The Naming of Things

A few things on naming caught my attention recently.

First there was this article (from the NYTimes, of course) which is on taxonomy in general and on native taxonomies in particular. How good are you at distinguishing between bird names and fish names in on naming birds and fish in the Huambisa language?

Then I came across this linked from a faculty member's website: Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature. There's a lot to discover here. From the "Interesting Translations" section, I can't help giggling at Eucritta melanolimnetes (a fossil amphibian), which translates to "creature from the black lagoon", and at Vampyroteuthis infernalis, a squid relative, aka "the vampire squid from hell."

The Creature from the Black Lagoon... is actually sort of cute.

Vampire squid from hell... yeesh. Way to live up to your name!

My favorite section, of course, is the puns. Here's one of the best bits on the whole site:

Balaenoptera musculus Linneaus (blue whale) Musculus could mean "muscular," but it can also be interpreted as "little mouse." Linne would have known this and, given his sense of humor, may have intended the ironic double meaning.

That Linne... what a wacky guy!

Finally, I was reading about native plants the other day... if I told you you had Ambrosia and Lotus growing all over your yard, you'd probably think that was great, right?

Not if you have allergies. Ambrosia is the genus name for ragweed (the name has to do with the immortality of the species). Lotus is a little better -- it's a genus of plants known as deervetches, but certainly desn't look anything like what most people think of as a lotus.

I Happen to Like New York

Just a quick trivial post to get myself into the habit of writing again. I'm going to try to make Wednesday my blog day and spend ninety minutes writing. That's not a whole lot, but if I can at least get into the habit of one post a week, I'll have a more regular update schedule. This semester is keeping me really busy (more on that later!) so it's been tough to write lately. 

Anyway, there were two great articles in the Times today that I just had to share. They don't have anything to do with food, politics, natural history, or any of my usual topics. They're just snapshots of New York. Even though I'm still in NYC on a semi-regular basis, I miss living there. 

First article: The Elevator at Fairway. On the one hand, I love articles about how eccentric Fairway is. On the other hand, I wish they would stop writing about it. There are already too many people there! When I returned a piece of cheese to Stop n Shop yesterday (it had been wrapped in plastic for nearly a month! cheese abuse!) I felt a particular pang for Fairway. I don't think any given piece of cheese stays on the shelf for more than a day there. 

Second article: I LEGO NY, by Chris Niemman, the same artist who told us about how much his sons love the subway. Charming, whimsical, and very very funny. Take ten minutes out of your day to chuckle, and if you're a New Yorker like me, to enjoy the sense of superiority that comes with knowing that people in other parts of the country won't get it quite as well as you do. 

PS: The bulk bar -- the best place in NYC to buy granola, dried fruit, or whole grains -- is upstairs, as are the fresh peanut butter machines. Just don't ask me where the elevator button is, I'll never tell. 

Small and Blue and Beautiful

Yesterday I blogged about something very small.

Today I'd like to call your attention to some articles that talk about something very big.


Forty years ago today, astronauts took this historic photo, "Earthrise". I didn't remember that until reading the editorials in the Times, of course, since I wasn't around yet. Some say that this image helped jump-start the environmental movement.

Anyway, the articles from today and from 1968 are worth checking out. Here is today's editorial reflecting on 1968 and now; this op-ed piece observes that while *we* may be fragile, life on earth has endured worse than humans and survived. From the first editorial, click on the "Related Articles" links to download some of the original articles from 1968, which are not available as web pages. This photograph is also so famous that it has its own Wikipedia page.

From the 1968 editorial:

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

Lovely.

PS: For more on "Earthrise" and a short video clip from the Apollo 8 mission, visit this Dot Earth post from today.

The 40 Million Year Old Virgins

Imagine, on this cold near-solstice day, that in the spring you go out to a nearby pond and collect a sample of water. You bring it home, put a drop on a microscope slide, and take a look at the pond's microcosm. Zooming around your sample are a wide variety of "wee beasties" -- you might see a blobby amoeba, a diflagellate like Chlamydomonas, and many other single-cell organisms.

Then a large, mostly transparent creature comes into focus. It doesn't look like all the others. It's far more complex, like a mechanical sea creature in miniature. Something like this:


Beautiful, isn't it?

This is a rotifer, a tiny aquatic animal in the phylum Rotifera. It may be small, but it is bilaterally symmetric and has a distinct head. It pulls in food particles with the wheel-like structure (hence "rotifer" or "wheel-bearer") around its mouth.

The rotifer pictured above is, however, special for another reason. This is a bdelloid rotifer (the b is silent). You are looking at a species that has not mated in at least 40 million years.

All bdelloid rotifers are female, and they reproduce by parthenogenesis. (Olivia Judson talks about them at length in her excellent book, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, and wrote a column about them in June.) This is highly unusual, since it is generally thought that gene exchange is an important mechanism for evolution. Yet with no sexual reproduction, how could the bdelloids have speciated so intensely (there are estimated to be 350 species) and persisted for so long?

Researchers at Harvard and Woods Hole may have the answer. In a paper published in Nature in May, geneticists found that when they analyzed rotifer DNA, they found genes known to occur in plants, fungi, and bacteria. This evidence suggests that rotifers have been engaging in horizontal gene transfer (HGT).

HGT is a well-known phenomenon, but it was primarily known from single-celled organisms. For example, many bacteria are known to incorporate novel genes from other members of the population, or even from other species. When you only have one cell, it's not too hard to get a novel gene into that cell. Most animals, which are by definition multicellular, can't do this; most of us pass our genes to our offspring via specialized reproductive cells, which are typically hidden away inside gonads. Unless novel genes make it to the sex cells and can therefore be passed on to the next generation, HGT has not taken place. (Passing genes to your offspring is vertical inheritance.)

Bdelloids, however, appear to be capable of massive horizontal gene transfer. Gladyshev et al. point out that this is not a case of rotifers simply retaining genes that are common to all life; that case is both extremely unlikely and not supported by the data. Instead, they suggest,

It may be that HGT is facilitated by membrane disruption and DNA fragmentation and repair associated with the repeated desiccation and recovery experienced in typical bdelloid habitats, allowing DNA in ingested or other environmental material to enter bdelloid genomes.

With their proclivity for moist habitats, bdelloids also run the risk of dessication. They are able to withstand repeated dessication; in fact, it might be necessary for the continued success of the entire class, since this appears to be the mechanism by which they gain new genetic material. The authors conclude,

Although the adaptive importance of such massive HGT remains to be elucidated, it is evident that such events have frequently occurred in the genomes of bdelloid rotifers, probably mediated by their unusual lifestyle.

So, in conclusion, bdelloids have done away with sex as we know it, but periodically get turned into rotifer jerky, incorporate new genes while their cells are cracked open, and when reconstituted and repaired produce more copies of themselves, thus passing new genes to the next generation.

Lots of questions remain; for example, what are rotifers doing with all these new genes? (One example is a bacterial gene for cell walls; no one knows how an animal might make use of a cell wall.) I will keep you posted on all rotifer-related news updates. Stay tuned!

References
Gladyshev, E. et al. "Massive Horizontal Gene Transfer in Bdelloid Rotifers." Science 30 May 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5880, pp. 1210 - 1213

Judson, O. "The Weird Sisters" The New York Times, June 3, 2008.

Sneak Peek

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine is all about food!

Bittman! Pollan! Kosher conundrum! Exploding corn (on the cover)! All this and more on newsstands this Sunday... or, yours to read right now.

I haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, so I'll probably have at least one more blog post about this issue of the magazine. I just wanted to bring it to your attention, since it looks like there's tons to read. Before I dig in, though, I just want to point out exactly which food they chose for the cover. It's not an heirloom tomato or a bag of wheat or a Twinkie. It's an ear of corn. And that's not an accident.

Read, enjoy, discuss... I'll blog it up soon enough!

Super Supper?

People who know me well are often inclined to ask my opinion about whether something is "good for me." It's an interesting question. I'm not really qualified as a nutrition scientist, food chemist, doctor, or, you know, any other professional food expert. I am a vegetarian, which has made me more aware of what I eat (and more aware about myths concerning protein, for example) but other than that, and being a voracious reader and an enthusiastic Pollangelical, I'm just an ecology graduate student.

But, usually, I have an answer. It's generally along the lines of, "Well, is it a plant? If it's a plant, eat it. If it's not a plant, just eat a little of it." For more information, I turn to the trusty rules of Pollan: does it have more than five ingredients? (Bad.) Are any of them unfamiliar? (More bad.) Are any of them unpronounceable/indistinguishable from the ingredients in your shampoo? (Very bad!)

Now, though, there are new problems. Foods that used to be totally normal foods have become... something else. Do you like sardines, for example? (Many people don't.) What if you couldn't taste them, and they were in your orange juice this morning? Would you like to have some broccoli, kale and beet salad? (Not too appetizing?) That's OK, you can get all your vegetables in a convenient chocolate bar form!

Weird, right? And yet... and yet. Superfood or Monster from the Deep?

So is that chocolate-broccoli-kale-beet bar good for me?

I hope no one asks me, I'm not really sure what to say. I'm pretty sure the answer is, "Well, it's still a chocolate bar!" but what does that even mean any more? What if it supplies all the daily requirements of certain things? I can tell you that eating a square of chocolate will not fill you up, and you'll still want a normal meal. I can tell you that if the rest of your diet is made of burgers and fries, having some antioxidants in your chocolate is probably not going to help you much.

What about having orange juice with sardines in it? Even assuming a negligible flavor difference, shouldn't orange juice have, you know, just one ingredient?

Thoughts from the gallery? I'm moderately sleep-deprived, so let me know if I lost you somewhere along the way.

Fantasyland

At night, I close my eyes and in my dreams I visit a magical land. A land that, in some ways, is much like our own... but just a little different.

Actually, I have a map... it looks like this:



Let the "keep dreaming" comments begin.

Sarah Palin: Heartless Lawbreaker

Hello readers, I apologize for being very quiet of late. I've been watching and reading coverage of the DNC and the RNC, pondering "change" and "hope", starting the school year, getting the full rundown of teaching assistant instruction, etc.

There are a few things I would like to point out about "moose-hunting hockey mom" (what the heck kind of demographic is a hockey mom, anyway?) Sarah Palin. Namely, that she doesn't only like to shoot big, adorable, antlered critters.

Sarah Palin likes to shoot dogs from airplanes. Specifically, these dogs:


(What, you thought I was going to work a reference to Bristol Palin's pregnancy and Sarah Palin's determination to stick to her abstinence-only, wolf-killing guns? Nah, that would be a cheap shot, no more sporting than shooting a wolf from an airplane...)

OK, yes, the dogs in question are the wild conspecifics of our cuddly canine companions. (And I am being incorrect in referring to them as dogs, since dogs are the subspecies and wolves are the species. It got your attention though!)

But that doesn't change the matter of aerial hunting. Aerial hunting is cruel, unsporting, and just plain awful. Whole packs can be shot in a short amount of time, orphaning pups back at the den. They claim to do this to increase herd numbers of deer, elk, caribou, etc. so that hunters can put more meat on the table. (In other states, wolves are shot to protect the interests of ranchers who claim that wolves kill their sheep.)

Want to see what wolf hunting looks like? Check out this video on Radar. There isn't a lot of blood, but it's not an easy video to watch all the same. Oh, and so you know, Sarah Palin broke the law (again!) when she offered a bounty on wolves. There was a law against putting bounties on various critters, including wolves. And she broke it by offering $150 per pair of fresh forelegs of a wolf. That seems pretty clear (and pretty grim) to me. (And now they want to go after black bears...)

Do you really want another Vice President with no discernible compassion, no respect for the law, and no regard for the environment? Haven't these last eight years been enough of that?

Rescue Ink

When Big Ant, Sal, Des, Batso, and Mike Tattoo tell you that your dogs have inadequate shelter from the sun and you should really build them a doghouse, would you say no?

Tattooed Bikers, A Dog's Best Friend

It takes a tough man to bottle-feed a kitten, that's for sure. Let's hope Michael Vick runs into a couple of these guys when he gets out of prison.

You can learn more about them at the site for Rescue Ink.

Don't forget -- spay and neuter your pets! (Big Ant doesn't like people who don't.)

PS: Forgot to mention -- the slide show for this article is one of the greatest things ever. Really.

I Want to Go to Nice

This restaurant sounds amazing!

Rich, Luxurious, French, Vegetarian

The only thing is, where did Mark Bittman get this idea that people need to be convinced that veg doesn't equal monastic? Guacamole, peanut butter and tahini are all vegan and all decadent, and when you're ovo-lacto the whole world of cheese, eggs, and therefore soufflé is at your disposal. So, I'm not really sure where that came from, or who he's trying to convince. After all, he did write How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, so he knows better... it's very odd how defensive he is.

But if you're up for a trip to Nice (and who isn't?), let me know, we're going to this place.

Applebee's, Meat, and the Dearborn Independent

Today D. and I went to the local Applebee's for a quick bite after doing some shopping at Target. We don't eat there often, but it was close by and we figured it would be fast and easy, and it was.

While we were waiting for the check, I idly surveyed the sports memorabilia decor. Jets jerseys sharing a wall with Giants jerseys, an assortment of hockey team photos, and along one wall, a number of humorous golf-related signs.

And then my eyes fell on something unusual on the wall of golf items. For there, between the sign indicating that hitting your caddies with a five iron is more effective than with a driver (or something like that, it seemed very violent either way) and something else about golf being outlawed in fifteenth-century England, there was a little framed magazine cover showing a man in classic golf pose, having just driven the ball 200 yards and looking very satisfied.

It was a cover from the Dearborn Independent.

Had I been in this Applebee's a year ago, I might not have even made any association, although the name was certainly familiar. However, over the last couple of months D. and I have been watching The Jewish Americans, a great documentary that aired in three 140-minute segments on PBS. It's really good so far, although I haven't yet wanted to watch the next segment. Learning about Jews in the Old West is one thing, but we're just about up to World War II and that's a little harder.

In the meantime, though, we have learned a lot about Henry Ford and the newspaper he purchased that published some genuinely bonkers anti-Semitism. Among other things, it ran the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Dearborn Independent was founded in 1901 and purchased by Henry Ford in 1919; it didn't publish again after 1927, after lawsuits about above-mentioned bonkers anti-Semitism forced him to shut it down. The cover in the restaurant was dated 1926, putting it squarely within his era.

I'm not calling for some kind of mass action against Applebee's; restaurant chains have enough going on right now with the economy doing what it's doing. But it did get me thinking. I had actually been planning to email the company anyway; the menu is dreadfully dead-animal centric, although, as our waitress helpfully pointed out since it wasn't on the menu, they do serve vegan burgers. I think I will mention the magazine cover in my email as well. I know that their intention was not to offend; I'm sure it's only up on the wall because it fit the golf theme of that section. But I do think it's worth reconsidering whether it should be up there at all.

What do you think?

What, Me Worry?

John Tierney's column today, "10 Things to Scratch from Your Worry List" does our planet a considerable disservice.

OK, yes, it's true we don't need to worry about sharks (we never did), and local produce may not be all its cracked up to be. (Eating in season is still best, but it's more complicated.)

But what bothers me about this column is #5, "Evil Plastic Bags."

5. Evil plastic bags. Take it from the Environmental Protection Agency : paper bags are not better for the environment than plastic bags. If anything, the evidence from life-cycle analyses favors plastic bags. They require much less energy — and greenhouse emissions — to manufacture, ship and recycle. They generate less air and water pollution. And they take up much less space in landfills.

It's as though he's being willfully ignorant -- for if you follow the link to the EPA page, you know what they recommend? Bring your own bag! (Don't believe me? Click the link.) While plastic may require less space and less energy, they are also made from petroleum, which unlike trees, does not spontaneous grow from the ground.

In short, the evidence only marginally favors plastic bags in my opinion, and overwhelmingly favors the option of cotton canvas tote bag instead. Or reuse your plastic bags, if you can; I find that mine tend to rip well before the eleventh reuse, which is the point at which you have "broken even" by some reckoning. My bags of choice for regular grocery shopping are a combination of little green Stop n Shop bags and two long-handled canvas tote bags. (Long handles are good for slinging over shoulders.) If I was in the market for another bag, I might get this one. It's pretty! I keep extras in the car; I have a large canvas bag that can hold three six-packs of bottled beer (tested yesterday) among others.

Bring your own bags; then you don't have to worry about plastic bags or paper bags. And your groceries will taste better.*

*Note: groceries may not actually taste better.

Mater Familias

This article ran a couple of weeks ago.

Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man

I find everything about it interesting. A woman cannot head a household, but it's acceptable to change her gender and live her life as a man, and head a household. It is an interesting view of gender perception. While I'm glad that greater equality is coming to Albanian women, it's also a little bit sad that such an interesting cultural tradition (respected by both Christians and Muslims alike) is going to fade away within the next twenty years or so.

I don't know what else to say... any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

I Love the Subway...

I love the New York City subway system. It's always been like a jungle of intersecting vines to me, and as Tarzan swung vine to vine, I swing from handhold to handhold through my turf.

I do not love the subway anywhere close to the way these two little boys do, though. This story, and the accompanying graphics, are utterly adorable. It's great that someone out there is actually pleased to hear the words "service change".

I hope that one day, riding the subway, I will encounter this family and see three little boys singing (in perfect harmony) all the stops on the 3 train. That would be one for the blog. I'll keep you posted.

(Boom de yada, boom de yada...)

Bagels and... what?

Hmm. Zabar's will have their hands full trying to make sardines the new lox. Good luck with that.

Sardines with your bagel?

Despite what seafoodwatch.org might say, salmon is probably best to just keep on your Avoid list. I'm not sure how recently they updated the list, but it probably hasn't been updated since the Pacific fisheries south of Alaska were closed. With prices on Alaskan salmon poised to go through the roof, you might want to find something new to put on your bagel.

Unfortunately, the other classic bagel topper, whitefish, is also a no-go. Atlantic cod, aka whitefish, is a big red Avoid on that list. But if you're a fan of herring in cream sauce, you're doing A-OK, since herring (aka sardines or kippers) are considered a Best Choice.

Of course, the other option is to not put any fish on your bagel at all. I like mine toasted with a little butter, tomatoes, and a slice or two of manchego. Simple, delicious, and definitely dolphin-safe!

Sparkling or Still?

Tap water is hot. Bottled water, finally, has earned itself a reputation as an excess, an over-indulgence by Americans who don't know how good they have it, who have clean water always on tap and available.

There's just one little problem.

My kitchen sink doesn't produce seltzer.

And I like seltzer, dammit! I'm not so keen on sodas, I'll have one once in a while, but I love seltzer. Sparkling water is just so delicious and fun to drink... except for the large plastic bottles that it comes in, which inspire a pang of guilt every time I put one in the recycle bin.

But there is an answer! You can make your own! SodaClubUSA has the answer. Refillable carbon dioxide cartridges, reusuable bottles, and a broad selection of flavors.

Also, I would point out that anyone who can get the Forward, the Environmental News Network, and RV Life to agree must be doing something right! (Of course, the NY Times is right in there too, surprise surprise, but for once that isn't where I read about it first.)

My only criticism of this would be that they don't have nearly enough seltzer flavors... I'm a fan of lemon and lemon-lime, but I also love cranberry and raspberry. Where are my berry flavors? All in good time, maybe. Or I could just use real fruit, I guess.

You say CAFO, I say IFAP...

The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Union of Concerned Scientists have published reports that say that our current animal husbandry system is inhumane, inefficient, and disgusting.

Yeah. We already knew that, but it's nice to have confirmation from people with recognizable names!

Yesterday I went to the Rutgers Farmers' Market (I'm not really sure what to do with that apostrophe, by the way; anyone have a suggestion? If multiple farmers are selling things, it goes at the end like that, right?) for the first time. The produce selection was limited, but one item was in abundance: meat. There were bison steaks and burgers, chickens -- whole, deboned, sausaged -- quail, maybe even lamb, I don't remember exactly. Locally and humanely raised, the whole lot of it. I wish it were as simple as "stop eating meat" but if that's not really the way you want to go, check out your local farmers' markets; you might be surprised at the variety of non-vegetable foods available to you. (I'll get some links to the NJ ones up soon.)

Guano

There was about a week there with no posts; sorry about that. I was busy, and there was Memorial Day weekend, and it took a few days to get myself back together.

This article, in two short pages, manage to cram in a lot of interesting information about colonialism, the pre-petroleum world, sustainable fishing, sea bird conservation, organic farming, and other topics.

Peru Guards its Guano as Demand Soars Again.

Guano is bird droppings; colonial birds such as the cormorants and boobies mentioned in this article produce a lot of it every year. Before humans figured out a way to make synthetic fertilizer (leading to corn that is grown with petroleum, which doesn't really help us when you make it into ethanol), guano was the richest soil amendment you could buy.

What I'm not too clear on is why seabird guano is so particularly sought after. We have millions of captive chickens, turkeys and ducks; can't we use some of their droppings in a similar way? If anyone has a good explanation about this (is it something about the level of fish in the diet?) I would love to hear it.

Anyway, it's an interesting article. It gives a little more insight into just how this massive food chain we've created works. Fish that would go to seabirds are instead going to chickens (which don't normally eat fish); declining seabird numbers means less guano for organic farmers to use on vegetables. The price of petroleum goes up to the point that "conventional" petroleum-based farming is too expensive, so farmers of all stripes are looking for alternative fertilizers.

In Which I Am Perturbed

The latest thing in the abstinence-only movement:

Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose

Father-daughter "purity balls." Contents include praying, a ceremony involving white roses, and tactics that have been shown to have only limited effectiveness at actually protecting teenagers.

Aside from everything they mention in the article -- that abstinence pledges are ineffective against STDs because the kids are less likely to use condoms, etc. -- something remained unmentioned, only vaguely hinted at here:

For the Wilsons and the growing number of people who have come to their balls, premarital sex is seen as inevitably destructive, especially to girls, who they say suffer more because they are more emotional than boys. Fathers, they say, play a crucial role in helping them stay pure [emphasis mine].

Hm. Sounds like these girls are suffering from hysteria, or one of the other feminine complaints, perhaps. Haven't we moved past this nonsense yet?

Also disturbing: "Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16." She's promised to him? At 17? Seriously? I can barely believe this is done in our country, never mind with kids so young. More than anything else in the article, that really threw me for a loop.

The other thing that bothers me about all this is the conspicuous absence of two other important groups: mothers and sons. Where are the boys who need to learn to respect women from a positive female role model? Where are the mothers to encourage all of their children to make good choices? Why can't the fathers be role models for the boys too? It's just so infuriating that the onus is all on the daughters and the responsibility is all given to the fathers. As though sons had no responsibility for daughters' "purity", as though mothers had no role in teaching their children how to live their lives.

I should really stick to posting about animal behavior. Human behavior can be so infuriating.

Cynthia Nixon

Cynthia Nixon needs to get to the AMNH more often.

From her interview in the NY Times Magazine this past Sunday:

Has anyone ever told you that you resemble the woman in the Parmigianino painting “Madonna of the Long Neck”? I have a friend who sometimes calls me Bronty, short for brontosaurus, the dinosaurs with the really long necks. They have a new name now, apatosaurus.

Uhm... yeah. So that new name has been in place since 1903. Not... actually... that new. This is the sort of comment that just makes me roll my eyes and groan.

It needed to be said. It bothers me when people say things like that. It suggests that our education system hasn't been updated since 1903, which might be true, and is disturbing.