Two further notes on England

November 19, 2012 • 3:43 am

URGENT UPDATE: I think people are reading this site, for between posting this piece this morning and coming back from lunch, Amazon has nearly sold out of my favorite jam: only 13 jars of Tiptree Little Scarlet Conserve are left. Buy yours now! It may, like Twinkies, become extinct!

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In my life I’ve spent many months in the UK, including various places in England and five months in Scotland. I love the place, and the people are wonderful.

There are also many glories, highest among which is a British pub that has real ale.  There is nothing in the U.S. that is like a historic old local that has real cask ales served at the proper temperature (a temperature always mischaracterized by Americans as “warm”).  In fact, Oxonians will recognize the great pub where I had lunch yesterday: The Turf Tavern in Oxford.  I had a fine pint and a wonderful fish and chips with mushy peas (a vegetable dish, by the way, that many abhor, but I love). But I have two further observations about England since I’m travelling and can’t do substantive posts:

1.  The Brits are overly punctilious about two things: tea and marmalade.  There is “tea time” and “coffee time,” the latter in the morning and the former at all other times, but rigorously between 3:30 and 4 p.m.  Even many Brits who like coffee won’t drink it after noon solely because it isn’t proper.

Here’s a story that demonstrates this peculiarity. I once was making cappuccinos with my office espresso machine in the late morning (this was in Chicago). To be nice, I made an extra one to give to my friend and chairman, the Brit Brian Charlesworth, a famous evolutionary geneticist.  I walked across the hall to proffer the steaming drink to Brian, whereupon he looked at his watch to see if it was the right time to drink coffee. Since it was after 10 a.m., he refused my offer.  This is what I call “overly scrupulous” (“neurotic” is a less proper term).

And there are all the lovely jams that the Brits make—some of the world’s best, which include gooseberry and raspberry preserves, and what I consider the world’s finest jam: Wilkin & Sons’ Tiptree Little Scarlet Strawberry Conserve. (If you ever see a jar, buy it instantly, though it’s pricey, but be sure it’s the “Little Scarlet” version, for Wikin & Sons make other strawberry jams. I’ve just found Little Scarlet on Amazon for $22.14 for 12 oz.) This was James Bond’s favorite jam, and it’s made from a variety of small, deeply flavored strawberry cultivated only by Wilkin & Sons. It is ethereal, far better than any strawberry jam—nay, any jam—I’ve ever had.

Develop a search image for this:

Yet despite their multifarious array of jams, many Brits go for the same thing at breakfast: orange marmalade. Boring! It’s pure habit, nothing else.  It must be habit (or a perverse adherence to tradition), for there are so many other jams that are better.

2. The Brits say “different to” rather than “different from.”

An example:

“Little Scarlet is different to other strawberry preserves, even the other types made by Wilkin & Sons.”

“Different to” is just wrong; it sounds wrong and it is wrong.  I can live with “tyres” and “centre,” but not “different to.”

Oddly, every Brit I’ve tried to convince that this phrase is wrong has been baffled, and then disagreed!

But enough kvetching, for tonight I get to experience one of the glories of British academics: a formal dinner in college—in this case a formal dinner at New College, Oxford. This is something I always wanted to do and has been on my bucket list forever. Academics in gowns! Dinner in courses with good wine! High table! And port and dessert in a separate room!

Creationists create mimetic “Science Friday” show; real one files lawsuit against them

November 19, 2012 • 3:20 am

I’ve often posted about “Batesian mimicry,” the phenomenon whereby a palatable species (often an insect hunted by birds), evolves to resemble an unpalatable or toxic “model” species that is brightly colored and that predators have learned to avoid.  Before we go on, here’s a great picture of a Batesian mimic: a moth that mimics a paper wasp. Can you believe this is a moth? If you saw one in your house, you’d be fooled, too! (Image from The Grackle.)

But its curled mouthparts give it away as a lepidopteran:

By the way, there’s are several evolutionary predictions that can be made from seeing such species: if they evolved (rather than were created), one would predict that either now or in the recent past, you will find a model species of real wasp living in the same area as the mimic (predators need to learn to avoid the real “model” wasp to provide the selective pressure that causes the mimic to evolve resemblance), that there was a predator that occasionally tried to eat wasps, and that you could demonstrate that such aversion could either be learned by that predator or had actually evolved in predator. (There are cases in which aversion to brightly colored “warning patterns” has actually evolved as a hard-wired rather than learned behavior, for individuals with an innate aversion to stinging or poisonous prey would have a reproductive advantage.)

This is just one other case where the evolutionary hypothesis makes testable predictions. And, by the way, these have been tested and substantiated.

This is all a roundabout way of introducing a case of what I’ll call cultural reverse Batesian mimicry, in which we find a distasteful and poisonous phenomenon mimicking a a palatable model phenomenon.  The model, in this case, is the estimable NPR show Science Friday, which is very good. (I was honored to be on it once.)

The mimic is a duplicitous website and podcast called Real Science Friday, a creationist operation that apes (forgive the pun) the NPR show, and is run by a shady minister named Bob Enyart who’s been convicted of misdemeanor child abuse and involved, as both target and instigator, in various internet conspiracy theory disputes.  The mimicry is so precise that the NPR show has filed suit against Enyart.

As reported by Saturday’s ars technica:

Earlier this month the people behind NPR’s Science Friday radio show took some time to have a Legal Friday. On that day, they filed a suit against a minister/broadcaster named Bob Enyart for calling his Colorado-based radio program “Real Science Friday.”

NPR’s Science Friday is a multimedia machine with radio broadcasts on NPR, podcasts, online content, and more. It’s backed by the Science Friday Initiative, which performs additional outreach intended to help give the public access to the latest in science.

Enyart’s program also has all of the above (the radio program, the podcasts, the YouTube videos). But it lacks the backing of a foundation—and the science part. His “Real Science Friday” website(Tagline: “Don’t Be Fooled by NPR’s parody titled Science Friday ;)”) contains a variety of standard creationist material, much of it attacking evolution, but some of it arguing for a Universe that’s only a few thousand years old as well.

. . . The suit notes that Science Friday has five registered trademarks and claims that the creationist group is diluting them and confusing consumers. Science Friday says that in iTunes, the creationist podcast shows up in searches and in the “Listeners also subscribed to” section. On Google, it lands on top of the second page of results ahead of several legitimate web pages. (As of this writing, both of those facts stand.)

The suit demands a variety of relief for the NPR program, asking that the creationists be made to stop using the logo in electronic form, turn over the Internet domain, and hand over any physical materials (like CDs) that bear the logo.

Just to help you out, here’s a field guide:

The nutritious model:

The noxious mimic (two views):

And a screenshot, in which the duplicity is revealed only by the fake “winking” icon ( 😉 ):

If you want to see an example of how “Real Science Friday” (RSF) operates, just go over and read Enyart’s “Darwin was wrong about the tree of life” article to see how many mistakes, deliberate or otherwise, you can find. Here’s one: it was evolutionists and not creationists who exposed the problems of considering the Darwinius masillae fossil as a missing link between two groups of primates (see here, here, and here, for example).

And RSF recycles the old New Scientist “Darwin was wrong” cover, the stupidest thing that the journal ever did. Darwin’s supposed “error” was to suggest there was a branching tree of life, a conclusion that, claimed New Scientist, was destroyed by horizontal gene transfer (the movement of DNA between distantly related species by vectors like viruses or direct ingestion). But such transfer is common only in bacteria, and if you analyze the total DNA of non-bacterial species, not just an occasional odd gene horizontally transferred from, say, fungi to rotifers, you will still find the tree of life branching in a nice Darwinian way.

But creationists are devious liars, and, as we see, will not only distort the evidence, but will parasitize a real science website attempting to draw attention to specious creationist claims.

These people will never give up until religion goes away, at which time, along with all the other benefits of secularism, we will hear no more from liars like Bob Enyart.

I have landed

November 18, 2012 • 2:18 am

I am sitting in the cold at the Central Bus Terminal at Heathrow, awaiting the bus to Oggsford (viz. The Great Gatsby).

I have three observations in my jet-lagged state:

1. Of all the major airports in the world, Heathrow is the worst, and I’ve been to many.  The corridors go for miles and, when you finally reach “Arrivals,” there is an interminable line with three desultory customs folk checking your passport. It is a dispiriting and sluggish welcome to Old Blighty.

2.  Britain is EXPENSIVE, as it has been for years (I was here at the glorious moment when you could get one pound for one dollar).  My one-way ticket from Heathrow to Oggsford, about an hour’s journey, cost twenty-three pounds, which is $36.50  US.  Still, I’ll bite the bullet and prepare myself to shell out upwards of three pounds for a pint of British ale, which, when properly cellared and served, is one of the world’s glories.

3. I watched two movies on the plane, one of which I’d seen before and remains superb: Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.  Great acting and fantastic camerawork. The other, Avatar, I hadn’t seen before, and found okay but a bit predictable and schmalzy.  I should have watched From Here to Eternity or, better yet, On the Waterfront, both available.  I coulda seen a good movie instead of a sci-feature about giant blue aliens, which is what I did.

Now that’s a tee-shirt!

November 18, 2012 • 12:26 am

Yep, that’s Darwin, with all the graphics made from bunch of real text from The Origin. It’s a Kickstarter project by Danny Fein, and you can get one of these (or Gatsby, Alice in Wonderland, or Moby Dick) by donating at least $30 at the link. Note, though, that you won’t get bupkes unless Danny gets a total pledge of at least $15,000; and, with 28 days left, there’s $12,000 to go.

The process (named “Litographs”), as shown in the link’s video, is quite complicated, for the words have to be legible. Here’s an enlargement from the Alice shirt:

You can also get posters, some of which have the entire text of the books.

Here’s the Darwin poster, which is lovely:

The biggest posters contain the entire text of a book, and these are available:

On the Origin of Species, Emma, Leaves of Grass, Moby Dick, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, This Side of Paradise, Les Miserables, Pride and Prejudice, The Aeneid, The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Three Musketeers, The Mysterious Island, The Kama Sutra, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Don Quixote, The Republic, Newton’s Opticks, A Tale of Two Cities, and Walden.

You’ll be the envy of all your friends (well, as least the nerdy ones) with your Darwin tee-shirt, so help Danny out!

h/t: Chris

Peregrinations

November 17, 2012 • 1:22 pm

I’m leaving today for the UK: Oxford, Denton, Edinburgh, and then Glasgow; I’ll return the 28th of November and posting will be light, as much of the time I’ll lack internet access (I’m hoping that Greg and Matthew will fill in).

Scheduled activities:

Edinburgh: Edinburgh Humanist Society, Friday, Nov. 23, 7 p.m. See link for details.

Glasgow: Skeptics in the Pub, Monday Nov. 26, 7 pm. See link for details.

If you’re in Scotland then, drop by and say hi.

An atheist sermon

November 17, 2012 • 9:52 am

Jerry DeWitt is a former Pentecostal minister turned heathen, a graduate of Dennett and LaScola’s “Clergy Project,” and now director of the organization “Recovering From Religion“.  You may remember the moving profile of him in the New York Times Magazine last August: “From Bible-belt pastor to atheist leader.” (Read it if you haven’t.)

This rousing two-minute atheist “sermon,” delivered at Reason at the Rock (the annual meeting of the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers), shows that DeWitt retains his preaching skills, and, despite his tribulations, has a great sense of humor.

h/t: Gregory

Two legs good, 750 legs better!

November 17, 2012 • 9:15 am

Alert reader Michael called my attention to an article and video about the world’s leggiest animal. The species is a millipede found in Northern California, lllacme plenipes, and was first described in 1926, and has up to  750 legs. It’s also sexually dimorphic, so males are smaller and have fewer legs.

As LiveScience reported in 2006:

Over the course of three trips to the California Floristic Province, scientists found four male specimens and three females, which they report in the June 8 [2006] issue of the journal Nature.

The females, as in turned out, were not only longer at about 1.3 inches, but also had up to 666 legs. The males averaged 0.6 inches in length and walked on no more than 402 legs.

The males and females probably start out at the same size. Females grow larger and develop more body segments, explained the report’s co-author Paul Marek of East Carolina University. “They are also wider.”

That report gave a record of 666 legs, suggesting that this animal was the work of Satan.

Here it is:

A white millipede named lllacme plenipes (Latin for “the pinnacle plentiful feet”) and found only in a small area of Northern California sports 750 wiggling legs, making it the “leggiest” animal known. (Here, the entire millipede with penny for scale.) CREDIT: Paul Marek

But a LiveScience piece this November 14, reporting a new study by Paul Marek et al. in ZooKeys (reference below), shows that reanalysis of more individuals of this species has shattered the leg record—up to a whopping 750! And there are other oddities:

“It basically looks like a thread,” lead study author Paul Marek, a postdoctoral entomologist at the University of Arizona, told LiveScience. “It has an uninteresting outward appearance, but when we looked at it with SEM and compound microscopes, we found a huge, amazingly complex anatomy.” (SEM stands for “scanning electron microscopy.”)

A rudimentary fused mouth with no known function is among the oddities, as are hairs on its back that produce a silklike product. “There was this huge amount of neat detail that we’re just scraping the surface of,” Marek said. [See Photos of the Bizarre Millipede]

A rudimentary mouth with no function? (See below for a photo). How does it eat?

The millipede wowed researchers with its unusually complex build that was tucked into such a tiny package — it measures 0.4-1.2 inches (1-3 centimeters) long. Shown here, view of the head and mouthpart showing a triangular tooth-lined orifice (arrow). Photo by Paul Marek

I’ll confess that I haven’t read the 35-page paper, as I’m off to the UK today, but I’ve scanned it and present this animal for your delectation.

Here’s a scanning electron microscope (SEM) photo of the legs of a male from the paper:

16 Ventral view of segments (♂). a Lateral tergal and pleural carinae jagged, pronounced on midbody segments b Pleurite medial margin broad, with scaly carina c Postgonopodal tarsus with thinner claw and without bifurcation, but with stout seta. Scale bar 0.4 mm. (From the paper).

Why so many legs? The authors offer an adaptive hypothesis in the abstract:

Based on functional morphology of related species, the extreme number of legs is hypothesized to be associated with a life spent burrowing deep underground, and clinging to the surface of sandstone boulders.

Well, that’s pure speculation, and do they really need that many legs to live in such a niche? Wouldn’t 700 do? Other constraints may have operated here: selection could have been for a thin creature of great length, and the number of legs could simply be a byproduct of genes making the animal longer.

Its head and antennae (see more photos here, or in the paper):

Figure 8.
Lateral (right) view of antennal and cephalic apices (♂). a Scanning electron micrograph: arrow, denticulate shelf-like carina, projecting dorsally from labrum-epistome margin. Scale bar 0.1 mm b Line drawing: top arrow, shelf-like carina; middle arrow, triangular tooth-lined orifice; bottom arrow, gnathochilarium. Scale bar 0.01 mm.

And finally, a video of the beast. Note how large its antennae are relative to its head (shown also in the photo above), and how it’s constantly using them to feel its way about, as expected from a fossorial (underground) animal:

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Marek, P. , W. Shear, and J. Bond. 2012. A redescription of the leggiest animal, the millipedeIllacme plenipes, with notes on its natural history and biogeography (Diplopoda, Siphonophorida, Siphonorhinide). ZooKeys 241:77-112.