mean the way we react to the world is static and unchanging.

RS: Absolutely not. There’s a vast difference between a biologically determined universe and fatalism.

h/t: Tom