Un bocado

November 15, 2010 • 3:44 pm

Yesterday we visited the Paloquemao market in Bogotá: a huge arena for all things foody and flowery. I took many pictures, especially of the tropical fruits, and will post them soon.

Today, though, in keeping with my daily food post, I want to highlight perhaps the best snack I’ve had in this country—and I’ve had quite a few in my limited time here.

While browsing the market, I noticed a stall that was quite busy, even at 9 a.m. I also knew that “lechon” was Spanish for “suckling pig.”  This merited investigation. (Click pictures to enlarge.)

Inside the stall, prone on a slab, was one huge roasted pig, not a suckling.  Between its crispy golden skin and succulent flesh was a layer of rice (with some peas) that had been roasted with the pig:

The crowd was getting variously sized portions of the porker and rice, snipped from the beast with a pair of scissors. Some had big plates, some small, and others had portions wrapped and steamed in banana leaves:

Natually, I had to have some. For the equivalent of $2 I got a small but filling portion, complete with a piece of crispy skin (the best part, of course), and an arepa, the Colombian tortilla.  I must say that this is one of the best street foods I’ve had in any land.

What a great breakfast! If Anthony Bourdain hasn’t eaten here, he should.

Mi rana

November 15, 2010 • 12:28 pm

Fortuitously, we have lots of good biology posts today, so I’ll add one more, involving more bragging than education.

My host at the Universidad de los Andes had a copy of the Spanish-language guide to harlequin frogs: Ranas Arlequines. And what do you know—there on page 68 was mi rana, in a color drawing I’d never seen before. (Click to enlarge.)

And the species description, which even those with rudimentary Spanish can read:

What a beautiful frog is Atelopus coynei, and what a beautiful name (see here and here for more info).  Sadly, as the text says, it hasn’t been seen since 1984, and may have gone extinct from the worldwide fungus epidemic that’s wiping out many species.

Science goes to Hollywood– favorite movie scenes, 3

November 15, 2010 • 11:44 am

by Greg Mayer

My last (at least for now) candidate for favorite science-y movie scene is from one of the great all-time classic B movies, The Killer Shrews. In the film, some scientists on an island are menaced by giant, venomous shrews. (Some shrews, such as  the short tailed shrew, Blarina brevicauda, of the eastern US and Canada, are, in fact, venomous.). In the following clip, about 8:10 in, the people have barricaded themselves inside a house, while the shrews roam about outside. The two men wearing ties are the scientists (dress code issues, again!); a shrew has broken into the house, and dashes out of the kitchen towards Dr. Baines (in glasses). [Updated 2019 07 30 with available video clip.]

After Dr. Baines falls dead to the floor, and his furiously-made typescript is examined, Dr. Cragis solemnly intones, “He recorded every symptom and reaction, right up to the moment of his death.”

The movie is justly famous for its absurdly amateurish special effects– the shrews appear to be dogs wearing rubber noses with shag carpets strapped to their backs. But what makes it a favorite scene is that it is based on a true incident– the death, by snakebite, of the great herpetologist  Karl P. Schmidt.

Schmidt, long time curator of amphibians and reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and coauthor of two influential ecology textbooks, died on September 26, 1957, one day after being bitten by a small boomslang (Dispholidus typus) at the Museum. The boomslang is a rear-fanged colubrid snake (i.e. not one of the more specialized venomous snakes, the vipers and the cobras and their relatives) from southern Africa, and Schmidt and his colleagues were lulled into a misled optimism by the snake’s small size and that only one fang had bitten him.

Boomslang, Dispholidus typus. Photo by William Warby, from Wikimedia.

Schmidt began taking notes about what happened, and recorded his symptoms until after breakfast the next day. By 3 PM he was dead. Chicago newspapers gave his death a prominent place in their pages. The Chicago Daily Tribune‘s Thomas Buck wrote

Dedication to Science Blamed in Tragedy…An inquest into the death of Dr. Karl P. Schmidt, world famous herpetologist who wrote a scientific account of his symptoms while dying from snake bite, will be resumed today in the city hall in Chicago Heights. (Chicago Daily Tribune Oct. 4 1957)

An unusual chapter of medical history was written yesterday at the inquest in the death of Dr. Karl P. Schmidt famed herpetologist who recorded his symptoms of snake poisoning without apparent foreboding or emotion. (Chicago Daily Tribune Oct. 5 1957)

Schmidt’s notes on the bite and his symptoms were published posthumously. Here’s part of what he wrote:

I took it [the snake] from Dr. [Robert] Inger [another famed Chicago herpetologist] without thinking of any precaution, and it promptly bit me on the fleshy lateral aspect of the first joint of the left thumb. The mouth was widely opened and the bite was made with the rear fangs only, only the right fang entering to its full length of about 3 mm.

Clifford H. Pope, yet another famed Chicago herpetologist, who prepared Schmidt’s notes for publication, wrote in his comments accompanying them,

That Dr. Schmidt’s optimism was extremely unfortunate is proved by his death, but it must be admitted that there was some justification: The boomslang was very young and only one fang penetrated deeply. However, almost two decades ago careful experimentation by Grasset and Schaafsma (South African Med. Jour., 1940, 14: 236-41) showed that boomslang venom has an extraordinarily high toxicity, even higher than those of such notorious snakes as cobras, kraits, and mambas. This fact alone dictates extreme caution in handling boomslangs of all sizes, even though they be among the most mild tempered of venomous snakes.

Davis, D.D. 1959. Karl Patterson Schmidt, 1890-1957. Copeia 1959(3): 189-192.

Pope, C.H. 1958. Fatal bite of captive African rear-fanged snake (Dispholidus). Copeia 1958(4): 280-282. (Schmidt’s notes are in this paper.)

Guardian interview with Hitchens

November 15, 2010 • 5:41 am

Several readers (thanks!) have pointed me to Andrew Anthony’s longish but splendid interview with Christopher Hitchens in yesterday’s Guardian.  It’s sad to read how ill Hitchens has become, but the piece is far more than a lament.  You’ll learn, for instance, that Hitch had a torrid affair with Anna Wintour (what an unlikely pair!), and hear some new words on atheism:

Hitchens dislikes the “New Atheist” title. “It isn’t really new,” he says, “except it coincides with huge advances made in the natural sciences. And there’s been an unusually violent challenge to pluralist values by the supporters of at least one monotheism apologised for quite often by the sympathisers of others. Then they say we’re fundamentalists. A stupid idea like that is hard to kill because any moron can learn it in 10 seconds and repeat it as if for the first time. But since there isn’t a single position that any of us holds on anything that depends upon an assertion that can’t be challenged, I guess that will die out or they’ll get bored of it.”

As for the notion that his brand of atheism is reductive or joyless, it’s religion, he contests, that is “cosmically hopeless, as is all the related masochism that goes with it – you’ve got to spend your entire life making up for the vermin you are. What is that if not degrading? We don’t do that to people. We say you may as well know you’re a primate, but take heart, primates are capable of great things.”

Nonetheless, Hitchens mentions a “narrow but quite deep difference” between himself and Dawkins. Unlike the evangelical biologist, he has no wish to convert everyone in the world to his point of view, even if it were possible. In other words, he savours the counterargument. Like John Stuart Mill, he is aware of the empty end of achieved objectives. The true satisfaction lies in the means. Although Hitchens is often seen as a provocateur or a contrarian, and both are indeed aspects of his character, at heart he’s incurably in love with the dialectic.

And this:

Along the way, he says, “I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness. Amazing.”

Sound like anyone we know?

Wasps: artists or robots?

November 15, 2010 • 5:13 am

by Matthew Cobb

[Continuing my lazy practice of re-posting material from elsewhere in the blogosphere and bringing it to the attention of WEIT readers, here’s one I posted last week over at Pestival (the insect arts festival – yes, honest!  Go look!)]

In case you weren’t listening to BBC Radio 4 at 06:15 am the other Sunday morning, I thought I would present to you the case of one of nature’s artists, the potter wasp. This small solitary wasp was the subject of the excellent Radio 4 programme The Living World. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can listen to it again here:

The female wasp makes a little clay pot about 1cm across, with a small hole in the end. She lays an egg in the pot, and then crams it full of living, semi-paralysed caterpillars which her offspring can eat. You can see quite how small the pot is in this photo from the BBC website, by Andrew Dawes. The “pot” is the tiny white thing underneath the middle finger!

[EDIT: The following (clearer) picture was taken by WEIT reader TrineBM (see comment 2 below)]:

According to Wikipedia (so it must be true, no?) the great entomologist Karl von Frisch, who was the first to study the honey bee’s waggle dance, claimed that the shape of the potter wasps’s pot inspired native American pottery designs. Quite how one could know that was true (or not) is hard to say – and what about other pots from round the world that look pretty much the same?

But is the wasp really an artist? Does it know what the pot should look like? John Walters, who’s been studying the potter wasps on this Devon heath for the last four years, says that he thinks each wasp has a different style – some pots are symmetrical, others have distinct twists. That doesn’t mean to say they know what they’re doing. Indeed, it seems certain they do not.

One of my favourite studies of animal behaviour was carried out on a potter wasp in 1978 by Andrew P. Smith, then of the University of Sydney. On the other hand, I seem to be one of very few people who rate this work – it has only been cited 13 times in the last 32 years. I feel your pain Dr Smith!

Andrew’s wasp – Paralastor – makes a rather more elaborate nest than the Devon potter wasp, a kind of odd umbrella shape, made up of a mud column and a bell-shaped entrance, leading to an underground chamber where the larva can munch its way through its living lunch, as seen here:

This picture shows the female wasp in action:

So how does she know what to build? Construction takes place in stages:

But does she have an image of what the final nest should look like? Or does she simply know that she’s carried out a series of behaviours and simply do them in sequence? The answer to both these questions is “No”.

Through a series of experiments involving changing the ground level, or altering the angle of the column, or making holes at various points, Smith was able to show that the wasp in fact proceeds by a series of steps, each of which is induced by a particular stimulus. If she sees a hole, she makes a column – even if this ends up with a bizarre double-umbrella nest:

The conclusion of the paper – apart from a lot of very tired and confused wasps – is this rather neat flow diagram, showing how the wasp decides what to do next:

So the wasp is not an artist, it’s more like a simple robot, carrying out a task when the appropriate conditions are provided. Less romantic, but still amazing!

Andrew P. Smith (1978) An investigation of the mechanisms underlying nest construction in the mud wasp Paralastor sp. (Hymenoptera: Eumenidae). Animal Behaviour 26:232-240.

Dawkins + kitteh = awesome

November 14, 2010 • 8:54 pm

Okay, this new Dawkins Foundation video presents an optimal combination: Richard (answering Reddit readers’ questions) and a kitteh.  (Keep your eye peeled at 11:49.)

But even if you’re cat-averse, there’s lots of good stuff here.  Dawkins discusses Sam Harris’s new book, singles out his “most scientifically unsubstantiated personal belief,” suggests how the internet may be the best way to spread atheism, and describes the three most important unanswered questions in biology (guess before you listen).

In the last four minutes, Dawkins, channeling Olivier, reads some of his hate mail, not omitting the scatological terms. It’s hilarious!

h/t: Peter

Almuerzo!

November 14, 2010 • 6:48 pm

A light lunch for four at Zipaquirá, home of Colombia’s famous “salt cathedral.”

The dish is picada, which, loosely translated, means “Gimme de meat.” I estimate that there are at least five pounds of steak, pork, and sausage here, as well as copious amounts of plantain, potato, yuca, and stuffed corncake.  The beverage is refajo, a mixture of beer and soda pop, which sounds dicey but is actually pretty good.

Although we were famished from our tour of the salt cathedral, we managed to polish off only half of this dish; the remainder went to our host’s familia.

Uncle Karl becomes Mooney

November 14, 2010 • 5:36 am

I thought that Uncle Karl—I restored his affectionate epiphet when he made a funneh about Eric Clapton—was finally done with his multi-part War on Coyne at BioLogos.  (Note to those captious accommodationists who accuse me of using “Uncle” as perjorative: I don’t, and Giberson calls himself that.)

It turns out, though, that Giberson’s just shifted the battlefield to HuffPo, where he’s published yet another (front page!) critique of moi with the jawbreaking title of “The precarious but profound middle ground in the struggle between religion and science.” And slowly but surely Giberson is morphing into Chris Mooney:  he cites him twice, even lauding Unscientific America for its “eloquent” demonstration that the faithful have no monopoly on scientific ignorance.

I don’t know what Giberson’s smoking over there at BioLogos, but the whole piece comes down to a long whine, viz., “Why can’t we all just get along with each other?” By “we”, he means accommodationist Christians like Giberson, atheists like me, and fundamentalist evolution-deniers like Baptist leader Albert Mohler.  When you read the piece (and I’m recommending it only if you either want LOLz or have the same obsession with Giberson as he apparently has with me), you’ll see that it’s completely clueless:

I have been wondering, especially in light of the recent, highly polarized mid-term elections, why “middle ground” of the sort that accommodationists are trying to stake out, is such a troubled bit of geography. From a purely logical point of view, Mohler could view me as “a welcome but theologically confused ally in the war on scientism.” After all, he and I both agree that Coyne and the New Atheists go too far when they insist that science rules out religion. But instead, Mohler assaults my argument as “really interesting — and really dangerous.” . .

On the other end of the spectrum, Coyne could view me as “a welcome partner in the cause of scientific literacy.” After all, I am making efforts to persuade people who reject evolution to change their minds and accept it. Both Coyne and I are trying to get more people to believe in evolution. But, from where Coyne sits, I seem to be on the wrong team and am engaged in a “crazy and futile attempt to accommodate a faith that embraces science with the faith of people like Mohler.”

Why is it that people on middle ground always seem to be on the “other” team, when this seems far from obvious? In the recent election, by analogy, why were moderate Republicans vilified for being too much like Democrats? Has everyone in the country decided that there is only “us” and “them,” so that “not us” equals “them”? Whether we agree with people in the middle or not, is there not value in acknowledging those who can make connections between disparate points of view? Are we locked in a zero sum game where victory on one side automatically prescribes defeat on the other?

After all these posts and cross-posts, Uncle Karl just doesn’t get it.  Yes, we can make some common cause with those closest to us on the lunacy-atheism spectrum.  I will be glad to join Giberson in attacking creationism.  In fact, in that respect we already are joined.  And Giberson can, if he wishes, join Mohler in touting Jebus.

But to many atheists, the middle ground is not a “reasonable” position. It enables superstition, thereby denigrating or watering down true science (example: the fine-tuning and humans-are-inevitable arguments, Francis Collins’s view that human morality couldn’t have evolved and therefore must have been given by God, and the NCSE’s refusal to admit that evolution is “unguided”). And accommodationism provides tacit approval and support for all the bad stuff that’s done in the name of faith.

After all this discourse, Giberson stlll can’t understand why people can love evolution but oppose accommodationism, or feel that the best way to get rid of creationism is not Giberson’s strategy of promoting evolution, but our strategy of marginalizing religion.

The conflict between science and religion is indeed a zero-sum game, at least to the extent that atheism is incompatible with any faith that tries to foist its beliefs on the rest of the world.  It’s zero-sum in precisely the same way that the conflict between segregationists and civil rights advocates was zero-sum.  There is no reasonable middle ground allowing a little bit of segregation. As P. Z. put it so eloquently, “squatting in between those on the side of reason and evidence and those worshipping superstition and myth is not a better place. It just means you’re halfway to crazy town.”

And so, Karl, you are indeed on the other team, because Team Atheism is more important than Team Evolution. If you’re reading this, let me inform you one more time: there are two battles—one against creationism and one against religion. The second is far more important because religion does far more damage than creationism. And when you win that second battle, creationism automatically disappears.

As a final request to Dr. Giberson, could you please explain your weird obsession with me?  I’ll answer your criticisms when I have the time and inclination, but must you do post after post on me?  Aren’t you supposed to be arguing more frequently with evolution-deniers than with evolutionists?  Like all real Americans, I enjoy the sting of battle, but it’s no fun fighting when the other side is armed with pop guns.