View from my perch

Alexander Wilson, American Ornithologist

Reading Scott Wiedensaul's book Of a Feather made me want to know more about early American Ornithologist Alexander Wilson. The book references Alexander Wilson: Naturalist and Pioneer, by Robert Cantwell. My Google search netted little of note aside from one gem: Alexander Wilson, American Ornithologist. It serves up images of his bird paintings, a biography, and references to more information.

"Spontaneous tempo", or "fascinating rythym"

The following two paragraphs were borrowed more of less intact -- the whereabouts of which sources I no longer recall. Just something interesting to ponder along the lines of the inherent relativity of time from the perspective of living creates, as apart from Einsteinian relativity.

If you ask someone to produce a “comfortable beat” (neither too slow or too fast) one most often gets responses in the range of 500-700ms (120-86 beats per minute).   This is known as “spontaneous tempo,” and has long been studied.

Spontaneous tempo is the tempo produced by the typical person asked to tap a steady pulse. This range coincides with a moderate walking pace, a human hearbeat, the rate of jaw movement in chewing, and the infant sucking reflex. It is also a fairly comfortable rate at which to tap a foot or a finger, since it is neither too fast for motor control, nor too slow for accurate, regular timing. Hence the spontaneous tempo seems to correspond to natural timescales involved with human motion; we might imagine a chipmunk to have a faster spontaneous tempo (also called "tactus").

You will probably also surmise that spontaneous tempo is inversely related to a creature's size or mass. Think of an elephant as compared to a centipede; which is moving faster if it is moving at its "spontaneous tempo"?

Stalking the Water Ouzel

That's Ouzel, not Weasel.

A Water Ouzel is a bird, also known as American Dipper, Latin name Cinclus Mexicanus. I saw one for the first time today, near Forks, Washington. (Yes, I'm on "holiday", traveling in western Washington state.)

I thought of the name Water Ouzel -- instead of America Dipper -- because that is the name John Muir used for it in his writing about the bird which I recalled reading. That would be The Water Ouzel, Chapter 13 of Muir's The Mountains of California, those mountains being the place I naturally expected to see my first Water Ouzel.

Apparently "American Dipper" is the more common common name. To paraphrase Kenn Kaufman in Birds of North America, it is a "stubby gray bird which flies low over mountain streams, pauses to bob up and down on a rock, then jumps into the water, swimming and diving, then walking on the stream bottom." The one I saw was finding plenty to eat in its aquatic foraging.

The true age of our planet

I've been pondering the history of the gradual widespread acceptance of the true age of our planet at around 4.5 billion years. Some web-searching led to an archived recording from  KCRW's website¹ of an interview of author Simon Winchester discussing his book The Map That Changed the World ². It is the fascinating story of William Smith (1769-1839), an English engineer and geologist who is best known for his development of the science of stratigraphy.³ William Smith is one among many⁴ who contributed to the progress of evolutionary thought. Yes, many before and since Charles Darwin, including Leonardo Da Vinci⁵ . Another was Georges Cuvier(1769-1832), a French zoologist and statesman, who established the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology.⁶ Searching for still more information on M. Cuvier led me to an on-line handbook entitled "... And Still We Evolve: A Handbook for the Early History of Modern Science", by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University College. More interesting and well-written essays can be found on Professor Johnston's johnstonia home page.
 

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1. KCRW is a Los Angeles NPR radio station. The interview is an episode of the "Politics of Culture" program.
   
2. I am currently listening to a read-by-the-author audio recording of the book. The recording was purchased from audible.com.
3. Smith, William. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 9, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9068306
4. For more on some of the many, see for example, Timeline of Evolutionary Thought.
5. Cuvier, Georges, Baron. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 10, 2006,           from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service:  http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028345.
6. An interesting site on Leonardo is from the "Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica" in Milan, Italy.

The Cairngorms, Chris, Lana, and the Keystone Cops

The Cairngorms

The Cairngorms National Park, the largest in the UK, is in Scotland. It came to my notice via a BBC News article relating the publication of a book entitled  The Nature of the Cairngorms, which among much else, documents  the discovery there (in 1997) of a new insect species. As article describes it: "The tiny black Christii fly measures just 2mm long and lives under the bark of dead aspen trees." 

It is surprising to me that new species are yet to be discovered in readily accessible places on  the planet.

The Park's website includes a brief video. It looks like a wonderful place to visit.

Images from the Edge

I came across the Images from the Edge website in some connection with The Cairngorms. It describes itself as "Pictures and stories of wild nature ... from northern and Baltic Europe." And they are beautiful pictures and interesting stories from an unfamiliar part of the world. You must free-register to use the "light-box" feature which allows e-mailing and saving of images.

Chris, Lana, and Keystone Cops

After finding the movie Falcon and the Snowman playing "on the telly" again recently -- and attempting to watch only parts I didn't remember from last time -- I realized that I had confused the names of the characters. I had thought of "Chris" as the name of the Falcon's girlfriend when in fact it is  the first name of the main character Christopher Boyce. The girlfriend's name is "Lana", played by the lovely actress Lori Singer.

Sean Penn (as Andrew Dalton Lee, aka "The Snowman") was less lovely, but brilliant in his performance.

Apparently I didn't remember the story very well. A little surf to Wikipedia lead to minor enlightenment, then on to the transcript from an in-prison interview of (the real) Boyce by one Ray Martin from the Australian version of "Sixty Minutes". Borrowing a little snippet:

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE (on how he got some classified documents back into TRW): ... I went to the gardener and told him to go out to my car and bring in the potted plant and put it in the Security Area.

    RAY MARTIN: So the gardener brought back the documents?

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Yes.

    RAY MARTIN: Was there no trouble?

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Keystone cops.

    RAY MARTIN: Pardon?

    CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Keystone cops.

    RAY MARTIN: But was there no trouble, in terms of getting that out I mean, if you are really determined to take out one of these top secret documents, you can do it?

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Yes.

The expression "Keystone cops" was clearly meaningless to the Australian interviewer. Trivia question then: what is the origin of that expression?

Torreys

That's right, Torreys, not Tories.

In my recent reading I've encountered the names of two men named Torrey, Bradford and John.

Bradford Torrey (1843-1912) was a nature writer and editor of the writings of Thoreau. See Bradford Torrey for more information. A true biography of Bradford Torrey seems not to exist.

John Torrey (1796-1873) was a botanist and chemist known for his extensive studies of North American flora. My familiarity with his name comes chiefly from his mention in Audubon to Xantus: The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names, by Mearns and Mearns.

Torrey Pines State Reserve, north of San Diego, is named for the Torrey Pine tree, which was named for John Torrey.

Bradford was born at Weymouth, Massachusetts, while John was born (and died) at New York City. Bradford died at Santa Barbara in 1912, after living as a reclusive in a hotel. His burial location seems to be unknown.

As far as I can tell, these Torreys were not closely related.