Michael Pollan at TEDS: What do potatoes think of us?

Pollan asks a provocative question:  Do we force plants to do our bidding when we breed them, or are we being manipulated by them?

Pollan is the author of Botany of Desire, a great book.  There is a PBS production based on the book.

Joy of pollination, according to Louie Schwartzberg

It’s a TEDS Talk, of course

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.  Plants do it, too, but often with the help of animals.

Here are some of the most glorious pictures of sex you’ll ever see, filmed by Louie Schwartzberg.  Anyone who has ever tried to take a good photograph should marvel at these shots, and the skill and artistry and luck it took to get them:

What will we do if the bees vanish?

The lowdown:

http://www.ted.com Pollination: it’s vital to life on Earth, but largely unseen by the human eye. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg [of Moving Art] shows us the intricate world of pollen and pollinators with gorgeous high-speed images from his film “Wings of Life,” inspired by the vanishing of one of nature’s primary pollinators, the honeybee.

Build-a-Prairie update

For a couple of years, about this time of year, the Bathtub gets a lot of hits from people looking to play a great little environmental simulation game called “Build-a-Prairie.”  It used to be housed at the site of the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota.

Alas, money ran out, or the proprietors simply decided not to support it anymore (it was originally sponsored by AT&T), or something, but for whatever reason the game is no longer found at the Bell Museum.

Is it available somewhere else?

Someone at SmartBoard shrewdly captured the game for use with SmartBoards.   At least, I hope they captured it.

Any other places the game can be found?

Nice Update:    Mr. Higginbotham found the Build-a-Prairie game, at the Bell Museum site:  http://www.bellmuseum.umn.edu/games/prairie/build/

Evidence of evolution: Giraffe’s laryngeal nerve

One of my favorite examples of evolution and how we can see it in living things today:  The laryngeal nerve of the giraffe, linking larynx to brain, a few inches away — but because of evolutionary developments, instead dropping from the brain all the way down the neck to the heart, and then back up to the larynx.  In giraffe’s the nerve can be as much as 15 feet long, to make a connection a few inches away.  Richard Dawkins explains:

All mammals have the nerve, and as a result of our fishy ancestry, in all mammals, the nerve goes down the neck, through a heart blood vessel, and back up.  In fish, of course, the distance is shorter — fish have no necks.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula’s Sciblogs site.

Crazy ants? Hey, I warned you . . .

Just over two years ago I noted the pending, rolling disaster of the introduction of Caribbean Crazy Ants, or Rasberry Crazy Ants, to the American South.

Associated Press is catching up.

Now, will you listen to me when I tell you not to vote for Rick Perry?   Will you listen when I tell you we need to control CO² emissions?

Carnival of Evolution #38 — take THAT, creationism!

Larry Moran is much the overachiever, sort of the Hermoine Granger of evolution wizards scientists.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised that his hosting of the Carnival of Evolution #38 at his rollicking blog Sandwalk resulted in one of the longest, largest, most jam-packed blog carnivals ever.

Go see — unless you’re a creationist.  If you’re a creationist you’ll see so much that you’ll begin to doubt your faith in creationism and anti-science, and then you’re likely to confuse that with doubt of God, and you can’t stand such a faith trial.

Yeah, you, Don McLeroy.  And you, Granville Sewell.  More knowledge than you can hold in your head.

Which article in the Carnival of Evolution is your favorite, Dear Reader?

Tip of the old scrub brush to P. S. Myers at Pharyngula (soon moving . . .).

How to make a dinosaur: Start with a chicken . . .

Dinosaur hunter extraordinaire Jack Horner explained to an audience at TEDS that he always wanted a pet dinosaur . . .

(From a talk recorded March 4 2011.)

Jack Horner may look familiar to you.  Or you may not recognize him without the cowboy hat.  Horner is famous enough in dinosaurphile circles that a character who looked like Horner, down to the red shirt and cowboy hat, was included in the Jurassic Park movies.

This is, in loose form, real science.  It’s the sort of stuff that somehow gets squeezed out of science curricula in middle schools and high schools.  What student will not find it interesting to talk about why we can’t clone dinosaurs from mosquitoes trapped in amber, but how we can regress a chicken to bring out atavistic traits?

Such material may cause apoplexy among some cliques at the Texas State Board of Education — because this reinforces evolution ideas.  Horner says, “We can fix the chicken — because evolution works.”

Science teachers:  Can you find some way to shoehorn this stuff back into your classes?

Still no fireworks at Texas SBOE . . . yet

July 21, Austin — The board reconvened at 5:35.  An amendment to the approval of Tech System’s chemistry supplement was quickly passed.  Without any discussion, physics and IPC (“integrated physics and chemistry” — science for kids who will not be interested in science, and for teachers who can’t make them interested — but I digress), approved on raise-of-hand, quick votes — both in under three minutes total.

Biology! Staff notes there are some noted errors contested by publishers; the board again discusses what constitutes an error.  Craig begs for delay to tomorrow, since no one on TEA staff appears to have any biology expertise to rule on whether an error is an error.

Publisher in question is Holt McDougall — the #1 biology textbook publisher, for textbooks in high schools and junior colleges.  Holt asked for a hearing on the errors.  If I understand the discussion, the board is saying they’ll stick with the panel recommendations, since they are doing that for all other publishers. In short, the process is unclear to those who invented the process and those who are ruling on the product.  This would be a good essay from Richard Feynman, wouldn’t it?

Dollars to doughnuts, those members who now claim not to be able to figure out whether errors of biology are errors of biology, will be saying soon that they are competent to rule on key theories of science (evolution).

[Remember to see the immediately previous post, for links to Texas Freedom Network and Texas Observer blogs also covering this process live.]

Oy.  Twenty minutes of discussion on whether to ask a representative from Holt to explain why Holt thinks designated errors are not errors.  Board doesn’t know their own process — are errors noted by a vote of the review panel, or by a simple designation from any panelist without discussion.

Motion to hear from the publisher.  Mavis Knight wants to know why a motion is required, if the SBOE rules say the board can call a publisher any time.  (“And, Texas doesn’t execute innocent people, either.”) Garza discusses issue before the vote.  Debatable motion?  Yes.  “I don’t think we’re going to learn anything new from the publisher.”  (Who said that?)

Knight speaks in favor of hearing, to learn how the publisher got to their conclusion that the designated error is not an error.  Soto agrees.  Ratliff favors the motion, too — “to make sure that what we’re about to approve for the next decade is the best possible material” — and because the board doesn’t know whether the question from the panel represents a consensus or a wild hare.  Clayton — “is [the publisher] also a biologist, and can he address the issue?”  “I wonder if we’re wasting our time listening to a publisher instead of a biologist.”

[Lost some text -- sorry]

6:06, motion to listen to publisher fails, 7-7.

Update, after adjournment:  Board voted to approve Holt-McDougall’s supplement on the condition that the publisher change things identified as errors by the review panel.  Board, by voting not to hear the publisher, failed to note that the “errors” are contested.  View of  biologists present is that the board is ordering Holt-McDougall to introduce errors.  Before final approval, can we get the board to come down on accurate science’s side?  This is the quiet erosion of good science I feared.

Board then pulled out three products for discussion, approving the others (biology, remember) on a hand vote.  Products pulled out are Adaptive Curriculum, Learning.com’s Adaptive Curriculum on their platform, and Technical Laboratory Systems’ SciTEX Biology.

Gail Lowe says the objection is the addition of Haeckel’s embryo drawings.  This is an old issue with Texas creationists.  They jumped on the Discovery Institute’s claim that Haeckel’s drawings show evolution, but where evolution doesn’t occur.  (Haeckel fudged drawings, biologists have known for years — but his fudged drawings haven’t been used to make his erroneous point in 50 years . . .).

Publisher steps up and shows photographs that they have agreed to substitute.

Somehow, the creationists fail to notice that what has happened is they are insisting on photographs that show evolution in stead of a drawing.  (Turns out the drawings are not Haeckel’s after all — just line drawings of embryoes).  Creationist Gail Lowe excitedly makes the motion to accept the product with photos instead of line drawings.  (Somewhere a Discovery Institute wizard is having a heart attack.)

Board proceeds to make similar motion for Learning.com’s version of Adaptive Curriculum’s stuff.

6:25 p.m.

Lowe complains of spelling, punctuation and subject-verb agreement issues on the slides for SciTEX Biology.  Motion to insist they be corrected before they make it to classroom.  Discussion . . . (discussion?  discussion?)

The science is right, but the spelling is wrong.  [To this old copy editor, this strikes me as bizarre.]  “In the future we need to appoint at least one member to each panel who is an expert in the English language.”  (missed which guy said that)

Motion to approve, with errors to be fixed, passes.

Item 8, biology supplements, as amended, is approved.

No fight.

Counsel says there must be a formal motion to reject the materials from the ID/Creationist guys.  Motion passes.

I’m a fireworks fan, but missing fireworks in this room is a good deal.

Board adjourned for the evening.  Votes on other issues, and final approval, tomorrow.

“Eat your peas, Gregor”

Gregor Mendel was born July 20 in 1822.

Google’s doodle honors the man now generally regarded as the “father of modern genetics.”  The Washington Post blogs note, “Rare is the monk who gets to be celebrated for passing down his genes.”

Oblivious to Mendel’s work and significance, and to much else in the world of knowledge, the Texas State Board of Education debates how to frustrate the teaching of evolution with hearings in Austin tomorrow, and a vote on supplementary materials to texts in biology on Friday, July 22.

Mendel would urge, pray for Texas and the children who will be saddled with the decision of the Texas SBOE.

Look up something about Mendel.  Maybe we could all learn something from him.

Google Doodle honoring Fr. Gregor Mendel, "father of modern genetics"

Friends of science and evolution: Testify next week in the Texas textbook process?

I get important e-mail from the Texas Freedom Network; they’re asking for help next week to fight creationism and other forms of buncombe popular in Texas:

Science and the SBOE: One Week to Go

Next week, the Texas State Board of Education will take a critical vote on science in our public schools. We need people like you to make sure the vote is in favor of sound, well-established science.

Up for board consideration are science instructional materials submitted by a number of publishers and vendors who want their product used in Texas classrooms. Even before the board meets, far-right groups have been hard at work trying to ensure materials approved by the board attack and diminish evolutionary science and include the junk science of “intelligent design”/creationism.

The attacks include one from a little-know firm out of New Mexico, International Databases, which submitted instructional materials rife with creationist propaganda.

It gets worse. Far-right SBOE members last month appointed creationists with questionable scientific credentials to teams tasked with reviewing the materials and making recommendations to the board.

And new board chair Barbara Cargill upped the stakes when in a speech just last week she framed the debate over science as a “spiritual battle.”

The board will hold just ONE public hearing on the science materials. Your participation is crucial.

It is critical that you act now by clicking here to express your interest in testifying before the board on July 21.

Please note: The deadline to sign up to testify is 5 p.m. Monday.

We must insist that the SBOE keep junk science – including “intelligent design”/creationism – out of our children’s classrooms. The board must approve only instructional materials that are accurate, that are in line with sound and well-established science, and that will prepare Texas children to succeed in college and the jobs of the 21st century.

Texas Freedom Network advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right. www.tfn.org | www.tfninsider.org | General: tfn@tfn.org

Tell a friend to subscribe to TFN News Clips, Alerts or Rapid Response Teams. Subscribers may choose the issue areas that interest them. To change your TFN subscription preferences – or to unsubscribe – click here.

Copyright 2010, Texas Freedom Network

Trying to carve out time here.  Can you help?

Hearings will be most interesting.  Support for the Texas State Board of Education actually comes, often, from the Texas Education Agency (TEA).  TEA this week laid off just under 200 workers, to deal with the 36% budget chopping done to the agency by the Texas Lege.  Word comes this week that curriculum directors at TEA were let go, including the director of science curriculum.

It’s rather like the first 20 weeks of World War II in the Pacific, with the aggressors advancing on almost all fronts against science.  When is our Battle of Midway?

Information, resources: 

• Texas Citizens for Science; TCS on Facebook
• Teach Them Science
• National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
• National Association of Biology Teachers

December 27, Good Trip Day: Darwin and Apollo 8

December 27 is one of those days — many of us are off work, but it’s after Boxing Day, and it’s not yet on to New Year’s Eve or Day.  We should have celebrated, maybe.

We should celebrate it as a day of portent:  A good embarkation, and a good, safe end to a nation-encouraging trip to almost touch the Moon.

HMS Beagle, on a voyage of discovery

On December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin and H.M.S. Beagle set sail on an around-the-world voyage of discovery that would change all of science, and especially biology, forever.

December 27 1831
After a few delays, H.M.S. Beagle headed out from Plymouth with a crew of 73 under clear skies and a good wind. Darwin became sea-sick almost immediately.

Darwin never fully overcame his seasickness, but he fought it well enough to become the single greatest collector of specimens in history for the British Museum and British science, a distinction that won him election to science societies even before his return from the trip — and cemented his life in science, instead of in the church.  Darwin’s discoveries would have revolutionized biology in any case.  In analyzing what he had found, a few years later and with the aid of experts at the British Museum, Darwin realized he had disproved much of William Paley’s hypotheses about life and its diversity, and that another, more basic explanation was possible.  This led to his discovery of evolution by natural and sexual selection.

Mini-sheet from the Royal Mail in 2009 honoring Darwin's discoveries in the Galapagos Islands

On December 27, 1968, Apollo 8 splashed down after a successful and heartening trip to orbit the Moon.  The three crewmen, Commander Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders, had orbited the Moon, a very important milestone in the methodological race to put humans on the Moon (which would be accomplished seven months later).  1968 was a terrible year for the U.S., with the North Korean capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo, assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign, riots in dozens of American cities, nasty political conventions with riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a contentious and bitter election making sore the nation’s divide over Vietnam policy, and other problems.  On Christmas Eve, Borman, Lovell and Anders broadcast from orbit around the Moon, a triumphant and touching moment for the Apollo Program and Americans around the world.   Their safe return on December 27 raised hopes for a better year in 1969.

Motherboard.tv has a great write up from Alex Pasternack:

In 1968, NASA engineers were scrambling to meet President Kennedy’s challenge to land a man on the moon by decade’s end. Because delays with the lunar module were threatening to slow the Apollo program, NASA chose to change mission plans and send the crew of Apollo 8 all the way to the moon without a lunar module.

Exactly 42 years ago, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit another celestial object. As they came around the dark side for the third time, Frank Borman, the commander, finally turned their capsule around. And then they saw the Earth.

Borman: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.
Anders: Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.
Borman: (laughing) You got a color film, Jim?
Anders: Hand me that roll of color quick, will you…

One of the resulting photos taken by Anders on a Hasselblad camera became one of the world’s most iconic images.

As Bill Anders recalls it:

I just happened to have one with color film in it and a long lens. All I did was to keep snapping… It’s not a very good photo as photos go, but it’s a special one. It was the first statement of our planet Earth and it was particularly impressive because it’s contrasted against this startling horizon… After all the training and studying we’d done as pilots and engineers to get to the moon safely and get back, [and] as human beings to explore moon orbit, what we really discovered was the planet Earth.

Yeah, we missed toasting it on time in 2010.  Plan to raise a glass on December 27, 2011, to Good Trip Day for the human race.  December 27 is a day we should remember, for these achievements.

Butterflies are free, to move about the country

Great mysteries of science, history and spirit call to us:  How do the monarch butterflies do it?

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) fly north from their enclave in Mexico every spring, stopping to lay eggs on milkweed plants.  After a migration of several hundred miles, that first group that left Mexico dies off.  Their offspring hatch in a few days, devour the milkweed, make a chrysalis, metamorphose into butterflies, then fly farther north, where they repeat their parents’ behavior:  Lay some eggs, and die.  Within three generations, they’ve spread north into Canada.

Inviting the monarchs in: You can see how Kathryn worked to attract butterflies. In this photo, you can see the butterfly weed (a milkweed), red Turk's cap, and blue ageratum especially for the monarchs.

Then the fourth generation does something so strange and wonderful people can’t stop talking about it:  They fly back to Mexico, to the same trees their great-great-great grandparents left.  There they sip some nectar, get some water, and spend a lot of time hanging in great globs, huddling over the winter, to start life for generations of monarch butterflies the next spring.

Sometimes in Texas in October, we can see clouds of monarch butterflies winging south.  If we’re lucky, they stop to visit our backyards and gardens, and we might provide some water and nectar to urge them homeward.  Kathryn, of course, plants the stuff the monarchs like, to help them, and to give us a chance to see them.

Monarch habitat in Mexico is under severe stress and threat.  Late storms and early freezes decimated monarch populations over the last decade [yes, that's the proper use of "decimated;" look it up].  Human plantings are more critical to the monarch butterflies than ever before.

Two years ago Kathryn and I spent a September morning outside the library at Lawrence University, in Appleton, Wisconsin, watching monarchs sip nectar from local flowers for their journey.  Those same butterflies — we hope — passed through Texas a couple of weeks later.

Two weeks ago . . . well, see for yourself:

A monarch butterfly feeds on blue porterweed in Kathryn's garden, October 2010 - photo by Ed Darrell

. . . we're here with the camera, little guy, just open up those wings, please . . .

That's it! Beautiful! Have a safe trip, and come back next spring, will you?

Resources, more:

• Blue ageratum is also known as blue mistflower, Conoclinium coelestinum
• Turk’s Cap passes under a lot of aliases: Drummond Wax-mallow, Texas Mallow, Mexican Apple, Red Mallow, May Apple, Wild Turk’s Cap, Bleeding Heart;
  Malvaviscus drummondii (M. arboreus var. drummondii)
• Butterfly weed — there are several plants that take this name in various parts of the country, this one is Asclepias tuberosa, but Kathryn’s bloom redder and more intense yellow than any of the photos I’ve seen on line.
• Blue porterweed is another important butterfly plant, Stachytarpheta jamaicensis; it also goes under many names:  Blue Snakeweed, Jamaica vervain, Brazilian Tea, Devil’s Coachwhip. Ours is in a container on the patio (not in the garden path picture).
• Yeah, the headline is a real groaner — an old movie title coupled with Southwest Airline’s slogan.  You’re free to suggest a better headline, anytime.
• You can help track the migrations of the monarch butterflies — go to MonarchWatch.org for instructions and details.
• Here’s another migration tracking program, at Learner.org (an Annenberg Foundation project)
• MonarchButterflyUSA.com
• Enchanted Learning’s monarch page
• I think the monarch in my photos is a male, at least, that’s what it looks like from the photos at Great Plains Nature Center in Wichita, Kansas — can anyone tell for sure?  How?
• Mexico’s tourism office advertising agency appears unable to tell the difference between a monarch and a viceroy — can you tell?

Conoclinium coelestinum

Literary mushrooms in Rockport, Maine

Greg Marley’s new book on mushrooms is out, and there is a launch party set for October 30, in Rockport, Maine.

Can you be there?

Greg’s book party:

Book Release Party and Mushroom Talk

Cover of Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares, by Greg Marley

Saturday, October 30 from 4-6:00 pm
at Farmers Fare on Route 90 in Rockport [Maine]
Light refreshments served and beverages available

Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love, Lore and Mystique of Mushrooms

Welcome a new book by Greg Marley, celebrating the wonder and mystery of mushrooms. Enjoy a readable, captivating and informative collection of great mushroom stories. From world-class edibles (with recipes) to the most deadly, learn about the mushrooms in your neighborhood and how to invite them into your life, or even how to grow your own.

 

Hey, if you’re in the neighborhood, drop in.

How evolution makes bedbugs resistant to DDT

Our internet’s best expert in bedbugs, Bug Girl, recently featured another post relating how DDT drove evolution of bedbugs, so that bedbugs are no longer susceptible to DDT.  You should go read what Bug Girl said.

And you can view the video here, too; let’s spread the word, eh?

As Bug Girl describes it:

I discovered that bed bug evolution–specifically resistance to pesticides–was also the subject of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center‘s podcast this month.  A FASCINATING interview with one of the grand old men of evolutionary genetics, James Crow.  He worked on DDT resistance back in the late 40s and 50s.

Watch, and increase your knowledge.

Want to teach evolution? Then be ready for THIS!

What would the police make of such a threat?

Bug Girl lifts the tent flap to show us just a little of what it’s like to be a teacher of evolution, including mysterious threats made on notes left under windshield wipers.

At least, I think it’s a threat.  (“If you teach evolution, I’ll make you giggle till you choke!”)

I figure that note came from the sort of person who would pray for this to happen to a good professor of biology.

(Do you think the note writer was trying to say something about the sheets upon which Bug Girl’s parents frolicked?)