Irreducible geological complexity (not!)

One of the conundrums of darwinian evolution is explaining how complex organs could evolve by means of gradual changes. Specifically, organs that perform a function which seemingly could not be performed at all by simpler, earlier versions of the same organ down the evolutionary tree. Of what benefit can half an eye be, or half a wing? This apparent impossibility is termed irreducible complexity.

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins gives series of compelling explanations of how these kinds of complex organs might evolve. For example, an intermediate version of the organ may have served a different function than the current one, and performed it well. Only later does evolution "discover", in her haphazard tinkering way, that the organ may be useful for another task.

Biology is not the only field with "How the hell did we arrive at this?" types of questions. Geology has them, too. For example, how can a river ever come to flow through mountains ranges (like the Yangtze and many others do) instead of going around them? Think about it. To erode its way through the range, the river must flow over it in the fist place! But how can it flow over it if the range is not yet eroded?

Turns out that there are explanations for this. One is Antecedence: the river was there before the mountain range started to rise, so it had time to erode it. Another is Superimposition. In this latter scenario, the mountains were there first. At one point, an adjacent lowland get filled by sediments for whatever reason, so that the mountains are now part of a plain. If a river comes to flow through that plain, it can erode those sediments and reveal once again the mountains underneath, all the while carving a path trough them.

We are used to thinking of geographic features as something static, and even if not static, as something that changes in dull and uninteresting ways. But landscape evolution can be as fascinating as its biological counterpart. There's a moment in Alan Moore's Watchmen in which Doctor Manhattan takes his girlfriend to Mars and gives her an speech to that effect, touching on the beauty of inanimate landscapes.

CSI, Vance, and Anthropology

There's an interesting post down at Ben and Alice about CSI as science fiction and anthropology, which also touches on Jack Vance's story The Moon Moth.

My girlfriend is obsessed with CSI in all of its multifarious incarnations, and enamored with the characters of Grissom and the one played by David Caruso. David Caruso? Oh, come on. The guy looks like he is permanently suffering for some kind of hepatic dysfunction. I don't care how nonchalantly and cocksurely he takes off his sunglasses.

J. G. Ballard wrote about CSI a few years ago. Here is the article.

Timur, Babur, oh my!

Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour

The Mulfuzat Timury; or, Autobiographical memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Timur

The Babur-nama in English (Memoirs of Babur) (Volume 1)

The Babur-nama in English (Memoirs of Babur) (Volume 2)

Edit: And also A History Of Afghanistan Vol. I

Book Order

I know this is a cliché, but you can deduce a lot about a person from the books he has.

What I wonder is how much more information could you extract if you were given the order of the books on the shelves, as compared to just an unordered set of titles.

For example, if you have Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds in your bookshelf, perhaps a good heuristic would be to assume that the books you put near it may contain ideas that you consider silly. Say, a Dictionary of the Occult or something like that.

I bet such an algorithm already exists.

La Epístola del Perdón

Una traducción al castellano de la obra de Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri Epístola del Perdón se puede descargar de esta página. La traducción se realizó como parte de una tesis.

An eldritch resemblance

A remarkable adaptation

Ifness permitted himself a faint smile. "They are a fascinating cult; the Chilite rationale and its physical projection makes a most elegant pattern. You don't follow me? Consider: a group which nightly intoxicates itself into a frenzy of erotic hallucinations, under the pretext of religious asceticism isn't this sublime insouciance? A social machinery is necessary to maintain this state of affairs: it is as you know. How to ensure persistence in a group not itself regenerative? By recruiting the children of other men, by the constant infusion of new blood. How to secure so precious a commodity, which other men normally protect with their lives? By the ingenious institution of Rhododendron Way, which also turns a good profit. What marvelous effrontery! It can almost be admired!"

Etzwane was surprised to find Ifness so enthusiastic. He said coldly, "I was born on Rhododendron Way and became a Pure Boy; I find them disgusting."

Ifness seemed amused. He said, "They are a remarkable adaptation, if perhaps too highly specialized. What would happen, for instance, if they no longer could obtain galga? In a generation or less, the structure of the society would alter, in one of several conceivable directions."

(Jack Vance: The Anome)

Ifness (and maybe Vance himself?) is capable of appreciating the intrincacy and ingenuity of a social arrangement, while still recognizing its perversity. Etzwane, having been a member and a victim of the group in question, is understandably incapable of such cool detachment.

Speaking of perverse social arrangments, one is reminded of certain mormon fundamentalist churches and their lost boys. Of course, chilites and mormon fundamentalists face very different problems. For the woman-hating chilites devised by Vance the problem is how to produce enough male children to replenish their ranks. For the mormon fundamentalists, the problem is how to dispose of the excess male population so that the remaining ones can enjoy the delights of polygamy. The true victims of polygamy are not women as it is commonly assumed, but low-status males.

Internet Archive find of the day

An audiobook version of the Pilgrimage of Egeria.

Travel Narratives

Divers and Sundry has posted an extensive list of travel narratives, with links.

Unveiled

Fear, anger, bewilderment, swept their inmost souls, and stunned their faculties. 'Abdu'l-Khaliq-i- Isfahani, aghast and deranged at such a sight, cut his throat with his own hands. Spattered with blood, and frantic with excitement, he fled away from her face. A few, abandoning their companions, renounced their Faith. Others stood mute and transfixed before her. Still others must have recalled with throbbing hearts the Islamic tradition foreshadowing the appearance of Fatimih herself unveiled while crossing the Bridge (Sirat) on the promised Day of Judgment. Quddus, mute with rage, seemed to be only waiting for the moment when he could strike her down with the sword he happened to be then holding in his hand.

(from here)

I have heard of the beauty of celestial beings, now I saw it; only this beauty, with all its awful loveliness and purity, was evil—at least, at the time, it struck me as evil. How am I to describe it? I cannot—simply I cannot! The man does not live whose pen could convey a sense of what I saw.

(from the chapter "Ayeha Unveils" of Henry Rider Haggard's She)

To die a little

I dislike changes, even changes for the better. To change is to die a little.

On the other hand,

Die a little. There is reason for it.

(R. A. Lafferty: Fourth Mansions)