Killing Diaspididae with Hypobaric Conditions

At work, I believe I have access to a hypobaric chamber - one where I can control the atmospheric pressure. I'm wondering if my Gerbera can handle low pressure longer than the scale parasites (Diaspididae).

Killing Waxy Scale (Diaspididae) on a Gerbera Daisy

Valued entomological engineer Tim suggested in the comments of my previous post on Momma Daisy's large-scale scale infestation, that I examine predatory insects or environmental controls as a way of dealing with my waxy enemy.

Predatory insects are my favorite means of control and I typically kill aphids with a small container of ladybugs and a bag over the plant. The ladybugs can't fly away and greedily annihilate the aphid infestation. Unfortunately, waxy scale (Diaspididae) has few predators. There's a parasitic wasp that can be used, but obtaining them as a homeowner rather than a grove manager is difficult. There's not much else to choose from.

As Tim notes in his comment, Diaspididae is very resistant to pesticides. The females' waxy covering protects them from contact poisons and I've yet to have much success with systemics. Diaspididae crawlers can be killed by contact poisons, but the females produce so many offspring for so long that wiping out an infestation completely requires total concentration. I've never been successful at that, probably because I've never been able to completely coat the plant in poison. One little spot on a leaf left untouched and some set of crawlers will survive to the next generation.

A thorough examination is required.
I've had the most success with a combination of crushing them with my fingers and a contact poison such as rubbing alcohol. That's known to be incomplete because, again, you just never seem to get every scale and every surface on a large plant.

We have deep concern for the health of Momma Daisy.
This leaves environmental controls. Here's what we know about our two combatants - Diaspididae and Gerbera.

Diaspididae:

Chrysomphalus aonidum has a preference for humid environments and cannot tolerate freezing temperatures.

Gerbera:

Can tolerate some frost but freezing temperatures will kill plant to the roots.

Hmmm. The freezer may well be my friend. It looks like we need to do some experimentation with freezing infested plant cuttings to see how long it takes to kill the little brutes.

Here is our plant sample with scale, as approved by our Maximum Leader. Now, on to the freezer!

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Wetlands

... well, wet front porch, actually. Our Maximum Leader is leading the way to the front door. That's how you get to the tuna, you know.

First Loot The Students, Then Teach Them

Dig this.

President Barack Obama lost a second member of his economic team as economist Christina Romer decided to return to teaching on the eve of an employment report highlighting the administration’s struggle to spur job gains.

Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, is returning to a post at the University of California at Berkeley

Outstanding! After smashing the economy with failed Keynesian economic policies and saddling her new students with mountains of debt they will spend their whole lives repaying, she goes to that haven of intellectualism, UC Berkley, where the clocks run sideways because that's the way they would run if that gosh-darned Real World operated the way it should.

In Econ 124, Professor Romer will call upon her experience forming economic policy to teach you how economic modeling and Keynesian multipliers function, or how they would have functioned if the American people had just done what they were told to do by their superiors.
But wait, there's more!

She is interested in heading the Federal Reserve’s regional bank in San Francisco, according to a person familiar with her plans

Yay! She could then oversee the printing presses that would utterly destroy the value of her new students' wages. Fantastic!

Here, a group of students eagerly await Professor Romer's return and plan a celebration in her honor.
Hopefully, she'll teach a special class on the stellar logic of the Cash-for-Clunkers program.

It's Time for the Nuclear Option

... because Momma Daisy's got scale. Boy, does she have scale!

The infestation is so dense, I think the scale has scale.

Stay Ungovernable, My Friends

"I don't always get politically involved, but when I do, I prefer to join Tea Parties. Stay ungovernable, my friends."

Biology, Darwin and Homophobia

OK, here's another foray into the controversial. Let's see if I can do it in the form of a series of neutral observations instead of a polemic. No moral or theological implications are intended.

Human biology dictates that two sexes are required for the production of a baby. Babies are necessary for the continuation of the species.

Darwin and others have pointed out that to a great extent, animals seek to extend their genetic material into the future through reproduction. Much of what animals do is a competition to see that their DNA makes it to the next round at the expense of others'.

Some primate males practice infanticide against other males' babies so that they may mate earlier and produce more offspring.

Milne-Edwards' sifaka groups are small, only three to nine members, and females only breed every two years on average. If a group has only one breeding male and two breeding-age females—a common scenario—and an incoming male like Yellow Silver kills any unweaned infants, the next year the resident male may mate with one female and the immigrant male with the other. (Wright has genetic evidence that confirms this paternity outcome in two cases, she says.) Thus, both males sire offspring that next year, which is a year faster for both males than it would be if the unweaned babies had lived.

In humans, child abuse is 10 times as likely in families where the biological parents are unmarried. This could indicate a link to behavior in other primates where one will protect one's own offspring at the expense of others'.

If you reasoned strictly from science, specifically biology, would you classify different kinds of human sexual relationships differently or would you lump them all together?

A Little Bit on the Proposition 8 Ruling

Two thoughts on the California judge striking down the constitutional ammendment banning same sex marriages.

1. Any society that doesn't know where babies come from and doesn't make the creation and nurturing of babies separate, distinct and privileged from not doing so is not a serious one. I'm sure it's jolly good fun and all, but anal sex does not produce babies.


2. Any constitutional republic that allows a single individual to override the lawfully enacted will of the people is not serious about being a republic. This is lawlessness, plain and simple. It's a judge banging his spoon on his high chair until he gets his treats.

Elsewhere across the Feline Theocracy, there are other reactions. Our Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings is dismayed.

A FaceBook friend playfully chided on her wall that we all needed to get over our homophobia now that a federal judge struck down Prop. 8 .

Because supporters of gay marriage wanted so badly for this to be about homophobia, they got exactly what they wanted and as a result this whole ordeal became about intimidation, smearing and undemocratic end-arounds...

Previous to this, we had felt that were we ever invited to a same-sex wedding, we would be honored to attend because it was not about us nor how we felt about same-sex marriage but about the happy couple. However, because of the undemocratic and thuggish nature of how this whole thing played out, the results are completely illegitimate in our mind and we now feel we could not attend such an event in good conscious.

Again, Congrats. Hope it was all worth it.

Our Archbishop of Texas is for same sex marriage, but against the means by which it was done.

So, for now, the ban has been lifted for California, I think. Right results, I think... but wrong mechanism and route to get there, because if a judge can throw this stuff out, another judge can just uphold it... or strike that decision down... and it's now judges vs. judges, out of the reach of the people and the legislators

Is this another case of slacker fascism?

A Question About Psychics

If you're a psychic, can you offload some thought problems into other people's heads and get some parallel processing going?

In for a Dime

... in for a few hundred billion dollars. Dig this.

Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011.

At this point, it's almost a waste of time to complain. We are totally screwing our children to feed our own self-righteous compassion.

On Frozen Peas and Unicorns

... well, err, Unicornfish.

While on Maui this last week, we've spent quite a bit of time snorkeling at one of my favorite spots on the whole planet, Ulua Beach. Most days, we've brought a small bag of frozen peas to feed the fish. As soon as you get out over the reef, the Unicornfish all recognize the bag and swarm over to you hoping for a treat. If they could make noise, they'd all be crying for noms like our Maximum Leader does when she smells an open can of tuna.

There would be 20-30 of these guys, fat and sassy, milling around you waiting for the shower of peas.
The Unicornfish were at the top strata of the water and always managed to get the peas first, but with a sufficiently large spray of them, plenty of peas would make it down to the Triggerfish and others in the middle strata. At one spot, down on the bottom was a huge Ornate Wrasse (I think that's what it was) that should have had a little light on it's head and been making vacuum cleaner sounds as it sucked up all the peas that fell to it.

Before we left on this trip, I considered getting an underwater camera or a waterproof case for the ones we had. The cameras were a bit too expensive and the cases came with sufficient user reviews claiming leakage and camera destruction to prevent me from buying them. Maybe next time.

The Unphotographed Gecko

It's a bit before 6 AM and I'm outside of our condo on Maui, drinking coffee and perusing the Interweb Tubes. There's a gecko running actoss the wall in front of me in a pose perfect for photography save for one thing. There's so little light that I'd need to use the flash. I've been trying to get a picture of one of them for much of the vacation, but they've all managed to scamper away before I could snap off a shot. Now here he is, splayed out on the wall, against a high-contrast backdrop.

Rather than blind the little guy with a monstrous flash of light, he shall remain The Unphotgraphed Gecko, Creature of Mystery*.

* - Cue the slightly disturbing organ music here.

Restored Japanese Tank

Dig this bit of video.

I didn't bother to research the back story, but it's amazing to me that the guy got the thing running or even bothered to do it at all. Japanese tanks were piles of junk suited only for getting their crews killed. Still, it's a wonderful bit of living history. It would have been fun to work on that project.

Elsewhwere, there's a group restoring a German Junkers Ju-88 bomber. Way cool.

Going Over Niagra Falls in a Barrell

... will be similar to the upcoming crash in the Chinese housing market. Dig this.

China’s banking regulator told lenders last month to conduct a new round of stress tests to gauge the impact of residential property prices falling as much as 60 percent in the hardest-hit markets, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Is this a realistic scenario?

China’s property market is beginning a “collapse” that will hit the nation’s banking system, Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said July 6.

Average prices may fall as much as 20 percent over the next 12 to 18 months, with declines of up to 40 percent in “big bubble” cities, Nomura Holdings Inc. said in a July 2 report. The impact on banks’ asset quality will still be “limited” as long as borrowers have adequate income to keep paying their mortgages, Nomura said.

That last caveat is a real howler. The damage will be about as limited as it was here in the US. Yikes.

Gary Larson and Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an atheistic moral code that states that good is pleasure and bad is pain. The morality of an action can be obtained by measuring its effect on aggregate pleasure and aggregate pain across the whole population (which may or may not include non-human animals or plants). In order to prevent wild orgies and drunkeness, Utilitarianism suggests that the elite members of society create a scoresheet to overweight intellectual pursuits. Something like this:

Getting a lap dance at a sports bar while drinking beer = 1 point.

Translating Plato from its original Greek = 1,000 points.

The problem is that this assumes the population will sit still and listen to the elites when they try to suggest that the elites' hobbies are more important than those of the general public. Gary Larson points the way to the result.

What Utilitarians say: "Pleasure is good. Pain is bad. Intellectual pursuits are much better than booze and sex."
What we hear: "Pleasure is good. blah blah blah blah blah blah booze and sex!"

Hilarious

H/T: Roger's Rules.

More on Missionaries

So a while back I posted about how I thought that successful missionaries had to come from technologically superior societies. That still didn't convince me that you could construct a winning sales pitch to cause groups of people to abandon their longstanding culture in favor of what you were selling. I was muddling about with this when I asked my wife what she thought.

"How would you sell the thing? If you were, say, Marquette trying to sell Catholicism to the American Indians, how would you do it?"

She looked at me in surprise at my puzzlement and simply said, "You would live your faith."

Hmmm. That still didn't make sense to me, the analytical marketing type. Yes, yes, I'm sure you would live your faith, but how would you get them to buy your product, I wondered, still working out how you would perform market segmentation and sell what the customer wanted to buy. Then this last Sunday, I went to Mass at St. Theresa's Catholic Church on Maui and afterwards found a book on Father Damien. The answer was so clear.

You would live your faith, you bonehead.

The dude was a Belgian who came to Hawaii, became a priest, worked on the big island for a while and then moved to Molokai to minister to the lepers. "Minister to the lepers" doesn't capture what he really did. What he did was place is body completely in the service of others in an attempt to live as Christ taught. He lived his faith.

There's a good summary of Father Damien's life here.
Dig this bit.

Father Damien had lived in Kalawao 12 years when it was confirmed that he had contracted Hansen’s disease. Although the disease is not highly contagious, Damien had not been careful about hygiene. Over the years he had done nothing to separate himself from his people. He dipped his fingers in the poi bowl shared with other patients. He shared his pipe.

He contracted the disease because he refused to treat the lepers like lepers. The disease separated them socially from the rest of humanity and that human distance must have been pretty painful. Father Damien crossed that distance to help them feel loved and accepted despite their disease. The dude didn't stride into town with bandoleros of antibiotics strapped across his chest and the latest medical gear in holsters at his hips, he lived his faith.

Yowza.

On Challenging Assumptions

In a previous post, I claimed that I had recently had a religious experience. Since the post was about science and atheism, it drew all kinds of challenges. I appreciate those challenges, because it has forced me to clarify my thoughts. Here's where I have ended up.

Assumption: Everything in the world can be explained through science - repeatable, measurable, definable rules and laws.

Event: Something very unusual happens to me which has religious significance.

Explanation: I understand the brain and psychology fairly well as well as chemistry, physics and mathematics. I can come up with an explanation for the event using these tools. However, my explanation is based on a sequence of highly unlikely occurrences and since probabilities are multiplicative, the overall probability that this event should have taken place is infinitesimally small.

Quandary: I am left with relying on my assumption that science can explain all things to accept my wildly improbable explanation for the event. I dismiss a miraculous explanation for the event only because my assumption tells me to. Essentially, an otherwise perfectly valid data point is discarded because it conflicts with my assumption.

I have good friends who are sceintists who have had similar experiences. We can also dispose of theirs through equally improbable explanations. More data points are discarded only because our assumption tells us to. Over time, in the aggregate, the number of such discarded data points quickly grows large. How many data points do you discard before you begin to wonder if the assumption was incorrect?

Maui Flower

I should have figured out what this was before I posted it, but I'm being lazy today. Enjoy!