Farm News 02-25-07

Sunday morning, after chores, fresh snow

Triple Tetrapods and More

On Thursday morning we had twice as many goats as we had on Wednesday morning. Lucy had triplets! Two male and one female. They all have silver ears, but their bodies are different colors. The little doeling is mostly black with some dark mahogany markings on her nose and front legs. One of the little bucks is light brown and the other is dark brown. They are all, of course, very cute.

Shortly after noon on Thursday I went out to check on the babies and found two more. Sally had twins! Five baby goats in one day was the most I can remember. Sally's pair consisted of a doe that is marked exactly like her mother and a little buck. The buck, unfortunately, failed to start. Sometimes babies never try to nurse, they just curl up and lie there for a day and then die.

Friday afternoon I went out to look at them and was greeted with the delightful sight of Lucy's light brown buck hopping. Jumping is a high priority skill for little goats. They will work and work at it, until, finally, they can get both front feet off the ground at the same time. Then they start working on the hind feet. Lucy's baby, no more than 36 hours old, managed to get all four feet off the ground at once.

By Saturday afternoon the first races were beginning. It was raining, so they didn't have a lot of room, but they used what they had to race back and forth. After a few laps they would all lie down and take a short nap, then jump up again and start a new race. Every third race or so would be delayed while they called for their mothers, feigning starvation.

Goats have two teats, a fact which creates traffic jams at the udder when they have more than two kids. I'll have to keep an eye on them to make certain they all get enough to eat. Little bucks will tend to push little does aside when there is competition. Even when there are only two kids the largest will always get the most milk.

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Farm News 02-18-07

Ad Astra

Cold, clear, dry winter nights are nice for sky gazing if you are dressed warmly. Then, when you come in the house and pull your long underwear off, static electricity creates a great light show, especially if you wear silk longjohns underneath woolies. Watching your sweetie undress in the dark can be great winter entertainment.

Pruning Trees and More Seeds

A reader asks, “Is now the time to prune a peach tree gone wild? (young tree but produced over 100 pounds of huge peaches last year and the branches are way too long for the size of the tree).”

Yes, February is the month to prune fruit trees. Peach trees, unless they are pruned annually, will grow way too long and break apart when they set fruit. Pruning will reduce the number of peaches produced but not the total weight of fruit produced. So, a pruned tree will produce big peaches and an unpruned tree will break up under the weight of a lot of little peaches.

Another reader suggests Territorial Seeds and Johnnys Seeds. I've bought seeds from Territorial in the past and been happy with them, and a neighbor has had similar positive results with Johnnys.

For tree purchases, my wife swears by Miller Nurseries in the Finger Lakes region of New York. There are at least three nurseries with the name 'Miller', which all might be equally good, but the one in New York is the one my wife likes. They have a good selection of apples.

Waxwings

A flock of Cedar Waxwings has shown up and they are happily cleaning all the berries of the Highbush Cranberries, Viburnum trilobum. This is the first time I have seen anything really going after the berries. The Mockingbird pecks at them occasionally, but the Waxwings seem to relish them.

Waxwings will rest in the tops of trees, well spread out, and all facing the same direction. It makes them fairly easy to identify from a distance. This flock is fairly calm and have allowed me to move within 15 feet of them, but the sky is so bright it is still difficult to look at them.

To top it off, what appears to be a Phainopepla showed up. The only places I know where you can see Phainopepla are south of Los Angeles. I sent off a rare bird sighting on the internet, so if anyone else sees it there might be a confirmation. Currently there are no confirmed Phainopepla sightings in Kansas.

More Monkey Business

Holy Primates! Dr. Alexander sent me an email and attached a copy of the report from Evolution and Human Behavior. Here is what she says:

Hello – and thanks for forwarding the news letter. I am attaching the article for your daughter. As you will see, the spatial preference for explaining male toy preferences is not my idea and is based on the sex differences in play styles (males – human and nonhuman – are more active and play rough and tumble more frequently than do females). In other species, this sex difference in play styles is more certainly hormonally dependent. Your thought that a pot can be thrown is true, but once thrown it lies still. A truck can roll – and keep rolling. I have also heard about young girls who place their trucks in blankets – so trucks can be nurtured too!

Finally, you daughter may also find it interesting that these toy preferences (measured by infants looking times at toys) emerge in the first year of life – which makes it rather hard to attribute to a child’s understanding of what is “gender appropriate” or a preference for a particular kind of play (as infants are rather limited by their physical development). An interesting idea (Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge) is that males and females differ in terms of their preferences for processing things that have predictable, systematic outcomes, such as trucks (laws of motion) and things that are of the “social” world, like dolls. His theory is that both dimensions are represented in males and females, but generally females have stronger interests in what he calls emphasizing and males have stronger interests in all things systemizing. This is the same person who describes autism as the “extreme male brain” (very low empathizing, very high systemizing).

Characteristics are either retained or dropped in a species depending upon whether or not they contribute to reproductive success. The behavior of infants has little to do with reproductive success or failure, so the behavior of baby monkeys is not what was selected but is, rather, the early expression of some characteristic that, in adults, contributes to reproductive success.

Baby male monkeys like pickup trucks. Well, of course. Any good country boy knows you can put a mattress in the back of a pickup truck and increase your reproductive success.

A reader who is the mother of two children, one male and one female, commented that her daughter never wore out a pair of pants, and her son wore out every pair of pants, usually at the knees, from pushing cars around on the floor.

Another reader, the weirdo who always writes in red and centers his lines, says:

Having spent about

five years at

Texas A&M University

with a female getting a

Ph.D., I’m prepared to make

a statement or two about

“gender differences” among

students, and especially faculty

at that gigantic institution - the

third largest enrollment in the U.S.

It was an exclusively male, military

school, until sometime in the ‘60’s,

and is still quite heavily male ‘dominated,’

numerically, as well as other ways:

10% of the faculty is female, and

they only tenure about 10% of

female instructors who

teach there. “Graduation”

isn’t just Graduation, but

at the same time, in

the same auditorium

as graduation occurs,

military “commissioning”

occurs. I ‘heard’ that more

officers are commissioned at

the same time as they graduate

from that school than any other

in the nation. The little rotcy boys

wander around campus in their knee-high,

custom made jackboots, saluting each other

through the academic year and being contemptuous

of women. I myself have seen it, and have NO doubt that

it has a very negative on so-called “scientific” work that has

any ‘bearing’ on gender differences.

And that statement, being overly broad and completely unsupported, is a good place to end this discussion. My academically appropriate daughter refuses to offer any criticism of the work of someone else when it is outside her field and will not help continue the speculation. The only other thing I have to offer is to thank Dr. Alexander. I thought it was a very clever piece of research and I wish Dr. Alexander well in her future endeavors.

Next, I think I will read a book or two by Simon Baron-Cohen. His work on autism sounds interesting. I have two young acquaintenances who are autistic, both high functioning, and I often wonder if autism is a disorder or a different order of mind.

Farm News 02-18-07

Ad Astra

Cold, clear, dry winter nights are nice for sky gazing if you are dressed warmly. Then, when you come in the house and pull your long underwear off, static electricity creates a great light show, especially if you wear silk longjohns underneath woolies. Watching your sweetie undress in the dark can be great winter entertainment.

Pruning Trees and More Seeds

A reader asks, “Is now the time to prune a peach tree gone wild? (young tree but produced over 100 pounds of huge peaches last year and the branches are way too long for the size of the tree).”

Yes, February is the month to prune fruit trees. Peach trees, unless they are pruned annually, will grow way too long and break apart when they set fruit. Pruning will reduce the number of peaches produced but not the total weight of fruit produced. So, a pruned tree will produce big peaches and an unpruned tree will break up under the weight of a lot of little peaches.

Another reader suggests Territorial Seeds and Johnnys Seeds. I've bought seeds from Territorial in the past and been happy with them, and a neighbor has had similar positive results with Johnnys.

For tree purchases, my wife swears by Miller Nurseries in the Finger Lakes region of New York. There are at least three nurseries with the name 'Miller', which all might be equally good, but the one in New York is the one my wife likes. They have a good selection of apples.

Waxwings

A flock of Cedar Waxwings has shown up and they are happily cleaning all the berries of the Highbush Cranberries, Viburnum trilobum. This is the first time I have seen anything really going after the berries. The Mockingbird pecks at them occasionally, but the Waxwings seem to relish them.

Waxwings will rest in the tops of trees, well spread out, and all facing the same direction. It makes them fairly easy to identify from a distance. This flock is fairly calm and have allowed me to move within 15 feet of them, but the sky is so bright it is still difficult to look at them.

To top it off, what appears to be a Phainopepla showed up. The only places I know where you can see Phainopepla are south of Los Angeles. I sent off a rare bird sighting on the internet, so if anyone else sees it there might be a confirmation. Currently there are no confirmed Phainopepla sightings in Kansas.

More Monkey Business

Holy Primates! Dr. Alexander sent me an email and attached a copy of the report from Evolution and Human Behavior. Here is what she says:

Hello – and thanks for forwarding the news letter. I am attaching the article for your daughter. As you will see, the spatial preference for explaining male toy preferences is not my idea and is based on the sex differences in play styles (males – human and nonhuman – are more active and play rough and tumble more frequently than do females). In other species, this sex difference in play styles is more certainly hormonally dependent. Your thought that a pot can be thrown is true, but once thrown it lies still. A truck can roll – and keep rolling. I have also heard about young girls who place their trucks in blankets – so trucks can be nurtured too!

Finally, you daughter may also find it interesting that these toy preferences (measured by infants looking times at toys) emerge in the first year of life – which makes it rather hard to attribute to a child’s understanding of what is “gender appropriate” or a preference for a particular kind of play (as infants are rather limited by their physical development). An interesting idea (Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge) is that males and females differ in terms of their preferences for processing things that have predictable, systematic outcomes, such as trucks (laws of motion) and things that are of the “social” world, like dolls. His theory is that both dimensions are represented in males and females, but generally females have stronger interests in what he calls emphasizing and males have stronger interests in all things systemizing. This is the same person who describes autism as the “extreme male brain” (very low empathizing, very high systemizing).

Characteristics are either retained or dropped in a species depending upon whether or not they contribute to reproductive success. The behavior of infants has little to do with reproductive success or failure, so the behavior of baby monkeys is not what was selected but is, rather, the early expression of some characteristic that, in adults, contributes to reproductive success.

Baby male monkeys like pickup trucks. Well, of course. Any good country boy knows you can put a mattress in the back of a pickup truck and increase your reproductive success.

A reader who is the mother of two children, one male and one female, commented that her daughter never wore out a pair of pants, and her son wore out every pair of pants, usually at the knees, from pushing cars around on the floor.

Another reader, the weirdo who always writes in red and centers his lines, says:

Having spent about

five years at

Texas A&M University

with a female getting a

Ph.D., I’m prepared to make

a statement or two about

“gender differences” among

students, and especially faculty

at that gigantic institution - the

third largest enrollment in the U.S.

It was an exclusively male, military

school, until sometime in the ‘60’s,

and is still quite heavily male ‘dominated,’

numerically, as well as other ways:

10% of the faculty is female, and

they only tenure about 10% of

female instructors who

teach there. “Graduation”

isn’t just Graduation, but

at the same time, in

the same auditorium

as graduation occurs,

military “commissioning”

occurs. I ‘heard’ that more

officers are commissioned at

the same time as they graduate

from that school than any other

in the nation. The little rotcy boys

wander around campus in their knee-high,

custom made jackboots, saluting each other

through the academic year and being contemptuous

of women. I myself have seen it, and have NO doubt that

it has a very negative on so-called “scientific” work that has

any ‘bearing’ on gender differences.

And that statement, being overly broad and completely unsupported, is a good place to end this discussion. My academically appropriate daughter refuses to offer any criticism of the work of someone else when it is outside her field and will not help continue the speculation. The only other thing I have to offer is to thank Dr. Alexander. I thought it was a very clever piece of research and I wish Dr. Alexander well in her future endeavors.

Next, I think I will read a book or two by Simon Baron-Cohen. His work on autism sounds interesting. I have two young acquaintenances who are autistic, both high functioning, and I often wonder if autism is a disorder or a different order of mind.

Farm News 02-11-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 23°

Ad Astra

Monday was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Lunar Orbiter 3, the final moon mapping mission. We have Google Earth and Google Mars, but not Google Moon. Hey! Google! We want Google Moon!

The moon has no atmosphere so satellites of the moon can orbit as low as they wish, just so they clear the mountain tops. What a ride it would be to orbit the moon about 100 feet above the highest peaks. That would be enough to make a person want to drink some whiskey, smoke some pot, and yell, “WHOOPEE.” As you might deduce, I belong to the Han Solo school of space exploration.


Garden Seeds

The garden seed order for this year arrived this week. For years we have ordered most of our seeds from Henry Field or Gurney, but this year we changed to Burpee. Both Gurney and Henry Field have greatly reduced the number of varieties they carry, whereas Burpee has a very large selection. Burpee might be a bit more expensive, but the variety makes it worthwhile.

One thing I'm looking forward to trying is Ruby Sweet Corn, a variety with bright red kernels. We've grown the red popcorn before, but this is the first red sweet corn I've seen. Along with the Ruby we ordered two other varieties, Sweet Treat and Silver Choice. Another new variety for us this year is Lemon Cucumber, an heirloom variety that produces lemon shaped yellow cucumbers.

Both of us like golden beets, so we ordered Golden Globe and Detroit Dark Red. For green beans we'll plant Blue Lake Bush, which have worked for years for us. Sweet Treat carrots are the only variety we ordered, new for us. Lettuce this year is Simpson Elite, which we have grown before. Honey Bun hybrid cantaloupe is new for us this year. Avon hybrid spinach is also a new variety for us.

We don't take too many chances on peas. This year we are planting Garden Sweet and Wando. Wando has produced well for us in the past. Orange Smoothie pumpkin, another first timer for us, finishes the list of vegetables.

Paula thinks global warming threatens the strawberry supply, so we will be planting a new bed with Festival, a variety we haven't tried before.

Flowers draw you into the garden. We save a lot of flower seed from year to year, and this year we are buying Scarlet Runner beans, which are pretty, attract butterflies and hummingbirds, and are good to eat. Calendula Oktoberfest is also going into the garden.

We purchased Teddy Bear and Chianti ornamental sunflower seed this year. The ornamentals cross pollinate with the wild ones and give us neat sunflowers all over the place.

There will be more seed purchases before the planting season is finished and we will buy plants, too. There are two kinds of garlic already in the ground and we will buy and plant more in the fall.

In a few weeks we will have the tree and shrub orders ready, and I will be able to give you another thrilling line by line report on what we are going to plant.

Monkey Toys


Okay, this started when I wrote this:

Our culture seems to be coming off a peak of ascribing all gender differences in behavior to socialization instead of genetics, yet most parents who have children of both sexes are certain that they differ from birth. Somebody watched baby monkeys when they were offered their choice of toy trucks or dolls. Little female monkeys liked dolls and little male monkeys liked trucks, generally. Not all of them were that way, just most of them. Although one might expect young monkeys to respond in some way to dolls, it makes no sense that young male monkeys would like trucks more than dolls unless one accepts the idea that something deeper, not explicitly stated, is being detected.

Dolls look enough like monkeys that one can understand why little female monkeys would like them, but there is nothing in the ancestry of the primates that looked like a pickup truck. Social influences could be used to explain why human boys like pickup trucks, but not monkeys. When our genes, and those of the monkeys, were selected out of the pool there were no mechanical devices around. Evolution is not forward looking, and I can't believe that some grand designer selected a set of genes that would lead to male monkeys liking mechanical devices.

What, then, were the characteristics being selected that led male primates to like mechanical devices and females to like dolls? It makes some slight sense for females to be more interested in dolls because they are the ones that will raise the next generation of babies. Perhaps males like pickup trucks more because, for some reason, more of the genes that incline primates to use tools appear only on the Y chromosome.

Maybe I'll ask my daughter what she thinks about this question.

So, I asked my daughter. She went to Wellesley, a women's college (the first thing she taught me is that it is a 'women's college', not a 'girl's school'), so I thought she might have some thoughts on the subject. Feminists have a tendency to ascribe all differences in behavior between the sexes to social, not genetic, influences, which made me think my daughter might disagree with me. She did, and wrote:

Trucks vs. dolls, I'm very skeptical; I'd want to see the published results of that study, because it sounds like the results could be open to interpretation and the methodology could be tricky. (What kind of dolls? Was each monkey offered a choice between the two or was it a free-for-all? What color were the toys?) I'd bet that human children of both genders like playing with baby dolls when they're quite young, and the boy/girl doll/truck split happens at a later age, which has little to do with evolution.

As for genes that incline primates to use tools - I think you're excessively tying behavior to genetics there. Something as high-level as tool use is the territory of cognitive science and neurobiology, not genetics. Toy trucks have nothing to do with the kinds of tools the other primates use; that's just our human brains making a connection. Monkeys don't know how to drive trucks, and even if they did they wouldn't connect that little plastic Tonka to a Ford F-150. (Frankly, you could say the same thing about the dolls - to a monkey they could just be another hunk of plastic.) If you did the study with known tool-using primates, and gave them a choice between sticks and realistic toy baby monkeys, you might have useful results.

I couldn't send the original report to her, it was published in Evolution and Human Behavior, but I did send a summary that appeared on EurekAlert, a site maintained by the AAAS. The summary said, in part:

Though the monkeys had no concept of a "boy" toy and a "girl" toy, they still showed the same gender preferences in playing with the toys, Alexander [Dr. Gerrianne Alexander of Texas A&M, the researcher] says. That is, compared to female monkeys, male monkeys spent more time with "boy" toys, and the female monkeys, compared to their male counterparts, spent more time with "girl" toys, she notes.

"Masculine toys and feminine toys," Alexander says, "are clearly categories constructed by people. However, our finding that male and female vervet monkeys show similar preferences for these toys as boys and girls do, suggests that what makes a 'boy toy' and a 'girl toy' is more than just what society dictates – it suggests that there may be perceptual cues that attract males or females to particular objects such as toys."

In the experiment, Alexander says, male monkeys spent more time playing with traditional male toys such as a car and a ball than did female monkeys. The female monkeys, however, spent more time playing with a doll and pot than did the males. What's more, both male and female monkeys spent about the same amount of time with "gender neutral" toys such as a picture book and a stuffed dog.

The summary then goes on to say:

She says the toys preferred by boys – the ball and the car – are described as objects with the ability to be used actively and be propelled through space. Though the specific reasons behind the monkeys' preferences have yet to be determined, she says, the preferences for these objects might exist because they afford greater opportunities for rough and active play – something characteristic of male play. Also, the motion capabilities of the object could be related to the navigating abilities that are useful for hunting, locating food or finding a mate.

Males, she says, may therefore have evolved preferences for objects that invite movement.

On the other hand, females may have evolved preferences for object color, relating to their roles as nurturers, Alexander notes. A preference for red or pink – the color of the doll and pot – has been proposed to elicit female behaviors toward infants that enhance infant survival, such as contact.

My clever daughter hit on the color problem right off. The researcher's speculation, that the males' preference might be for objects that can be propelled through space, doesn't make much sense to me, because dolls and pots can be thrown as readily as cars and balls.

My not always clever daughter doesn't think that tool-using has a genetic basis, but I ascribe that to the one-sided education she received at the women's college. Like most good feminists, she hasn't read much of Steven Pinker's work. However, she is about three months away from having a son, her first child, which might change some of her opinions about there not being a genetic basis for many of the differences between boys and girls.

Why are those monkeys behaving in that way? Don't they understand how confusing this can be? I am sending all this speculation to Dr. Alexander in the hope she might take time to help straighten us out.

William Calvin and Open Source Software


This newsletter is wandering quite a bit from discussions of ducks and goats, so I'll try to close some things up. When I stated that the product of a Darwin machine is complexity, I should have explained the difference between a Model T Ford and a new Lexus. A Model T is a very simple automobile and very difficult to drive. A new Lexus is a very complex automobile, but so easy to drive it can even automatically parallel park. Windows is far more complex than CP/M, it's long ago predecessor, but far easier to use. Complex things can have a simple exterior.

Darwin machines are not, in themselves, complex systems. Six easy to understand requirements are all that are needed to create a Darwin machine. Some day, perhaps, someone smart will link Stephen Wolfram's thoughts on the creation of complexity with William Calvin's six requirements and we will have something interesting.

Farm News 02-04-07

Sunday morning, after chores, cold


Ad Astra


The moon has been doing exactly what was predicted, with the full moon appearing at sunset on Friday, Groundhog Day. It is now a waning gibbous moon until next Saturday, when it is in the Last Quarter, after which it will be a waning crescent moon, which is where we started last month. If there is any change in the predicted lunar cycle I'll try to let you know.

Mercury is visible in the western early evening sky this week, slightly to the lower right from Venus. Venus is a very bright object in the western evening sky. Because Mercury is always close to the Sun we only see it in the morning or evening sky. It's overhead every day but the Sun's brightness hides it.


Cold


Where is global warming when we need it? Perry Lake is covered with ice, something that doesn't happen very often. Keeping the stock watered is becoming difficult. The dogs, cats, and wild birds all use the heated water bowl on the porch, so they are easy, and there is a heated waterer in the chicken house, also. I have a heater disc that goes into a bucket or pan, but if I put it in with the goats and geese one of them will pull it out of the water within minutes. Curiosity is sometimes a real nuisance trait in domestic animals.

The problem is that if we have a 1° rise in average temperature, it means that, in Kansas, the summer highs will be 11° higher and the winter lows 10° lower. Adding more energy to the weather system brings up the temperature a little bit and increases the extremes a lot more. At the rate things are going Kansas will, in another century, have Texas summers and Montana winters.

Poor Me!

On Wednesday, Paula slipped on the ice, fell, and broke her right wrist. I feel terrible! My sweetie is hurt and I couldn't prevent it. Even worse, now I have to do a whole lot of women's work. I even have to help her put on her clothes; the opposite of the part of this activity I am used to doing. Oh, well, broken bones usually heal in six weeks.

The break was a small crack with no displacement of the two ends. Her pain has been mild to moderate and she is quickly learning not to move her right wrist. She is in a short cast and the physician says she might be able to shorten it even more in three weeks.

This event has been the activator for some interesting speculations. We hear a lot of research about the differences in the health care given to men and women, but not much about the differences between men and women in seeking health care. Paula didn't want to go to the doc and have her wrist x-rayed. The neighbor woman across the road is having abdominal pains on the lower left side, but she doesn't want to see her physician to check for appendicitis. Is the difference in what health care is provided a result of physician bias or patient bias? By the way, the physician my wife sees is also a woman, which probably is not of any relevance.

Our culture seems to be coming off a peak of ascribing all gender differences in behavior to socialization instead of genetics, yet most parents who have children of both sexes are certain that they differ from birth. Somebody watched baby monkeys when they were offered their choice of toy trucks or dolls. Little female monkeys liked dolls and little male monkeys liked trucks, generally. Not all of them were that way, just most of them. Although one might expect young monkeys to respond in some way to dolls, it makes no sense that young male monkeys would like trucks more than dolls unless one accepts the idea that something deeper, not explicitly stated, is being detected.

Dolls look enough like monkeys that one can understand why little female monkeys would like them, but there is nothing in the ancestry of the primates that looked like a pickup truck. Social influences could be used to explain why human boys like pickup trucks, but not monkeys. When our genes, and those of the monkeys were selected out of the pool there were no mechanical devices around. Evolution is not forward looking, and no grand designer selected a set of genes that would lead to male monkeys liking mechanical devices.

What, then, were the characteristics being selected that led male primates to like mechanical devices and females to like dolls? It makes some slight sense for females to be more interested in dolls because they are the ones that will raise the next generation of babies. Perhaps males like pickup trucks more because, for some reason, more of the genes that incline primates to use tools appear only on the Y chromosome.

As I said at the beginning, “Poor me,” because my wife's broken wrist has led me to a very perplexing puzzle. Maybe I'll ask my daughter what she thinks about this question.