Pharyngula

PZ, I'm not what you would call spiritual, but I have religiously avoided watching anything to do with "Jackass" until you just tricked me. Thanks a lot.

Posted by: Bruce | March 28, 2008 9:59 AM

Wait a second. That's not really a single squid sperm right? I'm afraid I'm being pathetically credulous to even pose the question, but damn it, I'm not a biologist and I come here to LEARN.

Posted by: p4limpsest | March 28, 2008 10:01 AM

That was absolutely disgusting, yet hilarious!

My favorite Wildboyz episode was when Steve-O and Pontius dressed up in a Zebra suit and let lions attack them. Enjoy the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=N2rWrF5EwzA

Posted by: Dirk Diggler | March 28, 2008 10:11 AM

""That's amazing. I feel like I actually learned something today!""

haha.

Posted by: Geral | March 28, 2008 10:56 AM

(.)(.)

Posted by: wÒÓ† | March 28, 2008 11:18 AM

Somehow, I don't see squid porn catching on.

Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | March 28, 2008 11:21 AM

Squid beaks: Ed's article that Ph(i)Nk 0 linked is terrific. Of course, our gracious host here at Pharyngula is far too modest to link to his detailed article, "Cephalopod Gnashers," at the old site.

Posted by: HP | March 28, 2008 11:28 AM

ID has a penis, too, Stein. If you'd like to see ridicule done well and effectively, this is some of the best:

This is just recreation, scathing ridicule of Stein and Expelled that works, and is fun to view. It isn't very informative, just an accurate description of the dregs of American apologetics:

Comic actor and game show host Ben Stein isn't at all happy, according to the trailers for his spurious-looking new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which he berates in overheated, lachrymose and rhetorically manipulative ways the American academic establishment's reluctance to recognise intelligent design, the pseudoscientific, inbred second-cousin of biblical creationism, for which Expelled offers straightforward propaganda. Stein isn't making a political crossover here, just a formal one - from TV comedy, where his talents really lie, to political apologias, where his talents simply die. His deeply rightwing political opinions haven't shifted one iota since he was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon. (If you can believe it, Stein was once suspected of being Deep Throat.)

Given that kind of apprenticeship, amid the lying, wiretapping and campaign-trail double-dealing, you'd expect a dishonest documentary, and apparently, we've got one. From the parts I've seen - the first 10 minutes online - it seems to deploy all the loaded-dice arguments, the overdog's deep-seated sense of victimhood and conventional rightwing hysteria. Stein lambasts academe for dismissing the work of "ID scientists", even when they are bankrolled by the rancid likes of the Discovery Institute, a think-tank inseminated yearly with funds from California savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson Jr, who in 1985 told the Orange County Register: "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives." Man, I can't wait for that, Ben, the priests running everything and we live like it's Ireland in the 1940s. Par-tay!

And yes - you get all that in the first 10 minutes.

[The rest of the article isn't about "Expelled" or Stein, but it can be found here:]

arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2268344,00.html

I wish we could just treat it the way that John Patterson does. The fact is that we have to and do consider it carefully and show how and why ID and its various whines are wrong, but then they just moan pitiably again about how persecuted they are. Which wouldn't matter, except that politicians and too much of the public listen to them whinge.

Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 28, 2008 11:52 AM

Wow! It's a veritable cephalopod-fest today!

Posted by: Stuart Ritchie | March 28, 2008 12:44 PM

Funny, I actually read about their beaks earlier today; Spiegel Online has an article about (recent, I assume) discoveries about the structure of the beak tissue and how squids manage not to hurt themselves with their own beaks (the process of using the beak is described as "like cutting meat with a blade that has no handle"). The article's in German, sorry... If I understand correctly, the key is that the hardness of the beak is gradated; it has more chitin at the base than at the tip, and more protein at the tip than at the base, and the major factor determining the hardness of the tissue is the water content. Interesting stuff.
And I hate, hate, hate people who act like these guys. I'd have been very tempted to give the beak a good squeeze while they had their fingers in it...

Posted by: catta | March 28, 2008 1:25 PM

OM NOM NOM NOM OUCH!

Posted by: Robster, FCD | March 28, 2008 1:45 PM

I happen to be President of the local chapter of NASTÉ (the North American association of Squid/Tentacle habituÉs). Some consider us to be a fishy bunch, but once you get to know us, we have a way of suckering you in.

Wait wait don't tell me: Your motto is "We Give Good Cephalo!"

Posted by: Kseniya | March 28, 2008 2:27 PM

PZ (and all other squid aficionados), I was amazed yesterday to read this Yahoo story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_he_me/squid_beak;_ylt=AqqNcf24RN7f4tQzsS3HxXgPLBIF

I would have thought this sort of knowledge would have been discovered at least a century ago. I guess it just goes to show how little we know about our head-footed friends. Here's where I incur the wrath of Dr. Myers by giving much love and respect to the blue-ringed octopus, the coolest cephalopod there is!

Posted by: Mike | March 28, 2008 2:39 PM

The giant squid has a penis

I can haz...?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 28, 2008 2:52 PM

Mike, it's best to embed long URLs into [a] tags with shorter descriptions. That prevents the hard left-justification of the entire thread.

On the scale of life's hardships, though, I'd put it at about a 0.001. ;-)

Posted by: Kseniya | March 28, 2008 2:57 PM

Could the beak be a sort of remnant of the molluscan shell, as the pen is?

Posted by: Mike | March 28, 2008 3:14 PM

"Inkies" ... LOL!

Re: Can-A-Marry! Brownian, I believe you might have a chance at enlisting what's left of The Beatles in the aid of your noble cause!

Posted by: Kseniya | March 28, 2008 3:22 PM

#35:
Don't forget that there's a good chance the main giant squid's slippery spouse will divorce him and take half his fish and a large portion of his ink sack. Brother.

Posted by: Mike | March 28, 2008 3:26 PM

Someone clear up my confusion. PZ's earlier post said that squids have a "special tentacle" which is not a penis. When they are asked to hold the "penis," the guy says that it's not a penis - just a tentacle. So... which is it? Penis or special tentacle?

I have never said penis so many times in one paragraph before.

Posted by: Greg | March 28, 2008 3:32 PM

Wow! Many interesting links there. That one about the makeup of the beak was especially interesting-- and if anyone missed the first-hand account of diving with Humboldts, they should go back and dig it.

Thanks for the helpful answers, everyone!

(And David M-- you might employ some etiquette in the future. I've seen the ocean precisely ONCE in my life, and I certainly don't know anything about the jaws of molluscs. If "marine animal" doesn't work for you, try suggesting a more appropriate term.)

Posted by: DaveX | March 28, 2008 3:37 PM

DanioPhD,

Does that mean, then, that vertebrates are anal-retentive, while molluscs are oral-retentive? Or is it the other way round?

Sorry. Freud came up in therapy recently.

Posted by: Sili | March 28, 2008 4:20 PM

DaveX, you'll find that David M. isn't one to throw barbs or snap his beak at any honest inquiry. He's one of the most even-tempered and generously disposed persons in the 'hood. Consider it an uncharacteristic slip. :-)

Posted by: Kseniya | March 28, 2008 4:24 PM

molluscs are protostomes (i.e. the first invagination, or 'hole' made by the gastrulating embryo is the mouth) whereas vertebrates and many other more closely related critters are deuterostomes--the first hole we make as embryos becomes the anus. Those parameters for homology are a little too relaxed for my taste ;-)

I take your point, but it's exactly this kind of examination you're presenting that will ultimately answer the question. I'm not conversant enough with the genetic processes that form the holes in invertebrates to know whether we're talking about different genes that do similar things (analogy, not homology), or whether we're talking about the same genes that get just get triggered in different orders in different species, which could involve some degree of homology of the resulting structures related to those gene products. (I study sun bears, which are comfortably mammal-vanilla, embryologically speaking, to compare with humans; molluscs are terra incognita to me.)

I'd want to know that before categorically ruling it out, and I certainly wouldn't characterize a question from someone who hasn't delved into it in the degree specialists have done as "stupid". "Stupid" would be persisting in it after the evidence is in (and you know who you are--I'm looking at you, Dembski, Behe, Dr. Steve, et al!).

Until the evidence is in, or someone has explained to Dave how it would or would work, he's just generating a possible hypothesis at his level of available information; a process which may be naive, but is certainly not stupid.

Posted by: thalarctos | March 28, 2008 5:12 PM

to bad those are not Giant Squid but are actually large Humboldt Squid,was surprised nobody caught that?

Posted by: the free phenotype | March 28, 2008 5:39 PM

Thalarctos @#46

I'd want to know that before categorically ruling it out, and I certainly wouldn't characterize a question from someone who hasn't delved into it in the degree specialists have done as "stupid". "Stupid" would be persisting in it after the evidence is in (and you know who you are--I'm looking at you, Dembski, Behe, Dr. Steve, et al!).Until the evidence is in, or someone has explained to Dave how it would or would work, he's just generating a possible hypothesis at his level of available information; a process which may be naive, but is certainly not stupid.

Agreed--I wholehearteldy encourage questions and classify very few of them as 'stupid' (which is saying something--I've had more jaded, unmotivated undergraduates in the past few years than I care to count). Certainly Dave's query was a good one, IMO, and I wouldn't dream of casting aspersions at anyone who posed such a question from an honest desire to learn something new. I just want to clarify that I never thought--or wrote--any such thing.

My response about the blastopore was mostly just to be silly. 'Homology' can be based on very vague criteria, and if you take it to its broadest extreme, almost any two things could be deemed homologous in some way. Asses and holes in the ground come to mind :)

Your point about molecular homology is a good one--after all, it took molecular genetics to appreciate that the ventral nervous system of bilateral insects, etc. was patterned by the same genes as the dorsal nervous system of vertebrates and their allies. Turns out old Geoffrey St. Hilaire wasn't such a raving lunatic after all! I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that protostome mouths and deuterostome mouths were in fact patterned by some of the same genes. I'm at home now without institutional access to journals, and someone will probably beat me to it, but I'll look it up as soon as I'm reconnected to the academic world. However, even if this bears out, I'm still not sure it's appropriate to term these respective mouths 'homologues'. Dig?

Posted by: DanioPhD | March 28, 2008 7:30 PM

I spent part of every work day looking at colonoscopy photos, and it doesn't bother me. I seriously threw up a little in my mouth while watching this. Next time, please RickRoll me instead. PLEASE!:6

Posted by: MandyDax | March 29, 2008 2:57 AM

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that protostome mouths and deuterostome mouths were in fact patterned by some of the same genes.... However, even if this bears out, I'm still not sure it's appropriate to term these respective mouths 'homologues'. Dig?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 30, 2008 9:26 PM