BlackHat's Journal: My ears started popping/ One more red nightmare

And then, Roger the Shrubber laughed at me again this morning. News, Texttoon, and another quote for this current Darwin theme.

Delay in posting due to time issues and wanting to read up on the current events. Bush wins, as I had expected [feared]. And as I had also expected there is little proof. As a clear Audit has been made nul by the carpet of variation in systems and the open chances for untraceable fraud. BBV as I have been mentioning for several years [and before Mr Yeehaw!, Bev, & Co, but that's as may be] could use your help [time, money, good wishes] as 2006 is right around the corner.

As to any changes in my perennial predictions [predilection to FUD surely [/;-)] Oil still floors before summer at 21-25 (not the 35 as tossed about recently), KPMG will win the Little-Shits-Of-The-Year award again this year and next [Sorry Shell, after such a long run too], Enron will still be spun out for several more years, GE and Microsoft have already covered their asses, the FCC continues to sink from its once better days, the SEC will continue to become even more useless[as will the Brusselsprouts], Greenspan's voodoo glasses remain on Wallstreet's eyes for years to come, Iraq is still penciled in until 2006, and I'll still be playing catch-up on these supposedly daily entries. Here's one now.

Quote:
The platypus surely wins first prize in anybody's contest to identify the most curious mammal. Harry Burrell, author of the classic volume on this anomaly (The Platypus: Its Discovery, Position, Form and Characteristics, Habits and Life History, 1927), wrote: "Every writer upon the platypus begins with an expression of wonder. Never was there such a disconcerting animal!" (I guess I just broke tradition by starting with the sublime Hamlet.)

The platypus sports an unbeatable combination for strangeness: first, an odd habitat with curiously adapted form to match; second, the real reason for its special place in zoological history -- its enigmatic melange of reptilian (or birdlike), with obvious mammalian, characters. Ironically, the feature that first suggested premammalian affinity -- the "duckbill" itself -- supports no such meaning. The platypus's muzzle (the main theme of this column) is a purely mammalian adaptation to feeding in fresh waters, not a throwback to ancestral form -- although the duckbill's formal name embodies this false interpretation: Ornithorhynchus anatinus (or the ducklike bird snout).

Chinese taxidermists had long fooled (and defrauded) European mariners with heads and trunks of monkeys stitched to the hind parts of fish -- one prominent source for the persistence of mermaid legends. In this context, one can scarcely blame George Shaw for his caution in first describing the platypus (1799):

Of all the Mammalia yet known it seems the most extraordinary in its conformation, exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the beak of a Duck engrafted on the head of a quadruped. So accurate is the similitude, that, at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation.

But Shaw could find no stitches, and the skeleton was surely discrete and of one functional piece (the premaxillary bones of the upper jaw extend into the bill and provide its major support). Shaw concluded:

On a subject so extraordinary as the present, a degree of scepticism is not only pardonable but laudable; and I ought perhaps to acknowledge that I almost doubt the testimony of my own eyes with respect to the structure of this animal's beak; yet must confess that I can perceive no appearance of any deceptive preparation . . . nor can the most accurate examination of expert anatomists discover any deception.

The frontal bill may have provoked most astonishment, but the rear end also provided numerous reasons for amazement. The platypus sported only one opening, the cloaca, for all excretory and reproductive business (as in reptiles, but not most mammals, with their multiplicity of orifices for birth and various forms of excretion; Monotremata, or "one-holed," the technical name for the platypus and allied echidna, honors this unmammalian feature).

Internally, the puzzle only increased. The oviducts did not unite into a uterus, but extended separately into the cloacal tube. Moreover, as in birds, the right ovary had become rudimentary, and all egg cells formed in the left ovary. This configuration inevitably led to a most troubling hypothesis for biologists committed, as most were in these pre-Darwinian days, to the division of nature into unambiguous, static categories: no uterus, no internal space to form a placenta, a reproductive tract reptilian in form. All this suggested the unthinkable for a mammal -- birth from eggs. The neighboring marsupials, with their pouches and tiny joeys, had already compromised the noble name of mammal. Would Australia also yield the ultimate embarrassment of fur from eggs?

As anatomists studied this creature early in the nineteenth century, the mystery only deepened. The platypus looked like a perfectly good mammal in all "standard" nonreproductive traits. It sported a full coat of hair and the defining anatomical signature of mammals -- one bone, the dentary, in its lower jaw and three, the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, in its middle ear. (Reptiles have several jawbones and only one ear bone. Two reptilian jowbones became the hammer and anvil of the mammalian ear.) But premammalian characters also extended beyond the reproductive system. In particular, the platypus grew an interclavicle bone in its shoulder girdle -- a feature of reptiles shared by no placental mammal.

What could this curious melange be, beyond a divine test of faith and patience? Debate centered on modes of reproduction, for eggs had not yet been found and Caldwell's telegram lay half a century in the future. All three possibilities boasted their vociferous and celebrated defenders -- for no great biologist could avoid such a fascination creature, and all leaders of natural history entered the fray. Meckel, the German anatomist, and his French colleague Blainville predicted viviparity, argued that eggs would never be found, and accommodated the monotremes among ordinary mammals. E. Home, who first described the platypus in detail (1802), and the renowned English anatomist Richard Owen chose the middle pathway of ovoviviparity and argued that failure to find eggs indicated their dissolution within the female's body. But the early French evolutionists, Lamarck and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, insisted that anatomy could not lie and that the platypus must be oviparous. Eggs, they argued, would eventually be found.

Geoffroy, by the way, coined the name monotreme in an interesting publication that reveals as much about French social history as peccavi indicated for imperial Britain. This issue of the Bulletin des sciences is labeled Thermidor, an 11 de la Republique. With revolutionary fervor at its height, France broke all ties with the old order and started counting again from year one (1793). They also redivided the year into twelve equal months, and renamed the months to honor the seasons rather than old gods and emperors. Thus, Geoffroy christened the monotremes in a summer month (Thermidor) during the eleventh year (1803) of the Republic.

Just one incident in the pre-Caldwell wars will indicate the intensity of nineteenth-century debate about platypuses and the relief at Caldwell's resolution. When the great naturalists delineated their positions and defined the battleground, mammary glands had not been found in the female platypus -- an apparent argument for those, like Geoffroy, who tried to distance monotremes as far as possible from mammals. Then, in 1824, Meckel discovered mammary glands. But since platypuses never do anything by the book, these glands were peculiar enough to spur more debate rather than conciliation. The glands were enormous, extending nearly from the forelegs to the hind limbs -- and they led to no common opening, for no nipples could be found. (We now know that the female excretes milk through numerous pores onto a portion of her ventral surface, where the baby platypus laps it up.) Geoffroy, committed to oviparity and unwilling to admit anything like a mammalian upbringing, counterattacked. Meckel's glands, he argued, were not mammary organs, but homologues of the odiferous flank glands of shews, secreting substances for attraction of mates. When Meckel then extracted a milky substance from the mammary gland, Geoffroy admitted that the secretion must be food of some sort, but not milk. The glands, he now argued, are not mammary but a special feature of monotremes, used to secrete thin strands of mucus that thicken in water to provide food for young hatched from the undiscovered eggs.

Owen then counterattacked to support Meckel for three reasons: The glands are largest shortly after the inferred time of birth (though Geoffroy expected the same for mucus used in feeding). The female echidna, living in sand and unable to thicken mucus in water, possesses glands of the same form. Finally, Owen suspended the secretion in alcohol and obtained globules, like milk, not angular fragments, like mucus (an interesting commentary upon the rudimentary state of chemical analysis during the 1830s).

Geoffroy held firm -- both to oviparity (correctly) and to the special status of feeding glands (incorrectly, for they are indeed mammary). In 1822, Geoffroy formally established the Monotremata as a fifth class of vertebrates, ranking equally with fishes, reptiles (then including amphibians), birds, and mammals. We may view Geoffroy as stubborn, and we certainly now regard the monotremes as mammals, however peculiar -- but he presents a cogent and perceptive arguement will worth our attention. Don't shoehorn monotremes into the class Mammalia to make everything neat and foreclose discussion, he pleads. Taxonomies are guides to action, not passive devices for ordering. Leave monotremes separate and in uncomfortable limbo -- "which suggests the necessity of further examination [and] is far better than an assimilation to normality, founded on strained and mistaken relations, which invites indolence to believe and slumber" (letter to the Zoological Society of London, 1833).

Geoffroy also kept the flame of oviparity alive, arguing that the cloaca and reproductive tract bore no other interpretation: "Such as the organ is, such must be its function: the sexual apparatus of an oviparous animal can produce nothing but an egg." So Caldwell arrived in Australia in September 1883 -- and finally resolved the great debate, eighty years after its inception.

[...Big ass snip-age...]

If evolution were a ladder toward progress, with reptiles on a rung below mammals, then I suppose that eggs and an interclavicle would identify platypuses as intrinsically wanting. But the Old Testament author of Proverbs, though speaking of wisdom rather than evolution, provided the proper metaphor, etz chayim: She is a tree of life to them who take hold upon her. Evolution proceeds by branching, and not (usually) by wholesale transformation and replacement. Although a lineage of reptiles did evolve into mammals, reptiles remain with us in all their glorious abundance of snakes, lizards, turtles, and crocodiles. Reptiles are doing just fine in their own way.

The presence of premammalian characters in platypuses does not brand them as inferior or inefficient. But these characters do convey a different and interesting message. They do signify an early branching of monotreme ancestors from the lineage leading to placental mammals. This lineage did not lose its reptilian characters all at once, but in halting and piecemeal fashion so characteristic of evolutionary trends. A branch that split from this central lineage after the defining features of mammals had evolved (hair and an earful of previous jawbones, for example) might retain other premammalian characters (birth from eggs and an interclavicle) as a sign of early derivation, not a mark of backwardness.

The premammalian characters of the platypuses only identify the antiquity of their lineage as a separate branch of the mammalian tree. If anything, this very antiquity might give the platypus more scope (that is, more time) to become what it really is, in opposition to the myth of primitivity: a superbly engineered creature for a particular, and unusual, mode of life. The platypus is an elegant solution for mammalian life in streams -- not a primitive relic of a bygone world. Old does not mean hidebound in a Darwinian world.

Once we shuck the false expectation of primitiveness, we can view the platypus more fruitfully as a bundle of adaptations. Within this appropriate theme of good design, we must make one further distinction between shared adaptations of all mammals and particular inventions of platypuses. The first category includes a coat of fur well adapted for protecting platypuses in the (often) cold water of their streams (the waterproof hair even traps a layer of air next to the skin, thus providing additional insulation). As further protection in cold water and on the same theme of inherited features, platypuses can regulate their body temperatures as well as most "higher" mammals, although the assumption of primitivity stalled the discovery of this capacity until 1973 -- before that, most biologists had argued that platypus temperatures plummeted in cold waters, requiring frequent returns to the burrow for warming up. (My information on the ecology of modern platypuses comes primarily from Tom Grant's excellent book, The Platypus, New South Wales University Press, 1984, and from conversations with Frank Carrick in Brisbane. Grant and Carrick are Australia's leading professional students of platypuses, and I thank them for their time and care.) --Stephen Jay Gould

I let SJG run on a bit so he gets his greetz in there. More quotes on Darwin [and how the above relates directly to the rest] will come in the next JEs. Until then.

News:
Falluja and the transport tubes. They should just fill the tubes with oil and send that home. While the Shrub shuffles early. Rummy? Powell? Rice?

Arafat just might hang on long enough to see John Kerry eat his words. In a round about way Yasser already did.

Some of the Slope Slough dead go home. The bodies of 21 Chinese cockle pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay in north-western England in February have been returned to their families in China. They will be buried or cremated after finally having been released by coroners. The repatriation was paid for by the British government, citing the exceptional circumstances of the tragedy. Two more cockle pickers died, but their bodies have yet to be found. Eleven other Chinese are being allowed to stay in Britain to help police bring charges against suspects in the case. Except for one man from north-eastern China, all of those flown back were from the south-eastern province of Fujian.

The Mayor of Kabul makes noises with his lips.

Four more years of Richard and Adam? Well here's today's crap^h^op.
QUESTION: Can you go back to your statement that the upcoming referendum in Macedonia was indeed part of your calculus? Can you just make clear what exactly you are trying to do with that? Are you essentially trying to strengthen the government's argument that the projections for minorities within Macedonia should be maintained and extended? Is that what you're trying to do simply put?

MR. BOUCHER: We're trying to demonstrate, we're trying to express our support for the full implementation of these agreements including the decentralization that's an important part of it, and that is one of the subjects covered in the referendum. We're trying to show that the path that the government has followed brings stability, brings acceptance and brings recognition in the world for Macedonia and support for the path that it's been following in terms of implementation of the Ohrid Agreements, and so this is one, the step that we thought was appropriate to demonstrate that.

QUESTION: There is no way you can say that without reference to the sort of jargon of the Ohrid Agreement, I mean, so that the average person understands what you're talking about?

MR. BOUCHER: I think, first of all, the average person in Macedonia probably, and in the region, probably does understand these agreements a lot better than I do. But the point is to show support for a multiethnic society in Macedonia as they proceed in a direction that we feel contribute to their own stability and the stability of the region, and by taking this step in terms of recognizing Macedonia under its chosen name we feel that we bolster that progress.

Barry.

QUESTION: I was going to ask you how this supports multiethnic understanding by choosing a name that the populace and a next door neighbor thinks is the wrong thing to do?

MR. BOUCHER: This is the name that Macedonia, the government and the people of Macedonia have chosen for their country and that's the name that we will recognize them under.

QUESTION: Did the Foreign Minister call the Secretary, or is it reversed?

QUESTION: Do you know if there have been calls related to this?

MR. BOUCHER: The--our ambassador in Greece has talked to the Foreign Minister and then this morning the Secretary talked to the -- called the Foreign Minister as well to talk to him. We've been in touch with the Greek Government at other levels, people with their counterparts, principally through the embassy. We've also obviously been discussing the matter with the Government of Macedonia, our Ambassador of Macedonia in Skopje met with the Macedonian President this morning and just told him of the decision and then we've been in touch with other people who are interested on the Hill. I think we've been in touch with Javier Solana in the European Union, people like that, NATO Secretary General and others who might be interested in our decision.

QUESTION: Richard --

MR. BOUCHER: Can I get a gentleman in the back who have been anxious --

QUESTION: Any representation prior to this decision with the European Union?

MR. BOUCHER: We've certainly -- this is a topic that we've handled over a long period of time in conjunction with the European Union and we've had a lot of discussions with the European Union about the Macedonia name, the Greek question of Macedonia and Greece, so it is certainly a subject that both they and we are familiar with. In terms of the actual decision to do this, we had been in touch-- we were in touch with the European Union to tell them of the decision.

QUESTION: Otherwise, the European Union is agreeing with your policy? Excuse me?

MR. BOUCHER: You'll have to ask the European Union what their position is on this issue.

QUESTION: You made the statement. You said you have discussed this matter a long time and you give account of detail, so I would like to know what is what is the European Union statement about this.

MR. BOUCHER: I'm sorry. If you want to ask what the opinion of the European Union is, you'll have to ask a spokesman for the European Union.

QUESTION: No, I'm saying is your presentation on your part --

MR. BOUCHER: You can ask 20 times. If you want the European position, you have to ask a spokesman for the Europeans.

QUESTION: Why did you totally --

QUESTION: Did you ask the European Union whether they agree about it, with it, or did you just notify them what you're doing?

QUESTION: Exactly.

MR. BOUCHER: As I said, we told the European -- we were in contact with European Union to tell them of our decision.

QUESTION: In advance?

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was in advance.

QUESTION: What did you totally agree on the UN talks and proceeded unilaterally yesterday (inaudible), any communication, consultation with the UN negotiator Matthew Nimetz prior to that?

MR. BOUCHER: I know we were in touch with him. I don't know the exact timing on it, but the point I think we make, this is a decision the United States made because we believe it's the appropriate decision at this time for a policy that we want to pursue, that we want to show support for the path that is being followed by the government in Macedonia towards more stability and a multiethnic society.

The uh--at the same time, we would certainly welcome any progress that can be made in the UN discussions and would accept the outcome of those discussions if Macedonia agrees and the UN work out -- you know, can work things out, and we certainly would hope those talks would reach a speedy and a mutually agreeable conclusion.

QUESTION: Do you recognize the so-called "Macedonian ethnicity nationality language?"

MR. BOUCHER: Those issues are, I think, dealt with in the agreements. I don't have anything different to say here.

QUESTION: Did you have consultation prior with -- besides with Greece -- Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro?

MR. BOUCHER: Not that I'm aware of, no.

Sir.

QUESTION: According to the Greeks, you didn't tell them that you are ready to recognize FYROM, that you didn't have any consultation with them. It seems to me that you consulted with everybody except the Greeks.

MR. BOUCHER: I don't think I've described any particular -- I mean, it depends on how you -- what you describe as consultations. I think I've tried to be frank with you and say that this is certainly a subject where we've talked many times with many people, and people know our views, we've all discussed the pros and cons of this kind of step, and certainly the Secretary is personally very familiar with the issues, has been dealing with it for many, many years. And so I think we all sort of know the pros and cons. We balance the views. But this was a decision that the United States took because we felt it was the appropriate decision to us. And for those who we've been in touch with in the last 24 hours or so, we've really been telling them about our decision, not engaging in some further consultation.

QUESTION: Not before the 24 hours. For example, did Secretary discuss it with the Foreign Minister of Greece in New York in September?

MR. BOUCHER: No, I don't think it came up there.

QUESTION: There is a feeling in Greece that you want to punish them.

MR. BOUCHER: I think I've said, and I'll make absolutely clear once again, as the Secretary did in his phone call with the Greek Foreign Minister this morning, that this step is being done because we think it's the right thing to support a path of stability and openness and democracy in Macedonia. It's not a decision that's made in any way with reference to neighbors or other countries, but we do think it's a decision that can help support a path that has brought more stability to Macedonia and to the region.

QUESTION: How long has it been being batted around? I notice that as recently as October 14th you were up here on the podium saying that the name is the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and that any references to it in official -- U.S. official documents or otherwise to it as simply Macedonia or the Republic of Macedonia were mistakes or errors. In fact --

MR. BOUCHER: No, I didn't say they were errors. I said they were --

QUESTION: Well, you said it was shorthand. You had --

MR. BOUCHER: It was shorthand, yeah.

QUESTION: You -- in response to the question, you said that the Department had gone back and corrected the transcript of the briefing --

MR. BOUCHER: That was a transcript that said "formerly known as" instead of "formally known as," an index. So that was a mistake. It was not consistent with the policy at the time.

QUESTION: Okay. Well, so, as a -- on October 14th, when you said that the official name was the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, was the review underway?

MR. BOUCHER: This is not the product of some formal committee review process. This was a policy recommendation that was arrived at by consultations with different people in the Department. In-- I don't know exactly when they started discussing it, but the decision was just made in the last few days -- yesterday.

QUESTION: Was it a wise decision to make?

MR. BOUCHER: It was, as any decision, it has a lot of factors that have to be weighed.

QUESTION: So I assume there were people who thought maybe you shouldn't do this, is that fair? You've been very candid, but can you go that one step further and say there were people who thought --

MR. BOUCHER: No, I can't because I'm not aware of anybody who said don't. They just looked at it and said, is it -- should we do this now, and they discussed the pros and cons and reached agreement on doing it and made a recommendation to the Secretary.

QUESTION: When was the first time Greece was told of the decision, and at what level?

MR. BOUCHER: Our Ambassador told the Greek, I think, Foreign Minister, if not his office, if not him then his office, yesterday afternoon, our time.

QUESTION: Well, is this -- were these discussions that you did a preemptive notification of them: this is what we're planning to do? Or did they hear that you had done this and then they called you, and you gave them an explanation? I mean --

MR. BOUCHER: We called people up and said we've made a decision, here's what we're going to do.

QUESTION: The Greeks?

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah.

QUESTION: Richard, your reference to your weighing different factors in response to Barry's question, can we not necess-- assume from that that you decided that the anger and the hostility that you're facing right now from the Greeks was more than overcome by whatever benefit you think this is going to give to the Macedonians?

MR. BOUCHER: It's not just a two-part equation so I can't really phrase it the way you did. I tried to phrase it earlier in my own way by saying we were certainly aware of the likely reaction in Greece.

QUESTION: And --

MR. BOUCHER: And we have, I think, tried to go out of our way to make clear to the Greek Government and the Greek people that this is not a decision that's any way directed at them or intended to offend them; it's what we thought was the right thing to continue a progress of stability in the region.

Softball that is not. Goes on for a bit more there but let's look at another point.

QUESTION: Richard, there's a big exposé in today's Washington Post concerning Darfur, and the situation is getting precipitously worse. Is there, for all intents and purposes -- I know the President before called North Korea and Iran axis of evils, and Iraq as well -- is there, for all intents and purposes, something that can be done against the government in Khartoum, stopping military shipments and all types of other commercial contacts with them?

MR. BOUCHER: The--first of all, there are a lot of restrictions already and that we have made clear the kinds of benefits and relief that the government in Khartoum might have expected from concluding north-south accords, which we have worked very long and hard with them on. They can just not expect to get those benefits and that kind of relief unless they take appropriate action to help the situation in Darfur.

We have been very, very concerned about the situation in Darfur. We're currently in very close touch with the United Nations, with the European Union, about the current situation, particularly the expulsion of people from -- the removal of people from camps to other camps by the government in recent days. We have been working now, we're working today in the Security Council, consulting with other nations on this matter. We're hearing a briefing from the UN representative, Jan Pronk, up there today.

Second of all, we and the United Nations and the European Union have been trying to see what action we can take to try to make sure that -- look after the welfare of the people who were removed from these camps, and indeed the African Union is now sending people to the sites, to the locations where these people are, and to check on them and try to look after their welfare. This is one of the benefits of the kind of expanded African Union presence that we have been working hard at and that we have facilitated with the flights that we have been conducting to bring in Nigerian and Rwandan soldiers.

We are talking directly with the government in Khartoum. We've been in touch with Vice President Taha of the Sudanese Government about the matter of the removal and our strong concerns about those people, urging the government not to do this again and indeed to return these people to the locations that they were removed from. We are, together with the European Union, we're making more formal and continuous approaches to the government in Khartoum, again, on this matter. So this is something that we have been working very hard on to try to get it to stop.

Today, I think I'd say the situation is we hadn't seen any further removals of people from camps but we have not seen the people who were moved be able to come back to the camps, where we think they're better taken care of, and that is something we'll keep pressing for, the UN will keep pressing for. They have a Joint Implementation Meeting coming up with the Sudanese and we will continue to work with the EU and others to try to get the government to change its course on that matter. Back issues; nov3 and nov2.

Gitmo info he-ah.

Free and not dead press! The Dutch government has vowed to take tough action against Islamic radicalism after the murder of a film maker. Theo van Gogh, the director of a movie criticising the treatment of women under Islam, was shot and stabbed in Amsterdam on Tuesday. Several men, all believed to be radical Islamists, have been arrested. Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm promised more funding for intelligence services, and said terror suspects with dual nationality might be deported. Great! Now some one can make a film about the Dutch cops arrests. Kind'a ruins his point, but alas, that's the way it goes these days. 40's and cheap Russian smokes.

OYAITJ:
50924 : Blunkett has been fully sidelined, MCI-Iraq, Hamid Karzai is bolstered.
51018 : Declaration of Independence trademark of Diebold. Available in a glowing-blue GE edition or an oil-soaked Theocracy Lite.
51177 : Hotdogs, Colin Powell and Enrique Bolanos.

Texttoon(1):
Fumetti : Stock photo of George W. Bush. Overlayed speech bubble has him saying; "Got ya again, suckers!"
Texttoon(2):
HTML link to a jpg : An unlabeled link to a manipulated image presented in regards to an obscure subject about an obscure figure.