Renouncement

Kudos to Melli. Who correctly points out that pleasure-only blogging is an addiction. And addictions are to be controlled.

On or about 1 May 2008, this blog, and, if I can manage it, all of its predecessors will be removed from cyberspace. You have until then to capture anything you might wish from these sites, and check any links you might have to them. What’s here is yours, without restriction. If you think there are any dinero to be made from these writings, well, you haven’t been checking my stats. The joke will be on you.

I wish you well.

Added 1 May 2008:  To those of you who have expressed dismay that this blog is to be removed, I hear you and thank you.  What has occurred, however, is that blogging now constitutes a distraction from my real work, while providing no hope of an alternative to that work.  The small number of you who have commented is perfect testimony to the “no hope of an alternative” bit.  I can no longer afford either the time to blog or, at any time in the foreseeable future, to succumb to the temptation to return to blogging - as has already happened once.  Especially since more than half of my blogging time is spent fighting with an ISP that is the only one available here and does not work (if you come here, don’t sign on with these people).

I feel compelled to put the temptation to blog forever out of reach. Yes, I should be a stronger person. Alas, I am not.

Quilly will, at her insistence, save the OFP posts to CD.  When that task is completed, OFP will be no more.

Announcement

On this date, the 26th of April in the year 2008 of the Common Era, as reckoned on the Hawai‘ian Islands, I received a great blessing. Besides Quilly, that is, who is a great blessing all the time.

My laptop computer, the one I had brought from Maine new just over a year ago, has passed away.

It cost a pretty penny, from a manufacturer I had deemed reputable. And now it is gone.

Gone with the rest of its class of machines, the durability, repairability, and upgradability of which are so pathetic as a function of their cost, I can only wonder why we bother.

Bother to the point of gifting its makers and supporters with fortunes larger than the annual gross domestic products of most of the nations on this planet. While millions go hungry. And millions more garner resentment. Hatred. Even hatred unto violence.

I have no plans to replace this computer. I am unwilling to continue feeding the monster. Which means that I will be departing the blogosphere. And therein lies the blessing.

The blessing of time. Time to pursue other things, things that need doing, things that want doing, that the pleasure of blogging has taken away.

I will not be completely absent. Quilly’s star is rising, she is making something of blogging that I will never achieve. I will be an amoeba oozing in her background.

And besides, I’m a scientist. Never is not in my vocabulary.

So, this is au revoir, not adieu. The future may bring many things. But for the foreseeable future, amoeba be silent.

Be well.

“Expelled” Emo

As I’ve already mentioned in this space, I’m not trying very hard to keep up with the tornado of news and commentary that has Ben Stein’s Expelled at its vortex. That’s at least a full-time mission, and I have people who are depending on me to take a work break every once in awhile. But I found something that I just had to post, because it speaks to a point that I’ve blogged about here before in a similar context, and haven’t seen discussed much in this one.

That point: how hard it is to argue for a system (science) that requires dispassionate analysis to be understood, when the people with whom you’re trying to argue are screaming.

Blogger jjberg pointed me to an open letter recently released by Richard Dawkins, written to a pseudonymous person (”David J.”) who viewed Expelled and swallowed its claims that Darwinism is synonymous with racism.

I shall state immediately that I have not seen Expelled, and have no intention of doing so. They don’t need my money. It’s bad enough that I’m giving these people free pub by mentioning them. That means I’m getting my information about the production from secondary sources, which is an egregious science card violation. But if, as has been emphatically stated in several places about the blogosphere, Expelled has gone out of its way to equate the theory of natural selection with the Aryan theology of the Nazis, principally as a trick to rile up the emotions of its audience, then Ben Stein & Company have committed a crime against humanity, against which Abu Ghraib is a kindergarten squabble over fingerpaints.

Understandably, David J. lashed out in Dawkins’s general direction with a barrage of hate. Dawkins replied publicly. Which, I think, is both wise and necessary. This kind of nonsense - and it’s old nonsense, nonsense that I thought we’d gotten over decades ago - needs a forceful reply. But how? A couple of aspects of Dawkins’s letter illustrate for me just how hard it really is for scientists to craft an effective response to rabble rousers.

1. Dawkins opens by expressing sympathy for the losses suffered by David J.’s family during the Holocaust. But then he addresses David J.’s bitter language like this:

Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now … Don’t you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don’t you feel that … you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?

Forgive me, Father Richard, for I have sinned … Hey! Wait a minute!!

“Hello, Richard? Ben here. What was that you were saying about emotional blackmail? Same as you, pal! Same as you!! Hee, hee ..”

2. Dawkins proceeds to give a lengthy defense of the theory of evolution by natural selection, and its lack of connection to the racist dogmas of the past - which he ties neatly to religions, not to Darwinism. But then he writes:

I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live.

Now, here, your friendly neighborhood amoeba would like to rise up and say, “Say what? If humans are part of the natural world (we are), and we are subject to the principles of natural selection like all other living things (ditto), then, ipso facto, our societies as they are now are based on Darwinian principles. That they are not universally unpleasant places to live says that we don’t yet understand those principles very well, not that we lie outside of them.”

But what if I did raise that argument? What would happen?

a. The evolutionary biologists would fall to arguing among themselves over the many, many unresolved corollaries and nuances of evolutionary theory and its application to social structures. And if you think such arguments are uniformly conducted in mellow voices by mild mannered reporters for the Daily Planet … well, all I can say is, have your earplugs handy.

b. The ID crowd would see the argument and immediately proclaim “See? The proponents of evolution can’t even agree among themselves what is right! Therefore, they must be wrong! And we are right!” And at the same time,

c. The ID crowd would label yours truly a Nazi. “See? He does believe [sic] in Darwinism! He does believe in the survival of the fittest race …”

I will state for the record that anyone who does believe in a connection between Darwinism and racist ideologies has no grasp of the theory of organismal evolution via natural selection. The Social Darwinism of the early 20th century was debunked long ago. See crime against humanity, supra.

The only way out of this box that I can see is, ironically, to follow the advice of a rabbi. The one in Fiddler On The Roof: “Everybody just sit down!”

But that’s not how you sell toothpaste. Or an ideology, Dr. Goebbels. Marketing 101: if the customer begins to think, you’ve lost the sale. Therefore …

And modern Westernized society is saturated in appeals to our emotions. Rarely are we encouraged to reflect. Instead, we are challenged to respond. Even in our sporting arenas. Forty years ago (I’m getting to be an old amoeba), if you pumped your fist after a tackle, you were lucky if you only got benched. Now, it might make you a starter. Because it demonstrates that you’re motivated. Not to mention the fact that, the closer your sporting event comes to actual open combat, the more bums you’ll have sitting in seats at the arena and in front of The Holy TV.

Adolf Hitler - he upon whom Ben Stein & Company have pinned, erroneously but with great emotional force, the label “Social Darwinist” - knew how to rile people’s emotions. He was arguably better at it than any other 20th century public figure - and, from what I’ve read over the years, worked hard at honing this skill. Sober, upstanding citizens reported, repeatedly (I understand), that by the end of a Hitler speech, they had lost all capacity for analytical thought, and had their hands in the air with everybody else. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!!

Funny, isn’t it, that he and his people used the same emotion-riling tactics that we see today in marketing sports. Or deodorant. Or intelligent design … It begins to look like the communication problems we face go far deeper than the evolution/creation argument. Far deeper. Down to how We the Peoples of westernized society are being conditioned to respond … to anything.

And if that doesn’t scare the, um, hell out of you … well, I think it should.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Amoeba Blog Science (kinda)

A little while ago, Cooper wondered aloud how come, since I am a working scientist, I’m not more of a science blogger.

The fast answer to that is, that there’s already a powerful lot of powerfully good science bloggers out there. What I didn’t know about this already, I learned in a hurry from the tendrils of the blogosphere that weaved about my previous post. For example, places like Panda’s Thumb and Pharyngula contain a lot of deep thought (and, sometimes, considerable heat to go with it) about the science of evolutionary biology and the evolution/creation debate. I dread going over to places like those and bringing up an idea, only to discover that it was throughly thrashed out two months before I first heard about it.

Nay, I am a microscopic protozoon with an eensy leetle blog. Which exists for my own entertainment and the entertainment of those who find it enjoyable. I admire the learning and quick wits of those who write and comment on the serious science blogs. But, begging your pardon, I prefer to expend that kind of energy on articles that might actually turn into more grant funding and a higher salary. Even if they do get published in magazines (”journals”) that most people have never heard of, and have titles like Nuclear gene sequencing and molecular phylogeny of benthic gymnamoebae in western Long Island Sound, USA …

Yes, gymnamoebae is a word. And no, it doesn’t mean that Gold’s Gym has a special workout room where protozoan toughs bulk up their pseudopods and talk about their, er, dietary supplements.

This place is for lighter stuff. Which doesn’t stop me from getting my scientific licks in from time to time. For example, Quilly and I were discussing life’s complexity and its origins. The question came up: how, under evolution by natural selection, can “simple” creatures like protozoa survive? Would they not lose to larger, more complex forms of life?

“Nope”, I said. “Sometimes, it looks like evolution goes ‘backwards’, because a simpler form of life has evolved from a more complicated one. There are these organisms called myxozoa, which are parasites of fishes, worms, and bryozoans in the world’s marine waters. Most myxozoa look like protozoa, and taxonomists have been calling them protozoa for the better part of two centuries. But we now know that they are most closely related to things like jellyfish.”

“I never knew anything like that could happen, or that the history of such a thing could be traced”, she said.

Episodes like this have convinced me that people of good will and sound intelligence - Quilldancer is resoundingly at the opposite end of the human continuum from “dummy” - nevertheless are uninformed or misinformed about even the basics of evolutionary theory. A few good short stories might be just as effective as a dissertation to get folk interested, perhaps shake up their preexisting beliefs a bit.

That brings me as close to being a science blogger as I can get without quitting my day job (not recommended).

And if that doesn’t work, I can always trot out the Dudes.

PS: Earth Day has been cancelled. Read all about it. Just don’t believe everything you read.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

An Expellate Judgment

As you may have heard, today, 18 April 2008, is the day that Ben Stein’s pro-”intelligent design” documentary Expelled is released to theatres in these Untied States.

I would have ignored this event completely, on the theory that any response to the ID crowd will only encourage them. Until, that is, a blogger of whom I had formerly thought better things saw fit to link to, and endorse, a Youtube video, apparently posted for the first time here at the end of March 2008, on this theme.

The video is an animation “starring” Richard Dawkins, and featuring several other prominent proponents of atheism and antitheism including the blogger P. Z. Myers, Eugenie Scott, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and, in a cameo role, Charles Darwin. Performing in, of all things, a gangsta-style hip-hop number.

Now I have to confess, the author of this rap’s not entirely whack. But I didn’t grasp the lyrics on the first go, or the second, or the third … Part of that is the hard time I have in getting the lyrics right to any song I hear. So I was glad to have them spelled out for me here. (I’ve reposted them at the end of this blog entry, with a couple of corrections I spotted.) But I must not have been the only one who had trouble, if I may judge from the comments this video has received. Which are all over the map. Including those that think that the video actually is a promo for evolution.

It isn’t. What this amoeba thinks it is is a vitriolic anti-evolution rant with three main points:

1. Dawkins and Company are elitist gangstas who respond to any challenge with both verbal and physical violence.
2. They worship a God (”machine”) of their own making.
3. At bottom, what they’re really in the game for is the money.

If the lyrics don’t make that point plain, the opening screen should.

Especially when it’s compared to this.

I used to work for these people. Trust me. If they were masters of propaganda, I wouldn’t have had to tell my fellow scientists “Half the proposals I read are worthy; I can award one grant out of five applications, one dollar for every ten requested” when I called them (or they me) to tell them they’d had their proposals declined. Again. The NSF would have the money to fund the science, and We the People would be lovin’ it, Dr. Goebbels. Kinda like how we love American Idol and Dancing With The Stars.

But no. The NSF is not staffed with skilled propagandists. Scientists are not debate-squelching gangstas; I’ll concede, some of us can be pretty stroppy at times, but the weapon of choice is logic, not a Browning 9mm. Scientists are not overly concerned about money - if they were, well, your doctor would probably still be treating your tuberculosis with a forced migration to sunnier climates, because the researchers who could have discovered streptomycin would all be trying to get their big breaks on the west coast rap scene. Scientists do not “believe” in their own machines, or anything else. Any who “believe” in anything are breaking cardinal rules of scientific inquiry: all things arise from observable natural laws; all explanations are subject to testing; the only unalterable proofs are in mathematics.

At this point, I could simply direct you to the website that tells you everything that is wrong with Ben Stein’s movie. But, I can’t. If I did, it would endorse fighting the Molotov cocktails of the ID crowd with the Molotov cocktails of the evolution crowd. And if the only way to defend a field whose existence, indeed its entire history of benefit to humankind, is based on mastery of dispassionate logical thought, is Bomben mit Bomben!, then we’re in a bad way.

Yes, I understand whyfor all the shouting. The ID crowd does a lot of screaming and yelling, and it appears to be working. If the evolution forces don’t shout back …

So, fine. We wind up with two groups of people in the full throes of Konrad Lorenz’s militant enthusiasm, each prepared to demonize the other, each prepared to fight to the death for what its side believes … ooops.

The question I keep asking is: if religions are as flawed, as illogical, as ultimately detrimental to the human condition as atheists believe them to be, why don’t religions die? Without some sort of positive value, I argue, they would not, could not survive. Without some sort of understanding of those positive values, and how these can be supplied to people outside of a religious context, I see no end to the argument.

Except, in the defeat of atheists, and science. For, as Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. And science, despite the parlous financial status of the National Science Foundation, is already quite magical enough for the average citizen. Black magical. Getting more so by the day. Against the magically incomprehensible arrogance of the Ph.D.’s, the “my burden is easy and my yoke is light” of a Jesus or a Muhammad sounds like a pretty good deal. Worth supporting your friendly neighborhood Ben Stein for, even. Or blowing yourself up.

Until our society, dependent as never before on science (including the science of evolutionary biology) and technology, crumbles under the weight of its ignorance, Isaac.

But by then, it will be too late.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Lyrics to “Beware the Believers” rap:

My name is D to the I to C to the K, Yeah I’m the Dickie D,
I gots my PhD* and comin’ your way on the Youtube to bust your world view so just listen to me and don’t you argue.

(* - actually, Dawkins’s highest degree is a D.Sc., a degree awarded, chiefly in British universities, for a body of work accomplished and published in the years following the Ph.D.)

You see, this battle’s been ragin’ since Zeus was on the bottle,’tween Science like Democritus and Faith like Aristotle,
who said the mover was unmovin’ like some magic trick but
that’s no good logic, my posse is far too quick for this
religious schtick.

Cos science is the only way to know y’all, you stand with me y’all, or you can fall y’all

So go ahead and take your pick…

ES: Yeah you tell him Rick …
Darwin : Cos if you don’t know me …

RD: YOU DON’T KNOW DICK!!

Chorus : Yeah he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s smarter than you he’s got a science degree!
Yeah he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s smarter than you he’s got a science degree!

SH:On the shoulders of midgets we built up this machine,
DD:YEAH!!!

RD: Science silenced that watchdog wingnut Paley
growing stronger and harder almost daily, storming Wilber by force as we framed the discourse that faith and science are split in schismatic divorce.

Then Darwin took to the seas to see what no one had seen, and ever since then we’ve been increasingly keen, they may never adore us, but they’ll no longer ignore us,

give it to ‘em PZ hit these BLEEP with the chorus!!!

Chorus : Yeah he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s smarter than you he’s got a science degree!
The Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s still smarter than you he studied biology!

Then there was Darrow dukin’ it out with the straight and the narrow,
a ragin’ bull in the ring, he did his thing, and took it on the chin like he was Bobby De Niro.

We might have lost at Scopes, beaten down by the dopes, and the stooges of popes, but in losin’ we coped, becomin’ more than we hoped, creationists slipped on the soap of their own slippery slope.

What was impossible, improbable, is now wholly unstoppable untoppleable, the Dick Doc’ll roll up as you creationists foldup

you haters talkin’ bull,
don’t you know that this Dick is un-cock-frickin’ blockable …

Chorus : Yeah he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s smarter than you he’s got a science degree!
The Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s still smarter than you he studied biology!

Now the machine of our making, sees culture ripe for the taking,

Cos I’m the rappinest, rabidest atheist who unlike the Catholic, Muslim or even the Jew, believes that no God but science could ever be true, hell if I was dyslexic I’d even hate “dog” too.

Time to open your eyes, get yourself wise, the age of science will rise to be religion’s demise,

and while you churchies all cry, shouting ‘why God oh why,’ I’ll still be poppin’ my collar earning more dollars than Allah.

Hollah!

Chorus : Yeah he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s smarter than you he’s got a science degree!
The Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s still smarter than you he studied biology!

Chorus : Yeah he’s the Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s smarter than you he’s got a science degree!
The Dick to the Dawk to the PhD,
he’s still smarter than you he studied biology!

Of Hawai`i’s Voggy Skies

Those of you who have been following our blogs these last several months have been reading all about the serene and gentle lifestyle enjoyed by residents of these Hawai‘ian Islands.

The manageable cost of living, and the thousands who are benefiting from it.

The efficient and stable transportation network.

The docile native wildlife. Endangered species not included.

The clean air …

What? You thought that Hawai‘i, of all the places on Earth, would still have clean air and clean water?

Yeah, that’s what we thought too. But the waters especially around O‘ahu have long been known to be compromised by pollutants. Invasive seaweeds are making real pests of themselves all along O‘ahu’s shoreline, fed by, among other things, gunk from the Honolulu sewerage system. Gunk that the City of Honolulu has been told to clean up - by the Bush Administration’s gutted Environmental Protection Agency, no less. And the City of Honolulu is fighting the EPA ruling tooth and nail.

And then there was the morning we got out of bed with our eyes stinging, and the skies all around a dirty brown. What now, we wondered? We tuned to our radios, logged into our computers, and sure enough. We were under a pollution alert.

Smog? The Revenge of L.A.?

No.

Vog. The Revenge of Pele.

Vog was a new word for us too. Basically, it’s smog generated by a volcano instead of car exhausts and power plants. It’s a reminder that each and every one of the Hawai‘ian Islands is a volcano, and that the volcanos on Hawai‘i Island are still very much alive. However tame the tourists think they might be.

In fact, Halema‘uma‘u, the summit crater of volcano Kilauea, exploded into life a month ago as this blog entry is written, and ever since, the crater has spewed vast amounts of sulfur dioxide and other gases into the Hawai‘ian atmosphere. Turning conditions on Hawai‘i Island into a fair approximation of life under southern California’s smogberry trees.

And, on occasion, the other Hawai‘ian islands get gassed too. Especially when the Kona (southerly) winds are blowing.

Sometimes, especially on Hawai‘i Island, the vog gets thick enough so that it’s hard to see where you’re surfing. Or sailing. If this keeps up, Hawai‘i may have to start importing navigational devices from the mainland. Especially, from places like Maine, where their utility in keeping boats and ships safe as they pass through the murk has long been proven.

Voghorns.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Hippo Birdie Shoutout

I was going to try to keep it quiet. Silent, even. After all, I’m getting to the point where, not only do I have to take off my shoes to count the number of annual calendars that have gone into the trash since I came wailing into the world, I have to take off somebody else’s. This is only a good thing if you know that the party of the second part has recently washed the toe-y bits.

But no. Dearest Quilly had to go and make a public announcement. In Technicolor, even. And with her burgeoning audience, David, that’s no small thing. In fact, it’s just this side of what goes on in certain American popular restaurants. You know, the ones where the entire waitstaff comes trooping out from the kitchen with a lit candle stuck in a brownie (we’ll be coming back to this brownie business later) and a chant for the hapless recipient:

I don’t know but I’ve been told
     (I don’t know but I’ve been told)
Someone here is getting old!
     (Someone here is getting old!)

And then, Doug had to go and announce it too, over at his place. And if that weren’t bad enough, he composed a paean (well, sorta) to the sciences, presumably in my honor (though it’s more like an “in your face”).

All this brought out a raft of friends, old and new, to remind me of my incipient decrepitude celebrate my successful addition of another notch to my stock of years, and (presumably) pray that I might miraculously gain the wisdom that’s supposed to go with the years.

People like Brian, Brig aka Intricate Girl, Dr. John (and yes, it most certainly is), Jill, Jules (Mahalo nui loa na ho‘olaule‘a me la kaua!), Kat, the ex-Mainer Pennsyltucky Kitty (we got pizza; if we can recover from this week enough by Sunday, we might do something about a frosting carrier), Melli and her dangling participles (Chuck wants to say something about dingalings, but I won’t let him), Nessa (but ix-nay on the agic-may …)

“Dude! Did somebody say brownies? Special brownies?!”

‘Scuse me a sec.

“Dude, I didn’t think you were a parakeet, so I left out the hemp seeds. Sorry.”

“OC, that’s hurtin’. You don’t make special brownies with seeds!“

“You’re half right, dude. I don’t make special brownies. The end. Doesn’t Vista have enough hallucinations without ‘em? You, of all the dudes in the world, oughta know ’bout that. Now go back to sleep mode or somethin’, willya? I’m tryin’ to talk with some people.”

“Sheesh. Hey dude! Did you hear that? …”

Where was I? Oh. Yeah. There’s Patty, Polona, Terry (though I gotta tell ya, T., Puritan Pete who boards with us says that he prefers the phrase “playing a tune”), and the Head of the Pez Clan Herself, that TLP.

Plus the regular gang at Waking Ambrose.

And then there’s Cooper, who featured me ‘n’ Quilly on her SBF blog a week or so ago. Whether as a hippo birdie two ewe or not, I don’t know, and I can’t ask her ’cause, at the moment, she’s lounging on a beach in Mexico, the poor thing.

Thanks one and all, and I’m sure that somebody in this list is someone you’ve not visited before? Why not click and make a new friend?

Speaking of Quilly. In a couple of weeks, it’ll be her turn. She hasn’t had to take anybody else’s shoes off yet, but the day’s comin’. And on that day, the way her stats are reading lately, I reckon half the blogosphere will come calling. Servers could crash. If they do, just be patient. Eventually they’ll come back, and you can wave and say “Hi.”

Or maybe even visit the store and pick up something to remember her by. That’d make her most happy. Me too. Anything to get her out from among all those pre-K kids and stop her from bringing all their meshugginah viruses ho…. uh, ho…. uh, ah …

AHH-CHOOO!!!

Cheers, The Amoeba

Dude and Dude: Crucial

Dear readers: If you’re meeting the Dudes for the first time with this post or the last one - well, they’ve been around for awhile. Sorry about that. You can read a little bit about them here. One of these days they might even get their own place. Ah, the peace and quiet …

*          *          *          *          *          

“So tell me, dude …”

“OK, dude. Take this apple, put it on top of your head, and go stand up against that tree over there. I’ll go get my bow and …”

“No you won’t either, dude! What kind of a target do you take me for?”

“Not big enough to do my shopping in, dude, that’s for sure.”

“I was going to ask you a question, dude. But I’m not sure I want to, now.”

“Oh, c’mon dude. Let me have a shot.”

“If you insist, du … Stop that!!“

“Sorry, dude, I didn’t know it was loaded.”

“It, or you? Is there any beer left in the fridge?”

“That’s not the question you were going to ask, dude.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Next time, you’re buyin’. Look. There’s this Aussie guy, Quilly’s rather fond of him …”

“Does OC know about this?”

“… and he’s asking, ‘what’s the most crucial thing you’ve ever learnt?’”

“Learnt?“

“Hey. He’s Australian. From Melbn. They spell almost as funny as they talk. Deal with it.”

“OK. The most crucial thing I’ve ever … learnt, is not to get Al mad at you.”

“What?!?“

“Especially when he’s the landlord and you’re having trouble paying the rent. Then he gets real cross, and believe me, brother, that’s not a crucifix you want to be carryin’.”

“You’ll be the one in a fix, dude, you don’t stop crossing me up!”

“Right, dude. Broccoli.”

“Broccoli?“

“It’s crucial, dude. Y’know, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, roughage, all that stuff yer mom tried to tell you about so you wouldn’t have to spend the rent money on fat corporate executives selling diet pills? So crucial, in fact, that they built it into broccoli’s family name!”

“Broccoli has a family name? What is it? Spumoni or something?”

“Cruciferae, dude.”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“You got a lot of brass.”

“How did you know?”

“How did I know what?!?“

“About how the botanists got sick of people making cross jokes about their plants, so they changed broccoli’s family name from Cruciferae to Brassicaceae.”

“Dude, that’s crass jokes.”

“Wrong again, dude. Cress jokes.”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“You know that shot you wanted?”

“Yeah?”

“I want it now. A double. On the rocks.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Dude and Dude: The Great Hawai`ian Sellout

“Hey dude!”

“What do I look like, dude? A paniolo?

“A paniwhat?“

“A paniolo. A Hawai‘ian cowboy, you haole. Who might possibly have some interest in hay.”

“Dude, I’d love it if you had some interest in hay. Like maybe making some? So I wouldn’t have to be howling at you every month when the rent’s due?”

“Very funny, dude. Next thing I know, you’ll want me to be hawking T-shirts online or something.”

“Well, if it’s good enough for OC and Quilly, it oughta be good enough for you.”

“What?? They sold out?!?“

“I don’t think so, dude. Their store’s only been open for a couple of hours. I hardly think they’re sold out of anything yet.”

“Oh fer … what brought this on?”

“Well, you know Quilly’s been taking all these photos of like Hawai‘ian flowers and turtles and birds and things?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, she figured if they were good enough for this Aussie journalist guy, they were good enough to stick on mugs and calendars and aprons, stuff like that.”

“You think anybody will buy this stuff?”

“What? You dissin’ Quilly’s pictures?”

“And risk OC’s delete key?? No way, dude! Besides, that Aussie dude’s right. They are great pictures. And nobody’s payin’ me to say that.”

“Damn.”

“Damn what, dude?”

“I sure wish someone would pay you to do somethin’.”

“Hey! I can stand on the surfboard now, dude! Sometimes …”

“Riiiight. Here. Read this.”

“‘Click on by OC ‘n’ Quilly’s Cafepress Store for all sorts of knick-knacks, keepsakes, and mementos from Hawai‘i and the OC and Quilly blogs. C’mon. You know you want to.’ Dude? Did I just read a commercial?!?“

“You did a great job, too, Daddy-O. A lot better than you ride that board.”

“I can’t believe this. I’m turning into a capitalist!“

“Does that mean you have money for the rent, dude?”

“I said capitalist, dude! Not philanthropist!“

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

But seriously, folks. Check out the store. Buy stuff and save Quilly from pre-K.

Better yet, if you see something of Quilly’s that you think would look good on a mug (not my mug, of course, that would be fatal), let us know. We’ll see what we can do.

Cheers, The Amoeba

While Turtles Safely Graze

On our recent two-day trip to Hawai‘i Island (the haoles call it the “Big Island”, not realizing - or, perhaps, not caring - that the kanaka maoli don’t necessarily appreciate having a name that means “homeland” dissed in this particular way) …

As I was saying. On our recent trip to Hawai‘i Island, Quilly hoped to see turtles. So, on the one day of the two on which I wasn’t working, and as she’s already related, we went to a place where we expected to find some - the promises made by our hotel’s advertisements having gone the way of most promises made in advertisements.

And it came to pass, as we were walking along the shoreline near the heiau, I was able to stand and point and say:

“Sea turtle!”

“Where turtle?”

“There. Turtle.”

The embarrassing part of this story (not counting the Young Frankenstein ripoff) is, the two of us, including yours truly, The Amoeba, the Grand Protistan Master of Marine Biology, walked right past the spot where the turtle was - while other people were watching it - and never saw the thing. If I hadn’t happened to look back at a moment when the animal had its carapace above water, and watched the rock move …

For the next half hour, we sat and watched while this turtle, a mere fifteen feet away (it’s illegal to get any closer), paid attention to nothing but feeding its face. It’s illegal to get any closer, because the Green Sea Turtle is an endangered species and is protected by international, Federal, and Hawai‘ian State laws. Not that those laws stopped one kid from grabbing a turtle while we were there, and hoisting it into the air for his dad - and any wildlife officers in the vicinity - to see.

That face-feeding looked like hard work. There didn’t seem to be much more than bare rock for this oceangoing herbivore to eat. While we were considering this observation, I happened to look down into a crevice that was too small for a turtle to stick its head into. And saw this.

Most of the seaweeds growing in this crevice were limu aki‘aki, known to scientists (for the moment anyway, see *FOOTNOTE) as Ahnfeltiopsis concinna. Limu in Hawai‘ian means “seaweed”, and limu aki‘aki is one of the types favored by both sea turtles and humans. Though the humans usually prefer limu manauea, limu huluhuluwaena, or ogo with their ahi.

Where the turtles couldn’t reach, the limu growth was luxuriant. Where the turtles could reach, however, all the limu stalks were bitten off at the base:

Fortunately, this limu can form new growing tips from the bitten ends, and also can grow new stalks from a flat base that’s stuck like paint to the rocks. They must grow just fast enough to keep the turtles fed.

Around the corner, we found a sandy beach where turtles had hauled themselves up on the beach to bask themselves. There’s a lot more to this simple sentence than meets the first reading.

For one thing, sandy beaches are not all that common on the shoreline of Hawai‘i Island. Hawai‘i Island has, not one, not two, but three active volcanos on it. Most of the shorelines are black volcanic rock, from the lava flows that these volcanos spew out from time to time. A natural sandy beach is a thing to be cherished - and the one at Pu‘uhonua o Honaunau certainly was. So cherished, in fact, that the ali‘i claimed it for themselves. Only the nobility were permitted to walk it and land their boats on it. To the common people, the beach was kapu.

It still is. Ropes and signs prohibit the mere tourists from striding the sacred sands. Not only as a sign of respect to Hawai‘ian culture, but more importantly (given what Americans have historically felt about anybody else’s, especially English, nobility), as a sign of respect to the turtles, who will only haul themselves up on beaches where they feel they won’t be pestered while basking in the sun.

Apparently, the “basking in the sun” business is something of a mystery to people who study the Green Sea Turtle. Of all the half-dozen sea turtle species, the Green is the only one that indulges in sunbathing. I searched the Internet for awhile, and found nothing other than arm-waving explanations (such as “they like getting warmed up in the sun just like us”) for this practice.

I venture to suggest something.

Here’s a shot of our friendly grazer with its back out of water. You might notice that the back of the shell (carapace) looks less clean than the rest of it.

In fact, it looks like there’s stuff growing out of it.

Well, there is. Algae. Quite a bit of it. And it’s not like the turtle can reach back with a wire brush and scratch itself there to get rid of it. In freshwater environments, there are algae (for example, in the green algal genus Basicladia) that grow only on the backs of turtles. And their growth can get kinda frightening.

Like this.

So what’s a poor turtle to do, if it doesn’t want to turn itself into a floating seaweed garden? It can’t bite the algae off, it can’t scrape it off. What’s left?

Burning it off. That’s what. Hence the basking.

And the need for people to leave the blessed turtles alone while they’re basking. So the beaches where the turtles haul themselves ashore are kapu. Which is fine with me.

Time constraints prevented us from getting into the water with these turtles. I understand that’s quite an experience. Maybe next time.

*FOOTNOTE: The scientific name of living thing X is supposed to serve both as a label with which to identify X, and as a clue to the other living things to which X is related. With many forms of life including algae, this practice causes lots of problems. Mainly, because most algae were given scientific names based on what they look like, and in recent years we’ve found that algae which look alike may be no more closely related to each other than you are to the pineapples you just had for dessert.

I looked up DNA sequences that have been obtained from algae identified as Ahnfeltiopsis concinna, and compared them to DNA sequences from other closely-related marine algae. I found that species placed in the genus Ahnfeltiopsis are not all closely related to each other. Which means that at least some of the algae now assigned to the genus Ahnfeltiopsis need to be placed in some other genus - in other words, they need a new scientific name.

It turns out that, according to the DNA sequences I investigated, Ahnfeltiopsis concinna belongs to the same group as Ahnfeltiopsis linearis, the “type” (more or less, the first-named) species of Ahnfeltiopsis and therefore the “benchmark” for correct assignments of species to this genus. So it looks like I can keep Ahnfeltiopsis concinna as the correct scientific name for limu aki‘aki, right?

Wrong.

Because that same group of species also includes plants identified as Gymnogongrus griffithsiae, the type species (benchmark) for the genus Gymnogongrus. Which genus was first described in 1833; Ahnfeltiopsis was first described in 1992.

That means that I need to throw away the name Ahnfeltiopsis entirely, because it’s a synonym of Gymnogongrus and was published later, and change the scientific name of limu aki‘aki to Gymnogongrus concinnus [sic] …

If and only if the specimens from which the DNAs came that were assigned to Ahnfeltiopsis concinna and A. linearis and Gymnogongrus griffithsiae were in fact correctly identified - an if that is by no means a sure thing. And if and only if other kinds of analyses (including those from other DNA samples) give the same answer as the one that I looked at.

There are smarter and better informed people than I working on this question as I write. Meanwhile, I’ve got a headache. I can just imagine what you’ve got, dear reader. If you got this far.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.