Book Review: Evolution

Al Denelsbeck

I pushed through this book to try and get a review up before it went off sale this month, and this was more than I bargained for – it is a work of great detail and no small amount of illustrated points. One would think that images in books would make the reading go faster, but this does not hold true if you’re examining them for the details illustrated within.

Evolution: What The Fossils Say and Why It Matters, by Donald R. Prothero, is rather distinctively a response to the common creationist tactic of trying to use the fossil record as evidence of creation. Prothero makes no bones about this*, and devotes the first few chapters to trashing such arguments resoundingly, with more examples scattered throughout. While it might seem excessive to anyone expecting to see most of the book spent on paleontology, what becomes apparent is that no small effort is spent on grossly misrepresenting science and fossils by creationists, in myriad and often obtuse ways, and Prothero intends to hammer the nails into this coffin as fiercely as anyone can. Yet, there is no animosity present, nothing that can realistically be called an attack; he simply demonstrates how badly (and repeatedly) the arguments fail. To his credit, he remains very circumspect in assigning why such tactics have been used, and whether these were honest mistakes, poor research, or intentional lies – he remains, of course, liable for any direct accusation of motive. Yet it’s admittedly hard for any reader to see the long history and lack of corrections in creationist claims and come to any conclusion but willful deceit, especially when some of the proposed mechanisms for geologic strata, for instance, are pathetically juvenile.

In the midst of all this, Prothero digs into the paleontological aspect in earnest. The older Linnaean, and newer cladistic and systematic classifications, are laid out both historically and functionally, demonstrating how we’ve found better ways of drawing divisions among the lineages. He also clarifies why ‘lineage’ is a misleading term, indicating that any one classification of species might produce numerous offshoots in a given geologic period, ‘cousins’ if you will, which can give us confidence in the development of body structure without necessarily being direct descendents of any other species. The illustrations of linear developments, formerly used by textbooks to indicate the evolution of horses or mankind, gave entirely the wrong impressions; Australopithecus afarensis should not be considered a direct relative (even if it remains possible,) but instead evidence of a distinct body structure. While this might hamper anyone whose goal is to determine direct ancestry, there is little reason in paleontology to pursue this, and the numerous examples of form development from the fossil record, especially progressing towards the anatomy of existing species, is exactly what we’d expect to see from evolution by natural selection.

And Prothero does not skimp on the species, paraded past the reader by the dozens, each one representing a change in structure. The (solely) religious trope about “no transitional forms” becomes obvious horseshit in the face of countless examples giving even minute variations – all in perfect order of ages, right where we’d expect to find them in strata. But underneath the message that many creationists are abject liars sits the really cool parts, the development of body structures that tell details about each species’ habits and habitats – the change in location of mouth and anus that led to the modern sand dollar; the alteration in shoulder and limbs that gave birth to the tetrapods (the initial subject of Your Inner Fish); the remarkable combination of features that autheticate the land-dwelling precursor of manatees and dugongs.

The book fairly well splits the difference between scientific paper and general education; each chapter has a bibliography of sources, usually significant, but skips the special terminology and minutia of journal publications in favor of giving a coherent overview. In some places it gets a little dry, as Prothero does little more than list differences and development, but this never becomes tedious. There are also a significant number of references to Prothero’s own work, which might strike the reader as somewhat self-promoting, but he lists these as one would any scientific reference (Prothero 2004) and he has, indeed, published a significant amount in the field. These references have plenty of company as well, so ego seems to have little if anything to do with this. As he stresses more than once, if you want information on fossils, going to those who actually perform research in the field is only rational.

Another subtle realization that may occur is how much we live in a golden age for paleontology; much the same can be said for cosmology, as indicated in Big Bang. New discoveries spring up constantly, and in a decade we can easily see major additions to our body of scientific knowledge; this is illustrated very well by any science magazine, markedly different from anything dealing with celebrities or even world events – there’s even a small correction to Prothero’s statements about Homo Neanderthalensis that has arisen since the book’s publication just five years ago. And for those that like mysteries, paleontology is a very accommodating field – the lack of soft-tissue records, along with incomplete skeletal finds, routinely presents puzzles that must be systematically investigated. Yet this dearth of information is not as great as the layperson might assume, since details as minimal as teeth and ankle bones are capable of telling us much, with some experience in what to look for. While most people know that certain teeth are specialized to particular tasks, such as molars, they may not be aware that the shape of the cusp, occluding surfaces, roots, density, and further details can express size and shape of face, feeding habits, and yes, even relatives.

One thing that I missed was more emphasis on the many ways in which we’re comfortable with ages. Prothero touches lightly and briefly on converging lines of evidence such as geologic strata, atomic decay, and molecular descent, but doesn’t provide too many examples of this. Paleontology is far from relying on any one indication of age or relation, and the convergence and agreement among different methods is what has largely dismissed any doubts over time periods or relations. Just a couple of examples tied to specific finds would have provided further support for the time frames, in my opinion.

Given that a significant portion of the book deals with trashing creationist claims and agendas, there was another aspect that I felt could use more emphasis. Science relies almost entirely on finding ways to explain processes, and most especially to make predictions, even of what occurred in the past; our confidence level with it is seated firmly in how accurately this takes place. In contrast, most aspects of religious and especially creationist efforts in regards to science revolve solely around attempting to poke holes in these predictions, while doing nothing to make any predictions of their own, nor even attempting to explain why we see what we do. It is easy to blurt out that Paranthropus boisei is ‘merely an ape’ and not related to humans, but without finding humans within the same time frame, and without explaining why we have so many variations of animals that vanished, no alternative theory is being presented in the least. If, as we are expected to believe from creationist media, gaps in understanding are enough to completely dismiss everything about a field, every vestige of religion and creationism are hundreds of times more guilty of this and should have been eradicated long ago; hypocrisy is not a commendable trait, much less a divine one.

The final chapter explains why so much of the book spanks creationism, and why this should be in the forefront of everyone’s mind – quite convincingly, I might add. In the face of concerted efforts by creationists, mostly in the US, to drive an anti-scientific agenda throughout our culture, we must be both able and willing to fight back, or watch our culture fall from the mountain of advancements that we began building with the scientific revolution. There remains plenty of nationalistic pride about the US as ‘leader of the free world’ and all that, but we did not get there by quoting scripture and denying facts, and the evidence already illustrates our accelerating slide downwards. Creationism offers nothing to supplant this either, save for egotistic vanity in lieu of solid achievement. Since few people can actually buy this idea, the tactics have been instead to deny the solid achievements and misrepresent the facts. Prothero’s efforts here are simultaneously meticulous and voluminous in rebuttal.

And again, the paleontology is not lacking – there is much to be learned from this book, most especially in the vast amount of information we have garnered from the fossil record. It is readily comprehensible by anyone with at least a middle-school reading level, and quite well illustrated with both diagrams and photos. Yet it should not be considered a textbook devoted to the field, and serves a better purpose in informing the reader just how much disinformation is out there – there are far fewer tomes devoted to this than to details about paleontology, and many scientists and professors in such fields choose to ignore the problems that religious agendas inflict upon the sciences. Prothero doesn’t shy away from the conflict, and as far as I’m concerned, we need to be seeing much more of this.

Until the end of this month, the electronic version of this book is on sale through Amazon for just $3.99, which is a bargain that can’t be beat – the book is well worth the original hardcover price. Go here, or alternately here for a copy that benefits Doctors Without Borders, to add it to your library. And don’t let the message go to waste.

* That was shameless, I know

Amateur naturalism, part five

Al Denelsbeck

While I’ve covered some details about specific types of animals in the previous posts, I’ve been slow in getting back to some overall tips that apply to all of them, so with that in mind, let’s talk about behavior.

Years ago I worked at a humane society that, among many other things, offered obedience classes and sport training for dogs, as well as some counseling on behavior problems. One of the primary things that I took away from this experience was how differently dogs think, which affects how they respond to things. For instance, dogs are primarily pack animals, like their ancestor the wolf, and they usually couch all of their social interactions, even with people, in terms of the hierarchy within a pack. The pack is a layered structure, with every member determining their position in terms of being dominant or submissive to any other member, and this will even extend to the families that own dogs. We saw plenty of behavior issues where the dog would obey the husband, only occasionally the wife, and never pay any attention to the commands of the kids at all; it was easy to see where in that ‘pack’ the dog believed itself (and everyone else) to fall. We would also see numerous instances of well-behaved dogs that went on misbehaving sprees when in the company of another dog – they were competing to see who had what position in the new pack, and submission to the old ways wasn’t in the cards. And dogs have thinking processes that are much simpler and more immediate than ours. A dog that disobeys the “Come here!” command and then receives punishment when it finally does return to the owner isn’t understanding that the punishment was for the disobedience; all it knows is that it came back and was punished for it. Much the same made be said for the asinine folklore of, “rubbing the puppy’s nose in it.”

At the same time, I worked in raptor rehabilitation, and I started noticing the different reactions to the birds with strong eye-contact, and with looming over them. Eye contact can say a lot of different things to different animals in different circumstances, but very often it means a predator has locked on. And height is a standard dominance behavior in a flock, so much so that competing birds raise their crests to try and look bigger. Some of these observations led to my tips on stalking animals for photos.

But the overall thing that needs to be stressed here is that interpreting behavior is a very difficult thing, prone to wild inaccuracies. The very first thing to get rid of is the idea that any other animal at all thinks like we do. We’ve spent our entire lives learning all the little social nuances of our own species (some of us much worse than others,) and we already have specific instincts towards positive interactions. None of this, without exaggeration, applies to any other species – not expression, not sounds, not movements, nothing. In a lot of cases, aspects of our behavior mean the exact opposite of what we intend – a great example is saying, “Shhh.” We think it’s soothing, but many species consider this a threatening hiss.

Second, we have to get rid of assumptions and immediate impressions. My area plays host to Carolina wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus,) a bird that I am self-consciously resisting the urge to call ‘gregarious,’ but essentially it has far less concern with close approaches to humans than many other species. They’re also pretty noisy, and a frequent vocalization is a chattering, scolding tirade. Or that’s what it sounds like to us – to them, I’m fairly certain it’s related to mating behavior, since I’ve heard it most often when one was examining a potential nesting area, followed by the quick appearance of another. With birds, volume and harshness can fairly often indicate an alarm call, yet we must bear in mind that most calls are either territorial or sexual. Often if we listen closely, we can hear two rival males staking territory by repeating much the same call to one another. Should they get too close, it can spur either one to go chase off the intruder.

Another thing to consider is whether our presence is changing the dynamic at all. This is something that has made all studies on interpreting behavior rather difficult, and the reason why people like Jane Goodall spent so much time in ‘the wild.’ In similar ways to how people act differently when they have visitors in their house, species that realize there are humans nearby usually remain aware and won’t engage in the same behavior that they might when humans are not present, and any that have been habituated (like the gorillas that can be encountered on tours,) or selectively interacting (herons that steal bait,) and most especially captive (every lab and zoo situation,) are all in a very different dynamic than any typical situation, and behave differently. What we can determine from studying them is limited, and remains open to wild inaccuracy. Worse, we can’t even know which bits might be inaccurate. However, since more than a few species are alerted more by motion than appearance, remaining motionless is your best trait.

I’ll pause here a moment to offer a brief perspective. In the passage above, I spoke of herons ‘stealing’ bait. If you didn’t catch the error there, no surprise, but this remains part of the problem in our interpretations of behavior for any species other than our own. Herons have little, if any, sense of ownership, and most likely see bait buckets full of live fish as remarkably easy meals, and nothing more. Nor are they the slightest bit likely to assign any altruistic motives to us, and see us favorably for bringing them the meals – observations of altruistic behavior are extremely limited in most other species, and many may have no concept of it. And then again, we cannot think in terms of the abstract that we do when we use the word “altruism,” but instead, what the underlying instinctual motives actually are. I’ve used this example before, but we’re pretty comfortable saying that honeybees (Apis mellifera) have extremely minimal cognitive functions, certainly nothing resembling abstract concepts like altruism, yet they will protect the hive by stinging, which is usually a fatal behavior – that largely defines altruism to us, but it’s just an automatic defense, not ‘decided upon.’ Does this count?

And so, when we observe specific behaviors, we struggle to rid ourselves of the concepts that we have by simply being us, and may not even realize when we’re clouding our judgment. Think of all the people that you’ve seen who react favorably to the ‘expressive’ eyes of the primate family, or the ‘smile’ of the dolphin, or the ‘glare’ of the eagle – these are all utter nonsense, assigning human traits to other species that have no reason to possess them, and the counterparts that they do possess are likely expressed entirely differently.

Then, there are all of the factors that we may not even be able to detect, since we evolved with different environmental demands – pheromones, for instance. Is it mating season? Can we detect the musks that indicate fear or danger? What about the sounds in pitches too high or low for us to hear? Are we missing the squeaks that tell foxes where mice are? Since we lack the extraordinary color vision of some (most?) birds, are we missing the plumage differences that tell the females which male is a better spousal choice? And the same for the insects and their ability to find flowers at just the right time – how much of this is based on the shape of the flower, the details of the erupting pollen, the ultraviolet patterns in the petals, or the pheromone trail from other lucky foragers? How similar is it among different species?

All of this may seem discouraging, but the overall point is that behavioral observation is a remarkably tricky subject, and there’s only so much we can hope to obtain from it – probably far less than we think we can. Scientifically, the way that we become confident in our theories is first by determining patterns, as specifically as possible. Then, we start testing those patterns, to see if there are crucial factors within – most especially by either eliminating certain aspects, or by observing in circumstances that provide different patterns. Let’s say that bears always come to a stream at the same time to hunt fish. So, is this based on height of the sun, temperature of the day, the conditions of the foliage, the habits ingrained in them by their parents, or even by seeing the fish start jumping? We may test these, for instance, by observing bears in other regions of the world where the sun is at a different height, or the foliage different. We might watch for hunting traits that differ among bands, giving a hint that it’s learned behavior, or perhaps net all of the fish downstream and see if the bears try to hunt or not. This entire example is one that I simply made up, by the way – it is only intended as a demonstration of how we start to narrow down the true motivations of behavior for a better understanding. It does mean that the amateur naturalist has little chance of being able to determine such things with confidence, but they only way we might is by being careful and meticulous.

‘Careful’ is something that cannot be stressed enough, as well. There is a wicked tendency for humans to believe that because something bad has not happened, it will continue not to happen, even when they keep pushing the parameters. It sounds strange, but this occurs all of the time, when people keep creeping closer to wildlife to get better photos, or the enormously stupid ones who believe that they are ‘communicating’ with a species (I may tackle this one in detail later on.) The problem with knowing how far you can go is that you only find out when you’ve passed that mark, in which case you’re in danger. And our ideas of how much danger are often skewed by ego, incorrect assumptions, and inadequate protections.

I have my own experience along these lines. Years back when working for a humane society, we actually had a stray Asian deer species that had been captured in a neighboring county, that came to us because we had the facilities to house it. Standing half the height of our local white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus,) it was somewhat cute and unimposing. Tasked with finding out if this buck, who had a nice six-point rack, would be docile enough for public contact, I entered the cage (as I had done many times before) and began pushing it around slightly to see if dominance behavior would be exhibited. I was using a large durable plastic trash can lid as a shield if it decided to push me away. And I was doing this alone. The buck did indeed respond to this challenge to its dominance, and charged me. Hard. I hadn’t really considered that one arm, holding even a durable shield, wouldn’t mean much against the charge of a 70 Kg (150 lb) deer that can leap over a fence twice its own height. I was slammed back, and one point of its antlers lanced clean through the lid and into my arm; another came around the edge and into my abdomen. With blood running down my arm, I then had the task to exit the cage past a now-annoyed deer, while wondering just how badly I was injured. The good news is the one in my side, while raising a hell of a welt, had not actually entered my abdomen nor done internal damage, but that was only through luck more than anything else – the one in my arm had penetrated to a depth of at least a centimeter, and I still bear this scar. The fact that this could have been much worse reminded me that I was being stupid. Others are not so lucky. And at some other point I’ll relate the story behind the squirrel scar on my shoulder.

The point is, any animal can do harm, often more than we expect, so my underlying advice is, stay safe, and maintain an escape in worst-case scenarios. There is nothing about wildlife observation, study, or photography that makes it necessary or acceptable to be in harm’s way. And I need to stress that too many people feel there is prestige in braving danger to have an ‘encounter,’ something that idiotic shows like The Crocodile Hunter have glorified inexcusably. This has nothing to do with naturalism, and if you identify with such feelings in any way, get a skateboard. Wildlife observation benefits the most from professionalism, most especially being low-key and as undetected as possible.

I don’t mean to be discouraging, only realistic. It’s still pretty cool seeing some aspect of behavior that we normally don’t get to see, and even when we can’t be perfectly confident in the reasons, we can still learn a lot by being observant enough to notice the patterns. It’s often enlightening to watch something that we never imagined would occur, or to suddenly notice something that hadn’t registered before – I honestly can’t tell you how many times this has happened for me, and it’s solely because I had the interest to sit and watch. Keep careful notes, pay attention to everything that you can, and above all, enjoy yourself!

Good luck!

Storytime

Al Denelsbeck

Previously, in regards to the talk by Sean Carroll, I mentioned revisiting the comment about the universe being made of stories, and so I return. This is little more than stream of consciousness, I admit, so don’t expect anything major.

First off, what does “the universe is made of stories” even mean? Is this metaphorical, poetic, or what? Well, as Carroll says, it means that we interpret our world not as individual facts, but as a large collection of associations, inferences, deductions, and predictions. The story is the explanation, past, and future of any particular subject, mostly things that we cannot experience directly – if it helps, replace the word with concept, idea, property, description, or theory. If we strike a match and see it burst into flame, we do not simply observe this, but see this as representing a particular property of matches, and we’re not at all surprised to see it happen again with another match, even one that does not directly resemble the first. Nor do we simply file this as just a property of matches, but are able to give this a particular future association: something we might use when we needed to light a campfire, candle, or Molotov cocktail. When we speak of understanding something, we’re actually referring to extrapolating properties from observations, and often even predicting future events or reactions. We have the tendency to make connections between observations, infer constants, and assume that these will remain dependable enough to base future actions upon – with an extremely high degree of accuracy, too. An enormous part of the functionality of our brains is the ability to create these stories, and this even extends to your ability to comprehend what I am typing here, not just in understanding what I say, but it taking the varying emission of photons from your monitor in specific locations and interpreting that as letters, comprising words and sentences, in a language that shapes and clarifies our thoughts. And so, it is not so much that the universe if composed of stories, but that we as a species can only interpret it in this way – if indeed, we can even use the singular “it” in good conscience.

It is worth noting that there is no such thing as a ‘true’ story. We have no way of determining any such absolute, and the best that we can do is to develop stories that are as accurate as possible. Pause here and realize that the very word ‘true’ is actually a failed story, a definition of something that we have no ability to establish, so the word is an oxymoron all by itself. But, it still has some value provisionally, being applied in areas of broad parameters to indicate a high degree of accuracy – or, sometimes, in areas where we want to imply such accuracy exists, in the effort to fool others. For instance, there are many stories about how our government operates, and some exist solely to generate certain attitudes from the listener, and not because they provide any degree of prediction or explanation.

That’s the thing about stories – they can mean anything to us, depending on what we expect to get from them. There are always things that we want to hear, and any story that provides this to us gains greater weight to us, generates more belief, than others. We can like a story because it seems to explain (and even predict) what’s happening around us, or what produced some particular effect. An example would be the flammable property of gasoline which expands to push the cylinders within engines. We never see this happening, but we can piece together all of the observations before and after to infer the process, creating a story that most of us consider explanatory with a very high degree of accuracy. Yet we can have other stories about the nature of ourselves, consciousness and mind and soul and such, that we accept not on their explanatory nature, but on the gut feelings that they fit. Instead of describing or predicting, they only validate desires, but this is often strong enough to override the search for descriptions or predictions. The strength of any story relies on what we consider important.

It is easy to think that the word “consider” above must denote conscious, intended thought, but this isn’t an accurate story. So much of our lives is governed by the subconscious prods of survival mechanisms, urging us towards certain feelings and actions without any distinct ‘selective’ input – what we might call, “making a decision.” Very often, we can accept this emotional input unquestioningly and immediately build a story about how it really was a conscious decision, as we might do with impulse buys, bad eating habits, or cheating on a spouse; we don’t want to admit that we acted without thinking, appeasing some inner demon. Yet the story that explains how and why we do this, the concept of our evolutionary past and selected instincts, both fits the facts and predicts much of our behavior, and does so better than anything else that has been told. It’s remarkably useful, but it does take a desire to see usefulness as a better trait than indulgence. Not everyone wants this from their stories.

Much of what I do here on this blog is to rewrite stories. We have many concepts that foster certain attitudes or perspectives, at times to our detriment, and what I attempt to do is to introduce the story from another viewpoint. The goal is to produce the same insight that struck me about some subject, the sudden moment when the only thing that changed was what I believed, but it suddenly made more sense, fit the facts better, or generated a more useful outcome. And to some extent, I also hope to introduce a new story that generates a more positive outlook, from social interactions to the pursuit of knowledge – most especially, the idea that stories should have greater impact on us than mere vanity. There might be a basic value to things that we want to hear, but it probably pales against the value of stories that explain, enlighten, and most of all, provoke further investigation and better interactions. We have a long history of these (much of it now called “science”) and to all appearances, they’ve been quite beneficial to us. Holding out for these higher standards looks a hell of a lot more useful.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

The binary age

Al Denelsbeck

This is just a casual, rambling observation, inspired by far too many of my experiences, but the skeptic in me forces the admission that none of this has been empirically tested or statistically supported. Yeah, you get that way when you spend too much time on such forums…

Much is made about the “connected” nature of our society anymore, and by that I mean, the ability by a noticeable number of people to check e-mail, establish a web connection, receive text messages, and otherwise communicate electronically from wherever they might happen to be. While much of this can be attributed to cellphones with more numerous capabilities (“smart phones”,) it also applies to many plain ol’ cellphones, netbook and notepad and laptop computers, and probably a few wristwatches and umbrellas. I cannot vouch for how many people exemplify this; the marketing hype at least implies that such things are inordinately useful and important.

I myself admit to being quite unconnected in this manner. I hate cellphones, mostly because I’m tired of losing signals or trying to understand someone who keeps cutting out. I have a little $20 emergency jobbie that I use when on the road for an appointment, or sometimes in an area by myself that might be hazardous; while you might imagine “the dark side of town” by this, what I mean instead is hiking in unfamiliar territory or areas where a fall is much more likely. I do not want to be connected; when I’m out away from the home phone, the “land line,” I am busy doing something, and not really into a random conversation, even when alone. And when I’m with someone, there’s this basic implication: If I answer the phone, I’m telling the person I’m meeting with face-to-face that someone else is more important than they are. Add to this that the typical overheard cellphone conversation seems to consist of, “Hello?… Nothing, what are you doing?… WalMart…”

(I am in the south, so this may be skewed a bit.)

Now, I recognize that I might be an old curmudgeon in this regard, resisting the newfangled gizmos and the changing times and all that. Yet, there’s too many things that seem to be reminding me that being this way might have been a good idea.

I’m not even going to talk about the hazards to driving – just be sure to figure them into the mix, because they’re significant. And I’ll only mention the abject stupidity of texting anything on a tiny keyboard, even a non-numeric one, just once, and leave it at that. It’s actually much worse than these.

Let’s start with, the number of people who cannot read a fucking map. I’ve ridden in cars with people who follow their GPS units blindly, and it’s pretty tedious, especially when you know the route and there’s a shorter one if you turn the other way. “Um, we’re heading south; why did you just turn north?” I kept quiet once, thinking they were running another quick errand, only to determine that they had set their unit for “major roads” or some such. And yes, I’ve seen the people who need a GPS, and where they end up without one, but that’s due to their failure to understand how a map works. About the only credit I can provide for that is it saves on refolding the typical pocket map…

Notice where I said, above, that I keep a cellphone handy when out in remote areas? The key word there is ‘remote,’ and the reality there is, no signal in at least a third of these locations. If I was dumb enough to rely on it, I could end up in serious trouble – but I’m not that dumb. There’s always a backup, usually someone who knows where I am, but also the overall idea that the cheesy little gizmo isn’t something I’m going to put my faith in. I did without one for years – it’s called planning.

Mostly what I’ve run into, however, is a noticeable tendency for ‘connected’ people to be almost impossible to reach, and worse to communicate with. You see, when someone checks their e-mail on their phone while at work or out shopping or whatever, they either a) save it for later, or b) type out a six word response. Since I’m silly, and use e-mail like a letter and not like a text message, I ask everything that I want to know in one missive. And then spend the next three to six trying to get answers to everything that I asked in the first. Considering that the average response time to each e-mail is a day or so, this can get ridiculously drawn out. This is, of course, if they really do get back to it ‘later,’ which often isn’t the case anyway.

There is also the idea that e-mail (and text messages) somehow save on time or effort or something – depending on where someone works, more than half of the important communications during any day might come through e-mail. Which is ridiculous when you come to think about it, since it takes at least ten times longer to exchange information than a phone call. E-mail is useful for casual communication over items without time constraints, but ridiculously tedious for anything else.

You may have noticed the little anti-icons in the sidebar, purposefully avoiding all of the social media bullshit. If you credited that to me being an old fart or something, try again. I not only had a Facebook account, I was responsible for playing the social media game where I worked, at the insistence that this would accomplish something useful. Yet, no one could ever tell me what distinctive benefits it was supposed to provide, least of all produce any real numbers, and I already had enough other tasks that updating statuses and posting pics wasn’t supportable unless it could justify dumping something else. Obviously, it couldn’t. And my personal involvement was actually boring me to tears – I already maintained a website, which allowed me as much control as possible over my own photos, and I get no weird sense of accomplishment in listing ‘friends’ that I’ve never even spoken to. I have enough websites to go to for interesting information, with the added benefit that the amount of utterly mindless dross, and photos of people’s food or vacation spots, take up none of that. Is it important for you to know that I like Colin Hay? Yeah, I didn’t think so either…

And then, there’s the camera phone. Obviously, I have some bias in the manner, so filter this as you see fit, but what a goddamned waste of time and energy. I have seriously toyed with the idea of starting a “Save the Electrons!” movement to eradicate the waste of memory space and power drain on servers from the deluge of images too stupid and low in quality to even exist (yeah, go ahead and make comments about irony if it makes you happy.) I spend a lot of time teaching people how to properly (and steadily) hold a camera, achieve good framing, and think about their photos, and 99% of phone images exemplify everything that can be done wrong to an image, including having taken it for no reason. Not that long ago, photography was preoccupied with sharp lenses, films with the best resolution, and good color rendition – people chose particular films for particular purposes (some of us still do,) and made the effort to find lenses that performed well. It’s startling how much this has changed, with people chasing megapixels on an expensive touchpad phone with a lens from a toy microscope. Believe me, I’m no equipment snob, but I encourage at least having some standards…

While the technology was supposed to make things so much easier, more efficient, and less expensive, the end result has been a remarkable decline in quality, expectations, and usefulness. It may be very nice that someone can instantly access a web page from wherever they are, yet this has importance less than 5% of the time in my estimate – the rest of it is spent on vapid nonsense. Hooray, seriously, for the GPS navigation of rescue operations, and the cellphone that can be used when someone is lost or in danger – I won’t attempt to deny the benefits. But if you have to search hard to find those benefits, maybe it’s time to re-examine the situation. I’m having difficulty seeing the value in paying $100 or more a month to know what some celebrity can say in 140 characters, or to get sports scores immediately, as if waiting until you got home spoiled them or something.

Maybe it’s just me…

It’s original

Al Denelsbeck

So, here’s a thought I had the other day about the nature of good and evil, which theologians and philosophers call theodicy; I’m pretty sure philosophers have a name for those little lint balls that you get in your navel. And theologians have some kind of explanation that they’re god’s plan – just not how or why.

Anyway, genesis tells us that everything was hunky-dory until adam & eve disobeyed and ate the fruit. We’ll ignore for the time being that god had to know this would happen, put the tree in the garden in the first place, created the serpent, and so on – while these are details with as much theodical import as everything else (which means they really should make sense to us,) they’re not central to my particular viewpoint here. After this little contretemps, typically called The Fall (or The Autumn if you’re classier,) eve & adam got kicked out of the garden, finding food became a necessary pursuit, some of the vegetarian animals became carnivores (yeah, that’s another question,) and sex was invented/discovered/whatever. Without this, the most intense pleasure that we can feel never would have existed, which is yet another question that I’m not addressing, which probably makes me a candidate for a honorary theology degree.

The concept of Original Sin, accepted by some sects, is based upon this event. Every last descendent of those two naughty Chosen People is stained by this one action in the garden, born without recourse under a Damoclean Sword (might as well mix it up a bit) from something they had no control over, which may have occurred millennia before they came along. But even if you don’t truck with the Original Sin idea, there’s still the whole ‘paradise denied’ idea that gives us the existence we now have.

Basically, this means humans were created in a default ‘good’ state, but screwed this up right out of the gate. Forever after, we must make specific efforts to re-attain this state if we want to receive our reward for going through life. Note that adam & eve didn’t actually do anything in the garden to earn their initial good status; they started that way.

Now, imagine if it had occurred the other way around. Suppose that god had decided they should start with a default ‘bad’ status, abused constantly by the viciousness within the garden, but by doing something that pleased the one who gave them their traits and knew everything that could happen (yeah, it really does look like a manipulative game, doesn’t it?), they could then be blessed with a ‘good’ status to pass along forever and ever to their offspring, or alternately just exit the garden of nastiness to live in a nice world without strife. Free food, no competition, no floods or volcanoes. What if we were born with Original Grace, and had to do something nasty to deserve eternal punishment?

Now try imagining what religion would be like, since it would be inverted in nature. Since we’d have a god that was actually pretty cool instead of spiteful, we’d almost certainly have priests and such who told us routinely that, despite how great the world was, god was the very personification of Hate. Sunny days and excellent crop yields would be evidence that we displeased him somehow, probably by being nice to one another, and deaths in unlucky or bizarre accidents would be trumpeted as proof of god’s inherently shitty nature.

Atheists would still be considered in league with satan, of course, but we’d probably be accused of not being shrill and strident enough…

Muttering darkly behind winter’s back

Al Denelsbeck


North Carolina winters are usually not too dire, and we can count on some good outdoor weather pretty much throughout, but this doesn’t mean that good photo subjects will be as readily available, so I’m resigned (albeit reluctantly) to the arrival of the slow season. This little gallery is my minor act of defiance.

Above, a photo that’s harder to capture than you might imagine. While the seeds of the decorative pampas grass are easy to spot when they propagate in a gust of wind, this is largely because they’re moving – a still photo lacks this advantage, so the puffs must be caught against either a darker or a smooth background, and numerous enough to communicate the idea. A gentle breeze isn’t sufficient. Waiting on the strong gusts is one of the typical frustrations of nature photographers; you spot the event without the camera ready, then wait patiently (or not) for it to repeat itself, whereupon the wind becomes incredibly shy. Since I’d switched to this subject because my macro attempts nearby were being thwarted by the wind whipping the plants around (necessitating a change of lenses to boot,) this was a great test of patience, to say the least.

The breezy conditions can sometimes help with macro subjects, but not often. One of those rare occasions is seen at left, where a tiny crab spider was throwing out strands of web to travel between plants (and yes, this is an aster bloom like you’ve seen here so often before.) Spinnerets high in the air, they extrude a very fine web and let the wind take it, where it hopefully contacts another plant nearby and sticks; the spider then tacks down the near end and scampers across this tightrope. I’m always impressed with something that can adhere strong enough from casual contact to bear the weight of the spider – my mind tells me this really shouldn’t be a trustworthy anchor. Some spiders use this to make their orb webs, stretching between trees, plants, or your porch columns, but crab spiders do not make capture webs, preferring instead to lie in wait on an attractive subject, often camouflaged, and pounce upon insects that come to the flower. Getting any kind of spiderweb in the image is harder than it seems, because seeing the web requires just the right light angle and a dark background, and this is multiplied for casting behavior by the action being so brief. Don’t get the impression that I’m trumpeting my skills, because I attribute this to luck and perseverance – I have dozens of shots, within the past several years, of spiders just mooning…


The shamrock plants of The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog have proven to be more entertaining than expected. Even as they go into dormancy for the winter, they’re attracting bees and the occasional random insect, like this leaf-footed bug, Leptoglossus oppositus, who was sluggish enough to permit lots of close shots. You can get some idea of the difference between the Mamiya 80mm macro lens and the Mamiya 45mm reversed, both spoken about here, by the shots above and below. The one above is the 80mm, though full-frame; below we see a detail shot from the reversed 45mm, but this is a crop of only about 1/4 of the frame. Note the additional simple eye above the compound one.


On the same trip that I featured in this post, I got a couple of other images. Below is a magnolia green jumping spider (Lyssomanes viridis) whom I spotted on the underside of a leaf when I’d sprawled on the ground pursuing another spider. The sunlight coming through the leaf was also coming through the tiny spider, but capturing this demonstrates the tradeoffs of photography.


Macro work benefits from a high depth of field, which means a small aperture. Which means greatly limited light, thus either a) going for a longer exposure, b) increasing the ISO, or c) getting extra light in there, which is my typical method – virtually all of the macro images you’ve seen here are accomplished with strobes. That wouldn’t have worked with the sunlight through the leaf, though, and the slight breeze was enough to prevent a long exposure – not to mention the reluctance of the spider to hold still dependably, and the fact that I had skipped the tripod on this trip. The Canon 300D (Digital Rebel) drops significantly in quality with higher ISOs, so I went as high as I dared with ISO 400, and skipped the depth of field, shooting at only f5.6. As can be seen, this meant that most portions of the spider (which could have fit comfortably on your thumbnail) dropped out of focus, but I got the lambent primary eyes, which is the most important point. Those two big eyes facing front, in fact, are the telltales of a jumping spider, which helped a lot in identifying it because that’s not a typical jumper’s leg arrangement.

And finally, another frame from that trip (I’m not sure I should call this a ‘trip’ when it’s only 3 Km away.) I had originally included this image with the previously linked post, then removed it because I felt it wasn’t as strong as the others. A friend, however, indicated that he liked this one best, and it does illustrate how I feel about the seasons pretty well, so it makes a triumphant return.


Two hooked at once

Al Denelsbeck

At the moment (at least as I type this,) two prominent atheists are tossing forth and back about the old question of what would, or could, constitute evidence for god. Michael Shermer at Skepticblog and Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True have fallen on two sides of the debate over the word supernatural (I tossed out my own take on this earlier.) Basically, it seems to be down to a disagreement on how naturalism is defined – Shermer appears to find it applies to everything that we could experience or interpret, while Coyne seems to find it applies to current physical laws or properties. Anything supernatural, then, may or may not be detectable in ‘naturalistic’ ways.

The whole discussion/debate, however, is exactly why I find philosophy such a godawful waste of time more often than not. This can be considered nothing more than a debate over what sounds the best – neither standpoint offers, or can even hope to offer, anything in terms of testable posits, useful perspectives, or interesting avenues of research. To even have them discussing the same thing, they have to back up and precisely define many of the terms they’re tossing about. It’s easy to see that this could become a perpetual court deliberation on minutia.

The problem is, there is no case to try. Even trials between major corporations in the US, as ridiculous as they can be, never argue over whether or not to accept some bit of evidence that hasn’t been introduced, and that’s exactly what’s happening here. Religious folk continually ask what would serve as evidence of god, not because they have something to present to the court, but only because they’re hoping to score an emotional victory by hearing someone say, “Nothing! I refuse to accept anything! La la la la la la la…!” In that way, believers can happily assume they’re smart for believing, simply because the unbelievers are stupid or petty or something – proof through mistrial.

The only useful answer to, “What would constitute proof of god?” is, “What have you got?” You see, Coyne and Shermer are talking about whether planets spelling out messages could be either a provisional god or simply very powerful aliens, while believers have only produced, “My aunt says she spoke to god and she’s pretty convincing,” and, “The bible says the bible’s true.” This is worse than sitting down in a sandbox and discussing the hydrodynamic issues of building a road on sand with a three-year-old who’s bulldozing with a Lego.

I’m not against anyone doing anything because they have an interest in it, regardless of the impact (he says on a blog,) but this is obviously intended as both a public discussion and a salient point. Yet it can’t lead anywhere, and the reasons for it being introduced at all are too juvenile to treat with respect. Applying deep thought to it doesn’t make it any better. The trap of thinking that we have really cool minds is that we believe our minds can only produce really cool things, despite that formula being one of the first fallacies of logic.

Moreover, there’s an opportunity missed here, and one that both of these distinctive educators should be exploiting. Science isn’t about proof, and cannot be – there is no way to prove something beyond the shadow of a doubt. Everything in our knowledge base is provisional, based on the weight of the evidence and the dependability of the tests. Newtonian physics worked very well for centuries, until it was found that on extreme scales relativistic physics was more accurate. Science can and does accept the new evidence and changes to accommodate it, in recognition that we are mere humans and can not determine absolutes or ultimates, but only probability and replication. We will never be sure, but we can certainly be confident.

That right there is the biggest difference between belief and knowledge: believers want their absolutes, and try to deny to themselves that we cannot reach them – there will always be doubt. Knowledge, however, involves accepting this handily and striving to make doubt as small as possible. I am quite confident that gravity will draw things towards the center of the planet, and 99.999999% of the world’s population is right there with me. Not because it’s proven, but because it’s dependable. That’s been working pretty well for the entirety of human history, with indications that it’s been a hell of a lot longer than that. One would think that was enough.

That’s the bar that we should always set. Stooping to the level of anyone who doesn’t recognize why we use science only implies that we think they’ve got something to contribute; instead, we need to bring them up to the level of the most reliable knowledge structure that we have ever used as a species. Or they can play in the sandbox by themselves.

On composition, part 15: The background

Al Denelsbeck

We all have experience with missing something right under our noses, or someone speaking to us who remains totally unheard because we’re concentrating on something else. The proper term for this is inattention blindness, and lots of videos and examples can be found online (Richard Wiseman, over there in the sidebar links, deals with this trait from time to time.) It is something that is amazingly prevalent in photography, so let me emphasize that any photographer needs to keep making the effort to remain aware.

The primary manner in which this occurs is by focusing all of our attention on the subject itself, with no awareness of the background, the surroundings, and so on. This can have two distinctly negative effects. The first is that we let something else become visible in the frame, a distraction from the subject, or perhaps something that detracts from the overall feel of the image – trash or wires in the background are good examples. But the other effect is that we don’t frame the image with respect to the surroundings, how the image interacts or fits within. We are not simply after a photo of a bird, but a scene which contains the bird (yes, this is directly related to my spin on the Rule of Thirds.) Everything visible within the frame should be working as a whole to convey a certain idea to the viewer, or at least, doing nothing to detract from it.

Something that often defeats us is the aperture, or f-stop if you prefer. It remains at maximum opening up until we actually trip the shutter; commensurately, it also remains at the shortest depth-of-field. This means some details and distractions are much further out of focus to us in the viewfinder than they will be in the resulting image, though we can easily spot them when not looking through the camera. So it helps a lot to note everything in the field of view before raising the camera to shooting position; then when the white blotch is visible in the viewfinder, we know it’s a road sign or discarded paper bag and can shift position accordingly to eliminate this.

Even when we have achieved an appropriate, uncluttered and undistracting background, we can sometimes do more. For the fall shot featured in part seven, I waited for the (painfully slow-moving) clouds to provide a break behind the peak, while for the lizard seen here, I shifted position slightly to put its head against a leaf that provided better contrast. Such things make us aware of the three-dimensionality of our shooting locations – when we shift position, closer items within our frame move differently from more distant ones, and we can easily change their height, size, and position relative to one another.

That, actually, is an important factor in using the background and settings. Your subject can stand out better if it is framed among, or against, something that complements it well, providing contrast as needed. Getting lower can frame a subject against the color of the sky, or a slight shift may put it among a more solid, consistent background rather than a cluttered one with too much detail. This image isn’t actually showing the sky in the background – it’s showing the pond surface reflecting the sky, which was an angle that I could actually achieve. In using such a technique, a shorter depth-of-field very often helps, but be warned: some consistent patterns, like fences and walls, remain and betray their presence even when significantly out of focus. And as indicated at that link, you can also do some simple things to improve the appearance of the background.

We can also plan around a background, most especially weather conditions. This is usually the place where ‘background’ becomes ‘setting’ or even ‘mood,’ but this doesn’t diminish its importance. A subject can become even stronger placed against a background that is appropriate, more colorful, or more dramatic, and this can mean coming back at another time when the weather or sky conditions produce better effects. When on photo trips, I almost always have someplace that I want to see the sunrises and sunsets against, and make sure that I’m on location well before this occurs (usually) – I also carry a compass to know exactly where these will occur in relation to my subject. Be aware that sky conditions can change very rapidly, so suddenly realizing that there are great conditions and then trying to find an appropriate foreground interest for it won’t work unless the choices are very close. Some sunset, rainbow, and cloud conditions are drastically changed within just a couple of minutes, and sometimes even seconds.

Then we come to the really sneaky part of composition, bringing us back to the idea of the scene. Whatever reaches the edge of the frame essentially goes on forever, or at least represents the principle traits of the setting. This means that what you don’t include is as important as what you do. I use the image at right in my workshops to illustrate how this works, because it fails to show any indication that it was taken in a plastic pond liner only a meter across. What is communicated to the viewer (provided I keep my mouth shut) are only the immediate conditions, and the viewer fills in the locale with their own imagination. Some settings and backgrounds produce their own ideas from common association, the metaphorical aspect that can lend a lot to your compositions.

For all of the cameras that permit the photographer to frame their image in the LCD on the camera back rather than the viewfinder, I always recommend using the viewfinder as much as possible, primarily because it just makes for more stable habits. But there’s another reason why the LCD can be bad, and it’s because the manufacturers want to jam so damn much info onto the screen at the same time that you’re supposed to be composing your image. All that stuff at the edges tends to make the photographer subconsciously push the subject into the middle, and often can hide distracting elements that will nevertheless be in the final image. Chances are, you’re not going to be getting much of anything from the LCD info, since you already have spare batteries and memory to back you up anyway (right?), so just switch it all off. Use the entire frame, and look at everything in your image. If you see something that doesn’t belong, changes the mood or idea, or makes the image too complicated, get it out of there. While you’re at it, you may well find something that makes the image even stronger, if you change your position slightly. And be sure to examine the scene without looking through the viewfinder as well, to see what else can be used to better effect. A few seconds of awareness can change a snapshot into a stunning image.

Too cool, part 16: Now this is smart

Al Denelsbeck

A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about his young son, then three years old. It turns out the sprog was not only playing games on his folks’ computer, he had figured out how to install new ones on his own. This was not a child prodigy, and he wasn’t reading at the time – he’d learned it intuitively, by watching what his parents did and noticing how user interfaces were constructed.

Impresses as I was by that, it’s not half as impressive as an experiment in two villages in Ethiopia. As part of an educational program called One Laptop Per Child, nearly a thousand tablet PCs were deposited, still boxed, within the villages; no instructions, no demonstrations, no explanations. Just some specialized learning software and a solar charging interface. Bear in mind that not only had no one in the villages ever used a computer of any sort, they hadn’t even seen a written word.

Don’t let me spoil it all – take the time, right now, and read the source article. It’s fabulous.

One of the most interesting lessons in the program is how much we’ve built an infrastructure around our learning methods, and how little this might actually be necessary. Learning doesn’t require any real structure – we do it all the time, whether we’re intending to or not. What might be necessary is presenting the challenge, and the sense of accomplishment. One might also realize that these kids probably networked and cooperated in their accomplishments better than 99% of classrooms in existence, perhaps because they weren’t expected to perform some task set by adults, but because this was their own task – quite possibly assisted by the thought that they were being sneaky. We know how well this works sometimes – we were kids once.

Of course, some questions arise from the method in Ethiopia, which is admittedly just an initial experiment. Isn’t this expensive? Is there a high damage rate to the tablets? How sustainable is it? And how does one determine the program’s usefulness? But compare all of those questions against the typical classroom structure that we envision schools are made of, with a salaried teacher per certain number of kids, and the concept of progressing at a more-or-less fixed rate, and even the idea that the kids are competing for the teacher’s approval in the form of grades and praise. While these might work very well for our own circumstances, they’re much more difficult to implement in remote areas. Are you ready to go teach, even for a year, someplace without even electricity? Tablets really aren’t very expensive, and require far less maintenance that people do.

I have taught myself how to operate most of the software that I’ve ever used; this is not bragging, but a reflection of both the interfaces that they’re designed with, and my desire to use them. Because of this, I’ve had to teach the use of numerous packages to many people that I’ve worked with. Some picked things up quickly, and even taught me a few shortcuts. Others, however, almost literally fought with it, and with me. They liked their old ways of doing things, and had issues not just with technology, but with the idea that their employer was pushing something on them. Their learning was blocked not (necessarily) by my structure or the complication of the software, but by their own attitudes towards the task. Which makes me wonder now how I might have been able to motivate them better, with a change in my attitude.

I have several programs on the burner for schools right now, revolving around photography and arthropods – now I’m inclined to see how I might be able to incorporate some form of this structure within them, and how well that will work. This could be very interesting – not to mention a challenge ;-)

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