Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Ol’ Three-Eyes

It’s a frog tadpole with an eye surgically grafted to its trunk!

ol3eyes

Wait, this is an old story — similar experiments were done at least 20 years ago. You can transplant developing eyes to the tadpole, but the cool thing is that the donor optic nerves will grow into the sensory tracts of the dorsal spinal cord and grow anteriorly to the optic tectum, where they will make functional connections. Not, as I recall, adequate for image formation, but at least good enough that the tadpole will startle if a light is flashed at the eye in its tail.

I did kind of go “ugh” at the spin the story put on it, though: that it could lead to a medical breakthrough that would allow blind people to see! Nope. Frogs already readily accept eye grafts and regrow the connections; there are lots of experiments where, for instance, you cut out the adult frog eye, severing the optic nerve, and reinsert it upside down, and the nerves grow back and build new, functional connections. That’s the hard part, getting operational regrowth. Planting ectopic eyes is trivial.

Kentucky poll could use your help

It’s very oddly phrased. It’s about educators trying to improve the quality of science teaching, and one choice is to agree, because they need improving…and the other is to disagree, because of this “teach all sides” nonsense they get from organizations like the Discovery Institute. But that’s irrelevant; teaching about evolution and climate change is good science, and they’re correcting an omission of one side, the valid side.

I think it’s a distorted poll, trying to get the knee-jerk positive response to the “teach all points of view!” slogan. It doesn’t look like it’s working, fortunately.

Educators recommend new science standards that include teaching evolution and the effects of humans on climate. Agree?

Yes. Our schools aren’t adequately preparing out students in the sciences. 65.2%

No. How can they adequately prepare students if all points of view aren’t heard? 34.7%

Fleeing Minnesota for California, briefly

It’s been miserably slushy and cold out here in Minnesota, hardly any spring at all — I have serious concerns that my incoming shipment of fertilized chicken eggs for my development course may not survive the journey. We may still be below freezing up to the last week of the semester! So it’s good news that I’m escaping at the last day of classes to go to Southern California for the Orange County Freethought Alliance Annual Conference on 3-4 May.

They aren’t predicting any blizzards down there, are they? I’ve gone through two in the last two weeks, and I’m ready to have them stop.

Also, I’m scheduled to appear on the Michael Slate Show on KPFK radio at 10am that Friday morning. We’re threatening to pollute the airwaves with talk of unabashed godlessness.

Don’t go outside!

I made the mistake of leaving my snug warm house. It’s windy out there! The temperatures are right there on that edge where one minute it’s snowing, the next it’s sleeting, the next it’s raining, and then back ’round again! It’s cold, damp, and piercing; I prefer a calm dry -20°F to this soggy frigidity.

I’m staying indoors the rest of the day. Slippers on. Snuggly blanket close at hand. Not looking out the window ever.

Robin Ince vs. Brendan O’Neill

At #QEDcon (which sounds like a marvelous conference from the enthusiastic tweets resounding everywhere) there was a panel discussion yesterday that I’m looking forward to seeing appear on youtube.

Brendan O’Neill, professional conservative ass, put his opening remarks, “Is science becoming a new religion?” online. It’s a bizarre tirade — it cusses out this new-fangled trend of demanding evidence and expertise for policy decisions, probably because such demands cut him off at the knees.

Robin Ince, professional comedian and science advocate, has put his reaction online, titled “The fascism of knowing stuff”. He’s a bit incredulous that anyone in a culture that uses technology more sophisticated than a buggy whip could be against knowledge.

As someone who has often been called a fascist, you can guess which side of this argument I favor.

I guess I’m a disbelieber now

Justin Bieber is simply not on my radar — I have zero interest in his music, and I think it’s just fine that the teens of each generation have their own celebrity heartthrobs (in my generation, it was Shaun Cassidy; who else remembers him anymore?) But I don’t remember Cassidy or Leif Garrett or any of the other fleeting pop sensations* getting quite so full of themselves as this. Bieber visited the Anne Frank Museum, and this is what he left in the guest book (this was posted by the museum itself, so it’s straight from the source, in case you find it unbelievable…errm, unbeliebable).

Yesterday night Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House, together with his friends and guards. Fans were waiting outside to see a glimpse of him. He stayed more than an hour in the museum. In our guestbook he wrote: "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

Tonight Bieber will give a concert in Arnhem in the Netherlands.

Like I said, I don’t have any gripes about popular teenage singers. But when one rises to such extraordinary levels of asshattery, it’s hard to avoid commenting.

*OK, maybe Michael Jackson got to be that full of himself, to tragic results. And Kirk Cameron was briefly regarded as a teenage object of desire, and look at him now…but that’s more chronic egotism, rather than the acute narcissism Bieber is exhibiting.

Your comparisons make me cry

When we’ve got bad news, we get comparisons that show how deluded people are on other subjects. The NRA has been doing a great job promoting less gun control, and one of their tactics has been the myth of woman empowerment by gun…when on average, women are far more anti-gun than men. But do I really need to be reminded that 29% of Americans believe in little green men?

The data on guns isn’t so good for the ladies. A 2003 study by The American Journal of Public Health found there was “no clear evidence” that owning a gun reduced women’s chances of being killed. An analysis this year by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that “in states that require a background check for every handgun sale, 38 percent fewer women are shot to death by intimate partners.” Six times more women were murdered by intimate partners than by strangers in 2010. A study published in the Journal of Urban Health in 2002 found that women were 4.9 times more likely to be murdered by a gun in states with high gun ownership than in states with low gun ownership. Of the 10 states with the highest rates of female homicide, five are in the South. Southern white men are the most likely to own guns, at 61 percent. Southern white women are the women most likely to own guns, at 25 percent. That’s 5 percent more than the percent of American women who believe aliens exist. 

Aliens: More real than the myth that more guns means women are safer.

Or how about this: we get the good news that public support for gay marriage is rising, but get reminded that belief in creationism has been steady, and right now, only 44% disapprove of gay marriage, while 46% think the earth is 6000 years old.

What is going on? The Supreme Court hearings on the challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s ban on same-sex marriage suggest barriers to legalisation will fall eventually. Growing public support for same-sex marriage is another factor: the latest poll by the Pew Research Center shows 49 per cent of Americans approve of same-sex marriage, with 44 per cent disapproving.

This number is significant, not just because it shows that the swing in support for same-sex marriage has been swift, but because – as Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show this week – more Americans have an “evolved” view on same-sex marriage than actually believe in evolution. Forty-six per cent of them think the human race was created in a single day within the past 10,000 years, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. It is unclear how many of them will eventually evolve this view.

I get the message. People aren’t rational.

But I also get the promising message from the fact that we see a rise in support for gay marriage that there are tactics that work, and they involve actually touching personal and emotional and human values. The gay marriage campaign has been working because they’ve combined sound, logical arguments — how can you deny rights to one couple and give them to another? — with personal stories of people in love, and people excluded by cold regulations and bigotry.

We ought to try that more.

Can we at least fire this one media lackey?

When the revolution comes, media lackeys will not be lined up against the wall. I have a better idea, inspired by Robert Johnson of Business Insider, who actually wrote an article titled THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GITMO STRIKE: Detainees Are Treated Absurdly Well. He had the gall to write this:

While indefinite detainment without trial may be morally offensive…

Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Robert, I’m going to have to stop you right there. Indefinite detainment without trial IS morally offensive, so why are you writing a defense of it? Don’t you think that clause just brings your whole argument to a screeching halt? The “While…” tells me already that you are about to completely ignore the morality of the issue.

But go ahead, continue.

…the overriding philosophy on base these days is to treat the detainees really well. Compliant detainees enjoy a selection of six balanced meals, 25 cable TV channels, classes, and an array of electronic gadgetry and entertainment. I’m talking about a Nintendo DS for every compliant detainee, plus Playstation 3 access with a library full of video games.

OK, you seem to think that is sufficient to offset the immorality of indefinite detainment. Which is where my idea comes from: after the revolution, you, Robert, will be confined in a small room with a television, some holy books, a healthy but bland diet, and some video games. You’ll be happy, I presume? It’ll be just like a long, very long, vacation at a secluded island resort!

Except, you know, you actually wrote that the detainees are treated absurdly well, and also wrote this about the guards’ custom of taking apart copies of the Koran.

Zak demonstrated why Koran inspections are important, taking a hardcover Koran, flipping it upside down, and showing the wide opening under the spine.

Last time they stopped Koran searches, he explains, several detainees stashed medication in these tunnels of paper and then took the medication all at once in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Suicide is another effective way of getting media attention, and there remains a rumor among detainees that three simultaneous suicides would force the Pentagon to close Guantanamo — despite three suicides already happening in 2006.

It’s a bit odd, don’t you think, that while on this long vacation with good food and lots of video games, the residents are in such despair that they’re trying to kill themselves.

I’ll warn my wife. Next time I get a few days off and am lounging about eating and playing video games, it’s really a sign that I’m miserable and should be on suicide watch.