Evolve: Eyes

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.

A little preliminary heresy

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.

Looking for a journalist willing to do a story

One of our regular commenters here, BrokenSoldier, has a story to tell — an all-too-common tale of our government’s neglect of the men and women sent out to fight, and returning damaged to a bureaucracy that isn’t willing to do the right thing and support them. If anyone out there is willing to help get this story out, here’s an opportunity — it’s practically written out for you. This is a broken soldier’s story:

This is a request for help. Disabled veterans are being treated as if they are a burden on the government’s checkbook, and the government is getting away with it, mainly because the situation is so far out of the public’s collective eye that the military can quite effectively sweep it under the rug. Politicians are using our sacrifices as political capital in front of the nation, while the Army medical system turns around to our face and disdainfully treats us as if we are asking for something we do not deserve. All we want is the care we were promised, and all we are getting is organized resistance from the military medical bureaucracy. In some cases, this resistance amounts to the pure manipulation – and even alteration – of the medical regulations, for the sole purpose of reducing the amount of money the Army has to pay disabled vets upon their separation. I have turned to this kind of appeal, frankly, because I am out of options. I believe that
the only thing that can even begin to fix a problem such as this one is true exposure to the bright lights of public scrutiny.

When wounded soldiers comes home, they have to go through an evaluation process in which a panel of Army doctors determines what their final disability rating will be. If they decide that the soldier rates less than 30%, then they can separate that soldier with merely a severance check, and never dole out another dollar to him or her again. Should the rating be above 30%, the Army is required to medically retire that soldier, and send him or her a monthly check after they leave the service. In principle, this makes sense. But this is being abused by those doctors, in that they are intentionally low-balling wounded vets in order to get them under the 30% ceiling and get them out, for obvious reasons of saving money. Just in my case alone, I have seen doctors lie on official reports about what I told them, make childishly snide comments about the appeals that I have written to the Physician Evaluation Board (PEB), and one doctor even suggested that a
previous diagnosis was invalid simply because I was “fine” on the day he saw me. (And I have proof – to include hard copies of documents showing the offenses.) This does not stop with the low-level doctors, by any means. The Army PEBs operate on instructions given to them by their command, and one in particular is very telling. Since soldiers began coming home with serious concussion injuries, the Army medical community has seen fit to publish instructions to its PEBs concerning certain ratings and how they are to be ‘interpreted’ pertaining to veterans’ disability claims. One of them that I ran directly into deals with the occurrence of migraine headaches, which many veterans with concussion injuries suffer from, and how they are to be viewed. The schedule that lists ratings that are to be applied states that for a 50% rating, migraines must meet the frequency requirement of at least two pper month, and the severity must be prostrating. After
veterans began receiving this rating for their complications from IED-induced concussions, an instruction to physicians was published informing them that from then on, the word ‘prostrating’ was not to be interpreted as it is defined, but rather for migraines to be considered prostrating for rating purposes, the soldier must have stopped and sought immediate, emergency medical attention. Due to the fact that it is very difficult for someone laying prostrate from a migraine to get up and make it to the ER, you can imagine how well this worked in reducing the number of veterans that received disability ratings for their migraines.

And aside from the failings of the rating process, once the soldier is done with that, then there is the incompetent bureaucracy within the ranks of those handling retired service members to deal with. I was retired in January, but did not see a single cent of my retirement money until June. And when it did begin, taxes were being deducted – which shouldn’t happen, because combat wounded vets get tax exemption from their disability checks. After getting that fixed, I recently discovered that I have absolutely no medical coverage whatsoever – which I found out while trying to get my prescriptions filled – because my retirement documents never got to the agency responsible for administering my care as a medical retiree. The incompetence of those that handled my retirement file ensured that the necessary paperwork failed to reach almost all of the necessary agencies. And I am by no means the only one this type of injustice is happening to, but instead
it is a widespread occurrence. The reason for this is that once the soldier leaves the service and begins the fight for his or her benefits, it is simply that soldier against the entire framework of the Army bureaucracy, and that is far from a fair fight. (They do allow you a liaison in order to to help you navigate the system, but if mine was any indication, this is more of a burden than a help – in asking her to participate in a conference call to discuss why I disagreed with my initial rating of 10%, she resisted and actually said to me, “I’m not here to hold your hand through this.”) So I have ended up in a position quite familiar to veterans – broke, living with my parents, in debt up to my ears from the months without income, and having no consistent medical coverage.

So, if you read through this and it seems wrong to you, especially if it makes you a bit angry, then I’m asking for your help. The only thing that will fix this problem is to shine a spotlight on what is happening, because once that happens, the freedom of action that the Army medical community has enjoyed in bullying the wounded soldiers applying for disability will be gone. Once the public is cognizant of exactly what has been done to the veterans the government so profusely praises for their sacrifice, their hypocrisy will be laid bare. If you know anyone – journalist or not – that will take this story and tell it to the public, please let me know. The above injustices are only the tip of the iceberg, even in my case, and I have documentation of many more transgressions.

A disabled vet has fought far too much already to have to continue to fight with their own government like this when they get home. In this case, it is the soldier who is looking to citizen for help with this fight.

If you’re willing to help get the word out, contact Gary E. Ford.

Dr Horrible

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.

Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy

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.

My mailbox is a funny place

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.