A new Russian spidering tactic

kw: blogs, blogging, spider scanning

I checked stats when I finished the prior post. It appears that a different sort of spider scanning method is in use in Russia:

The spike of ~120 hits on the left came through the UAE. The cluster of smaller spikes on the right, from Russia, total half of all activity for the past week, concentrated in about 30 hours; nearly 300 hits so far.

This may be still going on. If I log in again in a couple of hours, there may be another spike or two showing.

Maybe some day one of the scanners will drop a comment to tell me what they find so interesting!

A Quattrocentennial worth noting

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, bibles, bible translations, history

A lovely book has recently come into my hands, A Visual History of the King James Bible: The Dramatic Story of the World's Best-Known Translation by Donald L. Brake with Shelly Beach. I come to this book late. It was published in 2011, on the 400th anniversary of the publication of the Bible commissioned by James I of England. Curiously, although this translation never received written royal authorization, it is frequently called the Authorized Version. Thus, the frontispiece of the folio printings during the first decades of issuance (and many later printings of all sizes) contain the words "Appointed to be Read in Churches", rather than "Authorized…" etc. Therefore, in Visual History it is never called the Authorized Version but is uniformly the King James Version or King James Bible.

The book is indeed a visual history, replete with portraits of many important figures in the history leading up to the translation work of 1604-1608, and for some time thereafter; and even more pictures of many historical Bibles and Bible pages. Dr. Brake is a Bible collector, with access to many rare volumes in addition to his own sizable collection.

The first complete Bibles printed in English were produced under the direction of John Wycliffe in the late 1300's, during the height of literary production written in Middle English, the language of Geoffrey Chaucer. This image from Wikimedia Commons shows the first verse of the Gospel of John, following the end of an introduction. If you note that the word "the" is in alternate spellings that look like "ye" and "yi", and that a word which looks like "at" is actually "with", you can read it, haltingly.

By the time of the conference at Hampton Court in 1604, during which a Puritan minister challenged King James I to support the production of a new translation (and, to everyone's surprise, the king agreed), there were several competing versions of the Bible in English, in particular the Bishop's Bible, the Geneva Bible and the Great Bible of Coverdale.

The English language was in flux, transforming from late Middle English into what we call Shakespearean English. The actual vocabulary and grammar used by the translators to produce the translation of 1608 dated to the generation before Shakespeare. This was for reasons similar to the love many people today have for the King James Bible's sonorous phrasing: it sounds "old" and thus "dignified". Also, since many of the translators were rather elderly (several died before the work was complete), it was the language of their childhood. Actual Shakespearean English was thought by them in the same vein that people of my generation think of the kind of English spoken by Millennials today. We and our grandchildren can easily converse together, but we sometimes use expressions that evoke a quizzical look from "the kids"…and they from us. I was interested to learn that the antique pronouns "thee" and "thou" and so forth were already falling out of use in 1604, but were retained for the same set of reasons.

Technical matters are also discussed, including the size of the final printed books of various editions, as shown in this illustration from page 74. Books are produced in various sizes by printing different sized pages on a folio sheet, which can be folded in at least five ways.

The typeface of Bibles before the late 1700's was nearly always blackletter (as in the image above), with its calligraphic look. But although the early printings of the King James Bible used blackletter for the text, they used a Roman typeface for explanatory notes and certain other apparatuses. Modern typefaces are nearly all either Roman—or similar "serif" faces—or Swiss—or similar "sans serif" faces.

The largest technical section involves the rules for translation, which are explained in some detail. The scholars wanted to be sure they got it right. However, they made last-minute changes in translating certain expressions. Even though the translation was considered complete in 1608, late changes continued for years. In addition, the way large books were printed, such that a changed word could often be replaced in the impression plate between one print run and the next, meant that the "1611" printing, which really went on for three years, led to numerous variations from book to book. This, plus printers' errors, that would be changed whenever they were found, led to an amazing consequence: While nobody knows how many "first edition" copies were printed, of the 150 or so that presently are known, none is identical in every respect to any of the others.

This poses a bit of a problem for those who consider the King James Version, or KJV, to be inspired as a translation. There is no letter-perfect copy of the "original text"! Numerous re-compilations of the text were made. When you buy a modern reprinting of the "1611 version", it is from one of these. However, the King James Bible one commonly finds at any Christian bookstore is a reprint of the third revision of 1769. It is the Bible that was coming into common use when the Constitution of the U.S. was crafted. The English text of the KJV was revised in 1629, 1675, and 1769.

In a late chapter the author takes up the matter of inspiration. The KJV is loved for many reasons, but there are two groups who revere it far more, to a point that I sometimes characterize as idolatry. Some believe the English translation itself is literally inspired, separately from the Hebrew and Greek originals. I believe the paragraph above disposes of such a notion. Others believe that, for the New Testament in particular, the Greek text used, commonly called the Textus Receptus, or Received Text, is exactly the text God wants to be used when translating into English. This is in spite of the fact that the text prepared by Erasmus, to which they usually refer, was secondary to a text by Beza that was the Textus Receptus of the translators in 1604-1608. The Beza text was favored because some of the text by Erasmus had actually been translated into Greek from the Latin Vulgate, because Erasmus could not get access to Greek texts for all the Bible books! But there is a further consideration.

The primary sources of both "flavors" of the Textus Receptus are Byzantine-era Greek manuscripts dating from the Ninth Century or later. They are both considered "near-majority" texts. I have a modern reprint of the Beza text that came with an appendix containing notes on the changes needed to convert it to a true Majority Text, that is, one that uses the version of each word or phrase as found in the majority of Byzantine manuscripts. There are thousands of such manuscripts, and literal criticism (criticism of the letters and words) is a serious discipline in its own right. Starting in the 1700's a number of older manuscripts were discovered, which fall into two categories names Alexandrian and Western. They are considered to be closer to the Koiné Greek of the First Century, though the Western manuscripts contain some passages in a more paraphrased form.

Over the past couple of centuries it has become clear that, whereas Greek fell out of use in favor of Latin in Europe, and in favor of Coptic in Egypt, it remained the common language of the Byzantine Empire in the East. Thus, the Greek New Testament, and the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, were used for centuries in the East. As a result there are many more Greek manuscripts from that region still in existence. However, the Greek language changed over the centuries. Byzantine Greek of the 800's or 900's was as different from Koiné Greek as modern English is from Middle English: Go back to the image of the Wycliffe Bible page above. You can figure it out, but it really is a different language from modern English. For the same reason, hardly anyone reads Chaucer "in the original", but in a translation. The Byzantine texts are copies of a translated Greek text, not copies of Koiné Greek texts. This is a significant reason behind the production of the text of Novum Testamentum Graece, currently in its Fifth edition by United Bible Society, which relies more upon the Alexandrine manuscripts. It is considered closer to a genuine Koiné text than any other.

The words of Dr. Brake are most relevant here:

Christians and Bible scholars throughout history agree that insofar as our English translations render the meaning of the Word of God as intended by the original authors in a language we can understand, they are inspired. (p. 244)

That is, the focus should not be on whether the written words in our hands are inspired, but on whether we are inspired by the Holy Spirit when we read them. As I heard frequently when I was a young Christian, "The Bible is the only book whose Author is present whenever we read it."

Voices from all directions

kw: book reviews, science fiction, space fiction, short stories, anthologies

Good collections of science fiction short stories are hard to find these days. I cut my SF-reading teeth on anthologies, much more than novels, in the 1960's. I don't know whether a lot fewer short stories are being written—it does seem that there are fewer SF periodicals than before—or that there are just fewer collections being published. Thus, I glommed onto a new collection of stories by Jack McDevitt instantly.

A Voice in the Night, which closes with a story of that title, contains 24 stories, mostly written during the past decade, but a few dating back as far as 1986. A few of the stories take us into alternatives to the Conan Doyle world of Sherlock Holmes, a few are straight Campbellian problem-solving romps, and many are various sorts of space opera with the author's particular twist. Or two.

The general milieu of a McDevitt space opera is a universe in which humans are the only spacefaring species, or even in which no other planet found in the past 10 millennia has even had bacterial life. But there are a few that are closer to a Star Trek universe, crammed with aliens, though in those stories, I note that nobody has FTL, and the only contact is via radio. Interspecies conversations take decades to unfold, and tend to be rather local!

McDevitt's stories have new ideas aplenty, and a couple have a different take on the viewpoint God might have. But I realize, in every case, to discuss the idea would be a spoiler, and I'd prefer for anyone reading this to have the joy/shock of getting into these stories for yourself. So that's it, folks. I loved the stories, I read them all-too-quickly, and I hope I find other collections, by this author and others, that are as compelling.

Spider scan report for today

kw: blogs, blogging, spider scanning

I logged onto Blogger a few minutes ago, to see that a spidering event came just a few hours ago. The Audience report is quite revealing:

Of the 143 hits counted for "today", 141 are revealed here. The 120 hits by the Spider came through (not necessarily from) the UAE, via FireFox on a Unix system. The other 23 hits are the normal traffic for an ordinary day.

His job really is for the birds

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, tower of london, ravens, ravenmaster

This publicity photo from the London Daily Mail shows Christopher Skaipe, the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London, with one of his charges. He writes in The Ravenmaster: My Life With the Ravens at the Tower of London that if you value your fingers, you'll forbear any attempt at excess familiarity with a raven who doesn't know you. Where a crow could give you a painful peck, even draw a bit of blood, a raven can remove a finger joint.

The Yeomen Warders of the Tower are chosen from military men with an unblemished career of at least 22 years. After he retired from 24 years of distinguished service, begun when he was in his teens, the author was told of opportunities to work at the Tower. To his surprise, after some backing-and-forthing, he was taken on. A few years later he was mentored in raven care by the then Ravenmaster, Rocky Stones. In 2011 he became the sixth Ravenmaster.

"Oh!", you might say, "Isn't raven keeping at the Tower a very ancient tradition?" There are legends aplenty surrounding the Tower's famous ravens, in particular how, should they all depart or die, England will suffer catastrophe. The actual practice of caring for the ravens may have begun in the time of Charles II, in about 1650. The Yeomen Warders, who might have been surreptitiously feeding and protecting the ravens, took upon themselves a more formal caring role, but the "job" of Ravenmaster dates to 1946.

The Tower, formally Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, began as a stout fortress begun in about 1078 by William I ("the Conqueror"). The original White Tower remains, and two rings of structures have been added in the centuries since. It is a place literally swirling with eerie, bloody, fascinating legends.

The birds themselves are legendary. Charles II is said to have decreed that no fewer than six ravens be kept. A bit of judicious wing-trimming ensures that they can fly from danger when needed, but will find it too exhausting to go far beyond the walls. Apparently, the meaning of "judicious" has varied over the years, and at least a couple of birds, over-zealously trimmed, fell to their deaths before more recent Ravenmasters "got it right". Ravenmaster Skaipe has had much to do with "getting it right", not only about the appropriate balance of freedom and restriction for the birds, but about their night dwellings, which they usually enter quite readily. They know of the foxes of the area, and that their Ravenmaster has a great responsibility, keeping ravens and foxes quite separate. Nonetheless, one of the ravens, 11-year-old Merlina, frequently flies and climbs to the top of the White Tower and spends the night there.

These birds have at least as much personality as the people around them. Merlina is a loner, Munin has a love-hate relationship with Skaipe, Erin has a "hobby" of picking a quarrel with one of the others, they each have their own way of stealing food from unfortunate humans in the vicinity, and so forth.

A raven is a big bird. At first it is hard to tell a raven from a crow. This poster from KidWings (the web site is mainly about owls) shows the differences. A crucial bit of missing data: a typical raven weighs 2.5 times as much as a typical crow or rook. Think of an all-black red-tailed hawk; they are that size.

So, what does a Ravenmaster feed the birds? Though they are excellent hunters and can fend for themselves, they do enjoy treats in the form of dog biscuits soaked in blood (In the book, the type of blood is not mentioned. I suppose pig or beef blood from a butcher will do). Also, the Ravenmaster prepares food for them twice daily, so they won't feel the need to hunt perpetually. It won't do for the public to see two of them entrap a pigeon and gobble it down, from center to skin, in the middle of the Green.

Each chapter illuminates a different facet of life, literally, with the birds. The author believes he has the best job on Earth. I reckon he is right about that.

Learning to love killer whales

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, natural history, orcas, killer whales, sociology

Prior to about 1965, the public perception of killer whales was of a rapacious beast, "the ocean's greatest predator", more to be feared than the great white shark. By about 1970, a few ambitious, large, ocean-focused aquariums, "oceanariums", had obtained juvenile killer whales, and soon SeaWorld began the famous "Shamu Adventure" shows that made killer whales into crowd favorites.

So far as I know, the first whales put on display in an oceanarium were two pilot whales at Marineland of the Pacific, beginning in 1962. Later they also obtained killer whales. I used to visit Marineland after moving to California in 1967, and I remember the pilot whales, but killer whales came later. I was more interested in the giant pacific octopus on display, an amazing animal. I have seen a killer whale show only once, at San Diego, some 20 years ago.

It was also about 1970 that the term "orca" was pushed into popularity by some that thought "killer whale" was too scary a moniker. I wonder if they understood that orca is one of the Latin words for "demon"? Linnaeus first classified the species as Delphinus orca, or "demon dolphin." Later the genus was changed to Orcinus, so now the scientific name means "demon from hell"! It is no coincidence that classicist J.R.R. Tolkien used the term "orc" for the demonic forces of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings.

After killer whales/orcas went on display, and millions got to see them in action, public perception changed, in just a decade, from fearing and hating them to loving them. In the process, the men who started the process, by capturing young whales and putting them on display, and whose work led to public love for killer whales, and then by extension, to all whales, became public pariahs. The original spearhead of killer whale capture, Ken Griffin, became the most hated, when we actually owe him a great debt of gratitude. Without his work and his obsession, would we still hate orcas?

Jason M. Colby is just the right author to produce a book about the decade during which this shift of opinion occurred, and its aftermath. His father, John Colby, was a whale-catcher during the early days of capturing young killer whales for display and scientific study. He has written Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator. Although I used the tag "natural history" above, this book records mainly unnatural history for orcas.

Prior to the work of John Colby, Ken Griffin and their colleagues (and competitors), the killer whale, AKA grampus or blackfish, was considered a global species that feasted on baleen whales, while also devouring huge numbers of Chinook salmon, fur seals, and shoals of herring. Fishermen hated them as competitors and potential human predators and usually shot them on sight. Since the 1970's we have gained a truer picture of killer whale life and society.

Killer whales are big enough to take on great white sharks, were they so inclined. Great whites grow to about 20 feet (maximum verified, 22 ft), and can weigh 2-2.5 tons. A 22-foot killer whale is just getting into adulthood; they grow to 26 feet (maximum 32 ft), and can weigh 6-9 tons. One population of killer whales eats primarily blue sharks, which are half the length and 1/10 the weight of great white sharks.

Killer whales are very social, living in stable family groups and multi-family clans. A clan, also called a Pod, has a home range and a food preference. In particular, in the Pacific Northwest, one Pod eats only salmon, another eats primarily seals, and another eats other fish including sharks. They inhabit a sonic world. They use echolocation to find prey and a large range of whistles, squeals and other sounds to communicate. The typical sounds made by one Pod differ from those of a different Pod. They have dialects! Where ranges overlap, it seems that many of the whales are bilingual, able to communicate with members of a different Pod.

Reading Orca, and its sad chronicle of whale capture and killing, I began to think of a whale capture expedition in more personal terms. What if humans were to be taken for display in alien zoos and study by alien scientists? Of course, the "alien abduction" fears of many folks reflect this. So just consider:

A gregarious extended family is on an outing, when some kind of net surrounds them. They are held for a time while smaller beings move about nearby and study them. More nets are deployed, which segregate certain individuals, primarily those that weigh between 60 and 120 pounds, ages 8-14. These are taken away, not to be seen again. The larger and smaller ones are released.

That is how alien abduction would actually occur, no midnight force beams, etc. That is what happened to numerous families of killer whales during the heyday of "whale shows" at oceanariums. However, in a typical capture event, some whales died (not always; Ken Griffin very rarely had a whale die during capture). The nets could tangle a young one, holding it underwater until it drowned, for example. Sadly, few whales in captivity lived more than a few months or a year. It took time for the captors to learn to take care of them.

Ignorance is deadly. Most of the whales captured were used to eating salmon or seals. They spurned the buckets of herring they were offered. Death by starvation was frequent until curators learned better, and also learned techniques to induce newly-caught whales to eat herring, the only food they could afford to obtain in massive quantities…also, it's hard to feed seals to captive whales, and if the public were to see the whales eating "cute" fur seals, the popularity of the shows would plummet.

It is still possible to see performing killer whales. But one by one, the shows are ending. The whales in captivity cannot be returned to the wild. Most now living were born in captivity and do now know the dialect of any wild whale Pods. One or two of the currently captive population are pregnant, meaning that SeaWorld and others will have to take care of killer whales for the next 50 years.

Enough of my ramblings. Jason Colby tells, and tells well, the story of orcas and their shift from mythological demon to beloved "sea Panda". Neither perception is accurate. But along the way, the scientific study of orcas and orca Pods became necessary, and much more is known about these amazing animals. I hope further good and popular books are written about their natural history.

Eat 'em and weep

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, food safety, research

Three stories about writing style:

Story 1: In one of his memoirs, prolific author Isaac Asimov writes of the article he wrote titled "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". It was a spoof, written for a purpose: he had been a published author of popular hard science fiction since he was 19, and he was wondering if he could write in the stodgy, hyper-objective style he would need to use for his doctoral dissertation in Chemistry at Columbia University. The article was as stodgy and hyper-objective as he could devise. He published it in Astounding, figuring that would be sufficient cover. His dissertation passed muster, but unbeknownst to him, his professors had read the article also. When they called him in to announce their (favorable) decision on his degree, the chair of his dissertation committee said, "Greetings, Dr. Asimov! Please tell us more about Thiotimoline."

Story 2: I worked a little more than two years as a machinist in the Physics shop at Cal Tech. We were building a precision radio telescope antenna; it was 34 feet across (10m), and had to be accurate within a few thousandths of an inch (100µ). During the final shaping of the parabola, the assembled dish was mounted on a rotating air bearing 8 feet across (2.4m). It spun slowly, as a specially constructed device cut into the aluminum honeycomb surface, a couple of mm per cut, as it was advanced up a specially-shaped track. Each cut took a full work day. I had to babysit it while the master machinists worked on other things, every day for a few weeks. Because machining uses hearing more than sight, I could move about the room, a huge space in which the mirror for the Palomar Telescope had been polished, which had later been half-filled with a synchrotron, a kind of atom-smasher. I found a cabinet filled with draft copies of PhD dissertations, based on research done using that synchrotron in the 1960's. This is all background: I have the kind of mind such that I can read, with some enjoyment, stodgy, hyper-objective dissertations, which is what I did for most of those few weeks.

Story 3: My brother had been a working artist, primarily a calligrapher and calligraphy instructor, for more than 20 years. The art market was slowly shrinking in the late 1990's, so he decided to return to school, get a Doctor's degree, and, he hoped, become a museum curator or professor. He first completed a Master's in Art History. However, he also was a published author, of nonfiction books, with a very readable writing style. Not having published his own "Thiotimoline" article, he had nothing he could use to convince a dissertation committee that he could write in a style appropriate to a history dissertation. So the History Department declined to admit him to a PhD program. One of them told him privately that the professors were embarrassed that their writing was so bad by comparison to his. Fortunately, a different department requested that he apply, and he was admitted. He received a PhD at age 50 and is now a professor.

I find in the book Did You Just Eat That: Two Scientists Explore Double-Dipping, the Five-Second Rule, and Other Food Myths in the Lab, two scientists who are moving in the other direction. Paul Dawson and Brian Sheldon studied various food myths with their students at Clemson University (Dr. Sheldon is now at N.C. State U). They studied myths about the 5-second rule, Beer Pong, restaurant menus, jet-air hand dryers, and several other things. Being professors, having written their own stodgy, hyper-objective dissertations, they are moving into the public arena. This is not unusual…but this book is unusual, in a good way.

This book is unique in my experience, being a mix of about 2/3 very refreshing text for the general reader, and 1/3 stodgy, hyper-objective reporting of their experiments. I have read many popular books in which the results of scientific experiments are discussed. This is the first such book in which every experiment is described in the kind of detail you'd find in a technical research report. The authors are kind enough to warn us about this in their Introduction, and to set off the stodgy stuff with "Science Stuff Ahead"; they give permission to skip these sections, to anyone who finds them too stultifying. Thus, for example, a few sentences from their chapter about the germs found on restaurant menus:

Swab-samplers (made by 3M Swabs, 3M Company) were used for menu sampling… The restaurant menus sampled fell into three general sizes of around 603, 768, and 1,207 cm². … Back in the laboratory, sample tubes containing the swab and sterile 0.1 percent peptone water were vigorously shaken by hand...

From the descriptions, and sufficient budget, and an army of willing students, you could reproduce each experiment exactly. That is why the writing is the way it is. Of course, I can read this stuff just fine, but most folks can't; the MEGO factor can be huge!

Let's cut to the chase. Is the 5-second rule true? ("If you pick up dropped food in less than five seconds it is still safe to eat.") Is it? How would you define "safe"? The outcome of the experiment, in which several kinds of food were dropped onto tile, wood, and carpet inoculated with a harmless variety of Salmonella, the most common cause of food poisoning, was that "safe" really just means "maybe a little bit safer". In general, if you can grab that grape in one second, it will have fewer bacteria on it than if it takes you 4 seconds, and if you wait, say, half a minute, there will be even more. But the number of bacteria transferred was never Zero. However, by this measure, carpet was "safer" than tile or wood. That is the opposite of what I'd have expected.

Consider this, though, based on other experiments: How many bacteria get on your food from your own hands? How thoroughly and carefully do you wash before handling food? Prior to washing, after almost any amount of daily activity, our hands are as dirty as the floor we are walking on, whether or not we wear shoes indoors.

Rather than be a spoiler about the results in this book, I will instead invoke a forensic principle, known for at least a century, as it applies to the transfer of germs (bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites) to and from our food and everything it touches: When two surfaces come into contact, material from each surface is transferred to the other. Numerous criminals have been convicted in part because, not only were their fingerprints found "at the scene", but, if they brushed against the wall, tiny flakes of paint from that wall got on their clothing.

To sum up, if anything touches food, we must assume it will contaminate the food unless steps were taken ahead of time to remove all contaminants. So, if you're going to enjoy Beer Pong, make sure you have really good medical insurance!

Animal personality comes out of hiding

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, animals, animal behavior, animal psychology

The rat-runner's motto:

Given any combination of feeding, temperature, and light level, the rat will do what the rat wants to do.

There is a word I'd like to abolish from the scientific dictionary: Anthropomorphize. In common understanding, to anthropomorphize is to talk about some thing or animal as though it were human. We do this all the time: "My phone thinks it knows better than I do," or "My cat loves to have his belly rubbed." But in a scientific article, to speak of any animal as having emotions, feelings, or intentions; indeed, to speak about an animal in any way other than as a piece of automatic machinery that is operating according to (never-to-be-properly-defined) "instinct", was forbidden for decades, upon pain of losing tenure and being blackballed from the hallowed halls of getting published in "good" journals.

John A. Shivik is one of many researchers who are doing away with this blinkered perspective. In his new book, Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes: The Science of Animal Personalities, he explains his own shift of viewpoint and presents many examples of animals that have been proven to have personalities, from familiar dogs, cats, coyotes, horses, and cougars to mosquito fish, spiders, and even protozoans. Yes, an amoeba can have a personality! No brain, but the tiny critters have their preferences.

Here is an example of a familiar sight. The kittens all look the same. They are a purebred litter, bred under controlled circumstances so there's no chance of multiple fathers here. It looks like they are all ready for a nap, but Roger, there, has a different idea. I suspect that seconds later he scampered off. Maybe you've been to the SPCA to adopt a puppy. One comes right to you, and her litter mate hangs back looking shy (Me, I'd pick the shy one, as long as she was friendly when I went over to her).

In Mousy Cats the author explains in some detail how the anti-humanizing trend became a straitjacket for biological researchers. He tells us of his own experiences with coyotes—including one much more wolf-like than he wished!—and other animals; even more, he tells of the work of a growing number of researchers who work with all kinds of animals to demonstrate their differences in personality and how they shape the lives of the individual animals and their species' survival.

We might step back and ask, "Why does there need to be such a wide array of personalities, not only among people but among animals? Why doesn't evolution, or God, or something just produce the 'perfect' animal?" Nature isn't static. The average rainfall where I live is a very solid 3 inches per month (sometimes manifested as 3 feet of snow). But a few years ago the precipitation for the year was not 36 inches, as expected, but about 25. The governor issued orders against lawn watering and washing cars. And then this Spring we had an entire year's rainfall in two months; mold grew in unusual places, such as the rafters in my attic.

More to the point with animals, a litter of coyote pups with a bold, calm disposition will do well when there are plenty of prey to eat and few dangers, but if a pack of wolves moves into the neighborhood, they'd better beware. Wolves kill coyotes, and it's better to be more timid. A litter of coyote pups with a variety of styles of personality, some more bold and adventuresome, and some more retiring and watchful, are more likely to have at least one or two that survive the present environment and go on to gain a mate and have offspring of their own. Sometimes, the bold ones can safely adventure here and there, finding more prey and growing up faster than their more retiring litter mates. During such times they'll have more offspring. Sometimes, all the bold ones are killed off by wolves, and the shy ones manage to avoid that fate. The pendulum never stops swinging.

Varied and changing environments are behind the evolution of varied personalities. You look at a bunch of orb-weaver spiders; my favorite is the Golden Garden Spider. They all look the same. They spin webs that look a lot alike. Scientists have gathered spiders by the dozens to test if they have different personalities. They might take 60 of a particular species and raise them in individual terrariums. How do you test the startle response of a spider? To be simple, you sneak behind it and poke its rear with a pencil eraser! Nearly all the spiders run off the web and hide. How long will it be before each one comes out of hiding? How long before they are back on the web? The researchers will wait a day or two, so the spiders are hungry, and then drop a small cricket into each web. How long does it take for each spider to dash out and attack the cricket? It should come as no surprise that the spiders who take the longest to "recover" from being poked by a pencil eraser also take the longest, and are most cautious, when approaching and attacking the cricket, even when they are famished.

Well, if spiders have personalities, however rudimentary, it follows that any more complex animal ought to have one as well. Indeed, whether we keep pets or not, we all know somebody's cat or dog or cockatiel or whatever, if not our own. We know that each is a unique individual. The researchers that the book highlights are proving it, scientifically. It is about time the scientists caught up with what we all knew all along.

So I repeat what I've said before: It's not that animals are like us, the important point is that we are like them. We have personalities because they have personalities.

A spate of Russian spidering

kw: blogs, blogging, spider scanning

Before getting to a book review, it's good to see what activity has been in the past week. Here we see someone in Russia having a new and different "scanning party":

Here it seems a less automatic process was used: grab a couple dozen posts, look them over for an hour or two, then use about 8 focused searches over a day's time. I wonder what other sites or blogs have seen a similar phenomenon…