Atheists Love Birds

According to that ignorant scamp, Ray Comfort, Atheists can't love birds as much as their jesusy peers.  In a short, on-line article (available on his ridiculously stupid website Pull the Plug on Atheism) Comfort ask a series of brainless questions about birds in his attempt to demonstrate that atheists are misguided ones.

Here's what Ray wants to know:

Why don't we see fat sparrows? What are they singing about? Who teaches them music? How come they can all sing on key? How do they know that they are sparrows so that they can hang with other sparrows? Birds of a feather do flock together (how many sparrows do you see flying with seagulls?). Are they nervous on their first flight? Who warns them about cats? If it's their mom and dad, how do they communicate with their kids?

He then finished his post with this little gem:

As an atheist it must be a little frustrating having no one to thank for all this. How can you not stand in awe at the intelligence of the mind that put all this together? I marvel at the genius of God. Einstein did. Newton did. The atheist doesn’t. He sees the meal but never tastes it...because he doesn’t want to. What a tragedy.

Look, Ray, I know you are pretty dumb, but this is re-fucking-diculous.

To begin with, we know the answers to many of the stupid questions you ask about birds (do you read anything BUT the bible?).

For example, "Why don't we see fat sparrows?"  Well, we do, jackass.  As a matter of fact, scientists routinely measure and compare body fat in studies of bird health and use body fat as an indicator of quality of diet among other things.  We can't see that fat just by looking at birds because birds are covered with feathers, ass.

Another example: "Birds of a feather do flock together (how many sparrows do you see flying with seagulls?)."  Seriously, Ray?  Are sparrows the only birds you know about?  I guess they are one of the few birds mention by name in your ultimate encyclopedia of superstition and myth.

The truth is, moron, lots of birds regularly mix with flocks of different species (even different "kinds" to use your idiotic nomenclature).  Even the novice bird-watcher (whether a jesus freak or not) knows that chickadees, nuthatches, wrens, AND sparrows.  Another better example is found on beaches.  Shorebirds group together in huge flocks often numbering in the hundreds.  These are often composed of several species: knots, plovers, sandpipers, turnstones, stilts, snipes and others.

My point is that scientists already have answers to these questions.  In fact, scientists spend their days asking even better questions and then trying to answer them.

And as an atheist, I do stand in awe of nature, I just don't attribute the glory of nature to some imaginary tyrant who lives in the clouds and likes to fuck with people.  Instead, I give credit where it's due.  Nature is divine in itself.

The real tragedy, Ray, is that you think your life is more complete than mine simply because you choose to remain and ignorant fucking man.

Bass Avoid Biting Off More Than They Can Chew

This image shows a very rare event: a Largemouth Bass has attempted to eat a meal it can't swallow.  Until 1991, scientists had great difficulty quantifying how Bass decide what sized fish to eat.  Correlations between the body size of the bass and the body size of its prey were weak.  It turns out that bass carefully select prey that are smaller (from top to bottom) then the with of the bass' mouth.  This rather obvious (in hindsight) conclusion was made by  observing bass feed on small fish under controlled laboratory conditions.  The researchers found that Bass never ingested fish that were taller than their gaping mouths were wide.

Sunday School--The Ocean Sunfish

The Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) has to be one of the strangest fish in the world. It's huge, flat body without an obvious tail make it appear unrelated to other, more familiar fish species.  But taxonomist place the Ocean Sunfish in the order Tetraodaontiformes, which includes pufferfish.

When compared with the typical puffers such as the figure-eight puffer, commonly found in pet stores, it is difficult to find obvious similarities.  The figure-eight puffer has a round, chubby body, a longer tail.  The Ocean Sunfish is flattened along its vertical access and displays a great degree of symmetry along its horizontal access giving the top and bottom halves a mirror image appearance.

But when compared to another puffer species, the bronze puffer, the similarities are more evident.  The bronze puffer is more laterally compressed than the figure-eight puffer, and shows a much greater degree of symmetry in the dorsal and anal fins.

Other features of the Ocean Sunfish also indicate its close affinity with puffers.  The structure of the mouth is one example.  The larvae of fish from both groups are also very similar.