Sometimes Noe has energy to burn.
So she digs.
This can go on for quite a while.
She can’t understand why we don’t like holes being clawed into our pillows.
“Why do you keep taking my photo?”
“That better not be going on your blog.”
It’s been a while, but I thought I’d revive my posts on our (not-so) recent trip to Maui. While we were there, there was a lot of rain. This wasn’t so noticeable when we were on Haleakala (except for interfering with the view), but we had a lot of drizzle, showers, and then downpours for a day or so. Luckily it cleared up the last day we were there for more birding! But more on that later.
After we finished our most excellent Waikamoi hike, it was early afternoon. We headed back down the mountain through fog, having a few close encounters with cows along the way. Part of the road up to the summit is open pasture, and in the fog with hairpin turns, it’s pretty creepy to suddenly see a cow looming on the shoulder, stupidly chewing its cud and gazing at your car with an unfazed expression.
It was pretty rainy and overcast, and we didn’t feel like finding another place to hike in the rain (the beach was out, too), so we decided to drive down the Kula road a bit and check out the scenery. This is mainly an agricultural area, with a fine view downslope to the sea. We stopped at a wayside memorial park dedicated to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary.
Why a park on Maui dedicated to one of the men behind the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty? Well, it turns out that he attended school in the Kingdom of Hawaii, back in the late 1800s (`Iolani School and Oahu College-now known as Punahou). There are a number of statues of him on other islands.
At one point, he was issued a (false, for he was born in China) birth certificate from the then-Territory of Hawaii stating that he was born in Kula. Hence the Kula connection, and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park along the Kula Highway.
Sun Yat-sen is apparently one of the few Chinese revolutionary figures revered in both the People’s Republic and in Taiwan. His time in Hawaii was also a time of revolution: he attended school here during the reign of King Kalakaua, the second-to-last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii. By the time he returned to Hawaii, the Kingdom had been overthrown by a cabal of American businessmen, and political power rested in the short-lived “Republic of Hawaii.” While he was here the second time, the Hawaiian islands were formally annexed to the United States as a Territory.
For Hawaii, as well as much of the Pacific, those years were a time of change and turmoil. This period of time is something that’s definitely hidden when Hawaii is presented as just an entity subsumed into the U.S., and the formation of the contemporary political situation in the Pacific is taken as something of a forgone conclusion. For example, there’s not a lot of effort in public schools in Hawaii to tie the local events of those years to the turmoil in China and other parts of the Pacific, except as they relate to the U.S. snapping up territories that the European empires were losing control of, like the Philippines. Definitely an eventful time in the Pacific, and though Sun Yat-sen didn’t play a huge role in the contemporary political scene, he’s a formidable player in the larger picture.
In 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft (named before the 1998 movie) visited comet Tempel 1 for a peek at what it was made out of. When the two made their celestial rendezvous, the spacecraft fired a projectile into the comet, sending up a huge cloud of dust and ice and revealing what was happening beneath the comet’s surface. Their encounter was like two ships passing in the night: Deep Impact went on to visit another comet before running out of fuel, and Tempel 1 continued in its lonely journey around the sun.
Tonight, Tempel 1’s long, lonely journey will be livened up with another date with a NASA spacecraft- just in time for Valentine’s Day! This time, the spacecraft is the much more poetically named Stardust, an explorer which has visited several other comets and even sent comet samples back to Earth.
Stardust’s meeting with Tempel 1 will be much less physical than the hurried Deep Impact bump. Stardust and Tempel 1 will gracefully pass each other by, while the spacecraft takes photos of Tempel 1’s surface. How has Tempel 1 aged in the past six years? Does it remember Deep Impact at all, or has its celestial slingshot past the sun erased any traces of their brief encounter so long ago? Hopefully, tonight’s Stardust meeting will answer some of these questions.
Oh, and like any dating show on reality TV (“Date with a Comet”, anyone?) their encounter will be televised! Check out NASA TV at 11:30 pm EST tonight for the down and dirty. Don’t expect a funky soundtrack or edited-in catfight between Deep Impact or Stardust, though- this footage will be strictly uncut and unedited.
Metaphor plays a number of roles in the scientific process, from facilitating exploration of newly-recognized phenomena, to grounding predictive models that aid in analysis, to transporting ideas among different scientific fields, and perhaps finally to public communication. When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, metaphor had a central role in shaping his ideas about evolution by natural selection. He also was explicit about using metaphor to describe his theory.
Darwin used a number of different metaphors in his book for different aspects of his theory. Some of these metaphors took years to develop, and became central organizing ideas of his work. He used others more to ‘translate’ his ideas for the public consciousness. Howard Gruber lists five main metaphors in the Origin: artificial selection, wedges, war, a tree, and a tangled bank. Of these, the tree of life and warfare metaphors seem to be the two that are most widely referenced today.
Darwin used artificial selection– plant and animal breeding- to relate natural selection to a familiar process. In both types of selection, a population of organisms starts with genetic variation. In natural selection, limited resources and competition mean that only some of the organisms will survive to reproduce. In artificial selection, people pick organisms with desired traits to reproduce. This metaphor illustrates that selection can result in large changes in a population over time. One problem with this metaphor is that “selection” implies a “selector,” and natural selection happens largely via chance.
The wedge metaphor made it into the first edition of the Origin, but Darwin removed it from the second- so most people haven’t seen it. He says: “The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards with incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.” Wedges that stay in the yielding surface are species that survive, but to stick into the surface they presumably have to pop other wedges out.
While the wedge metaphor implies that competition is necessary for survival, the warfare metaphor makes this more explicit. For example, seedlings need to overcome “enemy” seedlings in a competition for space, and males compete for females in sexual selection. Today, the warfare metaphor is largely known by the phrase “survival of the fittest” (which didn’t actually appear in the first edition of Origin).
Darwin’s tree metaphor is probably his central organizing vision of evolution over time. From a single starting point, genetic changes in different populations send species down different evolutionary paths. Some of these “branches” survive, and split in turn to end off new branches. Other branches wither, and species become extinct. Over time, the single starting species gives rise to a multitude of different species, some persisting and some passing away. The metaphor of the “tree of life” is one that Darwin worked on for years and was never entirely satisfied with, but it’s a metaphor that still has a lot of resonance today.
While the tree of life represents the grand scope of evolution over time, the tangled bank illustrates the diversity of life that we can see all around us: “It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.” He uses the diverse “tangled bank” to illustrate how complexity can arise from the interaction of a few simple rules for natural selection. This is actually the final grand metaphor in the Origin, and in it he tries to provide readers with a vision of life’s diversity, underpinned by the common relationships of species.
References:
Darwin, Charles, and James T. Costa. The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2009. Print.
Gruber, Howard E. “Diverse Relations Between Psychology and Evolutionary Thought.” in Howard E. Gruber and Katja Bodeker (eds.) Creativity, Psychology and the History of Science, pp 167-191. New York: Springer, 2005. Print.
Edited 20 June 2011 to fix broken link.
Here’s a photo from the past: Noe, circa 2004, in Honolulu.
Our apartments in Honolulu never had air conditioning- usually the trade winds make it unnecessary. However, sometimes the trades stop, and it gets hot and humid- bad weather for bunnies. Our last apartment in Honolulu also didn’t have a great cross-breeze at floor level, because the windows were pretty high up.
Knowing that pets usually really hate electric fans (or at least cats do, my major pet experience at the time), I was really concerned about introducing Noe to a fan to help her cool off. I shouldn’t have worried- she absolutely loved the fan. She was a little concerned the first time, tiptoeing up to it and sniffing away. But then when she realized it was pretty much staying in one place (unlike the evil, evil vacuum cleaner), she flopped down right in front of it.
From then on, whether the fan was on or off, she would lay down in front of it. Sometimes, we’ll feel guilty that the fan is off, and turn it on just for her.
Obviously, air blowing on her ears is just fine with her. And she’s never tried to chomp on the electrical cord, as she does with other cords- though we definitely do keep an eye on that.
She still likes the fan, though nowadays the blue ice is her favorite nap “companion.” All that great condensation to get on her fur, I guess.
This (mostly) good news update comes from Florida Audubon. Apparently, state budget cuts will be directed in a way that does not mean closing the 53 parks previously targeted for closure.
However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be massive cuts to funds for managing public lands. There’s a massive budget shortfall to make up for, and the governor and legislature want to cut corporate property taxes on top of that (FL noes not have a personal income tax, so property taxes essentially fund state government). So that means big cuts to schools, social services, land management, environmental protection, etc.
With that in mind, I’ll try to keep posting about the Florida parks on that closure list, if only to get the word out that they’re there to visit. Here’s a soothing photo of Lignumvitae Key Botanical State Park, which I haven’t been to: it’s in the Keys, and you need a boat to get to it. Maybe something to combine with the ever-elusive spring birding in the Dry Tortugas trip some year…
Estero Bay Preserve State Park is one of 53 Florida State Parks proposed for closure in order to overcome budget shortfalls this year. This is one of very few Florida state parks centered on an aquatic area- in this case, Estero Bay, located just south of the massive sprawl of Cape Coral/Fort Myers in Southwest Florida. This part of the state is one of the current foreclosure capitals of the nation; abandoned homes and half-planned developments now blight the landscape here. Estero Bay Preserve is one of a handful of protected areas in the region.
I’ve never been into the hiking trails of the preserve, which run through a variety of habitats and provide homes to venerable gopher tortoises, delicate orchids, powerful bald eagles, and many other species. I’ve also never gone kayaking among the sheltering mangrove islands, sturdy oyster reefs, and prehistoric Native American shell middens of the bay. However, I have been birding along the protected shoreline.
In December of 2007, we went for a walk along the beach at Estero Bay. As I recall, the tide was pretty low, so the exposed mudflats and sand were attracting a wide array of bird life despite the beach’s popularity with people. There were no doubt munching manatees and frolicking dolphins in the area, as well as a bunch of other species that we just didn’t see. For example, we saw a bunch of these critters hanging around in the shallow water- I think it’s a sea cucumber, but maybe someone else will be able to I.D. it:
As we walked along the mudflats and through the shallow water, we watched out for stingrays and broken shells. I found a dying man-o-war (which we stayed a respectful distance away from) and Yan found several living sand dollars (which we left to do their thing).
My eBird list for the day records that I saw 21 species. Nothing too rare, given the type of habitat, but a fair variety of species: wood storks soaring overhead, Wilson’s plovers dashing on the sand, reddish egrets dancing for fish, short-billed dowitchers poking for worms, and so on. If we’d visited in the early morning, before the arrival of swimmers, there probably would have been many more birds to see. There were a fair number of fishermen, as well as swimmers:
This estuary is a rich habitat for many different species, and provides a wealth of recreational opportunities for local residents and visitors alike. I’d assume that “closing” this park would mean closing the interpretive parts of the park, the kayak rentals, and access to trails, while keeping the aquatic areas open for boating and fishing. Unfortunately, this would deprive visitors of the context by which to understand the history and ecology of the area. It will still be a rich natural resource, but our understanding of it will be shallower. And just that much poorer.
In an effort to cut the massively-in-the-red state budget, the Florida legislature has ordered state agencies to target their programs for a 15% across the board spending cut. For the Department of Environmental Protection, the agency tasked with…well, protecting the environment, this has resulted in a proposal to close 53 state parks.
As the link above suggests, while these parks tend to be smaller and less-visited (parks with camping facilities are absolutely swamped with visitors pretty much all rear round- no pun really intended but hard to avoid), they’re often the economic engines for poor, rural communities. They are also places where Florida residents-many of them recent immigrants into the state-and visitors can learn about the unique history and ecology of the state. Many of the parks proposed for closure contain lesser-known archeological sites, or threatened and endangered species. Without maintenance, these sites could easily be overrun by weedy invasive species or perhaps looted for artifacts (a definite possibility, in the challenging economy).
Florida Audubon is organizing a Facebook campaign to get park users to share their stories about the parks which are proposed to be closed. I’ll also write about my experiences at some of them on this blog. Meanwhile, here’s a list of the parks:
Rabbit vision is really different from ours. While rabbits have poor color and depth perception, they are excellent at detecting motion. Aside from a blind spot right in front of their nose (which can lead to accidental finger-nipping when getting a treat), they have nearly 360-degree vision, and can even see above them. This is an excellent adaptation that helps them from raptor attack.
They can also pretty much see behind them- one of Noe’s typical “I’m annoyed at you” behaviors is to sit across the room from us with her back turned, peeking at us out of the corner of her eye.
As part of my dissertation, I’ve been looking at several metaphors that Charles Darwin used to describe evolution and natural selection in The Origin of Species. It’s been interesting to see which have survived to the present day and which haven’t: Darwin was a great popularizer of his own ideas, but some of his images have stayed in the public eye more prominently than others. The ‘big one’ is probably the metaphor of the “Tree of Life” as a metaphor for evolution in its entirety, but there are several others that he used to illustrate different aspects of his theory. But I’m planning on writing more about this later…
Today, I wanted to point to this discussion, held at the Grant Museum of Zoology of the University College London, on the question of whether Darwin would have been able to get a job as a biologist today. On the surface, it’s a ridiculous question: Darwin’s body of work was the impetus for one of the most profound transformations of the field of biology that has ever occurred. His work has had an incredible impact on the way we view ourselves as a species in relation to the rest of life (and also has been misappropriated in an attempt to justify some strikingly heinous social policies). But if you dig a bit deeper into the kind of scientist he was, and the way that science as a discipline has changed, this actually is an interesting question.
In a nutshell, Darwin was a ‘gentleman scientist,’ naturalist, and experimentalist, who spent a lot of time observing many different aspects of the natural world. While he’s famous for observing some birds on a long ocean voyage, he also wrote about volcanoes, fossils, coral reefs, plants, chicken breeding, and compost. Today, molecular biology and lab work are where much of the biology action is, and basic natural history research is seriously underfunded in many places. There’s also a much higher degree of specialization among scientists today. So, would Darwin have been able to compete in today’s environment? Take a look at what the museum’s panelists had to say.
My guess is that he would be able to make it in biology today- he seems to have been a pretty adaptable individual, social networker, and fundraiser. But would miss the hands-on excitement of collecting new species of insects, examining rocks, and poking around on tropical islands? I’ll bet he would.