Penguins Got Feathers

I rather thought that they did, after all they do lay eggs, but it occurred to me I've never really paid much attention and they do rather look like seals, so I thought I'd check it out.

Yup, they do have feathers, the most densely packed of any bird, and each follicle has an individual muscle that can puff the feather out on land creating an insulating blanket of entrapped air; or each feather can be pulled down tightly to the body, creating an interlocking and water proof sheeting for swimming and diving. Pretty interesting appurtenances, these feathers.

And I learned that the penguin is a very old bird, at least 50 million years old, and very much then as they are now. That's about when birds first took to the sky...but as far as I know, no fossil of a "pre-peguin" has ever been found that could fly.

A penguin is a bird that never flew.

This is very interesting. It suggests feathers appeared initially, not for flight, but for insulation, a sort of funny fur. That means that penguins are mammals, because only mammals are warm blooded and only a warm blooded animal could profit from insulation. And it also means that feathers didn't happen because of flight, but flight happened because of feathers.

This may not be the tightest logic but it is interesting. It would fit with feathered dinosaurs that couldn't fly... But that would then mean that dinosaurs were warm blooded...at least the subset that developed feathers.

Pretty interesting. It means either that early birds were mammals, because they were warm blooded and thus could profit from insulating feathers; or that dinosaurs, some at least, having feathers, were warm blooded. So were all dinosaurs warm blooded, or were there two distinct lines of dinosaurs, or can the warm blooded develop from the cold blooded?

Speculations, speculations... And it occurs to me I don't know what the speculation is as to where warm blooded placental mammals came from in the first place, except that, right at the start, they were... v e r y s m a l l. Very small seems to explain origins. But then my own mice are very small, and they're darn near as complex as humans. Maybe mammals are actually warm blooded dinosaurs, they just don't lay eggs... Maybe we're all dinosaurs... I admit I'm not informed as to all of these speculations.





One other interesting thing: The Rat Squirrel (Diatomyidae), thought extinct for eleven million years, was recently found, well, not alive, but as a corpse in a meat market in Laos, meaning of course that it had died more recently than even a million years ago. It was initially classified as a new species, Laonastes aenigmamus, but following a search of the fossil record (by a second group of researchers) it was reclassified as the long extinct Diatomyidae.

Eleven million years dead and now up and kicking. That is pretty impressive, but this is the part of the article I want to quote:

Diatomyidae were squirrel-sized rodents that lived during the middle Tertiary period, 34 million to 11 million years ago, in southern Asia, central China and Japan. They also had highly characteristic molar teeth and jaw structure, which is how the researchers reclassified Laonastes.

A recently discovered fossil of Laonastes matched the "living" specimen in skull shape and overall size. The only difference is that the "living" specimen's teeth are slightly more pointed.

"It looks like possibly one of the things that's been changing in the family is improved cutting of vegetation," Dawson told LiveScience. "But over 11 million years, you'd expect some differences in the structures."

The emphasis is mine. In eleven million years the teeth got pointy. How exciting is this to those who believe that man as an evolving creature will at some time in a meaningful future be able directly to apprehend God?

Still Evolving After All These Years

The article in consideration is by Nicholas Wade, NYT, front page below the fold, March 7th, headlined: Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story; given to me by a friend who said it made him feel good to know we weren't just standing still. --It's hard to critique jello. It wobbles and has a flavor but no discernible structure. I see nothing solid in this article, I do see the wobble and it does have a certain flavor.

First I quote, completely, the entire portion of the article that may be solid science.

• "...researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped...." &
• "The selected genes turned out to be quite different from one racial group to another. Dr. Pritchard's test identified 206 regions of the genome that are under selection in the Yorubans, 185 regions in East Asians and 188 in Europeans." There were "few overlaps" between races.

That's it for the science. Everything else is story telling.

The methodology as I understand it is this: The genomic map is examined. Tiny spots of variation are detected that exist within otherwise homogenous populations. Because these areas are not universal they are considered of interest.--It is highly highly doubtful that these researchers have any precise idea of what genetic function these tiny variations have.

But you can do a lot with a variation if you've got the right mind set. The theory is this:

"...the test for selection rests on the fact that an advantages mutation is inherited.... If the improved gene spreads quickly, the DNA region that includes it will become less diverse across a population because so many people now carry the same sequence of DNA units at that location." The more quickly a gene spreads, the more essential its mechanism, and the mechanism is that "Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny."

So there you have it. For these variations to thrive, in effect those without them --700 in this study alone-- have to be killed off because they just can't compete for progeny. Genes affected include "skin color [&] hair texture". Does anybody believe a population is going to die out because of defective hair texture?

Now, the argument is made that these changes are "functional". That argument is made because otherwise the argument for natural selection is self-evidently silly. But as I've said, it's highly highly doubtful that the protein expression of any of these detected gene variations is precisely known, so the argument that they're significantly functional (all gene expression by definition is functional) is not based on evidence but on the initial presumption necessitating that they must be significant because otherwise there's no way they could spread rapidly through a population by natural selection.

I await more lab testing as to their specific functionality. It won't happen.

One interesting note. Some months back Dr. Bruce Lahn got all sorts of headlines when he reported that "evolutionary" changes in certain microcephaly genes explained the advent of agriculture and cities and perhaps of literature and high culture. "Dr. Prichard's test did not detect a signal of selection in Dr. Lahn's two genes..." Ah! So science is self-correcting... Well, not between gentlemen. As the quote continues "...but that may just reflect limitations of the test, he and Dr. Lahn said."

So there you have it. What ever evidence there might be out there for anything, by golly we are still evolving.

This is an area of study that should be interesting. unfortunately the only thing we know for sure that isn't evolving is the preconceptions of the people who write these papers.

A Blind Squirrel

And there are other reasons besides exhaustion, lack of time, and harassment that keep you from doing a blog entry, and that's lack of pleasure.

Hawthorne said he could do good work only when in a "grass growing mood", Michaelangelo complained to Pope Julius II that he couldn't do art if he were to be continually besieged by creditors; Dostoeveski envied Tolstoy the peace of Yasnayna Polyana. There is a best mood to write, and that's when you can simply enjoy it.

Now, you do what you have to do. Dostoevesky wrote The Gambler in 28 days to satisfy a creditor. It's a good book. I wrote business correspondence, because I had to, but I didn't write a blog entry because I didn't have to and because I certainly wasn't in the mood. If I had written I would have produced what I normally do.

Is the blog to be fun? Or is it to be something "I have to do?"

It is clear that no volume of work ever gets done apart from drive and discipline, but do I really want to make the blog a discipline? How severe a discipline? I go for my run each day. I never want to go, I do go, it's always fun once I get moving. Could the same happen with a blog? That to start would be unpleasant, but once started it would be fun?

Possibly.

But I see I'm giving this the wrong cast. I make it sound like a self indulgence: "I will do it if it makes me feel good." That's not it at all. The thing is, I don't feel good. This loss of my own time is driving me nuts, and the question becomes: "When you're being driven nuts, is it still possible to live a productive and a cheerful life?" This lack of cheer is the extraordinary thing. It's just not the way I live, yet it's the way I live now...

This is why the blog is important. It's a marker. I do it not as a discipline, but as an exuberance, and when I don't do it, that is, don't do it at all, something is wrong. It means I'm in a funk, and I really do not like being in a funk, but for weeks now there just has been no lightness in my mind. There's a fragility now in my three day existence. When anything disrupts my three days it disrupts my whole life, and that is a big deal. It destroys good cheer. It has got to change.

Years ago, when I was yet young, I confided in a friend certain matters of unhappiness concerning romance and asked him what I should do. He laughed, and said: "Howl at the moon." That was a wise statement. Unhappiness has to be as truly acknowledged as good fortune, and it has to be felt as deeply as joy. The personality incapable of grief is incapable of joy, because in each case the personality hides at a distance from life. It's pretend, pretending there's a middle course. There is not a middle course. As an intent "Moderation in all things" can be an ideal, but it can not possibly be a true life experience.

Still, there has to be some core unflappable, unchangeable, serene...? I have thought about this a lot and I find it difficult.

But ignoring now this huge problem, in the short course is it possible to achieve something of the same through something simple...like discipline? The habit of discipline doesn't make a man unflappable, but it certainly makes him embarrassed to not be disciplined, and so if to escape embarrassment he insists on discipline, why that's pretty darn close to unflappable. It helps. In general, routine is good, maintaining routine is better, because that's a moral discipline, and while I can't fully make this next argument I'm certain it's true: The discipline of daily discipline is core to good cheer. The body, mind and spirit simply find it so. It doesn't matter just why, it just is. And good cheer is an absolute necessity to a good life... And this concept needs more work. But I do know good cheer is aggressive, it's not timid, and it is very active...

I should note, when I'm with others, no one has ever noted this lack of good cheer. Two reasons: I believe it my obligation not to be a burden to others but to be a pleasure; and in fact, when I'm with others I enjoy them. After just a few minutes conversation I don't have to fake good cheer, I am cheerful. I'm having a great time...

Saint Jerome, as a hermit in the desert, intending to purify his soul, found his mind constantly taunted by images of naked women. When he went back to Rome and became a scholar he had no such problems, his mind was too busy with other things. When I'm up here I'm in a cave. I associate with no one. I have so little of my own time I want it all for myself, and I'm taunted by "images" of my lack of time, and burdened by my lack of good cheer.

Perhaps I've made a psychological mistake. At home I'm constantly aware I have no time because everything is an absorption in nonsense which is the same thing as no time at all, just time lost (you have to do this Alzheimer's gig before you can believe it). But it occurs to me that it's not study and thought that's lost in this loss of time, it's communication, it's fellowship. Maybe that's what my personality now craves, rather than just time for work?

This is a new thought... I'm with my folks for fours days, a virtually constant concentration. That's more people contact than has ever before been my habit. Four solid days of people is enough, for God's sake... But I do call it Dippyville. In fact I'm alone. The neurologically disrupted and atrophied brain of the Alzheimer's victim is not a real brain, not in terms of real communication. Bits of something like perception and thought can sometimes be spotted, but mostly it's nonsense. The personality seems "nuts", but in fact it's just disjointed bits of pretty much arbitrary chemical and electrical stimulation. It's a mind disjointed from itself, in no normal sense is it a recognizable personality. And this largely has been my society for two and a half years.

This is unnatural. It is not natural to stay in the desert attempting to not think about women, it is unnatural to stay in a cave and attempt to work when what the mind craves is talk...

Man, this is simple. I just don't have enough contact with plain old ordinary people, and this is why my personality has gone haywire. Muscles are toned by work, the personality is toned by talk. Without talk, the personality goes spastic, and finds stress simply in being conscious. Without talk the personality loses structure and so loses strength. Without talk a man is in solitary confinement. People in solitary confinement go nuts...sometimes. This is an insight, and man, is it simple: For two and a half years I've in effect been in solitary confinement, and I have been going a little nuts.

So... I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to surrender even more of my limited time; I'm going to seek out conversation. I bet I end up getting more work done, not less. This is an insight. Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds an acorn.
...........................

Things I should have written about but didn't:

• --The cartoons: More of them.
• -Dick Cheney: Impressive.
• --The bombing of the Shiite mosque and fear of civil war: Won't happen, there's too much violence there already and the people know what they're avoiding.
• --The ports deal: We need allies.
• --Islam? Islam has been around a long time and it's got to go. Allah's okay, there is in fact only one God, however differently He may be perceived, but that Muhammad guy is a disgrace. "...and Muhammad is his prophet". That's not the worship of God, but of one man. "Muhammad lied, people died", and have been dying for fourteen hundred years. I'll bet you half of all Moslems recognize this is a problem, but they're afraid to say anything. Muhammad was primitive, Islam is primitive. It's not going to change as long as Muhammad is more important than Allah.

More on this at some later time. This blog is turning strange, but I'm gong to follow it for a while and see where it goes.

Less Than Half, More Than A Third

I'm going to try an experiment...

Man, has it been a long time since my last post! I've got to check it out... --Jan 31, State of the Union. Wow, I didn't even remember doing that... I wonder if that's right? I'm only looking at some notes as I stand here writing at the kitchen counter. I'll check the blog later... I can't believe I've been busy in misery for seven weeks.

'Course, my life is only three days a week. I suppose it's possible to experience misery in three day bites and after three weeks of normal-person-time put those three bites together and have it seem only a little over a week, and after seven weeks have it seem only three... Which is what it seems to me; three weeks since my last post.

I imagine it's possible the mind can do this. If I slipped into a coma four days every week, and didn't know it, and in my alert state had no exterior markers by which I could know of those lost four days, why then, clearly, nine days would seem just a little over a week, because in fact my life, at least as time experienced, would have been just that, the duration of just over a week.

This is my life taking care of my ma. Of course I'm conscious, and in pain in fact those four days, and the time at times passes with unbearable slowness. But when it's done there's nothing. No time has passed, nothing has happened, no development, no involvement, no memories, just repetition again and again of the same same same nonsense. This is my ma, her conversation, her action, her mind. And you have to concentrate on it! At the end of a full hard day you've mastered a string of nonsense sounds and acts you knew the day before and the month before and the year before. And at the end of those four days those four days haven't happened because nothing can happen in nothing and you go back to your own place to resume your own life...and you're exhausted. Nothing is more exhausting than nothing, especially when you have to work at it. The mind is not made to have nothing in it. Nothing is the hardest work in the world. --I've done production line work, stacking boxes. I thought that got boring after a while... Man, it was wit and science and society compared to talking all day to a woman with Alzheimer's.

I overstate somewhat. I can make a clarification, dividing the matter into two aspects:
--Emotionally this is not a small deal. After all, you are watching your mother die. And she had been an extraordinary mother and woman, and now there's violence and stupidity and crude language... and sometimes touches of the old ma. It is emotional.
--But the mind dies. It just does. Because none of that topsy-turvy up-and-down emotion makes any sense. It's just chaos. Repetitive, repetitive chaos. Mentally it's as stimulating as watching water go down a toilet, and watching it and watching it and watching it go down the toilet all day long.

So this is my life now. Four days a week, mentally, simply don't exist and aren't remembered. Three days a week, mentally, is what I live --and I've spent those days fighting with the damn gas company!

What an utter pain. This is a property dispute. It's a lot like fighting with the government, you don't know just how much power they have to take your land, so there is stress... But my God, what a terrible way to spend the few days of mental life that I've got.

So anyway, this is why nothing has gone into the blog. There has been a considerable amount of "intellect" expended --if you want to call it that-- but nothing appropriate for the blog, and the three weeks I thought I had missed I now find are seven.

Just after Christmas I said I was going to change my blog concept somewhat. Instead of trying to pattern it after other blogs I read and respect I was gong to make it more like my notebook, just let it flow, and in time find out what it's all about, the only proviso being that the expression had to be publicly complete, that is, something somebody not knowing me could understand if they felt the interest and took the time, --and that of course was the other proviso, that it had to be something that could conceivably be of interest to someone else. No one could possibly care about my fight with the gas company, --so no entry.

Two things:
--The fight with the gas company could be a matter of general interest...if I could look at it with some disinterest and see some patterns and do some analysis,
--And it could be of some interest if I had a more fluid idea of my reader, and wasn't thinking in terms of formal presentation but yet wasn't merely talking to myself...

And thus my experiment. Some minutes ago I just started writing. But not to myself, and not to some formal concept of exposition, but still, to somebody...?

I think it's worked. I think what I've written is effective. It certainly says more than "Man, am I sick of going home", which is what I would have written if I were writing to myself. And I did get something down, which probably wouldn't have happened if I'd thought in more formal terms because when a man is formal he ought, really, to be dispositive (or so I feel) and one thing I do know for sure about my mind is that my mind is never dispositive.

So this "writing to somebody" seems to work. I just have no idea who that "somebody" is though. I have no image. This is strange.