More about butterflies

After viewing the IMAX movie "Flight of the Butterflies," I've had this fascination. This weekend (the second time in two weekends) I traveled to the Insectarium of the St. Louis Zoo to closely observe live butterflies indoors and to attempt to photograph them with a macro lens, this time using flash. Click on any of these photos for high-res versions of the photos below, which I took today. IMG_8178 butterflies March 2013 If someone told you that you need to make a small device, less than .1 ounce (3 grams), and it needed to fly and be capable of making controlled landings, you would likely not know where to start. Then add in that this device would need to seek out it's own fuel sources using its long extendable proboscis--a device that might make you think that the butterfly is a tiny flying elephant. It would need to avoid eating foods that were not appropriate. It would need to IMG_8161 butterflies March 2013recognize conspecifics of the opposite sex. Just Imagine how hard this would be to for a devices this small to be able to recognize others of its same species, especially given that it will use sight and olfactory clues. Just imagine training this device the mechanics of mating and producing viable young. Then imaging training this little device to properly navigate to where it needs to go, sensing out food and mates for its short life span of between 2 weeks and 2 months. Add in the ability to reach flight morphology through a chrysalis stage IMG_8213 butterflies March 2013and you wouldn't have any engineers that would take you seriously. For more details on how butterflies work, see How Stuff Works. That was my mindset as I set out to the Insectarium at the St. Louis Zoo today. Today's bonus is that in the process of struggling to use flash with the macro lens, I learned to drag the flash, capturing some visuals regarding the flight path of several butterflies. Notice the steaks of blur from the wings in the following two photos. IMG_8201 butterflies March 2013 IMG_8195 butterflies March 2013 Many of us are content to watch butterflies from afar, enjoying their beautiful colors. I'm finding them all the more fascinating up close, thinking of them as almost impossible to comprehend in their phenomenal delicate complexity, even as you are studying them up close. IMG_8226 butterflies March 2013

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Sequestration hampers U.S. warmongering

From the Borowitz report . . .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The spending cuts mandated by the sequester may hamper the United States’s ability to invade countries for absolutely no reason, a Pentagon spokesman warned today. The Pentagon made this gloomy assessment amid widespread fears that the nation’s ability to wage totally optional wars based on bogus pretexts may be in peril.

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Seven sins of God

Believers constantly overlook the sins of "God." He literally gets away with murder when he slaughters little children. All of this should be a problem for Bible literalists--the inerrant folks--but they claim that it isn't. That works thanks to the big blind spot to occurs in all types of believers: Morality binds and blinds, and it does this especially well in the context of religions. I spotted this image on Facebook--it details the seven "Godly" sins. There is no indication of who the author was--if anyone knows, I'd like to give credit. I can't argue with the logic of the chart. 7 sins of god

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Choosing a new pope will not change anything

Francis Kissling is a Catholic. In his article at The Nation, he sees no hope that choosing a new pope will improve the Catholic Church:

[The central teachings of the church are] cynicism—teaching things that are not true—at its most damaging, and it is the foundation of the modern church. The virgin birth is only the start of it. Heaven and hell, the turning of bread and wine into the body of Christ (a core teaching that polls tell us most Catholics reject), the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven (how could her body have gone to heaven when we are now clear it is not a real physical place?), the infallibility of the pope telling these untruths and insisting that Catholics must believe them to be Catholic—this all leads directly to corrupt popes and priests who lack compassion. Lying or just fudging it demoralizes those who teach in the name of the church. From such demoralization stems the need to protect the institution and oneself, to protect pedophiles, to let women die in childbirth by denying contraception, to allow the transmission of HIV and to keep alive a dysfunctional institution. It is no accident that priests have historically had a high rate of alcoholism; not only were they isolated by the solitude of the priesthood but by the dissonance in what they were bound to teach and preach and their own understanding of life and goodness. A new pope will change nothing.

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