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.
We haven’t heard from The Staves in a while, and, in truth, I don’t know what new music they’r making; but they’re coming to Canada and The States this summer (including Chicago!; see link below). Here’s an old performance of their song “Open,” recorded live and outdoors (on a boat) in Paris:
Their tour, whose schedule is here, kicks off June 10 in Montreal, then back to London, and then to the States until June 26, with an August performance in Wisconsin. There will undoubtedly be other dates filled in.
It’s Friday, and the sensible folk will have their own Bank Holidays tomorrow. Thanks to the several readers who expressed concern over my insomnia; I’m happy to report that it seems to be abating. And it had better be: I’m off to India next Wednesday.
It’s March 11, a day on which the Daily Courant, England’s first daily newspaper, was first published in 1702. On this day in 1851, the first performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto took place in Venice and, exactly sixteen years later, Don Carlos debuted in Paris (did Verdi have a lucky day on March 11?). In 1918, the first case of Spanish flu occurred, beginning a horrible worldwide pandemic that killed 50-100 million people, including my paternal grandmother, leaving my father motherless at the age of only a few months. In 2004, the Madrid train bombings occurred on this day—remember them? Notable births on this day include Lawrence Welk (1903), Antonin Scalia (1936, who died just a short while ago), and Alex Kingston, my hearthrob from ER (1963). Deaths on this date included Alexander Fleming (1955), Roy Chapman Andrews (a hero of my youth, died 1960), and Slobodan Milošević (2006). And it’s Johnny Appleseed Day in the U.S.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus is taking care of The Princess:
Hili: I think that something is over there.
Cyrus: I will see to it in a moment, just let me check something.
In Polish:
Hili: Tam chyba coś chodzi!
Cyrus: Zaraz zobaczę, tylko muszę coś sprawdzić.
My Okinawan correspondent sends the following photograph of an apparently window-killed bird.
Window-killed thrush, Okinawa, Japan, 8 March 2016.
I thought immediately, “a thrush”, noting the similarity in bill, body and leg shape to that of the familiar North American Robin (Turdus migratorius). I was also immediately reminded of the justly famous opening passage in Alfred Russel Wallace’s Island Life, in which, comparing the birds of Britain and Japan, he finds them remarkably similar:
WHEN an Englishman travels by the nearest sea-route from Great Britain to Northern Japan he passes by countries very unlike his own, both in aspect and natural productions. The sunny isles of the Mediterranean, the sands and date-palms of Egypt, the arid rocks of Aden, the cocoa groves of Ceylon, the tiger-haunted jungles of Malacca and Singapore, the fertile plains and volcanic peaks of Luzon, the forest-clad mountains of Formosa, and the bare hills of China, pass successively in review; till after a circuitous voyage of thirteen thousand miles he finds himself at Hakodadi in Japan. He is now separated from his starting-point by the whole width of Europe and Northern Asia, by an almost endless succession of plains and mountains, arid deserts or icy plateaux, yet when he visits the interior of the country he sees so many familiar natural objects that he can hardly help fancying he is close to his home. He finds the woods and fields tenanted by tits, hedge-sparrows, wrens, wagtails, larks, redbreasts, thrushes, buntings, and house-sparrows, some absolutely identical with our own feathered friends, others so closely resembling them that it requires a practised ornithologist to tell the difference. If he is fond of insects he notices many butterflies and a host of beetles which, though on close examination they are found to be distinct from ours, are yet of the same general aspect, and seem just what might be expected in any part of Europe. There are also of course many birds and insects which are quite new and peculiar, but these are by no means so numerous or conspicuous as to remove the general impression of a wonderful resemblance between the productions of such remote islands as Britain and Yesso.
(Perhaps inspired by Wallace, the Japanese ornithologist Masa Hachisuka once published a comparative list of the birds of Britain and Japan.) Wallace went on to contrast the remarkable similarities between the birds of these two distant archipelagos with the differences one finds when crossing the narrow strait between Bali and Lombok:
In the Malay Archipelago there are two islands, named Bali and Lombok, each about as large as Corsica, and separated by a strait only fifteen miles wide at its narrowest part. Yet these islands differ far more from each other in their birds and quadrupeds than do England and Japan. The birds of the one are extremely unlike those of the other, the difference being such as to strike even the most ordinary observer. Bali has red and green woodpeckers, barbets, weaver-birds, and black-and-white magpie-robins, none of which are found in Lombok, where, however, we find screaming cockatoos and friar-birds, and the strange mound-building megapodes, which are all equally unknown in Bali. Many of the kingfishers, crowshrikes, and other birds, though of the same general form, are of very distinct species; and though a considerable number of birds are the same in both islands the difference is none the less remarkable—as proving that mere distance is one of the least important of the causes which have determined the likeness or unlikeness in the animals of different countries.
Wallace, of course—in this and many other works—went on to explicate what the important causes of these disparities were, not the least of which are the evolutionary and geological histories of the organisms and land masses. (In the case of Bali and Lombok, the key factor has turned out to be that Bali is on the Asian continental shelf, and thus has been in frequent dry-land contact with the continental fauna, while Lombok is off the shelf, and has received its fauna over water by occasional means of transport.)
Like Wallace’s traveling Englishman, I too was struck by the great familiarity to me of this bird from the opposite side of the world. But while it was certainly a thrush, and almost certainly in the genus Turdus, I could not identify the species. I don’t have a Japanese or East Asian bird field guide, but checking some pictures on the internet, it seems most similar to T. pallidus, a winter visitor to Okinawa. Our deceased friend seems too white below, so I leave its species undetermined. Perhaps some reader will be able to identify it.
Window-killed thrush, Okinawa, Japan, 8 March 2016.
In addition to being a familiarly thrush-like bird, it was also, sadly, in a familiar posture: dead outside a glass door. Window-killed Swainson’s thrushes (Catharus ustulatus) are an all too familiar sight here in southeastern Wisconsin. My correspondent added about this bird, “Such a shame to see a dead bird, because they’re actually kind of rare to see. I blame the cats and Habu.” Habu are any of various pit vipers found in the Ryukyu Islands, which I thought were not common. I’ve queried my correspondent as to the relative abundance of cats and habu.
Hachisuka, M.U. 1925. A Comparative Hand List of the Birds of Japan and the British Isles. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (paperback published 2015)
Wallace, A.R. 1892. Island Life. 2nd ed. Macmillan, London. (at Wallace Online)
The Okeanos mission is at 2000 m below the Pacific. Have it on your computer in a window – amazing marine biology!
Indeed it is–all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures! Click on the screenshot below to go there, and keep it open as Matthew suggests (click on the arrow when you get to the site):
Guess what the creatures above are (yes, they’re animals):
From the website:
From February 25 to March 18, scientists will continue 2015 Hohonu Moana expedition efforts to explore deep-water habitats in and around Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The expedition will include work on seamounts in the Mid-Pacific Mountains while en route to port in Kwajalein.
You may recall the links to the video discussion a couple of weeks back on whether alien life existed. We also recorded a second discussion, discussing if machines will rule the world.
Apart from myself, the other participants were David Kirby (biologist and historian), Alastair Reynolds (astronomer and SF writer), Danielle George (radio engineer), Aravind Vijayaraghavan (nanotechnologist) and Sheena Cruickshank (immunologist) (all of us except Alastair are from the University of Manchester). The programmes were made by my pal Mark Gorton.
Here are the three 18-minute clips.
Part 2:
Part 3:
And if you have any doubt about what the future holds, there’s this video of the Boston Dynamics ‘Atlas’ robot, which has had a new swearing module installed:
Reader Darryl Gwynne described an incident he experienced at his university in Canada, and I asked him to write a brief account of it for me. So here it is. I’ve added a photo to supplement the one Darryl links to below.
Segregation by gender at a University of Toronto event
Darryl Gwynne
So it’s 2016 in Canada. Several students and I turn up at a public ‘science’ seminar where we are astonished to see that men and women are being seated on opposite sides of our campus lecture hall. Segregation began at the entrance when ticket-takers directed the women from our group through a separate door, but was further enforced inside; after we had taken seats with the ‘sisters,’ the males in our group were twice asked to move over with the ‘brothers’ (the second time by the speaker himself). We refused. The January 8th event – God Is Not Dead: Science and Atheism in Islam – was co-hosted by our (University of Toronto-Mississauga) Muslim Students Association and Ilmster Seminars.
We were not the only ones objecting to the segregation that day; a hijab-wearing student quietly thanked us for not moving, stating that dividing the audience by gender was wrong. Our subsequent discussions with her and other women were very interesting (and revealed that they were far better than the speaker, Abdul Malik, in articulating some of the key lecture points).
I complained about the segregation to our campus equity officer, the campus Vice-President, and the University’s Vice President of Human Resources & Equity, and they all indicated that gender segregation should not occur in lectures and seminars. However, there appears to be no policy and very little effort at our university to prevent such segregation. Although our equity officer informed me that, in response to my complaint, she is having an ongoing dialogue with our Muslim Students Association, segregation appears to continue at this group’s recent campus workshops and seminars:
JAC: I’ve added this photo to the one linked above. FB caption: “Dawah workshop happening right now till 5pm with Sheikh Osta in CC2150!”
When I contacted the Ontario Human Rights Commission they refused to give me an opinion on whether gender segregation at a public university event violated Ontario’s Human Rights Code, and simply informed me that any person who believed their rights had been infringed can submit a claim. Importantly, there appears to be no “legal standing” here in Canada on the issue of audience gender segregation at universities. This is in direct contrast with other countries such as the UK where “Gender segregation is not permitted in any academic meetings or at events, lectures or meetings.”
When it comes to prayer, however, our university does allow religion to overcome the right of women to sit where they wish in a student audience. In order to accommodate religious ceremony our campus has a Muslim group prayer room where (to quote one official) “gender segregation during worship services that the Muslim Students Association practices is in accordance with their religious beliefs which is permissible at the University of Toronto”.
Finally, Ilmster Seminars have done the God-Is-Not-Dead thing at several Ontario universities. There will likely be others, and the coordinators of the event will no doubt continue to separate men from women in modern university classrooms.
I saw this on last night’s news and was enchanted. The giraffes at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo are kept inside during cold weather, as they don’t have the right genes for winter, but there’s been a warm spell the past few days and so they were let out into their outdoor enclosure. (Giraffes are let out only when the temperature exceeds about 50° F [10° C ], and it was 70° F [21° C] on Tuesday!) This shows the antics of Potoka, a two-year old male reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata), as he gains some freedom.
Who can say that this is not joy unbounded? It seems as if he’s trying to get his fellows to join the fun.
Now whether one should keep these large and magnificent creatures in captivity is another matter (this is an endangered subspecies). But I’m at least glad to see them bounding about.
I didn’t get a chance to post many photos of my trip to Canada while I was there, so I’m catching up now. Today I’ll concentrate on one of the best parts of any trip: noms.
As part of my Centre for Inquiry gig in Ottawa, we had a “free will” brunch (we discussed the issue, but didn’t have a choice of what we ate) at the sumptuous home of Dave Smith. Smith is a famous figure in Ottawa as he not only ran the chain of Nate’s Delis (now down to one), but is also a big-time philanthropist, having raised more than $100 million for charities, including building a youth treatment center for drug addiction. He recently turned 83, but is as active as ever, and cooked all the food for our brunch. Here’s Dave in his basement kitchen:
His entire home is covered with awards and plaques for his philanthropy, as well as photographs of the famous people he’s cooked for, like the Queen:
and Nancy Reagan:
And Princess Di and Prince Charles:
But this is the prize: a picture of Pope John Paul II autographed “To Dave, God bless you (the bagels were great). Jean Paul II.” I couldn’t believe that Dave served bagels to the Pope, and that the writing was really John Paul’s, so I asked Dave. He assured me it was authentic, and that he’d cooked for several days for the Pope and his retinue when they visited Canada:
I was promised a real Jewish feed for brunch, and so was really excited, but there was a miscommunication: Dave made Indian food. Well, that’s an acceptable substitute, and it was very good. Still, I missed the promised latkes, brisket, and blintzes.
Dave also made a chocolate fountain for dessert:
Sensing my disappointment, I think, my genial host Seanna cooked up a batch of delicious cheese blintzes (with sour cream) for dinner that night:
As I noted previously, I took the train from Ottawa to Montreal, and my first night there I repaired to Reuben’s Deli downtown, where I had one of Montreal’s famous “smoked meat” sandwiches. It was the equivalent of a good pastrami sandwich, but the bread was too insubstantial to hold the meat, and it fell apart. (Note to Reuben’s: get some substantial kosher rye!) Service was also desultory, and, worst of all, I finished the sandwich. As we all know, such sandwiches should be big enough to furnish lunch the next day:
One of the great aspects of Montreal is its largesse of real French food, including pastry. Here, for instance, are the wares in a pastry shop at the Montreal train station, which is part of a large underground shopping complex. They had pain au chocolat and real croissants, as well as fancy cakes:
Napoleons, too!
The really funny part was that right next to the pastry shop above was a Tim Hortons donut store. The pastry shop had almost no customers, but people were lined up in front of Tim’s to get their coffee and mediocre donuts. What a corruption of French-Canadian culture!
The next evening, two readers, Anne-Marie and Claude, invited me to their home for dinner. And a real feast it was, too. On entering, I was presented with two squirrel presents (we share a fondness for squirrels): a Belgian chocolate squirrel and a wooden squirrel (with a bell) that Anne-Marie had carved herself. The gift came in a bag said to be inscribed by the resident squirrel himself, also known as “le petit ami”:
Dinner began with nuts (of course) and this amazing bottle of fancy local beer. It was, in fact, the best porter I’ve ever had, redolent of chocolate, malt, and cherries. I’m sure I’ll never get this again. [Update: as a reader notes in the comments, this is a Grand Cuvée Porter Baltique, brewed in Quebec by Le Trois Mousquetaires, and is very highly rated by the Beer Advocate. It’s also 10% alcohol by volume, which accounts for my feeling slightly buzzed as we sat down to dinner.]
The dinner was served, French style, in courses, starting with a salad (and baguette, with olives and olive oil):
And then homemade pasta with homemade sauce; I forgot to photograph the dish as I was hungry, but here’s the sauce that Anne-Marie made, with herbs saved from her garden:
And a selection of five cheeses, including a Brie de Meaux and several other raw-milk cheeses from France. I dearly love real French cheese:
Dessert: a homemade maple-syrup pie! It was spectacular, especially topped with local vanilla ice cream:
Also in attendance was a d*g: Ariel, a nine-year-old German shepherd. Although a d*g, he was quite amiable:
The next day Anne-Marie and Claude kindly drove me around on a tour of Montreal, so I got to see lots of stuff I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. Even in winter it’s a gorgeous city. I’ve already posted about our lunch of poutine, but wanted to add that at a state dinner for Justin Trudeau on Wednesday, the White House chef served a poutine appetizer:
“One of our canapes is actually a duck poutine,” said [White House chef Chris] Comerford as he described Hudson River duck shaved on fries with gravy and cheese.
“So it’s kind of like a take on a wonderful national dish of Canada. It’s a play on that dish.”
Before lunch, I asked to be taken to one of Montreal’s two authentic bagel bakeries. We went to perhaps the most famous, the Fairmount. Montreal bagels are made by hand using unbleached flour. They’re boiled in water with a touch of honey, and then baked in a wood-fired oven. They are then topped with sesame seeds (the classic topping), and come out toothsome and chewy—not the soft, oversized donuts you find in the U.S. They’re the real thing—the kind you used to be able to buy in New York during the Pleistocene. This store, founded in 1919, has been on its present site since the year I was born:
The menu. I, of course, wanted a sesame bagel:
Baking the bagels over wood:
Ready to serve:
The wood for firing the oven is stacked in the alley outside:
My prize: a warm sesame bagel with a schmear. I limited myself to one as we were on our way for poutine:
We did a lot of sightseeing, and before I went back to my hotel I asked to be taken to La Confiserie CandyLabs, an interesting place downtown where a Japanese couple make hard candy by hand, and it’s fancy stuff, coming in many natural flavors.
Claude photographed me with a cat lollipop. I was told it was a Japanese cartoon character, but can’t remember the name (I’m sure a reader will):
I bought two kinds: mixed fruit and taro candy (flavored with real taro root). I haven’t yet opened the bags:
Here’s a video from CandyLab. Making the small candies with designs inside is a real art. It’s this video, which I watched before going to Canada, that impelled me to go to the store:
Thanks again to my hosts, Anne-Marie (shown here amused by my photographing of poutine):
et Claude, having our postprandial café crème (it’s okay to have milk with coffee after lunch in Montreal, but not in France):
