Quizzing the Anonymous
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Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in the "shkrobius" journal:[<< Previous 50 entries]
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01:37 pm
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Table of contents
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. (F. Bacon)
( Last updated on December 25, 2008 )
Tags: table of contents
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08:56 pm
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Connections, connections
Planned parenthood -- eugenics -- racism -- advocacy of abortions
(A story of Mary Sanger's planned parenthood movement in the USA and its origins in the 1920s eugenics). http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2035690/posts
...Abortion ends more black lives than heart disease, cancer, accidents, AIDS, and violent crime combined. African Americans constitute little more than 12% of the population but have 37% of abortions... In some regions the numbers are much starker; in Mississippi, black women receive some 72% of all abortions... Nationwide, 512 out of every 1,000 black pregnancies end in an abortion. Roughly 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion centers are in or near minority communities.
I remember reading in Levitt's "Freakonomics" how legalizing abortions saved us all from rising crime (= black crime) by "elimination" of the unwanted ones:
...Teenagers, unmarried women and African Americans are all substantially more likely to seek abortions. Children born to these mothers tend to be at higher risk for committing crime 17 years or so down the road, so abortion may reduce subsequent criminality through this selection effect. http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf
It was not discussed there whether fighting crime by elimination of poor black population is ethically acceptable. The pioneer of the planned parenthood was straightforward in her views: The mass of significant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes...is [in] that portion of the population least intelligent and fit. Of course, the extermination is not only limited to the blacks (More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue of birth control). She was opposed to abortion, though: the idea was that the blacks should stop conceiving in the first place.
I do not know why all denials of humanity invariably lead to the same end. Perhaps this is the nature of the thing. Devilry finds the spot of the least resistance, providing "progressive" means to the same old aims.
Tags: note to myself
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06:44 pm
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Do the trees feel pain?
Let me guess -- if you ask this question around you'll immediately get the answer that plants do not feel because plants do not have nerves. Neither do the sponges, but they sent voltage spikes through their skin cells when touched. P. caudatum is a tiny unicel; when it bumps into an object it sends inward Ca++ current across its little body to change the beating pattern of its celia.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1282514&blobtype=pdf
Do they "feel"? I think they do. It is not much in a way of feeling, but they do not pretend to be sensitive types. You have long-distance, coordinated transduction of the signal in response to a local stimulus. It is electric, uses ions. Who am I to deny feelings to my metazoan brothers and sisters? Jellies do have nerves but only diffuse nerve nets, no brain. Some of them (box jellies) have eyes attached to this "no brain" and use these eyes to catch fish. If we start deny feeling to those looking at us, we would not get far in discussing feeling, do we? The sponges also have a "nerve net," but their cells are totimpotent and so the whole animal is a giant "nerve," if you wish. So it is questionable who is more touchy-feely: them or us, the eumetazoans.
Transmembrane voltage-gated ion channels like those in the axons and at the synapse are not rare at all. Such channels already occur in the prokaryotes and have evolved 2+ Gya. The plants are full of potassium channels: plasma membrane and vacuolar channels, hyperpolarization-activated channels, and so on. These are present in every tissue. There are also Ca++ channels - again, all kinds of voltage-gated channels. Nobody knows how these are interacting with each other: it is not a hot topic to study and it is not clear how to study it. The cross talk of these channels certainly occurs in plants because their coordinated action is observed in long-term ion fluxes in guard cells during stomatal movement (see Membrane Transport in Plants; MR Blatt 2004). Stoma are pores in the leafs through which the gas exchange occurs. Wikipedia explains the mechanics of this action here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoma
The Ca++ channels in plants respond to stress, e.g.
...When plant cells are exposed to environmental stresses or perceive internal signal molecules involved in growth and development, ion channels are transiently activated to convert these stimuli into intracellular signals. Among the ions taken up by plant cells, Ca++ plays an essential role as an intracellular second messenger in plants... Signal transduction pathways mediated by changes in cytoplasmic – termed Ca2+ signaling – are initiated by the activation of Ca++-permeable channels in many cases. To date, a large body of electrophysiological and recent molecular biological studies have revealed that plants possess Ca++ channels belonging to distinct types with different gating mechanisms, and a variety of genes for Ca++-permeable channels have been isolated and functionally characterized. We discuss their roles in environmental responses and in the regulation of growth and development. http://www.springerlink.com/content/k66728p8h8635222
...As the nerve-mediated signaling in animals, long-distance signaling in plants is a prerequisite for plants to be able to perceive environmental stimuli and initiate adaptive responses. While intracellular signal transduction has been attracting considerable attentions, studies on long-distance signaling in plants has been relatively overlooked. Stomatal movements are well recognized as a model system for studies on cellular signal transduction. It has been demonstrated that the stomatal movements may be frequently tuned by long-distance signaling under various environmental stimuli. Stomatal movements can not only respond to persistent stress stimuli but also respond to shock stress stimuli. etc.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2634372
When one reads papers like the last one, it is hard to ecape unease: if the plants rely on the same voltage-gated ion channels, have their own favorite mechanisms for long-distance signalling in response to local stimuli, both persistent and shock, if there is already the science of "plant neurobiology"
...The behavior plants exhibit is coordinated across the whole organism by some form of integrated signaling, communication and response system. This system includes long-distance electrical signals, vesicle-mediated transport of auxin in specialized vascular tissues, and production of chemicals known to be neuronal in animals. Here we review how plant neurobiology is being directed toward discovering the mechanisms of signaling in whole plants, as well as among plants and their neighbors.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16843034
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17263772
Stahlberg R. Historical overview on plant neurobiology. Plant Signal Behavior. 2006;1:6–8.
and talk about plant intelligence http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12740212
--- how the heck is one supposed to know whether they feel pain? What does it mean to "feel pain" if you are a plant? That they do not have the nerves is irrelevant, because the nerves are just convenient conduits for long-range electrical signalling in animals. Plants are not animals by virtue of parting the company long time ago; this does not mean that they do not face the problem of coordinated multicellular response to a change in the environment, inclusing local damage, which is the essence of feeling. Plants do it differently -- but not entirely differently; on the biochemical level there are striking similarities.
Do the trees feel pain?
Tags: mysteries
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06:49 pm
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My Americana. Liberal fascism?
In the wake of LJ discussions on "Is fascism left?" I've read Jonah Goldberg's bestseller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Fascism
Goldberg's idea is that American Progressivism is genetically linked to the intellectual milleau from which European fascism has also emerged; Golberg's view is that fascism was an international movement taking different forms in different countries, focussing on different holistic ideals (e.g., the class, the nation, the race). The connection of Progressivism to Hitlerism was tenuous (the similarity is the "third way" demagoguery, statolatory, and the emphasis on action). However, there was a lot of similarity and mutual admiration between the Progressives and Mussolini's brand of Fascism. Alas, the evidence is before my eyes. One of the drives in Chicago is named after a Fascist aviation general (Italo Balbo) and our lakeshore is disgraced by an Ostia monument "in honor of the Atlantic Squadron, which with Roman daring, flew across the ocean in the 11th year of the Fascist era." The year, in translation, is 1933 AD.
I've learned new things, such as the extent of socialization during the WWI and the self-admitted influence of James' pragmatism on the Fascists. Goldberg follows the standard path tracing fascism to Rousseau's theory of general will, but he draws the connections not only through Nietzsche and Hegel but also through Sorel, James and Dewey. He gives a view that fascism is (i) totalitarian political religion (in a sense that nothing is beyond politics and the Rousseau's idea of "politics as religion, religion as politics" is implemented) and (ii) the idea of enlightened avant-guard ruling the society, that is a group of self-righteous individuals appointing themselves as society guardians. The statism is derivative from these two features (the state is a means of achieving the utopia and preaching the politics/religion) and so is the militarism and imperialism (expedient for these goals).
...Fascisms differ from each other because they grow on different soil. What unites them are their emotional or instinctual impulses, such as the quest for community, the urge to "get beyond" politics, a faith in perfectability of man and the authority of experts, and an obsession with the aesthetics of youth, the cult of action, and the need for all-powerful state to coordinate the society at the national level. Most of all they share the belief - what I call the totalitarian tempteation - that with the right amount of tinkering we can realize the utopian dream of "creating a better world."
The only serious opposition to fascism in its many forms is Conservatism understood as "equal stress on classical liberalism and cultural conservatism". Goldberg does not quite explain what he means by "left" and "right," perhaps he follows Burke's original division: "right" means following the doctrine of inalienable natural rigths and "left" means the denial of this doctrine. On this criterion, fascism is a form of leftism: individual rights exist only as long as these accord to the Volkgeist.
I was not swayed by the idea that American Progressivism (= "liberal fascism") is part of this international fascist movement. It may share common features, but I think it is home-spun. America started as a theocracy more totalitarian than Moussolini's Italy. The self-righteousness and conceit of the elect builders of New Jerusalem have only subsided over time, as their heaven slowly moved from the realm spiritual to the realm political. Our zealots are the descendants of the folk subjected to a vast Calvinist experiment; even their geographical spread still matches the footprint of the Puritan heel. Add to this heritage 200 years of black slavery in the Old South, with its mixture of patronizing attitude and anti-capitalist fervor, and you get more than enough without the romantics, Sorel, and Hegel...
Tags: americana
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12:11 pm
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Why do we love the dinosaurs? (The fifth column)
It is summer time, and there are, once again, several movies about the dinosaurs. Why is that?
Because people like the dinosaurs. But why cannot we get enough of them? Elephants are big and smart, but there are almost no movies about the elephants. Ditto for extinct, large land mammals: the sloths, the armadillos, the pangolins. These were not only giant, but also exotic looking. Not good enough. Indricotherium was 10-20 tons, as big as a midsize sauropod dinosaur; still, no movies. Dinonyus, the Hyaenodonts, Uintatherium were impressive mammals, scary as scary goes, but few have even heard their names. Is it something special about the reptiles? Not really. Postosuchus was the top predator of the Triassic and many of the archosaurs and rhynchosaurs were frightful meanies, striking in their appearance, but these reptiles are not loved, whereas the dinosaurs are. The dinosaurs are scary alright, but there is also something attractive about them. Even the medieval dragons had princesses to attend to their needs...
I am wondering why. Large animals, like dinosaurs, have a particular problem: skin parasites. The familiar sight of the oxpecker bird sitting on a rhino and cleaning it from fleas and mites is the general rule: for every big animal, there is a small animal specializing in cleaning its skin and cavities; it is the textbook example of mutualistic symbiosis. Egyptian plover cleans the teeth of the Nile crocodiles from the leeches. Hippos, zebras, giraffes, elephants - all rely on birds for cleaning. The dinosaurs had vast expanses of exposed skin with many folds; the meat eaters had rotting flesh between their huge teeth. Their parasite problem should've been overwhelming. Who cleaned them? Small dinosaurs? Birdlike dinosaurs? Birds?
The life of the mammals under the dinosaurs is pictured in the darkest terms. Supraficially, this makes sense, but there is, obviously, one niche that was open to the mammals to escape the harassment: cleaning the beasts. The cleaners are tolerated, which may explain how some of the mammals made it through the bad times.
Our evolutionary ancestors were insectivorous proto-primates; it is believed that they assumed arboreal way of life somewhere at the end of the Mesozoic. However, the presumably arboreal adaptations would be the same adaptations one would need to clean large animals, like the dinosaurs. This is a very old problem: was the arboreal way of life primary (the arboreal hypothesis) or visual predation had evolved first (as you can live in the trees without our primate adaptations). The molecular clocks suggest the proto-primate branch evolved around 85 Mya. Our own order branched off these mammals about 63 Mya; the lories and the lemurs branched off about 75 Mya. Our ancestors have been a nocturnal, tree-living creature weighing about 1-2 pounds, with grasping hands and feet, also used by the infant to cling to the mother's fur. It probably had large forward-facing eyes for stereovision and a shortened snout (reflecting a reduction of the anterior dentition). It would have inhabited tropical/subtropical forests, feeding on a mixed diet composed mainly of fruit and insects. Like humans, it probably had a slow pace of breeding characterized by heavy investment in a relatively small number of offspring. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020418073440.htm
Imagine the scenario: around 90 Mya an insectivorous mammal betrayed its kin (that served as snack to the dinosaurs) and hit on a symbiotic relationship with the mortal enemy, cleaning their skin from the parasites; that is, doing the same work that the modern birds are doing. The adaptations to the "arboreal" way of life were, actually, the adaptations to doing this job, but it makes sense that the animal stayed some time in the trees, if only to avoid the predation on the ground. The niche was open and occupied, as the birds were still primitive. Then the disaster struck about 65 Mya: their symbionts all died out; actually, all large animals died out. Now our cleaning animal had to switch from its customary cleaning jobs to fully arboreal way of life. The modern primate was born. Today, nothing betrays this special role that our ancestors played in the dinosaur dominated world of the yesteryear except for... except for this peculiar love mixed with fear.
Why do we love the dinosaurs?
Tags: why
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04:44 pm
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How much is your blog?
There is a spammer that pesters me with this question. I've no idea how the worth of the blogs is quantified, but I do have an estimate of the monetary worth of this blog. A year ago, I obtained a NASA grant to pursue one of the ideas that came to me when I was writting a post here. Last week I got NIH funding to pursue another such idea. Both of these posts derived from questions asked by my little son. This blog has earned me $700,000.
Is it possible to put a price tag on a written word?
Tags: lj
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11:02 pm
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Pure Chekhov
http://www.antagonism.ru/parties/vkpz/story/64629/
Зося
Вайдат Натальевна, вы верите в теорию происхождения видов?!
Вайдат Натальевна, зверовед
я совершенно уверена, что естественный и половой отбор — очень важные, хотя вряд ли единственные, механизмы эволюции.
Зося
А эволюция точно была? (я просто сомневаюсь...)
Вайдат Натальевна, зверовед
была и есть. Страшно интересная штука, как всякие тварюшки приспосабливаются, изменяются... Только вот с мышлением и речью все сложно.
Зося
А как вы считаете, человек правда произошел от обезьяны?
Вайдат Натальевна, зверовед
Пани, человек и современная обезьяна произошли от одного корня, но не друг от дружки. Где он, тот бибизян, что наш дедушка? Шимпанзе, с которыми мы генетически очень близки (95%) тоже молодой вид, как и сапиенсы, насколько мне известно.
Саша Капитановский
Вот он, уважаемая Вайдат Натальевна.
Вайдат Натальевна, зверовед
Ох, Саша, левый дядя какой-то... какой он приматолог? Шимпанзе не слоняются целый день и спят не где попало, это ж не Адам с Евой в райском саду.
Алексей Гончарoв
А Вы, видимо, считаете, что человека "изобрёл" Бог? И есть ли у Вас доказательства? Кроме Библии, конечно...
Саша Капитановский
Уважаемая Пани Зося, у Мандельштама есть про эволюцию. Мне иногда кажется – у него про все есть...
Зося
"Если все живое лишь помарка..." — и правда: если эволюция — не химера, то зачем сохранилось столько видов примитивных существ?
Инна ( ст. сестра)
Просто так, для красоты и разнообразия. И для пищевой цепочки...
Вайдат Натальевна, зверовед
Я, кстати, полагаю, что именно что для красоты и разнообразия. Кстати, современные биологи Ламарка не вовсе отвергают. Ясон именно так объясняет, почему всякие утенки знают, что при появлении быстрой тени (от птицы) надо затаиваться. Ибо обучиться этому знанию можно только ценой жизни (ястреб же летает), то есть опыт никому уже не передашь.
Саша Капитановский
Мандельштам, романтический поклонник Ламарка, и здесь впереди: Ламарк, Бюффон и Линней окрасили мою зрелость.
Вайдат Натальевна, зверовед
"есть многое на свете, друг Гораций, что и не снилось нашим мудрецам"))
motobotanik
"зачем сохранилось столько видов примитивных существ?" "Зачем" к эволюции неприменимо: у неё нет цели. И даже определённого постоянного направления и то нет. Корректнее спросить "почему?" Потому что среда обитания не вынуждала эти существа к эволюции.
Алексей Гончарoв
А Вы не задумывались, Уважаемая Вайдат Натальевна, почему Мир Ислама так сильно отстает от Европы? Мне кажется все дело в этом... Впрочем — это только моё предположение... У султана было триста жен и пятьсот наложниц. Простые люди не могли даже жениться! Все красивые женщины были в гареме у Падишаха, Шаха, Султана, Бея, местного чинуши и так далее. Потом, когда Султан умирал, его сыновья убивали друг друга, и оставался только один — самый ловкий... Вот и ответ. Многие люди не могли передать свой генофонд следующим поколениям — отсюда и обеднение. А ведь когда-то Мир Ислама был куда более развит, чем Европа... Вспомним хотя бы медицину, астрономию, Дамасский Клинок, стихи, наконец! Куда всё это делось?
It goes on and on -- and it is all for real.
Tags: note to myself
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05:20 pm
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Why women love men?
...We love men because they will never understand us, yet even so they go on trying. Because they still manage to see our beauty, even when we ourselves no longer believe it. Because they understand equations, politics, maths and economics, but not the feminine heart. Because they manage to raise sport to something bordering on religion. Because they are never afraid of the dark. Because they insist on fixing things that are beyond their capacity, and dedicate themselves to this with the same enthusiasm as an adolescent, and get frustrated when they don’t succeed. Because they are like pomegranates: most of them is impossible to digest, but the seeds are delicious. Because they never comment on what the neighbors might think. Because we always know what they are thinking, and when they open their mouth they say exactly what we imagined they would. Because they never dreamed of torturing themselves wearing high heels. Because they love to explore our body and conquer our soul. Because a 14-year-old girl can leave them speechless, and a 25-year-old woman can tame them quite effortlessly. Because they are always attracted by extremes: the opulent or the ascetic, warriors or monks, artists or generals. Because they do absolutely everything possible to try to hide their weaknesses. Because a man’s biggest fear is not being a man (it never crosses a woman’s mind not to be a woman). Because they always eat everything on their plate, and don’t feel guilty about it. Because they take great delight in completely uninteresting matters, such as what happened at work, or different makes of automobiles. Because they have shoulders where we can rest our heads and sleep without much effort. Because they are at peace with their bodies, except for small, insignificant things like growing bald and getting fat. Because they are incredibly courageous in front of insects. Because they never lie about their age. Because despite everything they try to demonstrate, they can’t live without a woman. Because when we tell one of them “I love you”, they always ask us to explain exactly how. http://www.scribd.com/doc/6374518/Why-Women-Love-Men
Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh
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09:41 pm
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Cannibalism
To round the discussion of "who is a human." IP, bless him, found the right words that escaped me:
http://ivanov-petrov.livejournal.com/1192193.html?thread=58809857
...В качестве опорной точки надо понять, что такое человеческое тело - для человека, то есть собственно то, что собираются есть. Требуется вырабатывать определенные качества мышления - умение молчать, умение видеть только позитивное, положительное, умение не думать. Когда в определенном сегменте мышление научается работать в определенном стиле, эта стилистика мышления используется и в других облaстях...
...Cледует продумать, каким образом воздействует осознание людоедства на человека. Cовершенно конкретно рассмотреть человеческую психику и этику - поскольку никакой общей науки для этого нет, приходится рассматривать свою - чтобы увидеть, что произойдет при людоедстве. И тогда..oкажется, что результат меняется для личностей разного уровня и пути развития.
...человек эмоционального склада может быть приведен к сумасшествию, но его сравнительно легко вытащить. О сумасшествии я здесь говорю... в смысле душевного нездоровья. То, что прекрасно чувствуют друзья или супруги, или при знакомстве - потенциальные возлюбленные, но обычно не доходит до клинического вмешательства. А люди интеллектуального склада - у них есть защита. Oни попросту, в силу определенной тупости не понимают, что говорят и что делают, они уже в определенном смысле невменяемы - так это сделано в современной культуре - и потому для них операция поездания человеческого мяса пройдет сравнительно безболезненно. Внешне. Но внутренне наличная невменяемость... усилится, чего они не заметят.
Проще всего это говорится старым выражением - нанести вред своей душе, но сейчас это пустые слова... Hаша цивилизация устроена пока так, что эту работу каждый должен делать сам себе, другой человек вряд ли возьмет на себя такую большую работу. Либо друг найдется, либо уж самим надо.
Now, read this:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44779
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44868
If human embryos and fetuses are clumps of cells and lumps of flesh rather than humans, as I've been explained, then the lunch habits of this doctor should not be found reprehensible. Conversely, if these are found reprehensible, how serious is all this talk about clumps of cells and lumps of flesh?
I regret writing these posts, I really do now. I wanted to talk about something important to me: humanity. But through this blindness of which IP wrote so well and of which I am culpable, it degenerated into unseemly exchange on "why cannibalism is wrong." Time and time again I tried to explain that rights and wrongs are defined through their effect on people; that people with elastic notions of humanity are on the way to ruination of themsleves and their society. Cannibalism is wrong because you do not see the cannibals around. When it becomes the norm, everything goes to hell, and one is lucky to find oneself in dense jungle or little islands. I do not have to explain why cannibalism is wrong. Everyone can learn it on one's own and figure out what exactly is it doing to oneself. Likewise, I do not want waste any more of my time explaining "why is it wrong for people to decide who is human." Go ahead and start making such decisions to see for yourself where it leads, on every level, from psychological to social to spiritual. Eating human flesh is easy to start and hard to finish. There are experiments upon oneself that are not worth doing, even when these are Gedanken experiments.
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11:10 am
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Apt Alliteration's Artful Aid: Why do we rhyme?
...Взгляд, конечно, очень варварский, но верный (Joseph Brodsky)
In the 19th century rhyming was considered a hall-mark of poetry. Novadays this artful aid is less appreciated in Europe, with the major exception of Russia, where poets are supposed to rhyme well to be worthy of their prophetic status. That is only fair because Russia is five centuries behind Europe in introduction of rhyme; it is still a relatively new toy. Others are more used to it and less smitten with it. Why should we rhyme at all? Rhyme is absent in the Bible and in the poetry of the classical period (the lines rhyme only occasionally, rather than by intent). The Greeks knew rhyme, but as a device for rhetorics rather than poetry. Milton castigated rhyme as the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter. Dryden wrote disapprovingly that when, by inundation of the Goths and Vandals into Italy, new languages were brought in, and barbarously mingled with the Latin... a new way of poesy was practiced. In fact, rhyme is even more recent, at least in Europe. Before the 12th century, only the Irish rhymed, for reasons unknown:
...As early as the seventh century, the Irish had brought the art of rhyming verses to a high pitch of perfection... Nor are their rhymes only such as we are accustomed to, for they delighted not only in full rhymes, but also in assonances, and they often thought more of a middle rhyme than of an end rhyme. The following Latin verses, written by Aengus Mac Tipraite in 704, will give the reader an idea of the middle or interlinear rhyming which the Irish have practiced from the earliest times down to the present day:
Martinus mirus more
Ore laudavit Deum,
Puro Corde cantavit
Atque amavit Eum. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08116a.htm
The effect of celtic rhyming on the rest of Europe was zilch: it was a silly word game unworthy of poetry, together with writing poems in the shape of butterflies and other excesses of form. Then a book written by a canon of the church of St Victor in Paris changed it, introducing the internal rhyme into the mainstream ("En rex Edvardus, debacchans ut Leopardus"). Rhyme had its uses in Latin poetry, after all.
...The invention of rhyme is traditionally attributed to a probably apocryphal monk Leonius, who is supposed to be the author of a history of the Old Testament (Historia Sacra). This "history" is composed in Latin verses, all of which rhyme in the center. It is possible that this Leonius is the same person as Leoninus, a Benedictine musician of the twelfth century. (wiki)
Would Leonine verse become gold standard, our poets would still be flexing their brains to cast their inspiration into something like
wish......well.....love......well
......me......and......i'll......
treat......ill......serve......still
but the fate was more merciful, because the Crusaders happened to like the sound of Persian and Arabic poetry, especially the romantic one. How starved were they for rhyme transpires from the fact that most of Arabic poetry is [in my personal opinion, crushingly monotonous] monorhyme: the same rhyme is repeated many times over. This immediately suggests its true origin, because the Chinese were also fond of monorhyme; there are instruction books in Chinese telling that more than 100-200 monorhymes might be excessive -- or even compromise the beauty of a poem. Classical persian poetry, which is all tastefully and imaginatively rhymed, sounds heavenly. It is amazing what having just two extra vowels in one's language can do to the sound of poetry. While it is possible, but doubtful, that the Arabs and the Persians discovered rhyme on their own (around the same time as the Irish), it is more likely that rhyme (via Tang poetry) had spread through poetically-inclined merchants along the Silk Road.
The Chinese already had it at 500 BC, perhaps even earlier (Confucius' Book of Songs is the earliest rhymed verse and it is said to be a compillation of poems written as early as 1000 BC). It is remarkable that we still have these rhymed poems because in 213 BC having these poems was a capital offense and all books of poetry had to be burned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars
That was a close call for rhyme. Then the nutty emperor obsessed with his own immortality and greatness followed the path of the lesser mortals, and this example led to a greater leniency towards poetry in general and rhyme in particular ever since. By the time of the Tang dynasty, when rhyme started to expand westwards, this episode was ancient history. Rhyme won!
Not so fast ----------
Rhyming in hieroglyphic is an exciting topic of its own, but the very logic of it is that Chinese "rhyme" is presently but a theoretical construct: the exact, phonetical rhyme existed only in archaic and middle languages. The language has changed very considerably in 3000 years, and in today's Mandarin the rhyming is working poorly. What was rhymed poetry just yesterday became something not unlike classical Greek and Roman poetry, with meter but no rhyme. China is where rhyme was invented, but it cannot last there. In Europe, where writing is phonetic, rhyme can last, but only in principle, as the vernacular languages have the life time of a moth. The Arabs and the Persians are in between, and rhyme is rightfully theirs: it became sacred and interlocked with language itself, resisting its change.
It is asserted that rhyming is for the ease of memorization and melodics - or a device for inspiration. All true. But it may serve another role, which is seldom appreciated: holding back. A poem wants to be read in its original language. But this language is water passing through its texture and eroding everything. The pronounciation changes, the words fell out of use, the meanings of the idioms are lost, then the language itself is gone or changed beyond any semblance. It is a battle with time, in which time can only win. The rhyme is a device making this battle to last a bit longer. The poem fights the very language in which it is written, subordinating the life of this language to its own life and rejecting homage to fate. No wonder that the lovers of classical poetry looked at rhyme disapprovingly. Such folly was barbarian through and through.
Why do we rhyme?
Tags: why
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03:03 am
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30 m of destiny
People are fond of informing me that considering a zygote human is ridiculous. What next: a sperm cell considered a human?
Perhaps this folk intuition comes from the notion that a sperm cell is very small as compared to the size of a grown up man. Something this small cannot be it. But this size is an accident of evolution. It could've easily been the other way round had our females were capable of retaining the sperm of their multiple sex partners, so the sperm cells of different males must compete with each other. This competition begins the race that has led to spectacular results:
...The length of the filamentous, helical sperm-cells of freshwater ostracod [shrimp] can reach up to ten times the body length of its producer. The longest known ostracod sperm cell is 1 cm long. This scanning electron micrograph shows a bundle of such giant sperm extracted from Eucypris virens, which are approximately 1.8 mm long.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618144002.htm
The photo there is impressive!
...The Fruit flies (Drosophila bifurca) are regarded as the animals on earth that have the world’s longest sperm ever measured. When their coiled sperms are straightened out, they measure approximately 20 times the total body length of the male.
http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/13-strangest-and-most-unusual-sexual-behavior-among-the-animals
Had these ostracods and fruit flies developed intelligence they would consider their sperm the greatest stage of individual existence full of splendorous grandeur, the very measure of being; the adult stage conceived as the arduous period of preparation to gaining the true dimension of a rational being.
Would the 2 m owners of 15-30 m long sperm find it ridiculous that human life is already fully there, in the single cell?
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02:40 pm
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The Scarlet Letter
In Hawthorn's novel, set in Puritan Boston of the 17th century, the heroine is mandated to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing that designates her as an adulteress; those convicted of incest wore an "I". In Lang's "M," a homicidal maniac is labelled "M" by the hoodlums helping the police to catch the serial killer. The prisoners of many countries wear or wore striped clothing; in the US, it was abolished in 1904, though it is hard to see in what sense orange jumpsuits are different. The branding on the face, for criminals, was practiced in England until 1829. In Rome, the prostitutes were mandated to wear a toga. The deserters from the Union army were branded "D" on their faces. In Asia, the criminals were tattooed on the face.
The badges of merit, such as the distinction of being good at killing the enemy, have no sign of abating. The badges of shame are being abandoned. Why? The usual explanation is that the culture of shame is being gradually replaced by the culture of guilt, with its distinctive Judaic roots. Shame cannot be relieved, but guilt can, by confession and atonement. It is the absoluteness of the absolution that makes the badges of shame wrong. This explains, for example, why Puritans used the badge: there was no mechanism for absolving their sins, no authority to say that the sins have been forgiven, no penance was possible; they were forced to revert to the shame culture and they did. In England, it was a vestige of pagan Anglo-Saxon traditions; the practice was abolished in 1550, but then resumed and was repealed a few times more. The specific problem this branding addressed since 1600 was the abuse of the benefit of clergy by the criminals (leniency to first-time offenders). It was understood that branding was morally wrong, but nobody knew how to solve the problem otherwise. Keeping records addressed this concern and the practice was abandoned. Indeed, branding has no logic and no place in a guilt society, but such a society is possible if and only if there is a possibility of absolution. This I understand.
What I do not understand is the secular argument against branding. Why is it wrong? Is it, actually, wrong? If one denies the very premise of the absolution, what stands in the way of branding and, more generally, reverting to the default mode, a shame society? I do not see what could it be other than the inertia. Or is it another case of the divided heart, when one says one thing, but deep in one's heart still entertains the possibility of the absolution, if only through a meaningless ritual?
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06:33 pm
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Close LJ encounters of the third kind
I've seen a lot of on LJ, but never before was I visited by a person confessing his uncertainty about his status as a human being and wishing the others to decide it by consensus...
Spammers, flooders, robots, and now - self-professed humanoids. Who's next?
Tags: lj
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11:08 pm
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My Americana. XIX. The Tiger and The Wolf
Infanticide was widely practiced in China for thousands of years: on the third day after birth, the head of the family decided whether the child was accepted into the clan. If the child was accepted, he or she was considered human and killing such a child was homicide punishable by death. If the child was not accepted ("not lifted up" = buju or fuju), it was not considered human and was either abandoned or killed, with impunity. The connections to the abortion debate in the US are striking: denying humanity to a child by a Chinese parent finds the obvious parallel in American mothers denying this humanity to their unborn children. One can see how it would look a few millenia from now.
A surprising thing is that the opposition to this practice has been promoted from the top beginning from at least 300 BC. There are laws against it from Qin (255-206 BC) and Han dynasties (206 BC - 220 AD). The punishment for the abandonment and killing the infant was the same: tattooing and "wall building" for men and "grain pounding" for women. It appears from these legal codes that these were rather common and seldom punished transgressions. The enforcers themselves were unwilling to prosecute the offenders, who did nothing that their ancestors were not doing for hundreds of years. Given that, why there were such laws?
The Confucians (Zhou dynasty; Mencius & Mozi, 350 BC) argued that the infanticide should not be blamed on the parents; it was the ruler's failing in providing the sufficient support to the families to raise their children. If I understand it correctly, the argument was that the commonality of this practice implies that the ruler is not taking proper care of his people, so the very occurrence of the infanticide casts shadow on his credibility as administrator. This was the official version given to the rulers. The second objection was for internal use and it was that the infanticide violates heavenly harmony: The popular metaphor was that the tiger and the wolf, even though they were voracious animals, do not devour their young. The message was that humans should be at least as humane toward their children as the beasts were towards their offspring. ("Drowning girls in China", DE Mungello)
The infanticide is wrong because it challenges the cosmic balance: humans do what even beasts do not do. The balance will reassert itself, and the consequences will be apocalyptic and universal: everyone will pay for the transgressions of these homicidal parents. Of course, the proponents of the infanticide argued that you cannot kill someone who is not a human, that it was both ancient and perfectly socially acceptable practice, that it was good for the siblings to receive more care, etc. These poor, naive souls were too primitive to make the argument from parent's choice and personal liberty.
The latter advancement had to wait for another 2000 years. I've never understood why our pro-choicers stop at the abortions. Exactly the same arguments can be made about the infanticide, too; all one has to add is that the babies are not human until their parents recognize them as human. They are still clinging to the echo of the old belief informing their ("natural") conviction that a born baby IS human. But they've already rejected the fundamentals of this belief: that it is not theirs to decide who and who is not human, who dies and who lives. Why should one stop half way in this rejection, which is already irrevocably made? Isn't this planet overpopulated? What are we waiting for?
Is it just a matter of time, and in another 50-100 years we'll be right there -- or the very reluctance to go all the way betrays the divided heart?
Tags: americana
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12:03 pm
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A head-scratching question to all higher primates
Why do we scratch our heads when facing a perplexing task? Apes do it, too. Apparently, honeybees also have a "scratching" ritual faced with a dilemma: http://ivanov-petrov.livejournal.com/1187665.html
After much head-scratching, the only idea I have is that by demonstrating that one has lice (scalp scratching) one ensures not being disturbed by the others when thinking. Any other suggestions?
PS. ( Is scratching improving analytical thinking? )
Tags: whys
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12:57 am
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English->English
from http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/181696.html
THE TRANSLATOR
Unhasty evening shared with a tome.
A ticking clock inimical to scurry.
In front of me, a-waiting, the foursome
Of typed lines surrounding their quarry.
The silence grows louder in twilight.
The city calms by every intersection.
Full moon looks through the windows in the night
And sends me forth its mirrored reflection.
I'll spin these lines into the finest thread,
These are bestowed upon me, cut to measure.
I can't repeat verbatim what's said,
But I can find new casting for the treasure.
In evening every sound oozes grace.
The town's din subsides far and near.
Before me isn't the disk of lunar face
But its reflection carved in a mirror.
Usov, 1928
***
still evening
a book on my lap
the deadening tick-tack
of the clock so not pacing
in front of me
is a stanza
the trench lines
of the original
in twilight the silence grows canorous
the town quietens before nightfall
full moon peeps through burghers' windows
its glow bouncing off a mirror and onto me
i am spinning these lines into a thread
bestowed upon me
cut out precisely
i cannot repeat these lines verbatim
different
there will be different
four lines
when i finish
in the evening the sound reverberates with clarity
as the din of town's traffic dies away
it is not the man in the moon ogling me
but a reflection made in his image
Tags: translation as blasphemy
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04:50 pm
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Russian->Russian
http://www.vekperevoda.com/1887/usov.htm
...в рукописном фонде РГБ М. Л. Гаспаров обнаружил оригинальное стихотворение Усова, не имеющее аналогий в русской поэзии.
ПЕРЕВОДЧИК
Недвижный вечер с книгою в руках,
И ход часов так непохож на бегство.
Передо мною в четырех строках
Расположенье подлинного текста:
"В час сумерек звучнее тишина,
И город перед ночью затихает.
Глядится в окна полная луна,
Но мне она из зеркала сияет".
От этих строк протягиваю нить;
Они даны - не уже и не шире:
Я не могу их прямо повторить,
Но все-таки их будет лишь четыре:
"В вечерний час яснее каждый звук,
И затихает в городе движенье.
Передо мной - не лунный полный круг,
А в зеркале его отображенье".
(1928)
М. Л. Гаспаров: "Стихотворение изображает процесс перевода: вторая строфа пересказывается в четвертой близкими, но не тождественными словами, как бы в переводе с русского на русский".
The temptation is strong...
What do you think is better: the "original" or the "translation"?
Post Scriptum: ( which one is the original? )
Tags: translation as blasphemy
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01:42 am
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Insomnia. Homer. Tough sales...
http://riftsh.livejournal.com/37684.html
Tags: note to myself
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12:30 pm
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The sperm and spittle of the Pharisees
I've just finished Bykov's Life of Pasternak. In the English-speaking world, his original fame as a poet rested upon the translations of his poems (especially those in Dr. Zhivago) by his sister, Lydia Pasternak Slater, who lived in Oxford. To anyone speaking Russian, her achievement is astonishing, as she made Pasternak speak English, retaining the music of the verse, the intonation, and she closely followed the text. This is Russian school of poetic translation at its best, albeit in its English version. It is difficult to find another example of such quality. Here, for example is the ending of "Hamlet," from Dr. Zhivago
Но продуман распорядок действий,
И неотвратим конец пути.
Я один, все тонет в фарисействе.
Жизнь прожить — не поле перейти.
But the order of the scenes has been thought out,
And the end of the road is inevitable.
I am alone, everything is sinking in Pharisaism.
To go through the life is not the same as walks across a field.
(Dimitri Obolensky's literal translation)
But the plan of action is determined,
And the end irrevocably sealed.
I am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood:
Life is not a walk across a field.
(Lydia Pasternak Slater)
It is not perfect (some nuance is lost), but by reading this translation one can recognize Pasternak, that's him, his voice. My grievance is that the "action" does not reflect the ambiguity of Russian where the word also stands for "acts," as in a play (life is a playact with the foreordained sequence of acts and irrevocable finale). Also, being surrounded by the Pharisees is not the same thing as being drowned in falsehood. Still, it's a beautiful translation and good complement to the novel.
Yet I am alone in liking what Lydia Pasternak Slater did to her brother's poems. The common place opinion is that her translations are bad poetry. To someone who speaks little Russian the fact that this translation lovingly preserves what made Pasternak a great Russian poet to his Russian readers is lost. Instead, what catches the eye is that these translations do not read like English poetry, especially the poetry of the 20th century. The translations are intended for the English-speaking audience, after all: those who can read in Russian read Pasternak in Russian. As a side show to the novel, almost any translation would do, as it is part of the narrative. But as a standalone poem it leaves the impression of something that is way below the original; the original cannot be that, it should be something more like what the lover of English poetry would recognize as aspiring to greatness within his own poetic tradition -- the tradition that has never been too close to that of Russia and parted entirely with the latter in the late 19th century.
So, what translations of Pasternak are praised? Here is the one that received the highest accolades:
The sequence of scenes was well thought out;
The last bow is in the cards, or the stars, -
but I am alone, and there is none...
All's drowned in the sperm and spittle of the Pharisee-
To live a life is not to cross a field.
(Robert Lowell, Imitations)
The "the sperm and spittle of the Pharisee" is certainly a more striking image than "falsehood," and the fate written in the "the cards, or the stars" is more convincing than "irrevocably sealed" ending; there is also the preserved allusion to Hamlet. But this translation is as far from Pasternak's original as it gets; this is, indeed, an imitation that only tangentially relates to the original. This reads like Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV rather than Boris Leonidovitch Pasternak.
Lovell's version is from 1961, and tastes have changed considerably in forty years. The new trend is best exemplified in Burton Raffel, the celebrated translator of Anglo-Saxon poetry and Shakespeare's commenter. Lovell's inflamed imagery looks too... Pharisaic in 2009: too bookish, exalted, and insincere. Pasternak needs improvement, but it is now in the direction of the modern, academic American poetry whose audience is fellow academics and their students. Lovell dropped the rhyme because he had so much of his own to squeeze into the unyieldingly short lines. The next generation sees the rhyming and the rhythmic structure as passé.
But tonight it’s a different script
So excuse me, please, this time.
Yet scene must follow scene, the road
Goes where it goes. I’m alone, everything
Drowns in a pious show:
Life is no casual stroll.
(Burton Raffel)
The impotence of this translation understood as translation is striking; this is not a Russian poem at all; it is the solemn pronouncement of a guru sitting in his narcotic stupor on the mountain. The language is stilted, the imagery is stale ("excuse me, please, this time," "the [long and winding] road goes where it goes"). The "sperm and the spittle of the Pharisee" morphed into its exact opposite, a show of piety rather than misdirected passion. The life "is no casual stroll," it is an arduous journey round and round the field. But I would not declare this one a failed translation. It is, in fact, perfect of its kind: it rescues Pasternak from obscurity and makes him a campus academic doubling as a poet in residence. It brings Pasternak to his only mass readership in the US, which is students with taste for poetry. This Pasternak resonates with the audience. Who the heck is Pasternak to be interesting to the twenty somethings attending Colby College, Maine? The road going where it goes is a different story, that can be read to the sound of guitar riffs.
As the students get older, this juvenile version of Pasternak no longer satisfies them. It is understood that colloquial English is bad taste, not because there is nothing colloquial in Pasternak, but because poetic language has to have recognizable vocabulary and phrasing to serve the need, which is dropping a line to impress the others. There is a Pasternak for these folks, too:
And yet, the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted,
And nothing can avert the final curtain's fall.
I stand alone. All else is swamped by Pharisaism.
To live life to the end is not a childish task.
(Bernard Guilbert Guerney)
This is a remarkable translation perfectly fitting the need. Crossing a field is considered too cliché, so it is replaced by "a childish task," so it can be thrown into the face of the accused. There is the characteristic misunderstanding that "all swamped by Pharisaism" magically exclude the actor in the play. There is the pretense of a romantic poem ("final curtain's fall," "schemed and plotted"). Pasternak is rethought of as Lord Byron standing on the Ark and viewing the sorry spectacle of life, resting above those Pharisees. One can feel that the author of this translation was born in 1894, so Victorian is the product.
The others have no stomach for this Romanticism because it is too... English. English does not sound exotic. Then, it is simply wrong: Pasternak, as everyone knows, is a French symbolist, and he has to be translated accordingly. This is the conviction of Peter France, who, incidentally, specializes in French literature. Pasternak and Blok wrote in Russian only through a whim of cruel fate. The rhyme MUST be back, as otherwise someone might think they did not imitate Baudelaire.
But the order of the acts is planned,
The end of the road shall be revealed.
Alone among the Pharisees I stand.
Life is not a stroll across a field.
(Peter France, My sister, Life, and other Poems)
The latest installment of the intergenerational project of giving English voice to Pasternak is going all the way back and considering the poems part of the narrative. Little wonder that it comes with the new translation of the novel. The poem is supportive of the prose; it stirs no imagery of its own.
But the order of the acts has been determined,
And the ending of the journey cannot be averted.
I am alone; all drowns in Pharisaism.
To live life is not to cross a field.
(Eleanor Rowe)
After fifty years of this relentless effort, Pasternak's Hamlet still refuses becoming a poem in English. It does not fit into English poetry. To be truthful, it also does not fit into Russian poetry, but this fact is obscured by the accident of this poem being written in Russian. I cannot throw a stone into these translators: would (for some reason) the Russians require "translating" Pasternak into Russian every 15-20 years, the result will be the same. Every generation projects its own literary ideal on a poet and transmits the general idea of his greatness by cutting him to this ideal, by which the contemporary reader recognizes this acknowledged greatness. When this process of reinvention stops, the poet is forgotten.
I think that Pasternak would agree with this picture, as his own translations are of this kind. We are fortunate that Byron does not have to be translated into English and Pushkin does not have to be translated into Russian. Had that been necessary, the sperm and spittle of the Pharisees would drown us all entirely.
Tags: translation as blasphemy
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11:21 pm
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Yellow pages
Half of my relatives died in Latvia during the war. The Latvian sondercommando poured water on them in the dead of winter. The person in charge was captured after the war and sent to the Gulag. He was amnestied in the 1950s. My father saw him in his village in the 1960s. He looked unremarkable, like any other villager. In the late 1960s this Latvian had an argument with his mother. He tied her to a tree in his backyard, and hosed her with ice-cold water until she froze to death. This time, he was executed. My closest surviving relatives are from Leningrad. The odds of surviving the starvation during the blockade were much better than surviving in occupied Latvia.
My family barely escaped the same fate. My great-grandfather, a chemical engineer, was from Dvinsk. He was educated in Germany and wanted to stay there, but then changed his mind and returned to Russia in order to marry my great-grandmother. In the early 1910s, they settled in St Petersburg. They made it through the revolution. In 1928, my great-grandfather was arrested as the enemy of the people. He was lucky: it was early on, and he was exiled. The exile saved his life. During the war he joined my grandmother in evacuation. Would his choice be different, he would live in Germany and our branch would be extinct.
Yet there are worse things than death. Being a Jew in Nazi Germany was the best lot, because the Jews were the only people which were not part of it and couldn't have been part of it --- even if they wanted to. I know what could've been the worst, what would happen had the Germans disentangled their nationalism from anti-Semitism. Jewish SS men would be killing Polish Jews for the glory of Nordic Jewry. The Jews working for Gestapo would be catching gypsies, Jewish doctors would be doing experiments on the prisoners, and Jewish engineers would be constructing gas chambers. Do you think that that would not happen? I have no such illusions. The assimilated Jews in Germany had no scruples inventing chemical warfare during the WWI and the assimilated Jews in Russia were involved in the most heinous crimes. It is only by grace that the unthinkable did not happen. But it was close, too close.
No one was able to explain how my great-grandfather managed to die of old age. The family lore is that in his middle years he looked like Stalin and that saved him. On the photographs, he looks like aging Groucho Marx. I have little left from him: his letters, his phylacteries, his razor, and two pocket-size books: the Mahzor printed in Vilno in 1882 and the Hebrew Bible printed in 1922 in Cambridge. I also have a few holey, yellowed pages from the Book of Kings he always kept on his body.
I am well equipped for the 21st century.
Tags: true stories
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10:46 am
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Sympathetic and faithful members
A greater number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other...would spread and be victorious over other tribes.(Darwin)
...Intergroup hostilities figure prominently in a number of explanations of the evolution of human social behavior. If the conflict is frequent and lethal, then more altruistic group-beneficial behaviors—those entailing greater costs to the individual altruist—will be able to proliferate. Using a model of the evolutionary impact of between-group competition and a new data set that combines archaeological evidence on causes of death during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene with ethnographic and historical reports on hunter-gatherer populations, I find that the estimated level of mortality in intergroup conflicts would have had substantial effects, allowing the proliferation of group-beneficial behaviors that were quite costly to the individual altruist... It is estimated that adult mortality due to the warfare was 14% in hunter-gatherer societies... Frequent lethal intergroup encounters may reconcile otherwise anomalous facts about hunter-gatherer demographics. Human population grew extraordinarily slowly or not at all for the 100,000 years prior to 20,000 years before the present, yet under peaceful conditions foraging populations are capable of growth rates exceeding 2% per annum... The extent of prehistoric genetic differentiation, based on genetic studies of extant hunter-gatherers, shows that a realistic level of inbreeding within groups allows group benefits to offset fitness costs of roughly 3% associated with being an "altruistic warrior" relative to nonaltruists. Lethal hostility toward other groups could thus underpin cooperation and support within human communities. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5932/1293
It is time to propose the "altrusitic warrior" brain hypothesis: that human intelligence is the result of, specifically, development of a larger cranial size (capable of accomodating large neocortex) in response to the increasing size of maces used in the intergroup conflict.
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10:40 am
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Отречение от математики
Паскаль навсегда останется родоначальником особого типа гениальности... Величайший в мире математик? Но – «мне нет дела до математики». Вообразим же себе «Моцарта», говорящего так о музыке! Когда «юноша» Рэмбо навсегда отрекался от поэзии, предпочитая ей торговлю кофе и оружием в Африке, или когда провозглашенный-таки «величайшим поэтом Франции» Поль Валери мог, в ответ на недоумения, почему он не пишет больше стихов, исчерпывающе ответствовать: «Мне плевать на поэзию», или когда еще признавался Александр Блок: «На днях я подумал о том, что стихи писать мне не нужно, потому что я слишком умею это делать».
Отречение от математики, науки свершилось по всем правилам отречения от мира; подобно св. Франциску, отрекшемуся от мира на рыночной площади в Ассизи, Паскаль отвернулся от своего дарования, назначив себе участь просто «порядочного человека» (honnête homme). «Следовало бы говорить не: „Он математик“, ни „проповедник“, ни „краснослов“, но: „Он порядочный человек“. Только это универсальное качество мне по душе». В сущности, отказ от математики был отказом от самой идеи формализованного порядка. «Порядочный человек» не делает различий между ремеслом поэта и белошвейки; бессмысленно называть его поэтом, геометром и т. п., он, словно оборотень, превращается в кого угодно всякий раз, когда этого требует дело; никто не подозревает в нем математика, поэта или краснослова, и лишь по необходимости обнаруживают в нем того, другого и третьего. Чем он не может быть, так это картезианской персоной.
...отрекитесь от математики, делая ставку на «всё»; если вы выиграете, вы выиграете «всё»; если вы проиграете, вы все-таки выиграете универсальность самого «размаха», а это как-никак уже больше просто математики. «Скажут: „Вот хороший математик“. – Но меня, того гляди, примут самого за какую-то теорему». Отказ от математики оказывается, поэтому, отказом от только математики; метафорический подвох «мыслящего тростника» оправдан предчувствием будущей «мыслящей машины»... если «мыслящему тростнику» сподобилось-таки додуматься до «атеизма» и отрицать то, образом и подобием чего он является, то отчего бы не допустить повторения этой оказии и в случае «мыслящей машины»: «если бы человека не было, следовало бы его выдумать» или просто «существование человека непрограммируемо»... Рационализм не простил; Паскаль остался образом рехнувшегося гения.
http://www.rvb.ru/swassjan/stan_evr_n/01text/15.htm
Tags: findings
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04:21 pm
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Bohr vs. Spears
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/179285.html?thread=1018709#t1018709
Can anyone help us? We are debating with "ipain" the social brain (aka Machiavellian intelligence) hypothesis. The contentious issue boiled down to the following question:
Who is smarter, Britney Spears or Niels Bohr?
(1) Spears
(2) Bohr
Refuse to explain what "smarter" means. If you have a lot of friends from different walks of life that would be perfect. We count on your assistance.
PS: My bet is that at least 1/3 will elect Ms Spears as the smart one. "ipain" says no. Who is right?
PPS: Please, do not answer it here.
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12:53 am
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Klaus and Herr Hitler
cont http://aptsvet.livejournal.com/488731.html?thread=7203099#t7203099
Here is another story from a German-American friend of mine, Klaus. He lived in Stuttgart before and during the war. Like other kids, Klaus was in Hitler youth; by his own admission, he was a fanatical Nazi. Sixty years later he remembered every syllable of the anti-Semitic songs they sung marching through the streets. His home was a regular German home, with an altar: an expensive, leather-bound edition of Mein Kampf on top of the folded Nazi flag; there was also a portrait of the author of this book on the wall, right above the book. There was a rite he performed every day in front of the portrait and the book. Klaus' father was killed on the Eastern front, and a small photo of his father, in uniform, was placed on the altar next to the portrait. Klause lived with his mother and waited until he would be old enough to serve in the Wermaht.
In 1945, Stuttgart was captured by the Allies. Klaus was there when it happened. Shortly thereafter, an American soldier with a rifle in his hands and a lit sigarette in his lips appeared at the door. The soldier was black. Klaus never saw such a person. The sight of the non-Aryan fell upon the altar. He unceremoniusly tossed the holy book into the window and desecrated the flag by blowing his nose into it and wiping his black face. Klaus was so shocked he stupefied. Then the blasphemer had a better idea. He took his lighter out of the pocket and pushed it into Klaus' clenched fists, pointing him towards the image. It took some time for Klaus to grasp what the soldier wanted, so abominable was the request. He said: "Nein". The soldier became more insistent. Klaus resisted. The soldier began to be very insistent, using the butt of his rifle to push Klaus towards the portrait. Klaus decided that he would rather die than betray Der Führer. The soldier was shouting at him in an unintelligable language, and then he pressed the barrel against Klaus' chest. Klaus looked at the portrait on the wall. He closed his eyes.
It is at this moment that his mother appeared at the door. She saw Klaus. She saw the soldier with the lighter and the loaded gun pointing to her son's chest. She saw the portrait. Klaus told me that it took her less than a minute to kiss the soldier, take the portrait off the wall and lit it, and explain to the soldier, using pantomime, that Klaus was a deaf retard. Then she produced a bottle of Schnapps and saw the guy out. She tossed the burning portrait into the tub and told Klaus that she dreamed of doing it since Klaus was a baby.
He did not speak to his mother for two years. It took Klaus a while to realize what he was, but when he understood, he understood it very well. In 1954, he emigrated to the US, where he lives to this day. Klaus never made any secret of his past. He told me a lot of stories, in his unforgettable, heavy German accent, but it is this one that stuck in my mind.
I am glad I never had to stand before this altar.
Tags: true stories
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01:05 pm
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Social brain
...The ‘social brain hypothesis’ (SBH) states that socialization in mammals puts them under selective pressure to evolve larger brains. [] compared relative brain sizes for the group Carnivora. They looked at 289 examples, 125 of them extinct, and found that
brain-size changes do not correlate with the development of sociality... Previous analyses based on living species alone appeared to support the SBH with respect to Carnivora, but those results are entirely dependent on data from modern Canidae (dogs). Incorporation of fossil data reveals that no association exists between sociality and encephalization across Carnivora and that support for sociality as a causal agent of encephalization increase disappears for this clade. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/05/27/0901780106.full.pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7247/pdf/459618b.pdf
Here goes another brilliant idea what made a man a man...
Tags: evolution
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10:35 pm
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Splitting the baby
Here is an interesting iterpretation of Solomon's judgment. It never occurred to me to look at 1 Kings 3:16-28 in this way...
from http://www.jlaw.com/Commentary/solomon.html
...Yibbum is a Halachic rite which must be performed when a man who has a living brother dies childless. If this uncommon situation occurs, the widow must not remarry unless one of two actions are taken - either she must marry the brother of the deceased or she must be released from the obligation of marrying her brother-in-law by having him perform the Chalitzah ("removing" of the shoe) ceremony. It is uncomfortable for a woman to be trapped in this situation, wherein she would be subject to the will of another man. Her brother-in-law may not be locatable, compliant or appealing.
...The Midrash (Koheles Rabah 10:16) tells us that the reason both of these women were so desperate to have the living child declared theirs was that they were both potential Yevamos (widows subject to Yibbum). Neither of the two had any other offspring. Whoever would be judged to be the childless woman would not only lose the infant, but would also be trapped in the unpleasant status, being dependent upon her brother-in-law's good will.
The Midrash (Yalknt Shimoni 2:175) asserts that the husbands of the two women were father and son, making the two women, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law to each other. The two women - mother-in-law and daughter-in-law - had just lost their husbands, and needed a live child to exempt them from the status of a Yevamah. Both women gave birth to babies. However, these two babies were still less than 30 days old at the time that one of them died. The mother of the dead child would therefore be subject to the laws of Yibbum. This was the lying mother's motivation for taking the other woman's child.
If it were the mother-in-law's child who had died, she would have no incentive to kidnap her daughter-in-law's child. Even though her son (the deceased husband of her daughter-in-law) had passed away before her own husband had, and therefore he would not exempt her from Yibbum nevertheless, she would be exempt from Yibbum for another reason. The living child was her son's child, and a grandchild exempts one from Yibbum.
Only the daughter-in-law had the motive to lie and try to claim that the child was hers. If it was her baby who had died within 30 days of its birth, leaving her childless, she would have been bound to her husband's brother as a Yevamah - and that brother would have been -none other than the living baby (who was in fact her mother-in-law's child - i.e., her deceased husband's bother)! Since her brother-in-law was a newborn, the daughter-in-law would have had to wait 13 years before this baby would be able to perform Chalitzah on her and free her to remarry.
King Solomon suspected that since the only one with a strong motive to lie was the daughter-in-law, the child must really belong to the mother-in-law. Perhaps this also explains why King Solomon ordered that the child be cut in half. If the remaining child were to be killed, this too would free the daughter-in-law from her Yevamah status - since the living baby was her only brother-in-law. From the daughter-in-law's perspective, in fact, killing the child would result in a better solution for her. By just kidnaping the child she might have convinced the earthly court that she was not a Yevamah. However, she herself would know that the child was not really hers and that she really was not permitted to remarry, until Chalitzah was performed. By having the baby killed, though, she would truthfully be released from the bonds of Yibbum.
This is the reason the daughter-in-law suddenly lost interest in keeping the child when she saw that King Solomon was ready to cut the child in half. This would serve her interests even more if she took the child for herself. Therefore she insisted: "Cut!" King Solomon guessed that this would be the woman's reaction. By tricking her into making a seemingly ludicrous statement, he revealed her true motives and that she was lying.
I wonder what would King Solomon do in the recent case of a Russian girl in Portugal. Perhaps he would simply delay the deportation by the time when the child is old enough to make her own decision. All this drama was unnecessary and reprehensible. There was no need to split the baby.
Other Midrash interpretations summed
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/two-prostitutes-as-mothers-midrash-and-aggadah
PS. Retelling in Russian, http://ikadell.livejournal.com/356320.html
Tags: findings
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10:52 am
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My Americana. XVIII. Unto the seventh generation
...I am a jealous G-d visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. (Exodus 20:5)
Take one generation as the duration of the reproductive cycle of about 20 years, multiply that by seven and you get roughly 150 years. That's much longer than anyone lives. I thought that the seventh generation came from that: fading of the personal memories. As long as there are parents and children, the children cannot avoid being affected by the errors of their parents, but all memory of the personal guilt, however grievous is the offence, fades over the vast stretches of time. The problem with this interpretation is that the faulty memory can be strengthened by keeping records. This is not the same thing, of course, but it is still sufficient for the protracted vendettas going beyond the seventh generation.
Maybe the reasoning is different? What happens in seven generations is not as much as fading of the memories of this original transgression but rather inability to tell the difference between the descendants of the perpetrators and the victims. In seven generations, on average, the intermarriage results in the delicate situation that the children have both ancestors on their side, the guilty and the hurt, and retribution becomes technically impossible as they cannot retribute against themselves.
Now, consider the recent example of the application of the law of generational harvest: the affirmative action. I cannot say it's unjust that the sins of the slave owners who transgressed very badly indeed are transmitted onto their children's children, and so some atonement is due, although I'd think that 260,000 Confederates who died in the Civil War is sufficient. However, it is the wronged party that should decide the scope of the retribution, and I can imagine that a hundred years later it might be discovered that this atonement was insufficient. But even that discovery happened a while ago. It is roughly 150 years since the emancipation; the time of the seventh generation. And what do we see: the President of the US, whose white maternal ancestors from Ky. had slaves as recently as 1850, married to a woman descending from these black slaves. The seventh generation.
Tags: americana
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11:55 pm
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The second opinion
"scholar-vit" explains that the reactionaries are ignorant of their own traditions; would they care to learn these traditions they'd be liberals.
http://scholar-vit.livejournal.com/200637.html?thread=7054525#t7054525
"bravchick" believes that a Christian should not ask "What would Jesus do?" because it is blasphemous. He cannot identify any situation when it is appropriate to ask this question which happens to be central to Christian ethics.
http://flying-bear.livejournal.com/763151.html?thread=13252111#t13252111
A man who has no faith understands how faith feels on the inside. A man who cannot utter a "conservative" without pulsy understands how conservatism feels on the inside. Where this strange conviction comes from? Is it the same kind of imagination that makes a writer writing about a murderer to identify with the character because there is a murderer inside each one of us? Then the very pretense of understanding betrays this beast inside: either you admit that there are limits to your understanding of the others, but then you cannot second guess the others, or you pretend to understand the others, but only by revealing the beachhead of the otherness in your own soul - and then it becomes a window into the recesses of this soul.
I do not think there is any other way. And --- the sight seen through this window is better be kept within.
Tags: memorable exchanges
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11:39 pm
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Lineus longissimus
The longest animal in the world is a Nemetrean worm 5 cm in width and 30 m long. One specimen found was 55 m long. Most of other ribbon worms are < 20 cm in length (the phylum median is 7.5 cm). I wonder how the evolution of such an animal can be explained by natural selection. I do not say it can't. I simply have no clue how. Say, what precisely is the adaptive value of being 55 m long?
Tags: mysteries
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07:50 pm
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The ticking Quaker scenario
...the pacifism of the Quakers was raising serious moral problems, especially when the Indians began routinely slaughtering settlers on Pennsylvania's western frontier... The settlers, mostly non-Quaker Germans, were growing increasingly alarmed at the lack of protection. They thought it the most fundamental duty of the legislator to defend his people.
...In 1755, the Delaware Indians, urged by the French, initiated a series of bloody massacres... The Quakers were shocked by attacks from a tribe they thought was friendly. At first, the council in Philadelphia responded by denying that the attacks had occurred. Once the facts were undeniable, it argued that unfair treatment of the Indians must have provoked the massacres. They refused to appropriate any funds for defense, even after the horrific bloodbath of 1756. Instead of an armed regiment, the Quaker assembly created a commission to make sure the settlers were treating the Indians fairly. This provided little comfort for the frontiersmen seeing their wives raped and butchered, their children scalped, their crops destroyed, and their homes burned to the ground.
...The Quakers remained unimpressed, even when desperate German settlers rioted in the streets of Philadelphia demanding action on the part of the assembly. Less concerned with the responsibilities of government than whether the laws they passed violated their religious beliefs, Quaker intransigence grew even more rigid as the evidence continued to mount refuting the notion that the Delawares were a peace-loving tribe.
...The social respectability that the Quakers in London had achieved had dissipated, as news of the border massacres reached Europe. The London "Friends" urged the Pennsylvania Quakers to give up government so that they could avoid some blame for the bloodletting by the Indians, and the embarrassing military conquests by the French. On June 4, 1756, six leading Quaker assemblymen handed in their resignations.
...The Quakers were further disgraced when it became apparent that Quaker opposition to violence translated into their refusal to fight for American independence. In addition to being ridiculed as cowards, they were subjected to charges of treason... Despite the ultimate impracticality of the Quaker tradition, without it the American Revolution probably would have been quite different. It would have been very difficult to explain exactly what it was Americans were fighting for if the Quakers had not in fact implemented William Penn's political philosophy: specifically, that government has no right to use force against individuals to serve the purposes of the community. Quaker rule provided the needed historical precedent. http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap13.html
Tags: morals
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12:48 pm
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Molotov's cocktail, or American Optimism
from http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/175614.html?thread=972286#t972286
Americans are not only optimistic, but mandatory so. If you aren't, people will disapprove and let you know. To a natural born pessimist like me, this spotless outlook is both annoying and puzzling. After all, this country has been populated by folk knowning only too well that things can get rough very rapidly, when one can consider oneself lucky to survive. Their children's children, however, believe that nothing truly bad can happen to them beyond an occasional setback, which (in a long view) is nothing but a tiny dip on the ascending path. The key to keeping on this heaven-bound road is doing the "right thing". The recipe for the "right thing" varies from one person to another, but not the idea that there is a way of squeezing out of anything by doing this "right thing".
By and large, this is our creed. In Europe, they are more resistant to its charms, not through being wiser, of course, but through being beaten to a pulp on a regular basis. When you live in a place where whole nations have failed and whole countries have dissappeared then you may begin suspecting that some situations are terminal indeed. There is no "right thing" to save the day. It is not a temporary setback before the ever brighter future. That's just it: finis. You get the picture. Except for a few academics, I do not know anyone in the US really allowing oneself a thought that America will be in the position when doing the "right thing" is too late. Something can and will be done righting the wrongs, if only at the last moment, and from then onwards it will be happily ever after. The difference is in details of the approach rather than its central premise. When we are told that "America is going to Hell," what is meant is that it will go down the tubes if the "right thing" is not being done. But, of course, if the blind will see the shining glory of the "right thing," Columbia will place herself firmly onto the celestial sphere. It is useless to ask why. It is like asking: why "Ladies first"? You will be treated to imaginative stories, folk theories, and breath taking visages of unlimited progress; perhaps a hearty mix of these three components. They do not know. The ad hoc rationales are supplied to make sense of what isn't rooted in today's reality, what is forgotten.
What is the real premise of this belief? One may be misled by the very term "optimism" that it relates to vulgarized Leibnitz' theodicy. It is, partially. However, to become what it is, it has to be complemented by a different premise: that the world is as yet unfinished (as far as its goodness is concerned) and that human efforts can help bring about its goodness in the future. It is called meliorism. The optimism tells that the world is as good as it will ever get because it has already been optimized for goodness; it is useless to strive to improve it overall, as even G-d can't do that. Meliorism claims the world can be improved. That's not too bad by itself, because it does not tell that you cannot screw up: if it is up to us to increase goodness of the world and we are known to fail and fail badly, this increase in goodness is only potential; there is no guarantee that it will be actual. What is uniquely American is the synthesis of meliorism and optimism: complementing meliorism with the idea of no-failure. The latter stems from the premise that the world IS a good place. It is only our own evil that makes it less than perfect. Following the path of meliorism we will return to the primordial goodness declared by the Lord at the end of the Creation, and so there is a feedback: as certain particular evils are eliminated, the world becomes the best of all possible worlds, objectively and actually better than it its previous state, with the balance of good and evil changing in favor of good. Because the state has changed, it cannot be more than a temporary setback when things are going bad, because there is less of the residual evil in this new world, and so the balance will reassert itself at this higher point that has been achieved (this return is like the homeostasis of the standard optimism). It's a ratchet mechanism -- for goodness. If this looks a bit mechanical, that's because it is. It is application of the latest advances in mechanical engineering to the problem of good and evil.
Now we have all of the required pieces. Not only goodness of the world increases through good works of the people, but this increase has staying power in a long run. I suspect that this fusion is not the natural consequence of having emigrants starting afresh in the new world, but rather it is rooted in the blend of Protestant creeds that established the nation. You do not find this kind of "optimism" in South America, Canada, or Australia (I cannot say about the latter with certainty, as I've never been there). It needed the right time, the righ place, and the right mix of beliefs to emerge. Once it had emerged, it was so contageous that it infected the entire nation already swept by post-Revolutionary euphoria. Two hundred years later, the hold is as strong as it was at the inception of the idea.
I think this "optimistic outlook" is dynamite, with the tremendous potential for harm and self-destruction. The optimism per se is not a big deal, and the meliorism per se is not a big deal either. But you fuse these two, and it is going to be a bloody mess sooner or later. I am hard pressed to explain why so many people buy into this esoteric worldview. I wonder if this time bomb can be defused.
Is there any way to go back and separate optimism from meliorism?
Tags: forgotten topics
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09:14 am
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The end and the means
http://flying-bear.livejournal.com/763151.html?thread=13228047#t13228047
Exitus acta probat written by love sick Ovid's Phyllis in her letter to Demophoon is said to be the motto of the Inquisition, the Jesuits, or Machiavelli's demonic invention. The Inquisition had never had this motto. Jesuit moral theologians did have a similarly sounding principle, but its meaning (like Phyllis') is quite different from the modern usage: there is no affirmation that evil deeds are justified through good ends.
...Herman Busembaum, in his 'Medulla Theologiae Moralis' (first published at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1650) gives this [motto] as a theorem (p. 320). Cum finis est licitus, etiam media sunt licita (when the end is lawful, the means also are lawful); and p. 504: Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media (for whom the end is lawful, the means are lawful also). The Jesuit Paul Layman, in his 'Theologia Moralis,' lib. III., p. 20 (Munich, 1625), quoting Sanchez, states the proposition in these words: Cui concessus est finis, concessa etiam sunt media ad finem ordinata (to whom the end is permitted, to him also are permitted the means ordered to the end). Louis Wagemann, Jesuit professor of moral theology, in his 'Synopsis Theologiae Moralis' (Innsbruck and Augsburg, 1762) has: Finis determinat moralitatem actus (the end decides the morality of the act). (Facts of Faith, Edwardson, p. 281)
...It is erroneous to assert that the Jesuits, out of moral significance of the ultimate end, coined the maxim. Even though many Jesuit casuists hold that to whomsoever the end is permitted must also the necessary means be allowed, yet the qualification is always added that wrongful means are always to be deprecated. Writes Laymann, Jesuit moral theologian: "The presence of a good purpose lends no goodness to an action in essence bad, but leaves to this action its badness in every way." Gury says that it is never permissible to do the slightest wrong as a means of doing good. Another Jesuit moralist concludes: "The will, if directed towards a morally wrongful object, cannot be made good by virtue of any outward purpose. Whoever, therefore, acknowledges the wrongful nature of theft cannot decide to steal for however good a purpose, without imparting to his will the quality of wrongfulness. If the principle that 'the end justifies the means' is to be interpreted as covering the use if means (actions) which are morally wrong or sinful, then it is to be absolutely repudiated... The Jesuits merely hold, with St Paul (1 Cor 10:31) that morally indifferent or good actions may and should be justified by good intentions. (The Power & Secret of the Jesuits, Fulop-Miller, p. 153)
This Jesuit position is close to that of St Augustine ("Pay no great heed to what a man does, but rather to what he has in mind doing... One and the same matter, measured by the varying purpose behind it, becomes a subject for approbation or abhorrence, merit or condemnation") and St Bernard ("Good will is not shorn of its merit even when the action itself is not good") This is also the Thomist view: the morality of action is determined by its end:
Objection 1. It would seem that the good and evil in human actions are not from the end. For Dionysius says that "nothing acts with a view to evil." If therefore an action were good or evil from its end, no action would be evil.
Reply to Objection 1. The good in view of which one acts is not always a true good; but sometimes it is a true good, sometimes an apparent good. And in the latter event, an evil action results from the end in view.
Objection 2. Further, the goodness of an action is something in the action. But the end is an extrinsic cause. Therefore an action is not said to be good or bad according to its end.
Reply to Objection 2. Although the end is an extrinsic cause, nevertheless due proportion to the end, and relation to the end, are inherent to the action.
Objection 3. Further, a good action may happen to be ordained to an evil end, as when a man gives an alms from vainglory; and conversely, an evil action may happen to be ordained to a good end, as a theft committed in order to give something to the poor. Therefore an action is not good or evil from its end.
Reply to Objection 3. Nothing hinders an action that is good in one of the way mentioned above, from lacking goodness in another way. And thus it may happen that an action which is good in its species or in its circumstances is ordained to an evil end, or vice versa. However, an action is not good simply, unless it is good in all those ways: since "evil results from any single defect, but good from the complete cause." http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2018.htm#article4
"The end justifies the means" is poorly worded rehashing of this idea. The "motto" states that good ensues from the complete cause; it is not sufficient to do good deeds, one has to will good for it to be good. Machiavelli's pragmatism may be disgusting enough, but even he did not put it so bluntly as "the end justifies the means" in the Prince). Rather he claimed that "in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result... The means will always be considered honest, and [the prince] will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar." He does not go as far as claiming that the results justify the means; he is saying that the vulgar judge by the results. That is very true.
I suspect that "the ends justify the means" with its queer insistence that "justification" means more than the approbation of the vulgar is modern; it is as modern as Bentham's and Mill's consequentialist ethics. To claim, without the shadow of cynicism, that immoral means are justified by good ends ("the greatest happiness for the greatest number") one has to have the modern mind stretched well beyond what the Inquisition, the Jesuits, and Machiavelly ever dared to assert.
What is the end of believing that "the end justifies the means?"
Tags: forgotten topics, morals
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10:45 pm
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Why don't we have eyes in the back of the head?
If an animal has two eyes, the placement of these eyes follows two patterns: either these are placed laterally, to provide 180 degree field of vision (most commonly, in prey looking out for the predators), or upfront, to provide stereopsis for the price of a narrower visual field (in the predators, who are supposed to be focussing on their prey during the hunt). Our eyes betray our nonvegetarian origin: the ancestors of the primates were predatory. Close placement of the eyes was important for leaping and arboreal way of life in general, but it comes with a price, viz. one cannot see what happens behind you. Had we been predators, as our ancestros, that would not be much of a problem, but the primates have mainly been a prey, and lacking panoramic vision is a serious problem.
That means the primates needed to compensate for this conflicting demand on their two-eye vision. One can compensate with improved senses of smelling and hearing. One can also compensate with social networking (more eyes looking for the predators) -- and that was the path leading to the Homo. However, there is one more solution: developing an extra pair of eyes looking behind. This is a very natural approach, because one would combine the binocular vision with 360 degree panoramic view. This would be a great adaptive advantage. So why there are no four-eye land animals? A related question is: why do we have lens eyes in the first place? Would not curved mirrors be better for light collection and focusing?
It is doable. There is a fish that has four eyes: two lens eyes and two mirror eyes directing light onto the same retina. The connection with the previous post on green frogs is that this fish uses the same guanine-filled iridophores to make these mirror eyes:
...The brownsnout spookfish, Dolichopteryx longipes, has ordinary eyes with lenses pointing upwards, but alongside them are downward-looking eyes fitted with tiny mirrored plates. The plates made of guanine crystals are arranged so that the light entering the eye is reflected to a focused point on the retina, allowing the fish to see what lurks below it.
The brownsnout spookfish has been identified as the only backboned creature known to use mirrors rather than lenses to get images into focus. The mirrors allow the fish to detect flashes of light made by creatures in the deep in more detail than would be achieved by eyes with lenses, giving it an early warning of predators. Mirrors are better at providing focused images in the deep sea because they are more efficient in the low light levels and they avoid imperfections in images created by lenses.
...In nearly 500 Myr of vertebrate evolution, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes — how to make an image — using a mirror. With mirrors it can make a very bright, high-contrast image. The mirrors are more efficient in the dark because they reflect more of the available light into the retina, whereas lenses absorb small quantities as the light passes through them. Lenses, especially the spherical type found in fish, also suffer from small aberrations that affect the quality of the image. Mirrored eyes might be better for vision in other habitats other than just the deep sea but eyes with lenses were successful enough that there was little point in animals evolving mirrored eyes. The mirrors were an “add-on” to the fish’s one pair of genuine eyes and used to see bioluminescent light created by marine animals signalling to each other or trying to lure prey. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5469077.ece
...Each one is split into two connected parts; a tube shape which looks up and an outgrowth which looks down. At 1000 m there is little visually useful sunlight, so if the spookfish relied solely on its tubular eye, it would be collecting maximum sunlight but not be able to see anything else. It would be virtually blind to all the other fish and creatures around it — 80% of which emit some sort of bioluminescence. The outgrowth of the eye is filled with reflective plate crystals which act as a mirror, reflecting an image back onto the fish’s retina. http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1966
There are other creative possibilities, such as having a translucent fluid-filled dome with tubular eyes sitting deep inside it and peeping all around. This fish is doing it:
http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2009/barreleye/barreleye.html
So it is possibe to solve the engineering problems. The trouble with mirror designs might be more of a biochemical challenge: warm blooded animals lost the abililty to produce light-reflecting purine crystals (together with the iridophore cell harboring these reflectors). The example of blue skin and feathers shows that, in principle, collagen and air bubbles can be used to fabricate a reflective tissue, but there is too much light scattering for optical use. So this path two panoramic vision is off limits to the mammals. Conversely, the translucent skull might be too radical for a land animal: a soft skull is impractical (due to the vertebrate predation) while a hard skull requires a new material that has to be invented first (like the fused bone of a teleost fish or diatom shell). However, there is another possibility: four lens-eyes. Anableps have four eyes in two sockets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-eyed_fish
http://www.aosonline.org/xactions/1545-6110_v099_p145.pdf
...The eyes are positioned on the top of the head, and the fish floats at the water surface with only the lower half of each eye underwater. The two halves are divided by a band of tissue and the eye has two pupils, connected by part of the iris. The upper half of the eye is adapted for vision in air, the lower half for vision in water. The lens of the eye also changes in thickness top to bottom to account for the difference in the refractive indices of air versus water. (Wiki)
All one needs is putting such split eyes laterally and quadrifocal, fully panoramic vision would be possible. There is a rare abnormality in people when two irises/pupils occur in one eye (pupula duplex); a famous Chinese general had this condition, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiang_Yu
I can imagine a scenario leading from this abnormality to binocular, panoramic vision. But it had never happened.
Why? --- and imagine the consequence had that happened in the primates. The incentive to become social would be greatly reduced, but the brain would probably be larger, to process the doubled visual information. Had the cards been played differently, Adam would've been a solipsistic loner sitting on the hill --- and the eyes in his head would see the world spinning around...
Tags: why
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03:37 pm
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Silver bells and Cockleshells
During the recent discussions, I've heard the argument that only physical abuse that causes an average man to shudder is torture. This argument grossly over-estimates the capacity of our fellow human beings to shudder. How about a simple experiment: I tell you what two of the widely known and loved nursery rhymes in English actually mean.
Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice.
...The vicious farmer's wife in this rhyme is Queen Mary I, the daughter of King Henry VIII. Mary, a staunch Catholic, was so well known for her persecution of Protestants that she was given the nickname "Bloody Mary." When three Protestant bishops were convicted of plotting against Mary, she had them burnt at the stake. However, it was mistakenly believed that she had them blinded and dismembered, as is inferred in the rhyme... The reference to 'farmer's wife' refers to the massive estates which she, and her husband King Philip of Spain, possessed.
Mary, Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.
...This rhyme is [also] a reference to Bloody Mary. The garden refers to growing cemeteries, as she filled them with Protestants. Silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture and the maiden was a device used to behead people. http://brainz.org/24-terrifying-thoughtful-and-absurd-nursery-rhymes-children
...The 'silver bells' were thumbscrews which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of a screw. The 'cockleshells' were instruments of torture attached to the genitals. The 'maids' were a device to behead people called the Maiden. Beheading a victim was fraught with problems. It could take up to 11 blows to actually sever the head, the victim often resisted and had to be chased around the scaffold. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury did not go willingly to her death and had to be chased and hacked at by the Executioner. These problems led to the invention of a mechanical instrument (now known as the guillotine) called the Maiden - shortened to Maids in the Mary Mary Nursery Rhyme. The Maiden had long been in use in England before Lord Morton, regent of Scotland during the minority of James VI, had a copy constructed from the Maiden which had been used in Halifax in Yorkshire. Ironically, Lord Morton fell from favour and was the first to experience the Maiden in Scotland.
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/mary_mary_quite_contrary.htm
via C. Roberts, Heavy words lightly thrown: the reason behind the rhyme (Granta, 2004).
Now go to the playground and count shudders. The sadistic verse of Tudor age is the most treasured kiddie lore of today. In a few centuries, our children's chidren will be singing about waterboarding and electrocutions to the clap of their little hands.
Do we really want it?
Tags: morals
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12:39 am
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Why are there no green mammals?
Someone asked me this question recently. I gave the standard, easy-to-get answer, but I feel uneasy about it because it is worse than incorrect: it is misleading. I'll try to explain, but it may be difficult to follow. On the other hand, it is a fascinating subject, a striking example of natural application of nanoengineering and photonics. First, the standard answer:
...Mammals are overwhelmingly earth-colored. A few sort-of-green mammals do exist: Tree sloths turn grayish-green when algae grows on their fur. Australia's ringtail opossums have bands of black and yellow on their hair that can look a grizzled olive drab. You could argue that a diatom-encrusted whale is green. But nonmammal tree frogs, praying mantises and parakeets are all luminous greens. Green vegetation fills the natural world, and many of its denizens use green as camouflage. Why not mammals? The short answer is that mammals are hairy. Mammalian hair has only two kinds of pigment: one that produces black or brown hair and one that produces yellow or reddish-orange hair. Mixing those two pigments is never going to yield a bright, contestable green. Rutzmoser suggests a more complex explanation: that small mammals - the ones needing protective coloration the most - typically live on the ground, scurrying in leaf litter. "Dead leaves aren't green," she points out. "They're brown."Finally, most predators of mammals are other mammals, and mammals usually have poor color vision; ergo, green wouldn't help. Given enough time, natural selection could surely produce green fur.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1169/is_n5_v33/ai_17338585
also http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2003-09/1064503150.Ev.r.html
This answer is incorrect on several counts. While it is technically true that mammals have only yellow-red-brown pigments, the same applies to all but a handful of animals that make green pigments proper:
...Frogs have green rods in its retina; turacoverdin is found in the feathers of some touracos; there are green pigments in certain moths; a green pigment colouring the bug Psylla mali on apple trees is formed by symbiotic bacteria; a green pigment has been found in the integument of the lugworm, Arenicola; there are green schemochrome which color the polychaete worms Eulalia viridis and Phyllodoce viridis, and there is a dark-green schemochrome in the entomostracans Triops and Cypris. http://www.tightrope.it/nicolaus/metadoc10.htm
The rest have never learned how to produce other pigments than yellow, brown, and red, -- and some of these pigments (carotenoids) come from our food. Green lizards, parrots, and frogs are as dedicated melanin producers as the mammals. Their green originates through Tyndall scattering by microcrystals. The reflected light is enriched in blue and it becomes green when filtered by an overlayer of a yellow pigment, such as pteridine. Blue and green irises in our eyes originate through the same effect, so the mammals have not fully forgotten the trick. Cold blooded animals rely on stacks of DNA base guanine in their reflective cells (iridophores) to produce this incoherent scattering effect. The birds and mammals do not have these guanine filled iridophores, as they have lost the ability to produce the stacked guanine granules. Instead, the birds make nanosize air vacuoles and channels in the beta-keratin of their feather barbs, see
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v396/n6706/pdf/396028a0.pdf
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/43/4/591
What they do is not exactly Tyndall scattering, it is coherent scattering, by an engineered 2D structure supporting interference in just the right way, as in dichroic optics. Some birds make layered keratin/melanin thin film structures, too
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/Suppl_2/S203.abstract
but for the majority, it is air bubbles or channels lined by beta-carotene; these are thought to be produced by self-assembly.
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/Suppl_2/S253.full.pdf
How did warm blooded animals shed their iridophores? That's because heat trapping required covering skin, so the skill of growing purine and pterine crystals in the skin cells has been lost in the genetic drift:
...the evolution of hair and feathers, in mammals and birds, respectively, which covered the skin entirely, consequently led to the loss of iridophore expression in mammal and bird skin. Some birds retain structural colour-producing iridophores in the iris of their eyes. http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/207/12/2157
The birds had to reinvent color green from scratch, and this was done by inventing a way to entrap air bubbles in the beta-keratin matrix. The mammals never invented this particular approach, but they arrived at a very similar mechanism for coloration of skin (in mandrills and vervet monkeys), see
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/207/12/2157
Their appraoch is coherent scattering in collagen arrays of the skin, producing blue; the birds color their skin in the same way. These arrays are quasi-ordered 2D photonic crystals.
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/207/12/2157
Producing green skin via this approach is quite straightforward, and the paper claims that some marsupials and primatrs do have green patches of skin.
I believe that there are two likely reasons for the lack of green fur. One is purely technical: alpha-keratin of mammalian hair could be too soft for the air channel formation. Structurally, these are different proteins: alpha-keratins are helical, beta-keatins are pleated sheets. The mechanism of self-assembly that produces the "aerogel" may not work for these helical keratins, in principle. So the only way to get green/blue would be layering keratin itself. With such an approach, the problem may be in insufficient gradient of refractivity. With the collagen in skin, this is not too vexing a problem as the skin is thick, so one can have many layers, but hair is only 50-70 um in diameter, so it is hard to get an interference filter out of it, especially with the need of segregating the yellow pigment in the outer layer (to make hair green). Perhaps mammals could've developed a green pigment proper circumventing this inherent limitation, but there is another issue: the majority of mammals are color blind. Since grey/brownish coats are already providing excellent camouflage, the only incentive for green fur is sexual selection. The latter, for the dichromates, cannot lead to green fur. For the trichromate primates it could have, but they chose instead coloring their skin using collagen arrays, as chemically and physically it is easier. I speculate that the combination of these two factors is the correct explanation for the absence of green mammals. But that's just a guess.
Why there are no green mammals?
( How frogs and lizards make themselves green )
Tags: mysteries
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10:48 pm
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Why only retributive justice is just
I have little of essense to add to CS Lewis' essay below. The short of it is that the deterrent/preventive justice dehumanizes the offender and excludes the possibility of mercy; furthermore, if justice is not retributive, it undermines equality of people (as lex talonis is based on the notion that the value of what you have done onto another is the same as the value of having it done to you) which is the first precept of justice.
...According to the [deterrent] theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.
My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.
The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.
The distinction will become clearer if we ask who will be qualified to determine sentences when sentences are no longer held to derive their propriety from the criminal’s deservings. On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence was a moral problem. Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature, and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognizable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question in which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert. The only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures. But these are not questions on which anyone is entitled to have an opinion simply because he is a man... The Humanitarian theory, then, removes sentences from the hands of jurists whom the public conscience is entitled to criticize and places them in the hands of technical experts whose special sciences do not even employ such categories as rights or justice.
...If we turn from the curative to the deterrent justification of punishment we shall find the [Humanitarian] theory even more alarming. When you punish a man in terror, we make of him an ‘example’ to others, you are admittedly using him as a means to an end; someone else’s end. This, in itself, would be a wicked thing to do. On the classical theory of Punishment it was of course justified on the ground that the man deserved it. That was assumed to be established before any question of ‘making him an example’ arose. In the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way? — unless, of course, I deserve it.
But that is not the worst. If the justification of exemplary punishment is not to be based on desert but solely on its efficacy as a deterrent, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty... The punishment of an innocent, that is, an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment. Once we have abandoned that criterion, all punishments have to be justified, if at all, on other grounds that have nothing to do with desert. Where the punishment of the innocent can be justified on those grounds (and it could in some cases be justified as a deterrent) it will be no less moral than any other punishment. Any distaste for it on the part of the Humanitarian will be merely a hang-over from the Retributive theory.
...This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. The error began, with Shelley’s statement that the distinction between mercy and justice was invented in the courts of tyrants. It sounds noble, but the distinction is essential. The older view was that mercy ‘tempered’ justice, or (on the highest level of all) that mercy and justice had met and kissed. The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient... Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice. http://www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html
Tags: morals
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12:08 pm
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Of rats and men
I feel that our intelligence is exceptional not in our rationality, which is commodious, but in something more important and basic: the perception of time. To us, the past is a place we revisit and relive. What's it for animals?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/102856.php
Episodic-Like Memory in Rats: Is It Based on When or How Long Ago?
...Dog owners, who have noticed that their four-legged friend seem equally delighted to see them after five minutes away as five hours, may wonder if animals can tell when time passes.
...Although memory for when a salient event occurred suggests that rats can mentally travel in time to a moment in the past, an alternative possibility is that they remember how long ago the food was found. Three groups of rats were tested for memory of previously encountered food. The different groups could use only the cues of when, how long ago, or when + how long ago. Only the cue of how long ago food was encountered was used successfully. These results suggest that episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memory. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5872/113
...rats are able to keep track of how much time has passed since they discovered a piece of cheese, be it a little or a lot, but they don't actually form memories of when the discovery occurred. That is, the rats can't place the memories in time. The research team designed an experiment in which rats visited the 'arms' of a maze at different times of day. Some arms contained moderately desirable food pellets, and one arm contained a highly desirable piece of cheese. Rats were later returned to the maze with the cheese removed on certain trials and with the cheese replaced with a pellet on others. All told, three groups of rats were tested in the research using three varying cues: when, how long ago or when plus how long ago. Only the cue of how long ago food was encountered was used successfully by the rats.
...episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memory, which involves retention of the point in past time when an event occurred. The rats remember whether they did something, such as hoarded food a few hours or five days ago. The more time that has passed, the weaker the memory may be. Rats may learn to follow different courses of action using weak and strong memory traces as cues, thus responding differently depending on how long ago an event occurred. However, they do not remember that the event occurred at a specific point in past time. Previous studies have suggested that rats and scrub jays (a relative of the crow and the blue jay) appear to remember storing or discovering various foods, but it hasn't been clear whether the animals were remembering exactly when these events happened or how much time had elapsed. "Animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future."
Perhaps this is the main divide between human and animal intelligence: the way in which we perceive the past and the future. Having these is our great strength; it is also our curse. I wonder if it is natural. The rapid burst of modernization of H. sapience is commonly explained by the development of language, but it may be secondary to the development of human-like episodic memory, with placing the events in time and in this way constructing the worlds of the past and the future. We have this Biblical intuition that it is some kind of forbidden knowledge that makes us what we are, and this knowledge has something to do with our mortality. Gaining this type of episodic memory would be such forbidden knowledge. I doubt it is wired-in. Perhaps it is taught, and the "fall" involved the one who discovered it and tought to the descendants, making them human. The two major discoveries one makes using this type of memory is, precisely, the fear of death and the classification of the world into good and evil, as it ties good and bad effects with specific causes. That seemingly requires structuring of the past, as otherwise there is no proper causation. This awareness of oneself in time is rational soul; as it is a model rather than actuality, it is immortal. A minute change in the organisation of memory would lead to collosal changes touching on every aspect of intelligence and worldview.
Is it the episodic memory of the past that makes us human?
Tags: mysteries
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11:20 pm
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The promise of the future
...Hug Shirt, a high-tech garment that simulates the experience of being embraced by a loved one. When a friend sends you a virtual hug, your cell phone notifies the shirt wirelessly, via Bluetooth. The shirt then re-creates that person's distinctive cuddle, replicating his or her warmth, pressure, duration and even heartbeat. And, yes, the Hug Shirt is fully washable.
http://www.time.com/time/2006/techguide/bestinventions/inventions/clothing3.html
I saw this garment last week at the exhibit called "The future".
Tags: findings
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12:07 pm
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Why do we have four limbs?
Why do we have five digits? http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/174857.html
Four legs good, six legs ARE better. The most successful land animals have six legs organized into two tripodal superlegs moved one tripod at a time, so you get perfect stability in mid-step. That cannot be said about the four-legged creatures, especially the first ones. Furthermore, there is something disturbing about the precept that the four legs had helped the ancestral, semiaquatic tetrapod to transition to land. Just look at the [fully] aquatic mammals. Do you see four legs? You see a couple of strong flippers and (at best) the vestigial hind legs. The latter are of no use because the thrust comes from the vertically undulating tail. The hind legs get in the way. The reptiles and amphibians beat their tails horizontally, but the hind appendages are retained only when part of the life cycle is spent on land.
One would expect that the transition to land followed this pattern: the pectoral fins of the tetrapod-like lobe-finned fish used for locomotion, with underdeveloped hind limbs, the mode of land locomotion being crawling (similar to mudslippers) - then, over time, hind legs developed and walking became the way. The fossil record suggests otherwise. The hind limbs were more developed than the front limbs even in the fully aquatic ancestor. There was no crawling on land, it was walking from the start. The creature was using its four limbs in water, where having hind limbs did not pay off in all of the subsequent fully aquatic tetrapods. The ones that clung to their hind legs, like basilosaurus, used those for docking during copulation or other acrobatics.
For years we have been told just-so-stories that our four limbs were a land adaptation. In the past few years this story has crumbled apart, and it is no longer even considered. It is not supported by the fossil record and developmental genetics. The story of tetrapod evolution, the real one - as opposed to the one imagined to conform to the textbook notions - looks more mysterious than ever.
...[It was] assumed that the evolution of limbs was initiated and driven by the colonization of land. Here, however, was an early tetrapod that was ill-suited for life on land. It had well-defined digits (fingers and toes), but no wrists or ankles. It had relatively long limb bones, but they couldn't support much weight. Its hip also couldn't support much weight since it was weakly attached to the spine. Its short and thin ribs were incapable of protecting vital organs. Acanthostega also had a deep tail which sported a large bony fin. In short, it had a tail suited for swimming, a fish's spine and paddle-like limbs. A primarily, if not exclusively, aquatic lifestyle for Acanthostega is further indicated by the presence of internal, fish-like gills. Acanthostega's small, fish-like nares (nostrils) were probably used only for smelling under water; air may have been brought to the lungs by gulping. With its combination of fish-like and tetrapod features Acanthostega has engendered a variety of speculation about the paleoecology and evolution of early tetrapods. Its feet may have been superior to fins in negotiating shallow waters filled with aquatic plants and woody debris. http://www.devoniantimes.org/Order/re-acanthostega.html
...the first tetrapods arose from advanced tetrapodomorph stock (the elpistostegalids) in the Late Devonian, probably in Euramerica. However, truly terrestrial forms did not emerge until much later, in geographically far-flung regions, in the Lower Carboniferous. The complete transition occurred over about 25 million years; definitive emergences onto land took place during the most recent 5 million years. The sequence of character acquisition during the transition can be seen as a five-step process involving: (1) higher osteichthyan (tetrapodomorph) diversification in the Middle Devonian (beginning about 380 mya), (2) the emergence of "prototetrapods" (e.g., Elginerpeton) in the Frasnian stage (about 372 mya), (3) the appearance of aquatic tetrapods (e.g., Acanthostega) sometime in the early to mid-Famennian (about 360 mya), (4) the appearance of "eutetrapods" (e.g., Tulerpeton) at the very end of the Devonian period (about 358 mya), and (5) the first truly terrestrial tetrapods (e.g., Pederpes) in the Lower Carboniferous (340 mya). Physiol Biochem Zool. 77 (2004) 700.
The lobe-finned fish like Eusthenopteron is said to use its "limbs" to walk on lake beds, though there is no evidence for such mode of locomotion (extant lobe-finned fish do not walk on their fins). Furthermore, it had six fins. Another tetrapodomorph fish, Panderichthys, lost its dorsal fins retaining only paired pectoral and pelvic fins. So our tetrapody originated in the loss of unpaired fins in the ancestral fish that elongated its paired lobe-fins, for a purpose unknown. This purpose probably had no more to do with walking than basilosaurus' hind limbs. It could've been sexual selection. It could've been supplying sudden thrust for ambushing prey. Spreading weeds has been suggested, too, although I do not see what hind limbs would be for. It could've been anything. In all probability, we will never know why tetrapod-like fish started to grow their lobe-fins, however, no matter what that reason might be, they would have exactly four limbs. Why?
Because this follows from the developments that occurred 135 Myr before the first tetrapod-like fish appeared. That the land vertebrates would have four limbs with digits had been decided 500 Mya. The stories about the creativity of evolution should not be taken at the face value; many decisions are irreversible. A vertebrate animal may be in desperate need of six limbs for its survival. It is not going to get those extra limbs. To understand why one has to realize that the first, jawless fish did not have paired appendages that became our limbs. Their fins were on the midline. Then two sets of paired appendages appeared in jawed fish. The current thinking is that these paired fins were not new. The skeletal patterning has similarity to that of gill rays. See http://www.pnas.org/content/106/14/5720
There are three other theories (external gill, lateral fins fold and fin-spine ostracoderm theories). The gill arch theory is that the first pectoral and pelvic girdles were behind the gill arches from which these evolved. The external gill theory is the same idea but the gill is external, as in lungfish. The lateral fins fold theory suggests that paired fins evolved from median unpaired fins. The gill arch theory is the current favorite, but it has been in and out many times. The lateral fold theory postulates a duplication event involving Tbx genes patterning the fins (an extreme beneficient mutation, not unlike polydactyly). That was an extremely rare event, perhaps itself part of the whole genome duplication event leading from the jawless to jawed fishes.
Evolving paired fins improved the control of movement by tail beating. The two sets came from linking the patterning genes to the ones guiding anterior-posterior patterning. That we will have exactly four limbs has been decided the moment this genetic toolbox has been settled upon. In the subsequent 500 Myr no variation of this toolbox has been made. The potentiality for the complex anatomy was there right from the beginning. The tetrapods were not innovative at the fundamental level.
...the genetic and developmental toolkit that builds limbs with fingers and toes was around long before the acquisition of limbs, as this toolkit exists in a living primitive bony fish, the paddlefish. The latter have an elaborate fin skeletal pattern similar to that seen in more primitive vertebrates such as sharks and many fossil fish. Accepted theory among scientists has been that the pattern of Hox gene expression seen in zebrafish represents the primitive condition for the fin in any vertebrate, and the group leading to tetrapods elaborated on this Hox expression by adding a second phase and added to the skeletal pattern. Tetrapods have a second phase of Hox gene expression that happens later in development. During this second phase, hands and feet develop. Although this second phase is not known in zebrafish, it is present in paddlefish, which reveals that a pattern of gene activity long thought to be unique to vertebrates with hands and feet is in fact much more primitive. This is supportive of the theory that the genes to help make fingers and toes have been around for a long time. Prior to this find, a popular theory was that it was a novel development. Here's fish that doesn't have an autopod but is still using those genes in a second phase to help pattern out a fin that doesn't have fingers, never did, and is very far removed from tetrapods. It took a set of environmental triggers to make use of the pre-existing capability. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070523132701.htm
...Genetic processes were not simple in early aquatic vertebrates only to become more complex as the animals adapted to terrestrial living. They were complex from the outset. Some major innovations, like digits at the end of limbs, have been achieved by prolonging the activity of a genetic program that existed in a common ancestor of sharks and bony fishes. The same genes that produced ancient fins enlarged their role about 365 Mya in amphibians struggling to adapt to swamps, creating a distinct burst of development and more versatile appendages. The sharks and many other types of fish do not form more dramatic appendages during the late phase of Hox gene expression because it occurs briefly and only in a narrow band of cells, compared with the more extended time frame and larger anatomical area needed to prefigure the hand and foot in limbed animals. Finding the second phase in sharks, which have skeletons consisting not of bone but of cartilage, means the genetic processes necessary to muster fingers and toes existed more than 500 Mya. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070814212149.htm
As is the case with five digits, the four limbs have been settled upon eons before the first digits or limbs appeared. One sees this again and again. The adaptational paradigm of evolution, once one pays closer attention to the facts, poorly bodes with the reality. It is not the creative force. The benefit kicks in very late in the game when the ground work has been laid. Evolution is doing this ground work rather than accruing accidental benefits that are the fruit of its hard labors.
Why do we have four limbs?
PS. "Gaining ground: The origin and Evolution of Tetrapods" JA Clark (2008)
"Fins into limbs" BK Hall (2007)
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/39/3/676.pdf
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.38.091206.095546
Tags: evolution, whys
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11:57 am
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The deadly sin of optimism
Last issue of New Yorker magazine has an excellent essay on financial crisis
...The crisis is the culmination of events and trends reaching back, depending on your perspective, four, seven, seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-seven, thirty-eight, sixty-five, or a hundred and two years... The cause are technical, mathematical, cultural, demographic, financial, economic, behavioral, legal, and political. Among the dozens of contributors and culprits, real or perceived, are the personal computer, the abandonment of gold standard, the abandonment of Glass-Steagall, the end of fixed commissions, the rating agencies, mortgage-backed securities, credit derivatives, credit-default swaps, Wall Street partnerships going public, the League of Nations, Bretton Woods, Basel II, CNBC, the SEC, disintermediation, overcompensation, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, Phil Gramm and Jim Leach, Alan Greenspan, black swans, red tape, deregulation, lax enforcement, government pressure to lower lending standards, predatory lending, mark-to-market accounting, hedge funds, private-equity firms, modern finance theory, risk models, "quants", corporate boards, the baby boomers, flat-screen television, and an indulgent, undereducated populace. All these factors... conspired to make possible sky-rocketing leverage, mispercieved risk, and spectacular collapse. To tell the story of them all will require an Edward Gibbon. The fall of Rome, by comparison, was a local event. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_paumgarten
The author favors a very different explanation: the root cause of this meltdown is American optimism itself.
...What constituency is there for pessimism? People believe that optimism is necessary, an American right. The presumption of optimism is the problem. That's what creates the debt we have now... All people want to see what they own go up in value all the time... There seems to be an unwritten rule that the [opposite] can't be allowed to happen. So much effort is put into sustaining the stock market and home prices. This whole culture has been set up to see stocks and homes as annual riskless investments. They most assuredly are not. Banks are going under because they are undercapitalized. People are going bankrupt. Assets are dropping in value. Debt is the story.
This one makes more sense than these other "explanations". But I am natural-born pessimist, so I am biased. The root of the problem is elaborate rationales that people invent assuring themselves that things are either going great or can be made to go great -- against the evidence of their own senses and common sense telling that this cannot be the case -- and it is precisely this optimism, the belief that in the end it all will go better and better, that causes such recklessness.
Is it the spirit of optimism that led us into this mess?
Tags: economics
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10:49 am
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Almighty G-d Has Those Angels
Dad's favorites: found some of them.
Alice Babs (Duke Ellington, Second Sacred Concert)
Come Sunday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpb7wZmEUk&feature=related
Trouble of the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzd4Xu_cwTo
Keep Your Hand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzcYajuigHk&feature=related
I cannot find downloadable "By His Word was the Beginning..." http://mog.com/music/Mahalia_Jackson/Bless_This_House/By_His_Word
http://www.metrolyrics.com/by-his-word-lyrics-the-andrews-sisters.html
Tags: in memoriam
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11:39 am
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Why do we have five digits?
Polydactyly (extra digits) is common in humans, having the incidence of 1 in 500 live births. Winston Churchill had six toes. Anne Bolyen had six fingers. So hexadactyly does not disqualify one from climbing to the pinnacle of power... And you do not have to be alone: There is a breed of dogs with six toes on each paw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Lundehund
So the number of digits can vary and it is not even very rare. Now, if that is so, it is almost certain that in some animals a greater dexterity afforded by the sixth digit would increase their fitness, and so it will be selected for. So, why there are no vertebrate animals with more than five digits? (Some early tetrapods had more digits, like six-toed Tulerpeton, seven-toed Ichthyostega, and eight-toed Acanthostega).
For many decades it has been believed that we all have less or equal to five digits because the last common tetrapod ancestor had five toes. Gould was sceptical of this view and suggested that several lineages (eg, lissamphibia and reptiles) independently set on five digits after a period of experimentation. In fact, the frogs are not exactly pentadactyl.
...The Amniota (reptile, bird, and mammal) do, indeed, show the canonical pattern of five toes upon each limb (or some modification from this initial state). But Amphibia, both living and fossil, have five toes on the hind legs and only four on the front limbs. Anatomists have known this for years but have always assumed that this reduction to four proceeded from an initial and canonical five. This conclusion must now be challenged. If all the earliest tetrapods had more than five digits, and if amniotes separated from amphibians so early in the evolution of terrestrial life, why assume that the four toes of the amphibian forelimb descended from a primary five? All modern stabilizations probably proceeded from more than five. Perhaps the amphibian forelimb went from this higher number directly to four, without any pentadactyl stage between. If so, then pentadactyly crumbles on two grounds: (1) It does not represent the original state of tetrapods (as six-, seven-, and eight-toed earliest forms show); and (2) it may not mark the canonical state in one of the two great living lineages of tetrapods.
...A few mammals also process a functional sixth digit--the panda, whose false "thumb" has been a staple of these essays, and several species of moles. But these false thumbs are formed from extended wrist bones and are not true digits at all. These facts seem to heighten the oddity (and rigidity) of stabilization at five in a sequence that was once extendable, remains so now for mutations and experimental manipulations, but seems recalcitrant in setting a maximum of five as a normal state in all tetrapod species. When six functional digits form, the extra item must be built in another way.
...So why five? Of two major approaches to this question, the conventional Darwinian, or adaptationist, strategy tries to discern a marked advantage, or even an inevitability, for five in terms of utility for an organism's mode of life... On this argument, tetrapods have five toes because support and locomotion demand (or at least strongly encourage) this configuration as optimal. The argument gains credence from the probability that five digits evolved twice--separately, that is, in the two great divisions of tetrapods. The most obvious counterargument may also be support in disguise: why, if five is best on land, do the earliest tetrapods bear six, seven, and eight toes, respectively? A paradoxical retort holds that these first tetrapods evolved their limbs for locomotion in water and remained predominantly, if not entirely, aquatic.
...But strong elements of doubt also plague this adaptationist view. First, as stated above, members of one tetrapod lineage, the amphibians, grow but four toes on their front legs, and we have no evidence for an initial five--so pentadactyly may not be a universal stage in terrestrial vertebrates. Second, if five (with symmetry about a strong central toe) is the source of advantage, then why does our favorite species, the traditional measure of all things--namely Homo sapiens itself--retain five, require great strength in using but two limbs against gravity, but construct the end-member first toe as the main weight bearer? And why do the most successful of all large mammals, the "cloven-hoofed" artiodactyls, or even-toed ungulates--including cows, deer, giraffes, camels, sheep, pigs, and their numerous allies--bear an even number of toes, with the central axis running through a space between the digits (the misnamed "cleft")?
...The second major approach--historical contingency --argues that five was not meant to be, but just happens to be. Other configurations would have worked and might have evolved, but they didn't--and five works well enough. If five is so good, why do so many species devise such curious and devious means to produce six (prepollex or converted wrist bone)? If five is so predictable, why does one of two lineages grow but four? (I should say right up front that neither of these two positions -- adaptation or contingency -- really address the greatest puzzle of all: the recalcitrant stability of five once it evolves. Why should five, once attained by whatever route and for whatever reason, be so stubbornly intractable as an upper limit thereafter--so that any lineage again evolving six or more must do so by a different path? "Eight (or Fewer) Little Piggies." Natural History 100 (1991) 22
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_eight-piggies.html
Gould wrote this lucid essay in 1991. By 1992, it was clear that these are no more than clever fantasies. What matters are not these Darwinian speculations, but the intricacies of genetics and developmental biology.
...All modern tetrapods (four legged creatures), as well as all but a few fossil tetrapods, have limbs characterized by five or fewer digits. This has been viewed as an evolutionary enigma. Individuals of many species, including mice, chickens, dogs, cats and humans carry mutations which give rise to extra digits. Yet a pattern of digits greater than
five has never been adopted as the norm in a lineage leading to a modern species. This is surprising in light of the apparent evolutionary advantage of having more digits in certain instances.
...Understanding of the roles of Hox genes play in development additionally provides insights into the evolution of limb pattern. Hox gene expression patterns divide the embryonic limb bud into five sectors along the anterior/posterior axis. The expression of specific Hox genes in each domain specifies the developmental fate of that region. Because there are only five distinct Hox-encoded domains across the limb bud there is a developmental constraint prohibiting the evolution of more than five different types of digits. The expression patterns of Hox genes in modern embryonic limb buds also gives clues to the shape of the ancestral fin field from which the limb evolved, hence elucidating the evolution of the tetrapod limb.
...This evolutionary paradox can be explained in terms of developmental constraints if the developmental mechanism by which the number of digitis on a limb is determined is distinct from the mechanism that specifies the different morphology of individual digits. Each of these mechanisms has inherent developmental constraints. There are genetic constraints on digit morphology which make it impossible to select for more than five unique digits. Polydactyly can arise, but at least two of the digits will have the same genetically determined ‘identity’; leading to, for example, a second digit V rather than a novel digit VI. Therefore, tetrapod species rarely maintain a polydactylous sixth digit because simply having a duplicated structure might be of limited evolutionary use if it cannot subsequently be molded by selection for a distinct function.
...The Hox genes whose expression pattern seems of most relevance to subdividing the limb bud along the anterior/posterior axis (and hence to potentially specifying unique fates to each digit) are members of the Hox-4 cluster;in particular the five genes from the extreme 5¢ end of the cluster: Hox-4.4, Hox-4.5, Hox-4.6, Hox-4.7 and Hox-4.8. These genes are found to be expressed in the posteriormost regions of the vertebrate embryo, overlapping the region from which the hindlimb bud forms as an outgrowth of the flank mesenchyme. The same genes are also expressed in the forelimb bud.
...The existence of polydactylous individuals indicate that it may be relatively easy for an embryo to develop limbs with an extra digit. However, the existing Hox-4 genes expressed in the limb bud only provide five distinct addresses, thus allowing for the specification of up to five distinct types of digits. In principle, an additional duplication of one of the Hox-4 genes could provide an expanded capacity for encoding position along the anterior-posterior axis. However, the Hox-4 genes are also coordinately expressed in the CNS and elsewhere in the body mesenchyme. Thus to alter their expression would affect more than just the limb. In theory, the effects of a newly derived Hox-4 gene could be limited to the limbs by creating a limb-specific promoter. That, however, would likely require first duplicating a Hox-4 gene and then finetuning its regulation. The initial step of this transformation could be lethal. Hence, polydactyly is a common condition (humans, chickens, etc.) but perhaps nothing useful evolutionarily can be done with it; or at very least it may be evolutionarily easier to modify the morphology of an already uniquely specified structure such as a wrist bone.
...when a proto-tetrapod fish began to alter its developing fin buds to create structures useful for more than just swimming, it became important to create differentiated digits to replace the fin rays. The five posterior Hox-4 genes, which divided the embryonic limb field, provided a means by which the development of each digit could be uniquely modified. The use of these genes, however, would only allow for the specification of five digits. When the developing proto-limb bud was first subdivided into five zones by Hox-4 expression domains, each region could have included the anlage for multiple digits. The use of the Hox-4 genes to specify digit identity does not preclude growing more than five digits, rather it prohibits developing more than five morphologically distinct types of digits. http://dev.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/116/2/289.pdf
This example shows how unilluminating "natural selection" actually is. Five digits are neither adaptive (did not aim to increase fitness) nor historically contingent (did not "just happen"). The number follows from a choice Nature made early in tetrapod development, which is using Hox-4 genes for addressing the digits during limb development. It had no idea that millions of years later this particular choice would matter for fitness. It was an engineering solution which was as good as any. It could've been three, four, or eleven Hox genes, but it happened to be five, and after this choice was made no more than five unique digits became possible. The duplicative digits proved to be too cumbersome to provide any advantage, and Nature maxed on the unique ones. No "evolutionary theory" can answer the title question because the only thing that mattered cannot be explained. We will never know what configuration of the archaic lobed fish genome decided the choice of these particular Hox genes to pattern limbs. You can call it chance. You can call it fate. You can call it G-d's plan to create someone in His image. Or you can just stare at your fingers and ask: Why do we have ten little piggies?
Tags: whys
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02:04 pm
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The visit of fate
Oldest Human Hairs Found in Hyena Dung Fossil
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090511-human-hair.html
Tags: findings
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09:02 pm
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From Bereshith Rabba
Man was originally formed with a tail like the lower animals, but this was afterward taken from him out of consideration for him.
The nose is the most important feature in man's face, so much so that there is no legal identification of man without the identification of the nose.
Other worlds were created and destroyed ere this present one was decided on as a permanent one.
The waters of the various seas are apparently the same, but the different taste of the fish coming from the various seas seems to contradict this.
G-d made a condition with Nature at the Creation, that the sea should divide to let the Israelites pass through it at the Exodus, and that Nature should alter her course when emergency should arise.
Like the desire of a woman for her husband is the desire of Satan for men of Cain's stamp.
The sun alone without the moon would have sufficed for all his purpose, but if he were alone the primitive people might have had some plausible excuse for worshiping him. So the moon was added, and there is less reason for deifying either.
Adam was created with two bodies, one of which was cut away from him and formed Eve.
If man had been created out of spiritual elements only there could be no death for him, in the event of his fall. If, on the other hand, he had been created out of matter only, there could be no future bliss for him.
Rabbi Meier wrote a scroll for his own use, on the margin of which he wrote, in connection with the words: "And G-d saw that it was good." "This means death, which is the passing from life transitory to life everlasting."
The light, when first created, would have enabled man to see from one corner of the earth to the other; but the wicked men of the generation of Enos, the flood, and the Tower caused that light to be withdrawn.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/mhl/mhl05.htm
Tags: note to myself
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08:33 pm
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Ladies first. II
Woman is formed out of bone. Touch a bone and it emits sound; hence woman's voice is thinner than man's. Again, man is formed from earth, which is comparatively soft and melts when water comes over it; whilst woman, being formed from hard substance, is more stubborn and unbending. Bereshith Rabba
Does chivalry originate in biology? Are damsels in distress helped on the account of their "weakness"?
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/173826.html?thread=957442#t957442
Medieval dames, as opposed to the imaginary gentlefolk invented during neo-Gothic revival, were tough as nails. The brazenness of their sexual advances, on the evidence of chansons de geste, has not been surpassed even in our times (see Gautier's "Chivalry"). One of the things striking one when reading mediaeval literature is the complete absence of the notion of feminine weakness, which is inescapable in the Victorian literature. Nor can it be said that the knights were particularly desiring of helping women in general:
...The adept of courtly love, fresh from singing at his unapproachable lady's feet could pause on his homeward journey to tumble a shepherdess in her meadow, a fresh-faced village girl under a hedge. The Moslems in Spain and Syria were shocked by the licentiousness of the French... The noble regarded his female serf as chattel, to do with as he would. A noble was a bundle of paradoxes - a romantic lover and a libertine, a gallant knight and a bloodthirsty brute, a devout Christian and a flouter of the elements of morality. In that he shared his paradoxes with the rest of humanity.(Bishop's "The Middle Ages")
Understanding chivalry is understanding why yesterday's rapist would commit splendid folly to assist a damsel in distress and, in general, go out of his way to demonstrate exalted feelings towards noble women. This is accounted for by courtly love codes, but it goes beyond these codes.
Fin'amors is morally elevating, Platonic admiration, where a lady becomes both a focus of childlike fantasies and the seigneur of a knight. The latter was often quite literal because the ideal object of such rarefied devotion was the wife of the lord. There is little historical evidence that it was practiced; there is a school of thought that it was no more than a literary construct, the "courts of love" included, as the only existing evidence is poetical rather than documentary. This does not mean that the poetic tradition cannot change mores. The [poetic?] tradition is thought to be adopted in the southern France shortly after the first Crusade. The era was brought to an abrupt end when the northerners invaded the south during the Albigensian Crusade. The tradition spread precisely where the heresy entrenched itself. While there are scholars tracing it to Araby, Ovid, primitive Germans, I think it clearly stems from new thought. Courtly love, by itself, does not explain exaggregated fialty extended to all dames and puselles. The Cathar heresy, with its strong gnostic element, does. The troubadour movement originated in the Languedoc, the Cathar heartland.
The vision of intense and erotic, but not sexual, love between the sexes has its origins in the Gnostic's love feasts and the Cathar "kiss of peace." (Picknett) The sudden egalitarianism between the sexes of noble rank becomes more understandable in the view that the Cathars had both male and female preachers and adopted the gnostic ideas of masculine/feminine. This is the essence of Rossetti's theory of the origin of courtesy. According to him and his many followers, the whole troubadour tradition was crypto-Cathar. The true meaning of courtesy is allegorical. The damsel is the Cathar Lady of Thoughts, the Chruch of Love, the Sophia Maria of the Gnostics (De Rougemont).
...The Troubadours emerged in southern France at the height of the Albigensian Cathar movement and immediately following their slaughter in the Albigensian Crusade. Many of the Troubadours may have themselves been Cathars or at least influnced by Cathar notions. The Cathars were a gnostic group of Christians who rivaled the Catholic Church in Southern France and other parts of Europe, until they were declared heretical and ultimately driven underground. The Cathar Elect were celibate vegetarians who upheld notions of non-violence, reverence for the natural world (with special focus on the sun and the moon), and the spiritual equality of women. While some aspects of Cathar spirituality had a world-denying quality that might be unappealing to the New Age notions of today, the Cathars were a vibrant group with a rich mystical and spiritual heritage. There have even been suggestions of links between the Cathars and Sufi groups in Spain and Palestine.
...Courtly love is often thought of as a strange societal pattern that occurred because marriage among the wealthy was a practical affair brokered between families, leaving little room for love. That may have added to the appeal of courtly love, but it doesn't really explain it. Courtly love was a conscious spiritual practice. The ideal in courtly love was to embody the archetypal forces of Lover and Beloved.
...The Beloved was usually the woman. She was to embody the ideal of the Divine Feminine, Sophia, Divine Wisdom. She was to be ever slightly out of reach, but within sight. Her presence was to draw the Lover with her presence, her goodness, her feminine divinity. She was to be a beacon. In striving to embody this for her Lover, she was to merge with the Divine she embodied. The Lover was usually the man. His was the more active role. He was to seek his Beloved, his idealized Lady. He had to prove himself worthy of her, face great obstacles with humility and perserverance, in her name. In the Lover's intense passion for his Beloved, his constant focussing on her, he was to ultimately become a perfect Lover of the Divine and unite with the divinity he saw embodied in his Beloved.
...The goal of courtly love was not sexual intimacy. Indeed, sex was avoided because it would satiate the longing that acted as the spiritual force that drew the man and woman as Lover and Beloved to the goal of spiritual marriage. This was the ideal, and certainly not every couple followed this path, nor did every Troubadour always celebrate the inner sacred meaning of the path. Yet this was the core, and it was a pathway taught through societies and particularly passed on through Troubadour poetry and song. Courtly love should be seen as genuine spiritual pathway and not be superficialized. It is not inappropriate to think of courtly love as similar to Tantric sexual spirituality, as developed in India.
...Troubadours were also to some degree influenced by the great Arab poetry, and especially the Sufi poetry, flowing in through Moorish Spain, the trade routes of North Africa, and Palestine and the Crusaders interacted with the Muslim world there. The Beloved of the Troubadours is the same Divine Beloved of the Sufis. When reading Troubadour poetry, as with Sufi poetry, the Beloved -- though she may also be a real person -- should be understood to be the Divine and no other.
Ultimately, the Cathars were declared a heretical sect by the Catholic Church and they were brutally suppressed. The Troubadours scattered, but their influence continued with the many related poetic/mystical traditions that emerged from their diaspora: the Trouveres in norther France, the Minnensingers in Germany (including Wolfram von Ehrenbach, author of the first Grail romance), the Fideli di Amore in Italy (including Dante).
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Traditions/Troubadour.htm
see "The origin and meaning of Courtly Love" (R Boase) for exposition of the crypto-Cathar theories and their criticism.
Chivalric behavior towards a damsel has nothing to do with the folk theory of women as biologically "weak" and therefore needing knightly patronage and protection. It is the remnant of the triumphant Gnosticism returning in its Cathar implementation to medieval Christendom. Ladies are first because the masculine and feminine potencies have to combine in masculine action and feminine reflection, as Sacred Marriage, for Divine works to occur, and only such works save lives, rather than any human efforts.
Both "man first" and "ladies first" choices originate in the spiritual realm."Man first" can be traced to the rabbinical tradition, and "ladies first" to the Gnostic one. These origins have been long forgotten, but the tradition lives on, with lovely ad hoc explanations supplied to rationalize the incomprehensible.
Why are gentlemen courteous?
Tags: forgotten topics, morals
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12:26 pm
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Ladies first. I
Speaking of intractable ethical dilemmas, I remembered when I came across the first one, when I was a child: There is a sinking boat and there is a man, a child, her mother, and an old lady there, and you can save only one person. Who will be this person? I was unable to tell, so I asked my father. He told me that it does not matter, just save whoever you grab first. The majority of Europeans say you should save a child, a woman, a sick person. The Asians typically go by seniority, if I remember correctly. A grown healthy man comes at the very bottom of the priority list. Nobody wants to save us...
I am curious where this intuition originates. It is not "natural", which is easy to see examining old books. In fact, the Talmud teaches exactly the opposite, and Maimonides is of no two minds who has to be saved. It is not ladies first, it is man first. There were actual precedents of such a choice and the rabbinical advice was invariably "man first."
Mishnah Horayot 3:7: "The man's life is saved before the woman's."
...males are obligated to keep all of the commandments while the females are obligated to keep only part of them, as is explained in Kiddushin (Mishna 1:7) and he is [thus] more sanctified and therefore the man's life is saved first. (Rambam)
...A Jewish man, subject to special laws not applicable to a woman, is technically more sanctified than she. Maimonides' comment is based on a rule appearing in the previous mishnah. It is there stated (Horayot 3:6) in regard to the order of the sacrificial service that "anyone more sanctified than his fellow has priority [i.e. offers his sacrifice before] his fellow." The same Hebrew term kodem, "has priority", is used to describe both the succession of sacrifices and the precedence of a man's life over a woman's. The linguistic similarity of the two mishnayot allows Maimonides to apply the rule about Temple etiquette to understanding why a man's life should be saved before a woman's.
...There is also a more pragmatic logic behind Maimonides' explanation. Since it is in the general interest of Judaism that as many mitzvot as possible be performed, it becomes imperative in drastic situations, when only some lives may be saved, that the lives of those capable of fulfilling more mitzvot (i.e. men) take precedence over the lives of those obligated to keep less mitzvot (i.e. women). Rabbi Ya'akov Emden (1697-1776) makes use of similar reasoning to decide in the heartbreaking case of a boy and girl who had been kidnapped by gentiles with the intention of raising them as Christians. There was some chance of ransoming one, but not both children. But which child? Here we must recall that having a Jewish mother is a necessary and sufficient condition for one’s being born a Jew. If the boy is left behind, he will not be raised as a Jew, he will marry a gentile woman, and that will be the end of the matter. If the girl is left behind, she will become the progenitor of countless generations of Jews who will also be raised as Christians. It might therefore seem that the girl must be ransomed, but Rabbi Emden answers:
I know of no room for doubt since the Mishnah in the end of Horayot states that the man's life is preserved before the woman's because of his greater sanctification. All the more so in regard to apostasy his preservation takes precedence, because making someone sin is worse than killing him, and since he has more mitzvot than the woman, and will have to transgress many more [mitzvot] than the woman is commanded, therefore certainly the male takes precedence in being ransomed to save his soul.
...if I be suspected of making too much of Maimonides' interpretation, let me add that the classical Mishna commentaries of R.Ovadia Bertinoro (c.1450) and R.Israel Lipshutz's (1782-1860) Tifferet Yisrael as well as R. David Ben Shmuel Halevi's (1586-1667) Turei Zahav all concur with Maimonides' reading. His is the standard interpretation of the mishnah in question. http://jewishbible.blogspot.com/2005/10/ten-curses-of-eve-unpublishable.html
Why women and children first? The Mishnah rules that if a person is held for ransom in captivity and only one person can be ransomed, a woman should be ransomed, for her sufferings are greater -- that's assuming that nobody tries to convert or kill the captives. Ladies are indeed first, but not in a life-or-death situation (a Jew has to die rather than convert). The encyclopedias I consulted unanimously claim that the practice of "ladies first" in a life-or-death situation is modern:
...The practice arose from the chivalrous actions of soldiers during sinking of HMS Birkenhead in 1852, though the phrase itself was not coined until 1860. Although never part of international maritime law, the phrase was popularized in its usage on the RMS Titanic, where, as a consequence of this practice, 74% of women on board were saved, and 52% of children—but only 20% of men. Unfortunately, some officers on the Titanic misinterpreted this order from Captain Smith to actually prevent men from boarding lifeboats. It was intended that women and children would board first, and any remaining free spaces would then be allocated to men. Because so few men were saved on the Titanic, the men who did survive were in danger of being branded as cowards. (Wiki)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/feb/10/women-and-children-first
If this is correct, "ladies first" had little to do with ethics of choice in saving lives, but everything to do with vainglory: not wanting to be seen as cowardly by other men. NYT that made this episode into the exemplar, argued that Captain Herndon "well deserves a place in the heart of every woman who would honor herself by doing honor to courage, to loyalty, and to devotion" and his selflessness was equated with Christian codes embedded in the "high tone of the American mind." This is the familiar NYT-style rhetoric that did not change much over time. It is not expalined what precisely is Christian in saving one group of people above the other and why it is proper to desire honor in every woman's heart as opposed to every man's heart. There is no basis of such a preference in either of the Testaments. There are all kinds of hairbrained rationales involving gender roles, sexual selection and what not, which are neither here nor there, as (i) the idea is barely 150 years old and (ii) these considerations have little to do with morality. It is clear that people improvise a rationale where there is none. Maybe the rabbinical advice was reasonable, but I do not see how can I presume that the man in a boat is the kind of man Rambam is talking about. If this man is not this saintly kind of man, I do not see any particular reason to save him first. Besides, Rambam does not elaborate whether a male boy or a grown man should be saved first. I'd have no time to find out what kind of man I might be rescuing. I think that the Talmudic advice, reasonable as it is on its internal logic when applied to pious Jews living in ghetto, cannot be followed today, by the power of its own logic.
My father was right, go and save a soul. It does not matter who. But if someone's moral intuition tells "ladies first" or "man first," this intuition is as good as any, because it does not matter who is first. It is nice to have moral intuition that is so particular, but you have to pick the right age and the right place. I would not like to meet a man I let die and explain him the concept of "ladies first." I doubt such an explanation will be appreciated.
Or would it?
Tags: morals
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01:06 pm
[Link] |
Waterboarding
http://arbat.livejournal.com/349495.html
I've read the discussion there and in the rest of the series, and I have to say that people who accuse Arbat of distortions, poor logic, forced arguments, etc. are missing the point. They instinctively know that torture is wrong, but they cannot put their finger on what is wrong with his argument and begin to improvise and babble, becoming easy prey to Arbat's rhetoric. There are logical weaknesses in his doctrine, but not in the part that deals with the morality of torture in general. What this discussion illustrates is that ethics that are based on two general principles, which are widely shared both by the proponents of torture and its detractors in this debate, viz.
(A) saving human lives is the highest moral good,
(B) the use of force is justified when it averts the diminution of this good,
leads to the justification of torture. There is no error in Arbat's deductions, and he argues his case with skill, which cannot be said about the vast majority of his opponents. If one justifies the morality of self-defence and rodef law through these clauses, torture is justifiable. Yet many of these same opponents want to have it both ways: accepting clauses A and B, but not what follows from these clauses. If they accept A and B, they have only two options. The first one is to live with the consequences of this choice, which is theirs and theirs alone. The second is to institute the ban on torture as a commandment to obey. This is possible, but the normative character of this commandment (if clauses A and B are accepted) is disputable, as it does not follow from the general principles; as such, it will be disputed.
I've noticed that many people have rather negative opinion of such discussions. It is my impression that in quite a few instances this negativity is the result of putting a mirror to one's face and finding the image unappealing. The effect is not unlike waterboarding, when one is confronted with one's unheroic mortality. Here the confrontation is with one's unheroic morality: a person is violently plunged into deep waters that were supposed to be in the oceans far far away, but by cruel intent ended up one's neck.
It is easy and cheap to declare that something is wrong. It is much harder to tell what exactly is wrong with the argument, because that requires searching one's own mind and heart and perhaps revisiting and articulating one's core beliefs. Millions of good people hold clauses A and B in high regard without quite realizing the import of ethics resulting from such innocently looking principles. These are assumed to be the bedrock of one's secular morality, whereas this morality, in actuality, rests on a very different kind of rock. Their intuition follows the contours of that rock rather than the trash littering it and catching the eye of an onlooker.
The right reaction to such discussions is not grasping for counter arguments originating in clauses A and B, but looking closely at these clauses, as the crux of the problem is there, in these fundamentals. If these discussions will have such an effect, the good of such discussions would far outweigh the evil of tempting the meek, the unsure, and the hesitant, and putting the words of logic into the mouths of feeble-minded and morally deaf.
I reject both of these clauses unconditionally. I know what I reject, I know why I reject it, and I know what that means to me.
I thank Arbat for reminding me of these things.
Tags: morals
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05:11 am
[Link] |
Death & the Maiden
( a few more )
Tags: mysterious art
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11:09 am
[Link] |
Why our trees are not walking?
...Socratea exorrhiza is a palm native to rainforests in tropical Central and South America. The tree's stilt roots enable it to slowly shift position, up to 1 m a year to get more sunlight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratea_exorrhiza
http://books.google.com/books?id=mdEHpSmFVAIC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=Socratea+exorrhiza+walking&source=bl&ots=7X_Mhdiuml&sig=5MDLunQe1VtJLvYthBTB3S2U4CQ&hl=en&ei=Ghf9SeS9CIaHtgeIi7ySDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
...the walking tree actually changes its location over time. The roots act as a type of evaluation system, searching for good soil for the tree. If there is good soil on the north side of the tree, the roots on that side dig in deeply and hold firmly. If the soil on the south side isn't as good, the roots on that side remain shallow and weak. As the roots on the north side become stronger and deeper, the whole tree gradually shifts toward the north, pulled by the strong roots in that direction. As the tree moves, new roots grow around the new location, some of them extending even further to the north. If the roots find even better soil there, the whole tree will, over time, shift even more to the north. Or, if there is better soil to the east, the tree will slowly shift to the east.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/tree
http://www.gardenbanter.co.uk/showthread.php?t=35506
This looks like a good strategy, and the example of a walking palm shows that it is doable. Why are the trees not moving around?
My guess is that it does not pay off. If there is better soil a meter away, it is much simpler to grow more roots in this direction than move there. Besides, in all probability the soil a meter away is the same as where you are. Maybe 20 m away it is much better, but trees cannot recognize that. If there is too much shade, one's best investment is in rapid growth rather than moving, and the growth of the aboveground part and better light collection will allow the growth of the root system to collect more water and minerals. "Walking" just looks like a good strategy. It is not.
Tags: why
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12:29 pm
[Link] |
Why is piss yellow?
cont. http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/112225.html (Why do we pee?)
The textbook answer would be that it is yellow because it contains a pigment called urobilin, which is yellow. I hate such answers, because those get you nowhere if you badly need to know. As a matter of fact, I did need to know that for a biomedical proposal. So I spent two hours discussing this very question with a porphyrin chemist, two biochemists, an expert on heme catabolism, an MD from CDC, and a janitor who volunteered his opinion. The answer is that nobody knows, the janitor included. But it was not all waste of time. What I've always suspected turned out to be correct: this color cannot be an accident!
Urobilin is a product of heme breakdown. The porphyrin ring of iron-containing heme opens up making greenish biliverdin and then, in mammals, yellow bilirubin (which colors bile). The body cannot metabolize bilirubin derivatives, but the bacteria living in the gut can. They turn bilirubin into a reduced, deconjugated urobilinogen. This bacterial product is reabsorbed into the blood and returns to liver, where it is turned back into bilirubin. Some of it ends up in the kidneys. Not all urobilinogen is reabsorbed by the blood. Most of it is converted to stercobilinogen by amother kind of gut bacteria and ends up as stercobilin that colors feces brown. In other words, the blood steals urobilinogen from the bacteria before they turn the urobilinogen to the stercobilinogen. There is no physiological need for the kidneys to excrete urobilinogen into urine, because it can be excreted as fecal stercobilin. Only trace amounts (< 10%) of urobilinogen are excreted as urine; most of it is recycled or oxidized. There is no biochemical need for urine to contain the precursor of the yellow pigment.
Incidentally, the whole process looks very odd from the chemical standpoint. Breaking hemoglobins might be necessary, but it beats me why is it necessary to destroy the heme rather than reuse it. The explanation I was given is that one needs to oxidize heme because it is poorly soluble in water. This is a contrived answer because bilirubin is also poorly soluble until the sugars are attached. The solubility can always be increased, if necessary. Perhaps heme and hemin, especially in the membranes, are too dangerous to keep around due to their redox properties, so iron has to be taken out of the heme as soon as possible. As the ferrous iron is strongly complexed by the porphyrin ring, cleaving this ring is the only way, but that creates all these problems down the line. Certainly, there is a lot of room for evolutionary improvement here.
Now, the urobilinogen is colorless. What gives urine its yellow color is oxidation of urobilinogen to urobilin by oxygen present in the bladder. The oxidation occurs because urine is stored for a while and the urobilin is slowly produced. So the yellow color of urine is not accidental and the urobilin is not a side product. The body makes considerable effort to spike urine with a yellow, fluorescent dye despite no apparent physiological benefit for the excretion of this dye.
But why is it doing it? Foor animals to see urine? That is hard, unless on snow. Tje urobilin is not volatile and it does not smell. The urobilinogen is an anti-oxidant, but what is there to protect? I am at the end of my wits...
Why is urine yellow?
Tags: whys
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