Blog
This is a page where I pretend I have exciting and important things
to say to the world.
30 Jan 2010
I've always been bothered by the traditional definitions of seasons, because
seasonality is essentially a meteorological phenomenon and these definitions are based on
astronomical rather than meteorological events. Clearly the amount of sunlight we
receive plays the main role in determining meteorological seasons and hence the astronomical
phenomona are important. However, the link between, for instance, the winter solstice and
thermal minimum is somewhat complicated. If insolation directly and instantaneously
determined terrestrial temperatures, the solstice and thermal minimum should coincide. If we
assume a naïve astronomical determinism, winter solstice should be the middle of winter,
not its beginning. However, thermal inertia places the
temperature minimum after the winter solstice, sometimes long after. Consequently, an
astronomically coherent view of seasons does not make sense meteorologically. Placing
the beginning of winter at the solstice to account for this lag both removes the
astronomical credibility of seasonal definition and entails an assumption that the thermal
minimum lags about 45
days behind the winter solstice. This may happen in very cold climates (e.g., the North
Slope of Alaska & high
elevations in the Sierra Nevada), but more typically the termal minimum lags 10-30 days after
the solstice. The dominant view of seasons as beginning at the solstices and equinoxes does
not make sense either astronomically or meteorologically. Like most compromises, it fails on
both counts. So, in my opinion, either we should define seasons astronomically, or
meteorologically. Since I view seasons as a fundamentally meteorological phenomenon, I will
opt for the latter. Perusing weather data for El Paso on wunderground.com, I have defined
the seasons for southern New Mexico and west Texas as follows: the coldest 91 days are
winter; the warmest 91 days are summer; the days falling after winter & before summer are
spring; the days falling after summer and before winter are fall. This gives the following
dates:
Spring begins on February 19th.
Summer begins on June 1st.
Fall begins on August 31st.
Winter begins on November 20th.
For comparison, here are graphs showing the various options with temperatures at El
Paso (modified from wunderground.com).
First, astronomically defined seasons; i.e., solstices & equinoxes are centered in each
season:
Second, traditionally defined seasons with the solstices and equinoxes beginning seasons:
Third, my meteorologically defined seasons:
Note that the astronomical seasons are too early (because they do not incorporate lag) and the
traditional seasons are too late (because they incorporate too much lag). June 1st and
August 30th both have average mean temperatures of 79 degrees Fahrenheit. November 20th and
February 18th both have mean temperatures of 51 degrees Fahrenheit. Dates would probably
move slightly based on a more precise analysis, but these should be pretty close. Lag for
thermal minima and maxima is about 10-15 days, although the thermal maximum is not centered
within summer due to the influence of the average onset of monsoonal rains around the
beginning of July, which depresses daily maximum temperatures while apparently having no
strong effect on daily minima. Spring ends up being longer than fall (102 vs. 81 days), but
this reflects the meteorological reality that warming in the area is more gradual in spring
than is cooling in fall.
Doing the same thing for Indiana (using weather data from the Indianapolis airport), we
get:
Spring begins on March 3rd.
Summer begins on June 5th.
Fall begins on September 5th.
Winter begins on December 5th.
And more graphs; astronomically defined seasons:
Traditionally defined seasons:
Meteorologically defined seasons:
Indiana lacks the significant asymmetry of southern New Mexico & western Texas, presumably
because there is no monsoon season. Maxima & minima lag about 28-30 days behind the
solstices.
Comparing the two also brings to light another detail worth mentioning: placing the beginnings
and endings of seasons at uniform dates across even the climates of the United States is a
normative cultural concept that does not accurately meteorological reality. Indiana and
southern New Mexico are by no means the most divergent climates one could choose in this
respect; I chose them simply because these are the two places I have lived.
28 Oct 2009
Watching "Botany of Desire" on PBS. I've generally been a bit ambivalent about Michael
Pollan (discussed somewhere down below as well), but about 36 minutes in he veers into "just
plain wrong" territory. "Before that [before the evolution of angiosperms] you had this geener,
sleepier world where things reproduce
usually by cloning, by spores that were genetically identical to their parents". Regarding
cloning--yes, there were a fair number of clonal plants before angiosperms evolved, but there
are also plenty of clonal angiosperms. Regarding spores--He is right that sexual
recombination isn't involved in producing spores but: 1) this does not mean the spores
are genetically identical to the parent; they aren't; 2) angiosperm reproduction
involves the production of spores as well; this is not a difference between angiosperms &
non-angiosperms. Brief recap of plant life cycles: the dominant portion of the vascular
plant life cycle is the sporophyte (on the other hand, gametophytes are dominant in non-vascular
plants; mosses, liverworts, hornworts), which is diploid (has two sets of chromosomes, just
like all stages of the human life cycle except sperm & eggs). The diploid sporophyte
produces spores by
meiosis. Meiosis halves the chromosome number, so the spores are haploid. Whereas the
sporophyte has two copies of each gene (excluding the rare cases in which plants have sex
chromosomes), each spore has one copy of each gene. It's the same as the relationship
between, for instance, a human male and one of his sperm cells (except, for the sake of
nit-picking, that humans have sex chromosomes and most plants don't), and is not genetic
identity. However, whereas human sperm & egg cells do nothing more than unite to form a
zygote, plant spores undergo cell divisions to produce gametophytes. Gametophytes are a
multicellular haploid stage in a vascular plant's life cycle, and they produce gametes
(sperm and eggs) through mitosis. Gametophytes exist in all plants, but are quite small and
dependent on the sporophytes in angiosperms. Pollen grains are male gametophytes. Inside
each ovule lives a female gametophyte. When the sperm and eggs produced by gametophytes join
in fertilization, we are back at the diploid sporophyte level. Very short version: diploid
sporophyte produces spores; spores grow into haploid gametophyes; gametophytes produce sperm
& eggs; fertilization takes us back to a diploid sporophyte. Although (with minor
exceptions; e.g., the genus Vittaria) all plants produce spores, in no plants is the
production of spores itself sexual, but the production of spores is part of the sexual
process. Lest you think Pollan just misplaced a word or two, he continues: "And then
you have this incredible explosion of diversity that happens with this new strategy. It was
an incredibly successful strategy. It allowed you [by which he means angiosperms] to move your
genes around, it allowed you to evolve much quicker because sex creates variation." Nope, he
didn't just misplace a word or two, he's really saying that the key innovation of angiosperms
relative to earlier plants was sex.
10 Oct 2009
Another list of plants presently in flower in the Organ Mountains, this time from lower Bar
Canyon:
Amaranthaceae:
Amaranthus palmeri, Froelichia gracilis, Guilleminia densa
Asteraceae:
Artemisia ludoviciana, Baccharis
sarothroides, Bahia
absinthifolia, Bidens pilosa, Brickellia
californica, Brickellia laciniata, Ericameria laricifolia, Gutierrezia microcephala, Gymnosperma glutinosum, Heterosperma pinnatum, Melampodium leucanthum, Parthenium confertum, Parthenium incanum, Pseudognaphalium canescens, Stephanomeria
sp., Viguiera
dentata, Thymophylla pentachaeta, Xanthisma
spinulosum, Zinnia grandiflora
Berberidaceae:
Berberis trifoliata
Boraginaceae:
Phacelia congesta
Brassicaceae:
Schoenocrambe linearifolia, Lepidium montanum
Capparaceae:
Polanisia dodecandra
Commelinaceae:
Commelina erecta
Convolvulaceae:
Ipomoea pubescens
Euphorbiaceae:
Acalypha neomexicana, Chamaesyce fendleri, Chamaesyce serpyllifolia, Croton fruticulosus, Croton pottsii, Euphorbia davidii, Phyllanthus polygonoides
Fabaceae:
Chamaecrista nictitans, Dalea brachyphylla, Dalea
formosa, Dalea wrightii, Desmodium sp., Hoffmannseggia glauca, Lotus plebeius, Macroptilium gibbosifolium, Phaseolus angustissimus
Lamiaceae:
Stachys coccinea
Loasaceae:
Mentzelia multiflora
Malvaceae:
Sida abutifolia, Sphaeralcea incana
Nyctaginaceae:
Allionia incarnata, Boerhavia coccinea, Mirabilis linearis, Mirabilis oxybaphoides
Plantaginaceae:
Maurandya antirrhiniflora
Poaceae:
Aristida ternipes, Bothriochloa cf. barbinodis, Bouteloua
curtipendula, Bouteloua eriopoda, Bouteloua gracilis, Bouteloua hirsuta, Digitaria
californica, Eragrostis sp., Leptochloa
dubia, Lycurus
setosus, Panicum bulbosum, Panicum hallii, Setaria leucopila
Polemoniaceae:
Ipomopsis multiflora
Polygalaceae:
Polygala barbeyana
Polygonaceae:
Eriogonum wrightii
Ranunculaceae:
Thalictrum fendleri
Rosaceae:
Fallugia paradoxa
Solanaceae:
Chamaesaracha sordida, Datura wrightii, Nicotiana trigonophylla, Physalis hederifolia, Solanum cf. douglasii, Solanum elaeagnifolium
Verbenaceae:
Aloysia wrightii, Glandularia bipinnatifida
Zygophyllaceae:
Kallstroemia parviflora
5 Oct 2009
Yeah, I know, I never write anything here. Well, here's a list of plants seen in flower on
the trail to Dripping Springs, west side of the Organ Mountains:
Amaranthaceae
Amaranthus palmeri, Guilleminea densa, Salsola tragus
Asteraceae
Artemisia dracunculus, Artemisia ludoviciana, Bidens leptocephala, Bidens pilosa, Brickellia
californica, Brickellia eupatorioides, Brickellia laciniata, Cirsium undulatum, Ericameria
laricifolia, Gutierrezia microcephala, Gymnosperma glutinosum, Heliomeris longifolia,
Hymenothrix wislizenii, Parthenium incanum, Sanvitalia abertii, Stephanomeria sp., Verbesina
encelioides, Viguiera dentata, Xanthisma spinulosum
Brassicaceae
Lepidium montanum, Schoenocrambe linearifolia
Capparaceae
Polanisia dodecandra
Euphorbiaceae
Acalypha neomexicana, Chamaesyce fendleri
Fabaceae
Chamaecrista nictitans, Cologania broussonettii, Macroptilium gibbosifolium, Rhynchosia
senna
Lamiaceae
Hedeoma oblongifolia, Marrubium vulgare, Salvia ramosissima, Stachys coccinea
Loasaceae
Mentzelia multiflora
Malvaceae
Sida abutifolia, Sphaeralcea incana
Nyctaginaceae
Boerhavia coccinea, Cyphomeris gypsophiloides, Mirabilis linearis, Mirabilis oxybaphoides
Onagraceae
Gaura mollis
Plantaginaceae
Maurandya antirrhiniflora
Poaceae
Aristida ternipes, Bothriochloa cf. barbinodis, Bouteloua curtipendula, Bouteloua gracilis,
Chloris virgata, Digitaria californica, Echinochloa sp., Enneapogon desvauxii, Eragrostis
cilianensis, Leptochloa dubia, Panicum bulbosum, Panicum coloratum, Setaria grisebachii,
Setaria leucopila
Polygonaceae
Eriogonum abertianum, Eriogonum wrightii
Rosaceae
Fallugia paradoxa
Solanaceae
Chamaesaracha sordida, Datura wrightii, Physalis hederifolia, Physalis neomexicana, Solanum
elaeagnifolium
Verbenaceae
Aloysia wrightii, Glandularia bipinnatifida
29 Apr 2009
Is parsimony better than maximum likelihood & Bayesian analysis with homoplastic
datasets?
Continuing my minor obsession with Pituophis & Pantherophis, discussed
somewhere below... a brief recap: Burbrink & Lawson (2007, Molecular Phylogenetics &
Evolution 43: 173-189), using almost exclusively mitochondrial data, published two
phylogenies, one based on maximum likelihood & one based on Bayesian inference. Both
phylogenies had low bootstrap/posterior probability support, and differed in various
respects. Of current interest, the maximum likelihood analysis showed Pantherophis to
be paraphyletic, with most of the rest of the tribe Lampropeltini derived from within the
genus, while the Bayesian analysis also showed Pantherophis to be paraphyletic, but
with only Pituophis derived from within it. Parsimony analysis--my analysis, as
Burbrink & Lawson did not use parsimony--of the same data showed Pantherophis and
Pituophis to be reciprocally monophyletic, but again with low support. Burbrink &
Lawson preferred the Bayesian topology and concluded that Pantherophis and
Pituophis were congeneric, with the name Pituophis having priority. I thought
this was unwarranted, given the disagreement between analyses and low support in all
analyses. Further, inspection of the data suggested high levels of homoplasy, given that the
mitochondrial loci involved: 1) were highly variable; 2) were coding loci with a correspondingly
low available character space; 3) produced trees with very low consistency indices in
parsimony analysis.
On to the current development. A new paper by Pyron & Burbrink (2009, Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution, in press) present maximum likelihood &
Bayesian analyses of an expanded dataset--most significantly adding three non-coding nuclear
loci--that shows both generally high support and agreement between analyses. Both
maximum likelihood & Bayesian analyses show Pantherophis and Pituophis to be
monophyletic. I find this comforting for two reasons: 1) it confirms my earlier belief
that taxonomic change was unwarranted; 2) it undermines the traditional argument against
parsimony analysis. Expanding on "2)", parsimony analyses are believed to be susceptible to
incorrect conclusions when data with high homoplasy are analysed, typified by "long branch
attraction", in which taxa that are particularly divergent from the other taxa included in the
analysis, but not closely related to each other, may be incorrectly grouped together due to
chance sharing of identical character
states among a large set of character state changes. Because maximum likelihood & Bayesian
analyses include models of sequence evolution intended to estimate the likelihood of and
account for random sharing of identical characters, they are believed to be less
susceptible, or even immune, to this problem, and thus to provide better inferences when
homoplasy is a confounding factor. In this particular case, the opposite is true.
Parsimony gives the correct topology (i.e., the topology strongly supported when additional,
presumably less homoplasious, data are included) when the smaller, more homoplasious dataset
is used, but maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference do not. So, in at least one case,
parsimony out-performs the alternatives when poor, highly homoplasious data are used. How
often is this true? I do not know, and have not encountered papers in which this is
adequately addressed with empirical data (the papers suggesting better performance from ML &
BI--at least those I have read!--are based on simulated or hypothetical data). I also do not
know if parsimony analysis of the "new" data would still produce reciprocally monophyletic
clades for Pantherophis and Pituophis; I assume so, but have not (yet?)
done the analysis.
Remaining quibbles. For the moment I will limit myself to the following: the Pyron &
Burbrink paper includes no listing of specimens or GenBank sequences used. This is
presumably in the online supplementary information (I haven't checked yet; don't
worry, I will), but, in my opinion, this and similar works should under no
circumstances be published without making this information available to the reader within the
paper itself. Supplementary online resources are not an appropriate place for
information on what data were used and where they came from, because the long-term
availability of such online information is highly suspect (some online supplementary
information is already missing from the websites of other well-known, respectable journals).
This should only be a home for information that is helpful but not necessary to
interpretation of the work; information that would not normally be included in a paper rather
than information that would normally be considered mandatory. Further, even when included in
the paper, this information should be checked by editors and reviewers. The 2007 Burbrink &
Lawson MPE paper included a dozen or so errors in citation of GenBank accessions. This kind
of sloppiness in reporting, or expulsion to supplementary online resources, of basic sampling
information seriously undermines the long-term usability and reliability of any research.
11 Mar 2009
A good quote from the New York Times: "Because the math is really complicated people assume
it must be right." - Nigel Goldenfeld. See the source article here. I enjoy
the ambiguity. We can interpret this statement as either disappointment with mathematical
ignorance, or as a condemnation of complexity as a form of deceit.
10 Feb 2009
With Darwin's 200th birthday coming up, the controversy between evolution and intelligent
design has again received a prominent public focus. So, a few words on this topic. I think
the most important thing to keep in mind here is this: this controversy has been
debated in the context of public primary education. Knowing that context of this controversy
alone tells us much of what we need to know. This is an important issue not in science, but
in public policy; not a scientific debate, but a question of what we tell students in
high schools. That does not, of course, mean it is not an important issue. Education's
importance is, indeed, consistently underestimated in our public discourse. By putting
this issue in context I am saying not that it is unimportant, but that it is not a
scientific question, not a question debated in scientific venues nor one
appropriate for such venues. Were there a strong scientific case to be made in favor of
creationism, it would have been made within academia. The arguments in favor of intelligent
design are not made in scientific journals
because its advocates are not attempting to establish biological theory, they are
attempting to control public knowledge from the bottom up, bypassing both academic discourse
and often educators themselves, instead seeking to convince school board members and others who
are removed from both research in biology and from the transmission of the knowledge that
research provides us. The relation of public policy advocacy to
biology is like that of a
Ford commercial to the nuts & bolts of automotive design. Public relations and media experts are
hired to produce commercials that will influence consumers, because this is their area of
expertise. Engineers are hired to design the vehicles because, likewise, that is the
activity in which they excel. Public advocacy of biology by working biologists can end up
looking like Ford commercials that were produced by engineers. Intelligent design advocacy,
on the other hand, is like what might happen if Ford
entrusted media firms with the design, construction, and promotion of their vehicles.
The commercials might still be good, but I sure wouldn't try to drive one! Bottom line: if
you want biology, ask biologists.
10 Nov 2008
Obama's dog? I have difficulty imagining the level of tedium that would lead me to believe
this is interesting. I know the election's over, but there are still important things
happening in the world.
5 Nov 2008
Allow me to editorialize on politics briefly. First the obvious; Obama's victory is the
best thing I have seen happen in American politics during my memory. Next, the obscure. I'll
go out on a limb and say that, regardless of what eventually happens with the allocation of
electoral votes, this:
is the final outcome of the vote. We don't know who won in Missouri or North Carolina.
Barring
dramatic changes resulting from provisional ballots or the like, we won't know who won
Missouri or North Carolina. Even if everyone involved does their best to conduct elections
fairly and honestly, any polling effort of this magnitude has a margin of error. How big is
that margin of error? We don't know, but the winner-take-all structure of most state electoral
colleges assumes that it is zero. When a candidate wins by an amount within the
margin of error, we cannot implement a winner-take-all criterion because we
don't know who the winner is. Instead we are left with a "someone-take-all" approach; we
don't know who won, but we simply give the electoral votes to one candidate or the other
anyways.
This has no effect on the
results of the current election. That is why now
is an appropriate time for politicians to finally solve the problem. At the time of the 2000
presidential election, when we faced precisely the same problem, it
was too late to fix it and the issue was too politically charged for productive dialogue.
Now, we don't face either of those limitations. If we don't fix the problem we will
face it again sooner or later. The solution requiring the least change to the
present electoral college system would apparently be to get
all of the state electoral colleges to: 1) find and use an appropriate method for estimating the
margin of error; 2) split the state's electoral votes evenly between the candidates when no
winner can be chosen.
Further, the irony here is palpable. The original purpose of the electoral college
system was primarily to buffer the presidential election from the whims of the voters.
Regardless of the opinion you may have on the pursuit of that particular goal, the result has
clearly been the opposite. The electoral college system shows far greater fluctuation based on
small, local changes in voter preference than does a simple national majority vote. A 6%
lead in the popular vote translates into a lead of 36% in electoral votes. Changes of less
than 1% in the popular vote can translate into wild fluctuations in the electoral votes; in
this case, push Indiana and Florida just a little bit and the lead in electoral vote drops to
22%. Indeed, this is precisely why ties pose such a problem for the electoral college
system...
2 Nov 2008
In seeking Thysanocarpus descriptions I also come across the following from Greene, 1900
("Studies in the Cruciferae.--III", Pittonia 4: 187-207):
"I have made repeated careul and laborious efforts to ascertain to what extent genuine Arabis
Holboellii, a Greenland plant as to the original, is indigenous to British America and the United
States. And while the results attained can not be considered final, I think it well to put them upon
record.
And for one thing, I am convinced that A. Holboellii does not occur, so far as known, upon United
States territory; nor have I yet met with satisfactory evidence of its occurrence on this continent;
though it is to be expected from very far northward, along the shores of the Arctic seas. Our Rocky
Mountain and other far western and northwestern plants that have been so referred must, it seems to me,
be treated as fair subspecies at the least. A number of such segregates have already been proposed, and
I shall here present the characters of several more.
But first of all, I shall attempt, what seems never yet to have been given, a real diagnosis of the
original of this group, which has hitherto been recognizable only by means of the plate in the Flora
Danica.
A. Holboellii, Hornem. Stem stoutish, simple, 6 inches high or more, very leafy below; leaves
about 3/4 inch long including the short distinct petiole, the blade lanceolate, acutish, entire, the
whole canescent with a minute stellate pubescence; cauline leaves few, oblong, sessile and auriculate-
or subsagittate-clasping, either wholly glabrous, or the auricles with a few marginal forked hairs;
stems and also pedicels of the flowers glabrous: flowers rather more than 1/4 inch long (much larger
than in the U.S. segregates); sepals with a few scattered stellate hairs and a conspicuous white
scarious margin; petals twice the length of the sepals and with broad round-obovate somewhat spreading
limb, apparently white, acquiring a blush of rose in drying: anthers sagittate: ovaries and young pods
glabrous: pods somewhat deflexed.
This description is drawn up from Greenland material in the herbarium of Mr. Theo. Holm collected by
himself; and I have seen no even high-northern continental specimens that match them. The nearest
approach to them is made by Canadian specimens which, as I suppose, fairly represent the following:"
Despite his many detractors, Greene was right again... although in contrast, note his eight names in
Thysanocarpus, of which at most two seem to merit recognition.
1 Nov 2008
Another entry for my own reference so much as anything else, descriptions of the various
species, subspecies, and varieties named in the mustard genus Thysanocarpus, in
alphabetical order. Only basionyms of taxa presently included in Thysanocarpus (i.e.,
no Athysanus) are listed.
First, the description of the genus by Hooker, 1829, Flora Boreali-Americana 1: 69.
29. THYSANOCARPUS. Nov. Gen.
Silicula obovata, plano-convexa, undique latissime marginato-alata, apice emarginata,
unilocularis, evalvis, monosperma. Semen late obovatum, pendulum. Radicula
inserticae dorsalis, obliqua et ad margines cotyledonum applicata.--Flores parvi, albi,
racemosi. Siliculae pendulae.--Genus Tauscheriae affinis. An vere
distinctum?
Thysanocarpus affinis Greene, 1901, Pittonia 4: 311-312.
Thysanocarpus affinis. Very erect, 1 to 1 1/2 feet high, simple below, parted above
the middle into several suberect racemose branches; herbage glabrous, glaucous: lowest leaves
not seen, the larger cauline 3 inches long, of narrow-lanceolate outline, with several pairs
of very prominent subulate or often falcate-incurved teeth, the base slightly auricled,
those of the flowering branches lance-linear, very saliently denticulate: petals very small,
not exceeding the sepals, but stamens well exserted: silicles of strongly pyriform outline,
small, unevenly crenate, never perforate, the scarious margin very narrow or obsolete, the
whole body of silicle hirtellous.
Santa Catalina Island, California, March, 1901, Blanche Trask. The species has the foliage of
T. ramosus of the same island and of others of the group, but in mode of growth this
plant is at the opposite extreme, while the characters of the pods are very distinctive.
Thysanocarpus amplectens Greene, 1896, Pittonia 3: 87.
Thysanocarpus amplectens. Stem stoutish, simple and leafy below, with a few racemose
branches at the middle, 12 to 20 inches high, glabrous throughout and very glaucous: lowest
leaves unknown; cauline linear-lanceolate, remotely and retrorsely dentate, with very
conspicuous sagittate lobes at base which clasp the stem: white petals shorter than the
purple (white-margined) sepals; stamens scarcely exserted: pod nearly orbicular, glabrous,
the body reticulate-venulose, the wing of 14 to 16 short rays and a regularly crenate hyaline
margin, but no perforations.
Type collected by the writer in southwestern New Mexico, 16 April, 1880; referred by Asa Gray
at the time to T. elegans, from which species its perfectly glabrous and strongly
glaucous herbage effectually excludes it. It is really of the group to which T.
laciniatus belongs, though its very conspicuously sagittate-clasping and merely dentate
leaves, as well as its mode of growth, prevent its being confused with that species. I do not
know how much of the Thysanocarpus materials from Arizona now extant in herbaria may
be referable to this very distinct extra-Californian member of the genus.
Thysanocarpus conchuliferus Greene, 1886, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 13:
218.
Thysanocarpus conchuliferus.--Glabrous, 3--7 inches high, with many divergent
branches; leaves linear, the lower cleft into narrow segments, the cauline auricled at base;
racemes short and rather close; pods a line or more in length, cymbiform, the conduplicate
margin sinuately parted into spatulate divisions, or the latter coherent above, leaving
narrowly oblong perforations; style equalling the margin of the pod and commonly coherent
with it; pedicels nearly divaricate or quite straight, twice as long as the pods; flowers not
seen.
Common on mossy shelves and crevices of the high rocky summits and northward slopes of Santa
Cruz Island. A most interesting new species, very remarkable in the character of its fruit;
showing how nearly our American Thysanocarpus can approach the Asiatic genus
Tauscheria and yet remain a perfectly valid genus, the very dissimilar
Athysanus being excluded.
Thysanocarpus conchuliferus Greene var. planiusculus B.L.Rob., 1896, Synoptic
Flora of North America 1(1): 113.
Var. planiusculus, Robinson, n. var. Fruit plano-convex or slightly concavo-convex,
not perceptibly reticulated but hirsute upon both sides: pedicels 4 to 6 lines long.--Island
of Santa Cruz with type, T. S. Brandegee, April, 1888.
Thysanocarpus crenatus Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray, 1840, A Flora of North America 1: 118.
4. T. crenatus (Nutt.! mss.): "petals about as long as the calyx; silicles
orbicular-obovate, crenate, glabrous, slightly emarginate, membranaceously winged; the wing
perforated; style not exserted; leaves linear-lanceolate, runcinately and remotely
denticulate.
"St. Barbara, California, March--April.--Stem 12-14 inches high, branching above. Leaves an
inch long; the lower ones somewhat hirsute. Silicles about half as large as in T. curvipes;
the wing more or less perforated." Nutt.
Thysanocarpus curvipes Hook., 1829, Flora Boreali-Americana 1: 69-70.
1. T. curvipes. (Tab. XVIII. A.)
Radix parva, annua, subfusiformis. Caulis solitarius, plerumque ramosus,
erectus, 6-8-pollicaris ad pedalem, parce foliosus, inferne subpilosus. Folia plerumque
radicalia, patentia, duas uncias longa, pinnatifida, hirsuto-scabra, laciniis brevibus,
obtusis, basi attenuata. Caulinea remota, linear-oblonga, basi latiora, subsagittata,
superiora sensim minora. Flores racemosi, parvi, ramos terminantes. Pedicelli
floribus paululum longiores, graciles, glaberrimi, patentes, demum, fructiferi, insiguiter
deflexi et elongati. Calyx: sepala aequalia, ovalia, convexa, glabra, erecto-patula.
Petala minuta, lineari-oblonga, basi attenuata, integra, alba, sepalis breviora.
Stamina 6, tetradynama: Filamenta filiformia, edentula: Antherae
subglobosae. Germen brevissime stipitatum, obovatum, plano-compressum, lato-marginatum,
alatum, apice emarginatum, stylo subaeque longo, demum, et videtur, deciduo teminatum.
Stigma obtusum, parvum. Silicula dependeus, forma et structura fere omuino
germinis, sed estylosa, convexo-plana, utrinque subreticulata, vix uninervis, unlocularis,
evalvix. Embryo flabus. Cotyledones suborbiculatae, plano-convexae:
Radicula subaeque longa, insertione evidentissime dorsalis, sed obliqua et versus
margines cotyledonum incumbens.
Hab. On moist ground, near the Great Falls of the Columbia. Fl. April, May.
Douglas--I long hesitated whether or not I should unite this interesting plant with the
genus Tauscheria of Dr. Fischer, with which it sufficiently accords in habit, and, in
many respects, in the singular structure of the seed-vessel. In both the species of
Tauscheria, however, of which I have excellent specimens from Dr. Fischer and Professor
Ledebour, the silicula is truly cymbiform, the margin is curved inwards, and the
extremity, instead of being broad and notched, as in Thysanocarpus, is narrow and
elongated into a beak, like the narrow prow of a vessel. Its perfect embryo I have not been
able to examine: but in our plant, this has always its radicle inserted at the back of one of
the cotyledons, and then inclines obliquely, so that the greater part of its length is applied
to the edge or margin of the cotyledons. In the figure here given, the seed did not occupy
the whole of the cavity of the cell, as was the case with more fully ripe capsules, given to
me by Mr. Douglas after the plate was engraved, and which, I believe, were produced by plants
cultivated in the Garden of the Horticultural Society.
[note--my .pdf of Flora Boreali-Americana is at times difficult to read; the Latin probably
has typos.]
Thysanocarpus curvipes Hook. var. cognatus Jepson, 1936, A Flora of California
2: 100.
Var. cognatus Jepson var. n. Herbage nearly glabrous, a little glaucous; blades of
cauline leaves entire or nearly so; pods orbicular-elliptic, abruptly contracted to a
shortly cuneate base, 3 lines long, not notched at apex or only slightly.--(Fere glaber,
glauciusculus; folia caulina subintegerrima integerrimave; siliquae orbiculato-ellipticae,
base breviter cuneata (lin. 3 longa) abrupte contractae, ad apicem fere integerrimae.)--Pine
Log, South Fork Stanislaus River, A. L. Grant 702 (type); Lake Eleanor, Tuolumne Co.,
4690 feet, A. L. Grant 1257.
Thysanocarpus curvipes Hook. var. eradiatus Jepson, 1925, A Manual of the Flowering Plants
of California: 447.
1. T. curvipes Hook. Fringe-pod. Fig. 438. Slender, 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, more or less pubescent
or hirsute; cauline leaves linear or lanceolate, the lower dentate or denticulate; basal
leaves often
narrowed at base to a petiole, commonly sinuate-pinnatifid, with triangular acute or acuminate lobes;
pods obovate varying to round-obovate, pubescent or glabrous, 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 lines long, often very
convex on one side; wing narrow, rather crowded with broad rays, entire.--Frequent in the open hill
country of Cal., 100 to 5000 ft.: n to B. C. and Ida. Var. eradiatus Jepson n. var. Wing of pod
membranous, without rays.--Deserts, Inyo Co. (Panamint Range, Jepson 7040, type) s. to the Colorado
Desert.
Thysanocarpus curvipes Hook. var. involutus Greene, 1891, Flora Franciscana:
276.
1. T. curvipes, Hook. Fl. i. 69. t. 18 (1829): T. runcinatus, Hook.: Don.
Dict. i. 196 (1831). A foot high or more, with few and rather strict racemose branches, or
smaller and simple-stemmed; radical leaves in a rosulate tuft, pinnatifid, with short obtuse
lobes or subentire, hirsute; cauline oblong- or linear-lanceolate, entire,
sagittate-clasping: fr. obovate, seldom 2 lines wide, strongly concavo-convex, glabrous or
slightly tomentose, the marginal rays broad, dilated above, rather crowded, with narrow
diaphanous spots (rarely a few perforations) between them. Var.
(1) involutus. Taller and more strict: fr. elliptical, only a line wide; rays
nearly obsolete, the purplish subscarious margin closely involute all around; style (rather
prominent in fl.) deciduous. Var. (2) pulchellus. T. pulchellus, F. & M.
(1835). Radical leaves merely toothed: pods densely tomentose; the wing rather
broader.--The type of this species has not been found south of Mt. Shasta, except in
Humboldt Co., Marshall, Miss Bush. The first variety is from Sonoma Co.,
Bioletti, and this may not improbably be found distinct. Var. 2 is our most common
form in middle Calfornia.
Thysanocarpus curvipes Hook. var. longistylus Jepson, 1925, A Manual of the Flowering
Plants of California: 447.
1. T. curvipes Hook. Fringe-pod. Fig. 438. Slender, 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high, more or less pubescent
or hirsute; cauline leaves linear or lanceolate, the lower dentate or denticulate; baasl leaves often
narrowed at base to a petiole, commonly sinuate-pinnatifid, with triangular acute or acuminate lobes;
pods obovate varying to round-obovate, pubescent or glabrous, 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 lines long, often very
convex on one side; wing narrow, rather crowded with broad rays, entire.--Frequent in the open hill
country of Cal., 100 to 5000 ft.: n to B. C. and Ida. [...] Var. longistylus Jepson n. var.
Style 1/2 to 3/4 line long (in the species 1/8 to 1/5 line long), persistent.--Sierra Nevada, 3000 to
350 ft., from Mariposa Co. to Tulare Co. (Jepson, type).
Thysanocarpus curvipes Hook. subsp. madocarpus Piper, 1906, Flora of
Washington. Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 11: 306.
1a. Thysanocarpus curvipes madocarpus subsp. nov.
Differs from the species in having its pods glabrous instead of puberulent.
From field observations this seems worthy of subspecific rank. While both forms may occur
close together, yet so far as my observations go a particular colony of plants is of one form
of the other; the two do not occur mixed.
Thysanocarpus deppii Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray, 1840, A Flora of North America 1: 118.
2. T. elegans (Fisch. & Meyer): petals nearly twice as long as the calyx; silicles
orbicular-obovate, membranaceously winged; the wing (often) perforated with holes, emarginate
at the apex.
a. silicles glabrous; style conspicuously exserted.--T. elegans, Fisch. & Meyer,
l.c.
b. silicles villous; style slightly exserted. Hook.! ic. t. 39. T. Deppii,
Nutt. mss. T. n. sp. Fisch. & Mey. l.c. (without a name.)
g. silicles somewhat pubescent, wing not perforated; style not exserted.
California, Douglas! Deppe. (ex Fisch. & Meyer.)--Stem 12-18 inches high,
branching, nearly glabrous, Leaves in b. lanceolate, sagittate, repandly toothed; in
g. linear, the upper ones almost subulate and sagittate-clasping. Silicles 2 1/2
lines long; the winged margin perforated with a row of 12-14 oblong holes, or marked with
thin diaphanous spots, the opaque coriaceous substance of the centre extending between them,
and thus giving the silicle a radiated appearance.
Thysanocarpus desertorum A.Heller, 1905, Muhlenbergia 2: 47.
Thysanocarpus desertorum Glabrous, yellowish, especially in the inflorescence, maximum
height 2 dm, branched from the base, the branches ascending, becoming somewhat racemose:
leaves scattered, the lowest ones oblanceolate, about 3 cm. long, 4 or 5 mm. wide, sparingly
runcinate-dentate, acute or acutish; those above smaller, nearly linear, not narrowed at the
base, clasping but not auricled: pedicels 3 mm. long or less: flowers very small, the sepals
obovate-oblong, white or yellowish with broad green midvein: petals a little shorter and
narrower than the sepals: silicle plane or nearly so, orbicular, 3 mm. across, slightly
reticulated, glabrous, minutely crenate but not perforate; the short style not exserted from
the notch.
The type is no. 7681, collected April 14, 1905, on rocky hilltops near Randsburg, Kern
county, growing under overhanging rocks.
Thysanocarpus elegans Fisch. & C.A.Mey., 1835, Index Seminum, quae Hortus
Botanicus Imperialis Petropolitanus pro Mutua Commutatione Offert. Accedunt Animadversiones
Botanicae Nonnullae 2: 51.
Th. elegans F. et M. Th. petalis calyce longioribus; siliculis glaberrimis ala
foraminosa cinctis apice truncatis styloque exserto terminatis.--A Th. pulchello,
quocum crescit et cui ceterum persimilis est, silicularum ala foraminibus numerosis latis
uniseriatus pertusa facile dignoseitur.
[Exceedingly approximate translation:
"Petals longer than the calyx; silique smooth and with perforate wings, apex truncate with
the style much exserted terminally.--Similar to Thysanocarpus pulchellus, but the
perforate wings of the siliques readily distinguish it." Quoting from Jeremiah
Johnson: "Now isn't that easier than saying all that gibberish?"]
Thysanocarpus emarginatus Greene, 1896, Pittonia 3: 86-87.
Thysanocarpus emarginatus. Slender and low, much branched from the base, glaucous and
also hispidulous, with scattered, spreading or deflexed white bristly hairs: cauline leaves
all linear-lanceolate, entire, sessile but in no degree auricled or even dilated at base:
flowers and radical leaves unknown: pedicels of fruit short, spreading, scarcely curved:
fruit nearly orbicular, the body glabrous, with strong midvein and almost equally prominent
transverse veinlets, the broad wing perfectly entire, scarious, abruptly and rather deeply
emarginate at apex, wholly destitute of perforations and lacking even the usual radiating
bundles of fibrous tissue.
Collected by the writer at the summit of Mt. Diablo, Calif., 20 June, 1892, and very
erroneously referred, at the time, to T. laciniatus; from which it is distinguished
not so definitely by its pubescence as by the remarkable character of the pods. In the
structure of the wing of the fruit this species is equally removed from the group of the
original species and from T. radians; but it has an ally in T. Palmeri of the
far-distant Cedros Island.
[There is no species named Thysanocarpus palmeri; perhaps Greene was referring to
Thysanocarpus erectus, see below.]
Thysanocarpus erectus S.Wats., 1876, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
11: 124.
Thysanocarpus erectus. Smooth and leafy: leaves oblong to oblanceolate, an inch or two long,
auricled at base, somewhat sinuate-dentate: flowers purple or rose-colored: fruiting pedicels
erect: pod minutely pubescent, the wing of the fruit (still immature) without indication of
nervation or perforation: style very short -- Collected by Dr. E. Palmer on the western side of
Guadalupe Island. Distinguished especially by its erect pedicels.
Thysanocarpus filipes Greene, 1900, Pittonia 4: 200-201.
Thysanocarpus filipes. Slender, branched from near the base and all the branches racemose:
herbage scarcely glaucescent, deep-green: leaves of the stem (the lowest not seen) lanceolate,
acuminate, sessile by a subhastate base: racemes dense: pods round-obvate, 1/4 inch long, on filiform
pedicels of 1/4 to 1/2 inch, the whole body of the fruit very minutely hirtellous, only obscurely
venulose, the rays about 12, for the most part united near the summit and forming elliptic
infra-marginal perforations, the crenate diaphanous margin purplish: stigma included within a deep
terminal notch.
Near Clifton, Arizona, Dr. Anstruther Davidson, 1899.
Thysanocarpus foliosus A.Heller, 1905, Muhlenbergia 2: 47-48.
Thysanocarpus foliosus About 5 dm. high, hirsute below, pale and glaucous, branched
from near the base, the branches ascending, stout: lower leaves linear-lanceolate, 6--8 cm.
long, about 1 cm. wide, acutish, somewhat hirsute as well as ciliate, sparingly armed with
minute retrorse points, the base hastate rather than auricled, the lobes broad and somewhat
rounded; uppper ones of similar shape but gradually becoming smaller, acute or acuminate,
glabrous or nearly so: flowering stems naked, about 2 dm. long; pedicles 5--7 mm. long:
sepals purplish, over 1 mm. long, oblong, only the margins white: petals spatulate, slightly
longer than the sepals: anthers purplish, a little exserted: silicles round-obovate, 4 mm.
across, the margins entire, whitish or purplish, the greenish body somewhat rayed, densely
tomentose: short style protruding from a slight notch.
The type is no. 7719, collected April 18, 1905, on the side of a ravine back of Girard
station in the Tehachapi mountains, Kern county, California. The species is remarkable for
its large, practically entire leaves and tomentose silicles. A relative probably of T.
pulchellus F. & M., but that is described as "siliculis glaberrimis," a fact overlooked
by Greene, for in Flora Franciscana, 276, he says "pods densely tomentose."
Thysanocarpus hirtellus Greene, 1896, Pittonia 3: 86.
Thysanocarpus hirtellus. A foot or two in height, loosely branched from the base, all
parts except the inflorescence and fruit clothed rather densely with short or rather stiffly
hirsute simple hairs: lowest leaves oblanceolate, coarsely toothed; cauline
traingular-lanceolate, entire, with rather ample sagittate-clasping basal lobes: flowers
very minute, the narrowly spatulate petals barely equalling the sepals; stamens longer and
well exserted: pods round-obovoid, glabrous, venulose, the wing with 8 or 10 acutely ovate
perforations, or with as many nearly closed sinuses instead (the dilated tips of the rays in
this case distinct).
Discovered by the writer in a wooded cañon tributary to Dry Creek, Napa Co.,
California, 12 May, 1895. Very distinct from all known species by habit and pubescence; the
pods also much more like those of the glabrous glaucous species T. crenatus and
conchuliferus of the south than those of T. curvipes and other northern
pubescent species.
Thysanocarpus laciniatus Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray, 1840, A Flora of North America 1:
118.
5. T. laciniatus (Nutt.! mss.): "petals as long as the calyx; silicles elliptical,
glabrous, winged; the wing entire or crenate, not perforated, entire at the apex, and
acuminate with the conspicuous style; leaves linear, remotely and incisely toothed.
"With the preceding.--Decumbent deep green and glabrous. Stem about a foot long. Leaves 1 1/2
inch long, and scarcely a line wide; teeth long and subulate. Silicle about 2 lines long,
acute at each end; the wing diaphanous." Nutt.
Thysanocarpus laciniatus Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray. var. eremicola Jepson, 1936,
A Flora of California 2: 100-101.
Var. eremicola Jepson nom. n. Leaves moderately toothed or subentire, the cauline not
auricled or only moderately auricled; pods suborbicular, not cuneate at base, 2 to 2 1/2
lines long, the wing membranous, without rays.--West side of the Colorado Desert and north to
Inyo Co.
Locs.--Vallecito Cañon, e. slope Laguna Mts., Peirson 5942; Blair Valley, e.
San Diego Co., Jepson 8692; Andreas Cañon, Palm Sprs., Mt. San Jacinto,
Newlon 469a; Ord Mt., Mohave Desert, Hall & Chandler 6802; Black Mts., Death
Valley, J. T. Howell 3661; Hanaupah Cañon, Panamint Range, Jepson 7040;
Independence, S.W. Austin 450.
Refs.--[...]Var. eremicola Jepson. T. curvipes var. eradiatus Jepson, Man. 447
(1925), type loc. Hanaupah Cañon, Panamint Mts., Jepson 7040.
Thysanocarpus laciniatus Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray var. hitchcockii Munz,
Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, 31: 62.
Var. Hitchcockii Munz n. var. Capsula conferta, luteo-virida, 2.5--3 mm. lata, scabrella, cum
capillis parvis clavatisque. Type, from Dante's Point, Death Valley, P. A. Munz & C. L.
Hitchcock 11016, April 6, 1928, Pomona College Herbarium No. 145825. Well distributed on
the western Mohave Desert, as at Cushenberry, Hesperia, Willow Springs, Mohave, etc.
Thysanocarpus laciniatus Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray var. rigidus Munz,
Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, 31: 62.
Var. rigidus Munz, n. var. Plantae rigidae, compactae, 3-12 cm. altae, subpurpureae; foliis
pinnatifidis; pedicellis porrectis, non recurvatis; capsulis glabris, 2.5 mm. latis,
subcrenatis. Type, Laguna Camp, Laguna Mts., San Diego Co., May 16, 1925, Munz 9701,
Pomona College Herbarium, No. 82645. Another collection is from 50 miles southeast of Tecate,
Lower California, Munz 9572.
Thysanocarpus pulchellus Fisch. & C.A.Mey., 1835, Index Seminum, quae Hortus
Botanicus Imperialis Petropolitanus pro Mutua Commutatione Offert. Accedunt Animadversiones
Botanicae Nonnullae 2: 50-51.
Th. pulchellus. Th. petalis calyce longioribus; siliculis glaberrimis ala integra (non
pertusa) cinctis apice subtruncatis styloque longe exserto terminatis.--Antecendenti speciei
simillima, notis indicatis tamen satis distincta. Petala albida vel violascentia, parvula,
calyce tamen ferme longiora.--Hab. circa coloniam ruthenorum Ross.
[Exceedingly approximate translation:
"Petals longer than the calyx; siliques smooth and entire (not perforate), apex sub-truncate
with the style much exserted terminally.--Similar to the previous species [Thysanocarpus
curvipes] but we think it is sufficiently separate. Petals white or violet, small, calyx
... something ...--Found near the Russian colony Ross."]
Thysanocarpus radians Benth., 1849, Plantas Hartwegianas: 297.
1651 (211). Thysanocarpus radians, sp. n., foliis radicalibus
runcinato-pinnatifidis, lyratisve, caulinis auriculato-sagittatis amplexicaulibus
subdentatis, siliculae tomentosae ala lata orbiculata integerrima imperforata venis
elevatis radiantibus notata.--Herba pedalis fere glabra a caeteris speciebus
distinctissima. Folia radicalia rosulata, petiolata, angusta, 1--1 1/2--pollicaria, lobis
brevibus latis confluentibus v. inferioribus remotis, ultimus major oblongus v.
lanceolatus; caulina distantia, late lanceolato-sagittata v. fere ovata, obtusiuscula,
margine obscure dentata v. undulata, auriculis obtusis v. acutiusculis. Flores magnitudine
T. elegantis. Ovarium stipitatum, vix marginatum, in fructu maturo ala ad basin stipitis
attingit et ei cohaeret. Silicula cum ala obovato-orbicularis v. exacte orbicularis, fere
5 lin. diametro, apice saepe emarginata, loculo hinc valde convexo tomentoso, hinc fere
plano ala fere glabra membranacea venis radiantibus percursa 16 ad 18 validis
glabriusculis. Seminis radicula valde obliqua, fere accumbens.--In campis vallis
superioris Sacramento.
Thysanocarpus radians Benth. var. montanus Jepson, 1901, A Flora of Western Middle
California, 1st edition: 225-226.
4. T. radians Benth. Erect, commonly 1 to 1 1/2 ft. high and rarely branching; radical
leaves runcinate-pinnatifid; cauline ovate-lanceolate, auriculate-clasping; fruit orbicular, 4
lines broad, glabrous or tomentose, the edge of the body divided into radiating spoke-like nerves
which disappear abruptly just within the margin of the white-membranaceous wing; pedicels straight,
abruptly recurved at the very summit.
Low hills or rolling plains, infrequent: Healdsburg; Sonoma; Vacaville; Antioch; and Linden (San
Joaquin Co.). Apr.--May. Var. montanus is a color form; branches several from the base, ascending,
5 to 8 in. high; fruit 3 lines long, the wing bright purple.--Plateau of the Napa Mountains, north
of Mt. George, Jepson, Apr. 28, 1893.
[note that this variety disappeared between the first & second editions of Jepson's "A Flora
of Western Middle California"; apparently he changed his mind]
Thysanocarpus ramosus Greene, 1887, Bulletin of the California Academy of Sciences 2:
390.
Thysanocarpus ramosus. Wholly glabrous and slightly glaucous, a foot high, the stem
parted near the base into many erect, leafy and at length racemose branches; leaves 2--4
inches long, linear, those of the branches entire, or with a few scattered small but salient
teeth, and an auriculate-clasping base, the lower and radical with 2--3 pairs of linear
divaricate lobes: raceme naked, the pedicels slender and recurved: sepals minute, cymbiform,
erect-spreading in flower, white, with a broad green mid-vein: petals twice the length of
the sepals, spatulate-oblong, retuse: stamens 6, all of the same length, three on each side
of the broad flat pistil: samara regularly and rather strongly concavo-convex, the crenate
margin with or without some oblong perforations: style short, persistent. Species just
intermediate between its very singular island congener and the mainland T. crenatus;
having the foliage and branching habit of the former, nearly.
Thysanocarpus runcinatus G.Don, 1831, A General History of the Dichlamydeous Plants 1:
196.
1. T. runcinatus (Hook. l.c.) H. Native of North America, probably on the Rocky
Mountains.
Runcinate-leaved Thysanocarpus. Pl. 1 foot.
Cult. An insignificant plant of easy culture; the seeds only require to be sown in the
open border early in spring.
[Note- Don's attribution of the name to Hooker in Flora Boreali-Americana is in error.]
Thysanocarpus trichocarpus Rydb., 1903, Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 30:
253-254.
Thysanocarpus trichocarpus sp. nov. Annual, perfectly glabrous, except the fruit, 1--3
dm high: stem terete, branched: lower leaves oblanceolate or oblong, sinuately dentate, thick
and somewhat glaucous; uppermost leaves linear or linear-lanceolate, entire: racemes often 1
dm. long: petals slightly over 1 mm. long; blades broadly spatulate: pedicels in fruit about
5 mm. long, recurved: pod nearly orbicular, about 4 mm. wide, short-pubescent: wing-margins
crenate or lobed, not fenestrate: style scarcely exceeding the wing-margin.
Utah: Silver Reef, 1894, M. E. Jones 5163b, in part (type in U.S. Nat. Herb.),
5149d and 5139d.
27 Oct 2008
This weekend I did an overnight hike from Emory Pass to McKnight Mountain. For my own
reference and perhaps your entertainment, I provide latitude and longitude of noteworthy
landmarks on the trail, starting from the south and moving north. I provide my own
names as necessary.
Indian Canyon, a.k.a. Dark Ravine, is followed briefly by the trail along its upstream end,
where it is densely forested with
aspens along the bottom and a trickle of water: 32.9511 -107.7932.
Hillsboro Peak South Junction, where the Hillsboro Bypass Trail leaves the Black Range Crest
Trail, providing a route north that avoids the elevation gain associated with hiking up and
back down the peak: 32.9464 -107.7726.
Deep Saddle divides Railroad Canyon to the south from Holden Prong to the north, and is the
lowest point on the trail between Hillsboro Peak and McKnight Peak: 32.9595 -107.8082.
Locust Thicket is a flattish area along the ridgeline northwest of Deep Saddle, grassy with
scrub oak and numerous New Mexican Locust (Robinia neomexicana) to cut the arms
of the unwary: 32.9658 -107.8296.
At McKnight Junction the Black Range Crest Trail joins McKnight Road, following it until near
McKnight Cabin: 33.0044 -107.8563.
The Gila National Forest leaves McKnight Cabin unlocked for hiker use. Facilities
are minimal, but there is a wood stove, old creaky box spring beds, and an outhouse:
33.0325 -107.8565.
9 Oct 2008
Although the online version of the Flora of North America is an excellent resource,
particularly because it is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, it
unfortunately contains a number of errors. I will beging tracking those errors as I
encounter them here.
The main page for the FNA online (http://fna.huh.harvard.edu/, also reachable from
http://fna.org) contains a search box that does not function. The search box within the
pages for individual treatments, however, functions properly.
Amaranthaceae: The entry for Amaranthus arenicola is missing its distribution map.
Cupressaceae: Several Juniperus, including J. scopulorum and J.
deppeana, are missing distribution maps.
Asteraceae: Clicking on the link for tribe Heliantheae takes you to the page for tribe
Heliantheae subtribe Helianthinae, not to the page for the tribe as a whole. The easiest way
to find the other tribal page seems to be a Google search. This is part of a series of
systematic errors in the handling of deviations from a simple Family : Genus: Species
hierarchy. Links to keys for groups that fall between these levels (tribes of a family,
sections or informal groups within a genus, etc.) are often missing or broken. Similar
problems occur below the species level. Species for which a single infraspecific taxon
exists in
the flora area appear just as "var. foo" in keys for the genus in which they occur;
species with multiple treated infraspecific taxa
have keys to those taxa on the species page, and everything works fine. If there's only one
infraspecific taxon, whatever software is used to create the webpage just doesn't know what to
do. There's no key to link the species-level and infraspecific pages, so you get a separate
species webpage & infraspecific taxon webpage that cannot be navigated to from each other, and
only the latter is
linked to the key. So, for instance, in the key to Juniperus one step of the key
leads to "var. deppeana", not to "Juniperus deppeana var. deppeana,
and if you search for Juniperus deppeana you end up at the page for the
species, which is missing most of the information for that species because most of that
information is on the varietal page, to which you cannot navigate. In
short, it's a mess.
7 Oct 2008
After an excellent monsoon season it's starting to dry up here in southern New Mexico. On a
couple of recent trips I decided to keep complete lists of plants seen in flower. I
used to do this regularly in Indiana but have not done so much in New Mexico, in part because
the plant diversity seen on an average hike in New Mexico is often great enough that
listing it all can become time-consuming. So without further ado, some plant lists. Plants
are flowering (or either flowering or fruiting in the case of grasses & similar plants)
unless otherwise noted. Plants photographed for the first time are in bold.
Percha Box, Sierra County, 5 Oct 2008:
Amaranthaceae:
Amaranthus palmeri, Amaranthus powellii, Chenopodium cf. fremontii, Froelichia gracilis,
Kraschenninikovia lanata, Salsola tragus.
Asteraceae:
Ambrosia acanthicarpa, Ambrosia monogyra, Artemisia dracunculus, Artemisia ludoviciana,
Baccharis salicifolia, Bahia absinthifolia, Brickellia
cf. rusbyi, Conyza canadensis, Ericameria laricifolia, Gutierrezia microcephala,
Gutierrezia sarothrae, Heliomeris longifolia,
Heterosperma pinnatum, Machaeranthera tanacetifolia, Melampodium leucanthum, Parthenium incanum,
Parthenium integrifolium, Psilostrophe tagetina,
Sanvitalia abertii, Senecio flaccidus, Stephanomeria sp., Thelesperma longipes, Thymophylla
acerosa, Trixis californica, Verbesina encelioides, Xanthisma spinulosa, Zinnia
grandiflora.
Boraginaceae:
Tiquilia canescens (no fls).
Brassicaceae:
Boechera perennans or porphyrea (plants with neither fls nor frt, not properly
identifiable), Sisymbrium irio.
Capparaceae:
Polanisia dodecandra.
Convolvulaceae:
Ipomoea costellata.
Cyperaceae:
Cyperus cf. esculentus, Cyperus squarrosus.
Euphorbiaceae:
Acalypha neomexicana, Chamaesyce albomarginata, Chamaesyce fendleri, Chamaesyce
revoluta, Chamaesyce serpyllifolia, Euphorbia bilobata, Tragia ramosa.
Fabaceae:
Dalea brachyphylla, Dalea formosa, Dalea pogonathera, Dalea wrightii, Hoffmannseggia
drepanocarpa (no fls but some frt), Melilotus alba.
Lamiaceae:
Hedeoma oblongifolium (no fls).
Loasaceae:
Cevallia sinuata.
Malvaceae:
Anoda cristata (frt only), Sida cf. abutifolia, Sphaeralcea cf. incana.
Nyctaginaceae:
Allionia incarnata, Cyphomeris gypsophiloides.
Oleaceae:
Menodora scabra (frt only).
Onagraceae:
Gaura coccinea, Oenothera caespitosa (no fls).
Poaceae:
Achnatherum eminens, Aristida adscensionis, Aristida purpurea, Bothriochloa sp., Bouteloua
curtipendula, Bouteloua
eriopoda, Bouteloua hirsuta, Cenchrus sp., Chloris virgata, Dasyochloa pulchella, Enneapogon
desvauxii, Eragrostis cf. barrelieri (keys to that sp. and has yellow glandular rings
below the nodes, but the inflorescence is more diffuse, larger, etc., than usual for
the species), Eragrostis cilianensis, Eragrostis
cf. intermedia, Eragrostis pectinacea, Eriochloa acuminata, Leptochloa dubia,
Muhlenbergia cf. pauciflora, Muhlenbergia porteri, Panicum cf. bulbosum, Pleuraphis
mutica, Scleropogon
brevifolius, Setaria leucopila, Sporobolus contractus, Sporobolus cryptandrus, Tridens
mutica.
Polygonaceae:
Eriogonum abertianum, Polygonum aviculare.
Pteridaceae:
Argyrochosma limitanea, Astrolepis integerrima, Cheilanthes feei, Cheilanthes eatonii,
Notholaena standleyi.
Rosaceae:
Fallugia paradoxa.
Solanaceae:
Chamaesaracha sordida (no fls), Datura wrightii (old withered fls), Nicotiana trigonophylla,
Solanum rostratum.
Verbenaceae:
Aloysia wrightii.
Zygophyllaceae:
Tribulus terrestris.
Bar Canyon, Organ Mountains, Doña Ana County, 6 Oct 2008:
Amaranthaceae:
Amaranthus palmeri, Froelichia gracilis, Gomphrena nitida, Guilleminea densa (frt only),
Salsola tragus.
Asteraceae:
Acourtia wrightii (frt only), Artemisia ludoviciana, Bahia absinthifolia, Berlandiera lyrata,
Brickellia californica, Brickellia
laciniata, Ericameria laricifolia, Gutierrezia microcephala, Heliomeris longifolia,
Melampodium leucanthum, Parthenium incanum, Parthenium integrifolium, Pectis prostrata (frt
only),
Sanvitalia abertii, Schkuhria pinnata, Senecio flaccidus, Viguiera dentata, Zinnia grandiflora
(few fls left, mostly frt).
Capparaceae:
Polanisia dodecandra.
Convolvulaceae:
Convolvulus equitans, Dichondra brachypoda, Ipomoea costellata, Ipomoea cristulata, Ipomoea
pubescens, Ipomoea purpurea.
Euphorbiaceae:
Acalypha neomexicana, Chamaesyce albomarginata (no fls), Chamaesyce dioica, Chamaesyce fendleri,
Chamaesyce cf. nutans, Phyllanthus polygonoides, Tragia ramosa.
Fabaceae:
Dalea brachyphylla, Dalea wrightii, Macroptilium gibbosifolium, Phaseolus acutifolius
(frt only).
Lamiaceae:
Hedeoma oblogifolium, Salvia subincisa.
Malvaceae:
Sphaeralcea incana.
Nyctaginiaceae:
Allionia incarnata, Boerhavia coccinea, Boerhavia gracillima (one plant), Mirabilis
linearis.
Plantaginaceae:
Castilleja integra, Plantago patagonica.
Poaceae:
Aristida adscensionis, Aristida purpurea, Aristida ternipes, Bothriochloa cf. barbinodis,
Bouteloua curtipendula, Bouteloua eriopoda, Bouteloua
gracilis, Bouteloua hirsuta, Dasyochloa pulchella, Digitaria californica, Enneapogon desvauxii,
Eragrostis cf. intermedia, Eragrostis lehmanniana, Leptochloa dubia, Muhlenbergia emersleyi,
Muhlenbergia porteri, Muhlenbergia sp. (a small, awnless annual), Setaria leucopila.
Polygalaceae:
Polygala barbeyana (frt only).
Polygonaceae:
Eriogonum wrightii.
Pteridaceae:
Astrolepis cochisensis, Cheilanthes eatonii.
Rosaceae:
Fallugia paradoxa.
Verbenaceae:
Aloysia wrightii, Glandularia bipinnatifida.
18 July 2008
Topozone is dead. Long live Topozone! Er, I mean
TopoQuest!
13 July 2008
Continuing with Joko Beck... one of her later chapters in Nothing Special: Living Zen
is entitled "The Natural Man":
"Let's take a look at what we might call 'a natural man'. [...] In the Bible a natural man
would be Adam before he was expelled from the Garden of Eden--that is, before he became
conscious of himself as a separate self. What was that natural man like? What would it be
like to be a natural man?
"STUDENT: A natural man would be full of wonder.
"JOKO: That's true, though he wouldn't be aware that he was full of wonder.
"STUDENT: There would be no sense of separation between himself and the world around him.
"JOKO: That's also true. Again, he would have no awareness of his lack of separation."
What does the word "natural" mean here? And how seriously should we take Joko's
linking of a natural state of affairs with a purely fictional, imagined state? The
situation is complicated by Joko's view that the result of Zen practice is movement towards
a natural state. I can think of
no particular reason to view self-awareness (or awareness generally) as a product of
artifice. Considering our consciousness to be artifical is reasonable if we consider everything
about humans (even those aspects of ourselves that we
presumably had no hand in creating) to be artificial, but under such a view there can be no
such thing as a "natural man". What definitions of the words could cause us to describe
our normal states of mind as "artificial" while describing the results of a conscious attempt to
change our minds in one direction or another as "natural" without resulting in
self-contradiction?
11 July 2008
More thoughts on Joko Beck... within the portion of her message with which I strongly agree,
summarized below as "Pay attention to what you're doing," (perhaps "to what's going on"
would be better), there is nonetheless the rather large problem of how this is best to be
accomplished. The Buddhist approach is of course sitting meditation. The mechanism proposed
for this approach is, so far as I can tell (Buddhist writing does not appear, from my
very limited
experience, to be overly concerned with discussions of mechanism), is that meditation allows
us to become conscious of and eventually control or remove those mental activities which tend to
separate us from direct experience. This certainly makes a good deal of sense, however it
is unclear to me how what the relation of this process to understanding and comprehension
is. Awareness without understanding seems as though it would be rather empty. This may of
course be the point, but nonetheless we must still live in a world in which there are decisions
to be made and actions taken, and we must have an understanding of the situations we find
ourselves in so as to make those decisions and take those actions. Further, awareness without
understanding strikes me as oxymoronic; what, then would someone be aware *of*? In any
case, in Joko's writings there is very
little attention given to furthering understanding (or, for that matter, aiding the "functional
thinking" that she speaks well of on occasion) and her views thus seem rather lopsided.
For instance, Joko correctly points out the damaging effect of false generalizations; but
removing generalizations entirely is even more harmful and Joko gives no suggestions for
increasing the accuracy or utility of generalizations. So what are we to do? Often, the same
mental activities that can separate us from awareness (e.g., making of *false*
generalizations) are essential to awareness (e.g., making of *accurate* generalizations).
The content makes the difference. We ignore or trivialize the content of our thoughts at
our own peril.
27 June 2008
I've now been reading Nothing Special: Living Zen by Joko Beck. This is an
interesting book. It has enough of the trappings of ditzy New Age self-help to make me
cringe every few pages, but luckily some of the more obnoxious clichés of the genre are
ditched in
favor of what often appears to be real wisdom. The many portions of Joko's views I agree
with in this book generally boil down to an elaboration on the following: "Pay attention to
what you're doing." The equally many portions of Joko's views I disagree with are along the
lines of: "Once you sit and meditate long enough, you will see X is the case." X may be
that judgments are fundamentally invalid and false, that our identity as individuals is an
illusion, that the problems we concern ourselves with in daily life are similarly illusory,
etc. Maybe she's right. My meditation is sporadic and thoroughly
undisciplined at best (to put it another way, sometimes I like to stare off into space for a
while), and presumably long, intense meditation would change my views in some form or
another, quite possibly towards Joko's views. However, I find all claims that there is a
right way (to do just about anything, really) implausible and... irritating. And I find such
claims particularly irritating when they are presented in the aggressively
nonjudgmental style that is a trademark of so much New Age spirituality and is, alas, quite well
developed in Joko's writing. She clearly believes that she knows the right path, and I see
no indication she will admit another right path; yet she won't admit that people not on her
path are, by her standards, failing. Instead, every few pages like clockwork some phrasing
of, "They aren't ready yet, and that's okay," will rear its condescending, passive-aggressive
head. I don't mind nonjudgmental thinking (although I feel no need to embrace it myself),
but if we're going to have judgment I'd rather have it open and unapologetic. Judgment is
OK. What's important is knowing that you're being judgmental, knowing why, and understanding
what your judgment means (as an incidental aside, judgment is the prerequisite of
forgiveness, of acceptance). Cloaked judgment goes against everything Joko otherwise stands
for. But then, self-contradiction doesn't seem to hold much terror in Zen Buddhism.
Unrelated rant: Cymbals. Cymbals are the bane of modern popular & rock music. They should
simply be taken away from most drummers, to be released on a probationary basis after
attendance of a mandatory "safe cymbal" course. No matter how bad everything else going on
in a song is, the solution is not to just bang away on those things hoping it
drowns it all out. And when there is good stuff going on, for christ's sake lay off for a
while. I want to hear that stuff, not a bunch of monotonous eighth-note bashing. Today's offender:
whoever the drummer on Built to Spill's Keep it Like a Secret is. So far, all I can
say is that if all the Modest Mouse comparisons are accurate we must hope this is Built to
Spill's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; it has that album's mix of excellent
melodies mixed in with a layered approach apparently undertaken on the belief that lots of
stuff happening is good, even if half of it is entirely uninteresting and in the way. To put it
another way, there's lots of good stuff on
Keep it Like a Secret, but most of it can't breathe under the weight of thoroughly
uninspired rhythm guitar and those awful cymbals.
5 June 2008
A rather soul-destroying quote from Matthiessen:
"All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow:
acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births,
in death. Knowing this, one should from the very first renounce acquisition and heaping-up,
and building and meeting, and ... set about realizing the Truth. . . . Life is short, and the
time of death is uncertain; so apply yourselves to meditation. . . ."
Matthiessen takes this from Lama Milarepa, and we see a basic problem with Buddhism (at
least with the form of Buddhism popularized in the United States). Like all religions I know
of, it has a carrot and a stick. Christianity has heaven and hell, which are honestly both
rather difficult to take seriously; so we can ignore the whole thing and move on.
However, Buddhism has a very convincing stick, as seen here. On the other hand, the
carrot seems awfully small and awfully far away. Nirvana sounds neither plausible nor
appealling. Problems seem unlikely to conveniently disappear if we ignore them; and a life
with nothing to strive for sounds... boring, tasteless, soulless. I don't want nirvana for
the same reason I don't want a lobotomy. If the only way to avoid failure is to
give up trying, I'll stick with failure.
31 May 2008
From Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, p. 55:
"Somewhere, Einstein remarks that his theory could be readily explained to Indians of the
Uto-Aztecan languages, which include the Pueblo and the Hopi. ('The Hopi does not say "the
light flashed" but merely "flash", without subject or time element; time cannot move because
it is also space. The two are never separated; there are no words or expressions referring
to time or space as separate from each other. This is close to the "field" concept of modern
physics. Furthermore, there is no temporal future; it is already with us, eventuation or
"manifesting". What are in English differences of time are in Hopi differences of
validity.')"
Good for the Hopi; but how do they say things like "I'll meet you at my house at
7:00."? Or do they sit around discussing quantum physics all day?
Claims like this (the parenthesied quote is from Benjamin Whorf, so I guess it isn't all
Matthiessen's fault) suggesting that certain indigenous languages are ideally suited for
expressing fundamental truths by avoiding the "linear" or "analytical" restrictions of European
thought & language are always hard for me to take seriously. Surely these are just normal
people with daily lives like the rest of us. And yet we are supposed to believe that their
language expresses esoteric philosophy while bypassing all the niggling requirements of being
able to communicate in the mundane world of houses, times, food, meetings, and the rest?
Such a people would have starved to death centuries ago, no matter how enlightened.
So far, association of unfamiliarity with spirituality seems fundamental to
Matthiessen's writing. I suspect this underlies most interest in foreign religion and
culture throughout the U.S. It thus becomes difficult to disassociate, for instance, Buddhism
and escapism--though one might think they should be opposed.
14 May 2008
I've been re-reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. One thing that becomes
apparent that I had not realized the last time I read Nietzsche (however long ago that was)
is that his philosophy has distinctly Wittgensteinian undercurrents. Of course, Nietzsche is
known best for his various value judgments and not for the philosophical worldview that
underpins them. Those underpinnings are perhaps more interesting but harder to
trace since they are not explained as explicitly. The most distinctly Wittgensteinian aspect
of the early parts of Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche's suggestion that philosophy
is limited by language, and that philosophical error often results from mistaking grammar for
metaphysics; "we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words!"
But Nietzsche had perhaps not realized that we cannot free ourselves without leaving language
behind and becoming mute. Wittgenstein clearly did realize this.
An analogy is perhaps useful here. Imagine language as a bottle into which we pour meaning.
Most liquids go in fine, but some will corrode or dissolve the bottle and there are a great
many things that simply aren't suitable at all; bricks, for instance, go poorly in bottles.
Consequently, what kinds of meanings we convey--and thus the structure of our knowledge and
conception of reality--is determined at least in part by language.
Now, there is a problem with that analogy. The analogy suggests that meaning and language
are independent, with the former translatable (at least imperfectly) into the latter, whereas
properly meaning is subsumed within language. This is the point Wittgenstein often made and
that Nietzsche perhaps missed (or at least, I have not yet seen him express it). Perhaps a
better analogy is that language is like an Erector Set of knowledge & meaning. Only certain
patterns can be constructed. The unconstructable patterns are things that cannot be
expressed. Even here we skirt disaster by referring to these unconstructable patterns at
all.
12 May 2008
A western kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis) lives in a tree next to my apartment. It
sounds like this and
calls at night.
18 April 2008
Propagation of two quotes from Annie Dillard's For the Time Being:
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
"Purity does not lie in a separation from the universe but in a deeper penetration of
it."
Frithjof Shuon:
"It is always man who is absent, not grace."
14 April 2008
Goodbye TopoZone... the formerly free topozone.com has disappeared from the web, with its
functionality sunk somewhere into the $50/year functionality of trails.com. This was one of
the websites I used most frequently, as it provided free access to USGS topographic maps with
easy searching by place name, lat/long, UTM coordinates, etc. Alas, no more. It's a pity
USGS can't provide user-friendly online access to its own topographic maps.
8 April 2008
It is wise to remember that any argument, any reasoning, is designed to convince people of a
certain background. The premises are never stated in full and they include a wide array of
background knowledge without which the argument will fall flat.
An example of this I encountered today, certainly not for the first time, is the role of
proof in scientific reasoning. The short version, of course, is that proof has no role in
scientific reasoning. As scientists, we do not prove things but can occasionally hope to
disprove them. This view, called falsificationism, is for most scientists simply some
portion of the foundations that has been there so long it no longer arouses any interest.
However, in discussions with non-scientists--particularly with non-scientists who seek to
oppose science, like creationists--it causes no end of grief and misinterpretation. Lack of
proof is taken to mean uncertainty. "Theory" sounds like speculation. What scientists
forget when they try to explain falsificationism and the lack of proof is that they are using
arguments designed to convince mathematicians and logicians when talking to people who, for
the most part, have background in neither. The proof that science lacks is logical or
mathematical proof; science is inductive, not deductive. Were our creationists convinced
that we were mathematicians, this would be an appropriate approach to dissuade them. But
when non-scientists hear "proof" they are thinking of something more along the judicial lines
of "proven beyond a reasonable doubt" than of symbolic logic. In their usage proof is simply
strong evidence. So when we say that we do not prove things in science this is a mistake; we
do not mean to say that we have no strong evidence, but merely that we are not using the
specific form of reasoning entailed in logical or mathematical proof. Most non-scientists
have no particular interest in the second point, so why argue it? It merely engenders
semantic argument by ignoring the simple fact that meaning is context-dependent.
Related to this is the contingency of all language. It is common for logicians and
mathematicians in particular, and to a lesser extent scientists, to want to see structures of
language (especially formal languages like those of mathematics) as logically necessary.
This view tends to obscure the context-dependence of language and leads to a worldview in
which abuses to language are seen as abuses of logic rather than abuses of social norm (as a
random example here consider the use of double-negatives; it is merely a normative and
contingent fact of mathematics that --1 = +1; it could just as easily be that --1 = -2).
This leads also to a great many philosophical errors, wherein some fact about how our
language works--some contingent fact about what it is various Europeans mostly concerned with
their social lives, farming, hunting, warfare, etc., have wanted to say to each other and how
they have chosen to say it--is taken to have metaphysical significance. Descartes provided
no critique of our ability to know the external world, but instead some interesting problems in
our grammar related to knowledge. Post-modernism is not so new; metaphysicians have long
taken reality to be determined by grammar.
5 April 2008
From Ed Abbey:
"Life is already too short to waste on speed."
25 January 2008
More Cormac McCarthy... I read The Orchard Keeper, which includes a new way for Cormac
to irritate his readers--weird flashback passages in italics interspersed seemingly at random
in the text, usually without any readily intelligible connection to the rest of the
narrative. Parts of this book are utterly baffling. I found myself all too frequently
reading along and suddenly realizing I hadn't the faintest idea what'd been happening in the
last couple of pages. In these passages all the sentences seem innocuous enough but I can't
figure out what
they add up to. So I have to go back a little and begin again, hoping it makes sense
this time. Or just keep going and hope it wasn't anything important.
These disjointed passages stand out in this book particularly because other sections are,
unusually for McCarthy, gentle, relaxed, and quite frankly beautiful. In these sections I
can start to see him as a truly great writer; but then the spell is broken, jarringly.
I've also begun Cities of the Plain. The protagonists of both The Crossing and
All the Pretty Horses are featured prominently. Either I'm getting used to it or his
writing has settled down here into something relatively straightforward and intelligible.
However, more than halfway in I'm still waiting for a plot.
I also finished Horizontal Yellow. Highly recommended, even if he is wrong about
horses. I'll probably re-read it before too long.
16 January 2008
A band I recommend: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.
Since not many of their lyrics are online (I looked), here are those from a song I particularly
like, Cockroach:
O loathsome, crawling thing
be done with your miniscule affairs.
O hungry, creeping speck
I release you from your cares.
Be gone, specks.
Roach!
You live on carrion. That's outrageous.
You're probably contagious.
Blind, crippled, and half-squashed
and yet you carry on.
Your persistence is disgusting.
I could never find myself trusting
a creature that would rather live
in the trash than in the lawn.
Cockroach, your problems are not mine.
I love life, but with you I draw the line.
Not to flaunt my superior design
but next to you I'm practically divine.
Your problems are not mine.
Cockroach, your problems are not mine.
15 January 2008
Geographical errors in Horizontal Yellow: 1) Dan Flores has a picture taken from the
east side of the Organ Mountains just south of US 70, and labels it as being on the Jornada
del Muerto. However, the Jornada del Muerto lies on the west side of the Organ Mountains,
between the San Andres & Oscura Mts. on the east and the Caballo Mts. & Fra Cristobal Range
on the west. 2) The cover photo is a view looking south at the Capitan Mountains from the
plains southeast of Corona. The back of the book says that this is a view of the Sacramento
Mountains. In Flores' defense, however, there is a history of using
"Sacramento Mountains" in two alternate and rather different senses, either for the
Sacramento Mountains proper, or for the Sacramento Mountains plus all the nearby ranges on
its north side (despite the fact that they are very distinct geologically and several of
them are not contiguous with the Sacramento Mts. proper). Similarly, one will occasionally
see the San Andres Mountains, Organ Mountains, and Oscura Mountains collectively referred to as
the "San Andres Mountains". Clearly a better geographical taxonomy is needed in such
cases.
Another point on Dan Flores' book, continued from a brief mention yesterday: I don't buy the
idea that the arrival of domestic horses in the U.S. was some sort of grand Pleistocene
reunion as Flores (and a disheartening number of other authors) suggests. Flores is partially
aware of this; he admits that neither the country nor the domestic horse are the same things
they were
15,000 years ago, but he suggests that the differences are minor or unimportant--that both
are "close enough". I disagree. The southwestern plains of 15,000 years ago had a diverse
assemblage of megafaunal herbivores and, more importantly, robust populations of large
predators. This is a very different ecology from the depauperate herbivorous mammal fauna
and near absence of predators that the domestic horses faced when released into North
America. Similarly, the horse has also changed. Just how much in terms of its ecology, I do
not know. In terms of temperament and its relation to humans, however, there can be no doubt
that the change was profound. The native Equus scotti was not a domesticated animal.
It lacked precisely the relationship to humans that causes the great fondness and
romanticism with which Dan Flores and many others regard domesticated Equus caballus.
In cultural terms the difference between the two could hardly be more profound; we may as
well dismiss the differences between coyotes and golden retrievers as irrelevant detail.
In short, the horse Flores has fallen in love with is not American. It is Eurasian. As
an advocate of bioregionalism he may as well be singing the praises of Lehmann's
lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana; another introduced species that spreads rampantly
in parts of the southwest and, like Equus caballus, belongs to a genus with native
members).
Now, the whole situation becomes more interesting when we take into account Flores' rejection
of the traditional ideology of wilderness preservation as the pursuit of pre-European pristine
America (the
reasoning being, briefly, that the America the Europeans arrived in was an anthropogenic and
thoroughly inhabited landscape, not a pristine wilderness).
Given that rejection, his advocacy of the domestic horse doesn't necessarily require the
horse to be native. Nonetheless he consistently describes the return of the horse as the
return of a lost native. Another thing
that is not clear (yet?) in this book is what sort of new justificatory framework Flores
intends to put in place. If we abandon the old wilderness ideology (something with which I
agree), what do we put in its place? Or do we view Flores' desire for feral
horses as mere personal whim--and let his arguments for conservation and bioregionalism
suffer the same fate?
14 January 2008
Other recent books:
1) Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. May as well keep reading him so long as I've
started, right? This is one of his earlier books. He didn't use quotation marks then,
either. He did, however, use short sentences and short chapters, in marked contrast
to his later works. I think if you just stuck all his short sentences together with "and" and
took out the chapter breaks, though, you'd get something a lot like the later books. In any
case, this charming tale of a necrophiliac hillbilly is not as obviously pretentious as his
later works. A good read, if you like that sort of thing.
2) Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Pretty much what you would expect from
Krakauer-does-Mormonism. And, as you would expect, online reviews of it include a contingent
of irate Mormons who point out that the homicidal polygamists at the center of this book are
not representative of the LDS church. The problem with that criticism, however, is that
Krakauer knows these guys aren't anything like typical Mormons and openly says so. What he does
suggest here, however, is that although these fundamentalist extremists are so
unlike the modern LDS church they aren't quite so different from the early LDS
church. Thus there is not too much discussion of modern mainstream Mormonism here.
Krakauer's focus on the modern church is limited to how and why it has left most of the
extremist views and actions of the early church. What we get in this book is both some sense of
how an extremist sect becomes a sober mainstream religion, and how this in turn inspires a
fringe of more or less unhinged fundamentalism.
3) Horizontal Yellow by Dan Flores. Only partway through this one. So far I like it
quite a bit, although I remain baffled by the horse fetish that takes hold of so many writers
about the West.
7 January 2008
A book I read recently that I found not in the least objectionable: Throwim Way Leg
by Tim Flannery. I'm a sucker for biological exploration memoirs and this is a good one,
even if Flannery does study mammals.
In addition to explorations of New Guinea itself there is quite a bit here about its people,
who seem an interesting lot. I think I'd like to meet them if it didn't mean dealing with the
climate, parasites, &c. of New Guinea. Without being irritated by the book, however, I find
myself with little to say.
4 January 2008
So long as this page has turned into a venue for random Cormac McCarthy criticism, here's
another noteworthy feature of his writing... his protagonists seem to often encounter people
who tell him their life stories at length, with little provocation and little or no response
from the protagonist. Sometimes it seems like these must be the moments of meaning that the
rest of the books so clearly lack. And yet, while they're generally quite interesting and
enjoyable passages, they never quite seem to come together. After reading them I have the
feeling of having been moved closer to some deep meaning McCarthy wants to convey, yet still
without any clear idea what that deep meaning might be.
A lot of modern television shows (Alias, Lost, Heroes, etc.) seem to use the same sort of
technique. Their writers feel that every episode must provide exciting revelations; yet they
also realize that nothing can ever be resolved, or there won't be exciting revelations to
promise next week. The result, unfortunately, is a continual building of tension that builds
towards... nothing. McCarthy's books have something of the same feeling, although not as
pronounced and not as obviously manipulative.
3 January 2008
I am now reading another of Cormac McCarthy's books, The Crossing. Since the book begins
in Hidalgo County of southwestern New Mexico, an area I have visited several times, I will
mention another thing I have found unsettling about all of McCarthy's books I have read so
far. When the locations he describes are among those I am familiar with, his descriptions of
them are often at odds with my experiences. In this case, McCarthy describes the Animas
Valley and Peloncillo Mountains of Hidalgo Co. as being a land of frequent and sometimes
heavy snowfall in winter. This simply isn't the case. It is an area of infrequent
precipitation in the winter, and this usually not of the frozen variety. In the area where
he puts the protagonist's ranch, there are probably a few light snows most winters, with
minor accumulation and a quick melt as the sun warms it. Instead, he describes snow several
feet deep in the Peloncillo Mountains, a low range that doesn't make it much above 6,500 feet
in elevation. This is a pretty severe misjudgement of the climate; his descriptions make the
Animas Valley sound like Taos.
Other errors include misidentification of common plants or animals. For instance, on page five
McCarthy gives a description of a tree--pale, with bone-like branches and flaking bark--that
fits sycamore perfectly. But he says he's describing cottonwood, which looks nothing of the
sort and, as the most important and distinctive tree of lower elevations in New Mexico, is
a plant any competent observer of the southwest should be well familiar with. He also
describes the protagonist stopping at a stand of "blackjack oak" in the vicinity of the
Peloncillos, but this species occurs nowhere in the state, coming no closer than central
Texas. Oak identification can be a tricky subject, however, and so this error is more
understandable.
Similar errors that he has not made (yet?) in the The Crossing but which abound in
Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses include calling agave "aloe" (a
superficially
similar genus, yes, but an African one--and again agave is one of the most distinctive and
culturally important plants of the area) and some apparent confusion between coyotes and
wolves. It often seems that he's talking about coyotes when he mentions wolves, but it's
hard to be certain.
Probably it sounds like I'm nit-picking, but location is central to these books. It isn't an
afterthought that can be safely ignored here.
Another point before I leave McCarthy alone for the moment--I'm starting to wonder just how
many of McCarthy's books begin with a teenage boy leaving home to head into
Mexico. So far, I'm at three for three. It's not a bad plot-line, but it's starting to seem
redundant.
31 December 2007
I've never thought too highly of "important" literature. "Self-important" or "pretentious"
generally strike me as better adjectives. Recently I read "Blood Meridian" by Cormac
McCarthy; as important literature goes, this is a very good book. Yet it is pretentious,
collapsing under its own weight, written by an author who has clearly spent many hours
perfecting his style and worrying at his image. Speech never
comes with quotation marks and is rarely attributed. Dialogue is thus hopelessly muddled.
Plot and action can barely be discerned under their burden of long, tortured sentences,
obscure references, and irrelevant imagery. The characters likewise are indistinct, most of
them nearly interchangable. The protagonist is never given a name and barely has an
identity at all. Ultimately, there is little left in the book but McCarthy's stylistic
oddities and a long series of deaths, most of them violent and senseless.
Yet this book has received so much praise that I may read it again. Perhaps I missed
something. I must have missed something, since there barely seemed to be anything there.
On the other hand, I am most of the way through another of Cormac McCarthy's books, "All the
Pretty Horses", and find this one much more enjoyable. If we could just get him to drop the
endless run-on sentences and start using quotation marks and intelligible attribution of
dialogue, we could make a proper piece of good fiction out of it.
12 December 2007
Now I've also read The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein. Overlap with
Incompleteness is significant, although the two were written 20 years apart and The
Mind-Body Problem is fiction (loosely autobiographical fiction, but fiction) while
Incompleteness is (mostly) non-fiction. The impression given by the two books in
combination is that Goldstein lives in a very narrow world that she assumes to be the center
of the universe; I can't quite decide if this is charming or arrogant. I guess I'll stick
with charming for the moment and feel myself slightly superior for knowing that my own
worldview is hopelessly provincial, while Goldstein perhaps does not.
In any case, The Mind-Body Problem works very well as an entertaining mix of
autobiography and self-exploration, focusing primarily on the role of women in academia (at
least, in
one particular version of academia--Princeton of the 1960's/1970's) and, conversely, the role
of male genius in this world. The book's philosophical pretensions, however, are sometimes
irritating. Despite being a professor of philosophy, Goldstein comes across here as a good
novelist who dabbles in philosophy, rather than a philosopher who dabbles in fiction.
Although I can certainly understand the desire to simplify complicated philosophical issues
to some extent, so as to create an engaging novel rather than a dry technical work,
Goldstein's attempts at this often seem clumsy. Perhaps non-philosophers won't
mind, though.
As an example (the one that I found most irritating, of course) we have a proof of
dualism on pages 157-158. My own crude simplification of this proof is: "Since our
bodies continue to exist after death but our minds do not, our minds and bodies are
fundamentally different things." The argument, as presented, might sound reasonable in
context (at least to people without my antipathy towards dualism), however, the same argument
would allow us to split off into separate realms any properties of any object that can be
lost without the destruction of the object. So instead of dualism, we would end up with a
hopeless pluralism... not just mind and body, but color, size, shape, texture, &c., would all
live in their own separate realms, connected by God only knows what tenuous strands of
metaphysics. After all, the color of an object can change without
the object being destroyed, so the color of an object and the object must be very different
things inhabiting separate metaphysical realms; and so on for any malleable characteristic
you care to think of.
So, the short version is: if you like semi-autobiographical fiction about academia you
should like this book. Just don't expect too much from the philosophical bits.
9 December 2007
I recently read Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca
Goldstein. An interesting and well-written book (with minor exceptions; for instance, the
prefix "meta" becomes cloying after a few dozen uses), but, Wittgensteinian I
am, I'm left wondering what the general importance of Gödel's famous incompleteness
theorems
is. The narrow importance in mathematics--that Gödel showed Hilbert's program to be
unworkable--is fairly clear. (Even this importance, though, is somewhat fishy, since
Gödel's theorems rely on Gödel numbering. Roughly speaking, Gödel numbering
allows meaning to be ascribed to numbers. Since that meaning is
beyond the sort of simple arithmetical system Gödel was targeting, I'm not sure how valid
its use is in evaluation of such simple systems.)
However, very few who aren't working in academic mathematics
have ever heard of Hilbert's program--except, perhaps, in reference to Gödel's
theorems--and the alleged import of the incompleteness theorems extends far beyond
that narrow, highly specialized sphere.
To provide at least some minimal context, Gödel's incompleteness theorems state
that we cannot create a formal mathematical system that is both consistent and complete
(i.e., capable of being used to prove all true mathematical statements that can be formulated
within it). Hilbert's program entailed the production of a formal mathematical system that is
both consistent and complete, so clearly Hilbert & his mathematical followers have a problem.
The version of Gödel's incompleteness theorems that has seeped out into the world,
however, is the suggestion that exacting mathematics proves any systematization of knowledge
to be doomed. Hence
post-modernists love Gödel, just as they love Heisenberg (whose Uncertainty Principle is
similarly abused), because they think he dooms science, logic, math, etc., to the sort of
free-floating, harebrained subjectivity they adore. Much of Rebecca Goldstein's point in
Incompleteness is that this interpretation is at odds with that of Gödel himself.
Gödel, fide Goldstein, thought his theorems supported a Platonist (rather than,
for instance, logical positivist) view of the world, wherein mathematics could rely on
objective
mathematical truth when formalism alone fails. The result would then be to strengthen
mathematics by showing that it is a reflection of objective reality.
Wittgenstein, for
his part, described it as a "logische kunststuck", literally a "logical art-piece". From a
Wittgensteinian point of view, the Hilbert program was rather silly to start with, founded as
it was on the fear of contradiction to which mathematicians are prone. (This fear does have a
basis: logically, anything can be proven from a contradiction. Thus, any reasoning that is
based on contradiction is fruitless. The fear goes too far, however, when the possibility of
contradiction within a formal system is used to discredit the entire system. Like mud,
contradiction poses no problems until you step in it--so just walk around.) Gödel simply
uses this same fear to undermine the Hilbert program. The whole thing is rather irrelevant
and does nothing more, ultimately, than to translate the classic self-referential paradoxes
(which, in their various forms, boil down to something like "This sentence is false.") into
exceedingly complicated mathematics. The basic fact--that self-reference allows paradox--had
by Gödel's time been fairly obvious for several millenia. The translation of this
familiar philosophical pothole into formal math is ultimately a demonstration of great skill and
ingenuity, but not a surprising or ground-breaking result.
7 October 2007
How to distinguish Eryngium heterophyllum
and Eryngium lemmoni
or
Why I don't like to use the Kearney & Peebles
Flora of Arizona
Here is how Kearney & Peebles distinguish these two species:
"3. Plants from a cylindric taproot; lower cauline leaves pinnatifid to bipinnatisect;
inflorescence paniculately branched, the heads comate; bracts linear-lanceolate to lanceolate,
entire or with 1 or 2 pairs of lateral spines near the middle, commonly yellowish above . . .
. . . . 3. E. heterophyllum
3. Plants from a fascicle of fibrous or fleshy roots;
lower cauline leaves spinose-serrate; inflorescence successively trifurcate, the heads not
comate; bracts broadly lanceolate to oblanceolate, spinose-serrate with 2 or 3 pairs of teeth,
silvery-white above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. E.
Lemmoni"
And here are my observations on the various characters:
"Plants from
a cylindric taproot" vs. "plants from a fascicle of fibrous or fleshy roots". This appears to
be accurate and, although not necessarily a useful field character, this can be a
useful distinction with good herbarium specimens.
"Lower cauline leaves pinnatifid to
bipinnatisect" vs. "lower cauline leaves spinose-serrate". This is also essentially accurate,
although it could be better worded, for instance by including a more quantifiable distinction
rather than descriptive terms that can be somewhat subjective (how deep must the divisions be
before the leaf is pinnatifid?).
"Inflorescence paniculately branched" vs. "inflorescence
successively trifurcate". This is simply inaccurate. Inflorescences of the two species are
quite similar. In both, as we move up the plant we have first several alternately arranged
primary inflorescence branches, then a whorl of ca. 3-7 primary branches. Each primary branch
of the inflorescence is determinate, and may either terminate in 2-3 heads arising from a
single node, or the lateral head(s) may be replaced by secondary branches terminating in
groups of 2-3 heads. It seems to be more common for E. heterophyllum to have the
terminal groups with only 2 heads, and E. lemmoni to have groups of 3 heads. However,
this is by no means a uniformly applicable identifying characteristic, and neither
species has an inflorescence that is accurately characterized as "paniculately branched"
or as "successively trifurcate", although the primary branches of the inflorescences of
either species may (or may not) be "successively trifurcate".
"The heads comate"
vs. "the heads not comate". "Comate" is, first, a needlessly obscure term. I do not recall
having heard it before, in any context, and although it sounds much like the more commonly
used "comose" the meaning is quite different. In any case, a comate head is one in which the
bracts of the head are greatly enlarged at the apex of the head and form a leafy projection
beyond the flowers. Pineapples are comate. The heads of E. lemmoni are indeed not
comate and most heads on most specimens of E. heterophyllum are indeed
comate. But some heads on many specimens, and all heads on rare specimens of E.
heterophyllum are not comate, or at best indistinctly so. So this is a
one-directional character; plants with
comate heads must be E. heterophyllum, but plants with non-comate heads could be either
species.
"Bracts linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, entire or with 1 or 2 pairs of lateral
spines near the middle" vs. "bracts broadly lanceolate to oblanceolate, spinose-serrate with 2
or 3 pairs of teeth". This is accurate, although unfortunately there is overlap in the
descriptions.
Bracts
"commonly yellowish above" vs. "silvery-white above". I cannot tell if this character is
inaccurate, or simply variable and of limited utility. I have only seen E.
heterophyllum in the field at two locations (Rucker Canyon in the Chiricahua Mts. and
Clanton Draw in the Peloncillo Mts.), but both times the bracts were silvery-white above. No
difference in bract coloration is apparent from the herbarium specimens I looked at earlier
today, but colors are often unreliable in dried material. Presumably any specimens that did
clearly have yellowish bracts could be readily identified but, as with non-comate heads,
specimens with silvery-white bracts (which appear to be the overwhelming majority) could be
either species.
Although this is the most annoying example I have encountered recently
(since this key has resulted in my misidentifying E. heterophyllum as E. lemmoni
not once but twice), it is unfortunately not an isolated example. Most keys in the Kearney &
Peebles flora are well written and eminently usable. However, a significant minority are not,
and while these keys will still usually yield correct identifications if used carefully while
comparing specimens of all of the relevant taxa, they often make me feel rather confused and
can lead to misidentifications if used incautiously.
3 September 2007
I return this night from the Peloncillo & Chiricahua Mountains. I bring a piece of
Agave back, lodged in my arm.
28 August 2007
Got my first rejection letter for a manuscript; specifically, a brief note objecting to
poorly supported nomenclatural change in the snake genera Pantherophis &
Pituophis by Burbrink & Lawson.
Reviews are anonymous, but of course it's hard to resist guessing who the reviewers are based
on their comments. One review appears to be from
Burbrink; he very nearly says so and it is clear enough from the views expressed. It is,
predictably, uniformly negative and
includes, in addition to a couple of minor but correct points, many that appear to result
from nothing more than a negative reaction to criticism. For instance, I am told that I do
not have a clear grasp of why phylogenetic hypotheses generated by Bayesian inference should
be preferred over those generated by maximum likelihood. This is true--I don't have
any idea. The reason I don't have a clear grasp of this,
however, is related to one of my criticisms of Burbrink & Lawson--they prefer a BI tree but
do not give any clear explanation of their reasons for doing so, nor cite any author that
provides such an explanation. So I am criticized for not understanding a point that the
authors did not make. So it goes.
The author of the other review is less obvious. In initially suspected it might be David
Hillis, but have now learned that this is not the case. Most of the comments
from this reviewer are relatively minor criticisms, although he did notice a significant
omission on my part. Many comments relate to PhyloCode, and some of these are interesting.
Some background explanation is necessary:
Several phylogenies have recently been published for the tribe Lampropeltini, which includes
the genera Pantherophis and Pituophis among others. The status of the genus
Pantherophis varies between these phylogenies. Depending on the phylogeny, the genus may
be either: 1) monophyletic; 2) unresolved; 3) paraphyletic with respect to Pituophis; or
4) paraphyletic with respect to the genera Arizona, Bogertophis, Cemophora,
Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Stilosoma. Burbrink & Lawson suggested
that, based on topology "3", Pantherophis and Pituophis should be synonymized,
with no discussion of the alternate topologies (despite the fact that "4" was produced by one
of their own analyses).
I objected to this, on fairly obvious grounds. My second reviewer suggests
that under PhyloCode the situation would be unproblematic. PhyloCode is a system in which
taxa are explicitly clade names, rather than being defined based on content; a taxon
in PhyloCode is something like "all members of the smallest clade including species X, Y, &
Z". So definitions of taxa never change on different trees; but content often does change.
With appropriate definitions of the relevant taxa in the present situation, content of
Pituophis could remain unchanged, but content of Pantherophis would change
radically on different trees. I don't see, however, how this removes the problem. Instead
of having different content-based definitions of generic names, we would have constant
clade-based definitions with varying content. The result is the same: differing
content of taxa. And in fact the amount of variation increases. Under traditional Linnean
nomenclature, we have two alternatives: a) we either stick with previous usage & have two
separate genera, Pantherophis and Pituophis, or b) we accept Burbrink's proposal &
Pituophis now includes species formerly included in Pantherophis. Under
PhyloCode, we have four possibilities corresponding with the four published topologies,
either: 1) Pantherophis includes only those species previously assigned to the genus;
2) content of Pantherophis is undefined; 3) Pantherophis includes previous
members of the genus as well as members of Pituophis; 4) Pantherophis includes
previous members of the genus as well as members of Arizona, Bogertophis,
Cemophora, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Stilosoma. Furthermore,
conventions for stating which alternative is being used by an author are simple and
well-known under the traditional Linnean system. "Pituophis sensu Utiger et
al. (2002)" would indicate alternative "a", and "Pantherophis sensu Burbrink & Lawson
(2007)"
would indicated alternative "b". But what do we do when using PhyloCode? There is no
established convention. I suppose something like "Pantherophis, according to the
cladogram of Burbrink & Lawson (2007), figure 2" would work, but this presupposes more
knowledge on the part of the author. To know what
"Pantherophis sensu Burbrink & Lawson (2007)" refers to, I need to know which taxa
Burbrink & Lawson included in the genus. To know what "Pantherophis, according to
the cladogram of Burbrink & Lawson (2007), figure 2" I have to know both what the
PhyloCode definition of "Pantherophis" is and what topology is shown by the figure
referred to. Keeping track of PhyloCode definitions should be easier than the
corresponding Linnean requirement; under PhyloCode, there would be one published
definition per taxon name, whereas in traditional Linnean taxonomy there may be several.
Having to know published topologies, however, will often be much more difficult than keeping
track of taxonomic proposals in Linnean nomenclature. There are often many
more published cladograms than there are published taxonomic proposals; in this case, there
are at least 8 published cladograms relevant to delineation of supraspecific taxa within tribe
Lampropeltini.
PhyloCode certainly produces different problems than does traditional Linnean
nomenclature. However, I can see no indication that it produces fewer problems, and
can certainly see cases in which it produces more of them.
27 August 2007
Back from a couple days in the field. Hiking up steep mountains at night is very odd, I've
discovered. I went most of the way up Mt. Riley Friday night. On steep slopes on the east
side, I found myself on a 45-degree slope unable to see top or bottom of the mountain. Kind
of an odd mix of claustrophobia and vertigo. Worth doing once; maybe again.
24 August 2007
Following up from yesterday, here's another paper from the Crews lab that contradicts their
preferred hypothesis of progesterone induction of pseudocopulatory behavior:
B.G. Dias & D. Crews, 2006. "Serotonergic modulation of male-like pseudocopulatory behavior
in the parthenogenetic whiptail lizard, Cnemidophorus uniparens." Hormones and
Behavior 50: 401-409.
This one does at least have a minimal discussion of the anomaly:
"The absence of male-like
pseudocopulatory behavior by OVX+P animals [lizards with implanted progesterone] might be due
to the need for a decrease in levels of estrogen to accompany an increase in progesterone
levels (as observed in naturally cycling animals), a hormonal profile not achieved by
implanting animals in the OVX+P group with only progesterone."
Since the lizards in question had their ovaries removed and thus are producing no endogenous
estrogen, it seems that they would indeed have a "decrease in levels of estrogen", but I'll
readily admit my ignorance of most of the physiology involved. The main point remains: we
now have two papers showing no induction of pseudocopulation by progesterone, and one showing
it. So the effect is, if nothing else, not repeatable. Another point of interest is that in
this, and the other Crews lab papers on experimental manipulation of pseudocopulatory
behavior I have read, the authors find it necessary to induce pseudocopulatory behavior by
implanting testosterone in order to study it. This is presumably because intact
lizards do not exhibit the behavior often enough to study, and naturally-occurring hormones
do not induce this behavior reliably. So Crews lab experimental design & data do not seem to
support the Crews lab contention that this is a common, natural behavior. This also has the
further effect that most of the advantages of using a parthenogenetic lizard to study the
evolution of sexual behavior are nullified. It's not exactly clear what the behavior of
androgenized females has do with evolution of behaviors in natural populations.
23 August 2007
Further thoughts on pseudocopulation in Aspidoscelis.
The story David Crews likes to tell about the role of hormones is something like this (e.g., in
his 1987 Scientific American article):
Crews coincidentally observed pseudocopulation in captive A. uniparens, and wondered
what was going on. He first thought that perhaps A. uniparens had elevated
testosterone levels that produced male-like copulatory behavior in this all-female species.
Research down this line was only partially fruitful. It turns out that exogenous testosterone
can produce male-like sexual behavior, but there is no detectable testosterone being produced by
these lizards. So he figures it must be some sort of unusual activity of a typical female
hormone. Male-like behavior turns out to be limited to post-ovulatory females with high
levels of progesterone, and further experiments show that in both female A.
uniparens and the majority of male A. inornata, one of the parental species of the
hybrid A. uniparens, progesterone can elicit male-like sexual behavior. So now we
know the hormonal basis of pseudocopulation: male-like sexual behavior is produced in
these lizards by progesterone, a hormone typical of the female reproductive cycle.
As I mentioned, he was telling basically this story back in 1987, and though the Crews
lab has continued to do research on pseudocopulation in Aspidoscelis for the last 20
years, this part of the story hasn't really changed. Now here's the interesting part. In
2003, Sakata, Woolley, Gupta, & Crews published a paper entitled "Differential
effects of testosterone and progesterone on the activation and retention of courtship
behavior in sexual and parthenogenetic whiptail lizards." This isn't a particularly good
paper (for instance, readers are challenged to understand what, exactly, is going on in
Figure 2, to comprehend why the length of behavioral trials for expression of male-like
sexual behavior varies, apparently at random, among experiments, or to explain the absence of
any experimental control in Experiments 3 & 4), but it does have one rather intriguing
result. Sakata et al. find no elicitation of male-like sexual behavior in A.
uniparens by progesterone. Their Experiment 2, which looks at the difference in percent
of ovariectomized individuals of A. uniparens exhibiting male-like sexual behavior after
implantation of testosterone, progesterone, or cholesterol (this experiment does have
a control), shows that progesterone produces results statistically indistinguishable from
those of cholesterol. Now, you would think this would change the story, right? Nope.
In their conclusion, Sakata et al. simply cite previous work as having shown that
"both testosterone (T) and progesterone (P) can activate courtship behavior" (p. 528), and do
not even discuss the fact that their present study found no such activation.
18 August 2007
Some thoughts on pseudocopulation in Aspidoscelis...
David Crews & associates have studied pseudocopulation between females of
parthenogenetic Aspidoscelis in captivity for several decades now,
and have argued throughout that it is an important factor in the
reproduction of wild populations. This view was criticized extensively
early in the studies of Crew et al., but little criticism has been
published in the last two decades. I've been skeptical for a few years,
though, and it doesn't seem to me that the criticisms have ever been
satisfactorily answered. My present discussion is spurred by a 2003
article by Miriam Solomon, "The Whiptail Lizard Reconsidered", since it
includes many of the salient misconceptions and omissions.
The central question in attempts to understand pseudocopulation in
parthenogenetic Aspidoscelis has been whether this behavior is
primarily an artifact of captivity, or occurs frequently in the wild. M.
Solomon discusses this on p. 321:
"Reproductively inactive lizards do not pseudocopulate (so, it isn't just
artifactual behavior created by the stress of captivity, nor is it behavior
unrelated to reproductive physiology) (Moore, Whittier, Billy and Crews
1985 and Moore, Whittier and Crews 1985)."
The first conclusion here is erroneous, the second accurate. Condition-sensitivity
does not imply that a behavior is not an artifact of unusual
conditions. It may only mean that it is a relatively complicated artifact,
sensitive to variation within unusual conditions rather than only to the
unusual conditions themselves. Another mistaken assumption here (repeated
later on the page as well) is that increased stress is the only unusual
aspect of captivity. However, unusual captive behaviors need only be
caused by an aspect of the captive conditions that differs from those
experienced by animals in the wild; increased stress is hardly the only
such factor available and in fact greatly increased density of captive
populations, not increased stress, has been the most commonly mentioned
unusual aspect of captivity suggested by critics (e.g., Cuellar in the 1993
book "Biology of Whiptail lizards (genus Cnemidophorus)". M.
Solomon's discussion of this question continues on p. 322:
"There is one paper, however, that addresses a lingering worry, referred to
by Collins and Pinch as "the most salient piece of negative evidence" (p.
116): why has pseudocopulation not been observed in the field? As late as
1989 (Paulissen and Walker) there is puzzlement about this. Well, now the
important observations have been done. Crews's 1991 paper with Young
reports the first documented observation of pseudocopulation (by an
observer not involved in the debate), and also reports a new study giving
indirect evidence of pseudocopulation in the field from measurement of bite
marks (this was a much better study than the first such study). McCoid and
Hensley (1991), Eioer (1993), Paulissen (1995) (the same Paulissen who in
1989 doubted that pseudocopulation occurs in the field) and Bezy and
Enderson (2002) have reported pseudocopulation in nature in a number of
parthenogenetic lizards including C. uniparens."
Yes, pseudocopulation has been observed in the wild; however, the published
reports are either indirect or of the "man bites dog" variety. For
instance, the report of Bezy & Enderson (2002) is noteworthy and
publishable only because it is such a rarely observed phenomenon; while
such reports do help establish that pseudocopulation occurs in the wild, by
their very nature they also suggest that it cannot be common. Indirect
evidence is somewhat uncertain; published reports from indirect evidence
have not uniformly suggested that pseudocopulation is a common occurrence,
and since parthenogenetic species typically co-occur with sexual species,
it is necessary to distinguish whether bite marks come from pseudocopulation
with other females, or from copulation with males of co-occurring
sexuals; both are known to occur at unknown frequency in the
wild. Observational studies in semi-natural conditions (large outdoor
exclosures, rather than the small indoor aquaria of Crews et al.)
are another important source of information not mentioned by Solomon. Beth
Leuck conducted several such studies, and never observed pseudocopulation
among parthenogens. She did, however, observe a number of copulations
between sexuals in the same studies. Unobserved pseudocopulations may, of
course, have occurred; but they must have either been far less common than
copulation between individuals of sexual species, or
for some reason much more difficult to observe. On the whole, it seems to
me that we know pseudocopulation does occur in wild populations, but that
it appears to be much less common than sexual copulation and that claims
that it is frequent enough to physiologically replace sexual copulation in
parthenogens remain unfounded.
One of the implications of this is interesting, but has rarely been
explored. Parthenogens like those in Aspidoscelis are of great
interest in studies of the evolution of sex. The central question in that
field is, roughly: Since asexual taxa can, all else equal, out-reproduce
sexuals by a factor of two, why don't asexual taxa replace sexuals? If
parthenogenetic Aspidoscelis are physiologically entrenched by their
sexual history, and cannot realize the potential two-fold reproductive
advantage because of hormonal reliance on copulatory behavior that occurs
too infrequently in the wild to effectively replace sexual behavior in
gonochoristic species, this provides an answer. However, it may be over-looked
in part because it is not the kind of answer researchers are
generally looking for; it is a suggestion that all else cannot be equal,
and thus undermines search for a general explanation.
Another facet of the question that is generally overlooked is that
pseudocopulation may not be a characteristic of parthenogens, but one of
whiptails generally. Crews & Moore (1993, in "Biology of Whiptail Lizards
(genus Cnemidophorus")) mention, briefly and without further
discussion, that pseudocopulation is also observed when females of sexual
species are housed together in captivity. This important observation has
not been followed up, that I am aware of; this is odd, since it
fundamentally changes any picture of the importance of pseudocopulation in
whiptails. It renders the suggestion that pseudocopulation is something
new that happens in parthenogens to allow them to accommodate the absence
of males, which seems implicit in most of the work of Crews et al.
and in interpretations of their work, untenable. Instead, perhaps
parthenogens in Aspidoscelis can arise only because pseudocopulation
already occurs in the genus; but they cannot displace sexuals because
pseudocopulation doesn't happen often enough.
19 July 2007
Yes, it's been a long time since I wrote anything here.
Now, there's nothing some scientists like better than pointing out the gaping
flaws in the
work of others. I happen to be one of those scientists, and, with that in mind,
here are my
thoughts on a recent paper by E.B. Rosenblum: Convergent Evolution and Divergent
Selection:
Lizards at the White Sands Ecotone. First, a brief summary, taken from portions
of the
abstract:
"Three lizard species [Aspidoscelis inornata, Holbrookia maculata,
and
Sceloporus undulatus], distributed along a dramatic environmental
gradient in substrate
color, display convergent adaptation of blanched coloration on the gypsum dunes
of White
Sands National Monument." ... "I find species differences in degree of
background matching
and in genetic connectivity of populations across the ecotone. Differences among
species in
phenotypic response to selection scale precisely to levels of genetic isolation.
Species with
higher levels of gene flow across the ecotone exhibit less dramatic responses to
selection.
Results also reveal a strong signal of ecologically mediated divergence for
White Sands
lizards. For all species, phenotypic variation is better explained by habitat
similarity than
genetic similarity. Convergent evolution of blanched coloration at White Sands
clearly
reflects the action of strong divergent selection; however, adaptive response
appears to be
modulated by gene flow and demographic history and can be predicted by
divergence-with-gene-flow models."
The problems in this study show the importance of basic biology & knowledge of
ecology.
First off, this is based on mitochondrial DNA and the results show higher gene
flow
between sample sites for the teiid Aspidoscelis inornata than the two
phrynosomatid
species, Holbrookia inornata and Sceloporus undulatus.
Mitochondrial DNA is,
however, a biased marker; since it shows only matrilineal relationships, it will
consistently
underestimate gene-flow in species with male-biased dispersal. Not a terribly
good choice,
then, but perhaps defensible because it is far easier to work with than any of
the
alternatives; however, the deficiencies need to be addressed and they aren't.
Most lizards,
including phrynosomatids,
do have male-biased dispersal; but teiid lizards don't. So we
would expect
that, even under similar patterns of overall gene flow, phrynosomatids should
show more
geographic structure than teiids because of differences in sex-biased
dispersal.
Second, differences in microhabitat use & behavior, although mentioned, are
given short
shrift. From the paper:
"A previous study comparing activity patterns between H. maculata and S.
undulatus at White
Sands found that H. maculata spent more time in open areas and was less closely
associated
with vegetation than S. undulatus (Hager 2001a)." ... "Therefore, it is
plausible that H.
maculata is more visible to predators and that selection pressure for substrate
matching is
higher in this species."
This is an important point. If we want to look at background matching, we need
to measure
the backgrounds relevant for the lizards. A lizard that spends a lot of its
time under
bushes needs to be cryptic under bushes, not merely on open sand; even if
it matches
its background just as well as a lizard spending most of its time on open sand,
it will be
darker and more strongly patterned. And, guess what, the species that spends
most of its
time on sand, Holbrookia maculata, is indeed lighter and less-patterned
than the
other two, and so the observed results fit perfectly with expectations based on
what we know
of the ecology of these lizards. Moreover, ordering of taxa in order of
brightness is the
same on White Sands and off: Holbrookia maculata is always brightest,
Aspidoscelis
inornata is always darkest, and Sceloporus undulatus is always
intermediate--a good indication that something more than different facility in
matching
White Sands substrates is going on. But an important role for microhabitat use
and behavior is
rejected for, so far as I can tell, no particularly good reason.
A third, and related, problem is poor knowledge of White Sands:
"Second, intermediately colored S. undulatus [and A. inornata!]
could be locally
adapted to the intermediate substrate color at the margin of the dune field.
However, in
contrast to the large expanse of pure gypsum habitat, the band of intermediately
colored
ecotonal substrate is extremely narrow, often only meters wide. Given the
likelihood of gene
flow across the ecotone in this species and the restricted area of the ecotone,
natural
selection would need to be implausibly strong to provide an adaptive explanation
for
maintenance of intermediate color morphs."
I've spent some time wandering White Sands. The basic situation is this:
there's a large
active dune field with very white sand and small, slightly darker interdunal
areas; to the
west of this area there are flat, crusty, white, alkali flats; to the north,
east, and south,
the dunes get progressively smaller, narrower, more vegetated, and slightly
darker in color
while the interdunes get much larger and significantly darker. These large
interdunes toward
the edge of the dune area are a major portion of the White Sands area, and are
intermediate
in color between the active dune field and the soil of the surrounding flats of
Tularosa
Basin. The "extremely narrow" ecotone is exactly what you see along the road at
White Sands
National Monument in the area of the Big Dunes Trail, one of E.B. Rosenblum's
collection
sites, but it is not at all an accurate representation of the situation
otherwise.
Importantly, Aspidoscelis inornata is very abundant in these large
interdunal areas,
whereas Holbrookia maculata is not (I haven't seen enough Sceloporus
undulatus,
OTOH, to have any idea of their distribution). This comes back to the point
above: what
background is relevant to the lizards? This is determined by behavior and
abundance across
habitat types and cannot be estimated by simply choosing a half-dozen sites,
treating them as
monoliths, and seeing how well the lizards at each site match open soil or
sand.
And then we have another problem: phenotypic plasticity. We don't know whether
or not color
differences between White Sands and other populations of these lizards are
heritable, and we
do know that most lizards, including phrynosomatids, have some level of
plasticity in
coloration. For instance, a 1958 study by R.E. Bundy & J. Neess suggests that
the major
factor in background matching by the phrynosomatid Phrynosoma modesta is
plasticity.
And now we're down to nit-picking. There are more than three lizards with
light-colored
populations on White Sands, but the "other two" are never mentioned:
Phrynosoma
cornuta and Uta stansburiana. I wouldn't bother mentioning this,
except that E.B.
Rosenblum says: "In this study, I ask how the complete lizard fauna at White
Sands has
responded to natural selection across a common ecotone." No, this study
examines how 3/5 of
the lizard fauna at White Sands responds to selection.
In conclusion:
1. The genetic markers used do not provide a neutral estimate of gene flow, and
this bias,
although fundamental in interpretation of the results, is ignored.
2. Alternative explanations that fit the data at least as well as the preferred
hypothesis,
that gene flow limits crypsis, are rejected either without good cause or due to
poor
knowledge of the area.
4 January 2007
Thoughts on sex-ratio in ants:
The usual explanation of sex-ratios in ants goes something like this: In a
monogyne colony
with a singly-mated queen, queens are equally related to both male and female
alates and thus
should favor a balanced sex ratio, while workers have a relatedness of .75 to
female alates
and .25 to males and should therefore favor a female-biased sex-ratio of about
3:1. If queens
mate multiply this relatedness asymmetry is reduced (because relatedness to male
alates,
which carry only the queen's genes through parthenogenesis, stays constant while
relatedness
to female alates, which now may be half-sibs rather than full-sibs, decreases)
and the
tendency for workers to favor female-biased reproduction should likewise
diminish. If there
are multiple singly-mated queens, the relatedness asymmetry remains constant but
average
relatedness to either male or female alates drops, presumably reducing indirect
fitness
effects for workers of a female-biased sex ratio. Based on this, in monogyne
singly-mated colonies a sex ratio approaching 3:1 is taken to indicate worker
control of
reproduction, a sex ratio approaching 1:1 is taken to indicate queen control,
intermediate values are interpreted as the result of conflict and partial
control by each
group, selective killing of male larvae by workers is interpreted as a
manifestation of
parent-offspring conflict between the queen and workers, and so on and so
forth.
This explanatory framework is interesting because there is both a fair amount of
empirical
support for it and some errors in its formulation. One conspicuous absence is
the role
males may play. Because males are produced parthenogenetically from
unfertilized haploid
eggs, when a
male mates with a queen he will have a relatedness of 0 to any males the colony
later
produces, and males that could impart genes causing a female-biased sex ratio
would have
increased fitness as a result; the ideal sex-ratio for males, from the point of
view of
relatedness in the next generation alone, would be 1:0 (the ideal proportion of
males
increases from 0 if future generations are taken into account). Furthermore,
although queens
are
equally related to both male and female offspring, the haplodiploid reproductive
system of
ants means that, all else equal, male offspring, which give rise only to
females, will
produce only half as many "grandchildren" for a queen as will females, which
produce both
male and female offspring. So, although an account of the queen's direct,
single-generation
fitness alone would suggest she should favor a 1:1 sex ratio, when reproduction
of the next
generation is included the favored sex ratio becomes 2:1. If all this is
correct, both
males, queens, and workers should all favor a female-biased sex-ratio, although
to
differing degrees and with substantial variance associated with changes in
reproductive
structure of colonies.
Now, how to interpret variation in sex-ratio, killing of male larvae by workers,
dependence
of said killing on the number of mates a queen has had, and all those other
phenomena
...?
2 January 2007
Further thoughts on polygyne ants... in Solenopsis invicta the switch to
a polygyne
colony system has been linked to a single gene (Krieger & Ross, 2002; Science
295(5553):
328-332); this is interesting but not really very informative evolutionarily,
beyond
establishing that there is a genetic component to the social system. In
Linepithema humile, the switch to a polygyne colony system has been
attributed to a
genetic bottleneck (if all individuals in a population are very closely related,
all members
of the population may treat each other as kin; Tsutsui et al., 2000;
P.N.A.S. 97(11):
5948-5953), to increased costs of competition in the denser populations of the
introduced range,
and thus selection against uncommon recognition
alleles (Giraud et al., 2002; P.N.A.S. 99(9): 6075-6079), or to a
combination of a
bottleneck and selection against uncommon recognition alleles (Tsutsui et
al., 2003;
P.N.A.S. 100(3): 1078-1083). However, the last-cited paper undermines any
argument for
selection against uncommon recognition alleles since it shows that nestmate
recognition is learned in Linepithema humile, and that currently existing
"supercolonies" of L. humile are being maintained by learned broad
recognition in
spite of diversity at recognition alleles. The same paper also shows
competitive superiority
of monogyne colony workers against those of polygyne colonies, which further
confuses the
situation; competitive superiority of polygyne colonies, however, could still
occur if in
their introduced range these colonies can overwhelm monogynes through sheer
numbers, a
possibility supported by the higher nest density and abundance of polygynes
compared to
monogynes. These results from Tsutsui et al. (2003) furthermore argue
against a genetic
bottleneck alone causing current unicoloniality, unless the present genetic
diversity arose
after the recent formation of a unicolonial social structure, which seems
unlikely. Another
cause of unicoloniality that has been suggested in other ants is nest site
limitation: if ant
densities are high, good nest sites may all be occupied and queens may have no
choice but to
attempt to enter existing nests, giving rise to polygyne nests if they are
successful.
29 December 2006
I recently read E.O. Wilson's autobiography, "Naturalist". Excellent book.
It's also gotten
me on an ant kick again. Dangerous. Today's exciting phenomenon of note: a
polygynous form
(having multiple queens per colony) of the Argentine fire ant (Solenopsis
invicta;
a.k.a. "imported red fire ant", a name concocted for political correctness) in
the U.S. occur at
10-30 times the density of monygynous (one queen per colony) forms, and forms
interconnected
"supercolonies" without explicit colonial territories. This is odd. According
to kin
selection theory, one of the reasons you get cooperation in social hymenoptera
is that the
haplodiploid sex determination system of the hymenoptera produces the rather
unusual effect
that,
if the sex-ratio of reproductives is female-biased, workers are more related to
the queen's
offspring than they would be to their own. But in a polygynous colony, any
given worker may
have a relatedness of 0 to the offspring of a particular queen. All else equal,
polygyne
colonies should be on thin ice; relatedness no longer favors cooperation. But
instead,
polygyne colonies in this species show greater cooperation, with
cooperation extending
from the within-colony level to the between-colony level.
Even more interesting, this is not an isolated phenomenon, but a repeated
pattern in
highly-invasive ants.
28 December 2006
Possible answers to previous questions...
1: Yes; some obvious potential venues of cooperation include population
synchronicity (e.g.
masting in oaks), fertilization of ovules with non-self pollen rather than
selfing, nutrient
transfer to conspecifics through mycorrhizae (to the extent that this is under a
plant's
control, which may be very limited).
Cooperation is a somewhat limited word, though, and traditional preoccupation
with altruism
may obscure the evolutionary important phenomena. What are of interest to me
are any
processes that promote success above the individual level, whether they promote
success
at the individual level or not...
2: No; the limitation is that any genes acting at higher levels must pass
through the
gateways of lower-level selection first, and since success at these lower levels
is so much
more direct, obvious, and measurable, higher level selection of all kinds tends
to be
ignored.
26 December 2006
Question of the day:
Can plants cooperate?
Second question of the day:
Is there any inherent reason that kin selection shouldn't apply above the
population or
species level?
19 September 2006
More bits of Stebbins; p. 262:
"Hybridization between well-established and well-adapted species in a stable
environment will
have no significant outcome or will be detrimental to the species populations.
But if the
crossing occurs under rapidly changing conditions or in a region which offers
new habitats to
the segregating offspring, many of these segregates may survive and contribute
to a greater
or lesser degree to the evolutionary progress of the group concerned."
p. 270:
"There is little doubt, therefore, that the majority of the examples of
hybridization and
introgression which can be foud in plant populations at the present time are
asociate with
the disturbance of old habitats and the opening up of new ones through human
activity.
15 September 2006
Disturbing quote from this
article:
"If we're not willing to use it [non-lethal weaponry] here against our fellow
citizens, then we
should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. [Air Force
Secretary
Michael Wynne]
I find weapons that are non-lethal but incapacitating very disturbing. They
make abuse of
power easier to justify--after all, you're not killing anyone--but to
think that
using nonlethal force is inherently unobjectionable is absurd. And arguing that
American
civilians--or any unconsenting civilians--are appropriate guinea pigs for
weaponry of
any kind is downright evil. If we need test subjects--start with Michael Wynne.
If he's not
willing to use it on himself, he shouldn't be willing to use it on any of the
rest of us.
Now more Stebbins quotes; pp. 189-190:
"The common ground of agreement between these definitions may be expressed as
follows. In
sexually reproducing organisms, a species is a system consisting of one or more
genetically,
morphologically, and physiologicall different kinds of organisms which possess
an essential
continuity maintained y the similarity of genes or the more or less free
interchange of genes
between its members. Species are separated from each other by gaps of genetic
discontinuity
in morphological and physiological characteristics which are maintained by the
abscence or
rarity of gene interchange between members of different species. The above
sentences are not
to be construed as this authors definition of a species, since several different
species
definitions are possible within the framework of their meaning."
But--isn't it precisely the problem of existing species concepts that they try
to limit us
to a single axis for discerning species, rather than admitting of several
different axes, as
Stebbins' sentences above do? Why not embrace such a broad and inclusive
definition--merely
because it could be subdivided?
p. 202:
"The second alternative [the first was multiple species concepts] would be to
recognize that
at any given moment in the evolutionary time sale, reproductive isolation is
important in
keeping distinct only those populations which are sympatric or which overlap in
their
distributions."
In other words... Mayr's Biological Species Concept is applicable only to
sympatric or
overlapping populations. This criticism has been hemmed and hawwed over for
five decades
now, but has never been addressed in a coherent fashion. And it is precisely a
multidimensional species concept that will allow us to overcome this problem, as
well as
those that plague the other species concepts. Why, after all, would we expect
groups in
multi-dimensional space to always be identifiable along a single axis, like that
of
reproductive isolation?
11 September 2006
Unrelated thoughts... first, the legacy of September 11th, 2001:
Two wars won militarily in years past, still being lost in every other way
imaginable. One a
war of revenge, the other... god knows what.
How many thousands killed for this? Or millions--we don't know. How many Arabs
equal one American? How many eyes for one eye?
How many enemies made? We learned this lesson, between World War I and World
War II.
Enemies conquered and then rebuilt become allies. Enemies conquered and left to
fester
become new and greater threats. When did we forget?
The legacy is death and distraction. Force misapplied and evil still
afoot.
And the other topic, Pluto's planethood. There was a letter to the editor in
our student
newspaper announcing a march for Pluto, in opposition to its demotion, for the
honor and
memory of Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto's discoverer. But science is not merely a
popularity
contest; if it were, the accomplishments of scientists like Tombaugh would not
be
particularly important, but merely historical fads. And Tombaugh's
accomplishments were not
semantic; they cannot be erased merely by changing a word. Those supporting the
march
forget, or never knew, these facts.
6 September 2006
Another quote from Stebbins, p. 34:
"All [Dobzhansky, Mayr, & Huxley] agree that species must consist of systems of
populations
that are separated from each other by complete or at least sharp discontinuities
in the
variation pattern, and that these discontinuities must have a genetic
basis."
This remains essentially the case with modern disagreements on species concepts.
The
disagreements are not in what species are, but in what is the best axis on which
to look for
discontinuities.
And Stebbins, p. 35:
"In fact, it is likely that most families in which the genera are well-defined
have suffered
the extinction of many species, and further that most boundaries between
neighboring genera
represent gaps left by species which have perished."
The importance of extinction in observed patterns remains often overlooked and
misunderstood. In most cases monophyletic taxa, for instance, were previously
paraphyletic groups in which sufficient lineages have subsequently become
extinct.
Stebbins continues:
"If this fact is kept in mind, then
the search for natural boundaries to genera has some meaning to the evolutionist
and is not
entirely a matter of convenience."
5 September 2006
I keep forgetting to write anything here. Went many places over the summer, now
I'm
continuing to botanize in the semester, not taking any classes but running the
lab for Plant
Taxonomy. Recently read several books by Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek, The Living,
For the Time Being, and Teaching a Stone to Talk. All highly recommenended,
especially
P.a.T.C. and F.t.T.B. I also read a biography of Marcus E. Jones, an early
western botanist, by
Lee Lenz. Poorly written but worth reading. I just started Stebbins' Variation
and Evolution
in Plants. Very interesting so far; here's a quote from the first page:
"The hierarchy of categories is a multidimensional pattern of variation in
nature, and the
gaps or discontinuities give reality to the various categories."
I think (and hope) he means taxa by "categories". This seems to be his usage
elsewhere.
There are several other interesting quotes in the first few dozen pages that I
may put up
later.
12 May 2006
End of semester. I prepare to become less productive.
I read "The Foundations of Arithmetic" by Gottlob Frege. I guess I know what
numbers are
now. I thought I knew earlier. More interestingly, Frege thought he knew
earlier; he often
uses a rather odd form of argument that puzzles me. The basic form is, in
trying to discover
the essence of an entity you create some sort of conceptual construct and then
compare the
properties of the construct with the properties of the entity. You create a
conceptualization from which our uses of the entity can arise; but this ignores
the basic
problem. Either the entity is some pre-existing thing, and its uses arise from
it; or the
entity is a conceptualization to begin with and it is its uses. We are left
with either a
mirage or a duplicate.
Perhaps a new conceptualization creates new uses; but then it cannot be judged
by its
similarity to the old concept.
In specific reference to Frege's explanation of what numbers are, he has either
explained the
already-known, or created a new concept different from that of number. He
searches for
depth where there is no depth; 2+2=4 is an explanation, not something in need of
explanation.
18 April 2006
I recently read Wittgenstein's "Zettel". Quotes of interest (to me, perhaps
others):
p. 70: '"Heap of sand" is a concept without sharp boundaries--but why isn't one
with sharp
boundaries used instead of it?--is the reason to be found in the nature of the
heaps?'
p. 77: 'There are for example degrees of pleasure, but it is stupid to speak of
a
measurement of pleasure. It is true that in certain cases a measurable
phenomenon occupies
the place previously occupied by a non-measurable one. Then the word
designating this place
changes its meaning, and its old meaning becomes more or less obsolete. We are
soothed by
the fact that the one concept is the more exact, and do not notice that here in
each
particular case a different relation between the "exact" and the "inexact"
concept is in
question: it is the old mistake of not testing particular cases.'
p. 123: 'There might be a use of signs made, such that they become useless
(perhaps they are
abolished) as soon as the bearer has ceased to exist.
'In this language-game the name has the object on a string, so to speak; and if
the object
ceases to exist, the name, which has done its work in conjunction with the
object, can be
thrown away.'
And a random thought: math in biology exists to assure uniform analysis and
representation of
data. Statistics &c. are notational conventions. New methods that are not
accompanied by
decision rules governing their application are not progress, but undermine the
purpose of all
mathematical methods. When multiple methods already exist without a means of
deciding among
them, we have a severe problem. Standardized decision among methods is more
important
than the question of whether one method or the other is in some sense more
accurate.
11 April 2006
Rain!
<insert appropriately joyful exclamatory verse here>
25 March 2006
I took a trip through southeastern New Mexico and then down to Big Bend from the
19th to the
23rd. Those areas have gotten a bit more rain than we have here in Las Cruces,
but I guess
their rains were too little, too late--not much of anything in flower, and it's
pretty crispy
out there. This made the supposed goal of the trip, collecting Boechera,
somewhat
superfluous (though I did still find a few) and so I was forced to entertain
myself with
merely hiking and photography instead. The things I do for botany...
I've got most of the landscape type images online now. First I went to Wind Mountain, then to Sitting Bull Falls in the Guadalupe
Mountains.
In between those, I got hailed on whilst trying to sleep in my Tercel.
Disrupted the peace
of my slumber somewhat. Anyways, I then headed down to Big Bend National Park,
visiting the
Lost Mine Trail, the Window Trail in
Chisos Basin, the South Rim of the Chisos, and finally The Chimneys with adjacent Red Ass Spring. Where I've visited
places before,
the new and old pictures are mixed together so as to confuse you.
14 March 2006
I gave a talk yesterday resulting from my various species-related cogitations.
You could
watch the powerpoint file and try
to imagine my
rather erudite and witty commentary, if so inclined.
8 March 2006
It's National Procrastination Week. I ought to celebrate!
Well, I'll do that next week...
7 March 2006
An addendum to my earlier inchoate mutterings about math in science:
Part of the question is whether math has an explanatory role in and of itself.
I think this
depends in large part on the audience and is part of the divide between
biologists who
advocate mathematical primacy and the rest of us. To be blunt, for most
biologists math is
not explanatory; when you add an equation into a discussion you increases the
number of
things that need to be explained.
Instead, math is primarily a tool allowing uniform and explicit comparison of
different sets of
data, hence the focus on p-values and so forth. However, those biologists who
are highly
mathematically competent appear to think that an equation is an explanation,
rather than
something to be explained. As a result they become rather unintelligible to
those not
sharing their particular proclivities. This of course does not incline us to
become more
comfortable with math, but heightens the sense of mathematics as an alien and
baffling world.
As a recent example... suppose you're trying to look at how variation in
selective pressures
influences the ability of genetic variation to persist in a population. This
variation can
come in two basic forms: spatial variation and temporal variation. In a simple
case, we
might have two genotypes in a population and two environments that members of a
population are
exposed to. One genotype gives its bearer greater fitness in one environment,
the other
genotype
gives greater fitness in the other. Those two separate environments might be
co-occurring
microhabitats (sites closer to or further from a body of water, for instance),
or the result
of variation between years (years with more or less rain).
If you're a mathematical biologist trying to explain whether temporal or spatial
variation is more likely to promote polymorphism, you demonstrate that the set
of equations
describing spatial variation in selection gives the overall fitness of each
genotype as a
geometric mean,
whereas the set of equations describing temporal variation in selection gives
the overall
fitness of each
genotype as a harmonic mean. Then you conclude that spatial variation is more
likely to
promote polymorphism.
The number of people to whom that will be an explanation (even with the various
equations
and so forth inserted, as I have neither the time nor the inclination to do) is
quite small and,
as it would
happen, a non-mathematical explanation is possible and actually rather simple.
When there is
spatial variation in fitness, if the two genotypes are randomly assorted each
one will end up
having some representatives in the environment it does well in. When there is
temporal
variation, the environment is going to be universally bad for one of the two
genotypes in any
given year. As a result, either of the genotypes is much more likely to get
wiped out by a
bad year than by a bad microhabitat, and spatial variation in selection is more
likely to let
both genotypes persist.
This sort of explanation is not only more immediately comprehensible, but makes
it more
obvious what kinds of preconditions are being assumed and how they might be
violated. (For
instance, I can figure out how organisms might avoid a temporarily bad
environment and
upset this reasoning; I can't think the situation through in terms of organisms
differing in
ways that yield geometric rather than harmonic mean fitnesses!) However, if
you read a population genetics textbook, you're likely to see only the
mathematical
explanation. The way I figure it, if you want to only explain the biology
itself,
there's no reason to offer anything more than the plain-language explanation.
If you
want to explain both the biology and how to treat that biology in a more precise
mathematical
framework, both explanations
should be provided along with brief exposition of the relationship between the
two.
5 March 2006
Spring hasn't exactly sprung, but I think it's done about as much springing as
it intends
to. I was on the west side of A Mountain yesterday & saw six species flowering:
Baileya multiradiata, Thymophylla
pentachaeta, Dimorphocarpa wislizenii, Nerisyrenia camporum, Physaria gordoni
(or maybe
fendleri; they look rather too similar), and Streptanthus carinatus. Wandering
around Las
Cruces today, I also saw some Sphaeralcea, Phacelia integrifolia, a couple
clumps of Eschscholzia, some kind of Erigeron, & a lone Rafinesquia. Not quite
last year's
display, but at least we're getting some stuff blooming out there.
20 February 2006
I just got tickets to fly to Indiana in May. Disturbing as the idea is, I miss
the place.
I've also been reading more Wittgenstein recently, and trying to figure out what
the purpose
of math is; I suppose I'm supposed to just take the importance of math on faith
and dutifully
study it, but even if I take it as given that math is important I still need to
figure out
why. What purpose, exactly, does it serve? In what situations do I need math,
and in what
situations is the math superfluous or even obfuscatory?
As it is, there seem in biology to be two groups: A) those who always assume
that a
mathematical explanations is not only helpful but necessary and B), those who
don't
understand the mathematical explanations given by those in group A and view math
as just a
set of equations that you have to plug things into every now and then.
Neither group has analyzed the situation in any coherent fashion. Those in
group A
generally can't explain what exactly the math is doing for them, simply
insisting that it
is necessary. Those in group B just wish they didn't have to bother with the
whole
thing. My tendency is to fall into group B.
So I'm reading Wittgenstein's "Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics" and
thinking
things over. My impression
so far is that a cogent criticism of the group A position is possible, and that
the current
group A position is in part an obfuscatory force that has created the group B
position.
There are people who don't understand the purpose of mathematical explanations
because
those who do understand those explanations both haven't been able to coherently
explain their
purpose and have inflated their scope far beyond reality... instead of a useful
tool,
math in biology has become a priesthood. I hope at some point to get a
criticism of the
group A position worked out at least in its general outlines, right now I have a
rather
disjunct set of ideas.
30 January 2006
I submitted a letter to the editor for the journal Taxon, which they'll be
publishing. Not a
hugely significant publication (letters to the editor aren't peer-reviewed, for
instance),
but my first publication in a scientific journal nonetheless. It briefly
discusses an
argument for the inclusion of paraphyletic (including an ancestral form and some
but not all of its descendants; as opposed to monophyletic groups, which include
an ancestor
and all of its descendants) taxa in classification. I won't go into it in
detail here, but
might put up a citation once it's out into the world.
I've also been spending some time thinking about the concept that species are
individuals.
Often this is phrased as "individuals in the philosophical sense" or
"individuals in the
logical sense"; a problem should be obvious: definitions of "individual" will
vary between
philosophers and between logicians, and none of the various possibilities is
generally known
within the biological community as a whole (or, for that matter, in any
community
other than the philosophical or logical community), and so we've got a phrase
whose referent
is both ambiguous and largely unknown to the audience of interest.
Furthermore, it's not at all clear that there is any sort of native
interpretation for
"individual" in this context. Application of the word, then, is solely by
analogy. Given
that the analogy is, as mentioned, to an unknown concept, this isn't very
helpful. Consider
trying to describe the town of Lordsburg, New Mexico, to a New Yorker by saying
it's like the
nearby town of Deming but smaller and without the Florida Mts. nearby. At this
point, unless
you have found the exceedingly rare New Yorker familiar with New Mexican towns,
you
now have to explain what Deming is like in order to have accomplished anything
by the
comparison of Lordsburg with it. So why not just explain Lordsburg in the first
place?
Why explain by analogy to an unknown, if direct explanation is possible?
More explicitly, one of the things people have hoped to accomplish by calling
species
individuals is to convey that they are historical entities, with distinct
beginnings and ends
and perhaps some modifications in between. This is opposed to earlier
conceptions of
species as classes; categories are (in some sense) timeless, unchanging, etc.
So then we
wonder: is it obvious to the average
biologist that, by calling a species an individual, we mean that it is a
historical entity of
some kind? The answer seems to be "no", since authors wishing to make this
point feel it
necessary to spell things out and say something like, "Species are individuals;
and by
"individual" I mean a historical entity." Then... is invoking the "individual"
concept
necessary to make this point? Again, no--we can either explain directly, by
describing
characteristics of species (an originating speciation event, eventual
extinction) which
establish historicity, or we can even come up with temporally-limited classes
(e.g., "a
species is a class of organisms having members after time x and before
some future time
y). Either of these is a viable alternative to the individual-based
argument, though the
latter is not a particularly elegant or intuitive way of doing things. Well,
then... surely
we at least have made some progress by establishing that species are historical
entities,
even if the individual-based argument is not the only one, or even necessarily
the best one,
right? Again, I don't really think so... the "species are individuals" concept
first came up
in the 1970's, by which time it would have been very hard to find a taxonomist
who wasn't
aware of basic evolutionary events like speciation and extinction; we already
knew species
had temporal limits, so calling species individuals in order to establish those
temporal
limits seems rather like a clarification desperately in search of a
confusion.
More generally, there are no intrinsic limits to the conditions that could be
set on the
membership of a class. Any claim about species that could be accomplished by
describing them
as individuals could be accomplished by describing them as classes. It might be
more
difficult, but this is just a pragmatic argument and the "species are
individuals" proponents
think they are making an ontological argument.
21 January 2006
Most interesting website I've come across this month:
NOA
A:
Precipitation and Temperature
Through this you can get maps of the US
showing things like: precipitation, including absolute and percent
deviation from normal, for everything from the last week to the last year;
similar maps for
temperature; and changes in temperature and precipitation over the last four
decades.
I also just re-read Ed Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" and read "Wittgenstein's
Poker" by Edmonds
& Eidinow (about heated disagreement between Wittgenstein & Popper; though
there's a reason
Wittgenstein is in the title). Both highly recommended. Here're a
few quotes of particular interest to me at the moment from "Desert
Solitaire":
page xi of the introduction:
"For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces--in fact they alone seem to
me to
be of
much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your
own, the
flavor of an apple, the embrace of friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh,
the sunlight
on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of
granite and sand,
the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind--what else is there?
What else
do we need?"
page 30 & 31:
"I've had this tree under surveillance ever since my arrival at Arches, hoping
to learn
something from it, to discover the significance in its form, to make a
connection through its
life with whatever falls beyond. Have failed. The essence of the juniper
continues to elude
me unless, as I presently suspect, its surface is also the essence."
from page 273:
"Where is the heart of the desert? I used to think that somewhere in the
American
Southwest,
impossible to say exactly where, all of these wonders which intrigue the spirit
would
converge upon a climax--and resolution. Perhaps in the vicinity of Weaver's
Needle in the
Superstition Range; in the Funeral Mountains above Death Valley; in the Smoke
Creek Desert of
Nevada; among the astonishing monoliths of Monument Valley; in the depths of
Grand Canyon;
somewhere along the White Rim under Grandview Point; in the heart of the Land of
Standing
Rocks. Not so. I am convinced now that the desert has no heart, that it
presents a riddle
which has no answer, and that the riddle itself is an illusion created by some
limitation or
exaggeration of the displaced human consciousness.
"This at least is what I tell myself when I fix my attention on what is
rational, sensible and
realistic, believing that I have overcome at last that gallant infirmity of the
soul called
romance--that illness, that disease, the isidious malignancy which must be
chopped out of the
heart once and for all, ground up, cook, burnt to ashes... consumed. [...] In
answer to the
original question, then, I find myself in the end returning to the beginning,
and can only
say, as I said in the first place: There is something about the
desert..."
There are parallels in Wittgenstein. The last sentence of the "Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus" is:
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
& the most interesting section of "Wittgenstein's Poker", to me, is the
following from page
158:
"The theory that meaningful statements have either to be analytic (where truth
or falsity can
be assessed by examining the meaning of the words or symbols employed--"all
triangles have
three sides") or open to observation became known as "logical positivism," and
many logical
positivists [i.e., the Vienna Circle] took the Tractatus as their Bible.
[ ... ] The
total accuracy of
the Vienna Circle's interpretation of the Tractatus is another matter.
Wittgenstein
had parceled up propositions into those which can be said and those about which
we must
remain silent. Scientific propositions fell into the former category, ethical
propositions
into the latter. But what many in the Circle misunderstood was that
Wittgenstein did not
believe that the unsayable should be condemned as nonsense. On the contrary, the
things we
could not talk about were those that really mattered. Wittgenstein had spelt out
the point of
the Tractatus in a letter to a prominent avant-garde editor: 'The book's
point is an
ethical one... My work consists of two parts: the one present here plus all that
I have not
written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important
one.'"
The logical positivist interpretation had been mine, as well, but this view
seems much
better... I think I need to read & re-read some more Wittgenstein.
20 January 2006
Further comments on Jared Diamond's "Collapse":
In reference to blaming businesses for pollution and so forth--it is a duty of
the public to
hold businesses accountable for unethical, immoral behavior in which the public
is harmed for
private profit. Removing companies from the potential for blame in their
pursuit for profit
above all else erodes the ability of the public to fulfill this duty. As much
as blame is an
imperfect and often ugly concept, it remains a necessary part of the
process.
This is part of a larger problem; while Diamond is correct that part of being
able to adapt
to new situations, culturally, is the ability to jettison cultural values that
are no longer
functional and now hinder progress, he neglects the other half of this, that we
must also
create new cultural values or, better yet, coopt old values to perform new
functions in our
society. He seems to see cultural values as primarily a hindrance, whereas they
are also a
tool of progress. Taking this into account means we need new kinds of ethics
and morality to
allow us to evaluate new possibilities and prohibit harmful practices that
weren't previously
important, not
the rejection of parts of current morality that aid us in establishing
accountability for
new harmful practices.
Ideally we would react in a purely rational fashion rather than relying on
emotionally-charged and often inaccurate moral constructs but, realistically,
this will not
happen at a societal level.
Regarding TV pundits:
A couple weeks ago, a Republican spokesperson rejected current Democratic
resistance to (or
at least lack of enthusiasm for) Bush's (via FBI) investigation of the spying
leaks as
represeting "selective outrage" compared to the previous strong advocacy of
investigaion of
leaks involving Wilson's wife's identity as a CIA operative. Rhetorically this
is a good
move. It has enough truth to be convincing and awkward to refute, but enough
falsity to be
useful for deception.
The ideal response in terms of brevity and comprehensibility (and thus ability
to convince)
would be to point out that it is not the Democrats but both parties that have
switched sides
in the two cases; the Republicans can't attack the Democrats without atacking
themselves. The
downside is that, likewise, the Democrats leave no room for attacking the
Republicans, and
the whole thing is made to look like just another partisan squabble.
The better response, in terms of accuracy and cogency but too long and
complicated for a
sound byte, is that the Wilson leak appeared to represent a violation of law and
erosion of
natoinal security by the administration in order to bully a political opponent.
And,
likewise, the administration spying we learned about through the recent leak
also represents an
abuse of power for political gain. In both cases, Democrats are objecting to
presidential
abuse of power; there is no inconsistency, it's just the role of intelligence
leaks in the
two cases that changed. In the Wilson case, an investigation of the leak would
serve to expose
and potentially react appropriately to an abuse of power. In the spying leak,
an
investigation of the leak would serve a diversionary purpose, obscuring the
abuse of power
and decreasing the possibility of a correct response. But in both cases the
goal of these
Democrats was the same, holding the
administration accountable for illegal or immoral behavior. This is one of the
duties of
congress, and congressmen cannot be faulted for attempting to fulfill
it.
23 December 2005
You know what's a threat to national security? A president we can't trust with
the power to
defend our country.
Impeach.
And keep on impeaching until we find a real American in this administration.
Someone, anyone, interested in leading the country rather than duping it,
trashing it,
and milking it for cash.
18 December 2005
Highly recommended reading:
What You Can't Say
The gist is: there are moral fashions as well as clothing fashions, and
they restrict not just what we can say but what we think. He then goes
on to discuss various ways in which those moral fashions and their
influence can be discovered. Of those, one is particularly ironic--that
arbitrary moral fashion is probably at work when we find something
unspeakable that most other human societies have found perfectly
acceptable. The irony is that this suggests we can avoid the effects of
society-level conformity by embracing species-level conformity. However, the
most interesting way of identifying the effects of moral fashion
that he suggests is that whenever a statement, act, etc., is denigrated
through labelling rather than by demonstrating it to be incorrect or
harmful, odds are moral fashion rather than reasoning is at work. When a
good argument can be presented, it is always more compelling than
labelling; hence labelling is a fall-back in the absence of compelling
argument.
My favorite example of this is the word "intolerant", because it is an
ironic example. When someone accuses you of being intolerant, what they
mean, of course, is that they are unwilling to tolerate your (intolerant)
viewpoint. Maybe they have good reasons for doing so, but those reasons are
not demonstrated by the label "intolerant", which is given simply as a proof
of hypocrisy. The problem, of course, is that a great many things people
say and do are intolerant and some of those should be rejected for that
very reason. When, for example, the intolerance is based on moral
fashion rather than reasoning. And round and round we go... the
invalidity of the labelling argument is hidden by the fact that it often
arrives at the correct result.
Another problem is that, when moral fashion happens to be yielding
correct answers, the labelling argument is typically much quicker and
effective than direct rebuttal. It's hard not to use it. Would you
rather spend weeks digging up and analyzing studies on the comparative
abilities of men and women in management situations in order to try to
justify an equal-opportunity policy, or just reject the alternative as
sexist? The situation is further complicated by the fact that, in
practice, shorter arguments are more convincing than long
arguments.
This is one of the many cases where using invalid argumentation is a
rational, productive approach. It requires the expenditure of less time
and energy, and the results are more convincing. But, then, how do you
reject the cases
where using invalid argumentation is deceptive, counter-productive,
irrational?
Another essay linked from www.paulgraham.com:
A Civic Duty to Annoy
I agree with the sentiments, but after reading a few similar essays
linked from the "What You Can't Say" article, I find myself trying to
come up with arguments in favor of conformism...
14 December 2005:
I went to the Pyramid Mountains,
south of
Lordsburg in Hidalgo Co., NM, with Jeanne Tenorio
on Sunday. Nice little mountains, mostly reddish/tan rhyolite but with various
bits of
other stuff in there, too. I was hoping there might be some good ferns, but
things were
pretty dry and all I saw were Pellaea truncata and Cheilanthes
lindheimeri. My
main reason for going was simply that I hadn't been and, despite having driven
by them
several times on I-10, hadn't even noticed them. Turns out there's not just a
whole lot to
notice. A good place for aimless wandering nonetheless, and with excellent
views of the
Peloncillo and Dos Cabezas Mts. to the west.
I'm now reading "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared
Diamond. So far
an excellent book. He espouses a viewpoint I've seen before and disagree with,
though. He suggests that, since the purpose of a business is to make money, we
can't really
blame them for doing so in the most efficient manner possible, even when that
happens to
involve poisoning land, water, and people. There are a few ways to respond to
this:
1. If we can't blame the businesses for doing their best to make money, since
that's their
job--well, they can't blame us for wanting to blame them for their actions,
either, since
that's part of
our job. Diamond does mention that holding them accountable is part of our job,
but still
seems to want to reject the idea that the businesses can be blamed for screwing
things up for
the rest of us. While blame probably isn't the most useful concept in this
context,
trying to separate blame from accountability and rejecting the applicability of
blame comes awfully
close to rejecting accountability, too. For those thinking moral culpability
isn't
applicable, it's probably best to just not talk about moral culpability rather
than
attempting a one-sided rejection of moral culpability for businesses. If
talking
about moral culpability isn't helpful in the situation, then neither is any
attempt to reject
moral culpability, either.
2. The purpose of a business is to make money, true. But this doesn't mean
that it is in
the best interests--even from a purely financial perspective--for a business to
try to avoid
being accountable for damages it causes. For instance, there's an ASARCO copper
smelter in El
Paso. It was closed earlier because low copper prices made it a losing venture.
Now copper
prices are higher, and ASARCO wants to reopen, but they are facing strong
opposition because
of earlier pollution problems and an unwillingness on ASARCO's part to either
redress past
pollution wrongs or to take measures to prevent further pollution. Trying to
avoid
accountability is now keeping ASARCO out of business in El Paso.
3. The "we're just doing our job" defense has been tried before. The Nuremberg
War Trials
come to mind. While the crimes involved are totally dissimilar in kind and
scope, the
arguments are not--a crime is a crime is a crime whether it's part of your job
or not. If
making money hand-over-fist by mining requires a business to destroy other
people's
livelihoods, lands, and health then it's not acceptable. That it might be part
of a
business accomplishing its goals just doesn't matter.
26 November 2005:
I'm a binge-reader, I think. Recent books:
Centennial, James Michener
Rising from the Plains, John McPhee
Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
Blood Brook, Ted Levin
The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David
Quammen
And I'm about halfway through The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the
Beholder,
also by David Quammen.
Brief thoughts on a couple of those:
Centennial was one I didn't have too high hopes for starting off, since
the front
cover announces the book as the basis of some sort of "spectacular" televised
series, and the
only other thing I know about Michener is that "South Pacific" was also based on
one of his
works. So I expected populist drivel, to be perfectly blunt. But I read it
anyways, and the
short version is: it'd be an excellent book if you tore out the first 200 pages
or so. Don't
worry--that still leaves you with about 800 pages of reading. That first
section consists
primarily of narratives of the hopes and desires of non-sentient animals and
confused
accounts of evolutionary
history; the first can't be done well, the second just isn't done well by
Michener. The
rest, though, is a brief history of the United States as it relates to Colorado,
and is very
well done, especially in its surprising honesty. Though I wouldn't've expected
it in any
TV-ready book, he doesn't shy away from discussing the many unpleasant and
unflattering
aspects of American history. The view you come out with is one of the West
having been
made by believable, understandable human beings who made their share of
mistakes, rather
than the sort of
sanitized, glorified cowboyism that usually infects accounts of the American
West.
Blood Brook was interesting for similar reasons. Large portions of it
are the sort of
intimate observations of wildlife that usually end up off in Bambi-land, but
instead Levin
maintains an unusual degree of equanimity and, when you least expect it, is
suddenly
discussing--with equal equanimity--things like eating pileated woodpeckers,
cleaning
rattlesnake skins for mounting, and so forth. He demonstrates by example a
pragmatic
approach to nature that sees us as part of nature without anthropomorphizing
nature or hiding
its unpleasant aspects and, moreover, without hiding or denying our
unpleasant aspects.
24 November 2005:
Random thoughts:
There's no good word for the people who were in North America before Europeans
arrived.
"Indian" is hopelessly inaccurate, though perhaps useful in demonstrating
European
ignorance. "American Indian" is self-contradictory, though it does at least
avoid some
confusion. "Native American" I object to simply because I was born here and am
just as
native as anyone else, yet I'm not a "Native American". Sure, some people's
ancestors were here a lot longer than mine, but I've never been able to take the
idea that
ancestry determines a person's identity seriously. Culture is far more relevant
in identity;
and while Indians have had cultures here for much longer, and cultures much more
intimately
associated with the area than any culture from Europe, there are still problems
with calling
Indians "Native Americans" in a cultural sense of nativity--the pre-European
cultures of
North America are, for the most part, nonexistent. And North America's changed
a lot, too,
so cultures that were American would no longer fit. The simplest solution would
be to use
whatever word they had for themselves--but Indians
never had a collective word for themselves. Which brings up another point: the
Indians were
never a cohesive group, something which referring to them by a single name
obscures.
We are dependent on cars because we create cities that are unlivable without
them. This is
the purpose of a zoning board.
The incomprehensible corollary: those furthest from the city depend most on
cars.
On a related note, from the point of view of botanizing, hiking, etc., cars are
a mixed
blessing. With them, we can go far to experience new places. Because of them,
we have to go
far to experience much worthwhile.
I come across a quote from William Blake, in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
today:
`One law for the Lion and the Ox is Oppression.'
By this standard, modern public schooling is often oppressive; and I agree.
Unfortunately,
further exploration of the concept leads into disquieting areas. The basic
problem is:
who can we trust to determine who the lions and oxen are? and who decides what
is appropriate
for each?
Is our choice between oppressive uniformity and oppressive prejudice?
20 November 2005:
It's starting to get cold here. Cold by Las Cruces standards, anyways, which
means lows near
freezing and highs in the 60's. As a result, botanizing is becoming less
rewarding, though
ferns are still out.
Yesterday I visited Bosque del Apache, a large wildlife refuge along the Rio
Grande in
Socorro County that is of particular interest as the winter home of a large
flock of sandhill
cranes. Various birders in the department were heading up there with a visiting
speaker
(Jerry Wilkinson) during the week-long Festival of the Cranes, so I figured I'd
go along and see
what it's like up there. The short
version is, it's very odd. Imagine several hundred SUVs driving very slowly
along a wide gravel
road, the occupants frequently stopping and pulling out binoculars.
Furthermore, imagine that
the
gravel road is meandering through flat lowlands divided into perfect squares by
burms, small
canals, and smaller raised gravel roads, then punctuated by a visitor's center
with a temporary
tent-city
of bird-related arts and crafts. The general impression is that this is
simultaneously the most
sedentary and least natural way of experiencing large groups of wildlife. A
beautiful
location and enjoyable way to spend an afternoon nonetheless.
3 November 2005:
I've read a few books by Joseph Wood Krutch recently. The two best I've read of
his are "The
Forgotten Peninsula" and "The Desert Year", about excursions into Baja and a
year of living in
the Tucson area, respectively. "The Great Chain of Being" was less impressive,
given that it
wandered into moralist objections to biology that to a great degree simply
reflected
misunderstandings of biology. Anyways, I strongly recommend the first two, and,
having just
spent my first 15 months living in the southwest, "The Desert Year" seems
particularly relevant
to me. There's a passage at the end of the book that is interesting to me in
large part
because in some ways it is nearly the opposite of what I've noticed. He writes
for several
pages about the difference in how we experience things in a new area as compared
to one we
know well and are familiar with, suggesting that it is the new areas that we
experience most
deeply, through not having become immune to teh wonders of a place through daily
experience.
There is certainly some truth to this, in that most people seem to live their
lives in a
place without really coming to much understanding of the place, but on the other
hand I've
noticed that, for me at least, it's much more difficult for me to get much out
of a place
when too many aspects of it are new. A new place is often too overwhelming,
making it very
easy for the broad impact of it to be engraved on your consciousness but very
difficult to so
much as notice, in passing, any of the details. For instance, in botanizing
I've found that how
many
plants I notice in an area is to a large degree a direct result of how familiar
I am with the
area. Stick me in an unfamiliar landscape and I'll see the dozen or so most
conspicuous
plants. Let me hike the same trail repeatedly and on any given hike I'll be
seeing dozens
more of the less conspicuous or less common plants. As a result, there are a
few trips I've
made in the last year where I've ended up somewhere spectacular (like Mohawk Dunes) and
been a bit disappointed because, even though the area is beautiful, I just can't
find much
plant diversity. I know they're there, probably right in front of me, but I
just don't see
them. Familiarity can keep people from looking around them and seeing where
they are, but
unfamiliarity can do the same thing. It's only now that I'm starting to see the
same
places again and seeing the seasons come by a second time that I feel like I can
appreciate them.
Apropos of the 28 Oct mention of lists of Latin binomials, worth mentioning that
I'm now at 701
of those binomials in my southwestern plant photography. Yippee!
28 October 2005:
Haven't written much here, recently. Today we had an interesting guest speaker,
Stuart Pimm,
who is currently a high-profile figure in conservation biology in addition to
being an
alumnus of the NMSU graduate school. In brief, he's a tremendously entertaining
and likable
speaker, but makes the critical mistake that most people in conservation biology
make: he
assumes that species number is the only metric of importance in
conservation, which
leads to the conclusion that rare species, which make up most of the
species in immediate danger of extinction, are the things that conservation must
attempt to
save. While I am interested in these rare species and would very much like to
see them stick
around, the plain and simple fact of the matter is that, from the point of view
of both
planetary ecology and human interests, these rare species
are minor players at best. If conservation is to mean anything more
than just a tally of Latin binomials, we cannot focus our efforts on rare
species that are not
now and have never been of great importance to either the planet's ecology or to
us.
Want truly important conservation? Save topsoil in Iowa. There are no
endangered species,
but that soil means a hell of a lot to us and to North American nutrient
cycling.
3 October 2005:
Another trip to Aguirre Springs on Saturday. Things are drying up a bit up
there, but
there's still lots of good stuff out, including my first striped whipsnake
(Masticophis
taeniatus) in New Mexico. I might go up again next weekend, but I imagine
that
after that things will start drying out too much to be all that rewarding.
Still plenty warm
down in the lowlands, but up above 6000 feet it's getting positively
autumnal.
Then on Sunday to A Mountain. Better diversity than I'd expected, including a
couple of
grasses (Enneapogon desvauxii & Dasyochloa pulchella) that'd been
high on my
list of things I'd like to get pictures of.
I also got into a discussion about Karl Popper at a recent reception for
Jeannette Whitton, a
visiting speaker from the University of British Columbia, so here's the short
version of my
take on Popper.
Popperian falsificationism is the claim that:
1. Truth is the appropriate criterion for scientific progress.
2. a. Truth of hypotheses & theories cannot be demonstrated empirically.
b. Hypotheses & theories can be demonstrated to be false.
3. Therefore, science proceeds by demonstrating hypotheses & theories to be
false, and
provisionally accepting those that seem resistant to disproof.
People usually focus on 2. & 3., since this is what differentiates
falsificationism from
previous positivist philosophy of science, but I think the largest problem is
with 1.
Because:
4. A true but non-explanatory statement is scientifically worthless.
5. A false statement with a large amount of explanatory power can be very
valuable in
science.
The first should be fairly obvious, the latter somewhat counterintuitive.
Physics provides
an excellent example, though--Newton's Laws are known to be false, but
nonetheless were
an incredibly valuable scientific advance during their time and are still the
best
theory available for understanding everyday macroscopic, low-speed physics.
As a result of this, it seems clear to me that it is explanatory power, and not
truth, that
is the appropriate criterion for success of a hypothesis or theory.
So that rejects 1. Lakatos, interestingly, accomplished the same thing by
focusing on
explanatory power rather than on truth even though he never explicitly rejected
truth
as a criterion. Instead he remained nominally a falsificationist
and occasionally dragged truth out of some back closet when it suited his
argument.
However, his theory remains perfectly intact if you remove all reference to
truth from
it.
2. and
3. are also problematic and Lakatos also argued against them, this time in a
much more explicit
fashion. The gist is, any hypothesis or theory under test is never a simple
proposition, but
is a conjuction--often a many-parted compound conjunction--of separate
propositions. As a
result, negative experimental results demonstrate that the conjunction of
propositions must
be rejected, but cannot indicate which individual proposition(s) may be
at fault. So
negative results can always be interpreted as a rejection of minor sub-
propositions while
leaving the body of the theory intact, and as a result hypotheses & theories
cannot be
demonstrated to be false in any sort of systematic, objective fashion.
So falsificationism seems, to me, to be simply untenable. Popper, realizing
some of this,
waffled & weakened his stance a bit later on. However, a weakened
falsificationism cannot
succeed at its original goal of providing an objective & unambiguous way of
linking
scientific progress without truth, so even if such a weakened form may be
tenable it is a
failure on its own terms.
Though clearly untenable, falsificationism is often used as a rhetorical device
nonetheless.
People arguing in favor of science in one form or another find the general rule
that all
science must be falsifiable to be an exceedingly convenient argument against the
many
un-falsifiable brands of pseudo-science (intelligent design, for instance).
This rule can
stand up even without falsificationism, though. All scientific hypotheses &
theories must be
capable of being false, for the simple reason that all descriptions of the
external world
must be capable of being false. This need not be linked to Popperian
falsificationism, and I
think most people who use this rule as a defense against pseudo-science
inadvertently commit
themselves to a doomed and pointlessly restrictive philosophy of science by
believing
otherwise.
26 September 2005:
Went to Aguirre Springs on the east side of the Organ Mts. this last Saturday
and the one
before. On the 17th I was on a hike with the Las Cruces Chapter of the New
Mexico Botanical
Society with Rich Spellenberg; an excellent opportunity to learn many of the
plants from him
as well as getting to meet other botanically-minded people in the area. On the
24th I
returned mainly with an eye to photographing more of the plants, and got
pictures of about 30
species I hadn't previously photographed. Excellent diversity out there now,
though it's
starting to dry up. Weather's been a bit warm, but quite nice once you've hiked
up to 6500
ft.
Went to Bluff Springs & Sunspot in the Sacramento Mts. on the 25th. I was
hoping it might
approach Aguirre in late-monsoonal splendor, but no such luck. It's early fall
up there, and
very little in flower. The grass diversity was also surprisingly low in the
areas we
stopped. Maybe next year I need to get up there 5-6 weeks earlier...
I'm taking a course in grasses from Kelly Allred in the Range Sciences
department this
semester. I figured I needed to learn
grasses at some point, but would probably tend to ignore them if left to my own
devices. It's
intended as an upper-level undergrad course, but though much of the general
plant introductory stuff is material I already know it's turning out to be a
very rewarding
course and an excellent way to learn the grasses of the area.
14 September 2005:
A couple of sentences I've run across:
The first from a paper by G.H.
Orians
about the evolution of mating systems from 1969 (American Naturalist;
103(934): 589-602): "It is a well-known fact that males of many species
court rather indiscriminately and can, especially when deprived of sexual
activity for some time, be induced to mate with remarkably incomplete
stimulus objects." For proof, visit your nearest bar.
The second in "Log from the Sea of Cortez" by Steinbeck: "The rare animal
may be of individual interest, but he is unlikely to be of much
consequence in any ecological picture." I tend to agree.
Regarding grassland in New Mexico:
Desert grassland was once the dominant ecosystem in southern New Mexico. Now,
it has largely
been replaced by mesquite or creosote shrubland. The blame for this is usually
placed on
cattle grazing; the first heavy cattle grazing and the beginning of shift to
shrubland occurred
at the same time, and we know that cattle will consume grass until it is
unavailable, whereas they find mesquite and creosote rather unpalatable.
There's a counter-argument often given, though, that cattle can't be the cause
since the
shrubland persists after the cattle are removed. This assumes that the effect
(shrubland) will only occur while the cause (grazing) is
in action. Clearly, though, there are plenty of situations in which this is not
the case.
If I knock over a glass of water, it doesn't right itself and fill itself with
water when I
leave the room. Without data about this particular case, an assumption about
the
duration of the effect relative to the cause just doesn't make any sense. And,
as it would
happen, we do have reason to think that cattle cause long-term changes that
affect the
ability of
an area to support grassland--also coincident with the start of heavy grazing in
New Mexico
was a period of gullying of the areas that had been grassland. Grass holds soil
together;
when cattle graze an area heavily, they reduce the ability of the soil to resist
erosion, and
we get gullies. Gullies carry water away from the area and reduce the moisture
available to
plants. Is it then surprising that plants that had required the pre-gully
moisture
availability won't reestablish in the gullied landscape, even if cattle have
been removed?
I mention all this primarily because the lack of grassland reestablishment seems
to be
amazingly well-established as an argument against cattle as the cause of the
transition to
shrubland, though it seems to me a very weak one...
13 September 2005:
Classes: too many of them.
Saw part of an interesting program on PBS, an episode of POV about a 5th grade
teacher. Interesting in that he said that the main message of his classes is
"be nice
& work hard"; reflecting on my own schooling, I realize that the main message I
got was
"you're smarter than everyone else, so you don't have to work hard". Not really
helpful, when you stop & think about it.
I also finished "PrairyErth" last night. Overall an excellent book, though the
author
tends to digress too often into various literary affectations; e.g., there's a
"chapter
about hawks" which consists mostly of a discussion of writer's block (apparently
rather
than getting over the block he simply verbalized it), short sections lacking
most
punctuation, a consistent use of italics rather than quotation marks to indicate
quoted
speech, etc. The wide range of well-treated and fascinating subject matter more
than
makes up for this, but nonetheless it's distracting. Almost makes me want to go
to
Kansas, too, which is quite an accomplishment.
6 September 2005:
The New York Times quotes Senator Harry Reid as saying that New Orleans
reconstruction will
probably cost $150 billion or even more. The White House estimate is at least
$50 billion,
and the cost projections of this administration have proven to be severe
underestimates, to
say the least. Now, if that's not bad enough, flipping through the virtual
pages I find
another article, revealing that the population of New Orleans has been steadily
declining for
the last 4 decades, and now city officials are worried that many evacuees won't
want to come
back. Put it together, and we're looking at spending $150 billion to rebuild a
city people
don't want to live in!
This is like the weeks after 9/11 all over again... a major crisis hits and the
congress gets so
bowled over that all of a sudden we're about to commit immense resources to one
of the
world's biggest boondoggles.
3 September 2005:
Now we have a congressman from Louisiana joining the blame of federal
government, and
various black public figures claiming that the federal government chose to
respond slowly
because the majority of the people suffering in New Orleans are black. People
passing the
buck or trying to use a tragedy in order to foment hatred... bullshit. The
overwhelming
question in all this remains: Why weren't they prepared? Did the mayor of New
Orleans or
the politicians of Louisiana have any plan whatsoever?
Here's An
excellent article in the New York Times.
2 September 2005:
Well, it took Bush and a military invasion to destroy the sympathy the
US had after 9/11;
after Hurricane Katrina it seems like the people in New Orleans are intent on
getting that
job done themselves. To judge by news reports, the populace of New Orleans
falls into two
categories: those raping, pillaging, and shooting, and those complaining that
the federal
government isn't bailing them out fast enough. For instance, the New York Times
quotes a
man in New Orleans responding to the arrival of the National Guard by saying,
"Hell no, I'm
not glad to see them." I assume that the press is blowing things out of
proportion to some
extent, but nonetheless the result is that those trying to help New Orleans are
putting themselves in harm's way and being blamed for the disaster at the same
time. Makes
those going in to help that much more heroic, but it sure doesn't create
sympathy.
The mayor of New Orleans stands out in particular--he blames the federal
government for the
lack of a good response plan, disorganization, and worsening conditions in the
city when
making sure the city was prepared for this kind of disaster was his
responsibility.
The guy's supposed to be leading the city and instead he's trying to pass the
buck and blame
the feds. Brings home how lucky New York City was to have Giuliani, if
nothing else...
One of the little-mentioned good things in all this, though, is how many tens of
thousands
of lives were saved by good weather forecasting. Even though the evacuation
could've
been more complete, an unevacuated New Orleans would be orders of magnitude
worse.
In other news, the Botany Base Camp went well. I've got pictures of 23 more
species now, a
lot of those already online. Also good to get to talk to fellow botanists, sit
around a
campfire, etc. The area, seen here, was
a nice canyon in pinyon-juniper woodland; lots of great plants, though the
canyon didn't
lend itself too well to landscape photography. Bob
Sivinski, a botanist with the New Mexico Forestry Division, described it as
"monotonous",
but he's seen all this stuff before and I haven't. The weather also cooperated
nicely: we
were expecting to get rained on some of the time, but instead the rain held off
until after our departure.
31 August 2005:
Now at the beginning of the second week of classes. Too much going
on...
The most depressing thing about Hurricane Katrina is that we knew it was going
to happen. We
didn't know when, but knew that, sooner or later, New Orleans was going to be
hit and didn't
have any way of coping with a major hurricane. My feelings are thus rather
conflicted... on
the one hand, there are a lot of people suffering and a lot of them were too
poor to move so
didn't really have a choice in the matter; on the other hand, a lot of the
people in New
Orleans chose to be there despite knowing full well that this could, and sooner
or later
would, happen. My tendency at the moment is to feel sympathy for the first
group but not the
second.
More important is what we do now. The worst action, in my opinion, would be
simply
rebuilding New Orleans as it was and waiting for another hurricane. For decades
people have
been living in areas where natural disasters of this kind are simply inevitable
and then
relying on the rest of us to bail them out when their hubris catches up with
them. We need
to break the cycle. What I'd like to see happen is rebuilding of necessary
facilities at New
Orleans (port infrastructure, etc.) and government aid for those who were living
in New
Orleans on condition that they
do not return to New Orleans. We should not subsidize recolonization of an
area that
wasn't fit for a city in the first place. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is
exactly
what will happen.
25 August 2005:
Going to "Botany Base Camp" with Rich Spellenberg tomorrow, a meeting of
various botanists to investigate some poorly-known bit of the state.
Should be fun. This year we're going out to the north side of Catron
County.
24 August 2005:
I wonder sometimes if I'm a patriot. In any rational definition of the word I
clearly am
one, but on the other hand if people describe themselves as patriots I'm certain
to dislike
them.
For instance, when it comes to beer I'd rather have Harp, Bass, Steinlager,
etc., than Coors,
Budweiser, or Michelob. In the beer realm, this is regarded as strongly anti-
patriotic.
But, at the next level up, I'd much rather have beers from New Belgium (Fort
Collins, CO),
Sierra Blanca (Carrizozo, NM), Upland (Bloomington, IN) than the Harp, Bass, or
Steinlager.
For some reason, though, I don't think this counts in the minds of beer-
patriots; now I'm an
elitist rather than a traitor, and that's just as un-American even if the
"elite" beers I
love are made here in America by small companies that have much more to do with
traditional
home-grown American economy than do the huge corporate behemoths behind Bud
Light.
The basic problem with patriotism, religion, etc., is that tradition-based
("conservative"
in one of the many meanings of the word) means of decision-making contain no
means of
distinguishing good traditions from bad traditions. This is also the central
problem to all
authority-based decision-making--bad authorities can be just as compelling as
good ones.
What's very interesting to me with regards to both patriotism and religion is
that, even
though both clearly have a number of positive aspects, they have become so much
the realm of
conservatism that very few people seem interested in or able to create the kind
of new
structures we need in order to move into the future without losing our past and
falling into
the sort of shallow, crude, immoral, and over-hyped media culture that so many
conservatives fear. To some extent, I wonder if conservatives are dooming their
own
cultural values and morality to an early death by refusing to allow them to
become a vibrant
new culture that could compete with Hollywood.
A very interesting sentence quoted in PrairyErth, first said by Carl Becker in
1910: "A
fundamental characteristic of Kansas individualism is the tendency to conform;
it is an
individualism of conformity, not revolt." Interesting because you could easily
substitute "American individualism" and shift the year to 2005 without changing
the truth of
the statement in the least. So I guess the modern, in this aspect at least, is
not at all
new.
23 August 2005:
Dr. Kelly Allred, instructor of "Range Grasses", suggests I read "PrairyErth" by
William
Least Heat-Moon. I figure I may as well, though it seems an odd book--in praise
of Kansas.
Kind of worrying, really. It's good to have places to dislike, but if I read
too many books I
may run out of them. I'll have to make an effort not to read anything about
France, at
least.
20 August 2005:
Rain! A very small dense blob of precipitation hitting Las Cruces as I try to
head out the
door. A couple weeks ago we were 2" below average on summer rain. Now we're 1"
above
average. A good thing, too, since when I made my trip out to southeastern AZ on
the 7th &
8th and saw how lush it was there compared to here I was worried the monsoonal
rains had
already come and just skipped by southern New Mexico, leaving us to bake. But
now the rain's
here, and I just have to wait a little and the green will follow.
Reading Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez". In middle school (or early
high school?) I
remember reading "Of Mice and Men" and seeing a movie rendition of "Grapes of
Wrath". I
wasn't impressed with either (the former struck me as just not particularly
interesting or
exciting, the latter was downright boring), so am pleased to find in the "Log
from the Sea of
Cortez" an excellent book. This makes me wonder to what extent the
psychological background
of being forced to read something in which you aren't interested has turned
otherwise engaged
readers away from the "classics". Likewise I never got much of anything out of
Mark Twain;
perhaps I should revisit him at some point.
Anyways, last night I found an excellent sentence in there: "It is a rule in
paleontology
that ornamentation and complication precede extinction." The temptation to draw
parallels to
modern society is irresistable, but presumably so obvious that I need not
elaborate beyond
mentioning that there exist in this country yoga programs for pet dogs. And of
course
analogies can be made to the fall of Rome, etc.; past cultures often seem to
have become more
and more complicated and top-heavy until they simply collapse on themselves.
This is also very interesting from the point of view of the current mass
extinctions, which
are heavily concentrated in specialized taxa.
These taxa are also those that tend to be the focus of endangered species
programs. To a
good extent these are our canaries in the world coal mine. These are taxa that
we can predict
would be short-lived and fairly ephemeral regardless. Their rapid extinction is
a very bad
sign, but the current response is often akin to trying to resuscitate the
canary. Obviously
running out of the coal mine is also not a viable possibility, science fiction
fantasies
aside.
Another question that comes up in my mind, interesting from an
evolutionary perspective and possibly of extreme importance from a cultural
perspective, is
to what extent are the simpler taxa that escape the spiral into over-
specialization and go on
to form the next great lineages representatives of more primitive lineages or
the result of
secondary simplification from more complicated forms? Or, in cultural terms,
can an
over-specialized top-heavy culture escape back into viable simplicity, or is it
simply doomed
to replacement by a culture that avoided the complication to begin with?
18 August 2005:
Back in New Mexico. Mountains in the distance and the smell of creosote--what
more could you
want?
General thoughts on Austin & vicinity:
Heat & humidity & no mountains! Reminds me how good Las Cruces is in many
respects. Apart
from terrible weather right now, Austin's in a nice area. Too little public
land, though, and
too much city.
I take Austin as proof that I'm not cut out for large cities--everyone I know
who's
lived in the area says it's a great city, but I don't like it from the few days
I've
spent there thus far. It's simultaneously large and claustrophobic, making me
feel
trapped in a giant maze. The weather certainly doesn't help, and neither
does the smell--the downtown is full of restaurants and bars with great food and
great
beer on the inside, but outside there is an oppressive, pervasive smell of
decay. The
larger buildings in the downtown, though comparatively small and few in relation
to
truly immense places like New York City, are still too large and too obviously
built as
status symbols, towering over the rest of the town to remind you of the wealth
and power
of the few and, consequently, of your comparative insignificance. Definitely a
city
built for indoor life; inside, away from the smells, the heat, the humidity, the
futility of
trying
to get from one place to another, the crowding and claustrophobia of the
streets... it
can be quite nice.
The botany meetings, on the other hand, were very enjoyable. They were held in
the Austin
Hilton, which was a rather pretentious building with apparent refinement that
(unsurprisingly) turns out to be nothing more than a thin veneer. From inside
the Hilton,
though, I could safely ignore the rest of Austin and focus on the many good
talks being
given. I may write more on some of those later.
Today I also had to go to a mandatory teaching assistant orientation at NMSU. I
had missed it
last year because I had been informed of it too late and hadn't been told that
it was
mandatory. If I could have, I would've missed it again this year. Simply a
bureaucratic
waste of time, at least for me, and parts of it were rather depressing. For
instance, there
was a discussion of sexual harrassment in which the speaker told us that we
could be sexually
harrassing our students without knowing it if our students feel uncomfortable or
intimidated. IOW, the crime can be the result of inappropriate response by a
student rather
than of an inappropriate action by the teacher. While I have no reason to
suspect that this
is at all common or likely to occur, the possibility of having committed a crime
without
having acted inappropriately is disturbing, to say the least.
On the flip side, academic misconduct by students was downplayed, with that
speaker
suggesting, essentially, that only in very egregious cases is any disciplinary
action whatsoever
necessary or desirable. The prevalence of plagiarism and other forms of
cheating becomes
very easy to understand once you see how rarely they lead to disciplinary action
against the
student, simply because of a reluctance to act by those whose responsibility
that action
is.
And somewhere between those presentations we were told that having high
expectations of
students and holding them to high standards is one of the best ways to get them
to
achieve--but in a system where were are told, essentially, that we are very
vulnerable to
complaints against us by students but have very little capacity to hold them
accountable for
misconduct how exactly we are supposed to achieve this is not clear.
Then to finish the day off we were lectured on multiculturalism. This boiled
down to someone
with a very narrow and intolerant view of how we are supposed to act telling us
how to
accomodate differing views. The irony is similar to the "zero tolerance policy"
when it
comes to discrimination--which is to say, zero tolerance of intolerance.
Political correctness can easily become a tool of oppression, and if
the meek inherit the earth they will be the worst tyrants.
Nonetheless I remain optimistic about teaching this fall, mainly because
the rather depressing worldview advocated in the orientation seems to be
more a fantasy than a reality. I only wish they didn't try to trap me in
it.
11 August 2005:
Leaving later today for Texas. I don't feel prepared, but, then again, I
usually don't.
More thoughts on "The Ghost with Trembling Wings":
Throughout the book, one thing that seems to come up repeatedly is that the
search for presumably
extinct species draws much of its appeal from the improbability of success. I
get the impression
at various points that Weidensaul doesn't really want to find the stuff he's out
there looking for;
given how I tend to approach goals, I wonder to what extent this is because an
expedition that will
almost certainly fail is very psychologically safe. Success reflects well on
you, but failure,
being expected and nearly inevitable, has no negative connotations. The problem
is that in most of
these cases success, while looking good, would be nearly meaningless. Suppose
you've got a bird
that's only been recorded once. You see another one, and in order to have any
proof you've got to
capture and kill the thing--well, now the situation's exactly the same as it was
earlier, we know
it used to be out there, but still don't know if there are any more of them! In
order to advance
our knowledge, you need a bunch of specimens, data on diet, ecology,
reproduction, etc., and all
that kind of data would be both more meaningful and easier to collect on a more
common species.
For someone with a deep fear of success this is an ideal pursuit. For anyone
else, it's clearly a
losing venture.
The other thing that jumps out at me when it comes to the goal-structure of a
search for presumably
extinct species is that it could easily blind you to everything
else--you're never going to find a needle in a haystack unless you're
very good at ignoring the rest of the haystack. If you're almost certain
not to see
what you're looking for, and blinded to the stuff you're not looking for...
well, seems like you
may as well stay home! Weidensaul doesn't seem to have this problem to nearly
the extent that I know
I would, but nonetheless I can't help but wonder to what extent the spectacular
places he visited were
wasted on him. I guess I just don't like quixotic quests, but maybe people like
Weidensaul find them
deeply satisfying in a way that remains a mystery to me.
10 August 2005:
Right now I'm in the calm before the storm... tomorrow night I leave for the
2005 Botany
meetings in Austin, Texas (with botanizing for a couple days on the way there,
of course),
and after I get back the fall semester will be upon us. In addition to taking a
few classes,
I'll be teaching the lab section for Plant Taxonomy this fall. This means I'll
have to be
out collecting plants for class on the weekends. I don't know how I'll
survive.
I'm currently reading "The Ghost with Trembling Wings" by Scott Weidensaul, a
book
about efforts to find critters whose existence is uncertain, whether they be
species that are
considered extinct or those that never existed in the first place. An enjoyable
book, though
spending your time
trying to relocate something like Semper's warbler seems like a rather frivolous
response to
the cascade of human-induced extinctions plaguing the globe... the "endangered
species
mentality" (ESM) that is the basis of a lot of this book has always struck me as
a bit silly,
to be honest. For instance, in the
construction of the Tellico Dam that threatened to wipe out the snail darter and
led to the
first major attempt (and failure) to enfore the endangered species act--the fate
of the snail
darter strikes me as only a rather minor reason not to've built the dam. The
importance of
the snail darter, or any species, is its role in a functioning ecosystem. It's
the ecosystem
we need to save, not just one of its members--the Little Tennessee River was
what was
important, not the snail darter. The ESM misses
this fact, and leads to an approach to conservation that is often fundamentally
flawed. For
instance, in the Tellico Dam case, so far the snail darter seems to have
survived the dam (in
large part due to relocation efforts). Within the ESM, this means that building
the
Tellico Dam turned out to be perfectly fine, an event with no negative impacts,
whereas
this is certainly not the case. The ESM is also the justification for the
captive
breeding efforts that consume a vast amount of conservation resources ("vast"
only in the
context of conservation funding, of course). But from an ecological point of
view, a species
being bred in captivity has very little value. Such a species is valuable only
to the extent
that it can be re-released into a functioning ecosystem. But resources spent
breeding it are
resources not being spent preserving that ecosystem. And if we were
preserving the ecosystems we wouldn't need to be breeding the species in
captivity.
The ESM results in a conservation program that treats symptoms, not causes. It
also
makes conservation efforts very easy to criticize. To the spending of money and
restriction of development (something of a misnomer, really) in order to protect
something like a snail darter it's very easy for opponents to object that some
tiny
little fish isn't really that important. This is a bit of a problem for
conservationists
since, when you come right down to it, they're absolutely right.
9 August 2005:
Back from SE Arizona. It's wet over there right now; got rained on both days
and on the
drive back. Not a whole lot seemed to be happening on the herp front (though
other people
over there around now seem to be finding a bunch of critters), but the plants
couldn't be
better. Ended up visiting Sycamore Canyon first, which is just about the best
canyon I've
seen, and then went a few places in the Huachucas. The Huachucas were nice, but
the bits I
visited didn't end up having nearly the diversity and general lushness of
Sycamore Canyon. I
also did some road-cruising for herps on the way back to Las Cruces; there's
toads by the
thousands out now, and on the snake front I saw a couple Crotalus atrox,
Rhinocheilus lecontei, Thamnophis marcianus, and a lone
Crotalus
scutellatus. On the road SW of Portal I ended up running into Terry Cox, a
herper I know
from online forums, in addition to meeting up with Allan Bartlett in the
Huachucas. The gist
being: good trip.
I recently read "Mutant Message Down Under" by Marlo Morgan. It occupies a
bizarre realm
somewhere between Carlos Castaneda and "Chicken Soup for the Soul". Like
Castaneda's works,
it was originally published as a true account of the wisdom and magic of native
people, but
on closer inspection turns out to be a fraud. In this case, the first printing
was as
non-fiction but it has been sold as fiction--though still purporting in the
preface to be a
true story--since it became clear that it was not factually accurate. It's much
more
engaging and pleasant to read than Castaneda's books, but also far more cloying
and trite.
Kind of the reading equivalent of getting an appetizer when you thought you'd
ordered a main
course; still enjoyable going down, but deeply unsatisfying once it's
settled.
5 August 2005:
Irony:
One of the more interesting bits of information in Marc Reisner's "Cadillac
Desert" is that
the fist major brouhaha over the Endangered Species Act was one in which the
welfare of the
snail darter was directly correlated with the welfare of local private
landowners. This is
interesting because the most commonly given argument against the ESA is that it
represents
bloated federal government trying to restrict private landowners from doing what
they want with
their land. That the first major action
taken under the ESA was an attempt to stop a dam that would flood out hundreds
of private
landowners and whose only justification was that it would slightly increase
subsidization of
cheap power is conveniently forgotten. Since this dam was as clear a
representation the kind
of big-government wastage that the anti-ESA conservatives despise, you would
think that this
fact would be rather important--it means that the attempt to save the snail
darter was a case
in which the interests of conservatives and conservationists were perfectly
aligned. So far
as I can tell, the ESA and conservative ideals are still aligned. The spotted
owl
controversy, for instance, was simply another instance in which the ESA's main
effect has
been to decrease public subsidization of private profit. So how has the ESA
become hated by
conservatives?
More generally--when did subsidization become the holy grail to those who claim
to be
conservatives?
Also interesting, but completely unrelated, it turns out that things I'd been
thinking were
epiphytic bromeliads, like this one
at White Sands, are actually galls produced by small wasps. Very odd.
Apparently those
little dense rosettes of leaves are produced by the creosote as the result of
its growth
being hijacked by an insect larva. But, hey, they do look like little
bromeliads...
4 August 2005:
Corruption of seasonality:
On the news this morning I learned that New Mexico and Texas have a
tax-free weekend to encourage back-to-school sales. Hadn't heard of such a
thing before.
Why is it that yearly milestones have all been replaced with
economic
events rather than holidays, celebrations, or other cultural rituals?
Though this tax-free weekend is a minor example, it indicates a
disturbing pervasiveness of the trend. Economic interests are trying to
monopolize the rhythms of our lives, and most Americans just go along
with it. We watch the Peanuts Christmas special, and then go out and join
the sales extravaganza that has become not only
the spirit of Christmas but a civic duty. There's some resistance
to the trend, but most of it is both too little, too late as well as
inspired by the sort of religious fundamentalism that simply isn't
capable of providing a helpful alternative. The celebration of Jesus'
birth was just the first corruption of the holiday, after all--an attempt to
turn a
traditional seasonal holiday into a platform for religious propaganda. What we
need, to get
back to the true spirit of Christmas, are celebrations that reflect
important seasonal events in our areas, and which serve to bring people
closer to each other and to the land. For instance, Christmas doesn't make
any sense in the southwest, and never will. The holidays of the native
Indians are much more relevant to the area and its people, and I, for one, would
much rather
celebrate the coming of monsoonal rains than engage is some collective
delusion
that we are still in the snowy north. And certainly there are more
important things about the education of our youth than saving a few
dollars in taxes.
In other news, looks like I'm going to head into SE Arizona this Sunday and
Monday. I need
to return to Sycamore Canyon, west of Nogales, and will be meeting up with an
online herping
aquaintance in the Huachucas. Should be fun. Looks like there'll be rain,
though.
It's good that we get rain, but that doesn't mean I like hiking in it...
3 August 2005:
I'm now reading Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert". I summarize the first hundred
pages: Los Angeles is evil.
This basically confirms my earlier opinions, but now I know more of the details.
And I have to wonder--since Los Angeles' first few decades of governance were
based
on greed, fraud, and manipulation, has anything changed since then? Or have the
city's leading citizens simply gotten better at hiding their tracks?
Unfortunately the
same questions can be asked about New Mexico, though, since the state
is based more on ranching than on agriculture and doesn't have any huge thirsty
metropoli, water
conflicts aren't involved to
nearly the same extent. Instead we have a system where ranchers believe that
they have a
god-given right to do whatever the hell they want with public land, and the
government tends to agree. Ironically, the main thing ranchers do with this
ability
is make the land unfit for ranching; what was a huge expanse of grassland is now
gullied, eroded, and dominated by unpalatable creosote. Aldo Leopold argued
that
enlightened self-interest isn't enough to get us to a rational, sustainable
relationship to
the land we live on, but even enlightened self-interest would often
be a vast improvement.
And, yes, I am opinionated. :-)
1 August 2005:
Went out to the Organ Mts. yesterday. Not much of anything blooming (couple of
Acacia
species, some Eriogonums, and some kind of tall brassicacid seemed to be it in
the area I
hiked), so I was
reduced to photographing shrubs and some old fried plants. Pretty good day for
lizards,
though. Saw
a half-dozen or so adult Cophosaurus
texanus
and a couple of hatchlings, another half-dozen
adult Aspidoscelis exsanguis, and one each of Crotaphytus, Uta, and
Phrynosoma
cornutum.
On canyon wrens: Most people who are familiar with them probably figure they
were named
because they're wrens that live in canyons, but they've got the wrong end of the
stick.
These are wrens that confer canyon-ness on an area. Without canyon wrens
a place
might be a ravine, gulch, wash, arroyo, or valley, but it cannot be a
canyon.
Books:
Last night I started reading "The Emperor of Scent" by Chandler Burr.
In most
ways an
excellent book, but it contains a quote that demonstrates a profound lack of
knowledge of
biology. I won't bother digging it up verbatim, but the gist is Mr. Burr says
that
"molecular biology" is a meaningless phrase because there's no such thing as
non-molecular
biology in this day and age. As much as a few of the mobo wizards would love
for this to be
true, it simply isn't. The idea that we should relegate evolution, systematics,
behavior, and ecology to some sort of non-biological limbo is absurd.
To be slightly more explicit, molecular biology in its purest form is the study
of molecules
that happen to occur in living organisms. It is at its heart a study of
molecules, not life.
Molecular biology has produced some incredibly useful tools for the study of
biology, and large parts of modern biology simply couldn't exist without
methodology created by
molecular
biologists. But, conversely, no progress in biology could be made if molecular
biology were
simply
left to its own devices and everything else discarded. We would have volumes of
information
about the structures of proteins, but would know nothing about, for instance,
how those proteins
are used by
actual organisms to do things like detecting odors, how they might be important
in
things like speciation, determination of a species' habitat, modulation of
behavior, etc. This
would be like having
the world's best paint manufacturers working at top speed, but no artists
applying that paint to
canvas.
Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac":
One thing (among many others) that stands out to me about this book is that
Leopold's
assessment of conservation education is just as true now as when he wrote it,
decades ago.
Conservation isn't really something that has to be taught like math or physics,
by
memorization of laws, equations, etc. Conservation is what people do when they
understand
and appreciate the ecosystem they live in. What we need is education that tries
to impart
this understanding and appreciation, but this kind of education is minimal to
nonexistent in America. At the public school I went to in Indiana, there was a
project in
5th grade or so where students made posters of pressed and laminated fall
leaves,
labelled with the names of the trees from which they came. That, along with
occasional field
trips to state parks
(the highlight of which was always a swimming pool or the like) made up the
entirety of the
education in local plants, animals, or ecology. It's no wonder most Hoosiers
think of nature
as, at most, a place for picnics or fishing.
Unfortunately, the trend continues at most colleges. You can get a degree in
biology without
having taken a single course in ecology or having any instruction related to the
local flora or
fauna. And when you do take an ecology course you're likely to be bombarded
with equations
and theoretical models while basic important questions like "Why is the forest
around here
mostly maple?" remain not only unanswered but unasked. On the other hand, I was
required to
memorize the molecular structure of DNA and learn the electron transfer
processes
in reactions that produce the double bond
of an alkene. When did phosphate groups become more important to biology than
trees?
Some thoughts on Michael Pollan's "Second Nature":
Pollan's basic thesis seems to be that, first, we desperately need to come to a
productive
relationship with nature, rather than our current destructive reaction against
nature, and,
second, that naturalism, ecology, etc., have proven to be abject failures at
moving us
towards this goal, whereas gardening may prove a good way of approaching it. I
couldn't
agree more strongly with the first half, but the second half I disagree with.
This opinion
on Pollan's part is apparently based on a profound ignorance of naturalism
and science combined with an unrealistically positive image of gardening and
gardeners. With
regard to his view of naturalism, virtually the only naturalists he discusses
are Thoreau,
Wordsworth, and contemporaries. It is no surprise that Pollan
believes that naturalism hasn't accomplished anything the last hundred years,
since he
doesn't seem to be aware it has existed for the last hundred years. At the very
least he
doesn't realize just how important post-Thoreau naturalism is for
his subject. His discussion of Aldo Leopold, for instance, is limited to a
couple of
sentences in which Pollan essentially admits that Leopold beat him to the punch
70 years ago,
and then moves on as if this was of no importance. This is simply baffling.
Other important inheritors of and improvers on Thoreau's torch,
like Edward Abbey and Joseph Wood Krutch, aren't even mentioned. I'm as willing
to criticize
Thoreau as the next man (simply, his nature experiences strike me as rhetorical artifice
rather than genuine and the resulting oration is for the most part joyless), but
a lot of
ground has been covered since then. Among most naturalists, Thoreau's worship
of and alienation
from nature have
long since been replaced with a recognition of our role as active participants
in nature, and Thoreau's more obvious gaps in understanding have been filled in.
The naturalism Pollan
argues against is for the most part the naturalism of centuries past.
When it comes to science more strictly defined,
Pollan seems to have distrust but little understanding. For instance, he
suggests at one
point that a watermelon (or was it a cantaloupe? some cucurbit, anyways)
represents the
conversion of sunlight's energy into matter. And not some incredibly miniscule
portion of the
melon, but almost the entire non-water content of it. All those proteins,
cellulose,
sugars--so far as I can tell he truly thinks that the atoms in them didn't exist
before their
creation by
the plant from pure energy. His justification of this is that plants don't
significantly
decrease
the mass of the soil they grow in. That part is true--plants don't remove mass
from
the soil at a rate that even remotely accounts for their gain in mass--but let's
recall the
most basic fact about photosynthesis: it uses the energy of sunlight to convert
water and
carbon dioxide into
carbohydrates. Atoms from air and water are rearranged, but not created. That
little bit of knowledge alone explains why plants don't remove a
significant amount of mass from the soil, and has been a basic part of
biological education
in this country for decades. Perhaps this sounds like nit-picking, but for an
understanding of
plants photosynthesis is, well, kind of important. Most of the minor chemical
details can be safely ignored, true, but the basic concept cannot.
Between naturalism and science, I get the impression Pollan is reacting against
disciplines
he doesn't understand, which is a shame since both of these disciplines have
an incredible amount they could teach him.
With regard to Pollan's positive opinion on gardening, I think the gist is that
he sees a
great divide between lawn care and gardening, and I don't. When Pollan says
that "a lawn is
nature under totalitarian rule" I couldn't agree more, and when he argues how
flawed the lawn approach is in its insistence that we overcome local
conditions and potentialities to grow exactly what we want where we want it he
is absolutely
right. However, while good gardening requires much gentler means of control and
much greater
understanding of the subjects, in its typical form
it is no less a dictatorship. For instance, when Pollan discovers that his soil
isn't suitable for growing carrots, his answer is to change the soil. When one
of his shrubs
dies because the soil has the wrong pH for it, he changes the pH. And so forth.
These are
examples of exactly the same approach that Pollan criticizes when it comes to
lawn
maintenance. He decides what he wants to grow and where he wants to
grow it, and reacts to failure by trying to figure out how he can change nature
to get things
to work out his way. For more extreme examples,
consider any city in the desert southwest. In most yards you'll see roses,
lantanas, canna
lilies,
azaleas, etc., all of which represent opposition to local conditions and ecology
to just as great an extent as the lush green lawns which they surround. On an
online forum I
frequent, someone recently asked if he could grow Japanese maple in Albuquerque
after moving
there
from New Jersey. He wants to use gardening as a physical denial of his current
location,
climate, and ecosystem. This is, unfortunately, the most common approach to
desert
landscaping. In short, Pollan's claim
that gardening represents working with nature while lawns represent working
against nature
is flat-out wrong. Gardeners can work with nature and the best of them
do so. But
the
vast majority of American gardeners approach a lawn as a totalitarian regime of
grasses and a
garden
as a totalitarian regime of food plants, decorative perennials, shrubs, etc.
The plants are
different, but the approach to them is identical.
Another way in which Pollan's gardening-based approach has led him astray is
that
he doesn't seem to have any interest in understanding and appreciating local
plants and
ecology, and doesn't realize that his weedy second-growth woods are the part of
his land that
would most benefit from the sort of man-in-nature (rather than man-against-
nature) approach
he is advocating. He comes to see a moral imperative to remove weeds from his
garden,
but doesn't realize that this imperative speaks with a louder, stronger voice in
his woods.
Pollan even speaks approvingly of a crackpot seed vendor who claims that
invasive species
are a myth and supports the spread of exotic species throughout the globe,
apparently not
realizing
that this kind of viewpoint is precisely why weeds are so great a problem in
lawns, gardens,
and everywhere else on the continent. As a result of his misunderstanding of
and lack of
interest in his
ecosystem, Pollan manages his land in a way that reaffirms the dichotomy of man
and nature
that he argues against in other parts of the book. He creates a space that he
attempts to
control absolutely
and treats the rest as wilderness, left to fend for itself as though he had no
effect on
it or responsibility for it.
I'm sure that anyone who's gotten this far (if any) thinks I'm being
unnecessarily harsh, and
simply ranting against this book. To clarify: I feel strongly about "Second
Nature"'s
short-comings because I see its central mission as very important. Figuring out
how to exist
in nature is the most important challenge facing us, not just for the cute and
cuddly (but
not necessarily important) creatures that tend to be the focus of conservation
campaigns, but for our mental and cultural well-being and our very survival as a
species.
With more knowledge of the field and more consideration of how his actions fit
into this
problem, I think Pollan could have produced an excellent book that might have
opened eyes and
inspired new approaches.
It is this nearness to greatness that makes me so disappointed that the
potential remains
unrealized.
30 July 2005:
The inaugral blog. Everyone else is doing it, so I guess I should, too. I have
no idea if
anyone will actually read this thing, and mostly I'm
writing it as a way of organizing thoughts and whatnot. I also have no idea how
often it
will be updated, so expect the unexpected.
Recently I've been reading a couple of interesting books I figured I'd say
something about, namely Michael Pollan's "Second Nature" and Aldo Leopold's "A
Sand County
Almanac". On the other hand, I ought to go home. To be continued.
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