ARKive

I was motivated to put something up when I received news that this photo was now 'live' on ARKive. Not a very good photo, and they do not link to the original photos, so that one might actually be able to view them better... However, the site had some good links and information. I found exploring the links to the so-called Dinosaur Ant most enjoyable. To go to ARKive click on the ARKive thumbnail. To go to the original photos on Flickr, click on the photos.

I was also curious about all their links and sharing options, so I posted it to Facebook and Twitter. Though for the life of me, I cannot see the pleasure or the point of Twitter.

Grevillea subtiliflora (A WA species, photographed at Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens, Brisbane, QLD)

Male or Female?

Gums on Bynya Road, Palm Beach.

"Do you identify as male or female?" ran the text of a survey I was asked to complete recently.

This is political correctness gone mad. I do not understand why it is, that men with artificial vaginas whose femaleness can only be maintained by swallowing handfuls of hormones, have managed to impose on society to the point where such surgically created beings are given the courtesy of being called women. When it is the case that they menstruate for thirty years, and occasionally find themselves unwittingly pregnant, I might begin to believe that being a male or a female is a matter of personal choice.

But like Germaine Greer, I see it as an instance of extraordinary male arrogance to impose the belief that such a change is sufficient to make a person female.

The Duel

(My fire draws and the chimney is relatively waterproof, thanks to Andrew, Vicky & Rachel.)

Yesterday, I saw "the Duel", based on a Checkhov novella. I continue to be amazed that such physically unprepossessing actors, (Andrew Scott - hunch-backed, small) are chosen to play characters who could only get by on physical beauty. As played by Scott, Laevsky is a snivelling, whinging, morally & sexually unappealing character who can only have taken in people by beauty and his sense of his own superiority to all others. So why in hell didn't they choose a physically attractive actor? A sense of superiority coupled with ugliness (of soul & body) does not take people far unless there is a real intellectual superiority, which is a proposition which was exceedingly difficult to believe here.

In the duel itself, Laevsky shoots wide and throws away the pistol, challenging Von Koren to murder him in cold blood and in full public view - a reasonably cowardly response in itself. Despite this, Von Koren tries to shoot him, but fails. In my view a great pity. We are supposed to believe in a final Laevsky, redeemed and sympathetic. Fat chance. As Scott plays him, he is thoroughly unattractive, ugly, cruel, careless, nasty piece of humanity.

Atheists convention in Melbourne

Benches & bike racks, Southbank, Melbourne


Pedestrian bridge across the Yarra, Melbourne


Walking to the convention along the Yarra


Reflections of the Polly Woodside. (Just in front of the convention centre)

I went this last weekend to the Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne. I had thought it would be a case of preaching to the converted and that it would be boring, but it seemed a good excuse to see Melbourne again and to see my friend, Eve.

In the event, we found ourselves attending the entire shebang, and while much of the argument reiterated stuff I knew, much didn't, or it elaborated on themes in less well known (to me) areas. In any case, it was liberating to hear others say what I have now for a long time believed, that the Christian (Judaic/Muslim) God and the various attendant beliefs are incompatible with science....

The standout speaker for me was Dan Dennett (philosophy, Tufts University), but others were not far behind (Sam Harries, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott,Dan Barker, A.C.Grayling... and the list is invidious).

It was an amazingly good venue, with morning/afternoon teas and lunches provided easily for 4000 people in the short time allowed for these things, and the degree of mingling forced by the numbers of people doing to these things was most enjoyable.


Us

If you have read this far, please check out this haiku,
hexapod haiku (winner under 13)

At the museum

Walking from the Museum to Circular Quay (click on photo for the story)

Tuesday is Museum day, and today I transcribed moths and cicadas (would have stuck to one but the database is still in throes of development). So I transcribed records for the cicadas:
Tanna japonensis, Huechys celebensis, Huechys fusca, Huechys pingenda. Try googling these. You won't have much joy if you are looking for an image or some information.

It may sound entirely boring to look at an image and to try to transcribe the information in the labels photographed together with that sad pinned and very dead insect. But it's not. Today's interest lay in a bloke called Hans Fruhstorfer, the larger part of whose insect collections are in the British Museum of Natural History, but it seems the Australian Museum acquired parts of his collection (perhaps not wanted by the BMNH, or perhaps the colonial museum proposed a sufficiently interesting sum of money to acquire them.) So Huechys celebensis came from Bua-Kraeng, in the South Celebes and was collected (I think) in February 1896 by Hans Fruhstorfer in his wanderings. Other specimens came from Than Moi, Tonkin, from Montes ?, Tonkin. Part of what we do is to take the collection site and put a latitude, a longitude and an uncertainty on these. This can be difficult when you are struggling to read an ancient hand written or even type written label and you have to experiment to find the place. So my first reading of Than Moi was Than Mei but this was not recognised as a Vietnamese place name. Experimentation and the database suggested Than Moi so I went with that. A large part of the Asian species I was transcribing came from Fruhstorfer's collection, so following his career and wanderings through the years was very interesting.

Place names test one's geography and resolve. I struggled for ages with Matang, thinking it might be Malang and a few other things, finally resolving on Matang since it matched the country... In Australia, I struggled with Menninga Q, reading it as Meninga Q, but Meninga only brought up a place in New Guinea...

So my day was spent following the adventures of Hans Fruhstorfer in Asia and S.E.Asia, and also those of a certain L.M. Courtney-Baines who by the last beautiful Cerura australis moth had become L.M. Courtney-de Baines. What was also extraordinary, was that he had collected this moth at Bayview, in the years of 1966, 1967, 1974, 1984, 1985, and 1994(not sure about this last one, perhaps because at this point he had adorned himself with the particle). I remain amazed, and wondering how it was that this moth was collected by this bloke, at just this one place and over so many years. What is the story?
(Another image for this moth is at Butterfly house.)

Going home

Walking to Rachel's. Year of the Dragon plantings on what now serves as forecourt to that temple of superstition, St Mary's.

I went for a job interview in Newcastle yesterday, which entailed catching public transport to the city on Tuesday, and was to have seen me catching a return bus some time this morning (essentially a 3 day expedition with 6 hours travelling on the train to & from Newcastle...). But I got distracted and worked until 3, at which time returning home became an impossibility. (Two hours on a crowded lurching bus and an empty tum to finally take a 1 km walk along roads with no footpath in the poor visibility of rain and oncoming night, was too much for me.) I have thrown myself on Rachel's mercy and will sleep tonight at her place and make my way home tomorrow, preferably well fed and on an uncrowded bus and not wanting to be sick for the last half hour of the journey....

Carnivorous tree

Noddies nesting at Lady Elliott Island

I don't have a photograph of the tree, but there was a carnivorous tree on Lady Elliott. Its seeds burst into a mass of sticky things. When small birds and big birds get covered in them, their wings are unable to be freed and the bird dies, typically within the root zone of the tree, thereby enriching the sand of this coral island and the soil about the tree.

Nice to think that plants are so brilliantly evolved to use animals. It seems a nice turnabout.

Losing heart

Poinsettia

I have gone very cold on the Australian Museum's rapid digitisation project. Possibly because I am not very good at using the databases, which are very clumsy to correct and still full of logical errors... leading data to be easily destroyed.

Yet the need to continue is very evident. I flicked to this picture of Katipo rubivenosa, and wanting to find out more, I googled Katipo rubivenosa and found exactly nothing, except for the image in a discussion of the project. And so far, this seems to be the case for most of the insects we have photographed.

It cannot be the case that such information is so impossible to find, only that I am poor in finding it...

I have also gone cold on my camera. Nikon does not supply a printed verson of the reference manual which is pretty poor. I hate trying to read documents on my computer. And I am not happy with my photographs.....


Plate 6 in Wiener Entomologische Monatschrift 3 (1859). Poster on the door of the digitisation lab.
(Plate identified by Ian Riley) But as Ian says
"Actually the names of most of these are quite obscure. Charaxes bohemani seems to get a bit of coverage on the web, and its name has stood since first described by Cajetan and Rudolf Felder (father and son) in 1859. Despite this, in the Zoological Record there is only two papers referring to the species, one in 1870 and the other in 1985. Your photo is Plate 6 in Wiener Entomologische Monatschrift 3 (1859). The Felders had four papers in that volume entitled "Lepidopterologische Fragmente" I, II, III and IV."

Which reinforces my point.

on Barrenjoey Headland

I was trying to get a decent photograph of this tea-tree. So far, using Rachel's camera produces better photos than I can using my fancy Nikon SLR....

Now, in summer, the riot of flowering heath of late winter has gone, but there were still some lone flannel flowers and native fuchsia. I was chasing this tea-tree, but the rain kept on coming down, so I had to put my camera away and come away..


Leptospermum


Looking up the Pittwater from Barrenjoey


Looking across to West Head in the misty rain