Usually vegetarian Barrett writes about his experience at a Mexican poultry shop in Chicago and reaches some rather ambiguous conclusions about poultry, packaging, and the nature of Christmas. As a lifelong carnivore, all I can say is: three cheers for pre-packaged denial.

or, Sexification, again...

This whale-song thing is raising some interesting questions:

As brought to my attention below by Paul Goyette, Mark Lieberman of Language Log fame notes:

The idea that a hybrid whales should sing hybrid songs may surprise some people, though it shouldn't. We don't really know why hybrid animals show a mixture of complex physical characteristics inherited from their parents, and it's no harder in principle to explain how a hybrid animal might show a mixture of complex behavioral characteristics such as species-specific vocalizations. And in the specific case of hybrid vocalizations, there's a well-documented precedent: gibbons.

This, of course, followed by an expert detail of gibbon-calls. But to back the proverbial complex-trait truck up a couple of miles, there are a few notable points to be made before proceeding:

1) The genetic basis of complex traits and their inheritance from pure-breeding lines to hybrid lines has not only been studied since before written language (cf. corn, apples, and cannabis*), but is also a fundamental tool to understanding much of the genetic bases to many human diseases. To make short work of an elegant field such as this: a hybrid species arising from two separate pure-breeding parental species inherits one set of genes from each partenal species -- call them species A, and species B. For a single trait, the hybrid species expresses either the gene from A (A is dominant to B), the gene from B (B is dominant to A), or some combination of both (A is codominant with B)*. A complex trait is a combination (not necessarily linear, mind you) of these singular traits*. Furthermore, by looking at the progeny of the hybrid with another hybrid (assuming the hybrid is viable), we can determine how many genes exactly there are that affect this complex trait, and even begin to tease apart exactly in what fashion*. Long story short, hybrid progeny may or may not have hybrid voices, depending on how many genes control this trait. But this brings me to my second point:

2) In order for hybrid progeny to have some sort of hybrid voice, one makes the assumption that vocalization (in whales) is a genetic trait -- i.e., a trait that is contributed to by genes from the parents. Although it's not improbable that this is the case, it's unclear to me that this may be (as it is somewhat in humans) as a learned trait -- this manifests itself in humans as different accents. That is, although both my parents speak with heavy Bengali accents, I'm in no way predisposed to the heavy Bengali accent ab initio.

3) Most importantly, however, I think people are forgetting Occam's Razor in this case -- i.e., before considering the possibility that two whales of different species somehow a) misconstrued themselves for the same species, b) decided to "get it on" due to reasons not necessarily contingent on point a), and c) produced living progeny from doing It, people seem to have missed the rather more likely -- but sadly, far less sexy -- situation in which the mother of this whale/this what itself accidentally swam through/ingested some toxic stuff during a key developmental period, and was somehow doomed to sounding weird for the rest of its life**, or rather, that this might just be a poor whale with one of the six-pack rings stuck in its gullet. This last one is my favorite, since it explains why there seems to be just ONE whale like this out there.

Tirades aside however, I'll have to agree with Will on this one in that whale's just some lonely creature out there, looking for the right someone (sorry Amber). In lieu of this, of course, should the message ever reach the whale:

"Keep on plugging -- there are plenty of fish in the sea."***

*One can have a long discussion about this, but for now....
**To put it in human terms, consider what polio did to children, or what racemic Thalidomide did to children of mothers who used the drug for morning sickness.
***Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

Rather, morning -- introduced to me originally by the ever-erudite Ms. Rounds:

Lullabye -- W.H.Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreadful cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but not from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless.
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.