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Life On The Space Station

Earlier this year, I attended a "Star Party" at the MacDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, a venerable institution perched on a hill in the far west Texas desert. The skies out there are, understandably, crushingly big and so teeming with stars that the astronomers guiding the public stargazing events need to aim high-powered laser pointers at the sky in order for anyone to tell one star from another. On the evening of my attendance, our guide was giddy with the news that the International Space Station, formerly an invisible blip in the night sky, had recently been expanded to the point that…

Experimental Biology 2016 - Day 3

I LOVE THIS MEETING! DAY 3 included several very interesting comparative physiology sessions. Image of birds from Wikipedia Eldon Braun (University of Arizona) spoke about how birds have a unique way to prevent water loss and thereby dehydration. In mammals, the kidneys are responsible for recovering water from the urine. However when birds are well-hydrated, the urine enters the colon and moves backwards up the gastrointestinal tract to facilitate water reabsorption prior to voiding the urine. Hiroko Nishimura (The University of Tennessee) spoke about work she had done over the years…

Sheep as models for diabetes

Image of sheep from Wikimedia Commons Insulin is a major hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar. Its main function is to lower sugar by increasing glucose uptake into muscle and fat cells. Insulin resistance is the hallmark of type 2 diabetes and occurs when tissues in the body are not able to respond to insulin resulting in sustained elevations in blood sugar, also known as hyperglycemia. An alternative mechanism for lowering blood sugar is muscle contraction as it stimulates a pathway distinct from insulin in the muscles to cause glucose uptake from the blood. Exercise also helps…

Cats hunt using sight more than smell

  Image from Wikimedia Commons, Author: Alvesgaspar New research from the University of Lincoln, UK suggests that cats may prefer to find food using their eyes as opposed to their nose. The preference for vision vs. smell was tested in 6 cats placed in a maze that required cats to make decisions about which way to go based on either images or smells. The researchers observed that 4 out of 6 of the cats chose the visual as opposed to the smell cues to obtain their rewards (food). One cat showed a preference for using its nose, whereas one cat showed no clear preference at all. According to…

New discovery about dog eyes

Image from U Penn. I came across this really interesting press release from the University of Pennsylvania that I just had to share. Despite having a close relationship with dogs for thousands of years, we are still making new discoveries about our canine friends. Drs. William Beltran (School of Veterinary Medicine), Artur Cideciyan (Perelman School of Medicine), and colleagues teamed up to study canine eyes in an effort to improve treatments for humans with retinal diseases. Dr. Beltran was quoted as saying “It’s incredible that in 2014 we can still make an anatomical discovery in a…

Personal knowledge management FAIL!

Or maybe it's personal information management FAIL! - If you're sensitive to the difference. In other words keeping or not, organizing, retrieving, and re-using information things. I have no desktop search. I have no desktop search at work because the only one I could get has been emasculated - it's prevented from searching e-mail or shared drives (I know, I KNOW, really). Where the vast majority of my stuff sits. Our shared drives are very crowded and things get moved around and deleted. I periodically go through folders that I care about and label everything and move things into sub-folders…

Anthropology Carnival with Afarensis

Four Stone Hearth #70, the migrating anthropology blog carnival, has been posted today at the new site of Afarensis. I hosted the carnival earlier at the original home of The Primate Diaries, and I hope to again soon. There's a lot of great posts in this edition and I encourage everyone to check them out. My picks include: Anthropology.net has a terrific review of the new paper on Eem Neanderthals: The suggestion that Neanderthals made their own fitted clothes and kept food in storage rather than eating as much as they could on the spot, before heading off in search of the next meal,…

Even when we try our damnedest.

Cheetahs are truly some of the most amazing animals on the planet. It's the fastest land animal, accelerating from 0 to 70 mph faster than even high-end sports cars and maxing out around 75 mph. In much of its home range, conservationists have been fighting relentlessly to bring back population numbers from excessive hunting and territory loss. The species, once in the hundreds of thousands before 1800, was down to less than 12,500 by 1980. And these efforts, largely, have been successful in rebounding the big cat's numbers. Unfortunately, it may be all for naught. You see, cheetahs faced a…

Sperm Generation Paper Retracted!

This doesn't happen very often in scientific journals, and when it does, it's always a shock. A paper I wrote about a little while ago, where scientists claimed to have derived sperm from stem cells, has been pulled by the publisher for plagiarism. The editor of the publishing journal, Stem Cells and Development, decided to retract the paper because the authors had basically copied the first two paragraphs of the paper from another paper which was published in Biology of Reproduction in 2006 (both citations at the end). According to the editors, other than the first couple paragraphs, the…

Being a Pharmboy isn't always fun and games

From USA Today, some interesting and sad news: When a teenager in Jan Sigerson's office mentioned a "pharm party" in February, Sigerson thought the youth was talking about a keg party out on a farm. "Pharm," it turned out, was short for pharmaceuticals, such as the powerful painkillers Vicodin and OxyContin. Sigerson, program director for Journeys, a teen drug treatment program in Omaha, soon learned that area youths were organizing parties to down fistfuls of prescription drugs. I am now officially old. I thought I'd never say, "I remember when..." Well, I remember when drinking PBR as a…

How can I bribe you to contribute to Donors Choose?

So, I see that sly Dr. Free-Ride is bribing her readers with promises of poems and original artwork from the sprogs and writing blog entries on the topic of their choice if only they will contribute to Donors Choose. Very clever, very clever indeed. And not to be outdone, Sciencewoman is promising a personalized handprint from Minnow to anyone who donates $25 or more to her challenge. What to do, what to do? I have not written a poem since my teen years. Though as a 7-yr-old, I did launch the entrepreneurial Poem Manufacturing Company, which promised you a poem on the topic of your…

Val Henson - IT Goddess

At FairerScience.org I found this link to Val Henson's home page. Val is an operating systems programmer and one helluva woman. You'll want to check out her A Woman of Deeds essay. The essay takes its title from one of those "there, there, don't you worry your pretty little head about it" comments Val got from a 'friend' who, along with her husband, stole and patented one of her ideas. (Yes, I said along with her husband. Yep, they're now divorced.) The friend dubbed her "a woman of deeds, not ideas". That is just so precious. Val, if you will just point me in the direction of your…

Life lessons

I've just spent a hilarious few minutes reading this guy's accounts of the many ways one can injure oneself. It bothers me that I have done so many of them myself (especially the exploding incinerator), and a few he didn't think of (the rocket fuel on a petrie dish that my friend ignited in the chem lab). Anyway, he summarises them all: Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball. If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the…

This is huge.

I just walk in from the airport, turn on the television, and what do I see before me but Ned Lamont giving his victory speech. He's come from nowhere and defeated a once popular senator for his party's (former party's, I should say) nomination. The fight between Lieberman and Lamont isn't over, though - Lieberman has announced that he has absolutely no intention of bowing to the will of the voters, and will file petitions tomorrow to run in the general election as an independent. (That self-serving announcement came during his "concession" speech.) Lieberman may well manage to retain his…

Evidence from literature search says historical men liked narrow waists

Ouch. I know I am going to catch hell for posting this, but it is too interesting to pass up. Devendra Singh from UT performed a search of British literature from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The only consistently reported good bodily feature on women was a narrow waist: A team in the United States surveyed accounts of female beauty in British literature from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and found that the only feature that consistently got authors' pulses racing was a slender midriff. "The waist does not sound an intuitively sexy body part,"…

Bill Clinton tells America to look at the facts

Instead of vague platitudes, Clinton uses empiricism to make his points in last night's speech - America needs to look at what happened over the past 8 years. From last night's speech: The choice is clear. The Republicans in a few days will nominate a good man who has served our country heroically and who suffered terribly in a Vietnamese prison camp. He loves his country every bit as much as we do. As a senator, he has shown his independence of right-wing orthodoxy on some very important issues. But on the two great questions of this election -- how to rebuild the American dream and how to…

String Theory Kerfuffle

It's nice to see scientific fighting discourse from the outside. I say this as a spectator wanting to see a fight, but as a scientist it makes me worried. Yesterday I mentioned the John Hogan/George Johnson vlog about the Greene/Krauss debate on string theory on Bloggingheads.tv ... well there are quite a few commentaries about the whole recent episode. Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variances is upset. I do agree with his view that public debate is good, but I have to say that he utters outrageous statements that as a scientist make me cringe. I have a long-percolating post that I hope to finish…

I Don't Want to Cause a Panic...

...but there is more than one species of bone-eating worm! The genus Osedax (Annedida: Siboglinidae) are common features of dead whale falls and obtain their nutrition through bone-penetrating roots that host symbiotic bacteria. Whale bones don't have chance! The first species was described in 2004 and since then 3 more have been described (O. rubiplumus, O. frankpressi, O. mucofloris, and O. japonicus). A new study by Braby et al. identifies 4 more new species. The 4 tentative species are both morphologically and genetically distinct (based on mtCO1). Interestingly, they may be…

What does Tim Ball mean by 'to my knowledge'?

At 3:10 in a Tim Ball interview with the editorial board of the Ottawa Citizen, he says this: To my knowledge I've never received a nickel from the oil and gas companies. I wish I did get some money -- I might be able to afford their product. If you ask my wife she says its cost me a lot of money to take the positions I've taken. Been a lot easier to be on the gravy train of Kyoto and the government handouts and all the rest of it. I'm not doing it for my pocket or my pleasure I assure you. Certainly there is money available for climate research, but it is nonsense to argue that he could…

The Conversation on climate change concludes

The series of articles on climate change in The Conversation concludes: David Karoly: Bob Carter's climate counter-consensus is an alternate reality: Let's fall through a rabbit hole and enter a different world: the "Carter reality". In that world, it is OK to select any evidence that supports your ideas and ignore all other evidence. ... In the Carter reality, "there has been no net warming between 1958 and 2005." Of course, in the real world, there is no basis for this statement from scientific analysis of observational data. The decade of the 2000s was warmer than the 1990s, which was…

"Monckton is wrong"

John P Abraham has taken the time to go through one of Christopher Monckton's talks and check whether the references that Monckton cites say what Monckton claims they do. Of course, as anyone who has checked Monckton's work can discover, they don't. But Abrahams has gone the extra mile and checked with the authors of the papers as well and again and again gotten replies from the scientists saying "Monckton is wrong". The presentation is 84 minutes long and is devastating. Even at that length only some of Monckton's errors are covered. It's based on a Monckton talk from last year, before…

New Zealand Climate Science Coalition caught lying about temperature trends

Update: A special message to visitors from Drudge: you are being lied to. Global warming is happening and we're causing it, but to avoid dealing with the problem folks are shooting the messenger, attacking the scientists who discovered and reported on the problem. The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition isn't made up of climate scientists, but is just a group of global warming skeptics who gave themselves a fancy title. And they just got caught combining temperature data from different places to get rid of the inconvenient warming trend in New Zealand. If you want to know what the…

Smokers: Swish and Spit - If You Dare

A new study from Johns Hopkins shows that by sampling oral tissue from patients with a history of head and neck cancer doctors can predict with some accuracy the presence of a recurrence or of another primary tumor (presumably from the oropharynx). I found a couple of things about this report fascinating - first, the oropharyngeal tissue was not obtained by performing blind biopsies, which requires general anesthesia and O.R. time. Rather, the cells were collected by the patients themselves in a simple manner - gargling and spitting, and who doesn't love to do that, especially while…

Why We Have Breast Cancer Support Groups

A new study from a team of Stanford University School of Medicine researchers led by David Spiegel, MD, shows that participating in support groups doesn't extend the lives of women with metastatic breast cancer. The results differ from oft-cited previous findings by Spiegel that showed group psychotherapy extended survival time. This study contradicts an earlier experiment done by Dr. Spiegel in 1989 which did reveal that the survival of similar patients was extended by joining a support group. His comments regarding the disappointing lack of a time benefit from state-of-the-art group…

The Sunday Night Poem - Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), regarded as one of our nation's greatest poets, broke many barriers with his writing, resulting in criticism, controversy and of course worldwide and everlasting fame. His use of freestyle verse, his audacious (for the times) description of sexuality and his egocentric weltanschauung, paired with his genius for the poetic voice have cemented his reputation as a poet who should be on the bookshelf in every home. The following two excepts are the beginning and then (below the fold) the ending of the 52 sections of "Song of Myself," the first poem published in Whitman'…

Kleck's DGU numbers

Steve D. Fischer writes: First of all, you exaggerate the importance of burglary. From Question B (pg 185) we find that 37,3% of the crimes occurred IN the home. and 35.9% near the home. In Question C, we find that 33,8% of the respondents thought that a burglary was in progress. So burglary accounts for at most 1 in 3 defensive events. It is the most common of the crimes listed. Non-home incidents represent 2 out of 3 crimes. You seem to be classifying "near defender's home" as a non-home incident... What's a major difference between crimes committed in the home versus crimes committed…

So Where Will Those Jobs Be?

silverlinedwinnebago's Flickr photostream Some of the happiest people in the world come home smelling to high heaven at the end of the day. "Bruce Almighty" (2003) Job growth reigns supreme amongst political discussion. Where will we find these future jobs and how do we prepare for them? Charles Blow's recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times, "They, Too, Sing America" discusses some compelling data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job opportunities for the next decade may surprise you. They are women whose skin glistens from steam and sweat, whose hands stay damp from being…

Howard and Latham on guns

There's an election coming up in Australia. I haven't blogged about it because other people are doing a much better job than I ever could. A special plug though, for Tom Vogelgesang, who is running for Senate on a libertarian platform and has the good judgement to run a blog, choose to study computer science at UNSW and live in Maroubra. However, I will comment on what the two rival candidates for Prime Minister have to say about guns. Prime Minister John Howard (Interview on 2GB 17 Apr 02: listen) we will find any means we can to further restrict them because I…

Funding, Public vs. Industry

From The Scientist: Public Concern for Private Funding. More money generally means more science, and vice versa. But the source of the money - whether from public or industry well-springs - may be as important in determining the type of research that gets funded as well as the direction that research may take. During the last several years, the percentage of industry funding relative to public funding has grown (see Box). For example, industry funding of clinical trials rose from $4.0 billion in 1994 to $14.2 billion in 2003 (in real terms) while federal proportions devoted to basic and…

SLOCUM, An Oceanographer's Best Friend

On April 24, 1895, Nova Scotian Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston harbor on Spray, an 11 meter long sloop. He was the first to solo circumnavigate all 74,000 kilometers (46,000 miles) of the globe, accomplished without the use of stellar navigation by dead reckoning. Slocum's name continues to inspire and can be seen adorning ships and ferries, monuments and memorials and even a new underwater glider. With the potential to travel 2000 meters depth over a distance of 40,000 kilometers, the Slocum Glider developed by the Webb Research Corporation is the new bloodhound of the sea, an…

An end to Austenism

I know that true Sciencebloggers don't link to Billy D's blog, but there's just too much amusement to be had there. His latest shows that not only did he clearly fail biology (and math), but literature isn't his thing either. Billy explains: The Nazi emphasis on proper breeding, racial purity, and weeding out defectives come from taking Darwin’s theory seriously and applying it at the level of society. Those of you who do remember high school will remember quotes like these from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and fastidious, and his manners,…

Popular Governor

This is part of an ongoing series of posts deconstructing SurveyUSA's state-by-state polls of Presidential approval, Senator approval, and Governor approval. Today SUSA released their latest gubernatorial results. Kathleen Sebelius is a popular lady. For a Democrat in Kansas, that's fairly remarkable, so understanding how her popularity plays out has some broader interest, especially as rumors of Senate runs or VP nominations surround her name. SUSA finds her to be the 12th most popular governor, up from 15th last month. With 63% approval, her opponent in November will have a steep hill…

Weaponizing the Brain

There's an excellent and thought-provoking column in the latest Nature, arguing that basic neuroscience research will be weaponized unless researchers are vigilant. It is, of course, a scary prospect to imagine: a fleet of biological and chemical weapons targeted at the brain, and benefiting from decades of research into the details of our cellular pathways: In October 2002, Chechen rebel fighters held more than 750 people hostage at a Nord-Ost production in a theatre in Moscow. The siege was broken only after special military forces used what the Russian Health Minister, Yuri Shevchenko,…

The Greensburg Tornado

Last night, a tornado ranging between one and two miles wide swept through Greensburg, Kansas, destroying 90% of the town. The town is most famous for the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well. That tourist attraction, as well as a 1,000 meteorite displayed nearby, is the envy of neighboring towns, as readers may recall from last year's discussion of the meteorite festival in neighboring Haviland. The giant meteorite, and other record-breaking pallasite meteorites were found around Haviland, which is now hosting people whose homes were destroyed, like Job's, by a voice from the whirlwind. Google…

Crater lake at Eyjafjallajökull

The crater lake at Eyjafjallajökull as seen on June 11, 2010. Image from the Icelandic Met Office by Sveinn Brynjólfsson. After keeping us transfixed for almost two months this spring, Eyjafjallajökull has slowly drifted from the headlines. However, this doesn't mean that interesting things - volcanologically-speaking - have stopped happening at the Icelandic volcano. For one, a crater lake has now been spotted at the summit vent of the volcano. This lake is steaming vigorous, but at the end of last week, the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the Institute of Earth Sciences declared…

Friday Flotsam

Some of the articles you might have missed this week ... A lava flow from Kilauea breaks local traffic laws in the Royal Gardens subdivision, Hawai'i The Mayon Watch continues in the Philippines. No eruption yet, but some of the local newspapers are printing stories talking about "odd animal behavior" and other local "myths" about predicting the volcano, such as the wells drying up. Now, this is not to say that these things might have some predictive value (especially changes in the water table near the volcano as it inflates/deflates), but so far there are no robust scientific studies that…

Creationism in America & Europe

So I'm reading/hearing about something flaring up in Texas again in regards to Creationism. I always get these strange "articles" in my RSS for the "evolution" query on Google Alerts where an uninformed columnist rambles on how the theory has been disproved or brought into doubt. These arguments are not my brief, I'll leave that to Josh Rosenau et al. Nevertheless one of the interesting things about the discussion in regards to Creationists has been the reality that the United States is swarming with them, though there are Creationists elsewhere, especially in the Islamic world. It is a…

Genomics to complex traits

My post below outlining the possible future of genomics and intelligence made me recall a paper from last fall, Predicting Unobserved Phenotypes for Complex Traits from Whole-Genome SNP Data: Results from recent genome-wide association studies indicate that for most complex traits, there are many loci that contribute to variation in observed phenotype and that the effect of a single variant (single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP) on a phenotype is small. Here, we propose a method that combines the effects of multiple SNPs to make a prediction of a phenotype that has not been observed. We apply…

Not All DHHS Funding Is Equal: Why Krugman Is Wrong About Gruber (No, You Can't Have It All)

A minor kerfuffle has erupted around healthcare expert and MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, with some fireworks between Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman. Gruber has received $392,600 in funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to model healthcare outcomes. The argument has arisen because Gruber has been promoted by the Obama administration as "objective" and "independent." At first, I was very sympathetic to Krugman's view: The truth is that this is no big deal. Gruber's grant is from HHS, not the West Wing; it's basically the same kind of thing as, say, an…

Smart Water; New Jobs

Invest in the future. And especially, invest in sustainable, effective job creation in the water sector. The result will be millions of new jobs – a significant result. That is the key message from a new analysis just released today by the Pacific Institute on sustainable water jobs in the United States. That study, Sustainable Water Jobs: A National Assessment of Water-Related Green Job Opportunities, finds that proactive investments increasing efficient water use, improving water quality, expanding smart water treatment and re-use, and more will address growing problems associated with…

The dumbification of Spore

As anyone who has followed computer games at all lately knows, Spore is the recently released computer game from Maxis that was initially touted as a kind of partial simulation of evolution. Unfortunately, It wasn't a very good simulation of much of anything, and as a game it has only been a partial success, with some parts being quite entertaining and others deserving a resounding "meh". (Disclaimer: I have the game, but haven't bothered to install it yet; I've let Skatje play it for me, and I've read the reviews, and suffered a noticeable loss of enthusiasm from that exposure.) Now there…

Genomes with benefits

For the past few days I've been avidly following Daniel MacArthur's tweets from the Personal Genome Conference at Cold Spring Harbor(@dgmacarthur #cshlpg). The Personal Genomics tweets aren't just interesting because of the science, they're interesting because MacArthur and others have started to take on the conventional dogma in genetic ethics. For years, there has been a strong message from the clinical genetics and genetics education community that genetic information is dangerous. Unlike the other medical tests we're continually urged to get (mammograms, blood pressure readings, sugar…

Questions about bird flu contaminated vaccine -- or something

As I write this the story is still hazy [see Addendum] but it sounds like the kind of colossal screw-up we had four years ago when the American College of Pathology sent a pandemic flu strain (H2N2) to thousands of clinical and hospital laboratories as part of routine competency testing (see here, here, here). That was inattention by CDC, whose Director was mesmerized by the bioterrorism phantom and couldn't see beyond them. This time it's a vaccine maker and the cock-up sounds pretty horrendous, although it is hard to figure out exactly what has happened given the incomplete descriptions and…

Listeria and the public health infrastructure

Food poisoning can be a miserable experience and sometimes you feel like you want to die rather than endure another minute of the agony, but people rarely die from food poisoning. At least for most causes of food poisoning. The exceptions are the exceedingly rare cases of botulism and the much more common occurrence of listeriosis, infection with the organism Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria is a really nasty bug and serious cases are often fatal. The most at risk are the elderly, the immunocompromised, and pregnant women, biologically immune altered, and their fetuses and neonates. Listeria…

Chemical-safety legislation reform must consider children’s health

By Veronica Tinney and Jerome Paulson Children breathe more air, drink more water and eat more food per unit of body weight than adults.  Therefore, if a child’s air, water or food is contaminated with chemicals, children receive a larger dose per unit of body weight than would an adult in the same situation.  The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been unable to regulate chemicals effectively, and new chemical legislation must consider these key physiological differences. TSCA, which became law in 1976, gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limited authority to regulate…

sequestration summary

The OMB has reported on the effects of sequestration that will be triggered Jan 2013 unless Congress proactively changes the law before then. Some time ago, Congress set itself a trap: in an attempt to look like they were dealing with government spending and the deficit, they passed a law that triggers automatic cuts to spending, unless Congress agrees and passes laws that make concomitant targeted cuts or revenue increases to decrease the deficit. The nominal cuts are about $1.2 trillion, over a decade, cut from the projected budget in the out years, and are, by design flat across-the-board…

MRSA and swine: collision course

Both Mike and Revere have new posts up documenting swine as a new threat to human health (beyond the pork chops and bacon), via carriage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in these animals. Several papers have been published recently documenting high rates of MRSA carriage in swine in the Netherlands, and also have documented transmission of this bacterium from swine to humans. However, even more worrisome to me than the Dutch publications is a new one out in Veterinary Microbiology, showing high rates of MRSA in Canadian swine--and guess where we import about 9 million hogs…

Stinky seal-ducks. Amazing waterfowl facts part IV

More waterfowl weirdness... Most waterfowl can walk fine on land, and the majority of species are pretty agile in terms of their terrestrial abilities. But some species are so specialised for life on water, and have their legs placed so far back on their bodies, that any terrestrial abilities are poor, if not hilarious. One often reads of how divers (or loons) are only able to move on land with an awkward shuffle; less well known is that some waterfowl are pretty much the same. One of the weirdest of waterfowl has to be the Musk duck Biziura lobata [image above from wikipedia]. This is a…

Purussaurs: monster caimans of the Miocene

While googling for astrapothere images recently I came across the image used here: wow! This is a life-sized reconstruction of the gigantic Miocene alligatoroid Purussaurus, first named in 1892 for P. brasiliensis from the Upper Miocene Solimões Formation of Brazil. Most of the salient features that are diagnostic for Purussaurus can be seen in the reconstruction: the snout is incredibly deep, wide, rounded at its tip, and decorated with bumps and ridges, the dorsal surface of the snout is strongly concave, the external bony nostril opening was proportionally huge and anteroposteriorly…

Why can't my readers be dumber? Or: replica owls

I try not to under-estimate the intelligence of my readers, but couldn't you be just a little more clueless? I mean, come on: virtually every person who left a comment realised that the 'mystery animal' from yesterday was a replica owl. Clearly, it was much, much easier than I thought. Anyway, well done everyone. These owls are mostly based on Great horned owls Bubo virginianus, but the colour schemes are often a bit weird: the one I photographed has a red chest, though I doubt if this sort of thing makes much difference (hmm, or does it?). What's amusing is that this particular decoy is at…