The Michigan festival is apparently going to be showing BIll Maher’s new movie, Religulous. I’d like to hear if it’s any good, just to know how much I might suffer when I do go see it. And see it I will: anyone who gets Bill Donohue to start spluttering out threats of physical violence needs to be supported.
The warm-up act for this program was a dinosaur program called “Jurassic Fight Club”, which was loaded with CGI and lots of gratuitous razzle-dazzle — but I thought it was a hoot. It also had enthusiasatic scientists talking about how they figured out what had happened (although it does bug me that they treated some speculative stuff in the narrative as if it were factual). Most of the show was taken up with glitzy animations, but it was balanced with at least some discussion of the process of science, so I’ll give it a thumbs up.
Now to settle in for the story of the evolution of eyes…
Oooh: “the sparks of evolution are tiny, random changes called mutations”. I’m pleased that it jumps right in without compromise. It also promptly pushes the timeline back to 600 million years, and describes work done on jellyfish eyes. They show some very cool behavioral studies of how jellies respond to different wavelengths of light, illustrating why even simple animals would find light-sensing organs beneficial.
Teaser before the first commercial: trilobites. It looks they’re trying for a chronological approach.
The commercials are really annoying: Kinoki foot pad quackery and bigfoot. Bleh.
Now we get a quick summary of the Cambrian explosion — I saw an anomalocaris swim by. The first fossil eyes are from the Cambrian; compound eyes on arthropods. Modern insects are shown, explained as not descendants of trilobites, but probably share the same genes Good acknowledgment of the successful utility of dragonfly eyes.
Dang. Too little time spent on invertebrates — they’re already switching gears to focus on vertebrates.
Pikaia! Cool. Kinda nice that they’re setting up the vertebrate eye as an icon of evolution, and a kind of machine — good dig at ID. There’s also a nice simple animation of how an eye patch could form an eye cup, then an eye with a lens.
Yeah, they already leap into those sexy, glitzy dinosaurs. A little more time should be spent on those unsexy hagfish and lampreys, more interesting as transitional forms, but OK, most people wouldn’t find them as interesting as I would. They show Kent Stevens (UO! Yay!) work on identifying visual fields from dinosaur fossils, and discuss binocularity.
T. rex makes for good visuals, but is it really the best animal for discussing the evolution of vertebrate eyes? The innovations were all in place before the dinosaurs came on the scene!
Next lead-in: we’re about to learn about mammals and night vision.
Primitive mammals were largely nocturnal. So what are the special adaptations in the mammalian eye for night vision? Lots of isolated eyes in jars; the answer from comparative anatomy is that the size of the cornea is important. Cool: tarsiers have eyes that are bigger than their brains.
Another strategy: the tapetum, a reflective layer at the back of the eye. Nifty dissection of a big cat’s eye to show the structure.
Looks like the last 15 minutes of the program will be about human vision…
We lucky humans have color vision. Mammals radiated into numerous niches after the great extinction at the K/T boundary, and primates moved into the trees. Why did natural selection favor improved color vision in primates? Monkeys are shown to favor the youngest, tenderest leaves…which have color differences from old leaves.
Primates also have binocularity for better depth perception, an adaptation for living in trees. This gives them a narrower field of view, unfortunately. Birds of prey targeted these animals with limited vision, which made group living more advantageous for primates. They suggest that this would promote more social behavior and intelligence.
Summary: Not bad. The title is a bit of a misnomer, though, since only a little bit of it was about the evolution of eyes. A program more true to its title would have spent much more time on invertebrates, would have said more about the molecular underpinnings of vision, and would have concentrated on hagfish, lampreys, and teleosts among the vertebrates.
I know…dinosaurs and people are much more popular creatures, so the show compromised on the science for the sake of visual appeal. That’s an unfortunate reality of the conventions of TV programming, but it would have been nice to see them break out of that straitjacket, especially since the early part of the show on jellyfish was arresting and cool, showing that it can be done.
It was unabashedly pro-evolution, too, not giving a second to the silly stories we get from creationists. That’s a real plus, too.
P.S. All you happy Minnesotans should be pleased to hear that Roy will be in Minneapolis on 1-4 September. I’ll be sure to put up details as they become available.
You know nothing is sacred around here. Well, I saw The Dark Knight last night and … didn’t care for it. It was OK as an action movie, but the story was a mess. The plot wandered all over, and the movie seemed less interested in telling a story well than in throwing up moral ambiguity and ethical dilemmas which, instead of actually pursuing with any depth, it would resolve with a punch from Batman’s fist or an explosion. As a plot mover, the Joker was less an agent of chaos and more like the TA for a freshman philosophy course, leading everyone through twisty little exercises in artificial circumstances that present the poor student with difficult choices. The answers in the movie were about the level of superficiality I’d expect from naive freshmen: he’s not a hero, he’s more than a hero, he’s a guardian, or something. Unbelievably, the dialog actually spelled out such empty nonsense.
Although, it might make such courses much more interesting if, instead of writing papers, the students had to make their arguments in fistfights and pyrotechnics.
On the good side, though, the portrayal of the Joker by Heath Ledger has to be one of the best movie villains ever. That guy was scary — you wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, and Ledger made you believe that you just might find someone like him in a dark alley somewhere. He set the screen on fire, and made the guy in the batman suit recede into irrelevance. If only he’d been given a screenplay that was less stagey pinball machine, and more focused.
You are all aware of Joss Whedon’s new mini-epic, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, I’m sure. If not, get over there now…it’s only freely available until Sunday night.
All I can say is that it is about time someone made a sympathetic, musical tribute to supervillains. Now I’m wondering, though…the ending is not satisfactory. I want more. Whedon cannot simply stop here with a single 3 part event. I want a weekly series on the internet!
I guess that means we should actually pay for these episodes, as encouragement.
Oh, and if you liked Felicia Day in Dr Horrible, check out The Guild.
The movie genre of the summer seems to be the superhero flick, and I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve seen so far, but I hope Hollywood won’t forget other kinds of movies. There is one I’m really looking forward to, and the news so far seems to be that it will be true to the book: Watchmen. Oooh, it looks good.
That gadfly of the science communication world, Randy Olson, has a new movie out, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and many bloggers all over the place are putting up their reviews today. I tried something a little different. The other day, I invited a group of people from Morris, Minnesota to watch the movie with me, and then we discussed what we thought of it afterwards…while my daughter, Skatje, video taped the whole thing.
Here’s the team: Nancy Carpenter (UMM chemistry), Kristin Kearns (astronomy/physics), Pete Wyckoff (biology), Len Keeler (physics), Kathy Benson (psychology), Athena Kildegaard (poet), Kathleen and Lawrence Owen (retirees), Arne Kildegaard (economics), Nic McPhee (computer science), and me.
We all watched the movie together, and then…our reaction. It got us all going, and we talked for over 45 minutes, which I’ve edited down to 10 minutes here.
You don’t want to watch the whole thing? Well, the overall response was that, alas, the movie is mediocre as both a documentary and as a movie — it’s not really about global warming at all, but is more about how people respond to information. This is one of those awkward media misfits — it doesn’t really fit into any of the conventional niches. It also doesn’t accommodate itself to passive viewing; I think sitting alone and watching it would have been exasperating. As a catalyst for a discussion, though, it was much more rewarding.
So don’t see it alone! Bring along a few people so you can have a good entertaining argument afterwards.
I was interviewed on The Inner Side last night — if you live in Houston, you may have already heard it. If not, you can get the mp3 at that link.
Some days, my mailbox overflows with hilarity…like today. I got the new Roy Zimmerman CD! You should, too! It’ll cheer any liberal to realize that you aren’t alone, and you’ve got a theme song.
But I also get other mail that’s almost as funny, although not intentionally so. For some perverse reason, there are some of you readers out there who think you are making a statement and causing me grief by signing me up for conservative magazines and newsletters. You really shouldn’t. You know what happens? It comes in the mail, I flip through it, I laugh, and I toss it in the trash. Then when the phone call comes later, dunning me to pay for their magazine, I tell them that I don’t read it and I didn’t order it, and they get to eat the cost…and I laugh again. All you’re doing is contributing to the local landfill and hurting my mailman’s back, and that isn’t nice.
But you’re a conservative, so what the hell do you care.
Anyway, so far today I’ve received:
Assurances from a wattled, snake-eyed Newt Gingrich that Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is the great future hope of American Conservatism.
An advertisement from Human Events telling me that my lungs are dying and I have to stop exercising (it’s bad for you!) and buy their supplements.
Ann Coulter tries to sell me stock tips better than the Marxist tripe the Wall Street executives are peddling.
The Zimmerman CD had some real competition on the humor side, but wins in the talent department.
All right, I think I have a decision: we will meet at 6:00pm or thereabouts on Saturday, 12 July, at Manuel’s Tavern, 602 N. Highland Ave., and have a grand old time for as long as you all can handle it. Remember, those Denverites could barely make it to 10pm — I think Georgians have to show that they can both party and offer entertaining rational conversation as good as the Coloradans gave. The honor of the South demands it!
Oh, and look: Atlanta skeptics are meeting at the same place and roughly the same time. It should be an excellent crowd.
