Photography Contest XVII

By Matt Young
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The 17th annual Panda’s Thumb Photography Contest begins now, Monday, June 29, at 12:00 p.m., MDT (MDT = UTC(GMT) – 6 h). Owing to the short notice (we have been preoccupied), we will accept entries between now and Monday, July 20, at 12:00 p.m., MDT. The rules are precisely the same as previous years’, except, obviously, that the dates have been updated.

We encourage entries in a single, general category, which includes pictures of just about anything of scientific interest: any object of experimentation or observation, from single-celled organisms, through nematodes, fruit flies, rats, chimpanzees, and college sophomores to volcanoes, stars, and galaxies. In order not to omit theoreticians, we will consider computer-generated pictures and also photographs of equipment. Photomicrographs and electron micrographs are likewise welcomed.

Glenn Branch of NCSE has generously offered the following books as prizes: Edward Humes, Monkey Girl (2007), and Larry A. Witham, Where Darwin Meets the Bible (2002). The winner may have his or her choice; the runner-up will be offered the remaining book.

If we get enough entries, consistently with Rules 11 and 12, we may add categories and award additional prizes, presuming, of course, that we can find more prizes.

The rules of the contest are simple:

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X-ray image of flowers

By Matt Young
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Photograph by Bridgette Stockwell.

Bouquet of flowers exposed by x-rays with contrast medium

Bouquet of flowers exposed to medical x-rays with contrast medium.

Ms. Stockwell writes, "I am a Traveling Radiolologic Technologist (a.k.a. X-ray tech) in Boulder. I can't wait to sit down and check out your blog! I love science and sharing science.

"I have attached x-ray images of random flowers that I put in a cup to soak overnight in iodinated contrast, allowing them plenty of time to absorb the contrast. This experiment reminded me of a project in elementary school where I put white flowers in different cups with different colored dyes to change the color of the flowers. I figured the same concept could apply to the absorption of contrast. Sure enough it did!

"When we use contrast in x-ray imaging, it allows us to see soft tissues and organs that we normally wouldn't be able to visualize on standard x-rays. When x-rays are taken, anatomy with higher densities show up white/opaque, anatomy with less density like soft tissues tend to show up in the form of many colors of gray, and air shows up as black. So for example, bones are white, tissues are grey, and air is black. Flowers as we know are not very dense. So if I was to x-ray the flowers without contrast, they most likely wouldn't show up on the x-ray. By soaking them in iodinated contrast, we are able to visualize the flowers."

A philosopher reviews "The Design Inference", 2nd edition

By Joe Felsenstein
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The cliff known to the Lakota people as Six Grandfathers, now
known as Mount Rushmore. From Wikimedia, public domain.

 

Glenn Branch has pointed out that there is now a paper in the philosophy literature reviewing William Dembski and Winston Ewert’s 2nd edition of “The Design Inference”. It is written by Joseph K. Cosgrove, a philosopher of science at Providence College.

It will be found here: Joseph K. Cosgrove. 2024. Order, organization, and randomness: on the mathematical formulation of life. Synthese 204 (6): 1-17 where there is open access.

Let me try to summarize these issues.

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Araneus diadematus

By Matt Young
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Photograph by Joel Eissenberg.

Photography Contest, Honorable Mention.

Orb spider and web
Araneus diadematus – orb spider, September, 2024. Mr. Eissenberg notes, "This spider spun a web on the outside of our dining tent on our back patio here in Rumford, Rhode Island."

Ark Park Attendance Drops Steadily: Righting America

By Matt Young
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The entrance to the Ark Park, with the fake Ark in the background.
Credit: Northern Kentucky Tribune, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The fifth anniversary of the Ark Park came up in July, 2021, and the Northern Kentucky Tribune announced in a headline, Ark Encounter marks fifth anniversary with record crowds, announcement of new attractions to come. The claim was not exactly true then – attendance actually began to fall in the fourth year – and William Trollinger, writing this week on the Righting America blog, proclaims in a headline, Sinking Further and Further Below Their Projections: The Facts of Ark Encounter Attendance. Using data provided by the “indefatigable” Dan Phelps, Dr. Trollinger shows that, relative to initial projections, Ark Park attendance has dropped monotonically from 50 % in the first full year of operation to 26 % in the most recent.

As Dr. Trollinger dryly remarks, Williamstown “has not enjoyed the economic benefits that it hoped would come from subsidizing the Ark.”