Suddenly we have flowers

140 million years ago was when the ancestors of most (more than 99 per cent) flowering plants suddenly appeared on the planet. The evolutionary event took a mere few million years. This is blink in geological time.

From the New Scientist web site, we get this information:
Earlier research had failed to identify the relationships between the major groups of flowering plants, apart from showing that water lilies, a rare shrub called Amborella from New Caledonia, and a handful of other plants were the first to split from the main line of flowering plants. Now Mike Moore at Oberlin College in Ohio and colleagues have gone further.

The team sequenced entire chloroplast genomes for 45 flower species from all major groups, which revealed that five sister groups split off nearly simultaneously. Two groups, the eudicots (including roses, sunflowers and tomatoes) and the monocots (grasses and their relatives), together account for 95 per cent of flowering plants. Magnolias occupy a third group. The two others are less well known

What caused the explosive divergence remains a mystery, although large water-transport tubes may have played a part. Moore notes that the five groups are the only plants with this adaptation.

Okay that's the end of the quote from the New Scientist article. The really mysterious part, though, is not the "explosive divergence." The really mysterious part is that nobody draws a lesson from such events about the limits of human thought.

Mrs. William Blake

Talk about amazing, there was a woman who the most amazing man in the 19th century met, and was nourished by. A man who by some freak planetary accident, could think creatively and consistently. It is the latter adverb that is the amazing part. And this poet, artist, gentle person, had the protection of marriage, a woman who was content without monetary rewards, who was by his side. What, you want us to have tea together, in the garden, and both of us without any clothes on. Meeting the neighbors thusly. Yes, darling, if that is what you want, let's do it.
My admiration goes to Mrs. Blake, for her accomplishments, this nurturing, this steadying, she accomplished, was the result of totally mechanical forces. No one remembers Mrs. Blake, and yet one has to believe she made William Blakes's productivity greater. As how to classify Blake himself, we may have another post soon on that.

Sterne's skull still speaking

The skull of Lawrence Sterne, buried in an unmarked grave, was recognised by the leading authority in the 20th C on Sterne, and reburied in a well marked grave. The occasion for the discovery was the disposal of remains that occurred during a commercial redevelopment of the original grave area. Kenneth Monkman is the name of the scholar who recognised the skull. After two hundred years.

Banks have no form for this

And that is amazing to me --- banks do not have a form, any kind of receipt or digitized fill in the blanks document for --- when you bring them back money they gave you in error. Actually I was just pretending they gave me the wrong change, as a matter of curiosity. But isn't that interesting--how many thousands of forms, digital and paper and so volumious, and yet no form for when a customer returns money the bank overpaid them.

Possums never stop growing

Or so the naturalists say. Which makes one wonder, where are the refrigerator sized possums? I suppose they got hit by cars, before that is, they got so large.

Diamonds can play you false

A recent article in Wired magazine reported that it is now possible to create artificial diamonds that cannot be detected by any amount of laboratory analysis. THERE IS NO WAY TO DETECT PHONY DIAMONDS absolutely -- not all fake stones. What the article did not discuss was whether this applied to other gemstones, though I guess it may. And also this was not discussed --the repercussions on the precious stones market. It seems to me that this scientific feat of creating such good artificial diamonds should diminish the value of all stones, except maybe older stones with a well documented provenance. And heck, if you can fake a diamond, faking a provenance is a piece of marzipan. Well some of us anyway are out of the diamond market.