Got $100,000?

Ray Comfort desperately wants to debate Richard Dawkins, and has even offered to pay him $10,000. Dawkins has a counter-offer: he’ll do it for $100,000, to be donated to the RDF. Comfort has now upped the ante to $20,000. It’s not enough.

I would encourage teams of creationist philanthropists to get together, scrape up the $100K, and pass it along to Comfort, who will then deposit it in the coffers of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Not only would creationists have finally done something productive and contributed to the promulgation of reason for once, but the spectacle of this debate would be a source of endless hilarity for years to come.

Richard does have a few other requests: that Comfort reprise his banana argument, and that the event would have to be recorded by the RDF team, for the enlightenment of the world. It’s not too much to ask.

Don’t remind me

Do I really need to see these old reminders that some of our politicians are idiots? Here’s a quote from Governor Mark Sanford of South* Carolina:

Well I think that it’s just, and science is more and more documenting this, is that there are real “chinks” in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of there being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being… is completely at odds with, you know, one of the laws of thermodynamics which is the law of, of … in essence, destruction.

I know, it’s the South, the domain of knuckle-dragging bibliolators. So guess who said this a little more recently, in reference to Sarah Palin’s pro-creationist comments?

I saw her comments on it yesterday, and I thought they were appropriate, which is, you know, let’s — if there are competing theories, and they are credible, her view of it was, according to the comments in the newspaper, allow them all to be presented or allow them both to be presented so students could be exposed to both or more and have a chance to be exposed to the various theories and make up their own minds…

In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed — not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated, but in terms of the curriculum in the schools in Minnesota, we’ve taken the approach that that’s a local decision.

Yes, that’s our very own Governor Tim Pawlenty, of the eminently Yankee state of Minnesota. Shrivels the cockles of my heart, he does.

The latest nonsense from Sanford: he is refusing to use the money in Obama’s stimulus package to help the economically afflicted people of his state; instead, he offers prayers. That is the very definition of the uselessness of right-wing Republicans.

* Location clarified at the urgent request of many embarrassed North Carolinians.

Weird-eyed fish

i-e88a953e59c2ce6c5e2ac4568c7f0c36-rb.png

This is a photograph of Macropinna microstoma, also called barreleyes. It has a very peculiar optical arrangement. When you first look at this photo, you may think the two small ovals above and behind its mouth are the eyes, and that it looks rather sad…wrong. Those are its nostrils. The eyes are actually the two strange fluorescent green objects that look like they are imbedded in its transparent, dome-like head.

i-e4c1d2dbc8b451db6023adcf1a04981a-macropinna.jpeg
(Click for larger image)
Video frame-grab of Macropinna microstoma at a depth of 744 m, showing the intact, transparent shield that covers the top of the head. The green spheres are the eye lenses, each sitting atop a silvery tube. Visible on the right eye, just below the lens on the forward part of the tube, is the external expression of a retinal diverticulum. The pigmented patches above and behind the mouth are olfactory capsules. High-definition video frame grabs of Macropinna microstoma in situ are posted on the web at: http://www.mbari.org/midwater/macropinna.

It gets the name “barreleyes” because it’s are cylindrical, rather than spherical; this is an adaptation for better light collection in the dim depths where it lives, using very large lenses but not building a giant spherical eye to compensate. It’s ore like a telescope than a wide-angle camera. Here’s what a single eye in a side view looks like — the lens (L) is what is glowing so greenly in the photos.

i-448ffcbc59cdd27dd3b9fef803aea490-eye_diag.jpeg
Chapman’s (1942) mesial view of the left eye of Macropinna microstoma. Abbreviations: RS = rectus superior, L =lens, OS = obliquus superior, OI = obliquus inferior, RIN = rectus internus, RI = rectus inferior, RE = rectus externus, OP = optic nerve.

As if that weren’t weird enough, the animal has a completely transparent skull cap, and the eyes swivel about within the skull to look out through that translucent cranium. In the two pictures below, the animal is first looking straight up through its head (the eyes are in the same orientation as in the diagram above), and in the right frame it has rotated the binocular-shaped eyes forward to look ahead.

i-6801c74f55ec3677758ade36aac77a7c-macropinna_side.jpeg
Lateral views of the head of a living specimen of Macropinna microstoma, in a shipboard laboratory aquarium: (A) with the tubular eyes directed dorsally; (B) with the eyes directed rostrally. The apparent differences in lip pigmentation between (A) and (B) are because they were photographed at slightly different angles. (A) was shot from a more dorsal perspective and it shows the lenses of both eyes; the mouth is not sharply in focus. (B) shows only the right eye, with the lips in sharper focus.

Nature is always coming up with something stranger than we would imagine, and Macropinna is a perfect example. Apparently, the function of this arrangement is to give the animal a sensitive light detector for tracking its prey, bioluminescent jellyfish, and at the same time to shield the eyes from the stinging tentacles of the jelly while it’s eating it.

Robison BH, Reisenbichler KR (2008) Macropinna microstoma and the Paradox of Its Tubular Eyes. Copeia 2008(4):780-784.

On the spot

The Science Museum of Minnesota has a regular feature where they pick some local scientist and put them on the spot to answer questions — it’s like the dunk tank at the carnival, I think, where someone becomes the target and everyone else gets the fun of flinging things at him. This time, it’s my turn. Serious and sincere questions about biology only, please. Kids especially welcome. Trolls will meet an ignominious fate.

My colleague, Van Gooch, preceded me in this exercise. You can read his section to get an idea about what kinds of questions are appropriate…and you can also learn something about circadian rhythms!

Desperate space filler, Oscars edition

No, my work is not yet done, and my deadlines haven’t yet been met, but I’m confident that I’ll reach my goals by this afternoon. Bear with me with patience, please. Until this afternoon, when I slap these puppies and ship them off to their destinations, I’ll leave you with something to discuss among yourselves: the movies!

Last night was Oscar night, and I had the awards yammering in the background while I was pounding the keys. I have to get out more; I’ve seen virtually none of the nominated movies this year. There’s something called “Slumdog Millionaire” that’s getting a lot of buzz? Shows what I know. I hadn’t even heard of it until last night. My pop culture cred just took a nosedive.

As for the awards show, Hugh Jackman was pretty and congenial, which I guess is the role of the emcee. The format was grating: at each award, they’d have five past winners come out on the stage and slather flattery on each nominee, while the camera locked onto each one, simpering and squirming under the barrage of praise. This was not good; Hollywood already has a reputation of being the domain of the vain, and amplifying the effect with a prolonged demonstration of how happy these people are to be fawningly serviced in public had me cringing.

The high point, I thought, was Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for best actor in which he shamed the people who don’t want to see equal rights for everyone, gay or straight.

On a related note, Bill Maher was one of the presenters for best documentary, and what did he do? Plugged his movie, Religulous, while moaning over the fact that it was not nominated. Bad form, Bill, very bad form. Maybe it just wasn’t good enough.

I did finally see Religulous a few days ago, and I confess to being a bit disappointed. It consisted of a series of short interviews with, for instance, truckers at a truck stop chapel, Catholic priests, an “ex-gay” minister, a Muslim rapper, etc., and it was all capped with excellent and scathing monologue that strongly criticized religion. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, and there were some funny bits, but something nagged at me throughout, and only when I saw the conclusion did I realize what it was.

Maher cheated. He had a clear idea of what his opinion was, but he wasn’t sharing it with the people he was interviewing. They were left to flounder and make poor arguments in part because there are no good arguments for religion, but also because they were left in the dark about what they were arguing against. It may be funny, but it’s no fair; contrast that with the Dawkins’ documentaries on religion, which are less funny, but more honest, because the people on camera know (or should know) exactly what they are wrestling with.

A better Religulous would have recorded the closing monolog first, and sent that to each of the potential interviewees with a note saying, “Here’s my position. Are you willing to argue against it on camera?” That would have made for a much more interesting movie, and Maher would have had to break a sweat to address criticisms…and it would probably be less funny. There’s a reason Maher wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, and I think it’s because his documentary took no risks, and didn’t probe very deeply.