Headline Muse, 8/12

If pollutants are sending you reeling
In the waters with which you are dealing
And you’re looking to shed
Heavy metals, like lead,
You might find bananas appealing

Headline: Slippery Banana Peels Could Be A Savior For Polluted Water

Ok, so it’s not really a headline, it’s from NPR’s health blog, “Shots”. But it’s cool. Eliza Barclay reports on a study which used minced banana peel as a natural matrix for concentrating heavy metals (copper and lead) for extraction from river water. Metals were 20 times more concentrated in the pulp, and after extraction the pulp could be re-used, up to 11 times without reduced effectiveness.

Mighty Mouse!

Eekily, Squeakily
M. m. domesticus
Mates with its cousin,
Algerian mouse—

Gains a resistance to
Anticoagulants—
Most of the poisons you’d
Use in your house

If you introduce a selection pressure on a population, you’ll get evolution (unless you get extinction). Via the Beeb, a story on mouse evolution in response to our selection pressure, poison. In particular anticoagulant rodenticides, which cause death through massive internal bleeding (which is why you don’t want your pets getting into the mouse traps). A mouse with a resistance to such poisons would have a decided advantage, in an environment where such poisons are present.

In this case, house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) bred with Algerian mice (M spretus), and as you might expect from inter-species mating, most of their offspring were sterile. As a general rule, mating outside your species is not terribly adaptive. All other things equal, it is not a good reproductive strategy. Ah, but with a selection pressure like anticoagulant poisons in the environment, the few fertile hybrids were at a selective advantage over their purebred peers. Most of the hybrids, sterile, died without reproducing; the few fertile ones survived and reproduced; this is the very engine of natural selection (well, one path).

The fascinating part about this, to me, is the clear demonstration of the effect of specific environment. If not for the pressure of rodenticides, the hybridization strategy would be at a strong disadvantage, given that the majority of the offspring are sterile. But a particular environment can and does make a strategy useful where it otherwise would not be. This happens, of course, in other versions of selection as well, such as operant learning and cultural change.

A behavior that is, on the face of it, self-destructive–like self-injurious behavior–can be used in an institutional setting to avoid doing work, or to manipulate caregivers into giving attention (it is very difficult to ignore someone hitting or biting him/herself). This can be tremendously adaptive, in the right environment.

An evolutionary model reminds us that all situations are not created equal, and that a strategy that has been shown to work in one situation cannot be expected to work in all. Of course, in this model we only find out what works by seeing everything that doesn’t work… well, die. It’s not an efficient or humane strategy. And it sure as hell doesn’t look intelligently designed.

But in its way, isn’t it just beautiful?

Evidence And Faith

The evidence for God is in the universe around us,
In the oceans, in the mountains, in the skies;
You can see His holy fingerprints in galaxies and atoms;
You need only learn to open up your eyes.
The evidence for God is seen in everything in nature—
This has always been accepted by the wise;
But the evidence that shows there was no Adam, and no Eden,
Only tells us all that, now and then, God lies.

Via NPR, a story today, Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve, reminds us that evangelical christians (let alone all christians) are not a monolithic group. Not all evangelicals, for instance, believe the story of Adam and Eve.

[S]ome conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: “That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.”

Not exactly a radical position to take for those of us who don’t hold the bible as bedrock, but Venema’s position runs counter to central tenets of his church.

And Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century. Another one is John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently. He says it’s time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.

Now, it’s one thing to question some parts of the bible. But (as the NPR story makes clear) this particular part is the cornerstone of christianity itself. No original sin, no need for redemption, no reason for Jesus. This is a case where many christian sects make a very particular claim, one which if taken literally (which they do) is falsified by research in genetics.

I’ve known christians who believe that “god wrote two books–the bible and the universe”, and that we can reconcile the two by recognizing myth, story, and parable. But literalism does not have this wiggle room. One or the other “book” must be wrong.

It was easier to be a literalist before evolutionary genetics came along.

One Of My Quirks

The site is running a bit more smoothly, so I can trust the window to stay open long enough for me to type a bit. Anyway, since I am still in the process of introducing myself to a good many of you (and very much enjoying seeing the old names at the new digs!), I thought I’d confess something.

Sometimes, I cheat. I let other writers do the heavy lifting. One of my favorites is W. S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame). Once he’s taken care of metrical and rhyme schemes, the rest is easy. For instance, this one. You’ll note I am making a clever segue from XKCD themed verses to Gilbert-inspired verses…

There’s a marvel in the makeup of a mold
There is splendor in a cytoplasmic slime
And when scientists first noticed
This peculiar-looking protist
They agreed it was aesthetically sublime

Such a cheerful little fellow
In a brilliant shade of yellow
Yes I think it is aesthetically sublime!

There’s a multitude that live within a drop
They’re invisible until you use your lens
You can magnify the features
Of a myriad of creatures
Say hello to all your microscopic friends

If you grind it with precision
Then a lens can give you vision
So you notice all your microscopic friends!

If you agree
Sing derry down derry
It’s beautiful, very
And so much fun
Just look and see
Them verily vary
No magical fairy
To get things done

There is wonder in a parasitic wasp
In the horror she inflicts upon her foe
If a host should be infested,
From the inside she’s digested
In a process that’s as gruesome as it’s slow

What a wonder, but unnerving
I can think of none deserving
Such a process that’s as gruesome as it’s slow

There is beauty in a toxoplasmic spore
When it alters the behavior of a rat
With a tendency to pull it
Till it’s marching down the gullet
And residing in the stomach of a cat

Toxoplasma likes it best in-
Side a kitty-cat’s intestine
Which you get to through the stomach of a cat

If you agree
Sing derry down derry
It’s beautiful, very
And so much fun
Just look and see
Them verily vary
No magical fairy
To get things done

Inspired by The Mikado, of course, and by XKCD comic 877, “Beauty“.

Untested Belief

I’ve been fooled by illusions
And, in my confusion,
Seen things that are simply not there.
My memory distorted,
I’ve sometimes reported
False “facts”, as I now am aware

When the truth is revealed
Of how far I’m afield
I am shocked to discover my error
But the evidence shows
So that everyone knows
And I’ll reach a conclusion that’s fairer

If I’m liable to make
Such a blatant mistake
When there’s evidence there for pursuing
I could never deny
There’s a likelihood, I
Have some other beliefs worth reviewing

My point, to be brief—
Unexamined belief,
No matter how firmly invested
Could be right, could be wrong
But remains, all along
Nothing more, and no less, than untested.

So, yeah, I watched the Discovery show “Curiosity” last night, and the brief discussion following the show, and I wanted to throw a shoe through the television. Fortunately, cuttlefish don’t wear shoes, so the tv was spared. Sean M. Carroll did a great job (even though he says his great concluding remarks were left on the cutting room floor), and I applaud him. As always, though, I really wish there had been another scientist there, representing experimental psychology.

As is often the case, the god that the theologians believed in was “transcendent” and untestable. Carroll, quite correctly, kept trying to get at whether this god ever intervened–ever mucked around with the observable universe–but they did not fall for it (although one claimed that the universe simply would not exist without god). And without a claim of effect, physics has nothing about god to test.

But. I’d like to have seen someone there able to explore not the physics of the universe, but the psychology of belief (and no, not Shermer). The theologians (and some clips of physicists) obviously held their beliefs in god strongly; what do they know of how we come to believe? (I am using “belief” very broadly here, including evidence-based and faith-based beliefs)

We believe things, as physicists often do, because the data point to them. But humans are not perfect perceivers; we sometimes believe things that the evidence actually opposes, because we misperceive the evidence (N-rays are a fun example). If, when there is actual evidence to be had, we still sometimes get it wrong, why on earth should we be more accurate in the absence of evidence? The foundation for the theologians’ belief is the flimsiest house of cards imaginable, yet they pretend an authority and “invite Hawking to the table”. Sorry, no, that’s the kiddie table.

Two Books

My favorite thing about this one, on the old blog, was my readers’ responses.

There was a man who had a book
Of Things Which He Believed;
He followed it religiously—
He would not be deceived.

The story in its pages was
The Truth that he adored—
The world outside its ancient script,
He faithfully ignored.

When someone found a falsehood
Or a small mistake inside it
(Or even some tremendous flaw)
He eagerly denied it.

The Truth was there inside his book
And never found outside
If something contradicted it
Why then, that something lied

And when he met another man
Who had another book,
He fell not to temptation—why,
He didn’t even look.

And, surely, there are other men
With other books in hand
Who walk, with views obstructed,
Here and there across the land

****

There was a man who had a book
(I find this quite exciting)
Who looked upon a tangled bank
And then… he started writing.

He wrote about the things he saw
And what he saw them do
And when he found mistakes he’d made
He wrote about them, too

He shared his book with other men
And women that he met—
They found the catch is bigger, when
You cast a wider net.

They shared their observations
So that everyone could read;
They worked as a community,
The better to succeed.

They found they saw much further,
And discovered so much more
When they stood upon the shoulders
Of the ones who’d gone before

It’s a book that keeps evolving,
Always growing, as we learn.
Many people help to write it:
Would you like to take a turn?

Introspection

I have no eyes to look behind
And view my brain, much less my mind;
I cannot know your thoughts, and you
Are blind to what I’m thinking, too.
These are the facts; we can’t deny
We have no working “inner eye”
Nor any form of ESP;
Your thoughts cannot be seen by me.

The claim—that we can know ourselves—
Is countered by the miles of shelves
Of self-help books. Our knowledge hides
From where we’re told that it resides!
If we could simply take a look
Inside our minds, why need a book?
We’d never ask “How do I feel?
Could this be love? Could it be real?”

If God or Science offered me
Some cranial transparency
So you could see my every thought—
The change of mind; the urge I fought,
The censored comment never spoken,
Secret kept and promise broken—
What fabled treasures! Wondrous finds,
If we could read each other’s minds!

But we cannot. Make no mistake,
Our skulls and minds are both opaque
We do, instead, what we can do;
We read the things in public view
We see the song, the poem, the kiss;
Infer from these that love is this.
In turn, each element we find
We sum, and call the total “mind”.

If I could see inside my head,
(A place where angels fear to tread)
And see how thinking really works,
The jumble of selected quirks
And if (what wonders “if” can do!)
I saw inside your thinking too
I think that I should never see
What now makes up philosophy.

This post was originally a comment in an ongoing thread about memes. The fish, a macropinna microstoma, would be the perfect antithesis of the metaphorical cuttlefish. Cuttlefish obscure their thoughts in ink, but macropinna has a transparent cranium. Utterly open; I’ve known people like that. Except that, no. You’d think you can read her face like a book, but you’re really just reading that book by its cover, and you know what they say about that. We can’t see what a macropinna is thinking. But we can see what it is doing, which is all we need.

Botany Is Destiny

From the old blog–only had to change one sentence to apply it to today–thanks to PZ’s Botanical Wednesday.

Sigmund Freud (in)famously opined that “anatomy is destiny”, that (to oversimplify greatly) one’s personality and one’s potential were, to a large part, determined by what equipment one possessed between one’s legs. Penis envy (he has one, and I don’t!), castration anxiety (she doesn’t have one, maybe they’ll cut mine off, too!), and other Freudian concepts stem directly from whether you are an innie or an outie (so to speak).

The phrase has evolved a bit, and now is also seen as “biology is destiny”, with somewhat fewer genital-related shades of meaning, but the earlier meaning is sometimes (often? I have not done a thorough review, so cannot say) lurking just under the surface. Whether our reasons are Freudian or Darwinian, there seems to be enough interest in that one set of complementary organs to support several industries… and the continuation of life as we know it.

We have long known that the brain includes multiple areas involved in face-detection; I begin to wonder if the entire rest of the brain might not be involved in genital-detection. We see them everywhere.

Take plants. I have a cousin, an artist, who (decades ago) exhibited a number of paintings of plants, and of close-ups of parts of plants. It probably won’t surprise you to know that a split-open peach pit, in the proper perspective, will make the vast majority of a family gathering blush. It looks quite like the anatomical wall chart I once saw at an OB-GYN’s office. Robert Heinlein’s “Notebooks of Lazarus Long” includes a phrase that puzzled me when I first read it: “Have you noticed how much they look like orchids? Lovely!” And today, as often, PZ Myers’ “Wednesday Botanical” post celebrates the carnal aspect of vegetation (or perhaps that is all in my perception).

Oh, underused powers
Of beautiful flowers;
They tantalize, tempt, and entice,
Whether insect or human,
When flowers are bloomin’
There’s something that makes us look twice.

The curves I adore, kids,
I oft find in orchids
(Such flowers are dear to our hearts)
It’s not quite the same in
A pistil or stamen
But sometimes, it seems, parts is parts.

In just the right lighting
It’s rather exciting
When beautiful form follows function
In plant pollination
Or *our* fornication
When parts can perform in conjunction

That such an attraction
Creates a reaction
Is fact that a blind man could see
You might think me crazy–
I’m off to find Daisy
To ask if she’ll just let me bee.

On Flushing And Brushing

You’ve never really given it thought;
You just don’t do it, and really, you ought;
I blame your parents. You just weren’t taught
To close the lid when you flush.

But think—enclosed in a tiny room,
Each flush creates a fecal plume
Which bathes the place in shit perfume
While you might floss and brush.

To leave the toilet open wide
While stirring up what’s there inside
Creates a sort of toxic tide
And everything gets hit

So, please oh please, I think it best
To close the lid and keep it pressed
And never hear the words expressed
“My toothbrush tastes like shit.”

Yes, this was written for a particular person. No, I won’t really be able to show it to that particular person. SO… I need your help. Print it out and pin it up next to every toilet in the world. Just in case. And I’m not making the fecal plume phenomenon up.