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Wander through Berlin at night and you might come across 100-strong herds of wild boars. Apparently the pulling down of the wall not only liberated the Ossies, but was a red-letter day for the piggies too (via Mirabilis):

“Autumn is when mating customarily hits stride for the Middle European Wild Boar (Sus scrofa scrofa), but as Germany’s once-divided capital marks its fifteenth year of reunification next month, the habits of these urban animals have gone haywire. “It used to be they were born in February or March, and would be fertile a year later. Now it’s November of the same year.” When the wall that separated West Berlin from the surrounding forests fell, a historic migration passage opened. That change, combined with the withdrawal of occupying allied forces (American troops were especially avid hunters) and, more recently, a wave of abnormally warm summers, is believed to have triggered the reproductive and other mutations. The urban boar population went from a timid, manageable estimated three thousand in 1989 to the current numbers.

Not just the boars’ numbers but their physical appearance and behaviours have changed. By day, they roam the outer neighbourhoods in “sounders” of up to seven, then follow Berlin’s star-shaped system of parks and abandoned factories into the city at night in search of food, where they form groups that often exceed a hundred. These boars actively seek out human habitats – a third have never been to a forest. Committed omnivores, they’re more prone to strike gardens or the family dog than they are humans, unless you stumble between a Bachen and her Frischlinges. Females bite, males attack with tusks. They’ve devoured jagged strips through parks across Berlin. Last year, they caused more than four hundred traffic accidents in the city, some of them fatal. “If you hit a pig at a hundred kilometres an hour, you’re pretty much dead,” says the Jagdreferent.

I haven’t seen the original Nature article, but this post at Carl Zimmer’s “The Loom” website is interesting. Statistically it seems we all share an ancestor who lived about 2,300 years ago. This is a surprisingly recent date, and prompts a number of questions about the methodology used.

Of course we have to distinguish between genealogy and genetic history: with genes you get that random element which means that your great-great-grandchild could inherit none of your genes. Genes are (reasonably) identifiable, so it’s possible, as Cavalli-Sforza and others have done, to trace the movement of genes across populations. With genealogy, all you have is statistics, and some assumptions about the movement and degree of interbreeding of people throughout history. So, it would be an interesting question to ask the authors of the Nature article – and I don’t know if they discuss this or not – where this putative ancestor of ours might have lived. I imagine the answer would be somewhere on the Eurasian landmass, maybe the Middle East, at the centre of trade links and the site of expansionary empires. It implies that everyone on the American continent can trace an ancestor from outside America – possible – and similarly for Australian aborigines and the tribes of New Guinea – unlikely.

The trouble with statistical studies like this is, the answers they come up with tend to be advanced with more conviction than the assumptions warrant. Still, it’s fascinating stuff.

big fat ripe fruit high up in the tree, knock it down with a well-aimed stick, and open up the green case to reveal the beautiful glistening nut-brown conker inside. That was as good as it got though: you took it home, and within a few hours it was beginning to look dull. A couple of days later you threw it out. Trouble is, conkers are not much use – apart, that is, from making horsechestnut trees – and it seems so sad that such beautiful objects should just rot away. Maybe the game of conkers is a boyish attempt to deny the transience of beauty. Maybe – I feel a burst of wisdom coming on here – all culture is like that, an attempt to immortalise the ephemeral nature of life. Or something.

has become increasingly politicised. But over Sudan, in particular, two of its most senior officials have long held strong personal views. Both Natsios, a former vice-president of the Christian charity World Vision, and Winter have long been hostile to the Sudanese government.

Hostile to the Sudanese government? How could anyone be hostile to the Sudanese government, after all they’ve done for the southern Sudanese Christians, and now the black Muslims of Darfur?

If aid workers are to be apolitical at all times, even when the government itself is the prime instigator of the problem, then aid agencies in Nazi Germany would have been negotiating with the concentration camp commanders to allow food parcels in (“and we understand that there have been a number of deaths from poisonous gas, so we’ve included some gas masks”), and excoriating the Allies for dragging politics into it (see also here for a discussion of the ethics of aid to North Korea). An apolitical approach may be justified in the case of natural disasters, but not when you have politically inspired massacres and starvation. But really this is just good old anti-Americanism. If the US government is calling it genocide, then suddenly it’s become a cause that’s being over-hyped.

en the Austrians were unable to break through against the Italians in the Isonzo Valley in October 1917, the troops fired some 100,000 grenades containing the poison gas Phosgene.

Photographs of the attack show horrific scenes — corpses who had been struggling with inadequate gas masks, soldiers lying next to dead horses and rats, Italian troops who were gassed while playing cards or shaving. Some 40,000 died in the attack. Emperor Karl later described the gas as “very effective”.

There’s also the unfortunate business of Kurt Krenn, the Austrian bishop who led the campaign for beatification, who’s been forced to resign:

He bore administrative responsibility for a seminary in Lower Austria where sexual abuse was rife. Photographs were recently published of seminary priests kissing and fondling their students and 40,000 images depicting paedophile acts were found on the seminary computer.

It’s the recent history of the Catholic church condensed into one story.

As anyone who’s studied psychology will know, much of it involves restating the bleeding obvious, adding a spice of jargon to make it sound as though some important insight has been achieved. Sometimes they don’t even bother with the jargon, but devise an incomprehensible experiment. Here (via ArtsJournal) is a good example:

The mystery of why eyes in certain paintings and photographs appear to move has been solved: it has to do with how we perceive two and three dimensions, a new study finds.

According to a paper published in a recent issue of the journal Perception by James Todd, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and his colleagues, the optical illusion “is in the misleading information provided by the picture,” Todd said.

No matter what angle you look at a painting from, the painting itself doesn’t change, since it’s on a flat surface. The patterns of light and dark remain the same.

But three-dimensional objects, in life, change with the way light falls on them as viewers move around the object.

“When observing real surfaces in the natural environment, the visual information that specifies near and far points varies when we change viewing direction,” Todd said.

He added, “When we observe a picture on the wall, on the other hand, the visual information that defines near and far points is unaffected by viewing direction. Still we interpret this perceptually as if it were a real object. That is why the eyes appear to follow you as you change your viewing direction.”

So now we know.

hostage then perhaps we would have a better understanding of who is really behaving barbarically here. I can’t see any moral difference between the terror being inflicted on Bigley and the terror inflicted on children when our cluster bombs mutilate them, except of course that Bigley chose to be in Iraq and has a chance of being freed.

eedom, it is rare to find in the local press criticism of religion or religious institutions. Indeed, in the words of Iraqi poet Khaz’al Al-Majedi, “Freedom of expression is still missing in Iraq. I can write anything I want about the government, but should I criticize some political parties, or religion, my life would be in danger.”

I caught an item on Channel 4 news last night about Liverpool: new dynamism, economic growth, European city of culture in 2008, etc., etc.. All good stuff. I’ve only ever been there once, the Pennines still being a major barrier and me being born on the white rose side. Still – great city and all that. I do have one problem with Liverpool though: in general, the way they push the Beatles connection, and in particular….John Lennon Airport. John Lennon Airport. What were they thinking?

or, of course, is quite the opposite of Brook’s thesis. What Salvador teaches us that belligerent U.S. unilateralism failed miserably in trying to stabilize that tiny and suffering nation. In the end, it was a UN-negotiated multi-lateral solution that secured the peace and stopped the bloodshed.

Once again it’s that old left story: nothing’s changed since the eighties, the US is still bad boy no.1, imposing its will on small defenceless nations. As opposed to….? Leave Iraq to the tender mercies of Saddam? Let it fall to the Islamists? Yes, Brooks is misguided in trying to compare El Salvador and Iraq, but Cooper is doing just the same, from a different perspective.

What’s implicit in Cooper’s approach is the notion that the invasion of Iraq was some sort of whim, a mistaken desire to impose US-style democracy, a piece of Western hubris. I don’t see it that way. As Tony Blair said – a position he now seems to be abandoning – no responsible political leader could allow the situation in Iraq to continue. Saddam had already attacked two neighbouring countries, and had waged a virtual campaign of genocide against the Iraqi Kurds. He was talking himself up as the new Saladin. He was clearly interested in acquiring WMDs, and if he didn’t have ready-to-go missiles lined up, he was determined to get them. He had terrorist connections. He was, in sum, dangerous and out of control. His grip on Iraq was far too strong for any opposition to even think of forming. Sanctions were worse than useless, and the Iraqis were suffering appallingly. The UN, notably France and Russia with their profitable dealings with Saddam, weren’t about to authorise any action: they were happy with the status quo. So….now we have a situation where Saddam’s gone, but the country is desperately trying to piece itself together, against anti-democratic forces who indulge in acts of barbarity. If anything, should the left not be pushing for Bush (or Kerry…whoever) to do all that can be done to make sure that fair democratic elections in Iraq take place as planned, and that the forces of reaction are defeated?