Crosse's Acari

I have in my collection a book entitled "Oddities" which is a bit of an oddity in it's own right. In it, numerous tales of unexplained intrigue can be found, however rudimentary investigation in the past has revealed the book to be one of a few, if not the only source on most of the subjects. Such as appears to be the case in the story of Crosse's Acari. Andrew Crosse was an amateur scientist studying electricity in relative seclusion in the North of England in the first half of the 19th century. Inexplicably, and unexplainably, because his records were lost, in studying the effects of electrical current on a crystal he noticed that tiny aphids, or acari had sprouted from the surface of the rock. He continued his experiments and before long was overrun by literally hundreds of the little blighters.

From his own account:

"On the fourteenth day from the commencement of this experiment I observed through a lens a few small whitish excrescences or nipples, projecting from about the middle of the electrified stone. On the eighteenth day these projections enlarged, and struck out seven or eight filaments, each of them longer than the hemisphere on which they grew.

"On the twenty-sixth day these appearances assumed the form of a perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail. Till this period I had no notion that these appearances were other than an incipient mineral formation. On the twenty-eighth day these little creatures moved their legs. I must now say that I was not a little astonished. After a few days they detached themselves from the stone, and moved about at pleasure.

"In the course of a few weeks about a hundred of them made their appearance on the stone. I examined them with a microscope, and observed that the smaller ones appeared to have only six legs, the larger ones eight. These insects are pronounced to be of the genus acarus, but there appears to be a difference of opinion as to whether they are a known species; some assert that they are not. [See Fig. 1]

"I have never ventured an opinion on the cause of their birth, and for a very good reason—I was unable to form one. The simplest solution of the problem which occurred to me was that they arose from ova deposited by insects floating in the atmosphere and hatched by electric action. Still I could not imagine that an ovum could shoot out filaments, or that these filaments could become bristles, and moreover I could not detect, on the closest examination, the remains of a shell...

"I next imagined, as others have done, that they might originate from the water, and consequently made a close examination of numbers of vessels filled with the same fluid: in none of these could I perceive a trace of an insect, nor could I see any in any other part of the room."

He abandoned his studies due to the amount of scorn and ridicule that befell him after publishing his findings. It should be noted that no similar cases have since occurred. What did Crosse know that no one else did. Here is a link to the entire story as related in the book Oddities for you continued learning.

Boffins and Anoraks

Hurling some British slang in your direction this eve, we come to "boffins" and "anoraks". Each in their own way describing a "nerd" to us, although both words carry with them their specific connotations. A boffin describes a scientist or an engineer, generally an older, more mature man, tinkering away at some useful endeavor. An anorak on the other hand, describes a creature from the bottom of the barrel of social sensibilities. Someone like a D&D dweeb, or a trainspotter. Much lower functioning than their cousins the boffin, anoraks are doomed to ridicule with no hope for a way out through technological advancement. You on the other hand know how to identify them, hopefully you didn't learn something about yourself. Have the fun.

Trainspotters

After years and years, it finally occurred to me to find out exactly what the hell a "trainspotter" is. Well trainspotters, or railfans, are a classification of people that range from the amateur spotter to the obsessive weirdo. They are, as simply as the name suggests, people enamored with railways, and all aspects involving railways. Trainspotters are a particular classification of railfans that are particularly hung up on attempting to spot and identify every single piece of rolling stock know to exist for a particular rail company. They can be found hovering around rail line with note pads or tape recorded jotting down the serial numbers of passing rail cars. They are generally well connected with communities of other trainspotters in order to form as complete a picture as possible.

From Wikipedia, more on railfans:

Excessively enthusiastic railfans are sometimes referred to pejoratively as "foamers", especially by American railworkers, in reference to the joking notion that they foam at the mouth in their excitement over train operations. "FRN" (for "fucking rail nut")[2] is a similarly-used term in the American rail industry. The UK equivalent is "crank", which has been taken into enthusiast usage.

In the UK, railfans are sometimes called trainspotters, grizzers or gricers, according to their speciality (see below) or anoraks. In Australia, they are sometimes called "gunzels".

Just further proof that obsession knows no limits. The more you know.

Ik-y (sigh, sorry)

I was lured to the Ik by Vollmann's incredible "Rising Up and Rising Down." Specifically a quote by Colin Turnbull, a social anthropologist studying the Ik, in which he stated, "I am hopeful that their isolation will remain as complete as in the past, until they die out completely." The reason for this, Vollmann explains, is that Turnbull witnessed the Ik as a completely Machiavellian society in which food is stoled from the starving, children are cast out at 3 and the necessities of life are stolen from the needy to suit the greedy. Such accusations warranted investigation, and I find that Turnbull is widely discredited.

From Wikipedia:

Colin Turnbull wrote an extremely successful ethnography about the Ik, titled The Mountain People, which was quite disparaging.[1] While highly popular, the book was controversial, and the accuracy and methodology of much of Turnbull's work has been questioned.

Turnbull advocated to the Ugandan government forcible relocation of random tribal members (with no more than ten people in any relocated group). He defended this by arguing that the Ik society was already destroyed and all that could be done was to save individual tribal members.[2]

There is strong evidence that Turnbull had limited knowledge of the Ik language and cultural traditions, as well as almost no knowledge of the flora and fauna of the area. He completely misrepresented the history of the Ik by claiming they were traditionally hunters and gathers who were forced to become farmers. There is ample linguistic and cultural evidence that the Ik were farmers long before the creation of Kidepo National Park, which Turnbull claims caused the Ik to be driven from their major hunting grounds and forced them to become farmers.

Some of his main informants were not Ik, but Diding'a. Lomeja who helped him learn the Ik language was undoubtedly Diding'a, and according to informants of Bernd Heine (a linguist), who studied the Ik in early 1983, spoke only broken Ik. Further, three out of the six villages Turnbull studied were headed by non-Ik.

Turnbull's claim that Ik raided cattle and frequently "do a double deal" by selling information concerning the raid to the proposed victims are at odds with both the Dodoth County Chief's monthlty reports and the files of the Administrator in Moroto between 1963-1969. Rather, what these files and reports suggest is that the largest number of cattle raids occurred in parts of Dodoth County where any involvement by the Ik can be ruled out. No mention of Ik raiding livestock can be found in any of these reports and files.

Turnbull's claims that adultery was common is completely opposite to the statements of informants interviewed by Bernd Heine in 1983. They reported that during the two years Turnbull stayed in Pirre there was only one case of adultery. Heine writes: "All Ik elders interviewed stated that there are no indications whatsoever in the oral traditions to suggest that adulterers were burnt in the past."

Finally, Bernd Heine states: "Secondly, Turnbull's account of Ik culture turned out to be at variance with most observations we made—to the extent that at times I was under the impression that I was dealing with an entirely different people."

This is all that was said of the Ik people:

The Ik are an ethnic group, numbering only a few thousand people, living in the mountains of northeastern Uganda near the border with Kenya, next to the more numerous Dodoth and Turkana. They were expelled from their land to create a national park and, as a result, suffered extreme famine. Furthermore, their weakness relative to other tribes meant they were regularly raided. The Ik are subsistence farmers and grind their own grain.

The Ik language, Icetot, is of interest to linguists as a member of the highly divergent Kuliak subgroup of Nilo-Saharan languages.

The Ik people create several small villages in clusters, forming a "community". Each small village is surrounded by an outer wall, then sectioned off into familial- or friend-based "neighborhoods" called Odoks, also surrounded by a wall. Each Odok is sectioned into walled-off households called asaks, with front yards (for lack of a better word) and, in some cases, granaries.

It has been observed that children are expelled from the household at three years old and not allowed into the house afterward. They form groups called age-bands with people in their age group. The Junior Group consists of children from the ages of three to eight and the Senior Group is a band of children between eight and thirteen. There are no adults that look after these children, so they teach each other the basics of survival. Howewer, it is not certain whether this tradition is typical for the Ik or was temporarily caused by unusual famine conditions.

I plan to look deeper into the heart of the matter, and will report further when more is known.

Evolving Bananas

Wild Banana

I recently learned that atheists are wrong, and god has to exist because bananas are easy to eat. Link. But some nagging doubt in the back of my mind stuck around. "That just can't be true." I thought. So, rather than resorting to logic, which was my original defense, I have been tipped off to a bit of history that I find particularly crucial in this particular case.

The particular variety of banana that was most recently drafted into the army of god is a mutant. The cultivation of bananas goes very far back into human history. The first mention of a banana occurs around 600 B.C.E. in a Buddhist text. If you're keeping score this is also hundreds of years before Christianity evolved. Anyway, the variety of bananas we consume are cultivated mutations on the banana genome.


From About: Bananas

Historical bananas were not the sweet yellow banana we know today, but the red and green cooking variety, now usually referred to as plantains to distinguish them from the sweet type.

The yellow sweet banana is a mutant strain of the cooking banana, discovered in 1836 by Jamaican Jean Francois Poujot, who found one of the banana trees on his plantation was bearing yellow fruit rather than green or red. Upon tasting the new discovery, he found it to be sweet in its raw state, without the need for cooking. He quickly began cultivating this sweet variety.

More smoke for the gun from Wikipedia

While the original bananas contained rather large seeds, triploid (and thus seedless) cultivars have been selected for human consumption. These are propagated asexually from offshoots of the plant. The plant is allowed to produce 2 shoots at a time; a larger one for fruiting immediately and a smaller "sucker" or "follower" that will produce fruit in 6–8 months time. The life of a banana plantation is 25 years or longer, during which time the individual stools or planting sites may move slightly from their original positions as lateral rhizome formation dictates. Latin Americans sometimes comment that the plants are "walking" over time.

Cultivated bananas are parthenocarpic, which makes them sterile and unable to produce viable seeds. Lacking seeds, another form of propagation is required. This involves removing and transplanting part of the underground stem (called a corm). Usually this is done by carefully removing a sucker (a vertical shoot that develops from the base of the banana pseudostem) with some roots intact. However, small sympodial corms, representing not yet elongated suckers, are harder to transplant and can be left out of the ground for up to 2 weeks; they require minimal care and can be boxed together for shipment.

So, the bananas that god allegedly made for us humans to eat with ease are not even naturally viable as a species. They had to evolve before they could even get to that state. Not that that PROVES anything, except that humans also eat pineapples and coconuts.