Ray Woodcock’s Current Thoughts

I was wondering why moths fly toward lightbulbs.  I was thinking it might be because they think that light-avoiding nocturnal predators won’t bother them there.  But I got this other answer from HowStuffWorks.com:

Moths use the moon to navigate. The moon doesn’t move out of position if the moth flies in a straight line. But street lamps are confusing. If the moth flies in a straight line, it thinks the lamp’s position has changed. As the moth continues, the lamp “moves” again. The moth flies in circles, moving closer and closer until it is trapped.

Which makes sense.  But now I have another question.  If light bulbs confuse every moth, why aren’t the populated world’s moths wiped out within the first few nights?  Or, by now, having had more than a century of electric light, why haven’t moths evolved to the point where only the smart ones are left, the ones who have figured out the difference between the moon and a lightbulb?

I just read part of a debate on intelligent design vs. evolution.  People made good points on both sides.  But I still am not sure why there are two genders.

Someone said there are actually three, but they were counting hermaphrodites.  There is not a distinct third gender which is as different from male and female as those two are from each other.

One participant said that two genders gives you genetic diversity, but with more than two you start to run into costs that make it evolutionarily unprofitable.  In other words, nature designs for efficiency, and superfluous genders would be unnecessary and therefore inefficient.  That seems sensible enough.  But wouldn’t we see some species, somewhere, that are (or were) in the process of working through that?  Some kind of bird that has three or four genders, for instance.

It also seems like you could get even more genetic diversity, and could increase the likelihood of survival of the species, if people were able to reproduce regardless of gender.  Like in the situation where the men of a tribe got wiped out by warfare, or where women just get tired of men, or vice versa — why didn’t the ability evolve to reproduce by sharing earwax or otherwise cross-pollinating?  I guess one answer would be that evolution just hasn’t gotten around to that yet.  And that may be.  But I’d think that the force of life, just busting out all over, would have developed that sort of ability quickly, as a top priority.  Am I correct in thinking that cell self-division is the starting point?

Also, if genetic diversity is the goal, why just one mate?  Why not permit or require three- or four-way cross-pollination?

These sorts of question don’t prove anything, which is fine with me.  I’m not trying to prove anything.  I would just like to understand.

I just tried doing a quick Google search for this, but I don’t want to invest a lot of time in a stray thought, so just let me ask:  do you suppose animals race across the road, right in front of cars, because they know that birds of prey will not dare to dash down and snatch them when a vehicle is so near?

Plainly, this would not apply to deer and other large animals.  It also would not explain every confused gopher or indecisive squirrel who is fated to become part of the pavement.  But it would be interesting to know whether any kinds of small animals do use the onrushing automobile as a shield.

I am thinking about the western U.S. drying up, and I wonder whether it would help to pump massive amounts of ocean water into a large natural or artificial basin somewhere in Nevada.  This would obviously not be the more authentically natural move, at least not in the sense of leaving things as we found them; then again, if it counteracted our abuse of fresh water sources, maybe it would be authentically natural enough.

The purpose of this pumping effort would be to create an inland sea from which water could evaporate in such quantities as to provoke rainstorms further east.  And that’s my question, or questions.  Lake-effect rain and snow works on the lee side of the Great Lakes.  I am guessing that the Great Salt Lake may be the source of some of the snow on the Wasatch Range.  Do Lake Tahoe and Salton Sea not feed moisture into the atmosphere, or are they just not big enough to make a noticeable difference downwind?  (Or maybe they do, and I just haven’t heard about it.)  How big a salt lake would it take to produce a green streak eastwards?  Could the power of the ocean waves drive a pump that would shove water up over the Sierra Nevada, or would they have to build a power plant to feed enough water to stay ahead of the rates of evaporation and seepage into the ground?  Would the seeping water carry its salt with it, and if so, how far?  Presumably the salt left behind would create a salt flat when/if the salt lake ultimately dried up; would this then create a permanent lifeless zone?  Could they build a glass lid over the lake, so as to trap evaporating water into tanks for pumping or shipping elsewhere in the West?  If they went in the greenhouse direction, could they design the lake as a massive irrigated space, with troughs that would capture the salt and a forest of leafy plants between the troughs, so as to create some sort of tropical ecosystem?

Why do trees sometimes drop all of their leaves at once?  Some trees, some years, lose almost all their leaves in a single day.  Why?