Why does anyone care what politicians think about evolution?

It's only been a dozen days since Darwin's birthday, and evolution is in the news, and not because of some new study, but because a possible presidential candidate punted when asked about it.  Clearly at one level what difference could it possibly make what a politician thinks about evolution? A successful alumnus of our university with a position on the foundation board once asked TPP if he "believed" in evolution.  TPP responded, "It's not a belief; it's a well documented and very useful scientific theory, and yes, I use it all the time". What most people don't understand is that if you could poke a hole in some major component of evolutionary theory (science proceeds by falsification) it could make your career. And what we do for research is constantly testing various components of the theory, and even though biologists have been at it for 180 years, the results have been to improve understandings and add components and nuances to the theory, to meld various fields together, but no holes have been punched.  So why ask a politician what they think about evolution?  An essay in the NYer does a nice job of explaining. "What the question means, and why it matters, is plain: Do you have the courage to embrace an inarguable and obvious truth when it might cost you something to do so? A politician who fails this test is not high-minded or neutral; he or she is just craven, and shouldn’t be trusted with power. This catechism’s purpose—perhaps unfair in its form, but essential in its signal—is to ask, Do you stand with reason and evidence sufficiently to anger people among your allies who don’t?"  And in this context this is a more certain test than asking about climate change. 

Planning ahead - corned beef version

Home-made, home-cured corned beef is a wonderful thing. It's another one of those things that TPP just does once a year in the third week of February. There are two reasons why. One, without a whole lot else to do, it keeps you busy for about an hour, that is if you have secured all the necessary ingredients.  If you should decide to try this, the recipe is at that link, and hopefully you'll be able to purchase some saltpeter. With everything on hand, and having acquired a great big old brisket (on sale no less), the brine was mixed up and spiced, now you just have to wait a couple of weeks (although you can get away with 10-12 days in a pinch). Two, if you look ahead on the calendar you'll see this means the corned beef will be ready for St. Patrick's Day to satisfy some deep seated genetic urge. This is one of the ways you get through February; you have something special to look forward to. Next weekend is the local Texas Independence Day chili cook-off, and another good excuse to make a huge batch of some authentic chili (no beans, no ground beef, no corn, no macaroni, or other things that don't belong in chili).  Now to check the chili pepper supply!

Back pack with built-in stool

Every now and then you see an idea that is clearly a winner, and this looks like one to TPP.  Now of course the demographic TPP has in mind is 18-22 years old, and there might be 30-50 students of this age lounging on the floor along the hallway outside of this office waiting for the next class to start.  In their wisdom the university added only 5 benches along the hall, one for each classroom, but actually 4 of them are outside of a lecture hall that seats over 150 people. And they didn't do this until the building was 45 years old!  People space, not even a concept. Even when you're young and flexible, the floor is hard and uncomfortable, and these days, students just want to play with their phones to kill some time. So this bag that makes into a stool looks like a winner from my perspective.  You know this is a staged photo because this young lady doesn't have her nose touching the screen of her iphone.  Here's the link to the story and brand name as this blog doesn't endorse products, or accept advertising, or allow tacky popup ads. TPP hopes readers will show some appreciation for the purity of this approach. 

Dang, not a "real expert" on evolution

Right Wing Watch reports that American Family Association governmental affairs director Sandy Rios...explained on her radio show today that, “science has done nothing but disprove the theory of evolution.” “There is no scientific evidence” to substantiate evolution, she said, at least according to “the real experts”.

Gee, TPP feels badly; he didn’t get that memo, and since he doesn't know about the disproof, he isn't a "real expert". How deflating. This is typical of the criticism of science and evolution. You just keep saying there isn’t any evidence over and over, and the gullible believe it. If you had the time, say 10 years or so, to show this woman all the evidence for evolution, it would not make an iota of difference. But to simply say that science has done nothing but disprove the theory of evolution is an astonishing assertion. It is correct in exactly one thing; science does operate by disproving, falsifying hypotheses. TPP knows because data has not been kind to a couple of his best ones. But evolution? Why just today, a published study showed that populations of a Rhododendron in Ireland had changed genetically relative to ancestral  populations in Spain, perhaps as an adaptation to local pollinators. And that's just in the first journal seen today. People like Rios are really quite pathetic because they don’t know what they don’t know, but still aren’t afraid to mouth off about it anyways.  

Please extend some sympathy

When spouse and F1 team up on you, you don't really stand a chance. In this case however they teamed up with the NSA or some other nefarious government agency to track my movements. You see, since retirement freed TPP from his academic demands and regular schedules, his where abouts have been far less certain, so in an effort to maintain communications with a this retired botanist, his significant others exercised a family plan and acquired a smart phone for him, his first ever cell phone of any sort. Now one point that they made was that field work is a "young" man's game, and that solo field work by a clumsy aging fool would be safer if it were possible to call for help. OK, a valid point. Hmm, does the new wine bar deliver? That could be handy. A colleague and collaborator upon learning of this acquisition said, "Let's see it." TPP replied, "Well, I don't have it with me." They then suggested that somehow the main point of owning such a device was being missed. When you have carried nothing in your pockets for years, this is quite a change.  But now comes the real question, what are the best apps for a botanical scientist and gardener? Surely some uber geek readers can make some suggestions otherwise TPP is facing a steep learning curve. Now about that chip implanted in the back of my neck; what's that for?    

February - tough month for gardeners and recent retirees

The most recent snow missed us (too bad), and now another cold front has settled upon the upper midwest. It looks grimly cold outside. This is a tough month for gardeners psychologically, and physically with limited exercise, but things are even worse for non-gardeners. As a recent retiree, people keep asking if TPP is OK, enjoying retirement, and keeping busy? Yes, yes, yes. There is a great thing about being a plant-loving, gardening botanist which is that you cannot actually find the demarcation between your work and personal life. So, when gardening is bleak and impossible, TPP turns to curation work and plants growing in the glass houses, and other things. And even now arrangements are being made for the purchase of a new Scaidopitys to replace the one that died from the summer drought in 2013. And of course, sort of conflicting with gardening, field research continues, although at this stage its just preparing for the field so seeds are being vernalized and seedlings have been brought out of cold storage. Lastly when you get stone cold bored, you can always blog, or cook, or do home improvement projects for you know who. So, no question about it, TPP finds plenty to keep himself busy and amused. An encounter with an unfortunate colleague demonstrated the problem some recent retirees have. He doesn't garden, cook, or do anything domestic; his research was expensive and the grants dried up, and students did all the work anyways, and someone else will be assigned the lab space. He said he found himself sitting at home watching TV and he realized how pathetic that was, but still hasn't found anything to keep himself amused, which is why he was hanging around the dept office talking with people. The lesson here is that everyone should garden; you always have something to do even if it's just reading seed/plant catalogs and browsing through nursery web sites waiting for February to pass.

Pale blue dot

This is an interesting juxtaposition with the previous blog. That tiny blue dot is Earth seen from Voyager 1 at a distance of just 6 billion kilometers, and it was taken 25 years ago. Let TPP say now that Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog is one of the most consistently interesting and informative science blogs out there. Please take the time to read the essay by Carl Sagan posted there because even though our residence is part of a galaxy not unlike M106, this tiny blue dot is all we got. Wish we would take better care of it and stop acting as a species as if it was ours to squander.

WOW! Galaxy M106 poses

This is a pretty mind-blowing image of galaxy M106, and you can download an even higher resolution image. This is pretty amazing stuff. Apparently some of this composite image, the red arms, result from a massive black hole spewing out energy & hot matter across, across, hmm, no idea the scale of things here, thousands of light years?  If you look at the back ground, you see all those other things, and they be other galaxies. Just wow! 

Valentine's day doings

It's cold today, and getting colder, and with a stiff wind blowing so the wind chill factor is significant. The weather news people never make it clear whether they are reporting the wind chill factor or the apparent temperature with the wind chill factored in. Is the apparent temperature -13F or is the wind chill factor -13 degrees, in which case the apparent temperature is -2 F (11 F -13 degrees). At times you wonder if they know the difference themselves. Saturday morning errands occupied the morning: replenish wine supplies, stock up on groceries, get light bulbs, a new light fixture, and who knows what at a big box. You should know that TPP got Mrs. Phactor some dark chocolate passion fruit cream truffles. Yes, they (passion fruit) are her favorite, a lasting artifact of our time living in the tropics. Now she is busy making a quite magnificent Italian cream cake for a dinner party this evening. The frosting uses cream cheese and butter, which is then topped with chopped pecans (and yes, TPP chopped them this being the critical component). Now that the kitchen painting is completed replacing, or rearranging, many items has commenced, and with each change a domino effect takes place resulting in other changes. However, it does look better, and fresh. Drinking a nice Rogue mocha porter while blogging, and it is highly recommended, drinking while blogging. Now that was one too many things: beer, blogging, and black cat in lap, and while you can do any two of these three, you cannot do all three at once. Cat left to lick some cream cheese frosting from the cook's finger. And that's just all that's going on.

Another weird garden

If things come in threes, then TPP hardly knows what kind of garden to expect next! Earlier this week it was an erotic garden in Thailand, now (via this article at Slate) a strange, weird sculpture garden in Britain called the Forbidden Corner. Some of this registers a full 8.0 on TPP's weird-stuffameter.  But hey, one of the sculptures may be of an ancestor, a knight brandishing an armored leg is on the family coat-of-arms of TPP's alter ego!  Nice bunch of people, really. At any rate good old Atlas Obscura continues to deliver the goods; it's a good place to poke around.