Can Blue Tits Save The Conker Trees?

Hurray for Blue Tits!!

(No! Not THOSE kind of… oh, never mind!)

Could they be the key to solving a serious British environmental problem?

(THIS kind!! [1])

Yes, bird-watchers and tree huggers, the geeks and nerdlings over at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology have uncovered the wonderful truth about blue tits.

(A bird feeder sporting a nice pair of British blue tits)

The article begins, “Blue tits, a familiar garden bird, could be the salvation of our imperiled conker trees (horse-chestnut trees), which are under severe attack by a tiny non-native moth that has spread from continental Europe.”

Yes, the foreign illegal alien moth arrived in London just ten years ago, and has since spread across most of England and Wales. The moth caterpillars eat the leaves while hiding inside them, so damaging the leaves and causing them to turn brown and making the tree appear as if autumn has come early.

(Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner Cameraria ohridella. [Photo © Ian Kimber]) 

Experts at the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and the University of Hull are asking today (August 30, 2012) for the public’s help to find out how many moth caterpillars are eaten by birds, such as blue tits. They are asking volunteers to check leaves from a horse chestnut tree for the distinctive damage caused by the birds to the leaf mines and report it through the Conker Tree Science website.

(Damaged horse chestnut leaf, showing whitish leaf mines [2])

Dr Michael Pocock, from CEH, said, “It’s a big mission and we’re reliant on people’s help to discover how much birds are feeding on the alien moths.”

Dr Darren Evans from the University of Hull added, “In discovering whether garden birds, like blue tits, can help to protect conker trees, we will also be learning more about the behaviour of the birds themselves.”

The alien moth, which was discovered in the 1980s, has caterpillars that live inside the leaves, forming distinctive patches of damage called “leaf mines”. Up to 700 leaf mines have been recorded on a single leaf and the damage caused by large numbers of larvae can be striking. A previous Conker Tree Science mission discovered that predatory wasps were not effectively controlling the alien moths, possibly explaining their rapid spread.

(Signs of a bird attack on the leaf mine home of the moth [3])

This project, where anyone can get involved with genuine scientific research, is one of the largest of its kind in the UK and is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Find out more by visiting the Conker Tree Science project’s website. People in Britain can take part in the new “Bird Attack” mission from August 20 to September 23, 2012.

Let’s keep those cute blue tits up front in our battle against these pesky moths!

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[1] A blue tit in front of horse-chestnut leaves that are covered with brown patches of damage caused by the caterpillars of the leaf mining moths. (Photo Credit: Richard Broughton/CEH)

[2] [3]  Photo credit: Dr Michael Pocock/CEH

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Why I Miss The South (Part 7): Tough Southern Girls

Steel magnolias, they call them.

(“So… you say you’re a feminist. Inn’t that cute?”)

Sweet as jam…

(Hee Haw’s Cathy Baker)

and tough as nails.

(“Now.. Ah know yew are not gonna make me repeat mahself”)

 These girls brook no backchat.

(Ah cain’t wait to see the look on his face when I blow that hat off his head!)

They’re not bitchy. Far from it. They are the sweetest, kindest, most big-hearted girls you will ever meet.

But Lord help you if you do them wrong.

(Well, if it isn’t that lyin’, cheatin’ bastard coming up my driveway!)

A Southern Girl will tell you to go to Hell in a way that almost makes you look forward to the trip!

I miss their masterful flirting. I miss their refreshing honesty. I miss the laughter that comes straight from their hearts.

(The lovely Angela Johnson – one more reason to love Alabama)

I miss the way they talk and the sounds of their voices.

I miss the Belles and their strength of character. I miss the Redneck Girls and their passionate love of life.

In a very real sense, these wonderful women ARE The South.

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Loonies I Have Lunched With (Part 10): Davka Frei

I had occasion the other day to spend a leisurely afternoon with my dearly beloved friend, Davka Frei. [1]

Davka is a stunningly beautiful Jewish girl who has zero interest in Yiddishkeit. [2]

It’s not that she hates Judaism or even dislikes it. It’s simply not on the radar with her. As such, she is continually flummoxed at the fact that I live an observant Jewish life.

I did not grow up Orthodox. I chose to become Orthodox later in life. And this is what gets her!

You see, while Davka can wrap her mind around someone being observant because he or she was raised that way and ‘did not know better’ (i.e. FFB – Frum From Birth [3]), she has a much harder time understanding why someone who ‘knew better’ (i.e. had a normal non-observant life) would choose a frum lifestyle.

(Frum vs Frei)

Fortunately for the both of us, the Frum/Frei debate hasn’t affected our relationship in the least because for the most part we are completely dippy about each other. For all of our differences in terms of religious observance, we thoroughly enjoy each other’s company.

(Frei vs Frum)

And it is that genuine affection that trumps just about everything else.

In our own way, we are both as Loonie as they come… but we arrive at our loopiness from different angles.

(That’s not us, btw)

That’s what makes lunch (kosher, of course… my friend puts friendship over flavour! [4]) with Davka such a wonderful, delightful experience.

(Ahavas Yisroel! [5])

Love really does conquer all.

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[1] Davka Frei (pronounced ‘DAHV-kah FRY’). Not her real name. Davka Frei is a pseudonym. Davka is an Aramaic word that has no precise English translation. The closest you can come is probably ‘very’ or ‘exactly’ or ‘precisely.’  Frei (lit. ‘free’) is a Yiddish/German word meaning ‘non-observant’or ‘not Orthodox’… as in ‘free’ from religious observance.

[2] Yiddishkeit (from the Yiddish; Lit. “Jewishness”) – the word is usually used to mean Judaism and everything related to Jews and Judaism.

[3] Frum (from the German fromm, meaning “devout” or “pious”. The ‘u’ is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘book’ or ‘cookie’) meaning committed to the observance of  Jewish commandments and law, specifically of Orthodox Judaism. Frum is the opposite of Frei.

[4] Truth be told, our last lunch together was at the Oasis Cafe in downtown Toronto. I wasn’t expecting much. We both had the Eggplant Parmigiana with caesar salad and Peach Snapple. It was astonishingly good. Davka: “It’s so delicious, you’d never know it was kosher!” LOL

[5] Love for one’s fellow Jew.

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Why I Miss The South (Part 6): Flirting

I’ve given this a lot of thought and have come to two conclusions.

One: most people don’t know how properly to flirt. This is because…

Two: most people don’t know what flirting is.

Flirting is as complex as it is fundamental.

Flirting is about communicating with a person through a careful procedure that involves a little curiosity, a bit of brevity and laughter, and some meaningful glances and smiles. While it can be aggressive and obvious, I personally put this overt style of flirting in the ‘hitting on someone’ category.

To me, flirting is quiet and subtle. A look that lingers a moment longer than it otherwise would. The tiniest of smiles. The most seemingly innocent double entendre or Freudian slip. A meaningful exchange of glances in reaction to what a third person says. The most subtle of body language. Ideally, only the most observant of bystanders would even know there was any flirting going on at all.

One popular fact that gets tossed around a great deal is that scientists believe there are as many as 52 “flirting signals” used by humans around the world.

I don’t know how or where the scientists picked up such information but speaking strictly for myself the Number One Undisputed Capital of Flirting, bar none, is The South.

There is something about the flirting that goes on south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Flirting is not merely a skill way down yonder in the land of cotton… it has been elevated, refined and transformed into an Art!

It is through the art of flirtation that people in The South experience the pleasures of interacting with the opposite sex.

Flirting can be a means by which to get into a relationship, of course. It is certainly an enjoyable way to get to know someone initially.

But to me, flirting is an end in and of itself. It doesn’t have to lead anywhere else. To me, flirting is its own reward.

And when flirting with a Southern Girl… the rewards are immeasurable.

It’s been 12 years since I went down to The South. It’s been 12 years since I’ve experienced Flirtation as Art.

Nothing compares. Nothing comes close.

I miss it.

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Spider Version of Bigfoot in Pacific West Coast Caves!!

The folks over at ScienceDaily.com have alerted us to a new and terrifying menace on the West Coast!!

Spider Version of Bigfoot Emerges from Caves in the Pacific Northwest

The new spider breaks new ground in arachnology!

(Trogloraptor)

The article begins, “The forests of the coastal regions from California to British Columbia are renowned for their unique and ancient animals and plants, such as coast redwoods, tailed frogs, mountain beavers and the legendary Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch). Whereas Bigfoot is probably just fiction, a huge, newly discovered spider is very real. Trogloraptor (or “cave robber”) is named for its cave home and spectacular, elongate claws. It is a spider so evolutionarily special that it represents not only a new genus and species, but also a new family (Trogloraptoridae). Even for the species-rich insects and arachnids, to discover a new, previously unknown family is an historic moment.”

(Scanning electron micrograph – Trogloraptor spider claw)

As the boys over at Wired Science put it, “The spider is about 1.5 inches wide with its legs stretched out, bigger than a half-dollar coin. It was found living in loose strands of web hanging from cave ceilings and under forest debris. It wields a set of lethal-looking claws (right), but its hunting and fighting behaviors remain to be seen.”

Scientists from the California Academy of Sciences, San Diego State University, and citizen scientists from the Western Cave Conservancy all helped discover the spiders. The California Academy of Sciences team led the study to analyze and describe the new arachnid family.

Well done, geeks. We didn’t need to sleep tonight, anyway!

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Images: California Academy of Sciences

Journal Reference:

1. Charles Griswold, Tracy Audisio, Joel Ledford. An extraordinary new family of spiders from caves in the Pacific Northwest (Araneae, Trogloraptoridae, new family). ZooKeys, 2012; 215 (0): 77 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.215.3547

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Why I Miss The South (Part 5): The Tennessee Waltz

One night when I was driving down from Canada to Arkansas, I stopped at Jackson, Tennessee.

A few months before, an old girlfriend of mine, LK, introduced me to a wonderful place in Jackson called Casey Jones Village and I thought I would pop by to see if it was still open.

As I pulled in and parked, I could tell they’d had some kind of festival or concert there and, sadly, it looked like I’d missed it. Everyone seemed to be packing up. Rather than head back out on the highway, I decided to get out and stretch my legs and have a bit of a poke around.

I’ve never had bad luck meeting people in The South.

I headed toward the Old Country Store & Restaurant as there was group of musicians gathered there just to the left of the store. Looked like maybe they were a family. Two young ladies on violin. Two older gents on guitar. A stand-up bass. A banjo. Perhaps a harmonica.

I’d almost reached them when they lifted their instruments.

And that is when I heard it.

That small group of musicians started playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz.

I just froze in my tracks, taking it all in. I was transfixed.

I’m not sure if any of you have ever experienced a perfect moment. I did that night at that place.

The music. The night. The mild night air. A gentle breeze blowing the long blonde hair of one of the girls playing the violin.

I was in awe.

It was like looking at a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.

Although I know it’s not possible, it seems to me I held my breath the entire time. I was so afraid that if I spoke, if I moved, if I did anything… I would spoil the absolute perfection of the moment.

I’ve always liked the Tennessee Waltz. But on that exact night at that exact time and place… it was the most beautiful tune I’d ever heard.

When they finished, they began packing away their instruments.

As I quietly came forward, I noticed a big old mason jar with some money in it. Not a lot of money, I’m sad to say.

I took all the cash I had on me and rolled it up, put a $5 bill around the outside and placed it into the mason jar. It must have been around $400, I think. And I actually felt guilty for not being able to pay more… to pay them as much as they were worth in my eyes.

You see, I wasn’t giving them money. I was merely trying to pay back a small token amount of what they had given to me that night.

You can’t put a dollar value on perfection.

I’ll always remember that night… and The Tennessee Waltz.

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My 200th Kosher Samurai Post!

This is my 200th post on this blog site!

It is a happy coincidence that my last post is presently being featured in WordPress’s Freshly Pressed section. [1]

Thanks, WordPress, for the boost and vote of confidence. Youse guys are the most bestest ever.

Thanks to the many arts, cuisine, culture, entertainment, news and especially science sites out there in what we once called the information superhighway. [2]

(Kosher Samurai)

Special thanks to the geeks and nerdlings over at ScienceDaily.com and Scoop.it Science News. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I am constantly flattering all y’all! [3]

Extra special thanks to the lovely, talented and all-round magnificent Chris Conrad who provoked me into publishing my works and words online after me noodging her for years to get her own writing published in what we once called ‘magazines.’ [4]

(Vampyre Fangs)

Thanks most of all to the many people who have been kind and curious enough to stop in for a look at Kosher Samurai and my sister blog, Vampyre Fangs, as well as my ongoing Twitter experiment, the zombie apocalypse journal fiction work The Great Dead North. Your readership, comments and continuing support are very much appreciated.

(The Great Dead North)

For those new to my writing… I publish posts in both Kosher Samurai and Vampyre Fangs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. [5] I tweet on The Great Dead North daily. [6]

Please come back often. If you like what you see, please tell your friends.

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The best of 378,679 bloggers, 810,546 new posts, 1,033,890 comments, & 209,529,601 words posted today on WordPress.com.

[2] Ask your parents.

[3] As I learned in law school, stealing from one person is plagiarism. Stealing from a dozen is ‘research!’

[4] See [2] above.

[5] Excluding national holidays and Jewish holidays.

[6] Excluding Jewish Sabbath (Friday evening until Saturday night after dark) and Jewish holidays.

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I Knew It! Babies are Morally Bankrupt!!

Hats off once again to the gang over at ScienceDaily.com for blowing the lid off of this story.

Babies May Not Have a ‘Moral Compass’ After All

New research from New Zealand’s University of Otago is casting doubt on a landmark US study that suggested infants as young as six months old possess an innate moral compass that allows them to evaluate individuals as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

(Ethically handicapped)

The 2007 study by Yale University researchers provided the first evidence that 6- and 10-month-old infants could assess individuals based on their behaviour towards others, showing a preference for those who helped rather than hindered another individual.

Based on a series of experiments, researchers in the Department of Psychology at Otago have shown that the earlier findings may simply be the result of infants’ preferences for interesting and attention grabbing events, rather than an ability to evaluate individuals based on their social interactions with others.

The Otago study was recently published in PLoS One, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal.

In the original Yale experiment, infants watched a wooden toy (i.e., the “climber”) attempt to climb a hill. They viewed two social interactions; one in which a “helper” toy nudged the climber up the hill, and another in which a “hinderer” toy nudged the climber down the hill.

(Future sociopath)

After viewing these two scenarios, the infants were presented with a tray; on one side of the tray was the helper and on the other side was the hinderer. Amazingly, the majority of infants picked the helper over the hinderer. To further elucidate infants’ moral reasoning abilities, a “neutral” toy (i.e., a toy that neither helped nor hindered) was pitted against the helper or hinderer. When the neutral character was paired with the helper, the infants preferred the helper; when paired with the hinderer, they preferred the neutral character.

The paper concluded that the experiments show that infants can evaluate individuals based on how they interact with another individual, and that their ability to do this is ‘universal and unlearned’.

Lead Otago author Dr Damian Scarf says that the Yale study caused an international sensation when it was published in the leading journal Nature.

After reviewing videos of the Yale experiments, the Otago researchers noticed that two obvious perceptual events could be driving infants’ choices.

“On the help and hinder trials, the toys collided with one another, an event we thought infants may not like. Furthermore, only on the help trials, the climber bounced up and down at the top of hill, an event we thought infants may enjoy.”

(Has no conscience)

The researchers carried out a series experiments to test these assumptions and, by manipulating the collision and bouncing events, were able to show that these perceptual events were driving infants’ choices of the helper over the hinderer, Dr Scarf says.

In other words, the infants couldn’t care less who was helping and who was hindering. They chose the one who was bouncing around more because it amused them.

“For example,” continues Dr Scarf, “when we had the climber bounce at the bottom of the hill, but not at the top of the hill, infants preferred the hinderer, that is, the one that pushed the climber down the hill. If the social evaluation hypothesis was correct, we should have seen a clear preference for the helper, irrespective of the location of the bounce, because the helper always helped the climber achieve its goal of reaching the top of the hill.”

So there you have it, boys and girls.

A generation of cold, heartless infants. They will be the ones who will eventually choose the nursing homes in which we end up.

Better start bouncing around now, folks!

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Be sure to check out my sister blog, Vampyre Fangs!

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Should We Be Optimistic?

The folks over at UnitedAcademics.com Magazine pose an interesting question…

If ignorance is bliss, then optimism must be euphoria. Thanks to a mechanism called the optimism bias, humans are pretty much incapable of applying basic risk statistics to their own lives. We know smoking causes cancer, but we don’t expect it to happen to us. We find a lump on our body  and we tell ourselves it’s probably nothing. 

In his 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman notes that “people tend to be overly optimistic about their relative standing on any activity in which they do moderately well.” This ‘optimism bias’ generates the illusion of control [1]: the idea that we are in control of our lives. Bad things only happen to others.

You can see where this bright outlook on life can cause trouble. Wearing seatbelts? Not necessary.  Opening a savings account? Maybe later. Being overly optimistic in life puts us at risk. In addition, people who show cheerful, optimistic personality traits during childhood, have a shorter life expectancy than their more serious counter parts. On the other hand, optimists are more psychologically resilient, have stronger immune systems, and live longer on average than more reality-based opposites. So who’s better off in life; the optimist or the pessimist?  And who’s reality comes closest to the truth?

According to the “depressive realism” proposition, people who suffer from (moderate) depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality.  They are less affected by the illusion of control and therefore better capable of estimating their chances in life. In other words, people with depression are not pessimists, they are realists.

(Hey! Looks full to me!)

When you tend to attribute positive events to yourself and negative events to others, that is called a self-serving bias [2]. This is the case for most people. When you believe you are responsible for negative events rather than positives ones, you show a non self-serving bias – something that is often seen in people who suffer from depression.

Humans, apparently, have developed a way to better cope with negative emotions. Their rose-colored glasses cause them to view the world just a little better than it actually is. But without them we would never get anything done, says neuroscientist and author of “The Optimism Bias” Tali Sharot: “Optimism pushes us to take chances – attempt a new job, a new relationship. It also acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as believing a goal is attainable makes it more likely to be.”

Being optimistic is necessary in order to get anything done in life. Without the belief we can accomplish anything, we will not even try to do so. Still, holding on to the belief that everything will be OK in the future does not mean that we should ignore the things that are shitty today.

That, I think, is truly being realistic.

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[1] The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency of people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way that is beneficial to their interests

[2] The tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events.

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Loonies I Have Lunched With (Part 9): Practical Jokers

Have you ever eaten anything that you thought was one thing and then, after it was in your mouth, you discover to your horror that it was something entirely different?

(Nonna cooking up some Timbits)

Let me give you an example. Italian grandmother cooking up some meatballs in a skillet, placing the cooked meatballs onto a platter. Little five-year-old grandson comes into the room, sees a platter of what he thinks are Timbits. Child asks his sweet, adorable grandmother if he can have some Timbits. Nonna, who has a sick sense of humour, says, “Sure!” Kid bites into Timbit expecting a sweet, tasty treat and, instead, gets a mouthful of meat, fat, garlic, onions and parsley. Grandson makes horrible icky face. Nonna falls over laughing, thinking the whole shtick is the cutest thing she’s ever seen. Kid bursts into tears and spends years on psychiatrist’s couch trying to get over culinary child abuse.

(Some restaurants are a bit TOO dark!)

I had occasion to witness another example of this kind of evil subterfuge ages ago when some alleged friends of mine and I were having dinner in a dimly lit steakhouse. Gullible Friend was having some difficulty making out what was on his plate through the gloom of the dining room. He lifted a forkful of something and peered at it, trying to figure things out. Evil Friend helpfully suggested that it was mashed potatoes. Gullible Friend smiled and put the forkful into his mouth. His eyes bugged out and he began choking. Evil Friend cackled at her cleverness in fooling someone into eating a heapin’ helpin’ of horseradish.

(Mashed potatoes… or death on a spoon? [Photo Eve Fox])

I’ve never been a fan of practical jokes. I just don’t think they’re funny.

Practical jokes involving anything that needs to be ingested as part of the gag are, to me, particularly not funny.

People grimacing or spitting out food does not crack me up in the least.

Stop it.

Now…

Would you care for a Timbit?

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