Readers’ wildlife photographs

June 25, 2015 • 7:15 am

If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll remember that reader Mark Sturtevant raises lepidopterans for a hobby. We get the benefit in the form of developmental information and lovely pictures. Here’s the latest batch, with his notes:

As you may recall I had raised a large batch of cecropia moths (Hyalophora cecropia) last summer. Earlier this month I was kept pretty busy with the adult moths that had eclosed [hatched] from cocoons that were hidden in our family refrigerator over the winter. Here are four photos.

One of the newly emerged moths. This has pretty much expanded its wings, but is too soft yet to fly around the house.

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A close up:

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Moth incest!

It is easy to mate cecropias, even if they are siblings. They do not care. Some other species do not do this so readily. I obtained about a hundred eggs from these matings, and I am now rearing a small number of larvae from them. The rest I had humanely put down by freezing them. I have released this species into the wild (it is native here, and I see larvae and cocoons on occasion), but I have opted to not do that for many years.

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Cecropias are the largest native moth in North America. Here are a male and a female.

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Finally, here are two pictures of soaring hawks that Stephen Barnard sent me on May 20. I’ve lost the notes: I believe they’re red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), but their tails don’t look very red to me. Readers?RT9A5279 RT9A5287

 

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 25, 2015 • 4:37 am

Two more days until the Big Road Trip; I am mostly packed, though it was hard to decide what to bring along. In one week I’ll be in Aspen, barring my premature demise in a car crash. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is SOOOOOO tired:

Hili: I’m so very sleepy.
A: Would you like some coffee?
Hili: No, I’m going to take a nap.

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In Polish:
Hili: Strasznie mi się spać chce.
Ja: Chcesz kawy?
Hili: Nie, prześpię się.

Rabbit of the day

June 24, 2015 • 3:30 pm

My visitor Adam has departed, but not until I took him to Wrigley Field, where he went to see the Cubs last night (they beat the Dodgers 1-0). I didn’t catch the game, as I had to pack and stuff, but I did go to Wrigleyville with him, where we hoisted a brew and downed a superb bratwurst at the Goose Island Brewery. Adam ordered “chips” with his brats, not realizing that in America chips aren’t fries! (I wasn’t thinking.)

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A low quality iPhone selfie, but LOOK AT THOSE BRATS!

And on my way home today to take Adam to the subway (bound for O’Hare), I saw a lucky rabbit munching greenery:

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It was just a juvenile, and not very spooked, but it did eventually trot off. The photo below shows you where the phrase “high-tailing it” comes from!

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My page in “Neko Shirt”, translated

June 24, 2015 • 2:30 pm

Steven Nelson is a professor in the Japanese Department of the Faculty of Letters at Hosei University in Tokyo. When he offered (along with several other kind readers) to translate the page about me in Hiroko’s book, Neko Shirt, I thought he was certainly qualified to do it; moreover, he said he could do it from the photograph alone. Here’s the page again that he translated:

hili-shirt

I give Steven’s translation is below. Note that Hiroko calls me “a distinguished looking gentleman of a certain age”, which could also be translated as “old geezer”. Steven added this: “Unfortunately Hiroko called your website a bl*g, which I couldn’t bring myself to censor!”

I find the tale very funny—especially the bits about Meg Ryan and Tom & Jerry—and so am sharing the translation for grins.

Hiroko Kubota on Prof. Jerry Coyne

[Photo caption: It was a very enthusiastic order that came from an American university professor]

When an email address ends in .edu, it’s often from someone who’s associated with a school. I’d already received an email like that from a graduate student, so I asked, “Are you a student?” To which came the reply, “I’m a professor.”

I have a habit of imagining someone I’m corresponding with as a famous actor or actress, and this time I pictured Meg Ryan in a white lab coat. So during our initial email exchanges, I was convinced I was writing to Prof. Meg Ryan. But when I asked about height and clothing size, I thought to myself that this was a very broad-shouldered Meg Ryan … Then the professor sent me a link to a Wikipedia page, which I opened, and what a surprise I got! It was a distinguished-looking gentleman of a certain age. When I wrote that I’d thought he was a woman, he told me that I had learned something good, that the name Jerry is generally a man’s name. Then I remembered that Tom and Jerry had both been boys …

Jerry’s order was very precise. When I asked him to measure certain parts of shirts that he always wore, he asked whether to include the seams, and which length to give since different shirts had different lengths. He gave me the measurements in both inches and centimeters. His enthusiasm was because the shirt was to be worn at a cats vs. dogs debate (of course he was on the cat side).

“I want to wear it under a jacket, which I will take off during the debate to show everyone the cat,” Jerry said. “I like blue, so the shirt material should be blue; I like button-down collars so the collar should be button-down; a brown tabby would go better with blue than an orange tabby, so it should be a brown tabby.” He sent me a total of 10 photos, all of which were of the 3000 or so pixel size. As soon as the shirt that had been created in answer to such enthusiasm reached him, he sent me a selfie. The professor has a blog that he updates repeatedly every day, and he even introduced the shirt on it.

Unfortunately the crucial debate ended with the cat side losing. “It was because the people in the audience wouldn’t change their minds even after hearing the debate. There were more dog lovers in the audience to begin with.” That was the professor’s analysis.

Many thanks to Steven for the translation.

What a deal! White House announces it will negotiate with terrorists for American hostages, but give up prosecuting Americans for doing the same thing

June 24, 2015 • 1:03 pm

This just came over my CNN feed, and I find it totally bizarre:

White House has announced a presidential directive and an executive order that will allow the government to communicate and negotiate with terrorist groups holding American hostages.

Officials will now be allowed to talk to those terror groups and discuss ways to secure the Americans’ release, though the government will maintain its policy of not making concessions to captors.

While the government won’t pay ransom, officials will no longer threaten with criminal prosecution the families of American hostages looking to pay ransom to their relatives’ captors.

And it’s weird for two reasons. First, the White House claims that we will continue our policy of not paying terrorists for hostages. But why else would a group like ISIS release any American hostages except in exchange for money or goods? What on earth does Obama et al. think that “talking to terrorists” to “secure the American’s release” will involve? We’re going to sweet talk them out of their captives?

Further, the notion that the government had a policy of threatening American families with prosecution for trying to pay ransom to secure the return of their relatives is truly odious. Seriously, threatening them? Now I don’t know of any case when the government actually did this, or threatened such actions, but simply having such a policy is inhumane.  And to couch the announcement as if rescinding that policy somehow balances the new talk-to-terrorists policy makes no sense at all.

I don’t think the government should pay for hostages, for that’s a road that leads to ever-increasing kidnappings and ever-higher demands, but the government really should tell us what simple talking without ransom is supposed to accomplish.

The fact is that the U.S. simply doesn’t know what to do in the Middle East (neither do I), and this new move seems more like theater than sound policy.

A letter from an angry climate-change denialist: give your response

June 24, 2015 • 11:00 am

UPDATE:

Our emailer insists on being named, so named his shall be as requested in the missive below:

Bernard Arthur Hutchins Jr

You Must Acknowledge Intellectral Property

Jerry –

I make it three days now since I asked you to put my name on the item on your blog that was MY intellectual property which YOU posted without giving the source.

First, I asked you to put my name on it.  

Second, you threatened to put my  name on it if I contacted you again.  I did contact you again – asking you to acknowledge the source.  [Threats likely should not list actions that the threatener is already morally obliged to do!]

Thirdly, it is (as you must know) a tenant of academic integrity to acknowledge the source of material quoted.  I presume this is the policy at UC, but I am willing to investigate this.

I think Noon Monday is a reasonable deadline for some response from you.

Bernie

________________________________________________

I’m busy preparing for my trip, and don’t have much original stuff to post, but I wanted to share this email from a climate-change denialist who is angry and nasty about what I said in Faith Versus Fact about climate change. I’ll make a few remarks at the end, but I’m posting this mainly so readers can respond, and then I’ll simply send this person a link to the post and comments. I find that an efficient and multipronged way to deal with critics like this, and I don’t have to write my own long response, since it’s always counterproductive to engage people like this.

This is, by the way, typical of the kind of angry email I get, most of which I don’t mention on this site.

Dr Coyne –

Whatever possessed you (word carefully considered) to add the six pages (245-250) on “Denialism” (a toxic word that) of global warming to your otherwise admirable recent book?  It would seem you didn’t select or write this material with your usual care?  It comes across at an intellectual level of Jr. High, a cherry picked religious-flavored “strawman” contrivance, ignorant of (or dismissive of) the very existence of a true SCIENTIFIC opposition to your supposed CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) consensus.  Moreover, viewed as a not uncommon or original “denier-rant”, it is less skillful than what a half-dozen blogs post nearly every day.  This reeks of a hasty, unfortunate, puerile afterthought.   Singularly poor work in your book.

May of us “deniers” are CAGW “skeptics” motivated not in the least by religion (or politics), but by physics, engineering, and evidence. I myself am an atheist of the Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris school; and a physicist and electrical engineer.   When I see stability in a circuit I design, or robust thermostatting in nature, I know it is due to negative feedback (a loop in my circuit) or some natural feedback in the case of nature (NO MYSTERY – Second Law of Thermodynamics).  Looking at an overall physical picture, I understand it pretty well, and must conclude that Nature does in fact take pretty good care of Herself.  Incidentally, I have always viewed natural selection as really little more than feedbacks. [JAC: Oy! Little more than feedbacks?]

Much as the links of an evolution process can be complex, the thermostatting chains of the climate are complex (thus appearing designed) but only reflect the 2nd Law insisting that we must have something, somehow.  It is a bit astounding that an evolutionary biologist such as yourself, familiar with amazing Law-of-natural-selection-driven puzzles does not immediately grasp the corresponding self-organizing mechanisms of the 2nd Law.   Instead in your case, you have Faith (word considered) in a bit of “greenhouse” arithmetic that is already in error by 18 years of no warming.  Picking and choosing your science – so it would seem!

I have never heard of the silly “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.” but what did you expect?  Of the two paragraphs you reproduce, the first is unreadable claptrap; the second is essentially the correct CAGW-Skeptic (scientific) view.  What was the point of this radical juxtaposition?

Do I have any climate scientist credentials from which to speak?  I have a degree in climatology fully equivalent to the one Al Gore has and the one you have – NONE.  I have however studied the issue for over 12 years.  How important are credentials?  Google “Chomsky, Credentials, Substance” for my view.

Your unjustified “pigeon holing” of people who have analytically reasoned conclusions with those who resort only to religion for a similar conclusion, is frankly embarrassing, if not insulting to us.  You are doing a “hit job” on many honest thinkers, many of whom know far far more about the issues of CAGW than you apparently do, and you come across less as a scientist and more as a political animal.

Those of us who are travelers within the CAGW-skeptic circle to which I am a part, are owed an apology.

Name redacted

The section that this guy (yes, I’ll say that it’s a man) is referring to in Faith Versus Fact discusses religiously based climate-change denialism while also noting that religious opposition to climate-change is only a part of general opposition, much of which is based on economics. (But do note that 49% of Americans see natural disasters, including global warming as a sign of the End Times.) I also give quotes from US Senators and Representatives who also have religiously based take but in the opposite direction: that God would never let the Earth be destroyed by global warming. That attitude, of course, is as bad as denialism, for it encourages a lack of response.

Further, the “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming,” signed by hundreds of prominent and credentialed economists, scientists, theologians, and other religionists and academics, also notes this:

We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory.  Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.

. . . . We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.

We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part, to provide the abundant, affordable energy necessary to sustain prosperous economies or overcome poverty.

We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.

As for the evidence for global warming, there is a consensus among experts in climate science that Earth is experiencing anthropogenic global warming: 97% of climate scientists see this happening and, based on evidence, see the change as due to human activity. Of course scientific consensus can sometimes be wrong (remember that most geologists didn’t accept the notion of continental drift), but with such a strong consensus, the best evidence we have points to human-caused global warming, not to the denialism of the writer.

I won’t write more, or discuss the stupid “credentials” card played by the writer (except to note that the vast majority of scientists with equally good or better credentials than his disagree with him), except to point you to one place that gives a good summary of the evidence for anthropogenic global warming. It’s the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) site “Climate change: How do we know?“, which summarizes the diverse lines of evidence, including temperature and gas monitoring, glacial retreat, ocean warming and acidification, reduced snow cover, and so on (it includes copious references). You can find the evidence for human causation at the NASA site “Why is climate change happening?” That evidence constitutes my “faith” to which the writer alludes. He couldn’t be more wrong—about everything he says, especially his silly take on evolution.

Matthew’s Guardian piece on Franklin, Watson, and Crick

June 24, 2015 • 9:30 am

As you may know, Matthew Cobb’s engaging new book, Life’s Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code, came out in the UK in June, and will come out in the US on July 7.  You might want to preorder it if if you want a cracking good story of modern science, one that takes up where James Watson’s The Double Helix left off.

Partly to publicize his book, as well as to call attention to a question that’s occupied scientists and science historians for years, Matthew wrote a new piece in the Guardian called “Sexism in science: did Watson and Crick really steal Rosalind Franklin’s data?” Several people have answered this question with a “yes,” based largely on W&C having calculated the DNA structure using data and photographs produced by Franklin and by Raymond Gosling, her Ph.D. student at King’s College. A bit of Matthew’s article:

At the end of January 1953, Watson visited King’s, where Wilkins showed him an X-ray photo that was subsequently used in Franklin’s Nature article. This image, often called ‘Photo 51’, had been made by Raymond Gosling, a PhD student who had originally worked with Wilkins, had then been transferred to Franklin (without Wilkins knowing), and was now once more being supervised by Wilkins, as Franklin prepared to leave the terrible atmosphere at King’s and abandon her work on DNA.

Photo 51 taken by Rosalind Franklin and R.G. Gosling
Photo 51 taken by Rosalind Franklin and R. G. Gosling

Watson recalled that when he saw the photo – which was far clearer than any other he had seen – ‘my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race.’ According to Watson, photo 51 provided the vital clue to the double helix. But despite the excitement that Watson felt, all the main issues, such as the number of strands and above all the precise chemical organisation of the molecule, remained a mystery. A glance at photo 51 could not shed any light on those details.

What Watson and Crick needed was far more than the idea of a helix – they needed precise observations from X-ray crystallography. Those numbers were unwittingly provided by Franklin herself, included in a brief informal report that was given to Max Perutz of Cambridge University.

In February 1953, Perutz passed the report to Bragg, and thence to Watson and Crick.

Crick now had the material he needed to do his calculations.

I’ll send you to Matthew’s article to see his conclusion about the purported theft (and to learn some history of science), but I’ll add the comment he emailed me about his Guardian piece:

It’s a highly compressed summary of the chapter on the double helix. I was annoyed by comments around [Tim] Hunt that claimed W&C stole her data, which they didn’t. Plus I wanted to publicise the book!

The article suffers from not having been proofed/subbed, so there is one use of “data was” that got commenters very cross, a “no question that” which confused some US readers [JAC: this confused me too; what Matthew meant was “it wasn’t the case that”], and a Freudian conflation of Watson and Wilkins into Watkins!

I think Matthew’s take is accurate, and should pretty much settle the issue; and I also agree that had she lived (she died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of just 38), Franklin should have been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 along with Wilkins, Crick, and Watson. Since Nobels can be awarded to only three people in one category, see how Matthew thinks this should have happened.