It’s Sunday, and, in America, the penultimate day of Labor Day Weekend (Monday is also a holiday). As there’s little to say, I’ll use Grania’s trope of reprising this day in history (I didn’t realize that Wikipedia has an entry for every day of the year). September 6 is the 249th day of the year. On this day in 1522, Magellan returned to Spain after the first circumnavigation of the globe; in 1620 the Pilgrims left England to found their colony in North America; in 1870 Louisa Ann Swain of Wyoming became the first woman in the U.S. to cast a vote in a general election; in 1916 the first self-service grocery still, the Piggly Wiggly (still around!) was opened in Memphis, Tennessee; in 1972 the Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists occurred at the Olympics; in 1991 the name “St. Petersburg” was restored to Leningrad; and in 1995 Cal Ripken, Jr. played his 2,131st consecutive game for the Baltimore Orioles, breaking Lou Gehrig’s record of 56 years. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still obsessed with evolution.
A: You have emerald eyes.Hili: This is an effect of evolution of the camera flash.
Ja: Masz szmaragdowe oczy.
Hili: To efekt ewolucji lamp błyskowych.
Er, that’s a no on the Magellan thing. He was already dead when his ships returned to dpain. Although by the time he was killed, in the Phillipines, he had done a circumnatigation. First east from spain to the western pacific (where he picked up a “servant”), then back to spain and off on his more famous voyage headed west. When they got to the point that the servant could speak the local language they apparently knew that they had circumnavigated the world. ( thats my useless sunday morning item, enjoy the day 😀)
Spain not dpain – can’t type on a keyboard, let alone my phone!
He, and his slave Enrique, may only possibly have completed a circumnavigation. He acquired Enrique in the conquest of Malacca, on the strait between Malaysia and Sumatra. He was killed in the Philippines, which is a bit further east; although Magellan has said in his will Enrique was to be freed, the next captain decided to keep him enslaved, so Enrique escaped. Perhaps he made it back to Malaysia; and perhaps Magellan and Enrique had gone as far east as the Moluccas (ie ‘the Spice Islands’) (the Encyclopedia Britannica thinks he didn’t).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-Magellan
I was going to make the same point regarding Magellan himself (and Enrique). The surviving members of his crew did complete their own circumnavigation though in 1522, something like 20 of them in the remaining ship. I can’t think of the captain’s name, but I remember Antonio Pigafetta who kept a journal. It was a remarkable achievement (not done again for 60 years) but I can’t help think about how easily we achieve it today. Even people who will never do a circumnavigation might easily travel 50,000 miles in a year
Hmmm…just occurred to me…the green-eye photo flash phenomenon in cats and the corresponding red-eye phenomenon in humans…would be mighty interesting to compare the spectra of the reflected light with the spectral sensitivities of the eyes themselves….
b&
Isn’t the green reflection in cats a reflection from the nictitating membrane, while in humans, red eye is a reflection off the retina?
Honestly? I don’t know. But reflection and absorption are closely related phenomenon, and, even if different structures are involved, comparing the spectral characteristics might lead to various insights.
Hmmm…I might be able to manage 3/4 of that experiment, myself. The standard human spectral sensitivity is well known. I might be able to get a spectral measurement of my own red-eye reflection. And if I could do that, I could perhaps get the same from Baihu’s green-eye. But I don’t know if anybody has figured out the spectral sensitivity of cats’s eyes…with humans, it’s done through having subjects fiddle knobs to match colored lights — something not exactly easy to convince a cat to do….
b&
The Wikipedia article I linked to includes discussion of the different “eye shine” from cats and dogs with different colours of eyes. Which was news to me.
It also suggested iridescent effects, of angle-dependent color, which was similarly surprising to me. I’ll definitely have to ponder this experiment further.
b&
Not the nictitating membrane – I’m not sure if cats have one of them at all – but the tapetum lucidum, which is an approximately pan-chromatic mirror which allows each retinal cell two chances to catch each photon. It’s a common structure in nocturnal animals, though whether it’s one structure or multiple convergent evolutions, I’m not sure.
The red eye of humans is because of absorbtion by blood vessels in the retina. By implication then, the tapetum lucidum lays behind the retina, but before the main nourishing structures of the eye. The Wikipedia article linked adds more that I didn’t know off the top of my head.
Fair enough, but it does appear that cats have a nictitating membrane (besides the fact that I’ve seen it):
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-cats-have-an-inner/
I’d thought that the structure in reptiles was called a nictitating membrane, and it had a different name in mammals, but looking it up, it appears to be rather a mess of terminology.