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When a bug is not a bug

calebprime said:
I don't really care about the terminology referring to supposedly distinct styles of music, where the differences between most of them are actually trivial. They are 4/4 electronic dance music, mostly, with percussion.
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Well, I largely don't care either, but I will admit that it does bother me that music magazines here will have an almost infinite amount of categories for "modern" music -- it sometimes seem to approach the "one artist/band, one genre" border -- whereas both the Mass of Tournai, An den schönen blauen Donau, and Music for Prepared Piano will be listed under "Classical". I guess it has to do with my training as a professional taxonomist... Something in me wants to scream, "There are no exclusive synapomorphic characters for this group! It is paraphyletic and in dire need of a revision! Meanwhile, only a few of your 'non-classical' music genres have any meaningful autapomorphic characters and could do with a good bout of synonymisation!"

I only ever get as much worked up when it comes to the disproportionate amount of money and resources that are put into bird systematics and phylogenetics, compared to the meager allowance we have for invertebrate stuff...

calebprime said:
In your example, it would be highly confusing to call all acoustic music after 1000 AD "classical music" because that term has been stable and well-understood to mean the music from just after Bach to early/mid Beethoven, when it's referring to an historical period. And it's also well-understood when it refers to a genre available to consumers, to distinguish it from jazz or rock.
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Still, as you mentioned, it does happen. Back when my town still had a lot of music stores, they were all divided into a vast hall of pop, rock, punk, and what-have-you, all divided into neat little shelves, sorted by whatever esoteric scale the proprietor used, and then a narrow closet at the back where "classical" music, musicals, film music and sometimes jazz were placed. In some of them, a grand total of two people could fit in at the same time, one of which was the clerk. In these places, contemporary music was mixed up with things hundreds of years old, ordered by composer.

This adds one unnecessary step for the consumer. If I want to buy a CD with some form of pop -- and I usually don't; this is all an assumption based on prejudice -- I just need to go to the shelf marked "pop" and I will get it. If I want to buy a CD with waltzes, I can't just go to the waltz shelf, because there isn't one. I will have to either browse randomly, or know beforehand who composed waltz, and then look under his name.

calebprime said:
I speak as an embittered elitist wanker.
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Well, I speak as a taxonomist, and I sound -- so my sister informs me -- as if I was twice my age (I am not yet 30.) in my condemnation of this selective balkanization.
 
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Jorghnassen said:
It's not a bug, it's a[n undocumented] feature.

I just had to say it.
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Fixed that for you :D

And thanks for saying it. It's been sitting there on in my mind the whole while I've been reading this thread, and I didn't have the guts to spit it out... lol
 
quadraginta said:
@Mbob.

We ain't got no cika... sikay... big noisy bugs over on this side'a town yet.

You hoggin' 'em all for yerself?
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You should have headed West into the county over the past several days! They're still here, but starting to die off (my driveway is paved with their carcasses). Today was not nearly as loud as over the weekend. Take a trip out to MVF for ice cream during the day tomorrow - you'll see and hear them. The noise more or less follows the sun - starts gently as the sun rises, reaches a crescendo in mid afternoon, then quiets down as the sun begins to fall.

They do seem to be pretty localized, tho... the epicenter may indeed be my house. Travel five miles North or East from my house and there are none. Lots still five miles West and South of me, but I don't know how far they go. My neighbor was walking around with noise cancelling headphones on Saturday they bugged him so much (note the proper use of BUGged, here, since cicadas are in the correct order).
 
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AvalonXQ said:
All the little crawlies are bugs, including arachnids and insects. It's a colloquial term for invertebrate vermin.
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I'm going to agree with that. When I was a child I had a magazine called Bugs!, it covered insects, arachnids, molluscs, crabs, and so on. It was written by an entomologist so I guess he was happy with the 'nickname'.
 
calebprime said:
As someone who has taught electronic music in a conservatory, I take great exception to the casual -- nay, willful -- use of the term "techno", when here at the JREF -- committed as we all are to the value of terminological precision -- and in general, education, we should distinguish between Dark ambient, Breakbeat, Big git, Dubstep, Drum and Bass, Silly git, Electroclash, Folktronica, Electro pop, Eurodance, Gabba, Yabba, Doo, Goa, Psychedelic Trance, Happy hardcore, Dirty Hardcore, Hard Hardcore, Soft Porn Score, Harcore techo, Four on the Floor, Acid House, Ambient House, White House, House Mouse, Electro House, UK Garage, IDM, and of course the -- to my exquisitely sensitive ear -- obviously distinct genres of Trance, which fall under the broad subcategories of Acid, Classic, Euro, Hard, Hardstyle, Progressive, Tech Uplifting, and Vocal; and it wouldn't be splitting hairs to add Rave, Techno (as such) Downtempo, Glitch, Industrial "music", and Progressive Electronic; nor should we succumb to some Caucasian/Euro-centric hegemonic selection bias by ignoring Alternative hip hop, Crunk, Dirty rap/Pornocore, East Coast hip hop, Gangsta rap, G-funk, Grime, Wanker, Horrorcore, Hyphy, Latin rap -- not to be confused with Chicano rap, an entirely different genre -- Miami bass, Miami Vice, Midwest hip hop, Chicken Scratch, Calling the Chickens to Roost, Rooster Core, Political, Rap Metal, Rap Rock, Sheet Rock, Southern hip hop, Christian porno acid Satire-Core, Chutney, Bollywood ambient, Panir-Cheena, Compa, Mambo, Black Mambo, Big Dumbo, Merengue, and a host of many others, as long as they are all played, with reverence, on a DX7.
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Gabba gabba Hey!
 
madurobob said:
You should have headed West into the county over the past several days! They're still here, but starting to die off (my driveway is paved with their carcasses). Today was not nearly as loud as over the weekend. Take a trip out to MVF for ice cream during the day tomorrow - you'll see and hear them. The noise more or less follows the sun - starts gently as the sun rises, reaches a crescendo in mid afternoon, then quiets down as the sun begins to fall.

They do seem to be pretty localized, tho... the epicenter may indeed be my house. Travel five miles North or East from my house and there are none. Lots still five miles West and South of me, but I don't know how far they go. My neighbor was walking around with noise cancelling headphones on Saturday they bugged him so much (note the proper use of BUGged, here, since cicadas are in the correct order).
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This is kinda interesting. I've been in this apartment complex since the middle of '06. We had a big wave of 'em that summer, and again in '09. Nothing so far this year, but it seems like they usually turn up a bit later here, like July or thereabouts.

I haven't seen or heard one yet, and we leave the slider to the porch open nearly all the time so the cats can go in and out. When the cicadas are molting they generally leave shells on the porch screen to taunt the kittehs. You wouldn't think half a dozen miles would make that much difference.
 
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quadraginta said:
This is kinda interesting. I've been in this apartment complex since the middle of '06. We had a big wave of 'em that summer, and again in '09. Nothing so far this year, but it seems like they usually turn up a bit later here, like July or thereabouts.

I haven't seen or heard one yet, and we leave the slider to the porch open nearly all the time so the cats can go in and out. When the cicadas are molting they generally leave shells on the porch screen to taunt the kittehs. You wouldn't think half a dozen miles would make that much difference.
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I don't know why they are so heavy in some places, an not in others. These are apparently the "Great Southern Brood" of the 13 year cicadas. This website maps emergences:

http://www.magicicada.org/databases/magicicada/map.html
 
Kotatsu said:
In which case it isn't a bee, and in which case Shrike wouldn't call it a bee.

In which case it isn't a grasshopper, and in which case Shrike wouldn't call it a grasshopper.

But as Shrike stated that there was a bee in the flower and a grasshopper in the field, your alternatives make no sense.
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The point, which you may have just heard whooshing way over your head, is how does he know? If I, or any normal person, see a bug, we're incredibly unlikely to know the difference between various similar-looking bugs, even if we're in a position to see enough detail for a more knowledgeable person to be able to tell. Maybe Shrike can tell the difference between a grasshopper and a cricket at 20 metres when half of it's covered by a leaf, but most people can't, and therefore expecting them to specify exactly what species it is instead of just calling it a bug is extremely unrealistic and simply never going to happen.

The only difference I can see between the arrogance of the expert using the more limited definition of "bug", and the arrogance of the layman using the less restricted definition -- and they are both being arrogant -- is that while the former has made some sort of analysis of the situation, the latter is just willfully ignorant.
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No, the latter is simply using the word to mean what it has meant for a long time. It's the people demanding they stop using it to mean that and instead use it to mean something new that they've just made up who are not just arrogant, but also incredibly naive if they actually think people will pay any attention to them.
 
madurobob said:
I don't know why they are so heavy in some places, an not in others. These are apparently the "Great Southern Brood" of the 13 year cicadas. This website maps emergences:

http://www.magicicada.org/databases/magicicada/map.html
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Neat link. Thanks.

Nothing east of Old 86, all the way to Falls Lake. But they're all over western Orange County, north Chatham, and north of Durham.

Huh. Go figure.

Reporting bias, mebbe? Damn city slickers.
 
quadraginta said:
Neat link. Thanks.

Nothing east of Old 86, all the way to Falls Lake. But they're all over western Orange County, north Chatham, and north of Durham.

Huh. Go figure.

Reporting bias, mebbe? Damn city slickers.
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Or, perhaps also lots of paved spaces and over use of grub-killing pesticides? Damn city slickers.
 
madurobob said:
Or, perhaps also lots of paved spaces and over use of grub-killing pesticides? Damn city slickers.
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Could be, but like I said, I've seen 'em two seasons in the five years I've lived in this apt. complex, and I'm right across the street from the Europa. It ain't wall to wall pavement, but it ain't exactly the sticks, either. Plus, we have a grounds-keeping crew that's always spraying some kind of mystery substances.

Hasn't hurt the wildlife much, though. We've got more than the normal complement of rabbit, squirrel, and assorted birdies including owls and hawks, plus deer, racoons, etc., and at least one mama fox that dens up somewhere near Booker Creek and uses our complex as a private larder. She has a rep for scaring the hell out of people walking their dogs late at night, especially when she's teaching her kits to hunt, and the management's pet rules make sure there isn't any unescorted competition.
 
Cuddles said:
The point, which you may have just heard whooshing way over your head, is how does he know?
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Well, I assume, based on his/her contribution to this thread, that Shrike has some form of proper education that allows him/her to distinguish a bee from a hoverfly and a grasshopper from a cricket. It is not nearly as difficult as you and others here, who seem to lack this education, are trying to make it. I teach these things to two sets of students every summer, and they have no problem telling these things apart after just a few hours of field experience. Note that the actual knowledge needed to tell them apart can be learned in five minutes, but a few hours are needed to get some feeling for the diversity in each group.

Cuddles said:
If I, or any normal person, see a bug, we're incredibly unlikely to know the difference between various similar-looking bugs, even if we're in a position to see enough detail for a more knowledgeable person to be able to tell.
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No, you are not. Not on the level this discussion is, in any case. I can agree that it is probably too much to ask that someone who has not got even the crudest of biological educations should be able to tell apart different species of insects, or even different genera of families in some cases. But telling apart different orders of insects, well, there are just a comparative handful of cases where that would be impossible with only one day's self-teaching in the field.

And to not be able to tell apart an insect and an arachnid? Well, no person who can set aside time in their schedule to watch TV can honestly claim that they don't have the time learn how to tell if something is an arachnid or an insect. Again, there are a handful of exceptions, but these are typically not things that this so-called "normal" person would be likely to encounter anyway.

You and other "normal" people are "incredibly unlikely" to know the difference only if you prefer to remain ignorant about the natural world, and content yourself with the "normal", "It is some sort of disgusting bug and I don't care what it is". Biodiversity information is so easily accessible these days, that there is no other excuse.

Cuddles said:
Maybe Shrike can tell the difference between a grasshopper and a cricket at 20 metres when half of it's covered by a leaf,
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I have no idea. Distance and coverage was also not detailed in Shrike's example, and are therefore irrelevant. He/she might as well have been talking about one that can be clearly be seen sitting in full exposure just half a meter away.

And even so, you can certainly quite easily learn to tell a bee apart from a hoverfly at 20 meters distance from the way they behave. A bit trickier with bees and wasps, but certainly not impossible. Crickets and grasshoppers? In the general case, the same holds true. It is not very hard for anyone who is willing to spend ten minutes reading a book. Of course there will be tricky, usually tropical, species that are not as easy to place, but in the general case, all orders of insects are easy to tell apart, as are many families.

Cuddles said:
but most people can't, and therefore expecting them to specify exactly what species it is
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No one is expecting that. All examples in this thread are on family-level or higher. "Cricket" and "grasshopper" are not different species, nor are "bee", "wasp" or "hoverfly".

Cuddles said:
No, the latter is simply using the word to mean what it has meant for a long time.
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It is ignorance in that instead of trying to find out what the creature is, it is called a "bug", and that is believed to be sufficient classification.

It is arrogance because it presumes that language is static, and that what your great-grandfather taught your grand-father was correct must still be correct in all contexts.

Cuddles said:
It's the people demanding they stop using it to mean that and instead use it to mean something new that they've just made up who are not just arrogant, but also incredibly naive if they actually think people will pay any attention to them.
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This is not something that is demanded. What is hoped is that once a person learns that a certain term has a different meaning in a scientific context than in a non-scientific context, that person will be less casual when discussing that or related terms in a scientific context. As the original text was from a page I would expect to have a scientific outlook, it is correct that they true to educate people that in a scientific context, not all insects are bugs. In fact, I would assume that it is their duty to do so. It certainly is in my country.

The same could easily be said about "worms", "fish", "lice", and so on, as well as terms like "theory".
 
quadraginta said:
Could be, but like I said, I've seen 'em two seasons in the five years I've lived in this apt. complex, and I'm right across the street from the Europa. It ain't wall to wall pavement, but it ain't exactly the sticks, either. Plus, we have a grounds-keeping crew that's always spraying some kind of mystery substances.
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Well, I doubt you've seen the 13 year cicadas twice in the past five years... ;)

The annual cicadas do come out in late July/August. I've heard them called "dog day cicadas" because of that.
 
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