Gardeners delight - 2nd law of thermodynamics negates weeds!

After a while you get tired of trying to explain biology and especially evolution to people outside of the field, and this includes mathematicians like Granville Sewell. In a recent publication GS argues that the 2nd law of thermodynamics negates evolution because order increases and the 2nd law says entropy, disorder, must increase. Ah, but as has been pointed out to the critics of evolution every single time this comes up, the Earth is not a closed system which this law refers to. There's a constant input of energy. But Granville gets clever and says he's done the math to show that when "…all we see entering is radiation and meteorite fragments,[and] it seems clear that what is entering through the boundary cannot explain the increase in order observed here."
Now the Phactor isn't a physicist or a mathematician, but let me have a crack at explaining this. Life itself has the ability to capture energy and grow which decreases entropy, locally, for a relatively short (on a cosmic scale) period of time. Life doesn't violate the 2nd law, it just slows down the increase in entropy, and no law says you can't do that. Eventually all the energy captured dissipates as heat increasing entropy. What Granville is arguing is that life is not possible, let alone evolution. Since he sees nothing entering the Earth that can increase order, evolution must be invalid. Let’s simplify things. Granville doesn’t understand biology or how life works at all, so he’s going to reject the whole thing. When a mathematician tries to unexplain biology, 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4, it equals baloney.
But as the Panda's Thumb pointed out this is great news for gardeners because weeds can't grow and increase in numbers in your garden. And Granville's got the mathematical proof! But here’s what will happen. This foolish paper, even after being thoroughly sliced and diced by better and more mathematical minds than mine, will become the darling citation of creationists and it will be touted as “science” demonstrating why evolution is invalid.

News of an old friend

A rare communication from one of my two oldest friends was to tell me a childhood friend died recently of a heart attack while changing a tire on his daughter's car. It has been quite awhile since anyone from my youth had died. Two of my college roommates died, both in accidental mishaps, almost mundane ways, especially the indestructible AJ, who simply slipped and fell, and never once did he even get injured from playing hockey or any of the other crazy stunts we thought fun. Lost several high school friends to drugs and the Vietnam war, either separately or in combination. But then quite a long hiatus. Having escaped the dangers of youth, we became adults.
This fellow was a childhood friend, a good fellow, with a good family, and my visits and stays at their home were many. He never moved very far from our childhood homes, and my education and career took me to new places. And then as family moved away, and the older generation passed away, the visits "home" became fewer and farther between, and it has now been years since my last visit, much to the consternation of a sister who still lives there. Such is life. But now some three to four decades after dispersing, the prospect of having childhood friends dying is a reality that has started all too soon, and sadly, too soon for an old friend. While the nostalgic motivation to reconnect with people and places left behind has never been very compelling, so many new places remain to visit, so many new things to do, his death has produced a certain sadness and regret about the things sometimes lost, jettisoned and cast aside, almost as a necessary action for moving forward. In this instance, likely enough we would not have remained close friends even if fate had provided a botanical job near the home turf, but cordial, remember-when, old acquaintances almost certainly, and so with great sadness a name is ticked off the list, but not to be forgotten. No. The oak Hoosier cupboard in our dining room was his grandmother's and he is part of its story, and this is why things have stories, so we will remember.

Elvis is dead and I’m not feeling so hot myself

There was a distinct flavor of fall in the air this morning, and that’s how life in general is beginning to taste as I begin counting down my 7th decade. The Phactor wasn’t so sure how he felt about this, although it helps improve the attitude to have a new, authentic Hawaiian shirt, but while lots of things remind me about getting old, the spirit of a 20-something is still in me at times, but it just can’t ignore the aging package or the accumulated common sense and do stupid things anymore, and that is probably just as well because you can still enjoy living without doing stupid things even though the very young do not believe this. You come to understand that when you grow up, and up, and up. This somewhat morose feeling that old age is creeping up on me gave way to the pleasantry of the morning as the sun began to slice through the mist and tree leaves on my stroll to the coffee shop and then to my office, and the knowledge that this most certainly will be a beautiful September day as so many of them are. So it is good to be alive in September when good apples begin to ripen, and it just isn’t worth making a pie before they are; now if I could only remember where my apples were?

An academic tragedy

A young former colleague of mine was found dead in his apartment a couple of weeks ago. I just found out because his apartment is a couple of thousand miles from Lincolnland in California. It's been at least a decade since he left our institution, and I know what resulted in his dismissal. I rarely saw him in recent years, and I cannot say how he was getting along in life lately. But my guess is that the villain in this tragedy is addiction to that most common and socially acceptable substance, ethanol.

It kept a bright young fellow from having a successful academic career. I cost him his drivers license and for awhile his freedom. It cost him his only tenure track academic position. It cost my profession a promising young botanist, and you have to love someone who was just cuckoo for floral polymorphisms. And now it has cost him his life.

Jeff was not yet highly accomplished as his career was just starting, but everyone who had ever worked with him was impressed by his intellect. And biologists are a pretty capable bunch of people, so it takes a really bright and creative person to impress so many. And he was a likable enough fellow. Our faculty were extremely pleased when we hired him; he seemed like a good addition. The tragedy is that Jeff could have accomplished so much but for this fatal flaw.

This serves as yet another reminder that us average fellows, whose academic success is the result of just keeping at it, have a lot to be thankful for, but still Jeff's death saddens me greatly. Bright candles burn way too quickly.

Bad line karma

I'm not an overly impatient person. I'm not pushy, impolite, or discourteous when waiting in lines. I don't cut in, jump ahead, cut off, or act to someone else's disadvantage. So where did my bad line karma come from?

I ask this after 1 hour of waiting at the Canadian-USA border. The official border is right there, I can almost touch it, but the customs booth is still a couple of hundred yard, and probably close to another hour ahead. Across the expanse of carefully groomed grass and gardens in the median, the backup for entering Canada is barely 10 minutes. Five days ago the line to enter Canada stretched back a kilometer or more and I was an hour and 10 minutes in line, and of the two lanes, the slowest one (right) to boot. So today I decided to stay in the left lane, and the right lane is outpacing the left by a factor of about 1.5 even with merging cars from the duty free shop.

If I pick a grocery store checkout lane, no matter how short it looks, it will immediately bog down. That one little lady buying a single can of food for her little dog will take forever looking for two loose pennies in the bottom of her handbag to make exact change. And then the register will run out of paper tape and have to be replaced before printing her receipt, and then a new checkout person will come with their drawer before it is my turn.

Over and over this happens. If a hell exists, something I think remarkably unlikely, but if mind you it does, it will consist of endless lines, a cue from hell so to speak, an exquisite form of torment.

Even worse I can think of no way to improve my karma. The guy in front of me just changed lanes by cutting off another car that was a tad slow to inch forward. And now he is already 3 cars ahead. My wife says that if I'm so annoyed to do the same thing, but that would require rapt attention and quick reflexes, so I stay resigned to my fate. I hope they strip search the bastard.

Curtain Call for an Old Friend

This magnificent tree is called the curtain fig; it’s huge and may be several hundred years old. Curtain fig is not the common name of the species (Ficus virens), but the name of this specific tree. It’s a strangler fig, a type of fig that starts growing in the canopy of another tree. Its roots grow down and around the host tree, and its canopy grows upward, and ultimately the fig can engulf, kill, and take the place of its host. In Central America strangler figs are called matapalo, tree-killer. This fig apparently grew vertically killing its original host tree, and then fell against a neighboring tree, subsequently taking it over as well. Roots dropping from the diagonal trunk produced this curtain of roots that rises about 18 m from the forest floor, and from this emerges an immense crown of branches above the rainforest canopy.

Curtain Fig lives in a patch of rainforest near Yungaburra on the Atherton Tableland in northern Queensland Australia. I first saw this tree over 25 years ago, and shortly there after I met the fellow in the funny red felt hat at the lower right. And he in his own right is a magnificent fellow. I am thinking about this because I just learned this funny-hat-wearing fellow, my friend and colleague Tony, is dying of lung cancer, a rather ironic fate for a confirmed non-smoker.

Tony and I teamed up twice to conduct field research on the reproductive biology and beetle pollination of rain forest trees, and I spent months, some of the best times of my life, at this side working in the rain forest. I, even with the PhD, was the rain forest student, and Tony my learned mentor. Tony is simply one of the best field biologists ever. His keen eye for observation, and his equally keen intellect made him a largely self-schooled guru of field biology and rain forest natural history. And his attitude was even better than his knowledge. Tony approached his life and work with simple joy; he did biology just for the sheer pleasure of doing it, so it was just a bonus that the Australian CSIRO paid his salary.

He has a sly sense of humor. His almost child-like air of innocence and his often feigned naivety allowed his wit to prey upon those who thought themselves sophisticates or his educational betters, but , it was never mean humor. In fact there was nothing mean about Tony. Oh, and did I mention his singing voice or his rain forest tucker? No, and with good reasons, but I was often serenaded exuberantly and fed anyways. And who else would drive an hour out of the rain forest, at night, to the nearest civilization just to satisfy a sudden urge for ice cream? Only a wonderfully crazy fellow in a floppy, red felt hat, would think such a pilgrimage for an ice cream bar perfectly reasonable.

Tony played hard and worked hard, and his physical life took a toll upon his body; parts just wore out. That together with Parkinson’s has brought this great bear of a man to a near halt. The cancer will merely deliver the coup de grace. His life used up the rest, but it was used very well. My life is richer for having Tony as a friend and colleague, and it is with immense sadness that I write this reflection.

Curtain fig lives on, but for Tony, it’s just curtains.