Spot the crabs

August 15, 2014 • 9:49 am

[JAC: Sorry, folks; I can’t stop the man. It’s a form of madness.]

by Matthew Cobb

This picture appeared on Tw*tter, taken by Matt Nicholson, aka @SharkyNichol, whose bio says “Marine biologist, ecologist, and conservationist. From #Miami, now an MSc student at Uni of Exeter”.  His tw**t read: “Come try and find the camouflaging crabs #scienceinthesquare at the marine zone @UniofExeterESI”.

Now I’ll be honest with you, I can only see 1 ½ crabs (in other words, there’s one I’m sure of, and other that could be a crab). Matt said to me that he thinks there are 5 or 6. The one thing I am sure of is that there are neither nightjars nor killdeer in the tank.

BvEYtF1CAAAXL3E.jpg-large

Synechdoches I hate

August 15, 2014 • 8:31 am

“Boots on the ground” is today’s overused phrase.  Why not simply “soldiers”? Or “troops”? This shopworn phrase is even longer than the simpler alternative. It serves only one purpose: to make someone look like they’re either politically or militarily in the know.

I can see it now—a report about Coachella or Burning Man that says, “There will be an estimated ten thousand Birkenstocks on the ground.”

And while we’re at it, what is this “on the ground” business? How many news stories do we see that say, “The facts on the ground are . . . “? Are there other kinds of facts, like facts in the air: perhaps the number of airplanes in combat?

Get off my lawn!

A shot across Lebanon, Missouri’s bow

August 15, 2014 • 6:30 am

Twice the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) has written to the Superintendent of Schools of the Lebanon, Missouri school district, and twice they have been met with silence. The FFRF’s complaint, you’ll recall, is about Lebanon High School Principal Kevin Lowery’s prayer at the last graduation—a prayer that clearly violated the First Amendment.  Principal Lowery unofficially apologized for praying at a public-school function, but the proselytizing of Christianity at that school, and not just via graduation prayers, has apparently been going on for a long time. The FFRF wants it stopped, ergo the complaint.

Apparently the school board and superintendent of Lebanon thinks that if they just ignore the thing, it will blow over. But that’s not the way it works, and they really should know that. Their recalcitrance comes, I guess, from wanting to defiantly hold on to their religion, and from misguided notion that there’s really nothing wrong with broadcasting their faith all over the local school.

Well, the next step has been taken: the FFRF has written a kind of “discovery letter” to Lebanon, asking for information about the prayers and all exchanges between Lowery, the Superintendent, and the school board about the prayer. And these people have no choice but to answer this one: a response is required by law.

Here’s the FFRF’s letter, reproduced with permission. I figure that seeing all this will not only educate us about the tenacity with which certain Christians maintain their right to violate the Constitution, but also about how legal steps can be taken to build that church-state wall back up.

Click to enlarge:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 8.05.50 AMMy guess is that these people will respond that there were “no exchanges about the issue.” If they do that, they’d probably be lying, and they’d be in even bigger trouble.

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. The problem is that these people can’t distinguish between God and Caesar. And now, since they’ll have to consult a lawyer, it’s going to start costing them.

 

Friday music: Salut Salon

August 15, 2014 • 5:41 am

It’s gonna be a long day. Besides working on The Albatross, I had to dress up, which I hate, to get photographed for the dust jacket of The Albatross.  So let’s begin the day with some nice, upbeat music, played in a, well, acrobatic way. It’s Vivaldi, but you’ll recognize other songs as well. The YouTube notes say this:

“The Summer”, composed by Antonio Vivaldi, becomes the stage for a musical competition. Salut Salon fight acrobatically and with a special sense of humor — this is a Salut Salon classic, a live recording from the movie “Salut Salon. The Movie”, directed by musicfilmmaker Ralf Pleger.

If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t think anything weird was going on.

Salut Salon is a quartet of four German musicians from Hamburg who have played together since 2000.  As their German Wikipedia article notes, they play not only classical music, but jazz, pop, and folk. One of the members even sings, and they do some bits with a puppet named Oskar. They also run several outreach programs to introduce young children to music.

Here they are with Oskar, and they can’t help cracking themselves up:

There’s a lot more of Salut Salon on YouTube; I haven’t found any serious pieces played in a conventional way. They remind me of a younger, classically-oriented Spike Jones ensemble.

 

h/t: Ant

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 15, 2014 • 4:23 am

The next few weeks may be dicey, website-wise, as I’m working flat out on the Albatross. (I keep saying that but posts keep appearing.) Just don’t expect substantive ones, as my brain hurts.

How about some nice photos from our correspondent in Idaho, Stephen Barnard? (Click to enlarge.)

Three ways of looking at a rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus):

Rufous 5

rufous

Rufous 3

This is what they’re afraid of, for a sting could mean death:

wasp

A nighthawk (Chordeiles minor):

Nighthawk

A sandhill crane (Grus canadensis):

Sandhill crane

And three more views of the rufous, first at the feeder:

Rufous 1

Rufous copy

Rufous at sunset:

sunset rufous

Finally, a lovely landscape. . .

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A dog trying to save fish?

August 14, 2014 • 2:05 pm

Okay, here’s another video that has charmed people who see it as an attempt of an altruistic dog to save fish who have been taken out of the water. Several readers sent this to me, probably not because they believed that this was indeed the dog’s motivation, but simply because its behavior was enigmatic.

It’s enigmatic to me, too. The dog’s “water-pushing” is clearly directed toward the fish, and at least one of the fish seems alive; but I simply can’t see this as a case of interspecific helping. What do you think?

Here are the YouTube notes:

Dog Tries To Save Fish Out Of Water
In the city of Phetchaburi in Thailand, a dog discovered the fish out of the water and unconscious on the pavement. It will try not to let them die by spraying water with its snout. Besides the fish are few puddles. The dog will then sprinkle the fish, as if he wished they would not die. Touching!

What was it?

August 14, 2014 • 12:44 pm

What was this monstrous thing I put up this morning?

It’s the larva of a bluebottle fly (Calliphora vomitoria), of course. You didn’t know that???

Normally, adults lay eggs in carcasses, and the larvae develop on the rotting flesh. They aren’t like blowflies that burrow in and grow on living flesh. But as the note below says, their penchant for dead flesh makes them medically useful. What a clever way to take advantage of an evolved feature!

Screen Shot 2014-08-14 at 6.54.23 AM

This photo appeared in the Torygraph (h/t to reader pyers), with this note:

A coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of the head of a maggot or the larva of a bluebottle fly (Protophormia sp.) with tiny teeth-like fangs extending from its mouth. The maggots of this fly are used medicinally to clean wounds. The maggots are sterilised and placed in the wound, where they feed on dead tissue and leave healthy tissue untouched. Their saliva contains anti- bacterial chemicals which maintain sterility in the area. Maggots are used on ulcers and deep wounds away from organs or body cavities, most often being used to treat diabetic ulcers on the feet

Picture: EYE OF SCIENCE / SPL / BARCROFT MEDIA

Be sure to look at the other photos in that Torygraph gallery of insects and spiders.