Discarded cicada shells

Another cicada photo. Albert sent this one of their discarded shells in New Zealand. He says “I thought the empty shells were actually critters that could jump up at me. It was only later that I learnt that what I had been photographing were nothing more scary than empty cicada shells!” The shells’ owners were not necessarily dead. After emerging from underground the cicadas molt (shed their skins) on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as adults. The abandoned exoskeleton remains, still clinging to the bark of trees, as here.  More about their life-cycle in Wikipedia.

Can cicadas calculate prime numbers?

Photo: Tom Wildoner

In the US the 17-year cicada hatch of 2013 is in full bloom. Millions of crimson-eyed critters and their otherworldly din, I've seen them described as. They showed up yesterday in Carbon County, Pennsylvania – the photo comes from EarthSky. These 17-year cicadas live out most of their long lives as nymphs underground, but, each 17 years, they crawl out of the ground for a three-to-four-week festival of singing and mating. Afterwards, they die. Why every 17 years? Because they are mathematicians, that’s why. They recognise 17 as a prime number and they use it to elude their predators. 

It works this way. Cicadas are easy prey for birds and wasps. Now it turns out that predators commonly have 2-to-10-year population cycles. Imagine a cicada species with a 12-year cycle: it would be a feast for any predator with a 2-, 3-, 4-, or 6-year cycle (factors of 12).

On the other hand, Stephen J Gould reasoned in a famous essay that a cicada that emerges every 17 years and has a predator with a 5-year population cycle will only face a peak predator population once every 85 (5 x 17) years.

Advantage of prime numbers 

This gives an enormous advantage to cicadas that know how to calculate prime numbers.  Some biologists however claim that advanced number theory is well beyond the cicadas insect-sized brain and suggest instead that the pattern emerged as a result of Darwinian natural selection: cicadas that matured in easily divisible years were gobbled up by predators, and simply didn’t live long enough to produce as many offspring. Those who, by chance, had long, prime-numbered life spans fared best, survived longest, and left the most offspring, becoming the dominant variation of the species. It seems there are now at least fifteen distinct populations of periodical cicadas. Cicada emergence is tightly timed, with the bulk of the insects emerging within a span of a few weeks. Any cicada that tries to break the pattern is highly likely to have her offspring gobbled up.

I first became aware of this cicada prime number behaviour a few years ago through an In Our Time episode on prime numbers which I highly recommend. It included my guru Marcus du Sautoy.

In another radio programme I heard the biologist Simon Conway Morris pour cold water on cicadas and prime numbers, but he didn't elaborate his reasons.

Half a dozen obvious propositions

The English common law consists of about half a dozen obvious propositions, but unfortunately nobody knows what they are. 

Why does this aphorism, which I've just stumbled on, tickle me? It's known to us through Harold Chaloner Dowdall (1868-1955), a high court judge. Whilst he didn't invent it, he was sufficiently impressed by it to record it for posterity in the following letter to The Times in 1932, relating a remark he heard many years earlier when a junior barrister. 

Lord Sterndale [another high court judge] once said, “The common law consists of about half a dozen obvious propositions, but unfortunately nobody knows what they are.” He was reading a case I had looked up for him, and I did not know whether he was speaking to himself or enlightening a junior barrister in the mysteries of the law, and as his clerk immediately called him into Court the matter dropped. He was a leader at the time, and I think it was not long after he had taken silk. The observation is so witty and true that, unless it is already familiar, it deserves record; but as the number of those who knew Lord Sterndale diminishes, it would be interesting if any of your readers ever heard him make a similar observation.

The clerk immediately calling Lord Sterndale into court puts one in mind of the person from Porlock. Harold Chaloner Dowdall besides being a judge was also a regular commentator on ecclesiastical affairs, and in 1908-9 served as lord mayor of his native Liverpool. 

The phrase “taken silk” referred to a barrister becoming a Senior Counsel. I know all this from the Quote Investigator, who has additional information with citations if you want it.

Uncle Mickey

Michael O'Brien in the uniform of the Irish Free State army, about 1923

This is Eileen’s Uncle Mickey, her father’s eldest brother. He's one of those people who habitually attracts the sobriquet “larger than life character”. Till now I never had a decent photo. His grandson Patrick brought it a few weeks ago.  For joining the Free State Army Mickey was widely reviled within the family and accused of being a turncoat. An expression I never fully grasped until Eileen told me of the following episode that occurred around 1985 (by which time Mickey had been dead some years). Eileen was with her Uncle Joe (Mickey’s younger brother) in a pub in Kilworth a few miles from here called The Butchers. An old codger accosted Joe and asked him if he was Mickey’s brother.  I say asked but it was more in the nature of an accusation. You really need to hear Eileen tell this story, I don't do it justice. Next he loudly proclaimed that Mickey had turned his coat, making the while a theatrical show of turning his own coat inside out and displaying the lining. Uncle Joe remained cool under the provocation and confined himself to muttering “he did the bastard”, which had the effect of releasing some of the tension.

Now I need to say that this coat turning business is something that Eileen and I disagree on. Mickey is held to have supported the wrong side in the 1922-23 civil war. The pro-treaty government side that is. But to my way of thinking Mickey’s conduct was perfectly consistent. During the War of Independence he gave his allegiance to Dáil Éireann and after the 1921 Treaty he continued to give his allegiance to Dáil Éireann. It seems to me that it was O’Connor and de Valera and their followers who turned their coats. They disregarded the Dáil vote to accept the Treaty, and started the Civil War. But within Eileen’s family that’s never been a popular view.

Taken this afternoon: the borheen where Jonty confronted Mickey; perhaps, for all I know, the very spot. In 1922 it was a rough unmetalled track. From here the family home was about half a mile further up the hill. Our house is about half a mile down, to the left of the picture, which was taken by my friend Mark.

Another story. This one was told to Eileen and me by another brother, Uncle Jonty, when in his eighties, not long before he died. Jonty would have been 18 at the time of this incident, the fifth in a family of 11, and Mickey was the eldest, age 22, and you need to keep that dynamic in mind. It would be late 1922 I imagine. Jonty had joined the anti-Treaty IRA and was on manoeuvres in the vicinity of the location of this afternoon's photo. A Free State Army truck drove along the road (right outside the window where I'm writing this) and out jumped Uncle Mickey in his uniform and strode up the borheen, up the hill towards the family home. Jonty ran to intercept him and challenged him. Maybe he said “Halt who goes there” I'm not sure. Anyway, Mickey brushed him aside, retorting “you know very well who I am, I'm off to see my mother, now shoot me or get out of my way”. With genuine regret in his voice Jonty told us that he was not under orders that night to shoot, so had to let him go. Quite chilling actually. Some years later Eileen was discussing Neil Jordan’s recently released Michael Collins film with some old fellows in Ballyporeen who confirmed the story and added that Mickey was lucky to survive the night. Men came to the house looking for him, but didn't find him as his mother had hidden him out in the fields.

18th August 1922: one of the Crossley Tenders in the convoy

Mickey used to claim (but no-one can positively confirm this) that he was at BealnaBlath on 18th August 1922 the day Michael Collins was shot in an ambush there. A defining event in Irish history. I've been in touch with the Collins 22 Society. They haven't succeeded in compiling a complete list of those present, though they are still trying.  There were 20 soldiers in two open trucks known as Crossley Tenders. For all anyone knows Mickey was one of the soldiers in that photograph above.

Of course his claim to have been at BealnaBlath on 18th August may not have been a claim to have been on duty in the actual convoy that conveyed Michael Collins. Doubtless troops would have been despatched urgently from Macroom as soon as the report came in. Suppose Mickey was amongst these, that would still count as being at BealnaBlath on 18th August. Or indeed the whole thing could just be a colourful tale he made up. BealnaBlath is in Co Cork about 80 miles from here. 

Mickey had huge charm. Eileen remembers him from when she was five. After falling into a clump of nettles she had to have iodine, and fled from anyone who threatened to apply the dreadful stuff. But when Uncle Mickey called her she ran to him even though she knew he would hold her down while the purple stinging liquid was dabbed on her nettle burns. I'm sorry I never met him. Eileen says he would “light up a room”.

Mickey’s descendants have only sketchy details of his participation in the War of Independence and the Civil War. 

Black & Tan Medal (no bar)

The image is of a medal Mickey was awarded, known as a Black & Tan Medal, in reference to the Black & Tan War, the popular name for the War of Independence. The official description is Medal, without bar, to persons whose service is not deemed to be active military service, but who were members of Oglaigh na hEireann (Irish Republican Army), Fianna Eireann, Cumann na mBan or the Irish Citizen Army for the three months ended on the 11th of July 1921. July 1921 was the start of the Truce period: so this indicates that in the War of Independence Mickey had a non-combat role of some sort. However, I've seen a website which claims that despite the official description it would be wrong to conclude that all those who received the medal without the Bar were not in combat; in many cases men who had confirmed combat records did not receive the Bar, and the reason came down to politics and money - the Bar brought with it a pension.

If Mickey applied for a War of Independence pension (which Patrick says he likely did, and was rejected) and a Free State Army pension, files will exist. All medal and pension applications are being processed to be available to the public in 2016, an event eagerly awaited by historians and family researchers. The date has been selected to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising.

The old cliché 

Uncle Mickey’s story illustrates the old cliché about the Civil War pitching brother against brother. But Eileen says there was remarkably little animosity within the family arising from these events. Nobody spoke of them and it was years later that she first heard the stories I've related here.

Mickey’s son John (Eileen’s cousin) has some memories worth sharing. Chief amongst these, that his father was a devoted follower of Michael Collins and from time to time would literally cry about his being assassinated. This would turn into a tirade against Dev (de Valera), whom he held to be responsible, fervently praying that he should be shot.

John adds: “As kids we took no notice, knowing nothing of these matters, regarding all his mutterings as little short of rubbish. Anyway my mother had a very curt and common sense way of dismissing such things as totally irrelevant and a complete waste of time.”

Mickey’s occasional outbursts aside, John never at any time while he was growing up heard the civil war mentioned, or opinions being expressed anywhere, inside or outside of the home. Nor was it touched on at any school he attended. No more than if it had never occurred. He supposes that in the 1940’s everyone was too close to the events for dispassionate views to be expressed: not history yet, but rather a subject to steer clear of as memories could still be explosive. It was as if the entire nation was in denial, he says. Moreover Hitler and the world war seemed to tie up people’s thoughts in other directions.

John adds that when he was young, relations with his uncle Jonty were always most cordial “so fortunately the incident in the borheen was passed over with no lasting ill effects.”

Guess the date

Guess the date of this drawing: 1494? 1694? 1894?

           Answer: 1494.

Albrecht Dürer’s drawing of his fiancée Agnes Frey shows Agnes twisted up in a knot of anxious introversion. A New York Review of Books blog comments that there had never been a drawing quite like this before, with its frank portrayal of an informal moment of unguarded emotion. She looks withdrawn and preoccupied, and the circles under her heavy-lidded eyes may even make one think she has been crying. Typically portraiture at that time was honorific and represented the sitter's exemplary virtues. Dürer instead often sought to capture the idiosyncratic and psychological characteristics of the people he portrayed. He was fascinated with the close scrutiny of dark and brooding emotion, it says.

And here's a watercolour of a hare that Dürer did in 1502.

I should have said 1902, if you had covered up the artist's monogram. Puts me in mind of a Victorian wildlife illustration.

This self portrait on the other hand does not deceive:

We can all see that it dates from about 1498. The artist flaunts himself as a style icon. His grey over suit is trimmed in black, and he sports matching cap and white gloves. His bright white undershirt is trimmed in gold and he completes the ensemble with a brown cloak tied with a black and white intertwined rope.

According to Wikipedia Dürer is conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance. He wrote a work on geometry called The Four Books on Measurement, which includes the application of geometry to architecture and engineering.

Belated thoughts on Woolwich and other musings

I saw a list of don’t’s for Twitter. One was don’t sit in front of the tele and tweet BREAKING NEWS. Even worse, don’t lend spurious urgency to the thoughts gushing from your overtaxed brain by tweeting BREKAING NEWS. I've done a search on Twitter and people actually do this. Yes really. But there again maybe they're ironising and I just don't get it. Another rule is not to tweet “it's too soon to comment on this story …”. Very true that one. That’s my excuse for coming in with my comments about a fortnight late. So the first story I'm going to comment on late is the Woolwich meat cleaver murder on 22nd May. Shocking though it was, that wasn’t what made it a story. Had the killers run off we wouldn't have read about it. It was the videos. And that they didn't even bring their own cameras. We're sorry you saw this but it happens to Muslims every day. The more arrests are made, 10 at present, the less it can be passed off as the acts of crazed psychopaths. And the bigger the question over Jonathan Freedland’s Guardian piece saying the left should not use Woolwich to make its case on foreign policy. Crazed psychopaths they may be, but there's more to it.  

Health Minister James Reilly with
disgusting plain pack cigarettes

At this point I have to interrupt my flow and infringe my own rules. I'm sitting in front of the tele. And it really is brekaing news. Ireland is to be the second country after Australia to have plain cigarette packs with no logos or trademarks.   A lot of mean things have been said and written about health minister Reilly but hats off for this one. Some thoughts on this a few months ago. Reilly is also likely to introduce a 10% tax on fizzy drinks, sweets, biscuits, crisps, and chocolate as a way of tackling Ireland’s obesity problem. The Irish Examiner editorialised : “One thing can be said with some certainty about the war against sugar and fat misuse — we cannot prevaricate for decades like we did on tobacco before making the right decisions, even if they are the hard ones. The stakes are just far too high.”  Good, but oh dear, also bad. "Prevaricate" doesn't mean put off till tomorrow, it means to be devious.  On NPR in October 2009 Diane Rehm hosted a debate about taxing soft drinks. An industry spokesman arguing freedom of choice. Totally demolished. Worth listening to.  But sadly no longer available for download so ask me for the mp3 file if you like but I'll have to remove this sentence if they catch up with me.

Then there's Google and Amazon not paying tax. The salient fact here is they appear not to have broken any laws. These corporations are smirking at states and politicians. Read Google’s Eric Schmidt in The Observer and hear him gloat. And you’ve got countries like Ireland saying come and pay your taxes here we won't ask for much.  And Britain is little better, read Nick Cohen, also in The Observer, about Britain’s reluctance to pursue multinationals.

Next the US has launched an experimental full size fighter drone aircraft from an aircraft carrier called USS George H W Bush. Bet you didn't know they had a ship of that name. A defence analyst is quoted saying “This will be the future of warfare, and it will be a warfare that is a little less risky for humans”. He forgot to specify which humans he had in mind. My thoughts on this.

That’s all for now. Am working on a piece debunking the notion that neolithic passage tomb builders believed the sun would die in midwinter if they didn't do sacrifices; interesting times in the Catholic church with the new pope; and Eileen’s uncle Mickey’s civil war exploits.

Bangladesh union restrictions lifted after pressure

Only just discovered that Bangladesh garment workers are not allowed to form trade unions without prior permission from factory owners.  Perhaps I haven't being paying close enough attention and allowed myself to be misled by the impressive demonstrations following the Rana Plaza factory collapse. (By yesterday afternoon, at least 1,127 people were confirmed to have died - New York Times, 13th May.)

Another Bangladesh clothing factory disaster. Workers outside a building in Dhaka which caught fire. Credit: Ismail Ferdous/AP

Anyhow, all this is set to change. According to The Guardian (and other media including CTV news) there is an old law requiring workers to obtain permission before they could unionize. "No such permission from owners is now needed," a government spokesman is quoted saying. "The government is doing it for the welfare of the workers."

The New York Times has a different emphasis. Permission from owners isn't mentioned; but a list of names of those who want a union has to be submitted to the labour ministry who then pass it on to the employer who is thereby handed a useful tool for harassment and intimidation. This will now stop apparently. The New York Times says the new initiatives are “partly in response to outrage over conditions in the country’s garment sector” after the Rana Plaza collapse.

I'm not clear from reports whether the restrictions on unions are specific to the garment industry. Bangladesh is the world’s third largest exporter of garments and a government minister is quoted as calling the industry “the goose that lays the golden egg”.
 
Yet despite non-unionisation, protests by garment workers in 2010 achieved an 80% hike in the minimum wage to 3,000 takas ($38/£25) a month, according to The Guardian. 

A momentous deal

Since 2005, at least 1,800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh. This is from research by the advocacy group International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF).  I presume this figure includes the 1,127. Meanwhile War on Want is trumpeting the news that global retailers, including Primark, H&M, Tesco, Zara and C&A, have all signed the Bangladesh Safety Accord. War on Want regards this as "a momentous deal" and believes the retailers bowed to pressure from campaigners in the west disgusted by reports of the Rana Plaza collapse.

By the way the other day I was puzzling where to send money (see post below this). Maybe War on Want and the ILRF would be a start.  Thanks to Ben for some of these links, and links that led to links.