Bears in Romania

Doug Saunders of The Globe and Mail has been writing dispatches from Romania. The article linked to in the title refers to the large population of black bears there. The black bear is more or less extinct in Europe���except in Romania where, according to Saunders, they���re something of a menace.

Brits against ID cards

This might be quite stale, but the campaign against national ID cards in the United Kingdom has an irresistible illustration.

British bank fees

This just came to light in the BookCrossing chat forum. One of the members asserts that British banks have no right to charge fees that are higher than their costs. Just scroll down until you find it.

More about Passchendaele

I bought my third Remembrance Day poppy today. They constantly work loose and fling themselves to the ground, so by November 11, I probably won't have one to wear.

The quick history is at about.com: Passchaendale. There is, the last I heard, one surviving Canadian British veteran, Harry Patch.

That is a tank sinking in the rear centre.


It was 90 years ago this month. Greg Clark, the gentle Canadian humourist, was a veteran. The men who came back didn't talk about it. It took six men to carry a stretcher through the waist-deep mud. Men and horses drowned in the deeper parts or were buried by shell-fire. You can read here about the battle and its cost.

Giant dinosaur unearthed in Svalbard

A marine dinosaur, the largest of its kind, has been excavated in Svalbard, Norway: Pro-Science: Giant dinosaur dug out in Svalbard. There's more about the Pliosaur here.

Greek fire update

About nine days after Greece's wildfires broke out, now that the fires are mostly under control, Canada is thinking about sending some help.

Greece suffers fire disaster

More than two hundred fires are burning in Greece, encouraged by winds and high temperatures. fires are burning pine forests and olive groves, and have come near to some prominent, and major, archaeological ruins. Burned limestone turns to lime dust. About sixty people have died in the fires: some villages have been surrounded by flames, then burned; and people have been trapped in their cars after crashing while trying to escape.

But so many fires breaking out in forests for no good reason has led the government to think of arson. Some people, it seems, have been setting fires. Cans of paint or solvents and cell-phone detonators have been found in some of the fires. Marine flares were found in another forest where a fire broke out. You know the saying: "Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence: three times is enemy action."

The national government blames people who, it says, are setting the fires in hopes of disrupting the elections that are set for three weeks hence. There's no official way to re-schedule the elections. The opposition is calling the national government incompetent at firefighting (and everything else).

But it's hard to image what any government would do with a tinder-dry countryside and wind-spread wildfires. The government has declared a national emergency.

Teams from the rest of the European Union have come to help fight the fires and to airlift trapped people by helicopter before the fires can reach them. It all sounds quite desperate.

And this, perhaps, is another consequence of climate change: we were warned that dryer weather would make forest fires likelier and more severe.

Plague of voles in Spain

Mild winter and a fruitful spring seem to have brought a plague of voles to Spain. Hundreds of millions of moles are munching their way through the crops. There are so many that you can smell them. The government of Castille-Leon has started to burn harvested fields in hopes of roasting some of the mouse-like rodents. Several methods are being tried to kill them, including driving them with ultrasonic sound. Maybe they should get more cats, too.

Here's some vole info.

Experiments in the biochemical basis of monogamy were conducted on voles.

On the other end of the scale...

British field crickets, Gryllus campestris, are one of the most endangered species in England. At one time there were thought to be only 100 in the wild. The one pictured is from a captive breeding program.

Hoof-and-mouth disease strikes England again

A new outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease in England is the same strain as that used in a nearby laboratory. Britain is trying to react more quickly this time.


(Image is from here.)

There are seven strains of the virus. Immunity to one does not give immunity to the others, and at least two strains are quite variable. There are vaccines made from viral protein, which can not cause the disease. However, immunity lasts only a few months to a few years.

BBC: "Flood leaves 350,000 homes dry"

An alert BookCrosser noticed this headline: "Flood leaves 350,000 homes dry" when the British Broadcasting Corporation wanted to say that flooding in Gloucestershire had interrupted water purification services. It has since been changed to "Floods bring chaos..."

Some 350,000 homes in Gloucestershire will soon be without water because of flooding at a treatment works.

Tens of thousands of homes are without tap water and supplies in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury will run dry in hours, Severn Trent Water said.

About 600,000 people could lose electricity if flooding overwhelms defences around a key substation.

Viking hoard found in Yorkshire

A father and son walking with a metal detector have found the largest Viking hoard discovered since 1840. Their find is a large bowl containing more than 600 coins and some jewellery buried by Vikings around 930 CE.

(hat tip to LotStreetWiz for sending me the link)

Two car bombs defused in London

Two car bombs were found and defused in London, partly by luck. Sharp-eyed ambulance attendants responding to a minor injury at a popular London disco near Piccadilly noticed a car parked by the door that was smoking slightly--inside. Inside was a powerful nail-bomb.


Another car was towed because it was illegally parked. Towing staff noticed a "strange smell" of gasoline, parked it away from the other cars, and alerted people who discovered that it was another mobile bomb.

Both cars are being eagerly searched for clues to who left them.

Bloody terrorists. Britain is not afraid!

Still, this might lead to a heightened state of tension: more watchfulness and an extra cup of tea.

Absurd argument for bigotry

A news article states that European conservatives, encouraged by American visitors, is using the tired old "slippery slope" argument. It goes something like this: "If you let your kids eat peas, before you know it they'll be out grazing on the lawn." Here's the link:

According to leaders of a recent conference dominated by "pro-family" Europeans and Americans, Europe's increasing acceptance of same-sex unions is the top of a slippery slope that will ultimately leave the institution of marriage meaningless.

"Once same-sex marriage is institutionalized, other forms of marriage will quickly be affirmed as well, such as polygamy, polyamory, endogamy and child marriage," Bull said. He added: "Make no mistake. Marriage as we know it will be destroyed if we make all relationships legal."

So if you let same-sex couples who love each other make a legal, public commitment, then polyamorous people who believe in sex for fun without monogamy will bother to get married to do their orgies? It's not my cup of tea, but I don't think I would bother.

Japanese royalty honours Linnaeus

Coturnix's Blog Around the Clock article of yesterday, about the birthday of Linnaeus, has gathered a nice comment from MartinC:

Mrs MartinC, who works as a preschool teacher here in Stockholm, was out yesterday with her class for a nature walk to the local park - where the Stockholm Botanical Garden is located - when she noticed a crowd of Japanese journalists. She asked one of them what was happening and suddenly found herself and class whisked to the front and introduced to the Emperor of Japan, King of Sweden and their wives, the Empress and Queen! Apparently the Japanese regents are visiting this week to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl von Linne.

Isn't it nice of them to consider a seminal scientific discoverer worthy of recognition?

Here's a note about the celebrations:

The birthday party will continue for more than a week in Linnaeus��s home province of Sm��land and in Uppsala north of Stockholm.... Linnaeus will be celebrated with a festival of 18th-century music, the premiere of the film Mr Flower Power, a postage stamp, an anniversary coin, a tulip festival, music, thousands of flower children, dance performances, a memorial ceremony in Uppsala Cathedral and a conferment of doctoral degrees at Uppsala University. Thousands of guests have been invited from many different countries. The local authorities in ��lmhult and Uppsala have put their heart and soul into hosting a gigantic birthday party!

Linnaeus��s birthday on May 23 begins with a solemn commemoration in Uppsala Cathedral, which was consecrated in 1435. Guests of honour are His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf, Her Majesty Queen Silvia, Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria and Her Royal Highness Princess Madeleine, together with Emperor Akihito of Japan and Empress Michiko. A wreath will be laid on Linnaeus��s grave; specially composed music will be played...

The Japanese Emperor��s interest in science and in Linnaeus is well-known. In an article in the journal Science in 1992 he mentioned both Linnaeus and his pupil Carl Peter Thunberg. The Emperor��s interest in Linnaeus was demonstrated most recently during the Swedish state visit to Tokyo in March. In conjunction with that he visited the Linn�� 2007 exhibition at Japan��s National Science Museum, where he received the anniversary Linnaeus Medal. The fact that the Emperor is coming to Sweden so soon after this visit is considered to be unique.

Anders Bj��rck says,

���I am incredibly proud that the Emperor of Japan, himself a scientist, is coming to participate in this, the greatest jubilee ever organised in Sweden for a scientist."

Left-handed Mousterian hand axe

As I was browsing through images of Mousterian (therefore Neanderthal) stone-age tools, I found this description of a left-handed axe, made of jasper, that "fits like a glove in the left hand only:"

Natural openings in the jasper used as finger pockets. Ingenious and masterfully executed grip design with finger pockets on BOTH sides and a round, bulbous proximal end to distribute impact shock across entire palm.

Religions: Wicca

Wicca as reconstructed by its modern practitioners is a nice, agricultural, emotionally satisfying religion. The earth has its cycles of bloom and harvest, the year has its cycle of waxing and waning darkness, a life has its stages. "God" is male and female--the God and Goddess with their aspects in various roles, the God as hunter, father (or lover?), and patriarch(?), the Goddess as maiden, mother, and crone. Everything that you do, good or bad, comes back to you thrice over. You can tell that I have only a passing acqaintance with the concepts. But if you need a place to go, mingle, chant, celebrate, and feel the mystery and unity of the universe, it seems like a good choice.

See also "Wiccan holidays" and "Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism."

Darwin and Punctuated Equilibrium

In general, Darwin insisted on writing of evolution as very slow and gradual. But his own colleague T. H. Huxley pointed out that he was hobbling the process unnecessarily by referring to it as always gradual. It is slow, if we're talking of the formation of most species under most natural conditions. I think that Darwin's own cautious nature and hatred of conflict led him to characterize evolution as slow, on the grounds that it would be less upsetting for everyone if it were.

But when conditions change rapidly, especially if generations are short, species sometimes change rapidly as well. The British people inadvertently supplied a new environment for mosquitoes when they dug subway tunnels under the streets of London. And, obligingly, mosquitoes that found their way into the system and stayed there developed into a new species (Culex molestus), unwilling to breed with its surface-dwelling, bird-biting neighbours (Culex pipiens). The underground mosquitoes learned to feed on rats, mice, and people. (They tormented the people of London during the Blitz, when the subways were used as air raid shelters.) The first section of the London Underground opened in 1863, and the new species was noticed in 1988, a span of 125 years. Of course, a generation of mosquitoes is only 3 weeks long, so 125 years is about 1700 generations if the underground mosquitoes were able to breed all year 'round. There are even genetic differences between the mosquitoes on different subway lines. So a small population can diverge rapidly from its main branch. (See "Rapid Speciation" for more examples.)

In a stable environment, the long-term stability of forms is only to be expected, since organisms are well adapted and any change tends to make them less so. But under selective pressure from changed conditions, a group can change rapidly. If a population on the fringes of a territory has adapted earlier to conditions that become more common, the "fringe" group can spread back into the main group's territory. That can explain why, sometimes, a different form appears in the fossil record but the few, isolated transitional fossils of their changing are hard to find and perhaps never formed. This, more or less, is punctuated equilibrium: long periods of well-adapted fossils enjoying their optimum fitness, followed by changing conditions and their rapid replacement by a different form. It's still descent with modification by natural selection upon variation. It's still a natural process; and in our eyes it takes a long time.


In spite of Darwin's usual public insistence on "gradualism," which became really prominent after the attacks on the first edition of On the Origin of Species, he recognized the punctuated process as a likely scenario in evolution. Here it is, in his own words, from "Transmutation Notebook E:"

The more I think, the more convinced I am, that extinction plays greater part than transmutation. ��� Do species migrate & die out.?���

In the place where any species is most common, we need not look for change, because its numbers show it is perfectly adapted; it [is] where few stray ones are, that change may be anticipated, & this would look like fresh Creation. The gardener separates a plant he wishes to vary...

U.S. National Public Radio program "Speaking of Faith" has worked with the Cambridge University Library and Darwin scholar David Kohn to provide an online tour of Darwin's Notebooks and sketches (whence I borrowed this image).

Tags: crackpots, evolution, Charles Darwin, Darwin, speciation, punctuated equilibrium

Wiccan holidays

There are eight major Wiccan holidays in a year:

• Samhain (October 31). Samhain, (pronounced SOW-in, SAH-vin, or SAM-hayne) means "End of Summer", and is the third and final Harvest. The dark winter half of the year commences on this Sabbat. It is generally celebrated on October 31st, but some traditions prefer November 1st. It is one of the two "spirit-nights" each year, the other being Beltane. It is a magical interval when the mundane laws of time and space are temporarily suspended, and the Thin Veil between the worlds is lifted. Communicating with ancestors and departed loved ones is easy at this time, for they journey through this world on their way to the Summerlands. It is a time to study the Dark Mysteries and honor the Dark Mother and the Dark Father, symbolized by the Crone and her aged Consort.


• Yule, Winter Solstice (December 21). Yule, (pronounced EWE-elle) is when the dark half of the year relinquishes to the light half. Starting the next morning at sunrise, the sun climbs just a little higher and stays a little longer in the sky each day. Known as Solstice Night, or the longest night of the year, much celebration was to be had as the ancestors awaited the rebirth of the Oak King, the Sun King, the Giver of Life that warmed the frozen Earth and made her to bear forth from seeds protected through the fall and winter in her womb.


• Imbolc (February 2). Imbolc, (pronounced "IM-bulk" or "EM-bowlk"), also called Oimealg, ("IM-mol'g), by the Druids, is the festival of the lactating sheep. It is derived from the Gaelic word "oimelc" which means "ewes milk". Herd animals have either given birth to the first offspring of the year or their wombs are swollen and the milk of life is flowing into their teats and udders. It is the time of Blessing of the seeds and consecration of agricultural tools. It marks the center point of the dark half of the year. It is the festival of the Maiden, for from this day to March 21st, it is her season to prepare for growth and renewal.


• Ostara, Spring Equinox(March 21). As Spring reaches its midpoint, night and day stand in perfect balance, with light on the increase. The young Sun God now celebrates a hierogamy (sacred marriage) with the young Maiden Goddess, who conceives. In nine months, she will again become the Great Mother. It is a time of great fertility, new growth, and newborn animals. The next full moon (a time of increased births) is called the Ostara and is sacred to Eostre, the Saxon Lunar Goddess of fertility (whence we get the words yeast, Easter, and estrogen, whose two symbols were the egg and the rabbit.


• Beltane (April 30). Beltane has long been celebrated with feasts and rituals. Beltane means fire of Bel; Belinos being one name for the Sun God, whose coronation feast we now celebrate.
  
  
• Litha, Summer Solstice (June 21). Although the name Litha is not well attested, it may come from Saxon tradition -- the opposite of Yule. On this longest day of the year, light and life are abundant. At mid-summer, the Sun God has reached the moment of his greatest strength. Seated on his greenwood throne, he is also lord of the forests, and his face is seen in church architecture peering from countless foliate masks.


• Lugnasadh, Lammas, early harvest (July 31, August 1). Lughnasadh means the funeral games of Lugh (pronounced Loo), referring to Lugh, the Irish sun god. However, the funeral is not his own, but the funeral games he hosts in honor of his foster-mother Tailte. As autumn begins, the Sun God enters his old age, but is not yet dead. The God symbolically loses some of his strength as the Sun rises farther in the South each day and the nights grow longer.


• Mabon, Autumn Equinox, late harvest (September 21). Mabon, (pronounced MAY-bun, MAY-bone, MAH-boon, or MAH-bawn) is the Autumn Equinox. The Autumn Equinox divides the day and night equally, and we all take a moment to pay our respects to the impending dark. We also give thanks to the waning sunlight, as we store our harvest of this year's crops. The Druids call this celebration, Mea'n Fo'mhair, and honor the The Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering libations to trees. Offerings of ciders, wines, herbs and fertilizer are appropriate at this time. Wiccans celebrate the aging Goddess as she passes from Mother to Crone, and her consort the God as he prepares for death and re-birth.

See also "Religions: Wicca" and "Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism."

Tea for 74000 in Trafalgar Square

The average Britisher drinks 74000 cups of tea over his or her lifetime. To illustrate that number, 74000 cups were set up in Trafalgar Square.