The Dichotomous Trekkie 2.0

Now, let's take a turn to the water, and have a Tuesday Tetrapod on Orcinus orca, or the Orca ("Killer Whale").

One of the few common extant animals referred to by its specific name, orcas are the second most widely distributed mammal on the planet, after humans. Specifically:

Although killer whales occur worldwide, densities increase by 1-2 orders of magnitude between the tropics and the highest-sampled latitudes in the Arctic and Antarctic (Forney and Wade 2006). Killer whales tend to be more common along continental margins; however, there is some variation in this general pattern that appears linked to ocean productivity. Killer whales appear to be less common in western boundary currents, such as the Gulf Stream or the Kuroshio than in more productive eastern boundary currents, such as the California Current. Known areas of locally higher density often coincide with greater oceanographic productivity (e.g. off Argentina).

O. orca is technically a type of dolphin, a member of delphinidae, and possibly a complex of up to five species (but probably a combination of species, subspecies, and races). Currently, they are grouped as "populations" of transients, residents, and offshore, primarily differentiated by diet and behaviours with minor morphological differences.

Orcas are large, and commonly seen in water shows. They age at a rate similar to humans, with sexual maturity reached around 15 for females, and reaching up to 90 in age.

The orca is IUCN "data deficient", due to possible specific/subspecific splits and that certain populations are experiencing a 30% population drop over 30 years, while others maintain a stable population.

There is a gigantic repository of information on Orcas available — it is a Wikipedia featured article and many other resources are available online.

For last week's Tuesday Tetrapod, we look at Taricha rivularus, or the Red-Bellied newt:

T. rivularis is a plethodontid salamander, which, like other members of the subfamily Pleurodelinae, are sometimes called "newts". They transition to a smooth-skinned morph during their aquatic/breeding stage.

Like many other salamandrids, when stressed they can excrete a whitish neurotoxin on their skin, tetrodotoxin (TTX) which is very potent and can kill an adult human.

T. rivularis is IUCN "Least Concern" and can be found in northern california. The photographed specimen was found in Medecino county.

You can see more photos at CaliforniaHerps.

Just a quick entry. I realize I missed the TT again (even though I have the animal picked out for this past week and next week!) so next week will be another double-feature. However, I wanted to address the New York Times opinion article "Are There Secular Reasons?".

The premise of the article is that, following an argument from a Harvard law professor, there are no inherently secular reasons to perform an action, because, "there is no way, says Smith, to look at it and answer normative questions, questions like 'what are we supposed to do?' and 'at the behest of who or what are we to do it?'". Now, there are a few problems with this statement, essentially the premise of the article, which render the entire point, well, moot.

First, the question posed by Smith assumes that there is or should be an overarching, inherent, mandated, or otherwise external "reason" for everything, when in fact there is no reason to assume such a thing for anything. You are not "supposed" to do anything, nor must it be at something's behest. The only reason to assume you are "supposed" to do something is if you assume there is a pre-defined goal or end point which is validated for external or unassailable reasons.

Yes, that was a verbose way of saying "he's assuming a deity or deities exist and operating based on that assumption". OK, but let's say that you want a goal to exist. Is there a secular goal you can define that could serve what the theo-heads assume one requires for being "good"? (I neglect here the obvious argument that analyses that assumption) Well, yes. A secular worldview acknowledges that, basically, what you have is all you have, or, in other words, live life for life. A corallary to this is since your life today is all you or anyone will ever get, the kindest, most humanitarian thing to do is simply to try to maximize quality of life for this and future generations.

Basically, secular humanism.

I do wish theo-heads would stop being so fixated on shoving their deities on everyone.

This is just a friendly public service announcement — ignore any science (which is usually actually "science") from the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian. They are both pretty uniform in being united against climate change (the broader issue, not even just anthropogenesis), with ocassional alt-med quackery and such. I'd nail them on evolution coverage but for now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're just subject to the media's usual poor coverage of the subject.

If you'd like some pretty good, easily-accessible sources on climate change, check out:

• "Tamino" is a researcher who works with the climate data, and frequently posts statistical breakdowns and debunkings of common claims. While the debunkings aren't instantly findable, they're quite thorough when you find them.
• Skeptical Science has a list of frequently used arguments with knockdowns, citing peer-reviewed papers.
• RealClimate is a site run by various climatologists.
• "How to Talk to a Climate 'Skeptic'": A large number of articles sorted by class of argument and then by subargument.

So, yeah. WSJ? "Scientist says X" is meaningless unless it is peer-reviewed, and even more meaningless when they're not climatologists, and a "maverick" flying in the face of the consensus is not actually privvy to any special data. Also, stop saying "scientists" like it's a magical-catch-all phrase, or I'm going to have to start calling non-scientists "humanitists". A physical anthropologist or chemist has no special, extra-noteworthy climate position.

Ask yourself — what reasonable evidence do you need to demonstrate that climate change is happening? Will you honestly admit that you would be willing to change your position when you are confronted with that evidence? I have done some models of generic planetary temperatures, so I know many of the influences; I further, perhaps six years ago, as uncertain as to the anthropogenic nature of the argument. Soon after, I saw a long-term solar data analysis which removed the only reasonable alternative candidate from the equation. Further evidence keeps building to support anthropogenic climate change. You also have to look globally, and not just at the United States (which many of us in the US are prone to do). I don' think there is any evidence short of the catastrophic that will convince those of the Guardian or WSJ.

For various other topics, just ask and I'll put some links up when I get a request. Seems like the end of this post got slightly off-topic, huh?

Enjoy!

Man, the embed code on that was funky ... hopefully I extracted the actual video feed properly.

Fun fact? Bill Gates implies he likes fast reactors. Maybe integral fast reactors?

Covering tetrapods is amusing. I want to try for some sort of balance, but there isn't one — about 55% of my entries should be birds, 20% amphibians, 15% non-avian sauropsids, and 10% mammals. I should keep that in mind as I continue to post, and particularly put up more amphibians. That being said, let's work on that 15%, and bring forth Diomedea exulans, or the Wandering Albatross.

A procellariiform (tube-nose) water bird, like other albatrosses (diomedeidae), they have characteristically stiff wings they use to "dyanimcally soar", utilizing winds close to the surface of the sea. Procellariiformes are almost exclusively pelagic, with an uncharacteristically good sense of smell for avians. D. exulans are among the largest birds in the world, with definitively the longest wingspan. Average wingspans run 2.5-3.5 m, with largest verified reports running to 3.7 m and questionable sources reporting as much as 5.3 m wingspans. Other adaptations include the ability to excrete excess salt from glands in their nasal passage

D. exulans is a distinctive bird with a characteristic beak shape, and mostly white except for black-tipped wings, with some black along the trailing wing feathers as adults.

Like other procellariiformes, D. exulans is long-lived and has a distinctive breeding behaviour. They typically lay only one egg per two years, maintaining a monogamous, lifelong relationship with one other bird. Their breeding population is restricted to three primary sites, with 20% on South Georgia, 40% on Crozet and Kerguelen islands, and 40% on Prince Edwards Islands. This behaviour leaves them particularly vulnerable to cats and rats introduced onto these islands by humans, which cause large problems for eggs and chicks. Particularly on Kerguelen, some breeding colonies have had complete breeding failure due to cats. As a k-selected species, they are sensitive to this sort of predation, with reproduction not occuring until individuals are 11-15 years of age.

During the year, D. exulans is widely distributed, essentially cosmopolitian between 28deg-60deg in the southern oceans. Their wide distribution and their diet of cephalopods, fish, and crustaceans means they are strongly affected by longline fishing used to catch tuna and Chilean Sea Bass. The birds are prone to drowning after becoming ensnareed in the hooks along the lines. A survey in 2007 indicated about half of the chicks on Bird Island have ingested fishing hooks.

They are rated IUCN "vulnerable", with a >30% population decline over the past three generations. Efforts are underway by some fisheries to reduce albatross bycatch.

Well, in this belated TT, let's throw another xenarthran into the fray, with Priodontes maximus, or the Giant Armadillo:

All extant armadillos, including P. maximus, are members of Dasypodidae, which lie on a different branch than the extinct, massive, glyptodonts. P. maximus isn't quite as weird as other armadillos (which, among other things, give birth to four monozygotic young - ie, indentical quadruplets). P. maximus is fairly large, weighing about 30 kg and averaging 89 cm in length. While primarily formicivorous, they will sometimes also eat small rodents.

The armor on dasypodids are keratinized dermal scutes, with varying degrees of flexibility across the clade. Only the genus Tolypeutes has the capacity to actually role into a ball for defense, otherwise just rely on their armor for protection in conjuction with flight.

Native to South America (particularly north-central SA), Priodontes maximus is rated IUCN "Vulnerable" with a decreasing population. Population decline has been estimated at >= 30% in the past 24 years, exacerbating its naturally sparse population.

In an odd aside, IE can't get a break — if you're viewing the IUCN site in IE8, it may not display properly.

I may have fallen off the face of the planet, but it doesn't mean science stopped going. So, beginning with a bit of admittedly old news — we've determined the color of a few coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs' plumage. It's the subject of a few papers that came out in Science and Nature two weeks ago (DOIs 10.1126/science.1186290,10.1038/nature08740, summary: 10.1126/science.327.5965.508). The trick, it turns out, was to use a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to look at the microstucture of the preserved melanosomes in the feathers.

If you can work your way through this paragraph, you can also see why this discovery is not just a novelty, but scientifically interesting (I don't think I can phrase it better):

Integumentary filaments occur both in non-avian theropods that possessed true pennaceous feathers (for example, Caudipteryx) and in those in which the latter are absent, such as Sinosauropteryx, Sinornithosaurus and Beipiaosaurus. The report of superficially similar unbranched filaments in the ornithischian dinosaurs Psittacosaurus and Tianyulong suggests that such structures might be common to all dinosaurs. Many investigators have accepted that these various filamentous to feather-like structures are epidermal in origin and represent feathers; others have disputed this view, arguing, for example, that in the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx they represent degraded dermal collagen fibres, part of the original strengthening materials of the animal's skin. Resolving this fundamental difference in interpretation is important for our understanding of the biology of the taxa in which they occur, but also has wider implications; if epidermal in origin, these structures will inform models of the evolutionary origin of modern feather and the timing of steps in the acquisition of this evolutionary novelty.

Wikified for your convenience

Well, it turns out that the preserved microfeatures of the integument on Sinosauropteryx and Sinornithosaurus bear strong resemblance to modern microstructures in feathers known as melanosomes, which are responsible for giving color to feathers. Further, they are located inside the preserved feathers in physical locations analogous to those in living dinosaurs (ie, birds). The Nature paper thus conclusively demonstrates that they are epidermal features of the animals, ie, not degraded bits of skin, collagen, and scales that merely resemble feathers. As a fun fact, it showed that the animals they looked at had black, white, and russet feather colorations, and even color variations along single feathers and colored crests. The Science report suggests that Sinosauropteryx even had banding along its' tail.

In side-news related to the series of dino discoveries, the discovery of an early alvarezsauroid pretty much once and for all deflated the arguments of Alan Feeduccia. He had essentially resorted to temporal arguments (i.e., Archaeopteryx was older than the oldest found non-avian eumaniraptoran dinosaur) to state that Aves must have had a seperate, basal archosaurian/avesuchian ancestory, not nested within Dinosauria. Goodbye, so-called "temporal paradox". Now I just need to get people to stop saying the K-Pg event wiped out dinosaurs, and get them to insert non-avian in there. Remember, encourage evolutionary/cladistic thinking whenever you can!

Reading an article like the New York Times' recent one on textbooks and religion in the US has the magical ability to just make me so angry. The article itself is mostly neutral, but it brings up Don McLeroy, a dentist in Texas who has remarkable influence over science and history taught to children for the large majority of states. A history-denying activist moron er, "Young Earth Creationist" of the activist stripe, he has said

"Everything that had a beginning we can say had a cause," he tells his class of fourth-graders at Grace Bible Church. "And now science definitely says that the universe had a beginning. Therefore, the universe had to have a cause. And that cause is God."

Citation: Statesman.com

OK, normally, this would just be infuriating as he'd be a nutter on a school board that approves books for a state. But, seeing as Texas is the second largest textbook market in the US, and California is broke, it means this man essentially shapes the education of the rest of the country. To quote the Times,

And James Kracht, a professor at Texas A&M's college of education and a longtime player in the state's textbook process, told me flatly, "Texas governs 46 or 47 states."

As (admittedly) excessively vitriolic PZ Myers and other "strong" "New Atheists" can be, this is the sort of thing that makes me feel their position has merit. Evolution is not under controversy in any way in the scientific or educational community. Filth like McLeroy or David Barton are liars. The "Discovery Institute" are religious shills operating under an agenda to drive science out of the public arena and move to a religious educational system via the "Wedge Document".

Stories like this should inspire activism in freethinkers. Stories like this make it hard to reach a mutually agreeable arrangement in deference to the idea of non-overlapping magisteria (which, incidentally, I find highly problematic besides; a highly flawed concept with arguments similar to those Dawkins makes) — because if you give an inch, fools like Don McLeroy will try to take a mile.

Today's Tuesday Tetrapod visits the neglected xenarthran clade, opening with an (oddly) loved specimen — the brown-throated three-toed sloth, or Bradypus variegatus:

Sloths (Phyllophaga, or leaf eaters) are members of the major clade Xenarthra, and are composed of two not-especially-closely-related extant families, of which B. variegatus is a member of the monogeneric family bradypodidae, meaning slow-foot (brady- being the prefix for slow, like bradychardia). Xenarthrans are named for the extra vertebral articulations (xen- being the prefix for alien, like xenophobia), unlike all other mammals, and have an uncharacteristically low metabolism, lower than all other therians. The cladistics of xenarthra is not wholly resolved, with some analyses placing afrotherians and xenarthrans more closely together than either to boreoeutherians (if I recall, that portion is after Feldhammer 2007), and some other phylogenies suggesting that xenarthrans are basal to all other eutherians, which are then united under the node Epitheria, and still others (such as Benton 2004) placing xenarthra as more closely related to boreoeutheria than either to afrotheria. It is still being looked at, and still unclear, with studies as of 2009 still waffling. Additional diagnostic features of xenarthra include an odd hip girdle which has the ischiium and ilium fused to the anterior caudal vertebrae.

B. variegatus itself, and its genus, are the "three-toed sloths". They diverged from other phyllophagans (Megalonychidae, the monogeneric family containing Choloepus, or the two-toed sloths) about 30-40 MYA, with the other branch of folivorans containing the giant ground sloths (to which megalonychids are most closely related). They are notoriously slow, with a top speed of about 6-7 cm/s. This speed is coupled to their low basal metabolism and their diet; being so low in nutrition, the slow movement and low metabolism is needed to survive. In fact, they cannot properly maintain homeothermy, and are restricted to warm environments as they cannot regulate their internal body temperature. Their large curved claws allow them to suspend themselves with negligible energetic cost.

B. variegatus is rated IUCN least concern, with a wide range (though extirpated from Argentina since 1916), locally abundant, and no major threats.

As always, Jon Stewart is hilarious while informative. Some choice clips from Obama's friday evisceration of the more absurd talking points on the right.

Enjoy!

For the non-partisan fact checking side of things, you can see factcheck's analysis of the State of the Union and Politifact's quick analysis of the above GOP retreat Q&A (and here's factcheck's). Let it not be said I don't try to give both sides a fair shake ...

Some quotes for you, to give you what I'm feeling.

It's a gimped tablet computer.

Like the internet? Well you don't get to use all of it. No flash (flash is terrible, but you miss a ton of the internet without it)

Okay I'll just listen to internet radio while doing some emailing and facebook-ing. No multitasking.

I want to draw on it. No stylus

Okay I'll just type up some notes on it during class. No keyboard. Onscreen keyboard works well for your thumbs on a phone size device - for full regular typing with no tactile feedback? No.

Okay I'll just load pictures from my digital camera on it and use it as a big gorgeous portable display device. NO SD FUCKING SLOT. NO USB SLOT. WHAT THE FUCK.

$500 fucking dollars. HALF a thousand dollars.

Via Ars Comments

And am I missing something or does this not do handwriting recognition? You know, like the Windows Tablet PC software has since 2002?

The eBook reader stuff is another example of Apple mimicking real life objects unnecessarily. Creating a "library" page that looks like a real bookshelf and a book interface that visually resembles a book does not make this "easier to use" or "nicer." It makes it unprofessional looking, actually. Childish.

And don't get me started on the superiority of eInk over any screen display. It's no contest unless you're trying to fast track to bad vision.

Via Paul's supersite blog

• There's no multitasking at all. It's a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you're working in Pages... you can figure it out. It's a real setback for this device.
• The ebook implementation is about as close as you can get to reading without a stack of bound paper in your hand. The visual stuff really helps flesh out the experience. It may be just for show, but it counts here. Comment: Still not E-Ink. If the software is good it might be better than a standard PC, but really?
• No camera. None, nada. Zip. No video conferencing here folks. Hell, it doesn't have an SMS app!
• It's running iPhone OS 3.2.
• The keyboard is good, not great. Not quite as responsive as it looked in the demos.
• No Flash confirmed. So Hulu is out for you, folks!

Via Engadget

My god, am I underwhelmed by the iPad. This is as inessential a product as I've ever seen, but beyond that, it has some absolutely backbreaking failures that will make me judge anyone who buys one.

Via Gizmodo

And here I was thinking if it was implemented well I might eventually upgrade my netbook to one. Hah. I probably wouldn't even have a post on this if it wasn't for years and years of rumors to come out with, well, this.

For more on the underwhelming: PC World, CBS, Newsweek, ZDNet informal poll, Lifehacker informal poll. When David Pogue has little good to say, and even tries to spin backlighting as good, you know something is wrong.

And for the second tetrapod this week, I introduce Lophophorus impejanus, or the Himalayan Monal:

The Himalayan Monal is a phasianid galliform (my phylogeny of birds is not well resolved in galloanserae [galliformes or anseriformes] — help out if you can!), with a number of the associated trappings (ground nesting, medium size, etc) of pheasants. L. impejanus weighs 1.5-2.5 kg, and is reasonably sized at ~67cm in length. It lives in open coniferous forests in the Himalayan region, 2100-4500 m in elevation.

The males are very evidently highly sexually dimorphic to females, having bright, iridescent feathers with a crest. Their median weight is also about 200g heavier than the females. L. impejanus is the national bird of Nepal, and as such, and due to its habitat, is not threatened. It is rated by the IUCN as least concern, having a large, stable, widespread population.

Time for another double-post! Today's first Tuesday Tetrapod brings us an interesting group of snakes, a member of a group of elapids called the Hydrophiines — sea snakes. Today, we have Hydrophis melanocephalus, or the Slender-Necked Sea Snake

H. melanocephalus is one of approximately 70 species of elapids to have marine specializations. The bulk of the species are Hydrophiines, with Laticaudines being monogeneric (Laticauda). In Hydrophiinae, this manifests as salt glands around the tounge sheath for osmotic balance, full viviparity, almost nonexistent ventral scales, loss of 1-to-1 association with ventral scales:vertebrae, and enlongate neutral spines and haemopophyses for their tails.

Being fairly elusive, H. melanocephalus has not been evaluated by the IUCN. However, evaluations by other groups suggests it is highly venomous, endemic to the Indian Ocean region (South Chinese Sea, Vietnam, Japan (Ryukyu, Hokkaido, Kochi) Coasts of Taiwan and Guangdong northward to Zhejiang (China) Australia (North Territory?, West Australia), New Guinea Terra typica: Indian Ocean (type series from Indian Ocean and Madras, India) accoring to the catalogue of life). Sadly, the animal has been poorly researched.

So, I thought more about the amendment thing, as an an exercise, I wote up a (I feel) pretty comprehensive amendment.

Article 1:
People and persons under the law, are defined as organic beings, autonomous in their healthy state, with DNA differing no more than 5% per chromosome, with respect to a mean genomic profile of 100 reference individuals, selected randomly from the population every 100 years, consisting of equal parts genetic male and genetic female.

Article 1.1:
This definition may be expanded by a 2/3 majority in the House and Senate to advanced organic beings recognized of personhood, or to artificially created digital intelligences.

Article 2:
Rights granted to organizations, unions, corporations, and other groups are only in scope explictly granted by Congress. New rights and priveledges granted to these groups will have a delay in implementation of no less than two years.

Article 3:
Organizations, unions, corporations, and other groups are prohibited from financing, advertising, or campaigning for or against any issues or candidates presented to the public for a state or federal election.

That, I think, covers all the bases — and is even forward looking!