No wonder some people are so stupid

Prints Show a Modern Foot in Prehumans
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: February 26, 2009
Footprints uncovered in Kenya show that as early as 1.5 million years ago an ancestral species, almost certainly Homo erectus, had already evolved the feet and walking gait of modern humans. An international team of scientists, in a report on Friday in the journal Science, said the well-defined prints in an eroding bluff east of Lake Turkana “provided the oldest evidence of an essentially modern humanlike foot anatomy.” They said the find also added to evidence that painted a picture of Homo erectus as the prehumans who took long evolutionary strides — figuratively and, now it seems, also literally.

Until now, no footprint trails had ever been associated with early members of our long-legged genus Homo. Preserved ancient footprints of any kind are rare. The only earlier prints of a protohuman species were found in 1978 at Laetoli, in Tanzania. Dated at 3.7 million years ago, they were made by Australopithecus afarensis, the diminutive species to which the famous Lucy skeleton belonged. The prints showed that the species already walked upright, but its short legs and long arms and its feet were in many ways apelike.

More evidence that the brain evolved last. Or was created by God last, if that’s your viewpoint. Was it an afterthought? An incidental improvement that just happened? What was Homo Erectus thinking about with her tiny brain? If there was ever a fascinating question, that’s it. How much of our complex modern behavior happened in a very short period of time? Any why?

Why I like David Brooks

My friend PZ excoriates David Brooks for being such an enemy of the people and I certainly don't agree with a lot of what Brooks says. But I really like the way he says it. And I like his fundamental understanding of America, even when I disagree with his conclusions. Last night was a great example of David Brooks saying what he really thinks -- a rarity on TV, especially when it comes to criticism of a rising star in his own party.

Check out this clip with Jim Lehrer:

I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician and I opposed the stimulus package because I thought it was poorly drafted, but to come up at this moment in history with a stale, ‘government is the problem’ argument is just a disaster for the Republican party. The idea that the federal government has no role in this, in a moment when only the federal government is big enough to actually do stuff . . . it’s just a form of nihilism. I think it’s insane.”

Or this one later on PBS (sorry I don't know the moderator's name):

“Bobby Jindal gave possibly the worst response to a Democratic speaker in the history of democracy. For Bobby Jindal to come out and say government is the problem . . . that is just insane. That was the best thing that happened to Barack Obama tonight. That response from the most promising Republican politician was just an unmitigated disaster.”

Whatever you think about David Brooks' politics, he has an understanding of American culture. I saw him at a seminar sponsored by HG Magazine in New York just after Bobos in Paradise came out and he really nailed some big cultural trends. And he approached the research findings with humor and humility, which I find appealing.

So, sorry PZ. David's the man. Or at least he was last night.

Don’t give the doubters any more ammo

Andrew Revkin’s Dotearth blog today had this story:

Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said.

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why.

Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters (details below).

Dr. Pielke quoted the Belgian center: “Indeed, justifying the upward trend in hydro-meteorological disaster occurrence and impacts essentially through climate change would be misleading. Climate change is probably an actor in this increase but not the major one — even if its impact on the figures will likely become more evident in the future.

This is just the kind of thing that Rush and his gang of blow-hards pick up on and play back every day for the next ten years to prove to their mindless flock of sheep that environmentalists are pulling the wool over their eyes (how would that work?) about global warming.

There is plenty of good science on our side. We should be telling people that this is a long, slow process that is also going to take a long time to fix. I know people like to think in terms of this year vs last year, but do you really want the global climate change campaign to live or die on how much snow they get in New York next winter? Or whether Miami happens to get hit by a hurricane? We have a harder job than the poo-pooers. Let’s not make their work any easier.

Is it spring yet?

This morning I was reminded once again that Wisconsin is whitetail country. The fields and hillsides in our little valley are creased and lined with deer trails in the new fallen powder. Bounding in straight lines right up the sides of the bluffs. Rushing together and breaking apart like crazy tributaries of some big, braided river like in Alaska. Drawing loops and figure eights down on the flats, but not too far from the edge of the woods. Out there for everyone to see are the highways, cross roads and meandering rustic avenues of the deer family. Not just in one place, but all up and down the length of the valley (except right next to the few houses). This is not just a herd, but a family, a tribe, a nation coming together and breaking apart in their search for food under the snow.

Of course, the deer are here all the time. In the summer when the leaves make the wooded hillsides a visually impenetrable mass of green. In the dead of winter when the old snow is too gray and hard to hold the tracks. We just don’t see the evidence as flagrantly as today. This is our evidence of their existence, like the howling is the evidence of the coyotes. It was -14 this morning and I imagine even the deer are getting tired of that!

The end of coal

This week’s program on public radio’s Living on Earth focused on coal and how the unstoppable momentum for more coal power was stopped by a few people standing in front of the tanks.

Plans for some 150 new coal-fired power plants have bitten the dust as uncertainty grows about how to handle coal's emissions. Now the Obama administration adds to coal's woes with steps to regulate mercury, fly ash and greenhouse gases from coal plants. Living on Earth's Jeff Young reports.

One of Jeff’s interviews was naturally with Bruce Nilles, who takes the position that no coal is good coal.

NILLES: For the last eight years the answer has been to put our heads in the sand and ignore carbon dioxide. And the days of pretending global warming does not exist and that carbon dioxide will not be regulated are simply over. The Obama administration is gonna use existing authorities to begin to take a bite out of global warming and do our part.

We need people like Bruce who will stand up to the forces of “reason” and tell them they’re not being reasonable. Bruce argues that coal is actually more expensive than wind and solar right now. If you haven't caught up on the latest with coal, give a listen.

Living on Earth is a weekly environmental news and information program distributed by Public Radio International and broadcast weekly on approximately 300 Public Radio stations. The show airs in 9 of the 10 top radio markets and reaches 80% of the US.

Can't get into The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Everybody said I should read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. It's about dogs. It's set in Wisconsin. It was Amazon's Book of the Month in June 08. So how come my bookmark it stuck at page 90? Why do I walk past the book every day and reach for something else? Maybe it's ADD - I need too much stimulation and this book unfolds verrrrry slowly. What do YOU think?

Baby steps on drug policy

The NYT today reports joy among the drug realists at the potential appointment of R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of the Seattle Police Department as the nation’s drug czar. The Times reported:

The anticipated selection of Chief Kerlikowske has given hope to those who want national drug policy to shift from an emphasis on arrest and prosecution to methods more like those employed in Seattle: intervention, treatment and a reduction of problems drug use can cause, a tactic known as harm reduction. Chief Kerlikowske is not necessarily regarded as having forcefully led those efforts, but he has not gotten in the way of them.

Is that the best we can do?

What about shifting our national drug policy to a policy of legalization, regulation and problem reduction? What about a policy that actually does something effective to stop the flow of billions of dollars from middle class Americans drug consumers to terrorist organizations and drug thugs?

A story in the Wall Street Journal last week by Jose De Cordoba reported that a commission led by three conservative Latin American former presidents - Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, and César Gaviria of Colombia warned that the U.S. antidrug strategy was putting the region's fragile democratic institutions at risk and corrupting "judicial systems, governments, the political system and especially the police forces."

American drug laws are destroying the governments, economies and societies of countries like Mexico and Afghanistan, places we don't want to see become lawless havens for mobsters and terrorists and where we spend billions to prop up shaky governments and fund anti-drug activities. We are our own worst enemy in these places and American money is funding both sides of the war.

Prohibition has never worked. An interesting blog by conservative Tom Evelin not only makes a forceful case for legalization, but also points out that this is not a liberal or conservative issue.

Legalizing drugs is a stimulus package that comes at a negative cost to the taxpayer, punishes the bad guys by ruining their business, creates new business opportunities for good guys and lets us treat drug problems as we do alcohol and other addictions. The only problem is that it's political dynamite and will cause a huge anti-Obama surge from the right (but not from real conservatives like me).

There is some small measure of hope. Even in a climate of racial fear, massive drug-war propaganda, and no organized educational campaign for legalization, a growing number of Americans no longer see drugs as the monster under the bed. A poll last month by CBS found that 41% believe marijuana should be legalized, 52% oppose and 7% have no option. 30 years ago a similar poll found 69% against.

If the American public were presented with the real costs of the drug war, I believe attitudes would change quickly. But who can do that? Hmmm. How about it Anheuser-Busch and Altria? Ready for your own stimulus package?

Baby steps indeed!

Neanderthal walks into a coffee bar, says "hold the cream"

Svante Paabo announced on Darwin’s birthday that he has sequenced the Neanderthal genome. You can listen to the news conference from the Max Planck Institute here. This project took at least 2.5 years to complete the study of 200 extracts from 70 fossils and 16 sites. The fossils ranged in age from 38,000 years to 43,000 years. 



From the preliminary results, the genomic evidence is for a divergence approximately 830,000 years ago. The researchers looked with great interest at the lactose gene which is found on chromosome 2. Most Europeans have the gene which allows them to consume milk as adults. The Neanderthal DNA showed no such capacity to drink milk. However, the FOXP2 gene which is associated with speech is found in the Neanderthal. This does not specifically mean that they could speak. It does not even confirm that this gene was expressed. It does however show that there is the possiblility that they spoke.

Missing the point of anti-evolutionists

How people in various countries view evolution

This is from the Economist.

It is 150 years since the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which suggested that all living things are related and that everything is ultimately descended from a single common ancestor. This has troubled many, including Darwin himself, as it subverted ideas of divine intervention. It is not surprising that the countries least accepting of evolution today tend to be the most devout. In the most recent international survey available, only Turkey is less accepting of the theory than America. Iceland and Denmark are Darwin's most ardent adherents. Indeed America has become only slightly more accepting of Darwin's theory in recent years. In 2008 14% of people polled by Gallup agreed that “man evolved over millions of years”, up from 9% in 1982.

These surveys appear all the time, especially on science-oriented websites, accompanied by a lot of boo-hoo about how scientifically illiterate Americans are. I certainly won’t disagree with the assertion, but I think we are missing something if we just attribute doubt about evolution to a literal belief in creation stories.

The main reason people doubt evolution is that it posits a universe without plan, order or purpose. Physicists do the same thing, but ordinary people are so confused about curved space-time, string theory and uncertainty principles that they can ignore what physicists say.

Many people, on the other hand, say they feel the hand of God in their lives, that prayer seems to work for them and that they can’t feel comfortable with a random world. If we want to spread understanding of evolution – or string theory – we need to deal with that. People may say they doubt evolution because it conflicts with Genesis, but that’s just a convenient way of avoiding the real sticking point. Pointing out the logical flaws in Genesis is talking to the shadow, not the substance. The real question is, does science have anything hopeful to say to people who are yearning for meaning in their lives?

Way to go Bruce!

The environmental news site Grist.org has finally announced the winner of the 2008 eco-hero vote. Is it Barack Obama? James Hansen? No.

With 730 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Hero of the Year is ... [drum roll] … Bruce Nilles. Nilles is director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, which has helped coordinate the extraordinary grassroots movement that's sprung up in the last few years to fight against new coal plants. This victory for Nilles is really a victory for that movement, which has -- with very little help from the establishment or resources from big-money funders -- pulled off an amazing string of victories that is still going on. Nice job, movement. And nice job, Bruce.

Of course, if you want to know what’s wrong with the environmental movement today, just read some of the nasty comments. Talk about Balkanized! Relax dudes. Yer all on the same side.

Happy birthday; now drop dead

As Darwin is being lauded as one of the most important scientists in history on this 200th anniversary of his birth, less than half of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution, and just 55% can associate the man with his theory, according to a Gallup Poll.

Americans' religious beliefs are a significant predictor of their attitudes toward Darwin's theory. Those who attend church most often are the least likely to believe in evolution, and most likely to say they do not believe in it.

Americans who have lower levels of formal education are significantly less likely than others to be able to identity Darwin with his theory, and to have an opinion on it either way.

I would say I am surprised, but this is totally consistent with previous polls. After all we just spent 8 years with a president who didn't believe in evolution.

Lives of the (evolutionary) saints

Sean B. Carroll is a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin and a pretty smart guy who spends his days tracing the course of evolution via DNA and spends his nights writing about it. Maybe being a storyteller makes him a better scientist. In The Making of the Fittest, he put the full faith and credit of DNA-based research at the service of evolution and made it sing.

His new book, published just in time for Darwin’s 200th birthday today (happy birthday Charles), isn’t like that. Remarkable Creatures is a simple history of evolutionary thinking as told through brief biographies of noted scientists, starting with Alexander von Humboldt, who believed in an entirely static world, through Svante Paabo, who figured out how to extract DNA from Neanderthal fossils, thus proving they were not our ancestors. Along with way he profiles Roy Chapman Andrews, the pistol-toting Beloit native who provided the original model for Indiana Jones. 

For anyone who has not really delved into evolution and its history, these stories of the ongoing search for the missing links might be fascinating. I hope it will inspire a whole new generation of paleo-geneticists. Even if you know all about Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Walcott, you will find stories here that you probably have never heard told in a breezy, entertaining prose that moves the stories along like a good mystery novel.

But unlike Carroll’s other work, Remarkable Creatures breaks no new ground. Unlike some of the recent Darwin biographies, it offers no new perspective on why he did what he did. You will find no academic skullduggery, professional backstabbing or scientific mis-deeds here. Unfortunately, it would have required many more volumes.

God and Darwin

This week as we observed Darwin’s 200th birthday, so many of the comments about evolution have reflected such a dumbed down expression of Christianity that’s it’s a beautiful relief to read exploringourmatrix by James McGrath, Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University. I don’t always agree with him, but in every case his is the voice of reason. Too bad more Christians don’t listen.

Here are a couple of relevant excerpts from his recent blogs:

The majority of Christians who accept evolution do so because scientists with relevant expertise accept it. I don't think it should be otherwise. It certainly is wonderful if someone has the time and interest to become well informed about a subject outside their specialty, and for most of us evolution falls into that category. But if you don't have the time to inform yourself, then you really ought to accept what the scientific consensus is, and not a handful of engineers and preachers who tickle people's ears and tell them emotionally-charged things that they want to hear.

For me, my own personal faith has ceased to be about claiming certain things did or didn't happen in the past. That has its place. But I focus more on my own experience, and the reality that we inhabit now. If the teachings of Christianity are "true" in any meaningful sense, then we ought to be more concerned with how we treat others than with debating questions of history or even science.

McGrath takes fundamentalists to task for failing to understand the difference between what we know (for sure) about Jesus (which isn’t much) and what someone believes.

How do we do justice to that higher order of emergence in our experience that we have traditionally referred to as 'God'? The framework within which we speak of such things has changed, and our ideas will thus need reformulation. But in the end, until the experience of the earth's apparent immobility was accounted for, no satisfactory understanding of its motion could be formulated. In the same way, we cannot adequately rethink the nature of reality without doing justice in some way, even if a radically rethought and reformulated one, to the sense of meaning, purpose and transcendence that many human beings have experienced and continue to experience.

Of course, McGrath, with all his biblical learning, is a believer in science and evolution. His faith is not threatened by either. It makes you wonder why they are so threatening to so many others. What does it say about your faith if it can be challenged by a mere scientific discovery?

Too little too late

Having trouble understanding the economic recovery plan? I am.

Mostly you hear from politicians who are trying to either mollify or stir up voters who know next to nothing about economics or the plans. So I turned to a guy who has a long record of representing middle America. Jim Jubak usually writes about which stocks to buy and sell for MSN.com. So now that nobody’s buying, he’s writing some of the most informed and provocative stuff about the recovery plan.

Here is his reaction to the $500,000 salary cap for bankers.

That's it? That's the punishment for the reckless risk taking that pumped up the housing bubble, turned a decline in home prices into a global financial crisis that could shake banks and governments to the core, set off a credit crunch that brought the global economy to a standstill and has necessitated a tidal wave of taxpayer bailouts that will saddle generations to come with a mountain of debt and lower economic growth?

He also takes a more realistic view of what really drives economic activity.

Most economic policy -- and most economic theory -- is built on an assumption that human beings behave rationally. Good luck with spending money effectively on that foundation.

I am making no attempt to summarize his opinions or prescriptions here. The topic is way too complicated, but I do urge you to read his columns as a way of cutting through the clutter from the point of view of someone who is motivated by the same things that are important to the average person. What a relief!

If more people would read what he’s writing, perhaps Congress wouldn’t be so quick to pander.

Foxes still running the henhouse

Watching Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) talk about the stimulus on Meet the Press yesterday had me thinking about why you should never put a politician on TV. They all sounded like they were reading from their prepared talking points. I know. I’ve done lots of talking points. I practically wore out the MUTE button. It was like this was all about them. No. It’s all about me. I’m the one looking for a job or freelance work. They’re still getting paid to blather.

It especially fries me when I hear pols talk about how we can’t afford a stimulus package. I think the term used was “precious taxpayer dollars.” This is coming from the same people who spent the past eight years voting for a trillion dollar deficit. Their “borrow like there’s no tomorrow” policies actually were at the root of the current depression. All that extra money overheated the economy; it had to go somewhere and if you guessed Real Estate, give yourself a gold star. All this talk about irresponsible homeowners who really shouldn’t have taken out that big mortgage or that nasty community reinvestment act that forced bankers to lend to local people is a smoke-screen. This is fiscal policy at its simplest and they failed the final test miserably. Why should anyone listen to them now?

Darwin's other controversy

Darwin may be 200 years old and his theory of evolution by natural selection 150, but there are still many scientists who have a problem swallowing one of the principal implications of “descent with modification” – the idea that animals share emotions with humans. Patricia McConnell, an adjunct professor in the UW zoology department used her time slot at Saturday’s Darwin Day celebration to demonstrate why “human nature” and “animal nature” aren’t so far apart.

Read Darwin still raising controversy...for another reason, by Susan Troller in the CapTimes.

Charles Darwin was able to stir up almost as much controversy with notions about dogs and emotions as with chimps and evolution.

Although Darwin's pioneering notions about natural selection and evolutionary biology continue to draw plenty of fire and fury from religious creationists, he has another book that ruffles feathers, too: "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," published in 1872.

It’s interesting that although the “scientific” objections of Skinnerians and Marxists are not necessarily the same, both come from the same root as the religious objections – a faith in a worldview that’s based outside of science.

Skinnerians (behaviorists) want to think they are pure scientists because they believe only what they can directly observe. But their belief in the separate natures of humans and animals really grows out of a biblical foundation – the supposedly separate creation of humans and animals. They demand proof that there is congruence between humans and animals rather than starting from the Darwinian position that evolution logically implies similarity.

Marxists, of course, tend to deny human nature because they would like to think all human differences, beliefs and customs are created by culture, as writing on a blank slate, not locked in by chemistry or genetics.

Affirming a biological basis for human nature, and admitting that we share some of that nature with our fellow creatures is not the same as saying human behavior is pre-determined (as some fear). But it is the necessary starting point for understanding our behavior, which is step one in making a more civil society.

Celebrating Darwin

The University of Wisconsin is celebrating Darwin Day on Saturday, Feb. 7. Featured speakers include Sean Carroll, a UW-Madison professor of genetics and one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, Patricia McConnell, an authority on dogs and dog behavior, and Jeremy Jackson, an eminent scientist from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography who will speak on evolution and extinction in the oceans. Like evolution itself, Darwin Day is free and open to the public. They thoughtfully provided a helpful reading list, in case you can’t make it to the event.

Sean Carroll - Remarkable Creatures 

Sean Carroll - The Making of the Fittest

Sean Carroll - Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Patricia McConnell - Play Together, Stay Together

Patricia McConnell - Tales of Two Species

Patricia McConnell - For the Love of a Dog
Ethne Barnes - Diseases and Human Evolution
Noel Boaz - Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World is Making Us Sick
Peter Bowler - Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design
Janet Browne - Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography
Frederick Burkhard - Charles Darwin: The Beagle Letters
Francis Collins - The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
Jerry Coyne - Why Evolution is True
Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin - The Descent of Man
Richard Dawkins - The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene
Adrian Desmond - Darwin's Sacred Cause: How Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's View on Human Evolution
Jared Diamond - The Third Chimpanzee
Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant - How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches
Bert Holdobler and E.O. Wilson - The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Society
David Quammen - The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution
National Academy of Sciences - Science, Evolution, and Creationism
Neil Shubin - Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Elliot Sober - Evidence for Evoltuion: The Logic Behind the Science
E.O. Wilson, Michael Ruse, and Joseph Travis - Evolution: The First Four Billion Years

Hit by technology

I was planning to blog today but then I discovered that TDS had turned off my email account and it took two hours on the phone and a couple more more on the computers to get things sorted out. It's a lot more work for me, but I guess it's less work and cost for TDS. We see who the important party is in this relationship. There will be a blog tomorrow, the Good Lord willing and the creeks don't rise.

Hold those negative thoughts

The economy in a funk. An unpopular war dragging on overseas. Enemies arrayed against us around the world. A final presidential approval rating of 32%.

No, not George Bush. Harry Truman. Apparently history has a way of revising popular opinion, so it behooves all of us to hang on to our negative thoughts about GW Bush as long as possible to prevent any possible rehabilitation by future generations who don't know him as well as we do. Read all about it on the Gallup website.

Groundhog smoundhog

In the mundane scheme of things, today is Monday, a workday and also trash day for me. But there is a lot more to celebrate on this Feb. 2 besides bright sunshine.

Call it groundhog day, Imbolc, Candlemas, St. Brigid’s Day or whatever, this is one of those days in the calendar when celebrations from olden times come down to us like cultural echoes that we can hear but not quite understand. They have the power, if we care to pay attention, to open for us a much longer sense of time and tradition.

According to the Celts, the end of winter and the start of the awakening of the world is marked by Imbolc, or 'the lactation of the ewes' in Celtic. The birth of the first lamb means that there is once again fresh milk available, and is the proof of new life returning.

Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens is perhaps a precursor to the North American Groundhog Day.

Today is also Candlemas in the Christian calendar. Traditionally the term "Candlemas" (or Candle Mass) referred to the practice of blessing beeswax candles for use throughout the year, some of which were distributed to the faithful for use in the home.

Since the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, this feast has been referred to as the Feast of Presentation of the Lord, with references to candles and the purification of Mary de-emphasised.

In the British Isles, the day is dedicated to the goddess Brigid; it was adopted as St Brigid's Day in the Christian period. In Scotland the festival is known as Là Fhèill Brìghde, in Ireland as Lá Fhéile Bríde, and in Wales as Gŵyl Fair. Fire and purification are an important aspect of this festival. The lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months.

Whatever its ancient origins, our Groundhog day apparently began as a German custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries.

There is no more evidence to support the accuracy of the groundhog’s forecast than there is of the efficacy of holy candles getting one into heaven. On the other hand, it’s pretty sure that somewhere in the world a lamb was born today, signifying the return of life to our cold, cold world. For that, and all the other shards of history, we can celebrate. It sure beats trash day.