Especially if you are a Steven Colbert fan. Go here and make your own notice!Thanks to PZ Myers for spotting this.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
You're on Notice!
Especially if you are a Steven Colbert fan. Go here and make your own notice!Thanks to PZ Myers for spotting this.
What will the fundies make of this?
Apparently Rudi Giuliani has been stepping out lately. I have to admit she looks pretty good in the picture, but she really needs to work on her walk.The handsome fellow she's with is of course Donald Trump.
Here is a link to the video.
She also uses waaay to much perfume.
A tip of the antennae to Pam at Pam's House Blend for this gem.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Sheep PETA and Ethics...
A commenter on my recent post about the gay sheep research sent me ths very interesting link about PETA's involvement in this whole controversy...so check out this link from thenexthurrah:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/09/peta_crosses_th.html
The author, one empty pockets on reading PETA's claims about this research went and interviewed Dr. Proselli abut PETA's claim that the research is designed to help cure homosexuality in humans.
Emptypockets concludes:
A tip of the antennae to Jim Newman for the link.
Update 1/4/07 also from Jim Newman is this article from the Daily Kos:
A wolf in gay sheep's clothing: Corruption at the London Times
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/4/134158/4348
Technorati Tags:
gay sheep
science
ethics
PETA
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/09/peta_crosses_th.html
The author, one empty pockets on reading PETA's claims about this research went and interviewed Dr. Proselli abut PETA's claim that the research is designed to help cure homosexuality in humans.
Emptypockets concludes:
"PETA has joined the company of intelligent designists and global warming deniers, those who misreport scientific research, cherry-pick results, and flat-out lie to further their political agenda. PETA picked Dr. Roselli because sheep are adorable, unlike mice or flies, and because gay rights is a hot-button issue. They lied about his work and his intention because they want to turn as much of the public as they can against scientists who use animals. Lying about and distorting science in a campaign against biology research is something I've come to expect from the right, from Kansas school boards and Sen. Santorum. We should not allow it to take root on the left."Very true and I hope my readers will check this post out for themselves.
A tip of the antennae to Jim Newman for the link.
Update 1/4/07 also from Jim Newman is this article from the Daily Kos:
A wolf in gay sheep's clothing: Corruption at the London Times
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/4/134158/4348
Technorati Tags:
gay sheep
science
ethics
PETA
'Gay' sheep, Science and Ethics
Scientists are currently looking for ways to reduce homosexual behavior in sheep. Roughly 8% of rams prefer mating with other rams rather the ewes and this behavior appears to be a matter of biology. Now a endocrinological study attempting to modify this same sex behavior has come under fire as being perhaps unethical. According to an article in the Sunday Times of London (December 31 2006) scientists have been able to reduce the amount of homosexual behavior in sheep by modifying hormone levels in the sheep's brain.
This sort of thing ought to be good news for LBGT advocates because the sheep research strongly suggests an innate basis for sexual orientation. But as the article notes, the research has raised the ire of both animal rights activists and gay activists as well. Martina Navratilova defended what she sees as the sheep's 'right to be gay' and asserted that gays and lesbians would be "deeply offended" by the implications of this homophobic and cruel research. The article claims that the research could lead to ways that women could screen for and reduce the chance of having a child with same sex attractions. But see my next entry for an update on this claim and it's origin.
From my perspective as an LGBT person and a scientist, the research is important research in terms of getting at a fundamental understanding of sexual orientation. If some one is going to argue that sexual orientation is more than a matter of choice then this research ought to be supported. It is not after all sufficient to argue that same sex attraction is not a matter of choice and stop there. That sort of strategy is much like the intelligent design strategy of inferring the existence of an intelligent designer and stopping there, saying that the nature of the designer is outside the realm of science: bad strategy.
Obviously the research raises some ethical questions. Assume we can determine the possible sexual orientation of a child in utero and can intervene to modify this orientation. Should parents have the right to intervene to either abort or hormonally modify their offspring? On the one hand, reproductive rights are something many people have fought for over the last 50 years. How is letting women do this sort of thing any different? On the other hand, what are we doing to ourselves as a society if we allow people to do things that reduce the diversity of human experience for the sake of what we as parents want. If fetuses have some rights, is this sort of hormonal manipulation, merely another type of medical intervention such as prenatal surgery, or is it an immoral intervention insulting to the dignity of the person? I hope you see how this sort of issue has the potential of redefining many of the fault lines that divide us today.
I am not going to weigh in here (OK maybe a little)except to say that my tendency is to let these things be between the Doctor and the mother and let the social issues sort themselves out. I don't know what other option is really workable in a pluralistic society. I suppose we could draw a line and say no interventions into fetal development are allowed unless it is to prevent a very proscribed list of life threatening problems. In my mind the possible applications of the research sets up a conflict between several different principles that I deem important:
Regardless of the ethical implications for humans, it seems the research is important and trying to stop the research is definitely the wrong thing to do. But we do need to get beyond some of the social issues that excise us and start having a meaningful social dialogue about some of these highly disruptive technologies that are in the pipe line. I think the dialogue we need is related to the following questions asked by Richard Dawkins in a short article which has been highly misinterpreted as being advocacy for eugenics:
Technorati Tags:
gay sheep
science
ethics
This sort of thing ought to be good news for LBGT advocates because the sheep research strongly suggests an innate basis for sexual orientation. But as the article notes, the research has raised the ire of both animal rights activists and gay activists as well. Martina Navratilova defended what she sees as the sheep's 'right to be gay' and asserted that gays and lesbians would be "deeply offended" by the implications of this homophobic and cruel research. The article claims that the research could lead to ways that women could screen for and reduce the chance of having a child with same sex attractions. But see my next entry for an update on this claim and it's origin.
From my perspective as an LGBT person and a scientist, the research is important research in terms of getting at a fundamental understanding of sexual orientation. If some one is going to argue that sexual orientation is more than a matter of choice then this research ought to be supported. It is not after all sufficient to argue that same sex attraction is not a matter of choice and stop there. That sort of strategy is much like the intelligent design strategy of inferring the existence of an intelligent designer and stopping there, saying that the nature of the designer is outside the realm of science: bad strategy.
Obviously the research raises some ethical questions. Assume we can determine the possible sexual orientation of a child in utero and can intervene to modify this orientation. Should parents have the right to intervene to either abort or hormonally modify their offspring? On the one hand, reproductive rights are something many people have fought for over the last 50 years. How is letting women do this sort of thing any different? On the other hand, what are we doing to ourselves as a society if we allow people to do things that reduce the diversity of human experience for the sake of what we as parents want. If fetuses have some rights, is this sort of hormonal manipulation, merely another type of medical intervention such as prenatal surgery, or is it an immoral intervention insulting to the dignity of the person? I hope you see how this sort of issue has the potential of redefining many of the fault lines that divide us today.
I am not going to weigh in here (OK maybe a little)except to say that my tendency is to let these things be between the Doctor and the mother and let the social issues sort themselves out. I don't know what other option is really workable in a pluralistic society. I suppose we could draw a line and say no interventions into fetal development are allowed unless it is to prevent a very proscribed list of life threatening problems. In my mind the possible applications of the research sets up a conflict between several different principles that I deem important:
- The right to individual self determination is important and needs to be defended against the State.
- Social diversity is valuable and steps need to be taken to prevent excess homogenation of our society.
- We need to consider what we as a civilization want for the future of our species.
Regardless of the ethical implications for humans, it seems the research is important and trying to stop the research is definitely the wrong thing to do. But we do need to get beyond some of the social issues that excise us and start having a meaningful social dialogue about some of these highly disruptive technologies that are in the pipe line. I think the dialogue we need is related to the following questions asked by Richard Dawkins in a short article which has been highly misinterpreted as being advocacy for eugenics:
"I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler'’s death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn'’t the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?"Good but disturbing questions and as our scientific understanding of the interplay between genetics and environment continues to deepen, we are going to find ourselves less and less able to avoid them.
Technorati Tags:
gay sheep
science
ethics
More George Bush Science
My gentle readers know various Kansas bloggers have been railing against George Bush letting politics dictate science policy and the Angry Astronomer provides a good set of links to yet another example. Apparently the National Park Service's political hacks have bought into the teach the controversy issue and have not only allowed creationist texts about the Grand Canyon into the park bookstore but also forbid park rangers from telling visitors about the age of the Grand Canyon.
According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the Park Service has been told to avoid offending fundamentalists and not mention what SCIENCE says about the age of the Canyon(Hint: It's more than 6,000 years old). Worse yet a 2002 memo providing guidelines to park interpreters and rangers for dealing with science versus religion has been suppressed.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801
Worse yet from a social point of view is this report from the PEER web site:
http://www.peer.org/campaigns/publiclands/faith-based/index.php
By the way you cannot find information on the Geology of the Grand Canyon on the National Park Service's Grand Canyon site...unless you search the archives. Then you can find this link. Look quickly before it too is suppressed.
Update! See an alternate view and my response here.
Technorati Tags:
Science
Grand Canyon
Bush
Creationism
According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the Park Service has been told to avoid offending fundamentalists and not mention what SCIENCE says about the age of the Canyon(Hint: It's more than 6,000 years old). Worse yet a 2002 memo providing guidelines to park interpreters and rangers for dealing with science versus religion has been suppressed.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801
Worse yet from a social point of view is this report from the PEER web site:
http://www.peer.org/campaigns/publiclands/faith-based/index.php
To quote:
"In a series of recent decisions, the National Park Service has approved the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books giving a biblical explanation for the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders.
These moves all emanate from top Park Service political appointees over the objections of park superintendents, agency lawyers and scientists. A number of fundamentalist Christian and socially conservative groups are claiming credit for these actions and touting their new direct and personal access to Bush Administration officials."
There is a link to a petition to fight this sort of mixing of government and religion so please hop on over to the petition site and sign on. The site also has a way to pass on an e-mail message to your friends to alert them to this as well.
By the way you cannot find information on the Geology of the Grand Canyon on the National Park Service's Grand Canyon site...unless you search the archives. Then you can find this link. Look quickly before it too is suppressed.
Update! See an alternate view and my response here.
Technorati Tags:
Science
Grand Canyon
Bush
Creationism
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Pareidolia and Friends
Recently, I briefly discussed the word pareidolia, the seeing of sacred images in the mundane. John over at Blog Meridian has picked up on this and has a wonderful post enlarging this concept, even relating it to the Hitchcock movie, Vertigo. It turns out that there are a whole series of related words such as apophenia,the seeing of connections between meaningless data and synchronicity used by Carl Jung to refer to "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events."
Pareidolia is a recent coinage but the phenomenon is quite well known. I had several encounters with pareidolia during Pope John Paul's 1993 visit to Denver during which I was in the Papal choir. Here is an entry from my journal for 8/15/2003. We were at the Mother Cabrini shrine in the mountains just outside of Denver:
Here is a link to similar sorts of pictures.
Since we were at a holy place some of the other people there began reporting odd things. One of my fellow characters reported a vision related to looking at the sun through slitted eyes. He reported that:
The rest of his description was quite psychedelic and I can see how the crowd at Fatima could undergo some sort of mass hallucination that is described as the Miracle of the Sun. Other people were claiming that their crosses were turning to gold, or that they were smelling roses when none were around, this of course being a favorite sort of miracle associated with saints-though usually it is the dead body smelling of roses or flowers. I think there is something in us that actually likes to suspend judgment; quite frankly I felt the same sort of excitement that I did when I as a young teenager playing with a ouch board.
John mentions that pareidolia can be auditory as well. I am not sure if this qualifies, but here a related sort of phenomenon happened to Richard Dawkins when he was young. He tells about this in his recent book, The God Delusion:
Dawkins discusses this as part of his argument against the proof for God based on personal experience since the human brain has very powerful simulation and modeling capabilities.
He concludes in the following way:
By real Dawkins means related to something else other than your own brain's modeling efforts. After all, certainly the experience can subjectively real or in the case of synchronicity, the connection imbued with subjective meaning.
I had a good example of this when I was an undergraduate. I was standing outside the cooperative where I was living at Cornell, a place called Watermargin , and I was talking with some of the other residents about insects-specifically the green lacewing. I think I was telling them that lacewings were predators which they are, and I happened to raise my left hand's index finger just in time for a green lacewing to actually land on it. Of course everyone went oooh and ahhh though perhaps their wonder had been heightened by concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinal in their blood streams.
I suspect my audience and I would have still had a certain wonderful sense of surprise at this event. It seems that we find it rewarding emotionally to use our brain's simulation software whether we are aware of it or not. We love optical illusions, including ambiguous pictures such as those of in symbolist art, or in the works of M.C. Escher. As poets we often practice found poetry and use juxtaposition of words and images as inspiration for writing. As scientists we are constantly, as Dawkins did, spotting possible connections and filtering them through the scientific method to assess their meaning in the external world.
I ran across a very interesting example just this morning reading Steven Jay Gould's book of essays, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes. In his essay, "The Titular Bishop of Titiopolis," about Nicolaus Steno, often considered the founder of modern geology, there is a little gem about an agate in which could be seen "Christ on the cross with all the proper accoutrements, including a sun on the favored right side and a moon on the despised left." Gould's point was that as long as all odd things in rock were lumped together, fossils as well as these occasional accidental images could be lumped together as due to the plastic power in the rocks themselves and there would be no science of paleontology today.
What Steno, according to Gould, did was to classify objects in rock into those that were formed before the rock itself(e.g. fossils) and those that were formed after the rock (e.g. intrusions, veins, agate etc) that might "by accident resemble some abstract form or design." Steno's arguments and classification scheme for objects embedded in rocks enabled naturalists to understand that sedimentary rocks were 'created' after the fossils in them has solidified. Marine fossils high in the mountains must have 'solidified' before the sedimentary rock that surrounds them. The implication is that the Earth has a history, that things were not as some might argue created in place and that it is possible to infer a good deal about the Earth's history by careful inference. This powerful notion came about, according to Gould by Steno's reclassification of objects found in rocks into two groups in a way that had not been carefully done before. So from Steno we get to Lyell and from Lyell we get to Darwin and the intimate evolutionary connections among all the world's organisms that modern biology so rightfully celebrates.
Thus, whether in poetry or science, we use the powerful pattern recognition systems embodied in pareidolia and we relish making meaningful connections and sorting out ambiguity. I find it odd and tragic that some people can't seem to do that. They are so literal they cannot accept the power of metaphor in sacred text, or so hung up on the notion of intentional design that when confronted with the illusion of design they retreat from empiricism much like what Dawkins might have done had he been a little more frightened and impressionable.
Technorati tags:
science,
poetry,
pareidolia
religion
Pareidolia is a recent coinage but the phenomenon is quite well known. I had several encounters with pareidolia during Pope John Paul's 1993 visit to Denver during which I was in the Papal choir. Here is an entry from my journal for 8/15/2003. We were at the Mother Cabrini shrine in the mountains just outside of Denver:
"We met an interesting fellow from Chicago who had a set of allegedly miraculous
photographs that he had collected. Some of them show a crucifix in a cemetery
and each picture has a strange lighting effect. One for instance shows a beam of
light shooting from the out stretched hand of Christ. Quite frankly most look
like aberrations caused by light shining through the lens at a particular angle.
It strikes me as odd that the machine could record these miraculous images by
chance but the person taking the picture was not aware of them... "
Here is a link to similar sorts of pictures.
"There were several images seemed not so easily explained. One showed a
seemingly solid image of a robed woman floating in the air. It didn't look like
a deliberate fake but all these strike me as looking too hard for
miracles...Maybe I should be the Pope's Devil's advocate on these matters."
Since we were at a holy place some of the other people there began reporting odd things. One of my fellow characters reported a vision related to looking at the sun through slitted eyes. He reported that:
"the sun seemed to resemble a fragmenting host (that is a communion host of
course) with the upper part complete but the lower part shattering in fragments
which seemed to increase and not get any smaller..."
The rest of his description was quite psychedelic and I can see how the crowd at Fatima could undergo some sort of mass hallucination that is described as the Miracle of the Sun. Other people were claiming that their crosses were turning to gold, or that they were smelling roses when none were around, this of course being a favorite sort of miracle associated with saints-though usually it is the dead body smelling of roses or flowers. I think there is something in us that actually likes to suspend judgment; quite frankly I felt the same sort of excitement that I did when I as a young teenager playing with a ouch board.
John mentions that pareidolia can be auditory as well. I am not sure if this qualifies, but here a related sort of phenomenon happened to Richard Dawkins when he was young. He tells about this in his recent book, The God Delusion:
"Once as a child I heard a ghost; a male voice murmuring, as if in recitation or
prayer. I could almost but not quite make out the words, which seemed to have a
serious, solemn timbre...as I got closer it grew louder and then it suddenly
'flipped' inside my head. I was now close enough to discern what it really was.
The wind, gusting through the keyhole, was creating sounds..." (Dawkins pp
90-91)
Dawkins discusses this as part of his argument against the proof for God based on personal experience since the human brain has very powerful simulation and modeling capabilities.
He concludes in the following way:
"If you've had such an experience, you may find yourself believing firmly that
it was real. But don't expect the rest of us to take your word for it,
especially if we have the slightest familiarity with the brain and its powerful
workings." (Dawkins p 92)
By real Dawkins means related to something else other than your own brain's modeling efforts. After all, certainly the experience can subjectively real or in the case of synchronicity, the connection imbued with subjective meaning.
I had a good example of this when I was an undergraduate. I was standing outside the cooperative where I was living at Cornell, a place called Watermargin , and I was talking with some of the other residents about insects-specifically the green lacewing. I think I was telling them that lacewings were predators which they are, and I happened to raise my left hand's index finger just in time for a green lacewing to actually land on it. Of course everyone went oooh and ahhh though perhaps their wonder had been heightened by concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinal in their blood streams.
I suspect my audience and I would have still had a certain wonderful sense of surprise at this event. It seems that we find it rewarding emotionally to use our brain's simulation software whether we are aware of it or not. We love optical illusions, including ambiguous pictures such as those of in symbolist art, or in the works of M.C. Escher. As poets we often practice found poetry and use juxtaposition of words and images as inspiration for writing. As scientists we are constantly, as Dawkins did, spotting possible connections and filtering them through the scientific method to assess their meaning in the external world.
I ran across a very interesting example just this morning reading Steven Jay Gould's book of essays, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes. In his essay, "The Titular Bishop of Titiopolis," about Nicolaus Steno, often considered the founder of modern geology, there is a little gem about an agate in which could be seen "Christ on the cross with all the proper accoutrements, including a sun on the favored right side and a moon on the despised left." Gould's point was that as long as all odd things in rock were lumped together, fossils as well as these occasional accidental images could be lumped together as due to the plastic power in the rocks themselves and there would be no science of paleontology today.
What Steno, according to Gould, did was to classify objects in rock into those that were formed before the rock itself(e.g. fossils) and those that were formed after the rock (e.g. intrusions, veins, agate etc) that might "by accident resemble some abstract form or design." Steno's arguments and classification scheme for objects embedded in rocks enabled naturalists to understand that sedimentary rocks were 'created' after the fossils in them has solidified. Marine fossils high in the mountains must have 'solidified' before the sedimentary rock that surrounds them. The implication is that the Earth has a history, that things were not as some might argue created in place and that it is possible to infer a good deal about the Earth's history by careful inference. This powerful notion came about, according to Gould by Steno's reclassification of objects found in rocks into two groups in a way that had not been carefully done before. So from Steno we get to Lyell and from Lyell we get to Darwin and the intimate evolutionary connections among all the world's organisms that modern biology so rightfully celebrates.
Thus, whether in poetry or science, we use the powerful pattern recognition systems embodied in pareidolia and we relish making meaningful connections and sorting out ambiguity. I find it odd and tragic that some people can't seem to do that. They are so literal they cannot accept the power of metaphor in sacred text, or so hung up on the notion of intentional design that when confronted with the illusion of design they retreat from empiricism much like what Dawkins might have done had he been a little more frightened and impressionable.
Technorati tags:
science,
poetry,
pareidolia
religion
Friday, December 29, 2006
Prehistoric Monsters?
Pretty embarrassing to be hosting the Circus of the Spineless this month without any spineless blog entries of my own, but fortunately my local grocery store came to the rescue. We were grocery shopping last night and perusing the post Christmas close outs when what to my wondering eyes should appear but this little kit from the Smithsonian Institute.The box screams:
"Prehistoric Sea Monsters"
"Watch living fossils from the dinosaur age grow before your eyes."
"Hatch and grow amazing Triops again and again"
Well, sounds a bit like sea monkeys to me if you are familiar with those so naturally I was a bit skeptical. It turns out that these Triops are pretty neat. The Wikipedia entry for Triops says that this genus of Crustacea includes species that appear to be unchanged since the Triassic about 220 million years ago...so I guess that does put them in the living fossil category.Image credit:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Triops_longicaudatus.jpg
Photograph taken by Dominik Tomaszewski from http://mytriops.com/
It's not clear from the instructions which Triops species is in the Kit, presumably it is Triops cancriformis or T. longicautatus. Hopefully I can find out for sure. They are not sea monsters, but instead live in small fresh water temporary pools, unlike "Sea monkeys" which live in briney water such as the great salt lake. Both Triops and Sea Monkey's are in the class Branchiopoda which also includes fairy shrimp, a familiar resident of temporary fresh water pools here in the Midwest.
At any rate, my plan is to hold off setting them up until I start my Spring semester and have my general biology students follow them through their life cycle with me. I've done this before with "Sea Monkeys" as a way of providing something concrete to unify the semester and I will blog on them periodically.
Other links:
Pictures and movies of Triops:
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Triops_cancriformis/
A Triops fansite:
http://mytriops.com/
An introduction to the Branchiopoda:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/crustacea/branchiopoda.html
and if you have never had Sea Monkeys before: the Official Sea Monkey site!
http://www.sea-monkey.com/
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Circus of the Spineless #16
Merry Christmas or as PZ Myers might rather say: "Merry Cephmas." His Cephmas cookie is to the left used with his kind permission.
At the Annotated Budak, Marcus Ng starts us off with a couple of nice bee pictures right up my alley including a huge Xylocopa latipes.
http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2006/12/bees.html.
Many of my readers know that my masthead features a Xylocopa virginica, impressive enough in flight but I would love to see X. latipes in action!
He has a nice stingless bee photo as well.
Speaking of Hymenoptera, Karen from Rurality blog submits some pictures of mud dauber nests, I am not sure which one this is. She found these on a tree trunk, and notes that she normally finds them on manmade structures.
http://rurality.blogspot.com/2006/12/stings.html
As an etymological aside, down South she calls them dirt dobbers, rather than mud daubers which is, as she notes, a more familiar term for our Northern readers. Not to digress but my wife plays bingo with her mom and bingo players often use ink filled bottles with a sponge top to mark the squares on their cards, and these are called (at least here in Kansas) "dabbers" but pronounced 'dawber' as I would pronounce 'dauber'.
Yet another insect post from "A DC Birding Blog" this time of an Eye elator. Too bad the specimen was dead because this is another really impressive insect in life.
http://dendroica.blogspot.com/2006/12/eyed-elator.html
Some last moment insect entries include a Syrphid fly from Jennifer Orth, and a couple from Bev at Burning Silo:
Springtails everywhere
http://magickcanoe.com/blog/2006/12/08/springtails-everywhere/
and Photographing the Dobsonfly
http://magickcanoe.com/blog/2006/12/12/favourite-moments-3-photographing-the-dobsonfly/
We rented Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest over Christmas and of course the star of the movie as far as I was concerned was the the giant squid. So from Craig at Deep Sea News comes a comes a link to a video of a giant squid, a young female, only 24 feet long.
http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2006/12/kraken_video.php .
PZ Myers, of course, also has a lengthy thread related to this video at Pharyngula. By the way, I guess this PZ Myer's Babe in a Manger (**eg**):
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/friday_cephalopod_adorable_bab.php
If Kraken aren't enough excitement for you, Craig also has a couple of entries about carnivorous sponges:
http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2006/12/man_eating_sponges.php
http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2006/12/carnivorous_sponge_video.php
The video is not the best quality and the best stuff is toward the end, but it does show the sponges in context. What seems to be a very confused slug provides a little mystery in this amusing entry from snailstales:
http://snailstales.blogspot.com/2006/11/funeral-march-for-dead-slug.html
Is it true that a dead slug tells no tales?
PZ Myer's submission this month introduces us to the higher levels of animal phylogeny:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/superclades_of_the_cambrian.php. He introduces us to the lophotrochozoa, an assemblage of animals including mollusks and annelids along with some wonderfully obscure and interesting creatures such as the Acanthocephala. One of the commenters, by the way, posted a link to this tree of life based on ribosomal RNA sequence comparisons.
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/DownloadfilesToL.html
This can be printed out in a large format for your wall or where ever.
Finally a couple of crustacean entries. First up from Jennifer Orth's Invasive species weblog is a report of a newly reported invasive shrimp species in the Great Lakes. This is the 183rd invasive species known to have entered the great lakes:
http://invasivespecies.blogspot.com/2006/12/shrimply-worst.html
She provides a link to a paper by Ricciardi and Rasmussen who discuss some of the characteristics shared by invasive aquatic species and how various sorts information of might be used to predict which species are likely to invade the great lakes. The shrimp happens to be from the same Black Sea area from which the Zebra Mussel originated.
The last crustacean entry is my own, quite fortuitous entry about PREHISTORIC SEA MONSTERS, actually a Branchiopod called Triops being marketed by the Smithsonian Institute in little rearing kit similar to those for "Sea Monkeys".
http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/12/prehistoric-monsters.html
I was not familiar with these critters and plan to rear them out this spring at school. If you are looking for a possible gift for a child or child like adult for next Christmas, these kits may be available in your area on closeout.
Enjoy December's spineless offerings. The upcoming schedule for the Circus can be found at the Circus's home page.
http://invertebrates.blogspot.com/
The submission rules are at: http://invertebrates.blogspot.com/2005/09/rules-dudes-and-dudettes.html
Technorati tags:
invertebrates,
science,
zoology,
animals,
Blog carnivals
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)