February 12th - Darwin Day

[lpetrich]

Now all the rest.

Eudicots

• Proteales - Macadamia tree
• Ranunculales - Poppy: poppy seed
• Rosids
  
  • Saxifragales - Currant
  • Vitales - Grape
  • Fabids
  • Malvids
• Asterids
  
  • Caryophyllales
  • Ericales
  • Campanulids
  • Lamiids

Monocots

• Alismatales - Taro
• Asparagales
  
  • Asparagaceae - Asparagus
  • Amaryllidaceae
    
    • /Allium ampeloprasum/ - Leek
    • /Allium cepa/ - Onion
    • /Allium sativum/ - Garlic
    • /Allium schoenoprasum/ - Chives
  • Orchidaceae - Vanilla
• Commelinids
  
  • Arecales
    
    • /Phoenix dactylifera/ - Date palm
    • /Cocos nucifera/ - Coconut palm
  • Poales
    
    • Bromeliaceae - Pineapple
    • Poaceae - Grasses
      
      • /Avena sativa/ - Oats
      • /Hordeum vulgare/ - Barley
      • /Oryza sativa/ - Rice
      • /Secale cereale/ - Rye
      • /Sorghum/ - Sorghum
      • /Triticum/ - Wheat
      • /Zea mays/ - Maize: American corn
  • Zingiberales
    
    • Cardamom
    • /Zingiber officinale/ - Ginger
    • /Curcuma longa/ - Turmeric

Magnoliids

• Laurales
  
  • /Persea americana/ - Avocado tree
  • /Laurus nobilis/ - Laurel shrub: bay leaf
  • /Cinnamomum/ - Cinnamon tree
• Magnoliales - /Myristica fragrans/ Nutmeg
• Piperales - /Piper nigrum/ Black pepper

Magnoliophyta - Angiosperms

• Austrobaileyales - /Illicium verum/ Star anise
• Magnoliids
• Eudicots
• Monocots

[bilby]

I plan to wear this shirt:

https://www.nhmshop.co.uk/charles-da...ur-tshirt.html
which I got from the Natural History Museum while we were in London.

[lpetrich]

I went to that link, and I found that those dates were for the voyage of the Beagle, the ship that he rode for that world tour. That was long before he worked out evolutionary biology and natural selection, it must be noted. His famous finches he identified as an adaptive radiation long after he left the Galapagos Islands. But it was an interesting trip, and he saw a lot of interesting things along the way.

About Australia, he noted the different fauna in familiar ecological niches, and he noted that the first thing that one might think about that was that there must have been two creators creating the Earth's biota. I think that he was onto something there. It is not enough to conclude that something was designed. One's next question ought to be what the designer(s) were like. There could be multiple designers, designers with finite capabilities, and fallible designers. Human designers are multiple, finite, and fallible, and one may reasonably expect other designers to also be multiple, finite, and fallible.

[lpetrich]

I checked some pages on potluck dinners - Potluck Dinner Party Rules for Both Host and Guest | Bon Appetit and 20 PERFECT POTLUCK RECIPES - Butter with a Side of Bread - and I found some recommendations:

• Try for something easy to serve and eat, like finger foods.
• Avoid anything best served hot or cold.
• Avoid clashing flavors.
• Don't forget vegetables.

Like this:

• Mammalia - hot dog
• Aves - chicken salad
• Actinopterygii - sushi, sardines
• Malacostraca - shrimp
• Bivalvia - clams, oysters
• Basidiomycetes - mushrooms
• Rhodophyta - nori
• Cyanobacteria - spirulina
• Firmicutes - lactic-acid bacteria in yogurt
• For salads:
  
  • Eudicots - Rosids - Fabids - cucumber
  • Eudicots - Rosids - Malvids - broccoli
  • Eudicots - Asterids - Campanulids - celery
  • Eudicots - Asterids - Lamiids - tomato, potato
  • Monocots - Asparagales - onion
  • Monocots - Poales - wheat (in bread)
• Nuts:
  
  • Eudicots - Rosids - Fabids - peanut, pecan, walnut, hazelnut, almond
  • Eudicots - Rosids - Malvids - pistachio, cashew
  • Eudicots - Asterids - Ericales - Brazil nut
• Fruits:
  
  • Eudicots - Rosids - Fabids - strawberry, raspberry, cherry, apple, watermelon
  • Eudicots - Rosids - Malvids - orange
  • Monocots - Poales - pineapple

[lpetrich]

Having addressed the issue of celebrating biodiversity with omnivory, I now turn to another Charles-Darwin-related issue. Why don't well-documented heroes have certain incidents in their lives that legendary ones often do?

This was addressed by a certain Lord Raglan, and he worked out a mythic-hero profile:

1. Hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grandfather to kill him, but
7. He is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster-parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Richard Carrier has proposed some additional criteria, and these ones may be expressed as:

1. The hero fulfilled prophecies,
2. He worked miracles,
3. He pre-existed before his earthly existence,
4. And he became worshipped as a savior god.

(List of Lord Raglan evaluations, Lord Raglan's hero profile)

Legendary people often score very high, while well-documented people often score very low. Charles Darwin scores 6 and Abraham Lincoln 5. BTW, they share the same birthday, February 12, 1809.

[lpetrich]

I will look at why they are so different.

Ancestry

Legendary heroes often have royal and/or divine ancestry.

Charles Darwin came from an aristocratic family, and one of his grandfathers was a noted biologist, but Abraham Lincoln's parents were very ordinary people.

Infancy and Childhood

Someone tries to kill the hero in his infancy, but he is rescued, and he is often raised in another land by foster parents. The hero's would-be killer is sometimes tipped off by a prophecy of the hero's coming. Aside from that, we learn little or nothing about the hero's childhood.

Nothing of the sort had happened to either CD or AL, and we have learned some details of their childhoods. In fact, this is rather general. We don't have lots of stories of villains trying to kill baby heroes:

• Southern plantation owners vs. Abraham Lincoln
• Fundamentalists vs. Charles Darwin
• Rabbis, Jewish bankers, and Jewish Marxists vs. Adolf Hitler
• Psychiatrists vs. L. Ron Hubbard
• Oil-company executives vs. Muammar Gaddafi

We also don't have even the tiniest hint that the hero was coming.

Adulthood

The hero defeats some big villain, he becomes ruler, he marries a princess, and he has an uneventful reign where he issues laws.

The closest thing to big villains for AL was opponents in political contests, and CD did not even have that. AL's career as leader was *very* eventful, since he led the North in the US Civil War. CD's career was also not very eventful. Even his trip aboard the Beagle was not very dramatic. A possible exception is when he discovered that Alfred Russel Wallace had also worked out natural selection, and he decided to rush into print with what he had worked out by then.

Laws? Making evolutionary biology a rigorous science certainly qualifies as a sort of law, and AL passed some notable laws, like establishing land-grand colleges, financing railroad construction, and freeing the slaves.

End of Life

The hero is often repudiated and dethroned, and he soon dies a mysterious death, often at some elevated place. Though he is not often buried, at least not persistently, he may have several tombs in his honor. He is not succeeded by his children, if he has any.

Abraham Lincoln was not repudiated. Instead, he was shot by some disgruntled Southerner, though he was shot in an elevated sort of place: a theater box seat. Charles Darwin was not repudiated either. In fact, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, a great honor.

Some very notable people have indeed been repudiated: Tsar Nicholas II, Richard Nixon, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Muammar Gaddafi. However, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler were not repudiated, despite having been defeated by their opponents.

One of CD's children went on to become a noted scientist, though not an evolutionary biologist. None of AL's descendants have been anyone notable, however.

[lpetrich]

Here it is. Darwin Day.

Lincoln and Darwin: Raglanized at Wattpad
Lincoln and Darwin: Raglanized on FictionPad
Lincoln and Darwin Raglanized at My folder of stories as plain text on Google Drive

Raglanized? Become more like Lord Raglan's mythic-hero profile, by someone trying to kill them in their infancy.

[lpetrich]

The closest I got to a Phylum Feast yesterday was going shopping and buying some maple-cinnamon(?) covered peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and corn nuts. I couldn't find any pine nuts.

I should add some more:

• Eudicots - Rosids - Fabids - pumpkin
• Eudicots - Asterids - Campanulids - lettuce, sunflower
• Monocots - Poales - American corn
• Magnoliids - cinnamon
• Pinophyta - pine nuts

About Charles Darwin himself, his voyage aboard the exploration ship HMS Beagle has gotten a lot of attention. If nothing else, it is more dramatic than staying home all day in one's home, as CD did for much of the rest of his life. In fact, may people seem to treat it as a certain myth motif, the Hero's journey. Different students of mythology have come up with several statements of it, and here is Joseph Campbell's statement:

1. Departure
   
   • The Call to Adventure
   • Refusal of the Call
   • Meeting the Mentor
   • Crossing the First Threshold
   • Belly of the Whale
2. Initiation
   
   • The Road of Trials
   • The Meeting with the Goddess
   • The Woman As Temptress
   • Atonement with the Father/Abyss
   • Apotheosis
   • The Ultimate Boon
3. Return
   
   • Refusal of the Return
   • The Magic Flight
   • Rescue from Without
   • The Crossing of the Return Threshold
   • Master of Two Worlds
   • Freedom to Live

In fact, some people seem to think that CD worked out evolutionary biology in his voyage. But he only started thinking about it after he returned. Darwin's finches he only pointed out much later as an example of adaptive radiation. It is still recognized as a good example, and a much-researched example has been the cichlid fish of Lake Tanganyika in Africa.

But along the way, he wrote about Australia in his diary on 19th January 1836:

A little time before this, I had been lying on a sunny bank & was reflecting on the strange character of the Animals of this country as compared to the rest of the World. An unbeliever in everything beyond his own reason, might exclaim "Surely two distinct Creators must have been [at] work; their object however has beer the same & certainly the end in each case is complete".

[bilby]

The closest I got to a Phylum Feast yesterday was going shopping and buying some maple-cinnamon(?) covered peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and corn nuts. I couldn't find any pine nuts.

I should add some more:

• Eudicots - Rosids - Fabids - pumpkin
• Eudicots - Asterids - Campanulids - lettuce, sunflower
• Monocots - Poales - American corn
• Magnoliids - cinnamon
• Pinophyta - pine nuts

About Charles Darwin himself, his voyage aboard the exploration ship HMS Beagle has gotten a lot of attention. If nothing else, it is more dramatic than staying home all day in one's home, as CD did for much of the rest of his life. In fact, may people seem to treat it as a certain myth motif, the Hero's journey. Different students of mythology have come up with several statements of it, and here is Joseph Campbell's statement:

1. Departure
   
   • The Call to Adventure
   • Refusal of the Call
   • Meeting the Mentor
   • Crossing the First Threshold
   • Belly of the Whale
2. Initiation
   
   • The Road of Trials
   • The Meeting with the Goddess
   • The Woman As Temptress
   • Atonement with the Father/Abyss
   • Apotheosis
   • The Ultimate Boon
3. Return
   
   • Refusal of the Return
   • The Magic Flight
   • Rescue from Without
   • The Crossing of the Return Threshold
   • Master of Two Worlds
   • Freedom to Live

In fact, some people seem to think that CD worked out evolutionary biology in his voyage. But he only started thinking about it after he returned. Darwin's finches he only pointed out much later as an example of adaptive radiation. It is still recognized as a good example, and a much-researched example has been the cichlid fish of Lake Tanganyika in Africa.

But along the way, he wrote about Australia in his diary on 19th January 1836:

A little time before this, I had been lying on a sunny bank & was reflecting on the strange character of the Animals of this country as compared to the rest of the World. An unbeliever in everything beyond his own reason, might exclaim "Surely two distinct Creators must have been [at] work; their object however has beer the same & certainly the end in each case is complete".

Australia always makes people think of beer.

[Shake]

For anyone interested in how we humans came to be here, I'd highly recommend the still-in-progress video series The Systematic Classification of Life by YouTube personality Aron Ra. As of this posting, he is up to episode 37: Primata. The videos are quite educational and thorough. Enjoy!