Hiatus? No, just tenacity. I mean, Tennessee.

I haven’t given you much lately, Survival Machine readers.  I’m up to my monkey-like ears in work at my job, preparing for my biannual desert sojourn, and keeping my finger on the pulse of this mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.  Currently, I’m in Jackson, Tennessee, setting up a new physicians office.  I only now managed to pry it off the pulse long enough to type this post.  I just got done watching Episode 1 of The History Channel’s new series Evolve, which prompted a fun live blogging-and-commenting session on PZ Myers’ blog, Pharyngula.  I thought the show was pretty decent for something on The History Channel; my gripes were shared by PZ and several of the commenters on his post.  For an episode purportedly focusing on the evolution of eyes, far too much time was devoted to vertebrate eyes (dinosaurs, cats, humans).  There was a rather cool (I’m told) portion on jellyfish eyes toward the beginning that I missed.  Still, the crux of the whole IDiot argument about ‘irreducible complexity’ is that eyes didn’t just pop into place one day—this episode should have spent far more time on intermediary forms of the eye, using examples like hagfish or teleostei.  They did what you’d expect them to do for ratings, which is to show and discuss eyes in things people find cool (dinosaurs, big cats) or cute (tarsiers, ourselves).  Oh well.  I did learn that tarsiers have eyeballs bigger than their brains… though I’ve encountered more than a few humans who might fall into that category as well.  Anyway the cookie crumbles, this show airing is a positive thing.  And I bet if Curt Deckert were dead, he’d be turning over in his grave right now.

As for my blogging… okay, okay, I’ll try to keep up.  Maybe I’ll even post again later this week.  For now, no good post is complete without a picture of something.  What’ll it be this time?  I’m going with my gut (aside: next week’s episode of Evolve is about guts!), and posting a tarsier.  They’re just too stinkin’ cute for their own good!

P. S. — Thanks to C for watching Singe while I’m in Tennessee.  Be careful not to laser-cut his highly evolved eyes while playing “stalk the uncatchable spot.”  Did you know they glow in the dark due to his Tapetum lucidum?