27 May 2013

The Blog of Barely Imagined Beings


Welcome to the blog of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings.  I posted more than a thousand entries between February 2008 and February 2013 relating to every animal and theme explored in the book, and more.   See a summary of highlights in the right hand column, and the blog archive further down below the quotations from Bertrand Russell to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Update: Recent reviews here

Image: Maratus volans, the Peacock spider

22 May 2013

Conclusion


Conclusion

page 377: mappa mundi. As Caleb Scharf writes in Gravity's Engines, “Our current map of the known universe contains a vast amount of information, yet it is barely a scrap of parchment compared to the full atlas.”

page 377: a gardener wants to...see into the future. “The trick is to live in the moment and in the future at the same time,” says Todd May. (We need to believe in life before death.)

page 379: never...finished. In the preface to his Dictionary (1755), Samuel Johnson wrote that:
one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.
page 378: predict with precision. Albert Hirschman coined the term possibilism -- to draw attention to “the discovery of paths, however narrow, leading to an outcome that appears to be foreclosed on the basis of probabilistic reasoning alone.”

page 379: fully human. David Deutsch says people or entities that are capable of creating new explanations are, ultimately, the most important thing in the universe. I would say that one of the most important things about humans is that we find or create meaning and value. 

page 379: Regarding Occupy Martin Sandbu writes:
...to the frustration of critics – even sympathetic ones – the movement never stated what it was for...[but] one can be indignant and constructive at the same time.

Image of Milky Way Over Ghost Panel via APOD

This is the twenty-ninth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication. 

21 May 2013

The 30 tonne primate



Chapter 27: Zebrafish

page 370: what we may...learn. Recent advances include visualizations of the activity of nearly every cell in the larval zebrafish brain and of live memory retrieval in the whole [adult] brain.

page 372: immortalist scenario. Todd May observes:
If you start imagining us as fundamentally different from who we are, then the question is, are we really talking about us anymore, or are we talking about creatures that share certain things with us but aren’t really us in the most significant ways?
page 373: engineer...[micro-organisms], animals and plants. Scientists have created a transistor-like biological device. Dr Frankenstein needs his own Hippocratic oath, writes Luba Ostashevsky.

page 373: rate and manner of consumption. The total energy usage of an average person in the U.S., Canada, the Eurozone or Japan is equivalent to the biological metabolic rate of a hypothetical 30-ton primate.

page 373: wiser with...technology, not subservient. Evgeny Mozorov quotes Michel Serres: “Neither information nor a drug fix ever gives any happiness when you have it, but they will make you miserable when you don’t.” Michael Lewis quips “The dystopia in which computers...come to rule mankind has actually happened in the world of finance.”  John Lanchester quotes T J Clark: “the essence of modernity, from the scripture-reading spice merchant to the Harvard iPod banker sweating in the gym, is a new kind of isolate obedient ‘individual’ with technical support to match.’ ” On the augmented awareness made possible by information technology, Tom Chatfield writes:
There’s a great deal of emphasis on how my information-poor perceptions might be enhanced by integration with the internet — and how all manner of errors and inefficiencies will be ironed out along the way. Yet there’s little sense of how my ability to think my own thoughts, explore my own feelings or enjoy my own space will be similarly served, enhanced or encouraged. 
page 374: a generous view of human nature. The sentiment is from Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature (1741). See also An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751):
[It] cannot be disputed that there is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove, kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent. Let these generous sentiments be supposed ever so weak; let them be insufficient to move even a hand or finger of our body; they must still direct the determinations of our mind, and where every thing else is equal, produce a cool preference of what is useful and serviceable to mankind, above what is pernicious and dangerous.
page 374: play. Here is an elephant playing. See Zeal for play may have propelled human evolution.

page 376: continuous revelation.  Here's David Hinton on Lao Tzu:
Cosmos is divided into two fundamental elements: Absence or Nonbeing and Presence or Being. Presence is simply the empirical universe, which the ancients described as the ten thousand living things in constant transformation; and Absence is the generative void from which this every changing realm of Presence perpetually emerges, although it should not be conceived in a spatial sense, as if there were a pool of emptiness somewhere in the universe. Within this framework, Tao (Way) can be understood as the generative process through which the ten thousand things appear out of Absence and disappear back into it...

This is the twenty-eighth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

20 May 2013

Yeti crab

Harlequin shrimp (page 357). Heaps of Yeti crabs here

Chapter 26: Yeti Crab

NPR's On Point featured this chapter as an excerpt on the page for their show, Fantastic Creatures.

 page 355: An introduction to deep sea vents here.  The deepest discovered so far is 5000 metres down in the Cayman trough.

page 359: robot...nurturance...killer app.  See, for example, When are we going to learn to trust robots?, Robot warriors: Lethal machines coming of ageKiller robots must be stopped, say campaigners and Wildlife that isn't alive.

page 362: Panspermia. Two geneticists have applied Moore's Law to life instead of computers, and says their data suggests that life could have preceded the earth's formation.

page 362 the building blocks of life...already present in space. These may have included pyrophosphite, a likely precursor for ATP. A "black rain" made from pulverised comets may have [also] seeded Jupiter's moons, including Europa, with the raw ingredients for life.


This is the twenty-seventh in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

17 May 2013

Page-Turner

In the Page-Turner blog of The New Yorker James Guida says that The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
is about earth’s adventure as a whole...much of the news is abysmally sad. Should one be completely frank and insistent about this great tragedy, keep stressing the dimensions of what is being undone? Or will bright facts about the animal world, working indirectly, better aid the cause of action? Wisely, Henderson combines approaches. In that regard, he’s a bit like the honey badger [which] flourishes due to its insane strength and tenacity but also thanks to a fellow hive-seeking partner: a small bird, who lightly leads the way.

16 May 2013

Strange world

Sea pig

Chapter 25: Xenophyophore

page 343: undersea mountains, abyssal plains. Deeper still are trenches, which teem with microscopic life forms.

page 344: seabed sediment also holds radioactive iron ejected by a supernova 2.2 million years ago and preserved in the fossilized remains of bacteria.

page 344:  Dali painting. See image above.

page 349: Julian Barbour [suggests] time does not flow like a stream.  Lee Smolin says we need a new starting point for explaining the directionality of time. A friendly critic responds here.

page 350: perhaps...it is matter itself that is truly astonishing.  John Gray writes:
Even if there are such things as laws of nature, there's no reason to think they must be accessible to the human mind. What science suggests is the opposite. If our minds evolved by natural selection as Darwin proposed, shaped more by a struggle for survival than by any search for truth, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever fully understand the universe. Almost certainly the world is a far stranger place than humans can possibly imagine.

This is the twenty-sixth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

15 May 2013

Owl at dusk

Horned owl
Chapter 24: Xenoglaux 

page 334: tipping point.  Some scientists say an Arctic thaw may be the first in a cascade.  "Perhaps the worst news of all is that there may be no warning of impending flips." But there is also push-back against the idea.

page 335: sixth extinction.  Today's extinctions, say some scientists, may be the result of damage humans did in the early 20th century; our own extinction legacy could ultimately be far worse.   There has been excitement this year about the possibilities of de-extinction (also here). Cooler heads point to ecological and other challenges.

page 336: the consequences of climate changes for species survival, abundance, distribution are hard to predict, and likely to be complex and variable. A short article on birds is here. Generally, about one third of animal species are predicted to be affected. And disruption can travel the other way:  "wiping out top predators like lions, wolves and sharks is tragic, bad for ecosystems – and can make climate change worse."

page 337: owls fascinate humans. A recent science-based reason being the discovery of how they are able to turn their heads through 270 degrees.

page 337: horned owl. According to David Abram, the great horned owl has long been regarded as the preeminent prophet or seer among birds.

page 339: protect and restore the beautiful...and create new possibilities for future flourishing.  A shift from trying to conserve individual species to protecting ecosystems as a whole (and making some hard choices about which to protect) is underway. Scientific paper here, press report here. about See also Feral by George Monbiot.


This is the twenty-fifth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

14 May 2013

On Point online


I talked to Tom Ashbrook for On Point on NPR today. The talk is available to listen again here.

I referred to a poem by Les Murray. It's about cuttlefish (not squid):
Spacefarers past living planetfall
on our ever-dive in bloom crystal:
when about our self kin selves appear,
slowing, rubber to pulp, we slack from spear,
flower anemone, re-clasp and hang, welling
while the design of play is jelling,

then enfolding space, jet
every way to posit some essential set
of life-streaks in the placeless,
or we commune parallel, rouge to cerulean
as odd proposals of shape and zip floresce
– till jig-maw apparition
spurts us apart into vague as our colours shrink,
leaving, of our culture, an ectoplasm of ink.

Floating in a most peculiar way


Chapter 23: Waterbear

page 322 A greater and more durable [human] presence in space. John Fallows looks at a future mining the Moon and living on Mars. John Quiggin has fun with the arithmetic of interstellar travel.

page 322: Tardigrades in space. Not only the adults but waterbear eggs can survive in space.

page 325: no [animal] apart from Waterbears.  But scientists have found a way of giving insects a coat of armour that may allow them to survive the vacuum of space

page 325: life elsewhere in the solar system.  And other solar systems? Well, not only do we live on an unusual planet but we also live in an unusual solar system.

See also Stranger things in heaven and earth.

Hurricane at Saturn's north pole
This is the twenty-fourth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

13 May 2013

Conjuring with rainbow names and handfuls of sea-spray

Mnemiopsis leidyi

Chapter 22: Venus's Girdle

page 316: [Cteonophore] lineage is uncertain. A major for reason for this is that their DNA appears to be evolving extremely fast.

page 316 (marginal note): bioluminescent glow. A readable introduction to remarkable  bioluminescent creatures in the ocean here.  Another good resource here.

page 319: animal pleasure is not something from which the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has shied away. In the case of bonobos “the novelty and innovation never seems to end”:
“Observations...indicate that there [is] no tendency toward ‘normalization’ of position or time of copulation.” Savage-Rumbaugh also chronicles the various sounds that the bonobos make while having sex. Chimps make one sound. The bonobos have a variety of cries (naturally), including one known as the “long modulated squeal.” With as much sobriety as Savage-Rumbaugh can muster, she writes, “It changes pitch and phonetic aspect at least once, sometimes twice, and is rather poorly represented as ‘we ee e.’ ”

This is the twenty-third in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

10 May 2013

Unicorns

Rhinoceros beetle

Chapter 21: Unicorn

page 307: Unicorn's horn was the Viagra of its day. Rhino horn is the "natural" Viagra of ours. In February it was reported that a rhinoceros has been killed every 11 minutes since the beginning of the year. In April the last 15 rhinos in a Mozambique park were killed by poachers.

 


page 308: An informative post on narwhals today at Why Evolution is True.



page 308: Sawfishes are arguably the most threatened family of marine fishes in the world. See: Exaltation to extinction.



page 311: humans...kill many tens of millions of sharks every year.  See this graphic.

page 311: obligate metaphorists. Robert Sapolsky elborates here


This is the twenty-second in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

9 May 2013

Stranger things in heaven and earth

Petroglyphs etched into desert varnish, Utah

I've written about Weird Life by David Toomey for the May edition of The Literary Review, and have put a version online here.

Two posts on this blog in March touch on Toomey's work and some of the issues it raises. They are Cloud beings and In the long term.

Lee Billings invites us to broaden our ideas of what Earth-like planets could be like.

Thorny devil

Escher meets Ouroboros. Armadillo girdled lizard, southern Africa
Chapter 20: Thorny Devil

Page 297: analogous systems...in other arid places. Old growth forest in Tennessee is not exactly arid, but for some creatures there moisture is hard to find. In The Forest Unseen, David George Haskell notes:
Dehydration is the [lone star] tick's main foe during their quests [for blood]. Ticks sit in exposed locations for days, even weeks, waiting their hosts. The wind whisks away moisture, and the sun bakes their small leathery bodies. Wandering off in search of a drink would interrupt the quest and, in many habitats, there is no water to be found. So, ticks have evolved the ability to drink water from air. They secrete a special saliva into a grove near the mouth and, like the silica gel that we use to dry our electronic gadgets, their saliva draws water out of the air, the ticks then swallow the saliva, rehydrating themselves and continuing the quest.

This is the twenty-first in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

8 May 2013

Librarians go wild

The verdict in the May 15 edition of Library Journal:
This readable volume...will appeal to the serious reader with broad interests in science, mythology, folklore, and speculation on questions of the human condition.

Peony

Peony had arthritis and was very old, so she could barely move. She would try to climb into a climbing frame where a bunch of chimps were sitting and grooming each other. She wanted to join them, but she could barely get in there. The younger females would walk up to her, put their hands on her behind, and start pushing until she was up there with the rest. We’ve also seen cases where she started walking towards a water faucet, but, since it’s a very large enclosure and she walked with so much difficulty, a younger female would run ahead of her, take water in her own mouth, walk back to Peony, and then spit the water into her mouth so she wouldn’t need to walk all the way to the faucet. 
-- Frans de Waal

Sea butterfly


Chapter 19: Sea butterfly

page 285: the oceans have absorbed...much of the additional heat. See Missing heat found in oceans, global warming has accelerated in past 15 years

page 285: change in ocean acidity.  A recent report here. And Julia Whitty summarizes ten key findings.

page 286: in addition to cyanobacteria, most known species of bacterial plankton can be found everywhere

page 287: diatoms...years of study and appreciation.  Mary E. Harrington wrote a poem to Gonyaulax polyedra.

page 293: [apparent] reduction in the worldwide primary productivity of phytoplankton. Further research includes an ambitious new global survey.

page 293: plastic.  Plastic fragments are killing sperm whales and other species.

Image from Planktonology.

P.S. 14 May: Amazing sea butterflies are the ocean's canary in a coal mine.


This is the twentieth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

7 May 2013

Two modes of existence


An additional note for chapter 13:

page 204: two states of...trying to live utterly in the moment, and...trying to live in memory of reflection. Julian Baggini points out that Søren Kierkegaard articulated something like this:
Human beings are caught...between two modes or ‘spheres’ of existence. The ‘aesthetic’ is the world of immediacy, of here and now. The ‘ethical’ is the transcendent, eternal world. We can’t live in both,but neither fulfils all our needs since ‘the self is composed of infinitude and finitude’, a perhaps hyperbolic way of saying that we exist across time, in the past and future, but we are also inescapably trapped in the present moment.
(Earlier notes here and here)

The burning archangels under the sea

Chapter 18: Right whale



page 270: Balaenidae.   The evolution of baleen whales may be linked to the freezing of Antarctica from about 34 million years ago 

page 271: Bowheads...have the biggest mouths on the planet. And inside the mouth is a 4 metre (12ft) brain-cooling penis-ish thing, which no one noticed until 2012 or 2013.

page 278: reduced noise. See recent news story Whale benefit from action on ocean noise.

P.S. a "world first" account of a Orcas attacking Sperm whales here.

This is the nineteenth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

6 May 2013

Quetzalcoatlus

'Let us deliver mankind from the ancient, universal tyranny...of gravity!'
Chapter 17: Quetzalcoatlus

Choosing an animal beginning with Q was hard. The quokka would have been a happy choice.

page 248: the Great bustard may be heavy but ever year it migrates 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles).

page 249: California condors were brought to the brink of extinction, in part, because of lead poisoning, and lead poisoning remains a significant threat today. Recent research suggests that condors in California remain chronically exposed to harmful levels of lead.

page 256: Louise at Lulu's bookshelf notes that Objective Ministries is reported to be a fake. When I researched and wrote this chapter in 2008/9 I wasn't sure, and wrote tongue in cheek. In line with Poe's law, there are real beliefs which look equally absurd. See for example here and here.

page 259: balloonist. Seamus Perry reviews Richard Holmes's delightful history.

This is the eighteenth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.

3 May 2013

Pufferfish

Ocean sunfish

Chapter 16: Pufferfish 

page 242: appetite...out of control: especially when food is painstakingly engineered to addict. "Salt+Fat²/Satisfying crunch + Pleasing mouth feel = A food designed to addict."

page 243: unholy and savage. Truth as metaphor here.  In Immoderate Greatness William Ophuls quotes Seneca:
A bull contents himself with one meadow, and a forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other creatures.

P.S. 6 May George Monbiot riffs on the pathology of the super rich and the damage it does.


This is the seventeenth in a new series of notes and comments on chapters in The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. It appears around the time of the US publication, and adds to an earlier series that appeared around UK publication.