Nature of Flagger/Coward Distribution

A linear function was chosen to describe the number of flaggers in a group, such that the total number of flaggers across all the groups was equal to the total number of cowards.

f(x) = a + x (n-2a)/g , where n is the total number of rabbits in each group, g is the number of groups and a is the number of flaggers in the 1st group. This integrates to ng/2 i.e. half the rabbits. The gradient of the function is given by grad=(n-2a)/g.
Using this as f(x) the expression Gc – Gf (from before) was calculated. This gives the average predator pressure experienced by flaggers relative to cowards for populations of heterogenous groups with varying numbers of flaggers and cowards as described by ‘a’.
Gf – Gc =


Substituting the expression a = (n-g*grad)/2 into the expression enables a clearer expression of heterogeneity.

Results
p=0.5, n=10, g=10

Once the gradient is steeper then 60% then flaggers experience rapidly decreasing predator pressure. This is a distribution with group one having 8 flaggers and 2 cowards, and group 10 having 2 flaggers and 8 cowards a range of {2,8}
For 50 groups (g=50) the graph has the same shape but the gradient only needs to be 12% before flaggers benefit more than cowards. The general rule is that the cut-off is proportional to 6/g.
p=0.5, n=20, g=10


For groups of large size there is little extra benefit to cowards until the groups have a larger range than {5,15}. After which there is considerable advantage to flaggers.
p=0.1, n=10, g=10

If the probability of not seeing the predator is very low (10%) there is range of distributions which benefit cowards very much. Suddenly when the range reaches {0.5,9.5} is benefits flaggers. 0.5 isn’t possible so there are no distributions which favour flaggers in small groups.
p=0.9, n=10, g=10

A simple curve where ranges {2.5,7.5} and steeper benefit flaggers. Flagging strategy is an anti-predator strategy and obviously only benefits where predators are skillful and not easily seen by individuals.
ConclusionFlagging as a strategy depends upon strong heterogeneity in flagger/coward ratios. Low dispersal of offspring i.e. children remaining in the warren will create such a heterogeneity. Sexual selection for flaggers is vulnerable to the evolution of a “slag” gene but may provide a mechanism for heterogeneity also.
Another avenue of investigation is in free markets. The local marginal strategy is always to defect and become a coward. However under certain situations strategies that benefit the group will lead to selection for groups of individuals who do not do this, i.e.e those who abandon local marginal thinking.

Our Hedgehog

I’ve started to explain how we got into this ridiculous state of affairs where everyone duplicates the same structures again and again through this country; everyone has their own: car, house, phone, computer etc. Its a lot of extra work and its a lot of waste as most of this goes unused most of the time. However it has evolved and we are for the time being stuck with it.

Its not just us however that suffer because of this problem. Foraging animals that require habitats in different shapes and sizes to us get excluded by the repetitive parcelling up of resources. Had this argument with my mother who is hell bent on isolating her house and garden from the outside world. Watching Springwatch this year and being alerted to this project http://www.hedgehogstreet.org/ it seems I wasn’t wrong. Our hedgehog was found face down in the frost a couple of years ago starved on its meagre rations from our 1/3 acre garden and presumably trying to top up unsuccessfully with food in the winter it died. Now if we had a vegetable patch we’d be over run with slugs (their favourite food of which they eat about 200 a night) and my mother misses our little friend. A parable being written large in Man’s habitation of Earth!

Snakes

Wonderful day’s snake watching in Berkshire - March 20th 2011

Technorati Tags: snake,herpitology,adder,nature

. Particularly nice female adder fresh from hibernation in expert hands (not mine).

   

Snake Watching in Sevenoaks (8th May 2011) – 3 juvenile grass snakes (pic 1 & 2 same individual)

   

Grass Snake (male): fresh from hibernation (Reading April 2010)

 

Is Air Valuable?

Hearing "One World" on Radio World Service I was a little annoyed by the UN head of conservation's attitude to conservation efforts. Everything he said was within a consumptive economic paradigm: species may provide benefits to man; they should be preserved for future generations; they are so intricately involved in the web of life that we can't afford to lose them. How 1 dimensional. Such mechanical talk makes me think I should be dead.

Air is not valuable. It is easily available, free to transport (via the wind and diffusion) and is recycled free of charge. It is not economically valuable unlike its sibling land. What lies above us is free and worthless, what lies fixed beneath our feet is the most precious resource with more blood spilt over it, literally as well as metaphorically, than anything else. This distinction is purely mechanical like the difference between plains Indians following buffalo and Canadian Indians who were agricultural and owned land. An surprising irony I now see that vegetarians are better fighters than meat eaters because vegetarians form more fixed territories to grow their food on!

But what economics explains also rips economics apart. Air has no economic value because it has no exchange value, an it has no exchange value because no-one can deprive anyone else of it and so be in the situation of selling it to them. If air was available in bottles for even 1p we would just walk outside and breathe for free. Yet at the same time as it being worthless, it is the most important resource. We can survive without food for many weeks, we can survive without water for many days, we can survive without warmth for many hours, but we can't survive without air for more than a few minutes.

What is least valuable is also most valuable. If there ever needed to be a demonstration of economic value being just a type of mechanical measurement here it is.

There is then a type of valuation which doesn't show up in measurement until the resource is scarce. It is the same with a friend who dies and only then do we realise how much they meant to us, or a time of great happiness that we only appreciate when we are sad. The problem with economics is that things only show up in £ when it is too late. We "value" that we have already lost (as I often quote Bono as having said so well in The Fly).

This is where economic conservation is logically flawed. There is only money is saving that which is rare. It means that which is abundant we don't care about and that is the whole problem with mankind at the moment; we can't appreciate what is everyday, normal, free and easy. We have to aspire and struggle for what is hard to attain to get any value in life. Yet after a 1000mile journey to find gold we feel great value as we take it out of the hand of a man who lives in a place where it is so common they make spoons from it. Same material thing but one man travelled 1000miles for it. He should have stayed at home and appreciated his stainless steel spoon that the man from the land of gold has never seen, or even the wooden spoon that he crafted one cold winter from a branch. What is the difference except in how we look at it?

So sadly the UN head of Conservation is a very good conserver of the World because he only sees the value of what is already beaten up and virtually destroyed; that which has economic value.

Some Insecta for Contemplation

Following from the last blog on animal/human a beautiful male Oedemera nobilis resting in a flower after presumably a good meal of pollen (isn’t this a species of geranium… will check?). I love the fact that it evidently thinks it is camouflaged. Striking colour co-ordination tho I’ll give it that – metallic green and purple against the ultra-violet of the flower – striking!

Now that form is entirely derived from the needs for securing a mate and nothing else (beetle and flower)! Why stop being the larva? The females have a good taste then given how much beauty they demand from the males! Yet these creatures have brains far smaller than even a spinal ganglion let alone my visual cortex how can we share the same tastes? There seems to be something objective to beauty!!!Females lack the swollen legs which means they must be something to do with either display or fighting (what males like best in most species).

I only saw this because I was walking as my bike was in for repairs. This reminded me why I must never forget the primary value of walking over other transport.

Also came across this battle zone. Unidentified ichneumon wasps were swarming around these wood worm holes. Maybe this is another reason for beetles not to stay only as larvae! (which is true because by existing in two niches they increase their food supply).

The wasps utterly decimated the population as females mated with waiting males and then search

ed hole by hole for prey, entering head first and very quickly backing out if the hole had already been exploited – I presume they leave some chemical signature.

Once found they reversed out of the hole, turned around and went back in abdomen first to sting the prey and lay the time bomb of an egg. The swarm took about 20 minutes to complete the attack. But it was not all one sided. A huge jumping spider (9mm body) with perfect camouflage was stalking the parasites too. But he was not travelling far from that crevice presumably watching out for bird strikes. Of course me being present probably altered some of the behaviours too.

For people with wood worm in their houses I wonder if releasing a vial of these wasps every so often would curtail the problem rather more efficiently and safely than the wood worm killer chemicals. Tough on the old wood worms however being thrown into a very real Aliens type scenario. Having their insides eaten out can’t be the nicest way to end one’s life – tho the parasites are clever and do their work surgically and probably painlessly – they don’t want the wood worm to curl up with stomach pains and stop eating

wood straight away! Beautiful? Striking and extraordinary at least. Parasitoids are already used for this.

P.S. who needs the Serengeti when we have this on our doorstep? I’m happy that Spring Watch on BBC is diversifying away from birds (which are wonderful creatures yes) to include other classes of animal – Insecta has to be a must for the show given the sheer diversity and

beauty of them (butterflies and moths being only the obvious example). After reptiles they have always been my favourite - interesting to see how universal the appeal of snakes is to naturalists (I’m not alone) Chris Packam saying that he had 20 grass snakes in his room once. That’s more than I have ever seen – I’m impressed and its not like I haven’t looked for them.

On another occasion a sexual lady bird and the discarded case of its previous pupal stage. I wonder as it dries its wings whether the red pigment is created later of is this a yellow 7 spot!? But the real question is what does a ladybird actually look like? It’s the same question as what shape is water, and its interesting that humans chose the sexual form to represent the creature. We have the same eyes evidently as the mates.

Below another of the vast array of parasitoid hymenoptera…Amblyteles armatorius on the prowl to infect noctuid caterpillars (under-wings and the like).

Big parasitoids have little parasitoids inside their bellies to blight them, and little parasitoids have smaller parasitoids and so ad infinitum.

This itself raises the whole issue of inside and outside. If you ever have parasitic worms or a fluke, or even a virus yourself… is that really inside “you”.

And obviously the infinite regress is because a parasite cannot prey upon itself… altho actually it could. This is what a child is!!! tho children are a bit smarter than to kill their host (most of the time). Now that is a very odd ouroboros!! and an example where the SRH doesn’t quite work. Obviously this is what the film Aliens was about. Just reading into this I find it is documented. “Occasionally, accidents can happen and the ichneumonid may miss the target host and the egg may stick on her own body, when the larva hatches it at once attacks its own parent.”

btw the ultimate field guide to Insecta of Britain and Western Europe is the Domino Field Guide. The late Sir Dick Southwood who used to be at Imperial College and I remember my tutor telling me that it was while watching the pond outside the conservatory at Silwood Park that he did a thought experiment with frogs hopping into available spaces on the edge. I forget what the resulting theory was … oops. He says of this book “…an extraordinarily fine work.” couldn’t agree more.

Sex, Beauty, Animal and Human

… excerpt from previous blog…

I also realised that the common form of the stag beetle which flew past (with the hard shell, antlers and legs etc) is only the sexual form and so if beetles didn’t have sex we would know them only as rather ugly wood maggots.

Now examine the rest of the metamorphosing arthropods and it is evident that to be “sexual” is a very big deal. One of the dominant features is colour and flying… to find and attract mates obviously… and it seems some very general level of aesthetics that Nature shares from beetles to flowers to humans.

Suddenly it becomes apparent that the very property of being “sexual” imbues any creature with dynamism and beauty because it must find (hunt) and attract a mate. It is no surprise then that insect books spend so long painting the sexual form and only a page or two is dedicated to the larvae and even less to the eggs… we even think of the sexual form as the “adult” and the “true” form. It is adult in that it is the last stage and adult mammals are sexually reproductive but it is only by analogy.

Sex (as Darwin himself realised) is responsible for a very very great great deal of the natural “form” that we observe and enjoy in the natural world (in all species not just our own!!!). Sexual beauty is thus definitely archaeological (can be spoken about through historical narratives) and transcends the specific function of causing mating in humans. It is something that we can appreciate in other species that we have no intention of mating! It is even more obvious when you look at flowers … but it was beetles that did it for me.

I always suspected this - there is beauty in a girl that is far, far beyond what is required for physical sex, possession and marriage; a beauty that satisfies the mind also, the same beauty that the mind finds peace with in nature. This would link to a general conception of human beauty as a part of natural beauty – the Mother Earth maybe (who was a beautiful serene fecund middle aged woman when I met her – next decade or two older than the Virgin Mother).

Now the problem! Experiencing beauty in a female is a profound experience that transcends the common world. However beauty in a female within the common world becomes part of the status games that indirectly are linked to breeding. This was what I wrestled with in the Northern England stage of my Land’s End to John o’Groats walk. There was I trying to live as simply and “close” to nature as possible. Reducing the reliance on man made things as much as possible. I have even developed my knowledge of wild plants so that I can eat to a limited extent from nature also. But it was the joy riders from Manchester that disturbed my thoughts. Simply walking is not a very “Natural” thing to do. It is much more natural to be pumping with testosterone in big displays of viability to secure social status and attract high ranking mates – like buying a big car and burning up the rubber in the Yorkshire dales. I had to realise that being “in” nature like an animal and being outside nature like a “human” were distinct. We are actually man-animals. The animal sees a landscape as a source of resources like water, food, territory and building land, minerals, agricultural land etc. The human sees the landscape as a place to exist and Be within – appreciating primarily its beauty and watching its character and changes. In industry this is classified as a resource but in its nature it is more. It is not for the purpose of sustenance. If we didn’t enjoy the countryside we wouldn’t die (physically) indeed governments and industry don’t actually have to care about the environment at all. There is a weak argument these days that if we don’t care for the environment then we will be physically damaged as the Earth ecosystem breaks down. It is weak because the real reason for “care” for the environment doesn’t actually matter in physical terms at all. If people are so much like animals that they can’t see that they are animals to be honest it doesn’t matter if the human race goes extinct we just join the dinosaurs etc.

The reason why the environment matters is precisely because of what doesn’t matter. The human race doesn’t actually matter in physical terms. Like the Dodo we can go extinct. There is no reason in Heaven or Earth why it should matter… if we only think in purely practical animal material terms that is.

The reason the human race matters is because of things like “beauty” and “existence” and “Being”. The reasons that some people go walking. It really doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t, but when you do it you discover its “value” and that “value” is the value of the human race and the world as a whole. It is the Earth Mother if that metaphor works for you.

Where politics, economics, and technology and science are so lacking, and why they fill me with profound boredom, is because they deal with what seems to matter. Yet you look from a big enough perspective and what seems so important on the low level, like the interest rate for example, turns out to have no real importance. So the economy collapses and the human race descends into a dark age and nuclear war and goes extinct, as already mentioned there is no reason in politics, economics or technology and science why this should matter. One has to reach beyond these things to the True Being to find out why it Really matters. If we can’t see that then we have lost our “soul” and have truly been lost to the base gods of politics, economics and technology and science.

In this lies the SRH again that the system in which things matter can’t matter itself. Now this sounds a lot like the proposal in a book “The Self Writing Universe” which is a private publication and has small circulation but is the only thing that deals with this issue of theories of everything having ultimately to be theories about themselves… or universes writing themselves to use the bootstrap analogy he uses in the book. I skimmed the book in a few hours at 3am for the “key” and got the gist that the only thing that can explain the order and wonder of the universe must itself be absurd and paradoxical. Its time to return to that book maybe – annoying book though since he fleshes it out with a post hoc analysis of existing ideas which he only read up to write the book. They can’t by his own analysis be critical to understanding the book so why include them? I don’t need a history lesson in philosophy. Maybe he is following Pirsig’s example in “Zen and the art…” but I felt his analysis was autobiographical (deliberate or device it doesn’t matter) of the process he had actually been through.

So returning to “my muse” (as if I ever leave!)… there is the real reason for female beauty which is the same reason for the world and for everything. Then there is the proximal reason for female beauty which becomes economic and political. One only needs to watch music videos to see how female beauty is used primarily to define status. The sad thing then is to understand that to appreciate female beauty one must engage with the world of territory, property and “status”. This put another way is the problem I original recognised – that a relationship really means, no matter how spiritual it begins, the practical biology of child birth and that involves switching from our spiritual human side to the resource allocation attitude of an animal.

I can’t become an animal because it destroys the awareness of the very thing that I recognise in female beauty, in flowers and in adult beetles. There is no way down from here, one MUST ascend to the gods and leave worldly concerns of childbirth, family, status and resources behind… like it or not! To be Human is to sacrifice our own Animal. Thus I should appreciate the beauty in that bike and cast my concerns for food aside like I used to. Why is that manoeuvre becoming harder as I get older and closer to death… I should be finding it easier!!!

On Dawkins … again

 

Been toying with these ideas for years. It occurs to me yesterday that there is this potential problem in Evolutionary theory. Evolution is usually considered one dimensional. It is about the gene frequency in successive generations. But actually it can be considered as binary i.e. survival or not. The common garden worm is a form that has survived as is the human species. In terms of evolutionary success there is nothing between them. They each occupy their niche stably. People might argue that humans were superior because we command control of so much of nature. The problem for us is becoming ourselves – can we command ourselves? I personally fear not – there is a contradiction in commanding oneself (SRH). So the human race may indeed be out lived by the worms. This makes the worms more successful than humans. Yet we know in another sense that humans are “superior” to worms. Humans for example can codify and discuss this issue… can even gain liberation from material entanglement. It is blatant then that against the yard stick of evolutionary success most of what humans are about does not get measured. Even those individuals/species that go extinct have qualities and values that evolution does not respect.

The argument can be put this more interesting way. Dawkins has an idea that gene frequency explains everything – call it Selfish Gene. He even extends this idea to the spread of ideas themselves. Suppose there was a gene which corresponded to an interest in the idea of Selfish-Gene and another gene that lead to bearers rejecting the idea. It may sound absurd to say a gene exists for such a specific trait – that is exactly one of the weaknesses of this thinking!

For the gene to spread there has to be selection in favour of the Selfish-Gene gene, in other words those who bear the gene that stops them from believing in the Selfish-Gene suffer some increased mortality as a result. How can this occur? It can’t. There is just as much chance of the people with the anti-self-gene gene winning and those with the selfish-gene gene. This is the problem noted before that there is no selective advantage to Evolution Theory. It is not the product of evolution itself! Which would run foul of the SRH anyway.

Both these points taken together point to things that are fundamental to human experience which transcend survival and existence – things which transcend evolution, chess and game theory. Death as is oft noted in religious circles is not the end, not even a concern of true mankind who see that survival and existence are just a diversion of reality and not its basis. The problem with Dawkins is that he is so blinded by his own dogma that he will never see “the light” it seems.

p.s. I need to look up the official game-theory/computability approach to chess. Is chess a formal system?

On Butterflies

 

Just sitting here in a field at the university and I see my favourite butterflies: first a female orange tip and then about 5 minutes later a male. Some 30 minutes after that they are fluttering aro und together. To my left there is a long-tailed tit with food in its beak just resting and scanning the area before heading to its nest to feed the young. The male orange tip just lands on a flower right next to me. It is so like clockwork this breeding thing; it is ubiquitous. The long tailed tit flies back from the nest over my head. I think for a moment as I see that pair of butterflies together of my muse and myself. I wonder whether they experience the extraordinary quality of it, as I did or is it as I see now just plain and simple. I tried at breeding I say to myself and it didn’t work. So I imagine a conversation with an adversary who says that I should just try again, it will happen. I reply that making it happen isn’t the interest for me. I look at the birds here who will fledge their young in a few weeks and I look at the human responsibilities. I suppose we invest equal amounts – birds produce broods every year that take a month to fledge but only live a couple of years, we on the other hand produce just one brood which take 2 decades to fledge but live for 80 years. It is not the making it happen that is the point I think again, it is the cost. An advert in the paper I was reading says get paid to do the thing you something you enjoy most. Two thoughts enter my mind. My first ever realisation about the nature of “work” was that you didn’t enjoy doing it. True this isn’t universal but the most important jobs like cleaning and manual labour are not the things we chose to do for enjoyment. My mother calls them chores – this means they are not things we chose to do. Fact is work is mostly that assignment of things that have to be done but no-one wants to do them so they get a salary attached. Another way to see that is if doing something is so enjoyable then why would anyone pay you to do it, wouldn’t they just do it themselves? Labour and reward this is at root why I am reluctant to make it work. In a Malthusian, Efficiency-of-the-markets way if something has great rewards then the cost will go up (either in price, or in population) until the cost balances the rewards. Fact is having a family is extremely costly and the cost just keeps going up. My cousin is renovating a new home at the moment and I am utterly bewildered at the sheer complexity of planning regulations and the like. With each generation the amount of work required to provide an environment of nurture for children increases. Time was like the animals that you simply grew what you needed from the ground. Now with increasing population pressures and the ratchet of capitalism (increasing efficiency requiring greater complexity to create jobs) the environment is becoming chocked and there is simply no space for anyone. I made a half resolution today never to own any property: it is abhorrent I have decided, not because of what I shuts in but because of the principal of shutting people off land which I consider an act of violence against my fellow man. We go to all this trouble to ensure safety and security for the next generation at the cost it seems of the current generation. Space and Land quite evidently precedes the act of partitioning spaces – enjoying that primary Space and Land cannot be affected by the trivial creation of spaces. Of course people are welcome to divide the world up into little properties but it is a petty and trivial activity. Looking at the butterflies again the overwhelming sense is that breeding and property are actually petty and trivial activities. Not that this perspective is easy to reach. I have realised with great humility recently that the path I think I’m treading is difficult, at least as difficult as a good marriage – it is not the easy way at all. Up here in the cold mountains there is great perspective (occasionally when the clouds shift) but the going is most certainly harder than for the folks in the valleys. This must be accepted. So the sense grasped today is that there is clear space beyond the confines of the concepts of sexual relationship, marriage and breeding.

I forgot to add a central point to the discussion on work. There is an assumption in this society that “doing” is a given and we simply need to decide what flavour of doing we will be employed in. My genuine question since the outset has always been “why?”. Maybe a childish question but I don’t see the source of the premise that we need to do. Doing is always in response to something: a need or desire in ourselves or in someone else. Without need or desire what doing is there to do? Folding that into the question of breeding produces the other flavour I missed out.

11th Hour

Watched this yesterday – wished I had seen it ages ago would have saved me thinking out a load. It shows at least that a good deal of thought does exist in the right direction it just hasn’t seen made very popular.

Interesting ideas throughout. This was quite revealing:

The annual work done by nature was roughly estimated at $35 Trillion dollars compared with $18 Trillion done by humans. The only difference was that humans did all that work in an exchange system, while Nature did it all for free! Doesn’t this more than anything else throw a grenade into the concept of “exchange value” and “price”. It is like Structuralism arguing that nothing exists “outside” language because everything has to be communicated for “proof” – so you can’t by definition “prove” that anything exists outside language. I need to get that SRH sorted out after this wedding! The same is true with the paradigm of “price” they say how could anything be valued without an exchange system? We know perfectly well that it is, just it can’t be proven – though well done to the people who did the study in attempting to cross the boundary!

Thinking aloud: the way they did it was by asking how much it would cost for mankind to generate all the services that nature currently performs like fixing sun energy in plant material, bio waste breakdown, CO2 recycling, water recycling etc. I can’t believe it would not be more myself given that every heart beat would have to be performed by a human… SRH showing its head!

So maybe a similar question works for Structuralism and the SRH? Need a break from writing…

Speciation accidental

Just saw this in the New Scientist...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527511.400-accidental-origins-where-species-come-from.html

Mark Pagel shows that speciation occurs at a random rate not something you would expect if it required the accumulation of genetic errors and selection. Obviously random events like geological or climate changes would effect speciation but whole trees exhibit this character of exponentially reducing length of non-speciation e.g. 1/5, 1/5*1/5, 1/5*1/5*1/5, 5^-4, 5^-5 ... (if probability of speciation is 1/5).

Now this strikes me as correct. The forms that we see in nature are a combination of developmental restraints (symmetry) , adaptation (evolution of water-tight coverings) and accident (why are female peacocks like big tail displays?)

Just looking at some excellent VRML models of insects yesterday really showed up the extraordinary shape of nature... and also its arbitrariness. Why did this help consider the problem? In VRML the possibilities are infinite save only the creativity of the modeller. Thus when the modeller copies natural forms they are inadvertently copying shapes that have hidden causes. A butterfly is a very complex form - with a long, long, long genetic history and unnumerable physical, chemical, biological restraints: none of which are present in a VRML environment. The only restraint in that environment is physical consistency so that for example a keg cannot spiral around through the body. The shape that is being copied is the product of an as yet incompletely defined function: life. It makes it more vivid how undefined it is when we see the modeller having to apply his skills to all those legs and hairs and joints without necessarily understanding why this is this and that is that.

Does it "have" to look like this is the question? What would aliens look like given the same raw physical environment, but a different family tree and random events?

here also...

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/03/evolution_and_accident.php

Oregon Petition

A friend sent me a link to the Oregon Petition which aims to show a divided scientific consensus.

Noticing that the petition is in states with numbers per state already recorded it gave me the idea of testing the distribution of names against political orientation.

Quick look on the net gives good stats for all the states in alphabetical order so I could very quickly cut and paste into excel.

Observed values were collected from the petition and grouped according to their voting patterns over the past 10 years using the red, purple and blue scheme.

Expected values were calculated in two ways:

1) The first was by assuming that people were equally likely to sign the petition across all the states. The total number of signatures divided by the total population of all the states. Then the number of signatures in each state was expected to be directly proportional to the state population.

2) The petition selected for people with qualifications so patterns could have been attributed to the distribution of science establishments. (1) was repeated but using only the population of people in each state was a degree or higher qualification.

Here are the results for 2 (1 provides an identical conclusion)

X^2	Red (Republican)	Purple	Blue (Democrat)	Total
Observed (O)	9542	7919	13295	30756
Population (Degree or above)	20434	17688	43479	81602
Expected (E)	7702	6667	16387	30756
(O-E)^2/E	439.7	235.2	583.6	1258.5

X2 = 1258.5, df=2, p=0

In other words there is 0 chance of the hypothesis being true that scientists have signed the petition independent of state voting patterns. This is a major problem for the petition that claims that scientists are responding to objective research about the debate. Why should coming from a Republican or Democrat state affect your likelihood of signing the petition if it is based on research?

Well that is easy. Al Gore has biased the Democrats and the Oil industry is the second largest lobby group behind the Republicans. Just like tobacco it is not in the interests of oil giants to have us weaned off their product. And it is no surprise that the trend supports this with Republican scientists more likely to sign the petition than those from democrat states.

Now how does politics determine what free scientists think when they are supposed to be evidence based? Next time someone turns up with a “scientific” paper just find out who did the funding.

Something else that was interesting in this. Democrats substantially outnumber Republicans in the US. So Republicans governments don’t actually represent the people very well. It might also be true that Democrat states are more educated but I’ve not followed this up. That more than twice as many Democrats signed the petition as Republicans is an indication of how few Republican would actually qualify for signing the petition. Of those that do quality however they are much more likely to sign than those in Democrat states.

Evolutionists error

Watching CH4's "Inside Nature's Giants" I noticed a blatant error in the picture of evolution being expounded. Its also the same error that perfuses through the whole of GCSE Biology. It is the error of essentialism...

That is to say that "species" are given an actual status. People then say things like "elephants are adapted to their environment by having big ears". One wonders what happens if an elephant adapts to living in water... is it still an elephant?

It is not that elephants are adapted to living in these conditions but that the animals that have this genetic history and are adapted to this environment are called elephants. Form, History and Environment are One in an organism.

So we can't accurately say that "elephants" are adapted to their "environment"! "Adaptation" is a very subtle concept that seem to suffer this crude misuse all the time even by the biggest proponents of evolution like Richard Dawkins!

R.I.P. Grass Snake 8.2006 - 8.4.2009

Sadly, after making it through many winters, this 3rd year male grass snake came to its end. I found it 20 meters away from the group of mating snakes I had seen last month, but not in seclusion like then, but on the grass by the path and the trimmed hedge which runs nearby, its neck broken and its belly split open. Maybe this snake had found a mate during this warm spring, maybe not; this would have been its first sexually active year.

Unfortunately this is what so often happens when humans and animals come into contact. It was evening when I found it, its flesh still glistening in the warm sun - killed sometime earlier in the day. Undoubtedly it had been sunbathing in the morning when attacked. Maybe it was by human - but I think most humans have sensitivity and its injuries seem odd for a stick or stamping as you might imagine or even for some childish sadistic killing. It seems much more likely this is the work of an unrestrained dog, its teeth biting clean through the narrow neck crushing the spine and ripping the belly. It is not the fault of a dog, too stuffed on tinned meat to eat its own prey, it is not entirely the fault of the owner (who clearly didn't heed the signs insisting on a lead, and reminding them they are in a nature reserve) because a dog needs to play. It is just the fact that humans are animals and where animals compete there is death.

Yet humans are not entirely animals, it is when we realise (dialectically) we are animals that we become man. No animal creates a Nature Reserve. Few animals lement the loss of creatures from other species. It is a shame that so many humans are still only animals.

Dialectically I should not lash out against dog ownership but over the years I have developed nothing but disdain for dog owners. I've commented upon this before in the blog. Take a walk anywhere in the UK and you will meet other people taking a walk... and you will meet their dogs. I have always wondered whether these people would take walks if they didn't have dogs. If not, then the dogs are really walking the humans - a very sad state of affairs! The other time you will see people walking is when they have kids with them - this is very good, but what happens to kids that they stop doing this? All kids are fascinated by living things - the movement even from a snail is a wonder to a child. How do adults become so jaded that they learn to take for granted the one thing which dominates this planet and our whole existence namely life itself? Without the bird in the tree and everything that this entails this is just a barren rock where nothing stirs and the shadow of the rising and setting sun falls upon forgotten lands.

Yet you almost never see a "human" walking. It is because we are dead - dog owners are dead - preferring to mediate their experience of life through the childish yapping of their captured creature enslaved unknowingly into an ungodly alliance between man and animal. It is rather good for the dog - a social animal instinctively tuned to "status" struggles in the pack finding a new master a whole order of morality and intelligence higher than the top-dog, a master who also liberally shares out the packs kill. For the human however one wonders what can be sought in a dog? It is alive, so is a snail. It is intelligent, so is an octopus. It was once a critical member of a long standing symbiosis with man where dogs and man hunted together - but so are E.colli bacteria in the gut. It is very unclear what the concept of "pet" brings to the symbiosis these days. Dogs have been morphed like freaks at a circus into bizarre unworkable shapes, with no logic or purpose - living works of art. Would it be disgraceful to bioengineer further freakishness like double heads or six legs? Or just stick to the tail removing which is like having the muscles for our smile cut out?

This however is not my main criticism. I'm not always careful (at this stage) about by sources I'm more interested in getting the overall picture and fine tuning critical specifics when that is visible - but here is a statistic for the "recent" population of dogs in the UK 6.2 million. That is a dog for every 10 people in the UK. The dog niche is taken by the fox in the UK with a rough population for between 0.5 and 1 million. Crudely the UK environment could support around a million dogs - yet each day 7 times this are unleashed on the environment (6.2 + the foxes). While these pet dogs are mostly kept under control, their kills like the grass snake above represent a massive pressure on the environment.

Interesting facts unearthed just now. Only out a third of foxes find mates and breed, the rest are sub-ordinates who must wait for dominant individuals to die. If this is true there is evidently large competition for burrow sites in foxes. In harem animals the competition is for females - like with deer and some humans strategies also. I realise that many viable individuals may naturally never breed because they are low in the "status" heirachy, but this inefficiency enables rapid response to environmental changes. Fox hunting doesn't work because you kill one dominant fox and another comes out of the margins to take its place. This is exactly what auditing firms discovered in the 60s when over streamlines companies were seen to fail because they had no surplus resources to mobilise in times of stress. Low Status and non-breeding are critical aspects of Life's mechanism - tho from the individual perspective it amounts to being a "loser". Now that is more dialectical than anything on the subject of Status so far!

An irony is also found here. Foxes are hunted because they kill game birds (apparently). But game birds are hunted and eaten anyway. And the dogs used to hunt the foxes are fed from farmed meat also. And actually more meat is consumed by the hunting dogs than is consumed by the foxes that are hunted! The only difference is that dog owners pay farmers for the meat the dogs eat, while foxes don't pay farmers. So the simple economic argument to fox hunting is to replace hunts with compensation for farmers who lose livestock to foxes. This would cost the huntsmen less than the rigmaroll of hunting... now it is clear what hunting is - a culture and a sport - its got nothing to do with foxes! Hunting is an aristocratic sport. If it wasn't foxes it would be lions or elephants or something. How the whole UK media got all mixed up on this simple subject is beyond me.

Worse than dogs are cats. These creatures do still have a symbiotic relationship with man. With or without pet shops cats would still gravitate to urban environments and live near humans because of the population of rodents that abound near the amassing of foods in cities. I am very thankful to the cats near my garage. But at the same time there is 1 cat for every 6 humans in UK! With cats quoted as preying on 300 million animals a year (which is an underestimate I would have thought - it could be ten times this) there is a huge pressure on the environment - far greater than I suggest is warrented by the population pressure of rodents.

The obvious solution in both cases of dogs and cats is to either exclude dogs and cats from the environment all together, or stop feeding them and let there population come to carrying capacity. The former solution is simply cruel and raises the important question of what point dogs and cats do serve at all - we can just take walks ourselves why have a dog? In the latter case we would find out what pressure the UK environment really can sustain from cats and dogs by letting the cats and dogs take the pressure themselves. The one thing which would come under pressure is the industry of pet ownership and pet food and most of all the enduring idea that we must individually replicate each item in this country for each person so that each person can see themselves as the same as everyone else. I get all the pleasure of cats without the ownership from the cats that live near my garage - indeed propably more than the owners who evidently hardly ever see the cats because they are with me. I get all the pleasure of nature without the faintest whisp of ownership. As is always the case ownership distorts things and ultimately leads to death as we see in this picture. R.I.P. Grass Snake Aug 2006- 8 Apr 2009

Nature Diary (continual update)

Continued from photo diary 2006-9
2009
01.3 - Bumble Bees. Reed Bunting x 1 (Thames Valley Park)
08.3 - Mink x 2. (Twyford GP)
15.3 - Brimstone. 4-6 Grass Snakes mating (TVP)
19.3 - Comma butterfly (TVP)

06.4 - Black Cap x 2, Nut Hatch x 2 (making nest in tree), Chiffchaff x 1, Bee Fly x many! (Reading Uni)

12.4 - Orange tip (7oaks garden), Grass Snakes x2 (7oaks)

01.5 - Peacock laying eggs, fledged robin (Southcote)

05.5 - Cuckoo [heard] (Southcote)

24.05 - After dark saw 1st badger scurrying fast across road (Cycling down Pol Hill)

2010

23.2 Birds seen nesting (Reading)

24.4 Saw Adder, Brimstone, Heard Cuckoo (Frensham)

27.4 Saw first Orange-tip (male)

Gr8 nature participation site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/doonething/simple/surveys.shtml

Waxwing Year :-)

Sighting a group of Waxwings on rowan berries outside work on 14th January 2005 reawakened my childhood love of nature... and they are back apparently this year.

Interesting that I dreamed in early October - and even asked a friend who was off to Norway to look out for them - that a low berry harvest was going to make this a waxwing year!

Total Nature

Scriabin I understand had a concept of the Total Art Work - the combination of all art forms as a way of expressing the underlying Art. Identically isn't there a concept of Total Nature?

Nature from the urban perspective is a fringe peripheral entity. It is contained and entertained in a defined and limited form but we can escape it into the Human realities of literature, politics, economics essential society.

I've been developing a skeptical approach to the real significance of Society in the past few months and on the walk this enabled me to view with greater clarity a notion of Nature as an all encompassing framework upon which Mankind performs his works. Intellectually I've known this must be true, but it is hard to see when we are so brain washed by the hegemonic position of Mankind being the originator and foundation of Reality.

On this walking holiday for the first time I experimented with eating wild foods. This as Richard Mabey argues in the introduction is a great way to participate in nature. I also had binoculars to engage with the bird life properly for the first time. I've developed an old interest with insects to engage at that level also, I can add a deeper understanding of geology to that, and a growing understanding of weather.

Combine all this with my current developments in understanding Man's place in the world and the light of a "Total Nature" conception begins to shine.

Importantly this is not a "back to the trees" concept. It is simply an awareness of Truth, what Really exists in our Life. Understanding our place in the world is surely the most important thing for a Man before even he thinks about his own life. Failure to understand one's place and one fails to understand what one is.

Nature I maintain is something that we are intimately involved with on both the huge scale in terms of our planet, but also on the micro-scale in terms of the bacteria and chemistry of our own bodies. It is there in the weather, in the air, in the water, in the food, in the light, in every place. In thsi way the Truth manifests itself in so many forms that one cannot comprehend the Truth by looking at only one aspect. You cannot just be interested in ecology, or biology, geology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, agriculture etc and think that this is Nature - rather they are all required to glimpse what is a much deeper and fundamental conception.

A walk in the countryside is not a trivial pass time dictated by rights-of-way and the time allocated by an economic view it is an opportunity to involve oneself on all levels with the profound Reality that has been termed Nature.

By no means have I made any real transformation in my life, and by no means resolved a complete argument yet, but I've new confidenec in this approach that it really is better than the Hegemony.

Economy is rather in the news these days. It is interesting to note that there is no discontinuity in Nature at this time which I am aware of, and that the economic shift is entirely artificial and illusory! The fundamentals are still there: Crops are still growing and mouths still need feeding, yet the Human distribution system seems to have collapsed. Do we really need this distribution system? Many attempts have been made to re-engineer it, and with disasterous consequences. But they all fail it seems to me because they are not expressions of Total Nature, which is the only Reality.

The proof of this concept would I imagine be a fix of the economic distribution rules. But, I already know that the solution is going to be too radical for people to accept in my life time, if ever. Concepts like property and labour will be shown to be misunderstandings!

Charles Handy is the only person working in this direction that I know of. I should familiarise myself with his works. In particular an interesting statistic he produced was a trend in working hours. He placed agrarian working hours at around 20hours/week I remember. In my own life time we have seen working hours increasing. This seems counter-intuitive given techynological progress but it is a direct product not of Nature but of the economic system. We can only afford all the things we make if we work - so the loop is set up and a growing economy means endless more work. "Growing economy" is, I suspect, another error, but there is a vast wealth of doctrin behind (or more accurately generated by) this. I've discussed much already in the blog primarily that growing economy and consumerism is foolish in a world already facing limiting resources and ecological crisis.

Property is the most shakey but the hardest concept to investigate because it is so fundamental to our world view. Clearly it is illusory (taking the notion of illusion developed in this blog: that an illusion is something we believe without any evidence). If I purchase an apple then it becomes mine. Yet I would challenge anyone to show me the difference between an apple that is mine and one that is not mine. They are the same. Property does not exist in the world, it is a rule of the game, it could be otherwise, it is not Truth and it is not Real. So we are in game theory - this is where is gets complex and I've not been able to get through the maze yet. Astonishing however that John Locke's work is still (I believe) taken seriously when to my mind it falls apart so readily.

So "Total Nature" is the combined works and motives of Man that generate from and aim towards an understanding and appreciation of this most vast and profound Truth which underlies all extant things.

Beautiful moth...

I was just working my way through the nature photos iding the pictures when the window was hit my a fluttering moth attracted to my light. It was a swallow tail moth come to watch me working. I went back to work. I was iding what I remember is called something like "beautiful moth". Put it into google and got this page. The moth was back at my window. I ignored it and read the page...

Early hours of yesterday, about 1.00am, I heard a rattling agains my window. When I drew back the curtain I took a quick step back. After composing myself I got a couple of pics.click hereclick hereI have identified it as a swallowtail moth, one of the largest in the UK.

Then it hit me, wow! I've been outside to see it, a visitor from beyond but it has gone...

well I found my moth ... Nettle tap moth ... I must remember to set up a moth trap have been meaning to do for years... but 2nite off 2 bed.

Nanobacteria may just be lumps of limestone!!

They might have required a whole reworking of the concept of life... but maybe they're not alive after all.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080417/full/news.2008.762.html

Holistic conservation experiment success

10 year holistic conservation experiment in Madagascar: a success

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-miracle-in-madagascar-ndash-a-blueprint-for-saving-species-807799.html