This is an amazing video of a troupe of mountain gorillas who entered a research camp and ‘visited’ the humans who lived there. You won’t believe this until you see it:
This second video shares a bit of informatrion about the group who were lucky enough to have the house call:
The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe
by Chet Raymo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe, by Chet Raymo, is one of the most fascinating books you’ll ever read. Chet Raymo is a scientist, a thinker and a consummate inquirer. Everything excites him, draws his attention and I suspect threatens to distract him from his real job as professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College. Every morning, he walks to work along a course that covers approximately one mile. Having the type of mind he has, he can’t help but muse over every building, every smell, each part of his journey. It is in this book that he records his musings. Being a scientist with a passion for history, they are couched in the story of our Universe.He sees not just the upturned rock, but the forces that moved it to its current position and canted it at the odd angle. He sees not the flower by the stream, but its historic pilgrimage from Europe to its current home in New Hampshire. Continue reading ‘Book Review: The Path’
Here’s a great visual of the world’s ecosystems by Online Schooling:
Source: Online Schooling
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
So often scientific books lose us lay people with their PhD language. Not Bill Bryson. Using his infamous skill as a story-teller, he approaches the history of science with the same non-threatening approach John McPhee applied to the geology of America. Technicalities are dispensed with broad, non-pedagogic strokes while the surrounding humanity draws the reader into the intellectual excitement that is science. Readers can’t fail but want to read more. Continue reading ‘Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything’
Despite that Al Gore declared this topic closed, there is much information that can be debated, with proof of global warming or cooling based on facts and science. Consider:
Are we getting warmer or is change natural?
I read this article about the Eastern Cougar, now declared extinct, with sadness. It’s part of being human that we want to protect those in need, those weaker than us. The fact that we hunted this animal to extinction almost 300 years ago–as we did the American buffalo–doesn’t make it any more palatable.
The truth is, this happens all the time. Species are only viable when they can survive and thrive in their environ. When they no longer can, they die. The lifespan of the average species is only about 2 million years. Man tweaked that model by changing his environment, emigrating until we reached every corner of the world. Few species do that. Notably, insects do this with impunity, evolving a new species that fits the changed environment.
Most extinct species, we don’t notice. They were here and then gone and we move on. Some (buffalo, gorillas, apes), we try to stop the inevitable. The most notable to me are the Great Apes. They have been hunted and stalked until they now only survive in limited portions of the the planet, in limited numbers. They are as close to human as we can get without the technologic advances that allowed man to survive against greater odds. Tools, problem-solving skills, specialization. Yes, primates accomplish those traits thought to be unique to man and are evolving to do them better, but will they make it before they, too, become extinct.
Here’s the story on the Eastern Cougar. It’s sad, so don’t read it before you’re making an upbeat presentation.
Eastern cougar officially declared extinct
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
An eastern cougar pouncing.By Robert SavannahThe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has officially declared the eastern cougar extinct, 79 years after the last one was reported in the wild in the United States.
The eastern cougar is a subspecies of the cougar, which includes the Florida panther and the western cougar. There are multiple subspecies, though exactly how many is debated among biologists. All are called by several names depending on the area, including puma, panther, mountain lion, catamount, cougar and painter.
The eastern cougar’s historic range extended from Maine south to Georgia, west into eastern Missouri and eastern Illinois, and north to Michigan and Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick, Canada.
Eastern cougars were killed off by European immigrants protecting both themselves and their livestock. States offered bounties to encourage killing them. The last official records of eastern cougars are believed to be in Maine in 1938 and New Brunswick in Canada in 1932.
It’s true that cougars are still sighted within the eastern cougar’s historic range, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed that all of them are either western cougars or cougars from South America kept as pets and released into the wild, says Meagan Racey, with the Service’s Hadley, Mass. office. It’s known that western cougars are migrating towards the Midwest, Racey says.
The Service published an eastern cougar recovery plan in 1982 but the Service now wants to delist the subspecies, because it no longer exists.
While some had claimed that ‘ghost cats’ still lived in the cougars’ historic range, extensive efforts by Fish and Wildlife found none left.
“Even small populations of cougars, such as those in Florida and North and South Dakota, leave substantial physical evidence (tracks, photographs, scat, hair, genetic samples, road mortalities, cougars shot or caught in traps),” the agency said in a Q&A on its web site. “Service biologists assembled 108 records dating from 1900 to 2010 with a high level of confirmation that the described animals were cougars. After careful examination, the biologists concluded all reported cougars were animals that escaped or were released from captivity or that dispersed from the western United States.”
Since 1952, there are six earthquakes similarly sized or larger than the 9.0 earthquake that hit Japan:
All of these earthquakes were mega-thrust events, occurring where one tectonic plate subducts beneath another. All produced destructive tsunamis.
I’m not the only one crazy about numbers. These people made whole movies about them. This first is inspired by numbers, geometry and nature, created by Cristóbal Vila.:
This second one is about the Fibonacci Sequence (see this on codes and Fibonacci Number and this visual on Fibonacci Number):
This third one addresses the Golden Ratio (i.e., the Fibonacci sequence):
Enjoy!
That’s where Japan is located. The ‘Pacific Rim’ are nations located along the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Here’s a list of the major earthquakes since 1900 (credit: USGS) and their locations:
Largest earthquakes since 1900
Major earthquakes since 1900 located along the Pacific Rim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I bought this book at the height of my addiction to Matthiessen. I’d read everything he’d written and wanted more. Mark Tredinnick’s The Land’s Wild Music was advertised as a collection of nature writers, including Matthiessen, so I assumed I’d get a boatload of essays with a similar passion, insight, a like innate ability to see into the soul of nature. Continue reading ‘Book Review: Land’s Wild Music’
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I bought this book before I knew who Peter Matthiessen was, namely, one of the greatest nature writers of all time. Because of the book’s title, I thought the author would tie present day East Africa to a by-gone era when man was primitive and evolving and nature ruled. I read the first one-hundred fifty pages and put it down for five years before returning to it. At that time, I was lost in my passion for the life and times of early man and not so interested in anything that rhymed with ‘present day’. Continue reading ‘Book Review: Tree Where Man Was Born’
Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are by Frans de Waal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I selected this book based on De Waal’s reputation in primatology, interested in his thoughts on the root traits that define our human societies. Instead, he stumbled into politics often enough I finally set the book aside, unwilling to mix an objective study of science with a subjective analysis of world political problems. He could have cited a variety of international examples, but chose to concentrate on the USA and a few others, leaving me uncomfortable about his motives. I suggest he stick to science in his next book.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I bought this book at the height of my addiction to Matthiessen. I’d read everything he’d written and wanted more. Mark Tredinnick’s The Land’s Wild Music was advertised as a collection of nature writers, including Matthiessen, so I assumed I’d get a boatload of essays with a similar passion, insight, a like innate ability to see into the soul of nature. Continue reading ‘Book Review: The Land’s Wild Music’
The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior: An AutobiographyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read Tepilit Ole Saitoti’s The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior because I was so impressed with several books I read on the life of pygmies. The Maasai is another proud race that is disappearing, trampled by the march of so-called civilization. How other people live in the arms of nature while I’m snug and hidden in my man-made home with my store-bought food amazes me. Continue reading ‘Book Review: The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior’
Man the species lives on planet Earth. We are good caretakers, or not. We are a complicated species, so that is a complicated question. Most species last only a couple of million years. We’ve lasted not even a hundred thousand years, so our reign statistically has barely begun.
The question which worries us is, are we ruining our planet? Will we be the last living species to prosper on Earth or will Gaia shuck our ownership, squelch us as a species and survive despite our bad habits? Continue reading ‘Sunday Stats: Mankind vs. Gaia, Who Wins?’
The Forest PeopleMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I just finished a wonderful book, Colin Turnbull’s The Forest People. Turnbull lived ‘a while’ (pygmies don’t measure time with a watch or a calendar) with African pygmies to understand their life, culture, and beliefs. As he relays events of his visit, he doesn’t lecture, or present the material as an ethnography. It’s more like a biography of a tribe. As such, I get to wander through their lives, see what they do, how they do it, what’s important to them, without any judgment or conclusions other than my own. Continue reading ‘Book Review: The Forest People’
The now-famous oil-soaked pelican
According to a Louisiana District Court ruling, the Administration can’t prove that whatever caused the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is likely to cause another. The ruling handed down June 22, 2010 contends that the fact that one oil well collapsed doesn’t mean others will, as much as the fact that Toyota’s brakes failed doesn’t mean we must now recall Fords and Chevys (I know–I’m supposed to call them Chevrolets, but I’m too ornery).
How do I know this? I didn’t read news reports from MSM or the Other guys. Instead, I went to the primary source–I read the the court ruling that overturned the Admin ban on all offshore drilling over 500 feet. President Obama wanted time to figure out what caused BP’s problems. The court said, do it without shutting down other drilling.
The reasons the court cited are: Continue reading ‘Did the Administration Act ‘Arbitrarily and Capriciously’?’
Geology Underfoot in Southern CaliforniaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Very readable book, despite the complexity of the topic. Not as simplified as McPhee, but fascinating. My particular interest is where the little slip of California that is from Pacific Plate came from–that part to the West of the San Andreas Fault and causes us so much trouble. Did it come from Central America? As far down as South America? Or was it once an ocean island? I found lots of hints in this book, though as with everything that is pre-historic, it’s impossible to say for sure. Overall, if you read this book because you are interested in geology, you’ll enjoy the ride.
According to the Gallup Poll, Americans’ concern about environmental problems is down this year, and in many cases is the lowest Gallup has measured in its 20+ years of polling on the environment. Concern about polluted drinking water is highest (50%) and global warming lowest (28%).
Who gets the credit for this? Blame Al Gore. His squishy science has lost the people’s trust.
Here’s the most likely cause of global warming and/or cooling: changes in the Earth’s axis. Many scientists think that 
the Chilean earthquake changed the Earth’s rotation enough to change our climate–get us into our out of an ice age. Read on:
March 11, 2010: Pictures of widespread devastation leave no doubt: Last month’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake in coastal Chile was extremely strong. Indeed, say NASA scientists, it might have shifted the axis of Earth itself.
“According to our calculations, the quake moved Earth’s figure axis by about 3 inches (8 cm),” says geophysicist Richard Gross of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
If the Earth tilted over 3 inches, you probably think you would have noticed. But that’s not how the “figure axis” works. “The figure axis defines not how Earth is tilted, but rather how it is balanced,” says Gross. Continue reading ‘Here’s a Real-time Cause of Global Warming (or Cooling)’
Fact and Fiction about Early Man
