One of my clients is an artist and she has been working on a series of bronze plaques that have engravings of various insects on them. On one of my recent visits to her, she showed me a book she had been looking at by an artist named Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, who has made hundreds of drawings of insects mutated by radiation in places like Chernobyl and other sites in Europe that were affected by that disaster. Earlier this week, coincidentally enough, Wired had a post about Hesse-Honegger that features a great slideshow of some of her excellent drawings. You can read more about her work here.

Last year, there were lots of reports about the huge losses of bee populations in the U.S. due to what is called “colony collapse disorder”. Sadly, things are only getting worse for bee keepers, as the latest survey shows that a full one-third of all managed bee colonies in the United States died over the winter, but only about 5% due to colony collapse disorder. Most of the die-off is being attributed to weather-related starvation and harsh conditions. You know, that “giant conspiracy of government and industry” called global climate change.

Last week, the NY Times had a story about the rise of Roundup-resistant weeds on farms that used Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant GM soybeans, and now there is this story from the Manchester (UK) Guardian about the emergence of huge insect infestations in China, where farmers have been using Monsanto’s GM varieties of cotton. On one hand, this ought to shut up all the people who continue to insist that evolution is “just a theory”, but on the other hand didn’t everybody SAY this was what would happen with GM crops about, oh, a BAJILLION TIMES?!?!

Frankly, I find this a little disturbing: Eight percent of the human genome comes from the insertion of genetic material from a virus. A kind of RNA virus called a bornavirus has the ability to replicate in the nuclei of cells, causing its DNA to be incorporated into the DNA of the cells of the host organism, and thus passed along from generation to generation, eventually evolving into part of the “normal” genome. The researchers who have been studying this think that the resulting genetic mutations might be at the core of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and Republicanism.

I loves me some whoopie pies, and I loves me some caramel. So I gotta think that this recipe for salted-caramel buttercream whoopie pies just can’t suck. What? You’re not up to speed on the wonderment that is salted caramel? Quel dommage! Salted caramel is presently high on the list of trendy foods that every trendy foodie needs to know. It’s pretty much what it sounds like — caramel with a little bit of salt added as it is nearly cooled so that the salt doesn’t dissolve into the caramel but remains crystallized so that as you eat the caramel you get little bursts of salty flavor. The saltiness both enhances and contrasts the sweetness of the caramel. Obviously, you have to use salt that comes in large crystals or flakes, such as Kosher salt, to get the effect. The first time I ever tried salted caramel, it was in a gift box of gourmet goodies from France that my friend Tony sent me for Christmas about ten years ago. At first, I was underwhelmed, but it grew on me so that by the time I was near the end of the box of wrapped caramels, I was hooked. And as far as whoopie pies go, that’s just part of growing up in Maine (the birthplace of the whoopie pie). The whoopie pie filling recipe just calls for a little regular table salt, which I think would defeat the purpose of trying to recreate the experience of salted caramels, so you might consider going Kosher for these.

See the pretty birdie? It’s a pugo, also called a Worcester’s buttonquail, and it used to live on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. I say “used to” because the pugo has been listed as unobserved by ornithologists for some time and was thought to be extinct. Then this little fellow turned up in a hunter’s catch. This photo, in fact, is the only known photo in existence of a live pugo; previously there were only naturalists’ drawings of the bird.

And so what do you expect happened to this literal rara avis, who could quite possibly be the very last individual of his entire species? Oh, yeah, you got it…they killed and ate it.

Writing in the Times of London, columnist Camilla Cavendish complains about eating habits in the U.K. revolving more and more around fast food and take-aways from the supermarket and the value of rediscovering “real” food (preferrably local) as well as the joys of preparing your own meals at home. It’s a common charge these days in Britain, which is catching up to us in our gluttonous obsession with fake food. Here, of course, people who call for eating less fast food and getting back to cooking at home are castigated as looney liberals or elitist snobs, but in the U.K. they’re not quite so far gone yet that these sort of arguments can still be had in earnest and capitalize on the support of celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay. If you read the link I had earlier this week about the tomato workers of Immokalee, Florida, you’d see why it’s worth paying attention to in this country as well.

One more reason cooking is good for you: The Economist cites research by Harvard professor Dr. Richard Wrangham, who offers fossil evidence that cooking food is the mechanism that allowed the early hominids to experience rapid and significant brain development, resulting in the evolution of those hominids into modern homo sapiens. Coquo, ergo sum, as it were. I’ll bet Dr. Wrangham buys stuff at Cardullo’s.
Ogden Nash famously wrote “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker”, so the obvious thing to do is combine them. Cybele the Candy Blogger recently posted about a pair of chocolate candies, one filled with whiskey and the other filled with orange-flavored Cointreau. Liqueur-filled chocolates are not big sellers in the American candy market, where we have to be thinking of the children all the time, but I love the taste of Cointreau over most other orange liqueurs and will have to set out looking for them sometime soon. Chambourd would be good, too, I imagine.
Unquestionably, Robert Parker has been the most influential person in the world of wine in the last half-century. But, as inevitably happens with figures who become so overwhelmingly dominant in their spheres, the time comes for backlash. Via Grace Lee, the Depraved Librarian, (who almost never posts anymore, sadly), here is a link to a story in Conde Nast Portfolio about the growing unwillingness among winemakers and wine merchants to subject their wines to his point-scale scoring. Much has been written about Parker’s notorious fondness for “big reds” and how his influence on American consumers has pressured a lot of winemakers, especially in France, to tinker with their formulas (Americian wineries tend to favor “big reds” in the first place, but between the change in tastes and the overall drop in sales for French wines, they’ve been compelled to be more reactive). Now there’s a reappreciation for subtler wines, and a desire among winemakers to not feel so much market pressure, and Step One for them is ignoring Parker.

The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.

“They still oppose it,” he says. “They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs. The issue isn’t about informing these people. They are informed.”

Time to go smack my head against the wall for a while.

There are valid reasons to have qualms about nanotechnology.  Many safety concerns remain unaddressed, and quite a bit is still not known about how the small scale of the chemical changes being made actually impacts the properties and behaviors of materials (although I did read recently that a new study shows that nanotubes are not toxic to mice).  But being opposed to this sort of research because your giant invisible grandpa wouldn’t like it is just plain stupid.

Our national tradition of anti-intellectualism is starting to get in the way of keeping things running.  Last week in Salon, Laura Miller wrote about Susan Jacoby’s new book “The Age Of American Unreason” and Jacoby’s claim that fundamentalist religion in the United States is directly responsible for what Jacoby calls “junk thought”, epitomized by the “intelligent design” debate.  Erich Vieth, posting at Dangerous Intersection, also writes about Jacoby, pointing out some factoids which should sound familiar to people reading here: 50% of Americans do not believe in evolution, 50% of Americans believe in ghosts, 15% of Americans do not know that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Stupidity and religious faith walk hand in hand.  We’ve got a Presidential candidate who will pray to end the budget deficit, schools that pray for good grades for their kids, people who believe in miracles, and a President who says God tells him to start wars.  I’ve had people ask me why I can’t just “live and let live” with regard to fundamentalists, and all I have to say is that it’s because these people imperil us all with their appalling combination of stupidity and willful ignorance.  I can’t write this sort of stuff off with a blithe “oh, ha ha, silly fundies” anymore because they are contributing directly to the rapid demise of not just social and political institutions but of enlightened civilization itself.  And they don’t care, because, in their world-view, they’re all going to fucking Disneyland when the Apocalypse comes.

You can’t make people who are willfully and deliberately opposed to knowledge and reason turn around and accept those things by sheer force of will.  I’ve mentioned Nietsche’s words before: “Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”  And consequently nothing will stop them, not even acceptance.  Maybe through resistance it might be possible to get the fence-sitters and the “live and let live” types to see the danger these people pose and convince them to take up the cause.

There are a number of species of animals which have evolved to use parasitic methods to rear their young. You’re probably the most familiar with the cuckoo, which notoriously lays its eggs in the nests of other birds so that their chicks will overpower the mother bird’s own chicks and get the benefit of the mother bird’s feeding. There are also several varieties of wasp, including the aptly-named cuckoo wasp, which use similar methods.

This article at Nature News (the public website of the scientific journal Nature) tells us that a species of butterfly called the Alcon Blue also uses brood parasitism: its larvae (caterpillars) work their way into the nests of wood ants and through the use of a chemical they excrete mimic the smell of the ants’ own larvae. The ants are thus tricked into thinking the caterpillars are their own offspring and feed and care for them until they pupate. But what’s unique about this symbiotic relationship is that the ants keep evolving new chemical scents that let them distinguish between the ant and butterfly larvae. And, in response, the butterflies counter-evolve to keep up with the changes, resulting in a sort of escalating evolution. Evolutionary biologists call this co-evolution the “Red Queen Theory”.

Unless, of course, you’re a creationist like Mike Huckabee, and believe that there is no evidence for evolution.

(Yes, I know chimps are not monkeys…stop being a party-pooper)

Meanwhile, a group of German researchers studying Barbary Macaques has learned that the reason female macaques scream during sex is that the males need the auditory cue in order to ejaculate. I will leave you to consider the evolutionary consequences on your own (nudge-nudge, wink-wink).

NEWS FLASH! Paleontologists in China have uncovered the remains of a huge raptor that helps sceintists bridge the evolutionary gap from dinosaurs to modern birds. Gigantoraptor erlianensis was 10-12 feet in height and weighed over 3000 pounds, and sported feathers and a beak.

NEWS FLASH! British researchers have discovered that plants have the ability to detect other plants of the same species in their area through “recognition” of chemical patterns in the surrounding soil. Furthermore, individual plants will respond to this information and change their absorption of nutrients in the soil to benefit the overall survival of their “siblings”.

NEWS FLASH! An independent consortium of research agencies studiyng the human genome has released a study which finds that so-called “junk DNA” is actually far more crucial to determining genetic traits than previously believed and may, in fact, be more important to the overall function of the genome than individual genes. These findings challenge much current thinking about human genetics, but at the same time also promise to yield a much better understanding of the biochemical process of life.

NEWS FLASH! A whopping 68 percent of registered Republican voters DO NOT BELIEVE any of the above. This recent Gallup/USA Today poll produced some truly disturbing results that show that in the overall population, 44% of Americans do not believe in evolution. When analyzed for religious affiliation, fundamentalist Protestants and so-called “moderate” Protestants reject modern science in favor of mythology and make-believe by a wide margin, with Catholics only slightly more likely to believe in science. Seculars and Jews were the most likely to believe in science and evolution.

Comments:
I am profoundly mortified by 44% of my fellow Americans. I was actually embarrassed for those Republican candidates when they stated publicly that they don’t believe in evolution. I mean, seriously, how do they face normal people after saying s**t like that with a straight face?
Posted by shelley [URL] on 06/15/07

Where are the normal people at?

These people are just stupid. It’s not even ignorance at this point. It’s just stupidity.

Pretty soon, they’ll be questioning whether electricity is real.
Posted by Sarah [URL] on 06/15/07

Researchers at Harvard published an article in the journal Science yesterday that says they’ve found similarities in the proteins of Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils to those of modern-day chickens.

Sounds like they’re gonna need a re-write for the ending of Jurassic Park IV…and a really big fryolator.