Sunday, July 1, 2012

CoE $49 at the Mousetrap

CoE #49 is up at the Mousetrap. This is Joachim Dagg's blog, and he really likes mousetraps. I suppose this may be inspired by Michael Behe, but I cannot be sure. Here's one of my favorites:
 
 

 As he says, notice the trap to the right. There are other interesting things to notice here.

 Next edition - the 50th - will be at Teaching Biology.
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Joachim DaggJuly 2, 2012 at 5:17 AM

    You are right, my interest in the history of ecology and evolution received an additional topic (the history of mouse traps), when I read Behe's claim that functioning precursors with one part less are impossible by virtue of their irreducible complexity.

    Ironically, the patent on which all current flat snap traps are based (Hooker 1894) had one part less, because the patenter chose to form spring and striker out of one wire, whereas in current flat snap traps, these are made of two partseparate wires. Details at my blog in the link list.

    The above picture is converted to grayscale and mirrored. The original is in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts and the link to a high resolution online image is: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/90068246?rpp=20&pg=1&ft=mousetrap&pos=1

    The trap in this piece of art is of course a cage trap. (I wonder why the angel in the top right corner is carrying away a baby?)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)