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.
The name Szczebrzeszyn is infamous for being very difficult to pronounce for non-native speakers. The line [in the poem] with Szczebrzeszyn goes like this:
W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [the pronunciation can be heard here]
This roughly translates to: “In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed”. The phrase has been incorporated in everyday language as an epitome of Polish tongue twisters, and is often presented by natives to foreign learners of Polish. A monument depicting a beetle playing the violin that was erected in Szczebrzeszyn refers to the poem.
Here’s a photo of the statue from the Polish Wikipedia:
We have a lot of readers from different countries, so I’ll ask you to supply your nation’s most famous tongue twister in the comments below.
According to the Guinness Book of World records, this sentence is the toughest one in English:
Two bits of fotografic frivolity. First, spotted by my daughter Lauren on Tumblr – upside down bats throwing neat dance moves:
Then, from Twitter, this picture of a cat that allegedly sat on a guy’s phone and took a selfie (it has already been retweeted >14,000 times since it was posted three months ago):
Any other cats out there been taking photos of themselves?
. . . Al Bawaba reports over a quarter of young girls in Yemen are married before the age of 15.
It points the country passed a law in February 2009 setting the minimum age of marriage at 17, but that it was repealed after conservative lawmakers declared it “un-Islamic”.
Only religion can sanction this kind of monstrous behavior. And no, it can’t be pinned on Western occupation.
What do these three have in common, besides being prominent Victorian Englishmen? The, to me, surprising answer is: fingerprinting! Faithful and informative reader Dom has sent the following picture from the Galton Collection of the special collections at University College London.
Gladstone’s (left) and Wallace’s fingerprints. Photo by Dom.
Here’s a closeup of Wallace’s fingerprints, with Wallace’s signature below. I can’t quite make out what’s below his signature; I think it is, in part, the date.
Wallace’s signature and fingerprints, taken May 28, 1891. Photo by Dom.
Francis Galton was Darwin’s cousin, and perhaps is best remembered for developing the techniques of regression and correlation in his failed attempt to create a statistical theory of genetics in his Law of Ancestral Heredity. The law, unfortunately for Galton, was wrong. There was a long debate between Galton’s statistical school (biometricians) and Mendelians over the nature of inheritance. R.A. Fisher, in 1918, synthesized the two views, showing that the statistical resemblances among relatives studied by the biometricians are exactly what you would expect if the underlying genetic factors were inherited in a Mendelian fashion, thus laying the basis for modern quantitative genetics.
Galton, who was a bit of a polymath, also popularized fingerprints as a means of individual identification, collecting a large number of them and studying their forms and variations; hence, he collected Wallace’s and Gladstone’s. Fingerprints do seem to be individually unique, but because the systems of comparing prints rely upon a scoring of similarity rather than total identity, mistakes can be made, a recent infamous case being the American lawyer from Oregon imprisoned (briefly) for carrying out the 2004 Madrid train bombing. (The mistake was made by the FBI in the US; Spanish police correctly called the fingerprints as not matching.)
William Ewart Gladstone was three times Prime Minister, and his long, unfriendly rivalry with the two-time Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was one of the most prominent features of Victorian Britain. Gladstone once wrote a book arguing that it was the duty of the state to determine what the true religion was, and to promote that religion to the exclusion of others. (The true religion, of course, turned out to be Anglicanism.) He later changed his mind, at least a bit, and supported a bill to redress a bit of the imbalance in state support for Anglican vs Catholic churches in Ireland. But because he had publicly declared his exclusive support for Anglicanism in his book, he resigned rather than vote for the measure he supported!
Gladstone supported the right of atheists to sit in Parliament (MPs were required at the time to take a Christian oath, though some allowances had been made for Jews and Quakers), and attempted to seat the famous Victorian atheistCharles Bradlaugh after the latter’s election in 1880. Gladstone’s Parliamentary maneuverings failed, and Bradlaugh was actually taken from the floor of the house to jail! Despite not being properly seated, Bradlaugh kept getting re-elected, and eventually was sort of seated, and secured the passage of an affirmation bill, allowing MPs to affirm their loyalty, rather than swear on the Christian God, in 1888.
Arian Foster is a terrific running back for the Houston Texans of the National Football League (American football for you Ausländers). Last week he wrote a column for Yahoo Shine! called “Six things I’ll try to teach my daughter.”
At 23, and apparently unexpectedly, he found himself a father, and feeling clueless about how to raise his new daughter Zeniah. The article compiles six life lessons he decided to impart to her.
The first five things are somewhat conventional: how to find happiness in a tough world, the value of a dollar, the importance of loving one’s work, the importance of being kind, and what qualities to look for in a man (I presume he doesn’t think she’ll be gay). Those are bromides, but worthwhile nonetheless.
But it’s advice #6 that’s the kicker:
6. The flying spaghetti monster. There are billions of people on Earth with hundreds of religions and sects that trickle off each other. I will never tell her what to believe in. I know parents are very influential on kids’ spiritual beliefs and that can be a positive or negative thing. I can give her a basic understanding of religions when she starts showing interest and asking questions. But I will remain silent otherwise. How can I make a young mind believe this is the truth for them when they don’t yet have the capacity nor the cognitive desire to delve into something like this? If she shows interest I would advise her to fully investigate a religion and see if it fits her. And if she chooses none of the above, I’ll be fine with that as well. The values I instill in her should guide her to her decision. What’s most important, I believe, is to support her decision no matter what.
People think of football players as dim-witted but valuable pieces of meat, but Foster has far more sense than 95% of his fellow Americans. This sentence alone should be engraved on the mind of every parent:
“How can I make a young mind believe this is the truth for them when they don’t yet have the capacity nor the cognitive desire to delve into something like this?”
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) ranks among my top five artists of all time (I suppose the others would be Rembrandt, Leonardo, Picasso, and then a tie between Johannes Vermeer and Caravaggio), so it’s a big thrill to see that a previously unknown painting of his has come to light. Below is “Sunset at Montmajour,” painted at Arles in 1888.
Isn’t it beautiful?
Peter Dejong/Associated Pres
The New York Times describes its provenance and how it was authenticated (the “museum” is the wonderful van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam)
“For the first time in the history of the museum, that is in the past 40 years, a substantial capital new work of van Gogh has been discovered that was completely unknown in the literature,” said the museum’s director, Axel Rüger, in an interview. “He is one of the most famous artists in the world and we always think we’ve seen everything and we know everything, and now we’re able to add a significant new work to his oeuvre.” He added, “It is a work from the most important period of his life, when he created his substantial masterpieces, like ‘The Sunflowers,’ ‘The Yellow House’ and ‘The Bedroom.’”
The painting depicts dusk in the rocky landscape around Montmajour, a vineyard hill town in Provence, with the ruins of a Benedictine Abbey in the background, a subject that van Gogh explored many times during his time in Arles.
The painting has been in the private collection of a family for several years, but the museum would not release any more information about the owners because of privacy concerns, Mr. Rüger said. Two years ago, they brought it to the Van Gogh Museum to seek authentication, and researchers from the museum have been examining it ever since, said Mr. Rüger. The museum recently concluded that the work was a van Gogh because the painting’s pigments correspond with those of van Gogh’s palette from Arles.
It was also painted on the same type of canvas, with the same type of underpainting he used for at least one other painting, “The Rocks” (owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston) of the same area at the same time. The work was also listed as part of Theo van Gogh’s collection in 1890, and was sold in 1901.
“Sunset at Montmajour” is comparable in size to van Gogh’s “Sunflower” painting of the same year. The owners brought it to the museum once before in 1991, said Mr. Rüger, but at the time no one recognized it as a van Gogh. “This time, we have topographical information plus a number of other factors that have helped us to establish authenticity. Research is so much more advanced now, so we could come to a very different conclusion.”
If you are Dutch, or headed to Amsterdam, you’ll be able to see it soon: it goes on exhibit at the Museum on September 24.
These things are priceless, and I think all art of this quality really belongs in museums so it can be appreciated by everyone, but you might have asked yourself, as I did, “What would this sell for at auction?” Well, Wikipedia of course has an article on the most expensive paintings ever sold privately or at auction, and a van Gogh doesn’t come in until #6, “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” which sold in 1990 for $82.5 million ($146 million in today’s dollars). Topping the list is Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players,” which, as you may recall, sold two years ago for anywhere between $250 and $300 million dollars to the Royal Family of Qatar (price was undisclosed). I’d take a Van Gogh over a Cezanne on my wall any day.
The Old Masters, of course, are mostly in museums and are never sold. But the Wikipedia article discusses the possible value of the world’s most famous painting: the Mona Lisa:
The museums very rarely sell them, and as such, they are quite literally priceless. Guinness World Records lists the Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting in history. It was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962, before the painting toured theUnited States for several months. However, the Louvre chose to spend the money that would have been spent on the insurance premium on security instead. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$759 million today.
Here’s a graph of some of the paintings, but go over to the article to see the full list. In general I have no beef with the artists, except for the three Warhols, which went for 100. 70, and 63 million dollars respectively. That’s an absolute travesty: Warhol was a new-kid-on-the-block mediocrity, though I expect he’ll find his defenders here.
Which would you rather have on your wall: van Gogh’s sunflowers or Warhol’s soup cans?
This graphic shows on the vertical axis the dollar amounts of the most expensive works of art sold at auction. The horizontal axis indicates the year the painting was completed with the date range running between 1850 and 2000. Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol are indicated in different colors.
But enough of crass materialism. Who are your five favorite painters? Anybody who says Schnabel will be banned (only kidding!).
I am typing this with one good hand as there is a cat draped over my other. Excuse any typos!
Last night’s dinner was again Swedish, with the “peasant” dish potatis gratänt (potatoes au gratin with ham and other trimmings), salad, and pear nectar from local fruit to wash it down.
Dessert was nöttoscä päron, or pears in compote with crumbles:
Gosia and her 2-year-old daughter Hania joined us for dessert:
After dinner, Andrzej exhibited his attempt at artificial selection for larger walnuts. Several years ago he found a giant walnut growing on one of his trees, and planted it in an attempt to get larger walnuts. After seven years, that tree has finally borne nuts, and, sure enough, they’re all big. If this happens next year, it would suggest that the selected nut was a “sport,” or mutant walnut that was genetically dominant for size. Here’s one from the selected tree (left) compared to a nut from its ancestral tree:
After dinner there was a warming bonfire outside. Emma the d*g joined us, but Hili the cat showed a fear of the fire, and climbed a tree instead.
Hili is an amazing climber, and within seconds was up in a plum tree, even trying to crawl out on the thinnest branches. She had great trouble getting down, however, for she hasn’t learned that her claws are curved the wrong way. Her predecessor, Pia the cat, did learn to back down the trees, allowing her purchase on the trunk.
Hili spent a lot of time in the tree chewing on twigs, a behavior I wasn’t familiar with in cats.
A real chimney sweep came this morning! Here they still dress traditionally, in top hat and black clothing (they don’t, however, go into the chimney). A rope and brush were affixed to his back.
Homemade fruitcake for breakfast!
A trip to the butcher’s yielded two types of sausage. These thin ones are called kabanos; a reader pointed out earlier that the casings are made from sheep intestines:
This is a kielbasa swojska, which I suppose corresponds to a Linnaean binomial. These two encased meats will be part of today’s lunch:
