Predatory journals want my papers on reproduction and aquaculture

November 14, 2018 • 11:00 am

If you’re a published scientist, you will be getting this kind of come-on from predatory journals who want your papers (and your money for publishing them). I get at least one of these a day, all from journals in areas that are far removed from evolutionary biology.  Here are two I got just this morning, from journals that I’d warned previously to leave me alone. One is in reproductive medicine, and the other in aquaculture and fisheries science.

What the bloody hell? Do they just spam all scientists hoping to get submissions? The tone of pleading and desperation is amusing, and I’ve included the addresses and phone numbers in case readers want to look these places up (I have a strong suspicion that Google Earth will show the addresses to be a nondescript office building.

Eminent Submission
Global Journal of Reproductive Medicine (email reproductive@juniperpublishers.org)

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ certainty

November 14, 2018 • 10:15 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “mate”, came with a note that the author is “Fairly certain this is a new one.” Well, the author can’t be blamed given that in nine days the strip will celebrate its 13th birthday—that’s a lot of strips (and a lot of outraged religionists). You can become a patron through Patreon for as little as $1 a month; the link for that is here.

“Mate” uses a rhetorical trick to prove God’s existence, something that may have been cribbed by Alvin Plantinga, who is to theology what Linda Sarsour is to progressive feminism.

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 14, 2018 • 9:31 am

I’m BAAACK! Thanks to Grania for filling it with some great Hilis (and other posts) in my absence.

We’re returning to our regular readers’ wildlife feature, and I have a reasonable backlog to tide us over. We’ll begin with some doings on Stephen Barnard’s property in Idaho; winter is coming on and it’s migration season, most notably for MALLARDS (Anas platyrhynchos). Here is his latest batch of photos; Stephen’s notes are indented:

I’ve been trying to capture the phenomenal number of mallards migrating through, but I can’t do it justice. There are several hundred visible in the creek this morning (seen from inside my house through windows). At times there have been several thousand in my 1/2 mile stretch of the creek, or resting and feeding in the barley fields, or flying in vast flocks, in starling-like mumurations, seeming for the joy of it. There’s a lot of pair-bonding going on, with the head-bobbing ritual and aggression between pairs. The large, crowded flocks in the creek are very noisy in a squabbling kind of way. Because they’re hunted intensively, they’ll flush at first sight of a person on foot.

JAC: I especially llove the photo below. I wonder if these guys are heading towards a certain Chicago duck who’s rumored to be a great mom.

JAC: When I see photos like this, with hundreds of duck feeding on leftover grain, I have a strong temptation to go there, cover my body with barley, and lie there until I’m covered with ducks. But these ones are easily spooked, so it probably wouldn’t work.

 

Deets and Hitch playing chase. It’s just a game.

The bull elk [Cervus canadensis] is the winner in the herd that inhabits my place.


I think the rabbit is a desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii). He’d better beware of Cecil, the stray cat.

And one more displaying mallard photo, which Stephen titles “Check out my speculum!” I’m pretty sure they do this to impress the hens. I think they do, but I still think James is prettier than this drake (for one thing, his bill is a brighter yellow). 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

November 14, 2018 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning!

Jerry is back in the USA and sleeping off some jetlag,

To start off the day:

(Debussy’s Clair de Lune if you’re interested.)

 

In history today:

1851 – Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, is published in the USA.

1889 – Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.

1918 – Czechoslovakia becomes a republic.

1921 – Foundation of the Communist Party of Spain.

1971 – Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars.

1978 – France conducts the Aphrodite nuclear test as 25th in the group of 29, 1975–78 French nuclear tests.

1995 – “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.

 

Today’s birthdays :

1920 – Mary Greyeyes, the first First Nations woman to join the Canadian Armed Forces (d. 2011)

1922 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian politician and diplomat, 6th Secretary General of the United Nations (d. 2016)

1953 – Dominique de Villepin, Moroccan-French lawyer and politician, 167th Prime Minister of France

1954 – Condoleezza Rice, American political scientist, academic, and politician, 66th United States Secretary of State

1972 – Lara Giddings, Papua New Guinean-Australian politician, 44th Premier of Tasmania

1982 – Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai

 

There are ominous overtones from Dobrzyń this morning.

Hili: This bodes ill.
A: What bodes ill?
Hili: A light rain from the clear sky.
In Polish:
Hili: To źle wróży.
Ja: Co źle wróży?
Hili: Mały deszcz z jasnego nieba.

And from Twitter today (ish): [Notes: if there is a white arrow, click on it. If there are graphic pics included in the tweet, please click on it too]

All this means is that screech owls grow up seriously triggered about everything.

 

Whimsical Twitter

In the immortal words of Matthew:  Argggh!

Did you know Twitter:

The Writer’s Lament Twitter

Not exactly physics Twitter

The natural world is amazing Twitter

 

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1062434795982974976

Adorable dogs Twitter

https://twitter.com/CUTEFUNNYANIMAL/status/1062405508420812800

https://twitter.com/FluffSociety/status/1062057538110148608

 

The human race is doomed Twitter

Silly Twitter

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1062367130610556929

https://twitter.com/JohnBick4/status/1062132506646978563

 

Striking blows for Freedom Twitter

Cats are purrfect Twitter

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1062324617270910977

https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1062242623921029120

 

 

Current events Twitter

As the Tweet author notes: Also remember that when this woman was born, women still couldn’t even vote in France & Germany… That wouldn’t happen until 1945 in France. (1918 in Germany.)

And finally, a baby elephant because they make everything better.

 

H/t: Matthew, Blue

The last lunches: Chartres and Paris

November 13, 2018 • 12:00 pm

This November 11 was a rainy day to visit Chartres, which meant that the great stained-glass windows of the cathedral wouldn’t be shining in their full glory. Still, there are umbrellas, and so we visited the church and sat through a special Armistice-Day mass (well, most of it—until the priest started blathering on). The singing was especially pleasing in the acoustically-enhancing interior, even though they were singing about Jesus and stuff. And the priests walked in accompanied by French flags and old military men in their uniforms.

After mass (I never thought I’d write that) and a walk through the medieval part of town (Chartres is a lovely place), it was time for lunch at Esprit Gourmand, a highly-rated restaurant. I’d never been there before, and while lunch was good, I don’t think I’d go back. Service is interminably slow (lunch was about three hours, and we almost missed the train back to Paris), and the food, while very good by American standards, was so-so by my French standards.

The cozy interior:

Déjeuner. Entrées were roasted shrimp with some kind of savory whipped cream with toasted onions, and foie gras again (I eat a lot of it in France).

Main courses: Angus beefsteak with salad and a potato cake, and rabbit en croute, which was very good.

For dessert I had one boule of each of the five flavors of sorbet, and then there was the best dish of the meal, the “Sphère au Chocolat”, which consisted of a chocolate-covered ball of coconut pastry enclosing a creme filling, over which more warm bittersweet chocolate was poured at the table. The “Sphére” plate was also covered with diced mangos and pineapple, which went well with the bittersweet chocolate.

A video of the moment of pouring the chocolate:

Other things to see in Chartres. The cathedral looms over the town. One can only imagine what impression it gave to twelfth-century pilgrims visiting this magnificent edifice. It’s the best-preserved Gothic cathedral in France, and took only thirty years to build.

The stained-glass windows, of course, told the story of the Bible graphically so that even illiterates could see the rewards of obeying the Church, and the damnation awaiting sinners. (These photos were taken on a dark day with no flash, and shutter speeds were around 1/5 of a second; the pictures thus aren’t sharp.)

Most of the windows at Chartres are original: 800 years old!

Prayers:

The famous etiolated statues of the saints and apostles:

The priest greeting people after mass:

And—DUCKS in Chartres, many of them! In fact, mallards are to be seen in nearly every body of water in Paris, including in the Seine, in the ponds around the Eiffel Tower, and in the Luxembourg Gardens, where they have their own special duck house in the middle of the lake. (More on that later.)

The last lunch, as always, was at Chez Denise. Salade frisée (again), onglet de boeuf (hanger steak, again, cooked rare), stuffed cabbage, and no dessert (dessert was subsequently obtained in a fancy patisserie).

Salade:

Onglet avec frites (the wine is the house Brouilly; you pay only for what you drink from the liter bottle):

A properly cooked steak: saignant (“bloody”):

Choux farci (it was excellent, and you got two huge hunks of cabbage layered over a pork and beef filling. The outside was appealingly crispy:

And so farewell to Paris again, but I will be back. What a lovely town, to my mind the most beautiful in the world!

And, as someone once said on their deathbed, “There have been kings who haven’t eaten as well as I have.”

Groped again—in Munich

November 13, 2018 • 10:30 am

I got to the Paris airport so early (5:15 a.m.) that I was able to get a much earlier flight to Munich than I’d reserved, which was good since my waiting time in Germany was only scheduled to be an hour, and the Munich airport is big and the walks are long (plus one has to go through passport control again if you’re flying to the U.S).

Security was tighter than I remembered: I had to show my boarding pass and passport three times (and this was after I’d already done it in Paris), and then pass through luggage and body screening as well. I see the Germans have purchased the See-You-Naked-Machine (or as they’d call it: “Wir-Sehen-Dich-Nakt Maschine”, and this one singled out yellow areas on my wrists, ankles and upper body over the shirt pocket.

Because of these danger zones, I once again experienced a full body grope: fore and aft, including the obligatory palpation of the buttocks and inner thighs. Then I had to sit down while they groped my ankles too.

It wasn’t the TSA, but they were even sterner: “Take any papers out of your pockets!”, the man barked at me.  Papers??? What for?

Did I mention I had to remove my shoes, which have NO metal in them, and is just security theater after the shoe bomber tried his stunt seventeen years ago. Most European airports have long ago dispensed with shoe removal except for shoes with metal.

At least I got through with only minor sexual predation, and in two hours will be on my way to America.

Reader’s wildlife video

November 13, 2018 • 9:00 am

I am up at 3:30 Paris time for an early departure home, so as I’m winging my way back to the land ruled by a crazy man, please enjoy this wildlife respite: a flamingo video from Tara Tanaka. Her notes:

On an unseasonably warm and foggy Florida morning I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to video a rare visitor to St. Marks National Wildlife Reserve – an American Flamingo. Although the bird has a feeding style similar to other waders I’ve seen, it is unique in its circular pattern and rhythm, using both feet. It wasn’t until I was editing the video that I noticed that the bird appears to be missing its feathers underneath its body, behind the legs – I think I’m seeing pink skin – not feathers — with a visible vent.

If you’re not a science-minded birder you might want to stop reading here. If you’re still reading…another behavior that I found unusual was that unlike many other wading birds that I’ve observed and videoed including Reddish Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, Great Egrets and others that leave the water they’re feeding in before relieving themselves, this bird relieved itself in the water right in the path in which it was feeding, and it had a very different appearance from the white liquid stream of other waders.