[cap-talk] Bee Eyes

[Steve Witham]

About charging into the valley of blindness, Jesus said, "If your right
eye causes you to sin, pluck it out."  But upon consideration he said,
"First remove the plank from your own eye."

Evolution seems to have crossed the gap between compound and
single eyes in both directions.  There's a fascinating variety of
approaches including parabolic mirrors, corner reflectors,
segment walls that retract under low light, and simple eyes wedged
within compound eyes.  The eye of some flying insects, including the
bee, has a fovea--an area in the middle that gets better resolution
using larger lenses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_eye

I'm pretty sure the gene-activation signal for "form an eye here" is
the same for humans, bees and octopi, erm,
     While marveling at your own eye
     give a thought to the octopi
         whose optical nerves
         straighten out all the curves
     that cause blind spots for you and for I.

MarkM says:
>These have come up before on this list, and we've always concluded
>(correctly IMO) that HCSs have no technical advantage over pure ocap systems
>used with the Horton pattern. However, HCSs may provide the path through the
>valley of blindness that allows us to reach the higher hill.

By technical advantage you mean in terms of the kinds of effects you
could achieve if starting from scratch.  But, migration also has its
technical problems.  We need a capital-O notation for human effort.

  --Steve