Daily Archives: May 14, 2017

An orchid found only in Madagascar. At one point, researchers could only find 12 specimens. Photograph: Alamy

It is a unique evolutionary hotspot home to thousands of plants found nowhere else on Earth. However, Madagascars special trees, palms and orchids which provide habitats and food for dozens of species of rare lemur and other animals are now facing catastrophic destruction caused by land clearances, climate change and spreading agriculture, scientists will warn this week.

Thousands of plant species could be lost to humanity in the near future according to a report, The State of the Worlds Plants, by scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and due to be published on Thursday.

Forests and plants across the world are suffering from the effects of climate change, spreading agriculture and uncontrolled land use, but in Madagascar which is a focus of particular attention in the report the danger is particularly intense. Habitat degradation is substantial and continuing, it says.

Madagascar is the worlds fourth-largest island, having become detached from other land masses in the Indian Ocean about 88 million years ago, and this long isolation has made it a unique evolution laboratory, unmatched anywhere on Earth.

Today it is home to 11,138 native plant species, and of these 83% are found nowhere else on the planet. Yet almost half of these unique species are now at risk of extinction. In fact, these extinctions have already been going on for some time, said Stuart Cable, leader of Kews research team in Madagascar. Dozens of species are known from old collections but have not been seen since. Extinction is happening all the time here. It is very scary.

One of the most seriously affected plant groups are palms, a species whose position is particularly precarious. There are 204 species of palm found in Madagascar, and 200 are unique to the island. More than half of these palm species are known from a single site or have fewer than 100 individuals in the wild.

The Madagascar government is trying, and has increased its protected areas for plants from 3% to around 10% of its total land in recent years, added Cable. But we are finding many very rare species of plants in single tiny fragments of forest. We cannot protect these. They are disappearing all over the place, all the time.

Another especially threatened set of Madagascar plants is its orchids. The island has almost 1,000 species of orchid, of which 90% are unique to the island, and 70% are threatened with extinction. On a wider scale, the islands western dry forest, with its strangely shaped baobab trees and grasslands that consist of dozens of grass species unique to Madagascar, have both lost more than half their land cover since the 1970s.

The problem is that this is a desperately poor country and most people live as subsistence farmers, said Cable. They slash down forests and burn the trees to make charcoal and to free land to grow crops or graze cattle. Unless we can stop that, there is no hope.

A further problem was highlighted by David Goyder, an expert based at Kew on plants in Africa and Madagascar. A lot of invasive plant species are arriving from Australia and these are much more flammable than native plants. When the temperatures go up, they are much more likely to catch fire and cause even more damage.

In addition, climate change is beginning to take its toll on the islands land use. The south is becoming much drier, and people are moving north into areas that were previously not affected by slash-and-burn farming, added Goyder. The result has been even more habitat loss.

One solution has been the establishment of seed banks, and Kew has helped to store seeds from around 2,400 plant species as insurance against extinction. However, we can only focus on drier areas this way, added Cable. Plants from humid zones, from rainforests, have bigger fruit and seeds with higher water content so we cannot freeze them in seed banks. The only option is to try to preserve the forest and that is not proving easy.

Not every story is one of gloom, however. The orchid Angraecum longicalcar was found a few years ago in a small patch of Madagascars central highlands, though researchers could find only 12 individual plants.

Yet Angraecum longicalcar has the biggest flower of any of Earths 25,000 species of orchid and also possesses a huge spur, a 40cm hollow tube with nectar at its furthest end. This sugary inducement is designed to tempt hungry hawkmoths, who will then pick up pollen from the orchid that they will pass to fertilise other plants. Only hawkmoths that have 40cm tongues can reach that nectar, however.

We have set up camera traps near flowers to observe a moth visiting but have never seen one, said Cable. We think they may have gone extinct.

Geographically isolated and unable to be pollinated, the orchid looked doomed until a project led by Kew researchers, and involving local schoolchildren, arranged for specimens of Angraecum longicalcar to be hand pollinated, and seedlings grown in greenhouses. Today there are around 150 specimens growing at several locations in Madagascar, with another 500 ready to be introduced.

It is a heartening story but it is just one plant among thousands that are threatened in Madagascar, said Cable. How we save the others is a much bigger challenge.

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Time is running out for Madagascar evolution's last, and greatest, laboratory - The Guardian

Summer of Love veteran Bob Mateo says he was disappointed, upon visiting the exhibition at the de Young Museum, to find tie-dye scarce. I noticed that the exhibition had not one photograph nor video showing anyone wearing anything tie-dyed.

Curator Jill DAlessandro responds that there is one tie-dye tank top (worn under a purple suede outfit) in the show, and two wall hangings. Long and short, she writes, people started playing with tie-dye mid-60s. Diggers taught it in their store in 1967. At first, it was used mostly for home furnishings.

It was really at Woodstock in 1969 where it gained mass appeal and was as popular in mainstream fashion as it was in the counterculture, she adds.

Early tie-dye was crude, said the curator, who would have liked to include some crushed velvet tie-dye in the show, but never found a piece that I felt was museum quality.

For summertime fun, Vegansaurus is inviting revelers to travel to Ireland, where The vegan food scene is exploding. ... Well be doing all sorts of fun, chill and amazing things like traipsing through castles, low-key hanging with donkeys at a donkey sanctuary, and foraging and cooking a meal with yummy plant geniuses. (I do think thats a typo and they meant genuses but maybe it takes a vegan to appreciate the genius in a genus.)

At Point Isabel, the waterfront dog park of El Cerrito, Nina Shoehalter watched while a woman admired a shaggy dog being walked by an elderly gentleman. Looking proud, he beamed, she said, and told his dog, Show us your trick, Pixie. Shed!

And Adda Dada was in line at the post office on 20th Avenue in San Francisco, when he overheard a woman he described as panicked: I need to mail this as fast as possible! Its the dogs birthday!

Event designer/artist Robert Fountain threw a luxurious party at Filoli the other day to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his business. The party was catered by Taste, and everything was perfect, I am told. Fountains a man of great taste, essential, of course, to his success.

In order to pay party tribute to his beloved French bulldogs, Doris and Duke, he had his cake baker, Beth Ann Goldberg of Studio Cakes in Menlo Park, create life-size cake replicas of the dogs. Audible gasps were heard, says an eyewitness, when Robert cut into Doris, revealing her red velvet insides.

A report from Native Son Carl Nolte about the Sunday, May 7, party at Reds Java House to honor Tom McGarvey, the original Red in the joints name, on his 90th birthday. McGarvey, whose hair is white nowadays, is one of the last users of the old Potrero Hill accent, which Nolte says is part of S.F. subculture. Its Potrera Hill, ya know, and doan forget it, kid.

Pride of the Sunset boxer Irish Pat Lawler attended, as did many other old-timers, says Nolte. Makes you realize that the old city is fading away faster than the smile on a Cheshire cats puss.

Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik

Public Eavesdropping

That was awesome, man. My life sucks.

Man coming out of Victoria Theater after watching Under an Arctic Sky, a documentary about surfing in Iceland, overheard by Mark Aronoff

Link:

Evolution of tie-dye and the Summer of Love - San Francisco Chronicle

Richard Prum spends most of his time studying birds. But this year, the award-winning evolutionary ornithologist has also produced an unexpected feminist manifesto.

In his new book, The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwins Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal WorldAnd Us, Prum, an evolutionary ornithologist at Yale, challenges the dominant narrative among evolutionary biologists: that beauty and sexual ornaments, such as a peacocks plumage, a deers antlers, or the size of a mans penis, evolve for adaptive reasons. Traditional theory holds that these ornaments are designed to display good genes, attract females, and help the species reproduce. It also tends to characterize the female orgasm as either a tool for genetic subterfuge, or an evolutionary mistake.

Per the adaptive theory, the male orgasm motivates men to seek out more opportunities for ejaculation, and subsequently, reproduction. The female orgasm, meanwhile, has remained something of a mystery. Some evolutionary biologists theorized that it evolved to literally upsuck the sperm of genetically superior men. (This would have let women raise their children with kind, reliable, not-so-hot partners, while passing on the superior genes of the men they mated with on the side.) The other dominant theory, championed by anthropologist Donald Symons in his 1979 book The Evolution of Human Sexuality, holds that the female orgasm, like male nipples, evolved as a byproduct of natural selection.

Prum posits a differentand coincidentally, far more appealingexplanation: that female sexual pleasure is in fact the central force behind the mating process. Basically, the female orgasm exists because it feels good, and women naturally sought out partners who could provide them with pleasurable feelings.

The aesthetic proposal is that human female sexual pleasure and orgasm have evolved because females have preferred to mate, and remate, with males who stimulated their own sexual pleasure, writes Prum, and that females have thereby also selected indirectly for those genetic variations that contributed to the expansion of their own pleasure. In other words, women had the ability to evaluate the experience of sex, and chose (naturally enough) to have sex with men who gave them orgasms. This led male mating behavior to coevolve with female desire. As male behavior evolved to meet womens preferences, so did womens capacity for sexual pleasure, becoming more complex, intense, and satisfying.

In this scenario, female orgasm is not an adaptation to accomplish any extrinsic, naturally selected function, writes Prum. Rather, female sexual pleasure and orgasm are the evolutionary consequences of female desire and choice, and they are ends unto themselves.

Prum puts forth several points to back up his theory about how pleasure influences evolution. For one thing, womens orgasms are highly variable. If they are the result of indirect sexual selection, rather than direct natural selection, it makes sense that female orgasms would be more inconsistent.

This theory could also explain why human copulation, which lasts several minutes on average, is significantly longer than gorillas and chimpanzees seconds-long sex. Copulating for a longer period of time doesnt increase the likelihood that the female will get pregnantbut humans may have evolved to have longer sexual encounters to enhance pleasure. The diversity of humans sex positions, compared to gorilla and chimpanzees consistent mounting from behind, also suggests that weve evolved toward the goal of servicing female clitoral stimulation and pleasure, says Prum.

Last, the pleasure theory completely aligns with the fact that female orgasm is unnecessary for procreation: The female orgasm might have evolved to be so expansive and prodigious because it has no evolved function, writes Prum. It is sexual pleasure for its own sake, which has evolved purely as a consequence of womens pursuit of pleasure. The same cannot be said of male orgasm, which is limited in magnitude, frequency, and duration because of the link between orgasm and ejaculation.

Perhaps the most astounding element of Prums feminist evolutionary theories is that hes not the first to think of them. In an under-cited passage of The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin, the revered father of evolutionary biology, proposed that sexual displays in animals evolve precisely because animals select for pretty thingsor, in his words through appreciation of the beautiful and through the exertion of a choice. This passageignored by centuries of biologists who fervently sidelined the influence of subjective pleasureis the driving force behind Prums narrative.

For too long, evolutionary biologists have ignored the subjective experience of pleasure. With any luck, Prums book will expose the ways in which patriarchal thinking shapes scientific researchand help the public to understand that evolution is the result of womens choice.

Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

Read the rest here:

A forgotten Darwinian theory upends everything biologists thought about the female orgasm - Quartz

Yankees outfielder, and golf fanatic, Aaron Hicks takes a swing at some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.

Q: What drives you? A: Probably just the love of the sport of baseball is probably what drives me. And also, I mean, I want to prove people wrong, that Im a good player.

Q: What is the biggest criticism youve heard that bothers you the most? A: I dont want to be considered I want to be a starter. I dont want to be a fourth outfielder. Thats kind of something that I dont like. Im better than a fourth outfielder.

Q: Whats the difference between the Aaron Hicks we see today and the one the Twins gave up on after the 2015 season? A: I dont know, Im just more confident. Im confident in my approach. From spring training I was trying to hit for power this year and being able to drive the baseball. When I was in Minnesota, I was just trying to have a good approach into making solid contact at the big league level and telling myself that I belong there.

Q: Are you on your way to reaching your personal goals for this season? A: I think Im off to a good start.

Q: And what were those goals? A: Theyre personal goals!

Q: Career goals? A: I just kind of want to be a player that people remember.

Q: Describe teammate Aaron Judge. A: He looks like a confident player.

Q: Whats it like watching him in batting practice? A: It kind of hurts your neck (laugh).

Q: Gary Sanchez. A: He wants you to run just so he can throw you out. Hes an amazing catcher.

Q: How good do you think this team is? A: This team is very good. Its a dangerous team. A combination of veteran players and young players that are hungry and that they want to win.

Q: This team is for real? A: Very for real.

Q: What is your on-field mentality? A: Im a relaxed player while Im playing. I mean, when something pumps me, Im gonna be excited, thats for sure.

Q: What is your favorite catch? A: Probably my rookie year [2013] against Adam Dunn, when I robbed him of a home run.

Q: Youve robbed a few guys of home runs. What was special about that one? A: That was my first one ever.

Q; How great a feeling is that? A: Its an amazing feeling! When you see the guys face that thought they had a homer and now they dont its awesome.

Q: You threw out Oaklands Danny Valencia out at home from left field with a record 105.5 mph bullet in April 2016. You threw 97 as a high school pitcher. Were colleges looking at you as a pitcher? A: Yeah, but I told everybody that I dont want to pitch.

Q: Why dont you like pitching? A: I dont know, I just dont enjoy it. I like playing every day.

Q: You were criticized publicly in Minnesota for not knowing who the opposing starting pitcher was. A: Yeah. Guys would tell me and Id go look at video of him.

Q: Did that bother you, being criticized publicly like that? A: Not really, because that just comes with knowing how to become a big leaguer.

Q: Who is one pitcher in history you would want to test your skills against? A: [Clayton] Kershaw.

Q: If you could pick the brain of one hitter in history A: Ted Williams.

Q: Describe Rod Carews influence. A: He helped me out a lot when I was in the minor leagues. He helped me out a lot with bunting.

Q: What specifically did he work on with you other than bunting? A: Being able to drive the ball to left-center.

Q: Describe Yankees fans. A: Passionate fans.

Q: Who are athletes in other sports you admire? A: I enjoyed Tiger Woods coming up, just because of the dominance and he kind of changed the way golf athletes perform nowadays with weightlifting, and hitting the ball very far away.

Q: Does it sadden you, all the troubles hes gone through? A: Of course. I just cant wait for him to get back to the old Tiger and back on the course.

Q: Do you think hell win another major one day? A: Yeah. I mean, he has to stay fully healthy though to be able to do it. I dont know, theres some really good young players (chuckle). Theyre not gonna make it easy.

Q: What is your favorite golf course? A: I dont know, I played Hudson the other day. Thats an amazing course.

Q: How so? A: Just the view of the Hudson River, and just the course layout was awesome. The greens were amazing.

Q: Is turning pro one day something youve thought about or dreamed about? A: Of course! Yeah, definitely. Id love to try to make it.

Q: But you want to play baseball for a long time first. A: Yes!

Q: Other than you, who is the best Yankees golfer? A: Tyler Clippard.

Q: How good is he? A: Hes like a scratch golfer.

Q: And what are you? A: Im like a 1.

Q: Who was your boyhood idol? A: Torii Hunter.

Q: What did the Urban Youth Academy mean to you? A: It just gave me the guidance that I needed to become a better baseball player.

Q: Three dinner guests? A: Martin Luther King, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson.

Q: Favorite movie? A: 61*.

Q: Favorite actor? A: Denzel Washington.

Q: Favorite actress? A: Scarlett Johansson.

Q: Favorite singer/entertainer? A: John Legend.

Q: Favorite meal? A: In-N-Out Burger.

Q: Flowers for your mother on Sunday? A: Flowers, of course.

Q: How would you describe your mother? A: She loves her kids. Shes someone that will always be there for them.

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Aaron Hicks on his evolution, becoming golf pro and why he's not a 4th OF - New York Post

The gifted philosopher and theologian Stephen H. Webb (1961-2016) appeared on our radar screen all too briefly before his very untimely passing. Please see my remembrance of him here. Our old friend and colleague Casey Luskin interviewed Dr. Webb for the ID the Future podcast, and Im glad to offer a pair of those interviews that have been newly reposted this week in Webbs honor.

Find them here:

If the term occasionalism doesnt ring a bell for you, its one of the more bizarre accusations that have been aimed at the ID movement by people smart enough to know better.

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago, Professor Webb taught at Wabash College where he wrote, among other books, The Dome of Eden: A New Solution to the Problem of Creation and Evolution. He spoke with Casey about his experience of academic persecution after seeking to teach a course on evolutionary theories of the origin of religion. Webb observes the irony that when it comes to religion, Darwinists are of course free to apply their corrosive analysis, but when others turn a critical gaze on Darwinian thinking, that is considered out of bounds.

Webb describes his own origins as a Darwin skeptic with interests in intelligent design. He traces his initial explorations to a recognition of the brittle defensiveness that is a familiar aspect of Darwinian apologetics. He noticed the strange way that otherwise thoughtful and independent scholars turned into servile lackeys when the subject of evolution came up.

Enjoy these two fascinating conversations between Casey Luskin and Stephen Webb.

Photo: Stephen Webb, via YouTube.

Here is the original post:

In Remembrance: Conversations with Stephen Webb on Evolution and Intelligent Design - Discovery Institute

The letter dated May 1, 2017, by Douglas K. Turner titled What is, and isnt science states that Hindus, like others, bow to the faith of evolution. That simply is incorrect.

Hindus (Like Buddhists and Jains) have believed in spiritual, mental and physical evolution since ages. Various reincarnations of Vishnu roughly follow modern evolution. In the epic Ramayana, Rama takes the help of talking apes (Vanaras) to defeat evil ruler Ravana. A survey conducted by PEW Forum in 2007 showed that almost 80 percent of Hindus believe in evolution.

Monier-Williams wrote in 1875 Hindus were Darwinians centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists centuries before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the Huxleys of our time and before any word like evolution existed.

Hindus believe that the Earth is several billion years old and so is evolution. Ardha-Kalpa (half the time period between creation and destruction) is equal to 4.32 billion years which approximates the age of the Earth. Buddhists have always believed in billions of galaxies and the size of the atom given in Lalitvistara (200 BC) is fairly close to modern measurement. Jains believe that consciousness evolves as we grow.

In Hinduism, you will find monotheists, polytheists and atheists and therefore one can find various flavors of their thoughts. Rig Veda 10.129 states that nobody knows when creation started because even gods were created after the first creation, and perhaps he who sits in the highest heaven does not know.

Vir V.Gupta

Springfield

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Letter: Spiritual, mental and physical evolution - The State Journal-Register