seeing as it's #WorldPenguinDay, I thought I might share some penguin facts from my 2018 work, the Book of Humans.
First up: Necrophilia.
Sex with dead penguins has been known about in Adélies since
the earliest days of Antarctic exploration, as documented by the scientist aboard Scott’s last and fatal venture south. The
penguin’s behaviour was deemed ‘astonishing depravity’.
The ship scientist George Levick wrote of the young male penguins as ‘hooligan bands of half a dozen or more and [that] hang about the outskirts of the knolls, whose inhabitants they annoy by their constant acts of depravity’.
It was deemed far too unsavoury for delicate Edwardian sensibilities; instead it was redacted from the larger report released to the public, and written in Greek, made available only to a select group of stout-minded British gentlemen scientists.
Next: 'Transactional sex'
Female Adélie penguins, who need stones to build their nests, have sex with an unattached male, in exchange for a pebble.
Finally: masturbation
Male Adelie penguins in the Antarctic frequently gyrate and rub themselves, and spontaneously spill their seed on the ground in the absence of females. #WorldPenguinDay
So there you go. There's a whole chapter on necrophilia, and another on masturbation. And they are still not as bad as sea otters.
It's my least popular book, but I love it. Absolute filth.
A short thread on grammar, as the fewer/less crowd are outnabout. I used to really care until I started working regularly on @BBCRadio4, where I discovered that the most frequent complaints were from male grammar pedants.
They typically moaned about decimate, fewer/less, octopus and bacterium/bacteria. The thing about grammar pedants is that they’re not pedantic enough, and their corrections were often erroneous - stuff that is easy to Google - and born of doctrinaire oneupmanship.
And so I revised my position to be a descriptivist. Not everyone was taught the ‘correct’ form of grammar, which obviously, is entirely made up. The only thing that matters is effectiveness of communication. @OliverKamm is my Obi Wan on this matter.
I’ve had some fun with the race wienies today - it’s almost as if I could write a book on how to argue with a racist. Anyway, here’s some of the highlights: 1) the credentialists. How can it be that I have a job in one of the best genetics departments on Earth, and the BBC?? 😘
2) ‘you’re a disingenuous retard’
3) ‘I understand population genetics cos I have eyes’. Wish I’d known it was that easy before spending all that time learning it
I read a lot of books, and here are my non-fiction books of the year, just in time for presents, in no particular order.
1: Toxic by Sarah Ditum. Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Janet, Amy. These early-noughties mononym women who stood charged with being women at the juncture between the old media and the new. Will make you sad, angry and baffled.
2: Ultra-Processed People by @DoctorChrisVT revelations about an industrial complex that underlies so much of the health problems humankind faces, because our lives are flooded by food that is not food.
I went to see Oppenheimer. It is hard to imagine a film that I disliked more intensely. Apart from Tenet.
Positives: acting is fabulous, cinematography beautiful, music a bit overbearing but massive.
Negatives <deep breath>
* learn to write dialogue. People don’t speak like that. Every sentence is designed to elicit a zinger or exposition point in response.
* the editing is frenetic. Intercutting from different locations, colour/black and white, mad angles that make no sense.
The whole film is a montage.
Oh come on, don't make me do this, please. The sun is shining, and it's a nice da... MALE SEA OTTERS DROWN FEMALES AND USE THEIR CARCASSES FOR SEX UNTIL THE FALL APART. DON'T BE FOOLED, THEY ARE ABSOLUTE FURRY ARSEHOLES.
🚨 Genetics is PROBABILISITIC, not deterministic 🚨 This is a fundamental aspect of inheritance. The idea that being in possession of a certain version of a gene - an allele - determines a trait is incorrect, and you will fail 1st yr Introduction to Genetics if you write that.
Next: For the most part, the way we understand the influence of certain alleles - e.g. taste preferences - comes from studies in populations, and do not directly or deterministically translate to individuals.
The idea that behaviours are influenced by genetics is neither new nor surprising. EVERYTHING is influenced by both genetics and the environment. And here's where the history is important.