Poetry Thursday

This week's Poetry Thursday assignment was to carry a poem around with you and write about how that act affected you. Well that didn't work for me since I was carrying a poem, or more precisely a concept for a poem and working on the poem. The concept came about Thursday last week when I was in my back yard taking pictures and looking at all the insects that were mating or eating to get fat enough to mate and I started thinking that in the popular mind, spring is the time for reproduction and rebirth.

But for many species, late summer and fall is that time. Many aquatic invertebrates which had indulged in asexual reproduction during the summer, now switch to sexual reproduction. Cicadas have emerged and are frantically seeking mates; the grasshoppers are coupling everywhere. Indeed I think John Ashcroft, who is remembered for covering breasts on statues with cloth, would probably throw a huge tarp over my garden to protect young minds from thoughts of what those grasshoppers are doing. And they are not even using the missionary position. The plants...Oh the plants! This is the time for some of the best bees in Kansas to come out and strut their stuff among the plants...But I won't go there.



The poem finally fell into place over the weekend when we had approximately seven inches of rain and the Datura (Nightshade) pictured here ( their "white slips" showing) remained open during the day. So here is the result:

Late Summer Rains

Late summer comes in a rush
Of cicadas buzzing the air.
Monarch larvae fatten
On mother aphid laden leaves
Of seed spilling Asclepias
And grasshoppers leisurely couple
In armored fetish wear
While wee worms French kiss
In the soil and the pond.
Oh and the pond with its animalcules
Commingling their DNA
And playing craps with time-
The pond opens itself
To receive the pulses of rain
Which surprise the world with fervor
And the night working flowers
Caught unaware of the time
Show their white slips
In the day.

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Catholic Reactions to Father Coyne's Replacement

My blog entry about Father Funes' statment has been picked up by Inside Scoop, the blog for Ignatius Press. There is very interesting discussion about the language used by scientists to talk about evolution and genes and I think this discussion should be seen by scientists. The discussion mentions a book by David Stove called Darwinian Fairy Tales. The book apparently raises some interesting points about the langauge used by scientists to describe(if only metaphorically) genes, for instance describing genes as "selfish" or "altruistic". Stove was not a creationist of any stripe or even a religious person and he has no truck with ID as near as I can tell. But this looks like an interesting read.

The article quoting Joseph Sobran says:

"

Stove, who died in 1994, was a noted Australian philosopher. He was neither a scientist nor a creationist, but an atheist. He didn’t entirely reject the theory of evolution, and in fact had great respect for Darwin himself. But as a rigorous practitioner of linguistic analysis, he thought Darwin and his successors, from T.H. Huxley to Richard Dawkins, had relied less on scientific method than on the abuse of language.

The result was what Stove called “Darwinism’s Dilemma.” The facts simply didn’t — and couldn’t — square with the claims of the theory, particularly in its account of human life. And the Darwinians, while claiming to explain evolution and “the descent of man” as an enormous accident of a blind struggle for survival, have had to keep smuggling teleology — purpose — into their arguments.

They reject the idea of God as an intelligent designer, but they persist in using such expressions and metaphors as intelligent genes, selfish genes, tools, tactics, devices, calculated, organized, goal, and design. By implication, these words transfer the notion of purpose from a benign, superhuman God to subhuman entities like genes and “memes.” Dawkins, who posited (he’d say “discovered”) memes, flatly calls “altruism” “something that does not exist in nature.” After all, altruism would be a fatal handicap in the ruthless struggle for survival."

Now personally I think there is a failure to understand that our modern view of natural selection is more general than Darwin's notion and I am not sure that Stove, or Sobran for that matter, really understands the underpinnings of modern evolutionary theory.

Update! More on Catholics and Evolution and the Pope's evolution seminar.
http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/09/catholicism-and-evolution.html

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Funes Speaks about Vatican Appointment

Update! Father Coyne is apparently underging chemotherapy for colon cancer. Thanks to Pat Hayes at Red State Rabble to the tip.

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-08-25_1258007.html

Father Funes has apparently sent an e-mail which has been spreading through the astronomy community about his appointment to the directorship of the Vatican Observatory. I am posting the text in it's entirety exactly as I received it from a friend, since I have no reason to doubt it's authenticity. This appears to be the statement cited in today's Arizona Daily Star.

My earlier blog report with background is at http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/08/father-coyne-replaced.html

Father Funes writes:

Hello everyone,
Probably you may have learned that I have been appointed new Director of
the Vatican Observatory. At the time of the appointment, I was
participating in the IA General Assembly in Prague and George Coyne was
taking a very well deserved vacation. I've talked to George on the phone
and we both agreed that I would send a message making the "official
announcement".

Unfortunately, The Daily Mail has published an article entitled "Pope
Sacks Astronomer Over Evolution Debate". This article is absolutely false.

In May, after 28 years, George asked our superiors if they didn't think it
was time for the Vatican Observatory to select a new director and they
agreed to accept his resignation as well as appoint a new director. George
will take a year's sabbatical in Raleigh, N.C., before rejoining the
Vatican Observatory in September 2007. He continues to direct the Vatican
Observatory Foundation.

All the staff are most grateful to George for his years of inspired
directorship. Personally, I am very happy that George Coyne will
continue as President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation and that after
the sabbatical year he will be back with the Vatican Observatory. We need
George back. I am also quite pleased and happy with the full support that
I have from all the staff, included George.

The Vatican Observatory I "receive" is in very good shape. We enjoy being
at Steward Observatory and I hope that we continue this very fruitful
collaboration.

Finally, I would like to say that we, at the Vatican Observatory, we try
hard to keep up with the pace of the most recent astronomical
developments. Since last week we now have two categories of directors; the
giant, classic directors and the 'dwarf' ones. George Coyne belongs to the
first category and the current director... literally belongs to the
second one.

Jose Funes, S.J.

--
Jose G. Funes, S.J.
Specola Vaticana
Vatican Observatory

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Can our President use Binoculars?

Looks like he can't, but a quick check at snopes.com suggests otherwise. This image maybe real, indeed the very next image shows the binoculars with the lens caps off. So the good folks at Snopes conclude that Bush does know how to use binoculars.

Earlier disseminated images of Clinton at the Korean DMZ appear according to Snopes to have digitally fabricated lens caps. Looks like both sets of partisans were looking for a killer image like the famous Dukakis tank image that helped in a small way to end the Dukakis campaign.

This and similar images have been around for awhile but frankly I hadn't seen them until today when a friend forwarded a forwarded-well you get the drift-to me in my little corner of the noosphere.

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Another Flag Flap.

Relax Meade! It's in Colorado and involves a geography teacher who got reprimanded for displaying foreign flags in his class. Supposedly it violates Colorado state law.

The story is in the Progressive relying on the Denver Post. Apparently the teacher was going to quit over this but now a compromise has been worked out between him and the school administration so he can keep the flags up for six weeks at a time.

See http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_4231655.

I don't get it. But maybe I am just to liberal, ya think?

The Voltage Gate

I know we have scads of science blogs in the noosphere, but I say the more the merrier. I recommend that you charge on over to Jeremy Bruno's blog, The Voltage Gate (hmm sounds like he's had neurobiology). Jeremy is an undergraduate interested in science journalism. Right now, Jeremy features a series of articles about the phylogeny of the Red Panda and, unlike the rest of us slobs, he carefully documents his sources.

Why is it that editors think sports and other soft beats require specialized talent but science gets short shrift? I have whined about this before, and maybe with the rise of good science blogging the mainstream media will finally pay attention or else just go the way of the sauropods and big gas guzzling trucks.

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Saturday Plant Blogging

I love plants and though I am not a botanist I really love plant forms, the symmetry of flowers and stems and I am particularly drawn to both succulents and orchids, both of which make up the bulk of my house plants. At any rate, as an antidote to all the stuff that goes along with the start of a new semester (I even managed to miss Poetry Thursday), I took yesterday afternoon and today to shoot some plant pictures.

Most of these are on my flicker photostream , so if you want larger versions clicking on the picture will take you to my photostream images for the picture. Look for the "all sizes" and magnifying glass to see the available sizes for download.

The first set is from inside the JCCC greenhouse-it was too windy to get many good outside shots.



For Donna, our extremely talented and dedicated greenhouse manager is a waterlily bloom from her stock tank pond inside the greenhouse:



Often the plants I enjoy are plants that only a biologist can love such as many cacti but I think everyone can appreciate this one from the greenhouse. There wasn't a label with it so I need to look up what it is.



In addition to cacti we some other interesting succulents including this Stapelia in bloom. The full size view is very nice so you might want to get it here.



Also in the greenhouse is this nice Opuntia cactus; I don't know the species. Opuntias are often called prickly pears and the stems form flattened pads. What I had forgotten about is that in the same family is another group called chollas.



These cacti have cylindrical stems and succulent leaves at least some of the time. I was reminded of this today when I went to my Sunrise Garden Center in Lawrence to look at their new succulents and one of the plants that had to come home with me was this Opuntia subulata:



Looks like the taxonomy is a bit uncertain as some sites list it as Austrocylandropuntia subulata. Maybe this depends on whether or not you are a lumper or a splitter.

Of course I picked up some other nice plants while I was at the garden store such as a wonderful succulent Peperomia.



I know this genus as consisting of tropical non-succulent houseplants with wrinkled leaves that I have always had problems growing for any length of time. What I like about this plant is that the undersides of the leaves are a deep red color in contrast to the green upper surface. Hopefully this plant does better for me than it's moisture loving sisters. By the way this genus is in the family Piperaceae which includes..You guessed it..the pepper plant from which black pepper is made.

At the JCCC greenhouse on Friday I was impressed with the subtle coloring on these Echeveria pulvinata blooms:



There just happened to be a young plant of this species at the garden store so it came home with me. Echeveria includes Hens and Chicks which I didn't know!

Next up is an Epiphyllum cutting. This is one of the plants I received in the maill from Ron over at 2sides2ron the other month and I am happy to report that it and it's three mates are all beginning to root and grow.



In the garden there is a lot going on...Weed wise that is and I need to do a lot of weeding. For some reason the Lawrence area has been blessed with lots of rain and between that and the warm weather and the start of the semester-OK and general laziness- the garden has gone wild. As can be seen in this general view of my pond area.



In this view, note the bird house gourd plant taking over in the upper left. It is a volunteer since they really took over last year. But the leaves are nice. Growing up the trellis in the upper right are several Orchid bean plants, just coming into bloom. Not shown is the giant lamb's quarters which has taken over my peony patch.

My last shot may seem a repeat of a water lilly blossom from earlier this year, but this one is from today using my Canon Rebel. The detail is much clearer than my earlier shot taken with my old Kodak. You will probably enjoy the full sized version as well.



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Living with HIV

Certain groups in our society have begun to take AIDs and HIV for granted because of the new drugs we have, or maybe people have just become desensitized to AIDS. Other groups in our society say all it takes is abstinence, or that HIV is brought on by the gay "lifestyle" whatever that is. As an antidote to either position I suggest you read this post by my friend Ron Hudson over at 2sides2ron. Ron has lived for 21 years with AIDS, and he gives us a brief glimpse of what his life is like.

Thanks Ron!