Who Needs Medieval Ritualists Anyhow?

Hyphal tip to Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars for this heartwarming story of the true importance of love to the hierarchy of the Catholic church.

A paraplegic Italian man and his fiancée were denied a church wedding by a bishop because the man's injury also left him impotent. The denial came in spite of the fact that the bride-to-be was aware of this aspect of his condition and declared that she was alright with it.

Italian Bishop Refuses Wedding to Impotent Man
Deutsche Welle

An Italian bishop has denied a young paraplegic a church wedding because he is impotent, media in Rome have reported.

Although the man's fiancée is aware of the problem, a spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo, central Italy, told SkyTG24 television that "no bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of impotence as it is a motive for annulment."

The 26-year-old groom has been paraplegic since he was involved in a car accident. He and his fiancée were married in a civil ceremony on Saturday, June 7, in Viterbo, news agency AFP reported.

Attending the ceremony was their parish curate, who was banned from marrying the couple in church.

First off, I wish this couple all the hapiness they can get their hands on. The man involved certainly deserves it. The woman involved must truly love the guy, willing as she is to forgo certain physical aspects of their relationship.

Who needs these dress-wearing medieval ritualists, anyhow? All they're ultimately good for is propagating superstitions and nonsense that at least some of the world has outgrown including, apparently, this couple. The decision by this moon-faced assassin of joy in a cassock has nothing to do with annulment. Both parties to the marriage are aware of their situation and have given their consent. This garbage about annulment is an excuse made in an attempt to cover up the true nature of this organized bastion of sorcery.

Here's the real deal: it's about reproduction. It's no secret that the Catholic church teaches that sex is all about procreation. The reason this bishop booted a clearly committed couple is that it's unlikely that they'll start popping out new parishioners. It's the same reason that the church opposes contraception, same-sex marriage, masturbation, or anything else that feels good sexually but doesn't result in somebody going through a few weeks of morning sickness.

You have to understand, the church is obsessed with sex. It's just about the most dangerous thing in the world to them. When you have control over people's sexuality you literally have them grappled by the short hairs. It's like having control of their food supply. Were the church to ever relinquish their pubic grasp they'd ultimately be giving up much more, or so they believe. No sex outside of marriage, no sex inside of marriage if it can't result in offspring, no marriage at all for priests... I guess if it doesn't involve a crosier, an altar boy and the word "daddy," it just doesn't fly. After all, it's not really sex if it's not a man and a woman having it, right?

Screw them... or better yet, don't. I hope the groom told the bishop that he could go sit on his pointy hat and the bride came up with a fine suggestion of a place in which the loveless, merciless, dried-up old fart could go store his crosier so as to safeguard it against fading in the light of day. Hasn't this man, who has clearly found a good-hearted and giving partner, had enough pain in his life without this additional humiliating kick in the crotch? The bishop should be restricted to going on demon-hunting expeditions with Gabriele Amorth.

These wizened clerics wield the fear of divine retribution like a cudgel over the credulous. But you know what? It's bogeyman stories, and that's all it is. Nobody goes to hell and nobody goes to heaven. The closest we get is right here, right now. We have the power within our all-too-fallible grasp to make this world into one or the other.

At least we know now which extreme Bishop Chiarinelli favors. I hope he takes his stone-cold heart and all those within that dusty Romanesque autocratic citadel of mythology that countenance his pronouncement and arrives at the destination he seeks in his own life. The world need Chiarinelli like it needs a good manufacturer of buggy whips.

You know, he'll probably try to get this couple excommunicated for violating his version of the laws of god and nature. And so what? No more ooga-booga meals of human flesh and blood for them! Big deal. I'll send them my ma-po tofu recipe as a wedding gift. I'm glad they're ignoring the bishop's obsessive edict that sex is more important than love.

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Cooking with Science: Ma-Po Tofu

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert A. Heinlein
Time Enough for Love, 1973

It's Saturday and I'm being domestic today.

I've written before about LL and my approaches to cooking. LL is an artist; she never really measures anything and uses recipes as a vague guide at most. I, on the other hand, am a scientist. I experiment, make observations, and when I've hit on the perfect combination of ingredients I reproduce the result by repeating the process the same time, every time. I don't follow recipes so much as protocols.

In this vein, I have been conducting experiments these past couple of months to produce the perfect ma-po tofu. I am pleased to say that I feel that I have done it, and I'm going to place my protocol directly into the public domain. I would consider publishing in a refereed journal, but this is far too important a milestone to be locked away in some limited-access publication that would be read only by specialist ma-po tofuologists.

---

Reagents:
Ground pork (4 oz.)
Firm tofu (12 oz., cut into .5" cubes)
Frozen peas (1 cup) don't use canned; they can turn into green mush!
Oyster mushrooms, fresh (8 oz., chopped coarsely)
Chicken broth (1/2 cup)
Green onions (3, sliced) do not substitute regular onions!
Garlic (3 cloves, minced)
Ginger, fresh (3/4 tsp., minced) do not substitute dried ginger!
Rice vinegar (2 tbsp.)
Soy sauce (2 tbsp.)
Black bean sauce (3/4 tbsp.)
Chili paste (3/8 tbsp.)
Ground red pepper (1 tsp.)
Cornstarch (1 tsp., dry)
Cornstarch (1 tbsp. dissolved in 1.5 tbsp. water)

Procedure:
Combine ground pork, rice vinegar and dry corn starch in a bowl. Cover and set aside.

Mix soy sauce, black bean sauce, chili paste, ground red pepper, ginger, and garlic in another bowl.

In a wok, heat 1 tbsp. of canola oil over medium-high heat. Add ground pork mixture and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes. Add green onions and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes until the pork is evenly cooked.

Add ingredients from the second bowl. Continue cooking for another 2 minutes.

Add tofu, peas and oyster mushrooms. Stir and cook for 2 minutes taking care not to mash the tofu, then add chicken broth.

When the mixture comes to a constant boil (e.g., when you stir it, it comes back to a boil immediately) add the cornstarch dissolved in water. Stir thoroughly but don't mash the tofu (best way: insert a wooden spoon at the edge of the mixture, then flip it over again and again). Continue cooking for 5 minutes; sauce will thicken appreciably.

Remove from heat and allow to stand for 10 minutes to cool. Put it into a bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

When ready to serve over rice, heat until piping hot (NOT IN A MICROWAVE OVEN). The time in the refrigerator allows the flavors to blend.

Yield: 4-6 servings, depending on how much you eat. Best served over rice.

---

If you reproduce this protocol exactly, you'll have the best ma-po tofu ever. It's science. Well, almost. Damned fine dinner, though.

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Be Careful Around Compost: Death in UK Linked to Decay-Loving Fungus

I want to preface this with a disclaimer. What follows may be a bit scary for people who compost as part of their gardening, but it's nothing to get panicked about. It's a call for a bit of caution regarding something about which people may not know.

The death of a gardener in the UK was caused by inhalation of spores from the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, an ascomycete mold that is commonly found in small quantities in compost. Readers may have heard about other members of the genus Aspergillus in recent memory; this is the same group of molds that contains species which produce aflatoxin and have been found on grain products in the past.

In this case, however, the gardener who died was not killed by aflatoxin but by infection with the mold itself. This happened because he inhaled an unusually large quantity of spores while working with compost. The spores germinated in his lungs and caused an infection capable of killing an otherwise healthy (but see below) 47-year old man.

Fungal exposure and gardening
National Health Service, UK

...a case of a 47-year-old man who "went to hospital with chest pains just a day after opening a bag of rotting leaves". The man died three days later from aspergillosis, which he contracted after inhaling spores from a fungus that grows on dead leaves (Aspergillus fumigatus)...

A 47-year-old man – a welder by trade – was admitted with a history of cough, pleuritic chest pain (a sharp pain worsened by breathing, coughing and movement), increasing shortness of breath, fever and myalgia (muscle aches). He had previously been in good health, although he was a smoker. Other features at presentation included high fever, high breathing rate, irregular chest X-rays, high white blood cell count and crackling sounds in the lung while breathing. The initial assumption was that he had pneumonia, so he was put on antibiotics while further investigations took place.

After 24 hours, the patient was transferred to intensive care because of extreme shortness of breath. His condition worsened, and he showed signs of kidney distress and sepsis (high heart rate, low blood pressure and fever in response to infection throughout the body). The clinicians found that a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus grew from the man's saliva samples...

Clinicians established from his partner that the symptoms started less than 24 hours after he spread rotting tree and plant mulch from a sack around the garden. Clouds of dust had "engulfed him"...

The clinicians conclude that the patient experienced an acute invasive pulmonary aspergillosis infection. Although this infection would normally be seen only in immunocompromised patients, they say that "smoking and welding could have damaged his lungs and increased his susceptibility to infection". The clinicians also say that "because he died so quickly", they cannot rule out an undiagnosed immunodeficiency.

The clinicians add that although acute aspergillosis following contact with decayed plant matter is rare, it "may be considered an occupational hazard for gardeners". They recommend that quick and appropriate treatment for the fungal infection is essential...

This unfortunate individual seems to have created the circumstances that led to his demise. Such a situation is easily avoidable, though.

First, Aspergillus species mainly flourish where temperature and moisture are high. In the case of this gardener, it's worth noting that he was storing his compost in a plastic bag. That allows for the build-up of lots of moisture while trapping the heat naturally generated by decay and so is almost certain to foster the growth of numerous Aspergillus species, the spores from which are ubiquitous in the air and soil. The remedy is to keep temperature and moisture levels low by allowing heat and water to escape. Compost should never be stored in fully-closed containers and should be turned over frequently to allow for cooling and evaporation. Most species won't grow at all when moisture content is lower than 7%. The particular species in this case, A. fumigatus, also prefers temperatures close to that of the human body.

Second, it would be a very good idea to wear a pollen mask when coming into contact with compost. Aspergillus spores can't hurt you if you don't inhale them in the first place and a mask is an effective and relatively cheap way of preventing this. Compost is by its very nature a breeding ground for fungi and bacteria and inhaling compost dust can lead to infections other than aspergillosis, so don't do it.

Again, there's nothing here to be overly concerned about. As the British NHS states at the end of the article linked above:

Gardeners should not be overly worried that their occupation or hobby has suddenly become a dangerous one. Gardeners are likely to be exposed to a variety of bacteria and mould, which are present in the soil and the compost that they use. In healthy individuals, these do not usually cause serious infections...

A modicum of caution goes a long way.

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The Origin of Friday the 13th

Today is Friday the 13^th. Whenever the 13^th day of a month falls on a Friday we're treated to various explanations from news sources regarding the origins of people's dread of this date. On TV, in newspapers, and throughout the intertubes, numerous authorities will clarify for you how the combination of Friday and the number 13 came to be feared.

I don't want to be left out, and I actually have done a great deal of research into this situation. I have discovered the truth of the matter and it has nothing to do with the order in which apostles arrived at the "last supper" nor with the date and number of attendees at witches' sabbaths that almost certainly never took place.

I am fully confident of the reason that people worry about this date and base my conclusion upon years of textual analysis of sacred and arcane books across cultures and history, upon direct observation, and upon first-hand interactions. I feel entirely secure in stating the reason that people are concerned over Friday the 13^th.

Human beings are prone to believing in really dumb things. When particularly ignorant and/or stupid people need something of which to be afraid, they simply make stuff up. This is the origin of superstition.

When they further attach rituals to these superstitions, we wind up with religions.

Enjoy your unlucky day.

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Live from the Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

ATTENTION. YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE.
In light of the demise of all world governments, a new post-apocalyptic planetary emperor has seized control:

Tycho is Watching.
You have been warned.
That was some spectacular apocalypse we had yesterday! I've seen a lot of ends of the world come and go, but none of them has ever been quite like that. All that nuclear hellfire and the fourty-seven dancing Jesuses (Jesi?) fan-dancing on Mount Olympus — who would have expected that? I thought the purple-and-green-checkered giant frankfurters the size of oil tankers chasing the four-headed dragons in tutus through downtown Cleveland was a nice touch, too. Yep, that was one crazy Doomday, alright. It's going to be hard to top that one.

Today being the day after the world ended, I see that the weather is calling for a 40% chance of flesh-craving zombie hordes followed by brief periods of unexplained darkness. Gamma radiation levels are predicted to be "unhealthy," so children, the elderly and people with depleted lead levels in their blood should remain in their concrete bunkers until the all-clear. If you must go outside, a combination of SPF30 sunscreen and rubber cement should prevent spontaneous combustion.

In light of the end of time, banks and government offices will be closed today and there will be no mail delivery. All pottery making and watercolor painting classes at the senior center have been postponed until further notice. If you're looking for something to do with the family, civil defense authorities are planning workshops on post-holocaust survival at your local public library. Titles include "Introduction to Being a Rabid Mutant: Cooking For and With Your Neighbors" and "Oozing Skin Lesions: The New Black." Check your local news for times and locations.

Remember, the end of the world is no reason for an unexcused absence from work! Make sure to call in to the office and tell your boss that you won't be in today, or ever again, because we're all dead now. Not much point to worrying about things like productivity anymore.

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Is It Over Yet? Better Not Be.

It's nearly 4:00 PM. Here in Central Massachusetts, the weather couldn't be better. Low 80's, great breeze, sunny... not a sign that the world is ending anywhere.

In fact, it had better not end or I'm going to be royally PO'd. I've been waiting forever to get sequences out of Bolitotherus cornutus. I spent this morning rehydrating oligonucleotides and dissecting the wing muscles out of two specimens. I got everything set up, went to the freezer room to get some liquid nitrogen... and we're out. I need to do my extraction with the stuff or else muscle tissue sticks to the mortar and I can never get it ground finely enough and so won't get the largest gob of genetic material possible, proteinase K or no.

I really had my heart set on at least getting started on this today. I'm told that someone will be here tomorrow to replenish the liquid nitrogen supply. Sometime. Probably.

Because of this, I am officially postponing the end of the world definitely. There will be no mass die-off of humanity until I have sequenced these beetles! Any deity that attempts to bring on the Apocalypse before that event will have to answer to me.

There are no accessions for divine beings on GenBank. If forced to, I will not hesitate to add the first one. You got me, gods, angels, demons and devils? I'm a frustrated lab rat. You do not want to mess with me.

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Bow Down Before the One Your Serve

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Big Bucks for Bio Research in Massachusetts

A billion dollar life sciences research funding bill is well on its way to approval here in Massachusetts and Worcester specifically would get a sizable chunk of the money.

House passes science package

A billion-dollar, 10-year package of research grants, public construction money and targeted tax credits, all aimed at maintaining the state's leadership in life science research and expanding life science industries, passed the House yesterday on a fast track for Senate approval and the governor's signature.

The bill, under development since Gov. Deval L. Patrick proposed it along with legislative leaders one year ago, will offer $25 million annually in research and industry grants, $25 million annually in life science industry tax credits and $50 million annually for public research facilities and industrial support infrastructure.

About $216 million would go toward new life science research centers at the University of Massachusetts, including $90 million for the state's share of a planned genetic therapy research center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and $95 million for a Life Science Center at the Amherst campus...

The bill also sets aside funding for regional life science and technology centers in Pittsfield, Lowell, Springfield, Framingham, Dartmouth, Boston, Taunton and Woods Hole, most of which will be associated with local colleges.

Tax incentives will come in the form of tax credits toward the purchase of property for life science companies. The bill expands from 5 years to 15 years the tax exemption for life science companies and other bonus tax credits for firms that locate in designated economic opportunity areas...

The bill passed the House on a 142-15 vote, with Republicans accounting for almost all of the opposition votes. However, Worcester-area Republicans backed the legislation...

Massachusetts is a very good place to be a scientist.

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Reminder: Thank God for Evolution Tour of New England

A reminder to New Englanders that Michael Dowd, preacher and author of Thank God for Evolution, will be swinging through southern New England this month:

• June 6-8: Rowe, MA (Rowe Center Workshop, Kings Highway)
  
• June 19: Willington, CT (Willington Public Library, 7 Ruby Road)
  
• June 22-23: Woodbury, CT (Mattatuck UU Society, 122 S Pomperaug Ave.)

I'm planning to attend Dowd's talk in Willington. I don't think for a moment that I'll agree with everything he says and I'm not making any endorsement of his ideas on either religion or science. Nonetheless, I think Dowd may be an interesting speaker from what I've read about him in the press regarding appearances elsewhere in the country. I'm curious to hear about his proposed resolution of empirical evidence and Christianity.

If any readers in the Worcester area would like to attend the event, let me know and we can share the ride to Willington. The event itself is free, but if fellow attendees are willing to share the investment in gasoline, I won't object in the slightest. If you'd like to come along, send an email to dowdinwillington [AT] mycolicious [DOT] com.

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World Ends Today

Good morning, folks, and welcome to the end of the world.

As you have undoubtedly heard, a Millennialist self-styled prophet has predicted that humanity will be wiped out today by a massive nuclear war. Only the prophet's own merry band of polygamous followers will be preserved on their compound just outside Abilene, Texas.

For some reason, this particular prediction of imminent apocalypse has captured a good deal of public imagination. In the past few days, this blog has received a tremendous number of hits from people searching the variants of the phrase "world ends on Thursday" on Google. These people are not exclusively Americans, either. A small but significant proportion of the hits have been coming from Korea, Australia and Western Europe. I don't know what the motivation behind the searches is; there may be people sitting back and laughing at the prophecy as well as those who are genuinely concerned that today is the day that the feces meet the fan.

What are you doing to mark the end of the world today? As for me, I'll be in the lab dissecting and sequencing beetles. I have two DVDs coming from Netflix today — Superbad and Raiders of the Damned. The Netflix plot synopsis of the latter of these is:

In the wake of a cataclysmic global war that saw widespread use of biochemical weaponry, flesh-eating zombies are overrunning the planet -- and a helicopter transporting scientists who are working on an anti-zombie serum is humankind's only hope for survival. When the chopper crashes and strands the researchers in the midst of Zombieland, the onus is on a special-ops squad (led by Richard Grieco) to bring them back alive.

That sounds like appropriate viewing for the apocalypse. Provided that the world is here by the time I get home from the lab tonight, I'll be watching Raiders of the Damned.

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Why Don't All Taxis Have GPS Units?

I was on my way home from the lab just now and stopped off at the Mobil station at Main and Mill to pick up a pack of smokes. As I left the store, a Yellow Cab driver approached me and asked me how to get to Webster. He'd never been there before and had to pick up a fare there. I've never been there either as far as I know, so I first told the cabbie that I didn't know. I wasn't really thinking; it has been a long day.

So the cabbie went back to his cab and started fumbling with a map. I got back to my car and remembered that I have a GPS unit. I took the "lady in the box" out of the glove compartment, switched her on and approached the cab.

I knocked on the window and asked the cabbie to give me the address he was trying to get to, then punched it into the unit and there they were, turn by turn directions right to the door where his far was waiting in Webster. The driver, an African fellow, thanked me profusely and waited for me to pull out of the lot ahead of him.

Now, this is reason to ponder. Why aren't taxis equipped with GPS units? There are always places that some driver is bound not to know how to get to, and a GPS unit is a lot better for such things than a paper map. As someone who absolutely lacks a sense of direction and relies on both a car GPS and a hand held unit to get me where I'm going on-road and off, I can attest to how indispensable these things really are. Moreover, I can't figure out how cabbies can earn a living these days with the price of gas through the roof. I'd imagine the last thing a driver wants to do is waste gas; every excess gallon burned is money out of his pocket and I'd be willing to bet there's not a lot in there to begin with these days.

Why, then, don't the owners of taxi fleets provide drivers with GPS units that they could sign out if they wanted them? It would probably cut a few minutes out of the time it took a driver to pick up a fare and get them where they were going, it would likely save gas, and it would help new drivers learn their way around. There are some pretty good deals on the things these days and I'm sure someone buying multiple units could work out a deal on price with a supplier.

Paper maps waste time and money. Get with the digital age, fleet owners!

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Yet More Fungi: Collected at Wachusett Today

Today's collecting was the best outing yet, not the least reason for which was the excellent company I enjoyed. When we arrived at Wachusett the temperature there hadn't yet hit 70°, a tremendous relief after yesterday's heat. Despite Worcester itself having taken a hit from a particularly nasty storm last night, Wachusett seems to have been missed completely. There was no sign of the big winds that knocked down tree limbs and knocked out power all over the city. We were in the field from 10:00 AM until just before 1:30 and it never made it to 80°. There was enough of a breeze to keep the bugs to a minimum, too.

Today marks my first collection of a bolete for the season, and an uncommon one at that. I didn't identify it myself. Instead, one of the post-docs here, an expert on the Boletales, was kind enough to do it and I learned a bit more about identifying boletes in the process. I also picked up a couple of fungivorous beetles, one of which may be Eleodes, but a positive ID will wait until later on that specimen.

		The first bolete of 2008 is this attractive specimen, Boletus speciosus var brunneus. This one was growing in mixed beech and ash forest. Distinguishing characteristics include yellow reticulation all the way down the stipe until the pink tint begins. The cap turns dark olive in FeSO4 as well. Flesh color is almost as yellow as the pores but it rapidly turns azure blue when cut or bruised. Most blue stainers are not edible, but this one is reputed to be so. I'm not going to try it, though. As I may have mentioned, the only time I've ever poisoned myself was with a bolete that I found shortly after moving to Florida, and that one was also a blue-stainer.
		This charming little wood decomposer is Polyporus alveolaris, also known as P. mori. It has relatively large hexagonal pores and grows on hardwood sticks. It's one of the most esthetically pleasing of the polyporoid fungi and I'll be including it when I start molecular work on these fungi. It's probably more interesting from an evolutionary standpoint than anything else. That makes it pretty interesting to me, but maybe not so much to you. Pretty, though.
		This extremely slimy mushroom has become something of an object of contention here at the lab today. Both the pileus and stipe were so slippery that I could barely pick these things up. To my eye, the waxy, well-separated, thickened lamina, general coloration and growth habit, spores and overall sliminess tell me that it's a Hygrophorus and the post-doc who identified the bolete above agrees, going so far as to posit that it might be Hygrophorus chlorophana. I don't agree on the species; that one is usually deep yellow, not orange, although the mushroom is otherwise similar. I'm thinking it's something closer to H. psitticina, which are usually green — but sometimes other colors. A third labling thinks it's not Hygrophorus at all and swears that the spores look pigmented to him under the microscope (I don't see it). We may wind up having to extract DNA from this one to settle the speculation. I think there may be beer riding on it at this point. I will say this much; I'm going to win this bet with said labling, because the spore print he set up is turning out white as snow, which is in keeping with Hygrophorus, so neener neener.
		One more shot of the contentious possible Hygrophorus, this one illustrating the gill color and structure.

EDIT: It is, after all, Hygrophorus chlorophana. No DNA extraction was necessary; H. chlorophana can sometimes be more orange than yellow, and the greenish bruising, particularly at the margin of the pileus and base of the stipe, is the final clue. Coolness.

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Moon-Faced Assassins of Joy Refuse to Marry Anyone

Officials in two California counties have come up with a novel way of insuring the preservation of allegedly traditional marriages against same-sex marriages. If they have to perform weddings for same-sex couples, they'll simply refuse to perform any weddings at all. That way marriages can only be performed in religious settings — in the case of these two counties, that means a church — and churches almost entirely will refuse to perform same-sex weddings. The counties in question are Butte and Kern, both largely rural and not places with large numbers of gay people, but their excuse is that they don't have the resources to perform same-sex and opposite-sex weddings, so they won't do either one.

2 counties to halt all weddings, gay or not

County officials in at least two California counties say they'll stop performing all wedding ceremonies by next week, arguing that they don't have enough resources to marry both gay and straight couples.

Officials in Kern and Butte counties cited budget and staffing constraints as the rationale for halting the ceremonies. But clerks in other counties say that claim is specious. Some activists went further, arguing that the decision to stop the ceremonies amounts to poorly disguised discrimination against gay and lesbian couples...

Gee, ya think?

In Kern County, Clerk Ann Barnett announced her decision only after county lawyers told her she could not refuse to marry gay couples. Butte County Clerk Candace Grubb, meanwhile, blamed budget constraints, telling the Chico Enterprise-Record that her decision was made long before the court ruling...

Am I the only one who sees a bit of low-brow humor in talking about "Grubb in Butte?"

Both counties have conservative populations that overwhelmingly supported a 2000 ballot measure that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, a law found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on May 15. Advocates of that law are going back to the ballot in November with a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages...

Steve Weir, Contra Costa County's clerk and president of the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials, noted that the state allows counties to set their own fees for marriage ceremonies so they can recover the costs associated with performing the duty.

"It's a nice service that we provide to the public, and it's not costing me anything. In this day and age with the budget situation, how can you go wrong providing a public service that helps with your overhead? It's a no-brainer..."

Others said they doubt that the clerk's office in any rural, conservative county would be overwhelmed with gay couples come next week. Kings County Clerk Ken Baird, for example, said he would be surprised if more than a handful of same-sex couples wanted to get married there.

"Bakersfield (the Kern County seat) is not a very safe place to be out," added the Rev. Byrd Tetzlaff of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Kern County. "We are not expecting that many couples, maybe 10 or 12..."

After hearing of the decision, Tetzlaff announced she would perform free marriages to same-sex couples until Nov. 4, when voters will weigh in the proposed constitutional amendment.

Next Tuesday she plans to offer her services to all couples getting licenses at the county building. But she said she and other gay-marriage supporters have been told that the police will not allow them to conduct the ceremonies there...

[Kern County Supervisor Don] Maben said he is "getting a lot of flak" for raising concerns about Barnett's decision but, that to him, it's not a gay-rights issue - it is simply a marriage issue. At least 25 opposite-sex couples who had weddings scheduled at the clerk's office are also being forced to make other plans, he said...

Opponents of same-sex marriage have long argued that they oppose it precisely because it weakens the kind of marriage that they favor. In light of this development in Butte and Kern, it appears that this was a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. I find it hard to believe that performing a few additional ceremonies — a very few — for which the counties in question recover all expenses wuld tax local budgets to any extent at all, and certainly if that were the reason for their refusal, they could still make facilities available for others to carry out the ceremonies free of charge. That they refuse to do so and that a minister who is willing to do it has been told that the local police won't allow her to do so gives a clear lie to the justification being used by the Butte and Kern moon-faced assassins of joy.

Ironically, it would appear to be religious conservatives who are the real threat to marriage. Personally, I support the right of two people of the same religious persuasion to get married. The officials in Kern and Butte have a problem with that, too. Really, this is a cynical attempt to exploit a very old loophole in the laws governing marriage. By refusing to perform weddings, these counties — and I'm sure they won't be the only jurisdictions that try this — are turning over the right to make a contract exclusively to religious institutions. It's a loophole that ought to be closed; we shouldn't have a situation in which religious groups get proprietorship of decision making regarding such contracts. If government is going to provide any sort of recognition to marriage by way of tax benefits and responsibilities then it is also incumbent upon government to do everything necessary to make marriage itself a governmental, secular function and leave the religious aspect of it as a personal and non-necessary choice. Either that or government should stop recognizing marriage as a special condition and treat everyone equally when it comes to these things, making no distinction for married status. What is going on in Butte and Kern merely points out how government fails in this regard. The door has long been left open for something like this, and it was only a matter of time before someone decided to exploit the situation as it has existed for far too long.

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John McCain Breeding an Army of Trolls

I haven't written much about presidential politics in here. Believe me, I'm as happy as anyone that the end of ShrubCo is coming nigh after eight years of watching my country being turned into a deserved laughing stock. Of the eight presidencies during my lifetime, that of Bush II has been the worst for everyone except the super-rich and power-connected. I'll readily admit that I'm in full agreement with Dennis Kucinich who gave an impassioned, detailed and well-reasoned speech on the floor of the House a couple of days ago as to why the current presidency should not only end immediately but should have ended years ago. This hasn't gotten much buzz in the press, but I caught it on C-Span and various parts of it have made their way to YouTube, including the segment embedded here:

Still, as happy as I am about Dubya going back to clearing brush in Crawford, Texas on a permanent basis, I'm not all that excited about the two major party candidates. I started the primary season hoping against remote odds that Bill Richardson could get somewhere, but of course he didn't. Then I was marginally in favor of Hillary Clinton. Obama is my third choice from among the field of Democratic contenders, but I'll vote for him because if a bag of stale corn chips were running against John McCain I'd be casting my ballot for President Doritos in November.

The McCain Campaign's fiendish plot to breed an army of trolls chartered with spamming blogs with cut-and-paste text provided on their website doesn't do a thing to change my perception that McCain is insane in the membrane. While I may be channeling a bit of Dr. Seuss in that statement, I'm doing so here on my home blog.

The McCain campaign is exhorting the Xerox-minded to

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you've commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

Below those marching orders and commensurate promise of "points" appears a list of links to blogs. Below that appear "talking points" to be used on the targeted blogs.

To my mind, this is nothing but an invitation to troll. As you may have noticed, I moderate comments on this blog, and I do that in part because there are people who do exactly what McCain is asking his supporters to do with other cut-and-past responses. On any given day I'll delete a number of potential comments here that are nothing but cut-and-pasted Bible texts, commercial spams, and other such complete reproductions of what somebody else says. What McCain is asking his loyalists to do is really no different

Anyone interested in what McCain has to say can hear him on television, read his words in the newspaper, and even visit his website. That includes readers of Daily Kos or this blog or any other blog or no blogs at all. That doesn't require trolling the comments sections of those blogs, though. That's an annoyance, and I'm even less likely to vote for someone who is telling his followers to get in my face and do so in a manner which involves no reflection at all on their part. In fact, that's largely my problem with American Conservatism in a nutshell; it's mainly talking points and spin that relies on uncritical acceptance of authoritative statements. McCain's blog strategy looks to me like Rush Limbaugh's Dittoheads vomiting all over the web. Why in the world would I support such things?

All McCain's blog strategy does for me is point out that McCain just doesn't get it, and that's a big part of why I wasn't going to vote for him in the first place. Seeing him reward obedience with "points" doesn't change my mind about him one bit.

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The Rapture Came Today: If You're Reading This, You've Been Left Behind

Breaking news from California!

The Rapture happened today, but it turned out that only one guy was good enough to get taken up to Heaven. The rest of us are stuck here on earth with Satan and one crazy priest who's running around looking for him while howling in Latin and sprinkling holy water all over everything.

Only Esmyn Garmendia-Barrios made it past the Pearly Gates. Turns out that the whole key to getting Raptured Away was to be reading a bible in a national park at just the right time. All that other stuff about works and faith and not masturbating on Fridays was just misinterpretation resulting from an improper reading of the Secret Bible Code.

Sorry, all you apocalypse-awaiters. You're stuck here with the rest of us.

Alternatively, Garmendia-Barrios may simply have stepped off a cliff or been eaten by a mountain lion. Still, don't you just know that if he's never found, some loon out there will attach religious significance to his disappearance while ostensibly reading a Bible?

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Fungi and Tenebs: Collections at Wachusett and Moose Hill

A few recent fungi that I've collected and one brief story about how I collected the first one.

		I'd been eying these rather magnificent specimens of Ganoderma applanatum since there was still snow on the ground. They're growing on a dead oak that stands in a pond created by a beaver damn at my field site on the south slope of Wachusett Mountain. I couldn't get to them because the water was too deep, but last week it had dropped enough for me to give it a try. It took a few fallen branches and a good sense of balance, but I finally made it out to the tree. To collect some of these, I had to wrap one arm around the tree trunk while balancing on some exposed roots and snapping off the pads with my free hand. The photo here was taken after I'd collected and was back on solid ground. This was my trickiest collection to date, but it paid off. Not only do I have a couple of excellent specimens to sequence and culture, but one of the pads contained a mated pair of Bolitotherus cornutus and a number of young larvae; they're members of one of the core tribes for my work on Tenebrionidae, the primers for which arrived today. I'll be sequencing the beetles on Thursday. As far as I can determine, nobody has ever sequenced them before. Yay data!
		I had a bit of trouble keying this one out, but it conforms most closely to Mycena galericulata. The specimens were collected at Moose Hill in Paxton today. You can't tell from the photo, but it was hot and the flying insects were on the warpath. These are growing at the base of a hemlock. Not much more to say about them; I collected them for our herbarium and don't have much use for them otherwise. Maybe somebody else will someday. They're particularly pointy specimens. Pointy mushrooms can be kind of charismatic even if they're otherwise a bit on the drab side.
		A couple of diminutive mushrooms I collected at Wachusett last week. They're Pholiota, but I wasn't able to determine the species.
		I'm used to finding Pluteus cervinus during cooler weather, so I expected this to be an Entoloma. P. cervinus is edible; Entoloma are generally poisonous. Here in Massachusetts, deer mushrooms apparently fruit even in June (I collected this one at Wachusett on June 3). I have no doubt of my identification; P. cervinus has distinctive and graceful cystidia that are never found in Entoloma. There's a nice photo of one of these cystidia here, courtesy of Tom Volk. In Florida, I generally found these from late fall into early winter and I don't recall ever finding one at all in California. Although they're edible, I don't care for them myself. LL will eat them, but she's out of town and since I only found the one, it's now a herbarium specimen. I last found one of these last September and previously had found one in July. I forgot about the latter, but the point is that P. cervinus fruits throughout the entire summer and into early autumn here.

It was miserably hot in the field today and the winged insects were going crazy. That was the downside. The upside is that I managed to collect several tiny beetles from the fruiting bodies of some myxomycetes. I've identified the beetles to genus Pentaphyllus, which is a member of tribe Diaperini, another core tribe in my Tenebrionidae study (Bolitotherus is in Bolitophagini). When I say "tiny," I mean these little suckers are about 2 mm long. Nonetheless, they're useful to me and I'll be sequencing them as well — the first time that Pentaphyllus has been sequenced, as far as I know. Another "Yay data" moment.

Tomorrow, I head back up to Wachusett. Unlike today, when the temperature got high enough to begin melting lead, tomorrow is only supposed to get into the mid-80's, and it should be a few degrees cooler at a higher elevation. I'll still be sweaty and get attacked by bugs, but I have a hunch it's going to be a particularly good day of collecting. If all goes well, I should be able to identify whatever it is I bring back to the lab and free myself up to start doing some molecular investigation on Thursday.

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It's a Glamorous Life in Biology: Samplin' and Stinkin'

It's going to be hot, hot, hot here today:

...The National Weather Service has posted an excessive heat watch through Tuesday afternoon for a large portion of interior Massachusetts including Worcester and Springfield, where forecasters said the mercury could top out near 100 degrees.

State and federal environmental officials predicted another day of unhealthy air quality in the region, due to a build-up of ground-level ozone. Officials again urged residents to avoid strenuous outdoor activity...

— Source

So what am I doing today? I'm going into the field to collect specimens, along with my adviser and a couple of other students.

We're mycologists, dammit. We don't listen to no steenkin' excessive heat watches.

We're leaving for a field site at 9:15 and will probably be out for no more than two hours. We should get back to campus by around 11:30, at which point I'm going to come home and hose off the oh-so-attractive mixture of sweat and insect repellent with which I shall be covered. Then I'll eat lunch and head back.

Oh, and the best part... we're taking two cars, only one of which has working air conditioning. Ah, the glamorous life of the scientist!

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Maine Creationists Continue Gibbering

Even though it has been nearly a month since School Administrative District 59 in Maine rejected the nonsense put forth by Young Earth Creationist Matthew Linkletter, his gibbering co-Creationists continue their, well, gibbering. A letter from one of them appears in todays Morning Sentinel and even in terms of the usual blithering ignorance of science that we're all used to hearing from these people it's still pretty awful.

When law meets theory, theory must give way

I've met Matthew Linkletter a couple of times and I believe he has a keen intellect.

I think you people at the Sentinel editorial board know perfectly well that Linkletter's comments about evolution are factually correct. All you've ever advanced as evidence for evolution is the say-so of scientists who cannot stomach the idea of being held accountable for their actions by God.

Not too long ago, the same crowd was insisting that the world was flat.

No one on either side of the debate denies that natural selection is taking place. Natural selection is simply the interaction of all life and the environment on one another, causing a certain amount of adaptation by life forms to better survive. Natural selection does not explain where life, or the environment, came from, nor does evolution.

Mathematics does not support evolution. The odds of lighting striking a mud puddle and creating life have been calculated and found to be a mathematical impossibility.

Genetics does not support evolution. The human gene code is increasingly in decay. This decay is called genetic load. It's like sticks on a camel's back. When the genetic load reaches a certain point, mankind will become extinct.

The diligent can easily search out the truth. To Norman Dean, I would simply say Law of Entropy. When a law meets a mere theory, the theory must give way. Entropy is why people die, and it does the same to the theory of evolution.

Bruce Clavette
Athens

It's entirely possible that Matthew Linkletter has a keen intellect — when compared to Bruce Clavette. It's hard to imagine that he could be much duller at the very least.

The say-so of scientists is called — wait for it now — science. That's what gets taught in science classes. That "say-so" is backed up by facts, by research, by mathematical modeling. We're not just making this stuff up, but Clavette is right insofar as all he knows about it is the "say-so of scientists." If he did research himself, then he could be part of that "say-so" because he, too, would be a scientist. History, to that extent, is the "say-so" of historians. Mathematics is the "say-so" of mathematicians. See how this works? If the "say-so" of lumberjacks was taught in science class, that wouldn't qualify as teaching science. Ditto for the "say-so" of Creationists. Clavette, by the way, runs a municipal waste dump for a living. Garbage in, garbage out.

Natural selection doesn't cause adaptation, it selects upon adaptations that already exist and so increases or decreases the frequency of certain traits in particular populations. In order to generate new adaptations, mutation is necessary. Evolutionary biology includes both of these, and together (along with a number of other mechanisms of which I doubt Clavette is aware) they do an excellent job of explaining where life as we see it today came from and so the origin of the biotic part of modern environments.

Evolution isn't predicated on lightning striking mud puddles, and where Clavette comes up with this stuff is unknown to me. Mathematics supports evolution very well; evolutionary biologists use it all the time. One thing is for certain — there is nothing in any math of which I'm aware that prevents lightning striking puddles. The probability of lightning striking a particular puddle is vanishingly small, but the nature of statistics is such that if you have enough time, puddles and enough thunder storms the odds that one of those puddles will be hit by lightning eventually approaches certainty. Clavette apparently doesn't understand statistics any better than he understands biology.

Genetics supports evolutionary theory in every single case it's been looked at. Clavette, however, chooses to serve up what is perhaps the most muddle-headed point in his whole obtuse letter here. The concept of genetic load was first put forth by biologist JBS Haldane, the same man who, when asked about what biology has to say about God wryly and famously replied that it demonstrates that "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles." The concept of genetic load — itself a facet of evolutionary theory — doesn't tell us that mankind is going to become extinct due to the decay of our genome. It merely states that the loss of alleles in a population comes with some cost. It cannot be looked at in isolation, because new alleles are also generated sometimes and some alleles are never lost but go to fixation, meaning that all members of a population can carry the same allele and so the allele will continue to exist for so long as some other factor doesn't wipe out the population. Deleterious alleles are usually lost with greater frequency than beneficial ones due to natural selection. The potential does exist for a population to accumulate one or more alleles so deleterious that it will become extinct, but this is unusual. Clavette is acting a lot more like a prophet than a scientist when he asserts that mankind's genome is falling apart and that we'll eventually become extinct due to this "decay." I'm not aware of any scientific evidence for it, so unless Clavette has been doing some research into the history of the human genome on his own — in which case he ought to publish his findings — he's just making up stories here. This is why the "say-so" of scientists is taught in science classrooms, by the way. Students would be poorly served, indeed, if schools were to instead teach the "say-so" of people like Clavette.

Finally, Clavette brings up the hoary Creationist canard of the law of entropy, that bastardized version of the second law of thermodynamics. Need it be pointed out yet again that entropy increases irreversibly only in systems that are isolated from the input of energy from their environment — and biological systems don't qualify as isolated systems as evidence by the fact that Bruce Clavette, like every other living thing on the planet, regularly takes in energy in the form of nutrition? In other words, if it has a metabolism, it isn't an isolated system and isn't subject solely to the second law of thermodynamics. As long as energy is input into a system, entropy is overcome by that energy. It isn't just entropy that causes death; what causes death is the accumulation of small defects that aren't repaired because of the inherent imperfection of biological systems in the utilization of energy for creating chemical bonds, for example. Ultimately, we wear down like any machine. If it were simply unbridled entropy, as Clavette seems to think, we'd never live in the first place.

Clavette has a problem with scientists whose "say-so" doesn't include supernatural intervention. Instead, he wants to substitute the "say-so" of people who don't have the first inkling about scientific knowledge, a condition that Clavette demonstrates exists in himself in this letter. He then wants to call that "science" and teach it to students in his home state. If this were to be done, there would be no point to education. Why bother teaching students to be ignorant when ignorance is precisely the absence of education? Why not just have them memorize scriptural passages while squatting in a field somewhere and leave it at that?

I suspect that this would be just fine with Clavette. In fact if his letter is any indication of his educational history, there's a good chance that this sums up his early years quite well.

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Are You Worried That the World Ends on Thursday?

For whatever reason, it seems like I'm suddenly getting tons of hits on the entry I wrote about the world ending this Thursday, June 12. So far, nobody has left a comment about it, though.

That leaves me very curious. I can't help but wonder whether some of these many people who are finding "World Ends on Thursday, June 12" by searching on Google are actually concerned that it's really going to happen.

If you're one of those people and have found this entry, kindly help satisfy my curiosity. Do you believe that the world is going to end this week? Are you even a little bit concerned? Leave a comment here about the topic.

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It's Not Their Fault: The Devil Made Them Do It

At the end of 2007, it was revealed that Pope Benedict XVI was unleashing a wave of newly-trained exorcists against the depradations of Satan. The creaking cleric in charge of the War Against the Devil is exorcist-in-chief Gabriele Amorth.

In a new article, Amorth warns that everybody is vulnerable to being possessed by Beelzebub — particularly political leaders. There's really nothing to be done for it except to keep Amorth and his cadre of Vatican-sanctioned rattle-shakers employed seven days a week performing magical rituals in an effort to drive demons out of people's bodies. Hitler and Stalin? Possessed, of course. In fact, super-duper megapossessed!

Famous exorcist: 'The devil loves to take over those who hold political office'

In an interview with the magazine "Maria Mensajera," famous Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth said, "Everybody is vulnerable to the work of Satan" and that "the devil loves to take over those who hold political office."

The Spanish daily "La Razon" published the interview in an article by Alexander Smoltczyk in which the 82 year-old priest describes what happens in an exorcism. He said he has performed more than 70,000.

70,000 exorcisms? Wow, that's a lot of superstition. That devil really gets around! But if everyone is vulnerable (and as he notes later, he really does mean everybody), then how can all these people be held accountable for their actions? Surely we need to include a plea of "not guilty by reason of Satanic possession" in the options available to the accused in criminal cases. Politicians caught doing unethical things should be allowed to say "The devil made me do it, but a priest sprinkled me with holy water and I'm OK now" and get back to their offices. Free will? Nonsense; the devil makes us believe in such things.

"Evil exists in politics, quite often in fact," Father Amorth said. "The devil loves to take over business leaders and those who hold political office. Hitler and Stalin were possessed. How do I know? Because they killed millions of people. The Gospel says: 'By their fruits you will know them.' Unfortunately, an exorcism on them would not have been enough, since they were convinced of what they were doing. We can't say it was a possession in the strict sense of the word, but rather a total and voluntary acceptance of the suggestions of the devil."

See? Hitler and Stalin were super-possessed. We can tell in retrospect that mass murdering totalitarians aren't simply twisted human beings; it takes supernatural agency to explain genocide. Why not apply this to all cases of human misbehavior? People who kill other people aren't bad people, they've just been taken over by demons. They've been seduced by the dark side, young Jedi. Father Amorth knows this because he's been given the power of divine Monday morning quarterbacking. How many criminals aren't convinced of what they're doing? Amorth's statements could be just as well applied to Charles Manson, Gary Ridgeway, or some young gang-banger who wipes out a rival in a drive-by shooting. The difference between Stalin and any other murderer is a matter of scale, not of conviction. This is some insane prattling by this Amorth fellow.

"I tell those who come to see me to first go to a doctor or a psychologist," the priest continued. "Most of the time there is a physical or psychological basis for explaining their suffering. The psychiatrists send me the incurable cases. There is no rivalry. The psychiatrist determines if it is an illness, the exorcist if it is a curse," Father Amorth explained.

And yet he's personally performed 70,000 exorcisms — just one priest. It's not unreasonable to think that all the Catholic exorcists combined then have done something like ten times that number during Amorth's career, then. This doesn't even include all of the non-Catholic exorcists chasing demons around the globe, so we're almost certainly talking about millions of exorcisms. One must wonder, then, which psychiatrists and doctors are referring their patients to the bone-rattlers. Amorth should release a list of these aberrant healthcare providers so that those of us who have come to the considered conclusion that talk of possession is a manifestation of superstition can avoid patronizing them. It seems they're sending a whole lot of people off to be exorcised; I wouldn't want to be one of them.

Nobody, he went on, not even himself, is "safe from the devil. Everyone is vulnerable." "The devil is very intelligent. He retains the intelligence of the angel that he was."

"Suppose, for example, that someone you work with is envious of you and casts a spell on you. You would get sick. 90 percent of the cases that I deal with are precisely spells. The rest are due to membership in satanic sects or participation in séances or magic. If you live in harmony with God, it is much more difficult for the devil to possess you," Father Amorth stated.

Really? 90% of 70,000... that 63,000 people who have had spells cast upon them. Witchcraft is real, folks. This is oh-so-different from Dark Ages-like superstition how, exactly? In Africa, people are being beaten and burned to death on the same suspicion that Amorth is raising here. According to him, we're all surrounded by people who are casting spells at us! BURN THE WITCHES!

But if everyone, even Amorth himself, is vulnerable to possession, then how is anyone to be held responsible for their actions? It could be a spell or a demon or whatnot that made some CEO embezzle money from their company. By what objective, reproducible, testable measure can we discern who is truly responsible for his/her misdeeds and which of the accused is a victim of overwhelming supernatural deviousness?

"The Pope supports exorcists," he explained, but "satanic sects are proliferating," and for this reason Father Amorth said his calendar for the next two months is full. "I work seven days a week, from morning until night, including Christmas Eve and Holy Week," he said.

Be afraid, be very afraid. Satanic sects are proliferating. I guess that's helped by the fact that, according to Amorth, their members can use magic to control the actions of others, to make people sick, and, I would assume, dry up the dairy cows and hold back the rain, too.

I find it hard to believe that people still swallow this nonsense at this point in history. Devils and demons and possessions and spells... all based on the assertions of people who lived long ago, at a time when they didn't understand how things worked. Belief in these things is the product of ignorance, not of understanding. When this kind of ignorance gets institutionalized, people call it religion instead of the most proper term — superstition. It's pathetic that someone like Amorth exists as anything more than an isolated nut-job, that there are so many people willing to buy into this mumbo-jumbo.

The only difference between a Catholic exorcist and an animist witch doctor is that the Catholic version is better funded.

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Tycho Insulted by Evolved and Rational

Evolved Rationalist wrote last night:

Another fun fact about me is that I hate (and am terrified of) lizards. I hate the sight of them and I hate anything to do with them. I have never understood why people keep lizards as pets when they are obviously as ugly and disgusting as a giant 10-foot slugs...

Tycho is insulted. At his advanced age (he turns 12 in less than three months; that's like 96 in human terms), he's heard it all, including this sort of thing, and he can't understand it. Tycho loves humans. They feed him, they pet him, and they turn on the television for him. Tycho has nothing but positive opinions of human beings and he's hurt when they compare him to giant gastropods.

Comparing civilized reptiles to their wild cousins is like comparing the family cat to a leopard. For example, 2% of the population of the United States is bitten by a dog every year resulting in a dozen or more fatalities. When was the last time anyone in America was killed by a lizard? The numbers of people injured by domesticated lizards is so small that nobody even bothers to keep track. Tycho, in his extraordinarily long life, has never bitten even a single human — although he did once exhibit a powerful desire to take a chunk out of a clerk at the East Bay Vivarium in Berkeley. We still can't figure out what she had to do to provoke him to that extent, considering that he has always been willing to put up with all sorts of prodding and dress-up with no more than an "I don't like this" blackening of his neck sack. He'd rather lick the frosting off a cupcake, thank you very much.

Unlike stinky dogs that eat their own vomit or cats that shred the furniture, Tycho would like to remind everyone that civilized lizards are creatures of taste and refinement. Theirs is a life of satin blankets, fresh blueberries and public television. They are genteel and gentle creatures who wouldn't even hurt a tree frog that perched upon their head. They're immaculately clean, too. No self-respecting civilized lizard would soil their lair without a human nearby to clean up at once. Do you poop in your bedroom? Didn't think so.

Sure, wild komodo dragons pose a threat to humans. That has nothing to do with domesticated, educated lizards like Tycho, though. As anyone familiar with his internet celebrityness will tell you, he'd never stoop to drawing blood like some base animal. He'd much rather wait around for his human friends to cook him up some macaroni and cheese. That's what they're here for, after all. Unlike squabbling hominids, Tycho has no doubt about evolution. Humans are perfectly adapted to cooking and cleaning for bearded dragons, the real masters of this planet.

It is simply unreasonable to compare the urbane lizards of modern society to the backwoods, rude and unpolished lizards found on remote tropical islands. It's like lumping together Oscar Wilde and an Alabama klansman. The only thing they have in common is biology. The civilized lizards of today are creatures of refinement and dignity.

Tycho would like to remind you all that lizards are your friends and neighbors. Anti-lizard bigotry is unfair and hurtful. Thank you for your understanding.

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Like Being in Florida Again

Ouch... it's gotten very hot here in Worcester. I'm supposed to go on a collecting trip to Purgatory Chasm with my adviser on Tuesday, too. Let's see; 95° and humid, so it ought to feel like about 110°. Yummy. I'm sure there will be plenty of fungi and beetles, though.

It's suddenly like being back in Florida again. One trick I learned from collecting there was to freeze a couple of blue ice packs the night before and take them with me into the field. I keep one in my pack with a cloth so that when I wipe the sweat out of my eyes the cloth is nice and cold. Then I tuck in my shirt and throw the other ice pack down there; it helps in keeping cool and lasts for a couple of hours, at least. When the pack in my shirt gets close to body temperature I swap it for the one in my pack. That's usually good for three to four hours of not having heat stroke.

I'm also going into the field on Wednesday. I'm supposed to be bringing an undergrad from Holy Cross with me and meeting up with another grad student from Harvard at the Wachusett site. If you ask me, anything above 80° is too hot, but 83° is better than 95° and since we'll be at a higher elevation it should be a few degree cooler. No such situation at Purgatory Chasm; it's about 600 ft. closer to sea level than Wachusett. We'll no doubt be taking the full brunt of the miserably hot, muggy weather on Tuesday.

Have I mentioned lately that I'm biology's bitch? Well, clearly I am.

On a much more positive note, I've gotten a number of helpful responses back to an email I've sent around to people who work with beetles. I've already received some useful advice and will be getting sequenceable specimens from as far away as Indonesia and New Zealand over the course of the next couple of months. Coleopterists are a fine bunch of people — almost as much so as mycologists! (I kid, I kid)

As for today, I think I'll stick around here and avoid the heat. I have a paper to finish reading and revising, anyhow. My only venture outside of air conditioned comfort today will be a trip to the supermarket. I was planning to go collecting, but between the price of gas and the 102° heat index, I think I'll take it easy on myself. I hadn't originally planned to collect on Tuesday, but my adviser wanted to hit the field. I'll just do Tuesday instead of today.

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Fungus in Amber Likely Not Carnivorous: A Response in Mycological Research to Schmidt et al. (2007)

Back in December I mentioned the discovery of what was reported as a nematode-trapping fungus in Cretaceous amber from France by Schmidt et al. (first here and then after having read the article in Science Brevia here).

In the current issue of Mycological Research, a response to the Schmidt et al. piece appears that explains in some detail why there is no evidence to support the contention that the fungus in amber was a nematode-trapper.

Since Mycological Research isn't open-access — not even when it comes to things like this — I'll reproduce some of the salient points. The authors of the response are R. Gregg Thorn (University of Western Ontario), Markus Scholler (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde), and Walter Gams.

Have carnivorous fungi been found in Cretaceous amber?

...None of the photographs shows a ring attached to a sporulating hypha, nor was any trapped nematode documented (those shown are too slender to have been captured by the purported "traps"). In a drawing (fig. 1E) the authors present a reconstructed life-cycle showing a trapped nematode in a ring, rings attached to a hypha, formation of a ring before closure, and a blastosporic yeast. We have tried to obtain the slides deposited in Paris on loan without any success...

Fungi that trap nematodes with adhesive or constricting rings are members of the Orbiliomycetes, one of the oldest classes of phylum Ascomycota, and oldest in subphylum Pezizomycotina. Their segregation must have occurred much earlier than in Cretaceous times (Spatafora et al. 2007). Taylor & Berbee (2007) give a conservative estimate for the radiation of the Pezizomycotina of 215–400 Myr before present... A connection between a "trapping fungus" and a yeast is unlikely, and we consider that the published picture is probably an artefact of the two organisms being closely associated in space (perhaps only as a result of being captured in resin). The more organic connection between short conidiogenous cells and a main hypha shown in their fig. 1C illustrates a structure presently unknown in the Orbiliomycetes and would preclude the identification of these hyphae as belonging to the Orbiliaceae.

Non-constricting ring traps are only known from the genus Dactylellina (Scholler et al. 1999). The rings are three-celled, with three septa, not one as shown by Schmidt et al. (2007), and are stalked. A nematode that enters a loop would be stopped if its body diameter exceeds the loop diameter... Their struggle breaks the ring from the stalk and the nematode glides away with the ring around its body. The attached ring germinates to form an infection peg that penetrates the nematode, and forms an infection bulb, followed by digestion of the body contents. The ring thus not only serves as a trapping device but also as a diaspore... The attachment of detritus to the rings as shown by Schmidt et al. (2007, fig. S1 A) most probably is due to unspecific binding. The rings even of adhesive traps are not sticky all over and do not collect detritus. An adhesive non-constricting ring trap cannot function, because the nematode would get caught on the ring before entering it...

With all due respect for the importance of fossil documents, we are not prepared to accept the unlikely combination of ring-shaped traps and yeast-like growth as compatible with nematode capturing, which in the photographs of Schmidt et al. (2007) is not convincingly proven...

And there you have the gist of the response. I thought it important to reproduce here since I wrote about the original article in Science and also because this demonstrates the sort of checks and balances embodied in scientific progress. One group of scientists finds something they get excited about and puts forward an inference based on what they see. They publish their findings and ideas. Any other scientist can then look the article over and say, "Hey, wait a minute, here's an alternative hypothesis that includes some information that this other scientist overlooked." Evidence accumulates and everyone has the opportunity to evaluate the situation, weighing the evidence for and against the conclusions drawn on the subject under discussion. No matter the personal status of the scientists involved and no matter how exciting a given inference might be, there's always the possibility for new ideas to be put into play and given due consideration.

In an ideal world, Thorn, Scholler and Gams' reply would have appeared in the same publication that publicized Schmidt et al.'s work on the fossil. Mycological Research has, I'm sure, a readership that is a tiny fraction of that commanded by Science. For whatever reasons, that's not the way it happened in this case. I have no idea whether the reply quoted above was submitted to Science or not and I have no idea whether or not that journal will also publish it or even make note of it. I would hope that they would; to do so would be the most responsible course of action.

Carnivorous Fungi from Cretaceous Amber. Alexander R. Schmidt, Heinrich Dörfelt, and Vincent Perrichot (14 December 2007). Science 318 (5857), 1743. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1149947]

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