I bought two chrysalises a few weeks back and put them in my butterfly container. One was quite fat and housed a moth; the other was thin and dead looking and housed a delicate butterfly. I was told the moth was hibernating and would take weeks or months to emerge while the butterfly would be […]
Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin was certainly very funny, but it missed some of the less attractive parts of its target. The voice was high and almost melodious but Palin’s voice has grown guttural and aggressive. Fey’s intelligence and general niceness shone through but Palin is neither of those things. I found Palin’s endorsement […]
I was watching a nature program on PBS and it was observed that poisonous snakes and other poisonous animals tend to be brightly colored. This raises an interesting explanatory question: why make yourself so conspicuous, both to predators and prey? The suggestion made was that some kind of altruism is at work–kindly signaling to others […]
For even the nicest tabby that was ever born and weaned Is capable of acting, on occasion, like a fiend “In Respect of Felines”, T.S. Eliot
I’m hoping the world will be a better place in 2016 but I rather doubt it. Let’s see. Human vices spring eternal. We must continue to seek the good and shun the bad. What else can we do?
Is it possible to mean something (in the Gricean sense) by being silent? Surely yes: we have the pregnant pause, and silence can speak volumes. I could also make an arrangement with you whereby if I don’t speak at a certain time I am wishing to communicate to you that (say) I want to leave. […]
I went to Butterfly World in Ft Lauderdale the other day–which includes several large enclosures where butterflies fly freely around the human visitors. The latter were all entranced; the former generally gracious. Why can deny the magic of lepidoptera? But what does it derive from? It is often remarked that the wings are gorgeous but […]
My interview about Prehension was broadcast yesterday from Michigan on NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. My section of the hourlong show (called “Handwork”) was preceded by a section on the therapeutic value of knitting and followed by discussions of the delights of drawing and the manual typewriter. This was all good manual propaganda–spreading the hand […]
I’m reading Nick Lane’s book of that title: it’s all cells and biochemistry and proton gradients. The book is quite philosophical in a hard-nosed science kind of way, because it is about explaining early life from first principles. He dares to suggest that we don’t know the answer to fundamental questions of biology. There is […]