Smoky Mountains

I just returned from a delightful trip to the Smoky Mountains with my mom's family.  The mountains are gorgeous this time of year, and we had some fun experiences, including a five mile hike in the middle of a deluge where we lost the trail and a bear encounter in Cades Cove.  The bear we saw was in the middle of a meadow and crossed in front of my uncle's van, just a few yards away.  It got me thinking...what would happen if you were all alone on one of those trails and happened upon a bear?

Remembering D-Day

Taken from the internet:

You know what I did this morning? Maybe it would be better if I told you what I didn't do this morning.

I didn't have to spend over 12 hours on a transport ship in choppy water, then clamber down a cargo net into a plywood landing craft, all while carrying up to 100 pounds of gear on my back. Then, I didn't ride through the rough surf in that little plywood target, only to have the steel ramp (the only part of the little plywood boat that was even remotely bullet-resistant) flop down and drop me into the cold ocean water in front of a beach filled with steel obstacles, mines, flying bullets & exploding artillery rounds.

I didn't fly over enemy occupied territory at 1000 feet in a C47 cargo plane and then jump out of the plane into the teeth of enemy anti-aircraft fire. I didn't have to worry about my bright white silk parachute making me a good target for troops on the ground who wanted to use me for target practice, and after I landed, I didn't have to worry about engaging a vastly superior force with only the gear I carried with me (providing that said gear wasn't ripped off by the turbulence I encountered exiting the plane) with whoever I could gather together from the other troops dropped behind enemy lines the same as I was.
I didn't march into a plywood glider (PLYWOOD, as we've already established, is NOT very resistant to gunfire and explosions) and sit quietly while I was towed into anti-aircraft fire, only to be released and experience a controlled crash into trees, buildings or apparently open fields that were booby trapped with wooden poles and steel cables by the enemy. 

I wasn't asked to take my place in a McGyvered together amphibious tank, where I would most likely be swamped by the waves and sink to the bottom of the English Channel like....well, like a tank rigged for amphibious operations with lumber and canvas. And if I DID happen to get to the beach, I would have been the prime target of every enemy artillery piece for miles around. 

I wasn't asked to sit in a command bunker deep beneath London looking at casualty projections that predicted that we would lose 60% of the airborne troops committed to this battle and a good chunk of the troops storming the beaches, and I also didn't prepare a letter taking full blame for the possible disaster in order to protect my political leaders. 

You know what? Now that I've told you what I DIDN'T do this morning, what I actually DID seems pretty freakin' trivial. Veterans of the Normandy landing are becoming scarce now that we're sixty-five years down the road from that horrible day, but if you know one of them, make sure to thank them on this day. And don't limit yourself to D-Day vets - whether it was Normandy, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, the Tet Offensive, Grenada, Panama, Mogadishu, Fallujah, or just some godforsaken mountain road at the ass-end of Afghanistan, EVERYONE who served this country in uniform deserves a hearty handshake and our everlasting gratitude on this day.

Many of them were 18 or 19 years old...barely even adults.

And here's Reagan's speech for the 40th anniversary.  Whether you love, despise, or are indifferent to Reagan, this is an unbelievable speech.

Some Singin' Ladies

Last weekend, a group of ladies from a sister congregation came and sang at our church.  They had great character and came in such different shapes and sizes, so I decided to draw them up.

A Color/Composition Study

It's a killer whale attacking an otter, all dramatically and stuff.  Kind of a followup to this one.

On a totally different note, apparently Alabama is the last state in the union where homebrewing is illegal.  I had no idea!  The legislature just passed a bill to legalize it, and I think the governor is expected to probably sign it (he hasn't committed though).  I was planning on brewing up a batch this weekend anyway, but now I'll do it in solidarity with the new Dixie brewers.

Cactuses

Arizona inspired me to draw a bunch of cactuses.  There were so many cool and weird ones out there!

Been Drawing Many Elephants Lately

Ever Been Mauled by a Cougar?

We just got back from a delightful trip in Arizona, where we had a great time visiting friends and doing a lot of hiking.  One of those funny things about the Midwest is the fact that there's almost nothing that can harm you.  Um, yeah, that's not true with Arizona.

I have a bad habit of researching the wildlife of whatever place I'm traveling to before going.  Sometimes that's cool.  Sometimes it just convinces me that I'm going to die.  This time, it was the latter.  Turns out everything in Arizona can kill you.  If it's not a saguaro cactus falling on you, it's a mountain lion mauling you.  Or a scorpion stinging you.  Or a black widow biting you.  Or a rattlesnake striking you.  Or a tarantula chomping you.  Or a gila monster chewing on you.  Or a javelina charging you.  As far as I can tell, you pretty much can't go outside without automatically being preyed on by something.

Luckily we beat my mind's odds and survived all our hikes.  They were beautiful, but I did spent the entire time absolutely convinced that this is what was happening:

Now I can just look forward to the next time I go swimming and get eaten by a shark.

Elephant Light Studies

I should be on an airplane to the sunny southwest right now, but there's a massive thunderstorm going through which has delayed my flight.  Therefore, I decided to do some light studies with elephants.

Orcas in a Plane!

Not quite Snakes on a Plane, but close enough.  I just found this commercial, which I remember thinking was the coolest thing in the world back when I was a kid.  I was sure that they really put whales in there.  It came out in 1992.  Pretty effective ad, I daresay.  Though more of a joke now, with all the annoyances of airlines taking away any semblance of comfort.

Zombie Dodos and Pigeons and Mammoths, Oh My!

A stranger thing that's been going around the science news lately (and around science for a decade or two) is the idea of de-extinction, or bringing back currently extinct animals:

That sounds so cool, right?  Do it!

Well, maybe not so fast.  Like any act of 'playing God,' this kind of thing could have serious and unintended consequences.  Just ask Dr. Ian Malcolm.

However, before we get too excited, we need to make a few things clear.

• Jurassic Park won't be happening anytime soon.  Why?  Well, DNA has a half-life of 521 years, which means that after 521 years under normal conditions, half of the DNA sequence will be gone.  After 521 more years, half of the remaining half will be gone, and so on.  Scientists have estimated that the farthest back we could go with DNA would be a few hundred thousand years under ideal conditions.  Therefore, dinosaurs aren't the focus here.
• More broadly, we need DNA to recreate anything.  If there aren't samples that have at least somewhat retrievable DNA, we won't be able to bring it back (unless we use the less exact method of selective breeding, which I'll discuss below).
• I'm not going get into whether this the right thing or not to do.  That is a philosophical debate more than anything, with legitimate arguments on both sides.  But the 'cool' factor is pretty powerful.
• We've actually already done it. (???)  That's right, we have, a decade ago, when a group of scientists brought back from extinction the bucardo, an ibex species in Spain and France, which had gone extinct in 2000.  However, the little bucardo that was born had an extra lobe on its lung and died after only ten minutes.  So, for ten minutes in 2003, we had de-extincted the bucardo.

So, how exactly does this work?  Simply enough, actually (in theory).  Let's assume that you have a full or nearly-full DNA sequence contained in a surviving cell.  You find yourself a suitable host (which can be difficult if the creature has no close relatives) and take an egg from the host.  You then scoop out the DNA of the egg and replace it with the extinct animal's DNA.  Then you implant it into the host.  Lather, rinse, repeat, and hope one of them sticks.  For that poor little bucardo who ended up dying, they tried 57 different hosts.  Only seven had successful implantations, and only one of those carried to term.

Now, that raises the question.  What happens if we can't find a suitable host?  Some extinct animals, such as the woolly mammoth, the passenger pigeon, and the buscardo have close relatives that are still living (Asian elephant, band-tailed pigeon, and domestic goat, respectively).  Others, such as the Tasmanian Tiger, the dodo, or the giant sloth, may prove more difficult (though for a dodo, you'd probably just need a big enough egg, which may not be that hard to procure).

Alternatively, suppose we have a host (such as an Asian elephant), but we are still struggling to find a full DNA sequence (such as the woolly mammoth).  In that case, I don't quite know what happens.  In Jurassic Park, there's that goofy video where they say they've replaced DNA holes with frog and lizard DNA.  I'm not a scientist, so I'm not sure if you can do that.  You probably can do something like it, though.  However, if they could use the soft tissue from mammoth remains to get a full DNA sequence, that would be just plain awesome.

And that's generally the situation we're in right now.  We're trying to patch together sequences of DNA to get a complete sequence from long-dead species.

One of the other de-extinction methods (though I don't think this one is really what it claims to be) is, by selective breeding, to reverse-engineer an extinct animal.  The most notable of these is the Tauros Project, which seeks to bring back the aurochs, the ancestor of the modern cow.  This is made possible because (a) the species only went extinct in 1627 and (b) there are many, many old breeds of cattle, which, genetically, are very similar to the aurochs (for example, see the image below, which shows the male and female of many breeds of cattle, with the aurochs at the bottom):

However, does that mean that a reverse-engineered aurochs would be an aurochs?  I don't think so...I think it would just be a cow that looks like an aurochs.  But, as I already mentioned, I'm not a scientist.

For a good discussion from a TED Talk on the state of de-extinction, check this one out:

Assuming this can actually happen, here's my top five list of animals that absolutely need to be brought back from the dead:

1. Woolly Mammoth - luckily, this one is actually pretty likely.  There are tons of examples of soft tissue and hair, which may contain full DNA sequences.  Plus, we have Asian elephants, which would be great surrogates.  However, shockingly, we've never harvested elephant eggs before, so that's kind of a hangup right now, beyond the DNA issue.
2. Tasmanian Tiger - We have videos of the thing, so know a lot about it.  We also have samples of it (I think).  I hope someone's working on this one, since it would be a cool, weird animal.  It also only went extinct in 1936.
3. Saber-toothed Cat - Really any of them (since there are a few different species).  It would just be way too cool to see how one of these things eats and whatnot with the ginormous teeth.  I haven't heard anything about anyone trying to bring this one back, though.
4. Dodo - Does this even need an explanation?  It's a dodo, people.
5. Baiji - This poor little river dolphin recently went extinct (like, in 2004), which is totally sad.  There aren't enough river dolphins in the wild.  There should be more.

Honorable mentions go to the Passenger Pigeon, the Carolina Parakeet, the Great Auk, and the Giant Sloth.

I really want to see this thing happen.  For reals, y'all.