I’m one week away from turning 60. In a way, it’s crept up on me. I still feel and think the same way as I always did (don’t I?), although clearly, the body isn’t as responsive as it once was. But I have to admit that this particular sparrow is increasingly aware that he’s getting ever closer to the open window leading to the darkness beyond the castle’s hall. Still, I was cheered by this particular photograph of an elderly couple. Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Category: Nature
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Winter Is Here
We seem at last to be having a Winter worthy of the name. The Dutch are even daring to hope that the Elfstedentocht might be held again this year. Meanwhile, it’s a photo opportunity out there.
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Wolves and Humans
Jean Kazez has an interesting post up at the Talking Philosophy blog, where she writes about two books covering the subject of what it is to be human. The more interesting of the two seems to be Mark Rowlands’ The Philosopher and the Wolf.Because of the fact that we share the house with our dog, Kai, my choice of books for Martin this Christmas had a bit of a theme going about dogs and their owners. So I had chosen books such as Walking With Zeke, Dog Years and Paws and Reflect. From Kazez’s post, it sounds as though I should be adding The Philosopher and the Wolf to that list. -
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
We’re just under a year away from the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and a couple of months away from the bicentenary of his birth. As part of the celebrations, New Scientist has brought together a collection of the top ten of its in-depth articles that deal with evolution.
I’ve had a small pocket version of “The Origin of Species” for a number of years now, but this Christmas, I decided to treat myself to an altogether weightier tome: “On the Origin of Species: The Illustrated Edition”. This contains the same text that Charles Darwin penned, but it is supplemented by extracts from his autobiography, notebooks and letters, as well as a plethora of illustrations. I’m very much looking forward to re-discovering his masterwork. As the editor, David Quammen, writes in his introduction: “On the Origin of Species is a book every literate person should read. Equally important: It’s a book every literate person can enjoy”.
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Shouldn’t Happen To A Dog…
No comment – other than the fact that it speaks volumes about the owner. -
Parasites on the Brain
A couple more heart-warming stories from this wonderful world of Nature that we find ourselves in. First, the Puppet Master’s Medicine Chest and then, complete with video, a story about a tapeworm in a woman’s brain. Verily, the evolutionary landscape is wondrous to behold. -
A Sense of Perspective
As an atheist, I could imagine myself as a deist, but by no stretch of the imagination could I possibly imagine myself as a theist; certainly not with any of the mainstream flavours currently on offer. In a comment to a posting on Pharyngula about the latest example of religious brain rot, Emmet Caufield makes the following comment:What non-literal Christianity asks you to believe is that Yahweh sat on his hands and did fuck all for ~13.3 billion years, piddling about on the margins of physics to ensure the development of a bald ape with a big brain on an insignificant rock, orbiting a piddly star in an unremarkable galaxy, then 197,000 years later suddenly revealed himself to a small group of semi-literate desert goatherds in an obscure part of the Middle East, behaved like a complete prick for about a thousand years, then decided that he would incarnate himself as one of the bald apes and have himself tortured and nailed to a tree in order to appease himself for his own displeasure at the, entirely fictitious, landmark event of two particular apes using their genitals for their entirely natural evolved purpose. You believe this shit? It’s beneath ridiculous, a transparently preposterous concoction of primitive codswallop that any person claiming to be rational should be ashamed to believe.Christian theology is intellectual masturbation, the product of perverse attempts by weak-minded fools to continuously reshape the silly myth of ancient desert aborigines into something palatable to the modern moral zeitgeist, rather than throwing the whole mess of contemptible nonsense down the nearest toilet, where it belongs.Allegorical my hole. It’s asinine. The whole damn lot of it.I can appreciate the exasperation. Mythology can be high art, and useful as allegory, in the same way as fables and fairytales. Believing that it’s literally true is basically refusing to use that brain that you’ve ended up with through the process of evolution. -
Swearing in Sign Language
If you remove one means of expression, the human brain will find another. Funnily enough, I find this uplifting. -
Body Swapping
Neurophilosophy has a terrific post on the research work being done on the sense that one’s body belongs to one’s self. It seems surprisingly easy to trick your senses into believing otherwise. -
Death Comes to the Birdfeeder
Being Winter, I’ve hung up a birdfeeder outside my study window. It gets lots of visitors, generally members of the Tit families. Yesterday I was working away when suddenly I caught a flash of something whizzing past the windows, and the thump of at least one bird hitting the glass. A Sparrowhawk (an adult female, I think) had spotted the possibility of lunch and successfully captured a Great Tit. She took it a few yards away to under a Pine tree where she devoured it at her leisure.
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The Spectacular Sea-Slug
Carl Zimmer, over at The Loom, has a couple of fascinating posts on the Emerald Green Sea Slug, which turns out to be something from science fiction – practically a plant/animal hybrid. Wonderful. -
Dumbing Down Nature
I’ve always found Natural History a fascinating subject. And I used to look forward to natural history programmes on the Beeb. The zenith of such programmes was of course anything that had the magic name of David Attenborough associated with it.
Alas, the BBC seems now to be determined to plunge to the nadir with programmes such as Ocean, which started last night amid much trumpeting. Sample: “[the series] seeks to provide a better understanding of the state of our oceans today, their role in the past, present and future and their significance in global terms”.
Dear lord, but it was dire. The science was dumbed down practically to oblivion, being shouldered out of the way by lots of material designed to show that the cast and crew were having an awfully big adventure. Science for the “me, me, me!” generation… I note that on that web page showcasing the cast is a quote from explorer Paul Rose: “We are here to understand the Earth’s oceans and put them on a human scale”. Perhaps it’s just me, but that quote seems to make no sense whatsoever. Still, I see that I wasn’t the only person who gets irritated by this dumbing down of science, this review by Sam Wollaston pretty much sums up the programme as the pile of tosh it was.
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The Big Necessity
Another book for the reading list: "The Big Necessity" by Rose George. Johann Hari explains why its author should feel flushed with success. Hopefully her consciousness-raising is not just a flash in the pan… -
Stampede
We had a bit of excitement this morning. First of all, we were woken up at 7 am by a maize harvester working the field that is ten yards away from the bedroom window. Then, while I was letting the dog out for his morning constitutional at 8, I became aware of a lot of shouting going on at the front of the house. The dog ran there barking, and I followed as quickly as I could. I was met by the sight of our neighbour’s cows galloping back and forth in the garden and José, his partner, trying to round them up without too much success. She was trying to put them in the field next to us, but they had got away from her at the road crossing, and decided to make a dash for freedom.She yelled at me to ring Herman, the farmer, to come and help, so I went inside and rang him, while watching the herd thunder past on the front lawn in the direction of the maize field. He arrived after a couple of minutes, and between us, and with the help of the men harvesting the maize, we managed to get the herd under control and into the field where it should have been.There’s a couple of fence posts damaged, and some of the borders look a bit the worse for wear, but it could have been a lot worse. The lawns are in a bit of a state, but they’ll recover. The stampede has hopefully scared away the moles with a bit of luck. Never a dull moment… -
The Beauty of Nature
Carl Zimmer, over at The Loom, draws our attention to the world’s first Fungus Opera… -
Alien Landscapes
The Dark Roasted Blend blog has come up trumps with its suggestion for the most alien-looking place on earth: Socotra Island. Fully one third of its flora is found nowhere else on earth. Go and look at the photos – they are spectacular.(hat tip to Science Punk) -
Frozen Air
I was perusing the internet today, as is my wont, when suddenly, I heard an almighty thump. I was sure that it was the sound of a bird flying into a window, but after having examined the windows in the front of the house, and at the side, I concluded that it might have been something else.However, when Martin returned, he asked me to get rid of the dead pigeon at the back of the house. Mystery solved. It had flown into the french windows at the back of the farmhouse. I’m sorry that it could not distinguish between air and glass. Let this be its memorial.
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Sinking Beneath The Waves
Yesterday, I mentioned the Delta Commission had reported their findings and recommendations on what the Netherlands should do in response to rising sea levels. Of course, the Netherlands is not the only country at risk, there are those in immediate danger, as well as those where the potential calamity is greater that we in the Netherlands could experience. An example of the latter is Bangladesh, where over the next 50 years, 17% of the landmass will disappear under water, leading to a displacement of 30 million people. Here’s a sobering article, by Tahmima Anam, in today’s Guardian about the situation there. -
The Guinea Worm
You can add the guinea worm to the list of species that, as far as I am concerned, tip the scales of evidence in favour of the proposition that God is either a) a sadist, b) indifferent or c) non-existent. -
If I Give Her The Wool…
…would she make me one too? That’s the punchline to a hoary old joke that begins: "my mother made me a homosexual…".I couldn’t help but remember it when I read Johann Hari’s piece: "What makes some of us gay?" Actually, Johann’s piece is an excellent summary of where we are in the nature vs. nuture debate. Definitely worth reading.
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