Thanksgiving

The leaves have only been on the ground for a few weeks, as summer finally ended in the American southeast. A yellow butterfly,  a common pat size, floated by. It landed on a brown leaf, one of many covering the ground.

Consider the Squirrels

They toil a lot. In the morning waves, they are a gray foam.

Like words. Words do not have a one to one correspondence to our observed world. Never have, never will. Hence Western philosophy.

The squirrel a hawk grabbed, the squirrel that was dropped, or fought free, has a white oval on its side, and for a while a red eye within this shape.

Seeing him we celebrate. He has a narrative. Though we cannot number his fleas, note the dissymmetry of his nostrils, or file his form, we love him. Could he know, he would fear us more than he does some birds. We rejoice in his distance, whatever freedom is.

Are words a similar violence? Must our appreciation of the particular, be built on a scar?

Is all individuality bubbles in a tide? ....

of the ongoing, ever, canoodldrum

....
Words
are
trellises
.....

The Royalty of Words

Defenses of royalty in our modern world seem absurd to many, particularly intellectuals. I myself have found some, but here is a new one. (We are talking about this class of people as it appears in modern Europe.) If you see the external world as a reflection of hidden terrains, then you could say that royalty functions on a social stage as words do for an individual person. You have one figure representing many, and there is a unique attention paid to that one person, say, Queen Margarethe of Denmark. Her speech has a certain power, but it is NOT that dynamic of original forces, but merely a reflection, which is certainly diverse from the gears that run things, personally, and beyond. A constitutional monarch is every person's verbal talent. My picture is meant to point to the power of words, which is not the same as any truth value they might have. Words assert an authority which they do not actually have, and yet, there is something about the linguistic dimension which is remarkable.

The power of dirt

cit

https://neurosciencenews.com/dirt-fat-anxiety-14108/?


NEUROSCIENCENEWS.COM

Healthy fat hidden in dirt may fend off anxiety disorders - Neuroscience News


q

Summary: 10(Z)-hexadecenoic acid, a fatty acid found in the soil based bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae, interacts with immune cells to inhibit pathways that drive inflammation and increases resilience to stress. Researchers say the findings could bring us one step closer to developing a microbe-based “stress vaccine”.

Source: University of Colorado at Boulder

Thirty years after scientists coined the term “hygiene hypothesis” to suggest that increased exposure to microorganisms could benefit health, University of Colorado Boulder researchers have identified an anti-inflammatory fat in a soil-dwelling bacterium that may be responsible.

The discovery, published Monday in the journal Psychopharmacology, may at least partly explain how the bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, quells stress-related disorders. It also brings the researchers one step closer to developing a microbe-based “stress vaccine.”

....

Upton Abbey

Of course I watched Downton Abbey-- in case you ever need proof against imputations of any saintly stature on my part.

The ending of the last episode, where a sister marries a titled fellow is the climactic logic of the whole series, and thereby a revelation of contemporary values. Think about that a minute--- the 21st century, and marrying someone with an aristocratic bumper sticker, is the summit of human accomplishment?

Or so I once thought. Could Fellows actually have been hinting at a subtler vision wherein verbal complexities unite and push forward human understanding of our universal precipitous condition? 'Title' then might be pointing to verbal reality itself, and 'marriage', the present moment, which must assume an illusory completeness, actually shredding in the breath of speaking.

Surely I joke...

Emory fires Chinese professors

Scrutiny of Chinese American scientists raises fears of ethnic profiling

The firings of two professors at Emory University underscores the roiling debate over how to preserve the culture of free academic exchange while preventing China and other nations from abusing that trust. By Nick Anderson · Read more

The Samba of Life

In science news , (https://phys.org/news/2019-07-ants-defend-sugar-protein.html?) we learn about animal and plant cooperation. Below is most of the article:

Biologists Laura Carolina Leal and Felipe Passos have performed a series of experiments to determine how plants with extrafloral nectaries interact with ants in Brazil's Northeast region—specifically, in the interior of Bahia State, where the semiarid Caatinga biome predominates.

Extrafloral nectaries are nectar-secreting glands not involved in pollination, which provide carbohydrates to insects in exchange for defense against herbivores. The nectar attracts predatory insects that consume both the nectar and plant-eating arthropods, functioning as bodyguards.

"In contrast with the previous belief, we discovered that carbohydrate is only one of the forms of payment offered by plants to the ants that protect them. Another is protein, which ants obtain by consuming the herbivorous arthropods available on or around the plants they visit," said Leal, a professor in the Federal University of São Paulo's Institute of Environmental, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences (ICAQF-UNIFESP) in Brazil.

"This finding contradicts the idea that payment is in sugar only," Leal told. "It shows that what ants gain from herbivores also matters. We discovered that ants may be more aggressive in environments where arthropods and other sources of protein are scarce, defending their food sources and hence protecting plants."

The study is published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. The research interests pursued by Leal and Passos focus on the various forms of insect-plant mutualism. "Mutualism is a form of interaction between two species in which each benefits from the interaction in some way. If it isn't advantageous for both species, but only for one, it's parasitism," Leal said.

"Several studies have shown that nectarivorous ants expel herbivores and enhance the reproductive success of plants with extrafloral nectaries. The greater the importance of extrafloral nectar to the ants, the better for the plants, as this increases the ants' aggressiveness toward herbivores. We decided to find out whether nectar is the only payment by plants for the ants' protection or whether eating herbivores might also be advantageous to the ants."

Leal and Passos confirmed the hypothesis that plant attendance by more aggressive ants and the efficiency of their defense increase when the availability of carbohydrates and/or proteins to the ants is low, enhancing the relative value of both extrafloral nectaries and protein-rich herbivores to these insects.

The study was conducted on the campus of the University of Feira de Santana in Bahia. The region has a semiarid climate with an annual average temperature of 25.2 °C and rainfall averaging 848 mm per year. The vegetation in the Caatinga is xerophytic (adapted to life in a dry habitat), consisting of a mosaic of thorny shrubs and seasonally dry forests.

The researchers established 19 study plots measuring 16 square meters each, in early 2017. The plots were at least 30 meters apart, and mainly contained Turnera subulata, a clumping plant in the passionflower family known as white alder. This was the only plant with extrafloral nectaries in the plots. Its density varied from five to 218 individuals per plot.

"T. subulata has a pair of extrafloral nectaries on each petiole [the stalk that attaches the leaf blade to the stem] and inflorescence base," Leal said. The extrafloral nectaries are constantly visited by different ant species that can defend the plant against herbivores. The relative importance of any resource for animals is influenced not only by its abundance in the habitat but also by the number of individuals sharing it. Our first step was therefore to count the nests of ants that foraged in our study plots."

The researchers left five mixtures of carbohydrate and protein (sardine and honey) as bait in the soil of each plot between 7 and 11 a.m., when ants were most active at the site. One piece of bait was placed at the center and the other four approximately three meters away at the corners.

"We waited until the ants located the bait and followed them back to their nests, even when these were located outside our study site," Leal said.

They counted the ant nests and estimated the abundance of protein and carbohydrate resources for ants in each plot. Because T. subulata is a prostrate herbaceous plant occurring in open habitats, it is visited mainly by soil-foraging ant species.

"We recorded 312 occurrences of 13 ant species on these plants. Most were visited by two or more ant species simultaneously," Leal said.

The most frequent species was Camponotus blandus (42 percent of occurrences), followed by Dorymyrmex piramicus (25.6 percent). Dead arthropods in the soil are the main source of protein for these ants.

The researchers used soil arthropod biomass as a proxy for protein availability to the ants that visited extrafloral nectaries in each plot. To obtain this metric, they installed five pitfall traps in each plot, again one at the center and one at each corner.

"The pitfall traps remained active for 24 hours. We filtered their content and dried it in an oven at 60 °C for 24 hours. The lower the average dry arthropod biomass collected from each plot was, the lower the local availability of protein to ants," Leal said.

Less protein, more aggressiveness

The researchers also observed the behavior of ants visiting extrafloral nectaries with regard to a simulated herbivore to determine whether the availability of carbohydrate and/or protein in the habitat affected the efficiency of the ants' defense.

"We simulated the presence of herbivores on the plants using the larvae of Ulomoides dermestoides, a common predator of peanut seeds known as the peanut beetle or Chinese weevil. On the most apical branch of each focal plant, we placed one larva on the leaf that offered the best horizontal or near-horizontal platform for the insect. We allowed the larva to move freely on the leaf and waited for it to be found by the ants," Leal said.

The biologists identified the ants present on five plants in each plot and measured their efficiency in removing the simulated herbivores from the plants.

"When a larva was located, we observed the behavior of the ants with regard to the larva. We observed whether the larva was removed from the plant, whether the ants took the larva to the ground, pushed it off the plant, or consumed it where it was," Leal said.

According to her, the probability of interaction between the plants and more aggressive ant species was not influenced by the number of active extrafloral nectaries or the arthropod biomass found in the plots.

"However, the simulated herbivores were removed more frequently in plots with less arthropod biomass. This suggests that ants, regardless of species, become more aggressive toward other arthropods in protein-poor habitats. This increase in aggressiveness potentially increases the efficiency with which plants that have extrafloral nectaries are defended against herbivores," Leal said.

Unlike carbohydrates, protein resources are not renewable and are randomly distributed in the environment. Dead insects, for example, have no predictable pattern of distribution and may be found almost anywhere. Once consumed, these dead insects are unavailable to other species of ants in the community.

"This led us to propose that plants with extrafloral nectaries may be more efficiently defended in protein-poor habitats regardless of how much they invest in interaction via nectar secretion," Leal said.

If so, even plants that secrete low-quality extrafloral nectar may be efficiently defended because the ants' behavior toward herbivores will be driven by their demand for protein and not for carbohydrates.

When the headline is enough

Terrified woman suffers meltdown after being surprised by giant albino python in Singapore

Jul 5th 2019, 00:00

A woman had the fright of her life at Singapore Zoo when animal keepers crept up on her with a giant albino python. She had been facing her fears in an small snakes experience show.

When the headline is enough...and its always enough...

PSA

Dental malpractise is more common than you realize.
The story is detailed in The Atlantic magazine

A planet with an atmosphere, so near a sun it was thought impossible

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/30/forbidden_planet_star/

A Pace of Change

This lighthearted game originated with https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/cnms/altorientalistik.  We include it here because of its cleverness alone, without any endorsements implied or otherwise.

Carel Willink

He died in 1983

New York Times headline time

NYTIMES.COM

A Man in Kazakhstan Held Up a Blank Sign to See if He’d Be Detained. He Was.

Don't worry about who this is

Because I am just the driver of the get-a-way car.

New York Times headline April 20, 2019

Notre-Dame’s Safety Planners Underestimated the Risk, With Devastating Results

By KATRIN BENNHOLD and JAMES GLANZ

The man who oversaw the design of the fire safety system at the cathedral said he was “stunned” at the fire’s speed. Experts said the system included delays that cost firefighters critical minutes

Where we came from

Light on the path; or, The way heavenward
By John Kirk
1889


REVIVALS of religion are of various kinds. The people in one case are moved with a deep sense of sin; in another by the anticipation of judgment and the future punishment of the wicked; and yet again the revival may be got up simply by the exertions of a few people who think it is time that such a movement should be taking place. A fourth way in which a revival of religion may be brought about is through the revelation to some individual of the bright side of divine things. By Providence this man is put in such circumstances that the Divine mercy becomes apparent to him as it had not been before; that mercy and loving-kindness in the Gospel becomes so magnified that he is constrained to tell others about it. The results of this realisation of God's goodness upon himself being strength... purity, and joy unbounded, he feels, as he regards the cold and dead condition of multitudes of Christians and the darkness of the lost and sinful, that were they, his fellow-creatures, but to see in their God what he sees, they must also experience joy and strength. As a live coal laid upon a heap of faggots, so is this man amongst his fellows The flame of truth catches everywhere, and perhaps not only is a Church revived but a nation born...

Just a thought

Is the reality of human consciousness any more absurd than the illusion of survival after death?

Jan's story about the ants eating the map, rather than the picnic

How obvious is it that if you speak, you are speaking TO someone?

How obvious is it that the audience, even a presumed audience is a critical part of language?

Have we forgotten that to say 'I got that', means you have not?

How obvious is it to say 'I heard that before', is to advertise one's  incomprehension?

How obvious is it that one reason for originality is to reach those who spout the sentiments above, spout out of their helpless mechanicity?

"How to do fact checking"

https://blog.oup.com/2019/02/fact-checking-how-to/?

I excerpt this article below, and conclude, afterwards, with my own observations.

'I’ve been doing some fact-checking of my own lately for a book project and have a few tips.

'If you don’t know, don’t assume. Is guerilla originally a French word or Spanish? I once assumed it was French, not bothering to check. But it turned out to be Spanish.

'Don’t be misled by terminology. I once referred to the Soviet Revolution as occurring in October of 1917, based on the notion that it was the October Revolution. But that’s only true on the Old Style calendar; on the New Style calendar, the revolution took place in November 1917.

'Beware of common knowledge. What we think we know may not be the whole story. Take the simple statement that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. He was involved, to be sure, and a key player. But he was not a lone artisan (he had financial backers supporting him and skilled craftsmen working for him) and it is more accurate to say that he devised a revolutionary method of printing with mechanical movable type.

'Learn what needs checking. For any project, keep a list of the kinds of things that need to be verified: names, dates, places, arithmetic, and more. Names shift in your memory: Is it Pacific Crest Trail or Pacific Coast Trail? Dates can lead you down a garden path—a film might have been produced in one year and released in the next. Someone elected in 1980 would have taken office in 1981. ...

'Look for original sources. Information mutates from source to source, so it is preferable to find the original source. Where that isn’t possible, look for the best source possible—something that is peer reviewed or fact-checked.

'Ask for help. Reach out to librarians, archivists, and other scholars. ....

'Be wary of quotes. Something is often up when a quote appears more than one way...

'Admit defeat when necessary. When you’ve determined that something is unverified or in dispute, say so. There’s no shame in being uncertain.

'Inevitably, you will make a mistake, misread a source, or get fooled. When that happens, someone will correct you and it is best to admit the error, say thank you, make a correction if possible, and learn the lesson. Mistakes can happen to anyone, but every slip is a learning experience.'

I mention this quotation because the article appeared on the Oxford University Press blog. That glorious source is the reason I point out--- in what is perhaps a commentary on our times-- this advice is pathetically inadequate.  The author of this article ignores the internet--- which is where the ghastly results of human gullibility and ignorance are blatant. At the same time the web makes elementary fact checking much easier. And the article ignores how reliance on others as a warrant, is deadly to ordinary, even ordinary, knowledge. Pictures of cats is just an example--- the signs of manipulation are often obvious-- the smiling shape of a cat mouth, the extended forelimbs, over the head, of the beast---- a simple observation of a cat would reveal the presence of computer manipulation of these images. Many people are not just oblivious to the phony, they seem to see no reason to check anything.

Did I say gullible, ignorant, above. I meant to say ordinary.
And what could be more ordinary than to be cranky and/or surprised, by this topic.

Look it up--- UP

shareds: collective noun. definition- the discardable debris left when thinking through something
shareds: synonym- words

To be precise

Those people going on about robots,now, and the last few decades, those folks ARE robots.