Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“I Only Have Eyes for You“—some pedant will doubtless note that it should be “I Have Eyes For Only You”—is one of the great doo-wop songs of the 1950s, though it was actually written in 1934. The Flamingos‘ version below was recorded in 1959, and I well remember when it came out.
There have been a gazillion covers of this song, including a notable version by Art Garfunkel, and even one by Frank Sinatra, but this one is, to my mind, still the best.
Okay, some physics maven please explain this to me, and also why a few of the patterns formed by the sand are asymmetrical. (I haven’t looked up the Chladni plate experiment.)
From io9, where the notes say this:
Stop what you’re doing and watch this. It’s a video of sand. Sand skittering around on a vibrating plate, to be exact. But what happens when that sand skitters is amazing. Trust us – this is something you want to see.
What you’re watching is the Chladni plate experiment, as performed by YouTube science-and-illusion wizard Brusspup (he can also coax water into a zig-zagging stream, and make Rubik’s Cubes that aren’t Rubik’s Cubes).
Oh, and as a special treat—because you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggonit, people like you—here’s the Rubik’s cube illusion and other anamorphic illusions mentioned above. Be sure to watch for the felid at the end:
h/t: Chris
This hilarious cartoon at WilWheaton.tumbl clearly shows that sarcasm is often better than intellectual argument at dispelling the ludicrous claims of faith. It’s too skinny and long to reproduce here, so go have a look. It’s true!
And remember, Ceiling Cat is watching, too.
When we (Matthew was complicit!) recently posted a photo showing that you could see the rear of an owl’s eyes through its ears, some confusion ensued, and we didn’t know whether that photo involved removing part of the owl’s ear to expose the inside of its head. So the burning question remained: can you really see the back of an owl’s eye through its ears? We now have the answer.
Thanks to an alert reader, Dr. Kelly Williams of the Department of Biological Sciences at Ohio University in Athens, we’ve learned that the original post was indeed correct. If you peer into an owl’s ear-hole, at least in a saw-whet owl, you can see its eye. Kelly sent an email and photos documenting this amazing fact (reproduced with permission):
Just thought I’d give some info on the photo of the external ear and eye of the owl picture that was posted. The hand holding the owl [JAC: in the original photo] is mine and the owl was indeed alive and flew off just fine. We host several hundred visitors each year to our Northern Saw-whet Owl fall migration station and frequently gently part the feathers (as you saw in the photo) to show people the asymmetrical ear openings. I’ve attached my own photos (so not my hand this time) that show each side. Saw-whets are one of 3 species of owl in NA that have an asymmetrical shape to their external auditory meatus (several species have one ear higher than the other – like the barn owl). In Europe, I believe a greater proportion of owls have this asymmetry. The eye is supported by a sclerotic ossicle.
I believe the picture that was posted was taken by Jim McCormac—more photos and information are at his blog. (If you think the ear and eye are neat – check out the black light photos of the wing that fluoresce pink due to the porphyrins).
Here it is: an unretouched and intact living owl. The eye is clearly visible through the earhole:
And here’s the lovely creature itself, looking a bit peeved (but owls always look peeved):
And here are two pictures from McCormac’s website, Ohio Birds and Biodiversity. The first shows the wings fluorescing pink, the second the total cuteness of these tiny owls (the Linnaean binomial is Aegolius acadicus).
Finally, here’s one of Kelly’s PowerPoint slides showing the asymmetry of the saw-whet skull. It’s quite striking. I’m pretty sure it’s directionally asymmetrical; that is, it’s not random which ear is up and which is down. But that raises the question of how, during ear development, the skull “knows” which side is right and which is left. (By “knowing”, of course, I mean that there must be some biochemical/genetic cues that distinguish right from left.)
UPDATE: I’ve now replaced the original cat #2, which was an internet meme, with a genuine entry that I missed. So go ahead and vote for one of the six cats. We will subtract from entry #2’s vote the number of people who voted for the internet meme before the genuine moggie was posted.
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Sadly, there were but six entries in the cat beard contest. (The upside is that it’s been Officially Denounced by the Discovery Institute™.)
I hope the paucity of entries is attributable to the difficulties of making a cat beard rather than the lack of desire for an autographed book with the winner (and his/her cat beard) drawn in it. At any rate, I thought I’d let the readers vote on this one. Although some of the entries involved cat moustaches, all of the below are eligible to win the book. Vote at the bottom by number of cat, and vote only once (that means you, Butter!):
Cat #1:
Cat #2:
Cat #3:
Cat#4:
Cat#5:
Cat #6:
Cast one vote, please.
The winner will be announced on Friday, so you have until then (noon Chicago time) to choose your favorite.
I really don’t pay much attention to David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute (DI), for he writes the usual creationist pap about me ad infinitum, and it gets boring. (He also lacks a sense of humor.) I guess I should be flattered, though, that the DI sees me as someone who stands in the way of their foisting intelligent design and God on the world. Yes, God, for if you look up Klinghoffer’s potted biography at the DI, you find this (the title of the first book listed is hilarious):
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle and a contributor to Evolution News & Views. He is the author most recently of How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative (Random House, 2008). His previous books are Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History (Doubleday, 2005), The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism (Doubleday, 2003) and the spiritual memoir The Lord Will Gather Me In (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1998), a National Jewish Book Award finalist. His forthcoming book is Shattered Tablets: What the Ten Commandments Reveal about American Culture and Its Discontents (Doubleday, 2006). A former literary editor of National Review magazine, Klinghoffer has written articles and reviews for the Los Angles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications.
I wonder how well those books sell? At any rate, this belies the pretense that there’s no religious agenda behind ID. I suppose it’s pure coincidence that all the big honchos of the DI (with the possible exception of the unbearably pompous David Berlinski) are hyper-religious. According to Wikipedia, Klinghoffer is an Orthodox Jew. This pains me, as it always does when I discover that my fellow Jews can be just as ridiculous as fundamentalist Christians.
At any rate, Klinghoffer is now churning out roughly one piece a day, trying to cast Ball State University professor Eric Hedin as a martyr for ID, and attacking me for my relentless “bullying” of Hedin. Klinghoffer’s latest piece at Evolution News & Views is a repeat of all the others, accusing me of trying to get Hedin fired—that’s a lie, of course, but the DIers are good at lying for God—and bullying the poor man. There’s even a petition to Free Hedin.
This kind of anti-Coyneian invective is fine with me: I’d be doing something wrong if I didn’t get it, and I expect such tactics from the DI. But Klinghoffer crossed the line this time—he dissed my cats! (My emphasis below):
Maybe the reason has something to do with the fact that Coyne is not a nobody (though he is an ignoramus on anything to do with the intelligent design controversy). People are overly impressed by his university affiliations. And he keeps banging away at the issue on his blog, trying to put Hedin out of a job.
Make no mistake, that will be the ultimate result if Coyne gets his way.[JAC: No it won’t. Klinghoffer is an idiot.] While Jerry Coyne sits comfortably in Chicago, secure in his employment as he snaps photos of his own boots and the meals he eats and posts endless videos of cute cats, Hedin is surely in fear for the future of his career. (You don’t believe me about Coyne’s popular blog, Why Evolution Is True? Go over there periodically and see. He is currently administering a contest for readers who photograph themselves with a cat under their nose so it looks like a beard. Really!)
Yes, really! You can criticize my anticreationism all you want, but hands off the cats! At least cat beards provide some amusement for the readers, unlike the endless and tedious lies churned out by Klinghoffer and his DI confrères. And they don’t set back science, as Klinghoffer aims to do.
But what I want to say to Klinghoffer (besides requesting that he stop lying about me wanting Hedin fired) is this: if you’re so fond of “teaching the controversy”, why do you, and every other person who writes for Evolution News & Views, refuse to allow comments on your site? I note that Paul Nelson, a young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute Fellow, posted yesterday on my site. I then invited Nelson to present his evidence that the earth really is only a few thousand years old. He hasn’t responded.
Now, let’s have the results of that cat beard contest. . .