Sunday, September 25, 2011

Spider


Found this one in my basement. Can anyone identify the species? It's about 4 cm tall.

10 comments:

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Google search by image is amazing. Yours is unmistakably the same as this: Diadem spider = European garden spider

Whether they identified their subject accurately is another question.


What do I win?

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Another photo of Araneus diadematus

Jeffrey Shallit said...

I can offer you an extra copy of Nicolas Humphrey, Leaps of Faith, or a gift card from the University of Waterloo. Send me your physical mailing address by e-mail.

Michael Swart said...

Shoot. I was too late. I had a photo asking the same question with the same result.
See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjswart/2708932060/in/photostream

Mark said...

A. Diadematus is also known as the Cross Orbweaver. A couple of these flew on Skylab over 30 years ago. check out orbweavers and much more at What's That Bug?

Anonymous said...

The 5 dot cross is tell-tale, but 4cm seems awfully big for a European garden spider!

Arakno said...

"It's about 4 cm tall. "
That's pretty tall! And how long was it?

Anonymous said...

Sorry to bother you again with off topics, but isn't the fine tuning of constants of the universe simple fabrications(under dembski definition)?
It seems to me that it is just a arbitrary post hoc specification.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Sorry, but in my opinion, 'fabrication' is not defined rigorously enough by Dembski for anyone to say with certainty what is and what isn't a 'fabrication'.

Anonymous said...

Ozymandias, you might have a look at what Prof. Shallit says here:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandsdembski.pdf

and here:

http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/nflr3.pdf

(Always a good idea to do homework before asking questions.)  Incidentally, you might also be interested in a conversation touching on alleged "fine tuning" between Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2IisaNC4bE&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNpiX8XQhJM&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re4ZOJPQ9lI&feature=relmfu

Their whole conversation (in eight parts) is enjoyable listening; these links are just to the parts with the relevant content.

Sorry to continue an off-topic discussion; however, I hope this is not without interest.