Nearly as cute as the chickens from two weeks ago, this is a tiny planktonic sea star larva:
The part that actually looks like a star was only a couple of millimeters across but had a fully functioning ambulacral system, complete with tiny flailing suckers that it used to crawl across the bottom of my petri dish.
ScienceDaily reports on an interesting phylogenetic study in their imaginatively named article Tree Of Animal Life Has Branches Rearranged, By Evolutionary Biologists (who else?).
The big shocker: Comb jellyfish — common and extremely fragile jellies with well-developed tissues — appear to have diverged from other animals even before the lowly sponge, which has no tissue to speak of. This finding calls into question the very root of the animal tree of life, which traditionally placed sponges at the base.
To clarify, comb jellies (Ctenophora) are not grouped with the other jellies, corals, anemones, hydras etc. (Cnidaria), and at least on the course I very recently took on systematic zoology, we were taught that Cnidaria is most likely the sister group of Bilateria (the rest of the animals), Ctenophora is the next group down, and then Porifera (sponges) sits at the very base of the animal tree. The question was whether either Ctenophora or Cnidaria were more closely related to Bilateria, or if they were a monophyletic group that itself was the sister group of Bilateria - but Porifera’s place at the base of the tree was never in question.
Although I have the original Letter to Nature I haven’t had the energy to actually read it yet, although I did look at the pretty pictures. The figures suggest that Cnidaria and Porifera compose a taxon that is the sister group of the rest of the animals, and Ctenophora is now the basal group.
I must say I instinctively feel very skeptical of this, but since I haven’t reviewed the evidence I’ll obviously reserve judgement. Sponges have no real tissues and can only barely be considered animals. Also they share a very interesting characteristic with some colonial organisms that might very well be the sister group of animals, the Choanoflagellates. Pharyngula recently blogged about this.
I’m hoping more accomplished scientist bloggers will pick up on this story as I’m interested what they have to say - if anyone sees a post about it, please don’t hesitate to point me in the right direction!
On a sidenote, ScienceDaily has illustrated their article with a picture of Cnidarians, apparently thinking that “comb jelly” means “any ol’ jellyfish”. [They’ve now changed the illustration - I suspect I wasn’t the only one who mailed them about it.] Comb jellies don’t swim by pumping clumsily like jellyfish - they’re the ones with the combs of beating cilia that refract light like rainbows.
biology, evolution, systematics, tree of life, animals, jellyfish, sponges
Tonight, the president of the Swedish Humanist Association, Christer Sturmark, will meet Ulf Ekman, the founder of a prominent evangelical, charismatic christian cult in a debate. The cult in question is called Livets Ord, lit. Word of Life. It was invented by Ulf Ekman in 1983 (the year of my birth, incidentally). Some would probably object to my calling it a cult, especially since they’ve toned down the more controversial stuff in order to be more accepted in mainstream society. But a lot of to me very scary beliefs remain; the guilt and shame complex, the idea that homosexuality is a sin, and that women should submit to their husbands (even though men and women are supposedly equal under god - how they reconcile the two is an interesting exercise in twisted “equal but different” logic).
The debate takes place in Livets Ord’s home town, Uppsala, in fact in their own buildings, and there’s likely to be a lot of cult members there. Me and a few other Humanists will attend but we’re probably most definitely going to be a minority. Those of you who know Swedish can follow the debate live from Livets Ord’s webpage. It will also be aired on SVT2 on friday at 9:30 in the morning.
livets ord, ulf ekman, christer sturmark, humanism, christianity
Welcome to Life Before Death and the latest edition of Carnival of the Godless! I’m your hostess, Felicia, and originally I had big plans on making this carnival something … speshul. Then I realised that nothing I could possibly come up with would in any way add to the quality of the many, many posts submitted, which is why I’ve simply elected to let them present themselves with representative (or sometimes not so representative) quotes. So, without further ado:
HankFox.com: The Good Stuff - “I don’t know a single atheist, I’m not sure I’ve even MET one, who hated humanity, or wanted anything bad to happen to anybody.”
Also at HankFox.com: The Brassican Heresy and Atheist Questions.
The View from Here: Benny Hinn - What a Friend He Has in Jesus - “Despite the overwhelming evidence that Hinn is the lowest form of con man, exploiting the emotional and spiritual needs of the desperate, viewers, many of whom can ill afford it, will no doubt continue to donate millions of dollars annually in the hope of realizing some small improvement in their lives.”
The Barefoot Bum: Fine Tuning - “In short, the Fine Tuning argument is speculative, probabilistically meaningless, and, even if true, doesn’t establish anything interesting. I think it’s safe to say that, after Pascal’s Wager, it’s the second worst apologetic ever.”
Epsilon Clue: Where Are all the Reflective Christians? - “These people do believe in a magic man in the sky who helps them find their car keys /…/ So why aren’t the intelligent, reflective Christians telling them they’re full of shit?”
defryer.com: The Multiple Stages of Faith - “‘Faithlessness’ as a definition of the absence faith is really only used in a religious context since no one really knows or cares about our extent of faith in any other context. No one is ostracized (except possibly on a local level) for their lack of faith in government or purity of food or future direction of the stock market.”
Greta Christina: On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing - “If there is no God and no soul, and everything we are is comprised of physical things and the relationships between physical things… then when you change those physical things, the self changes as well. Our selves are not in our own hands nearly as much as we like to think.”
Also from Greta Christina: The Meaning of Death, Part 3 of Many: Fear, Grief, and Actually Experiencing Your Emotions
A Swedish American in Sweden: Sweden Separates the Church and State - “I don’t buy creationism, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a subject that should be taught in public schools. At the same time though skeptical of the complete banning of a subject or idea.”
Rational Apologetics: God is Evil - “God doesn’t care if we’re good or not — he only cares if we stroke his ego.”
Also at Rational Apologetics: The Elijah Challenge
The Skwib: The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Wacky Ancient Greek Atheist Edition) - “soul is just an exceedingly fine and spherical kind of atom - or perhaps superstition - in any case, it’s not that different from a goat.”
Surgeonsblog: Funnyman - “The mind reels. It’s like walking into a crime scene, wading through body parts, and, because the perpetrator wrote “Hah hah” in blood on the wall, saying he must have a humorous streak.”
Wild Philosophy: My Favorite Moral Bible Passages - “To summarize, morality requires that we beat our children, control our women, or burn, stone, or sell them, execute homosexuals, cast the sick out of our society to fend for themselves, and completely and utterly destroy any society with which we are at war (except for their virgin girl children, whom we are free to rape). Truly, God is great, and will reward us with many slaves if we keep His ways!”
Free Thinking Joy: Religion is mental horror vacui - “Whereas religions must fill the mental vacuum at any price, using gods and other stuffing material, science just tries to construct useful theories that grow into the empty space, but never filling it completely.”
Alexander the Atheist: Zeus Endorsement - “Rather than engage in voter fraud to ensure a win for Zeus I have decided, instead, to officially endorse him as my candidate of choice for the Coolest Fabricated Deity in an attempt to stem the tide of this Odin fanaticism.”
Also from Alexander: End Times: 2,000 Years and Counting
Skeptic’s Play: The moutnain theologians - “Soon he realizes that the mountain goes much higher, but the path is poorly marked and obscured in fog. He points it out to the theologians, but they cannot see the markings.”
Fannie’s Room: Blasphemy! (Part I) - “I think the idea that God is some sort of male being is a quaint man-made idea.”
ShakaOfEarth: ‘Earth Worship’ on the rise among evangelical youth - “Wouldn’t a smart parent allow their child to explore all the different faiths? Oh wait, Evangelical like to brainwash their kids and hate anything that even looks like it might allow their offspring to learn about reality.”
Bay of Fundie: Fundie Atheists - “For all practical purposes, God does not exist. If there is not now nor has there ever been any evidence for a god, then in practical, real-world terms, it is identical to making the statement that a god does not exist.”
Atheist Revolution: “In God We Trust” Must Go - “How do you suppose American Christians would feel about using currency on which “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is the greatest) was printed? How about “We Believe in Evolution,” “Secular Democracy,” or a similar slogan?”
Rational Responders: How to Respond to a Superlicious Christian - “As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, if you believe something without sufficient evidence, you are irrational.”
Atheist Ethicist: Hope - “Actually, I do grow warm and fuzzy in a blanket of science. Well, warm, at least.”
Homo Academicus: This Atheist - “…she is always asking me about my opinions or beliefs on all sorts of things, trying to see how far my atheism goes. I thought I’d save some time and just compile it all here.”
Long Live the Village Green: Upon the rack of this tough world… - “Before he died, I thanked my dad for being the best dad I could ever hope for. I told him how much I appreciated all the gifts he gave me: love for theatre and all the arts, for science and philosophy, for literature and history, for books and book collecting, and for Shakespeare!”
The Gaytheist Agenda: “Why do Atheists Hate America” - “…without faith and Christianity “America as we know it” would cease to exist. Of course to an extent that second part is true. Just imagine how much bigotry and oppression we could dispense with by eradicating Christianity alone.”
And finally, my own entry here at LBD: On Happiness: “The difference between atheists and religious people is that atheists are aware that our personal happiness is entirely up to ourselves and not some imaginary friend.”
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