… the stupid, it burns!
Rachel Maddow with Bill Nye (@thescienceguy) on climate change denial (mentions of evolution):
And Keith Olbermann on David Barton and revisionist history (compared to creationism) in Texas:
Um…
1
Category Archives: weather
Havin’ some fun in the cold
100_3207, originally uploaded by darwinsbulldog.
I hate the cold. I hate snow. But at least someone close to me doesn’t feel that way. This is my son Patrick having some fun running around our front yard as I was putting some fake cobwebs on our porch.
Darwin’s Dust
-
Two-toned dust plumes blew northward off the coast of Libya on October 26, 2007
This image comes from the photography blog The Big Picture from The Boston Globe. Each week’s post contains wonderful captures around a particular topic. The week of January 14 was “Earth, observed.” The dust blowing over the Atlantic brings to mind Darwin’s 1845 paper, “An account of the FINE DUST which often falls on Vessels in the ATLANTIC OCEAN,” from the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London (see this paper here on Darwin Online). Darwin writes:
On the 16th of January (1833), when the Beagle was ten miles off the N.W. end of St. Jago, some very fine dust was found adhering to the under side of the horizontal wind-vane at the mast-head; it appeared to have been filtered by the gauze from the air, as the ship lay inclined to the wind. The wind had been for twenty-four hours previously E.N.E., and hence, from the position of the ship, the dust probably came from the coast of Africa. The atmosphere was so hazy that the visible horizon was only one mile distant. During our stay of three weeks at St. Jago (to February 8th) the wind was N.E., as is always the case during this time of the year; the atmosphere was often hazy, and very fine dust was almost constantly falling, so that the astronomical instruments were roughened and a little injured. The dust collected on the Beagle was excessively fine-grained, and of a reddish brown colour; it does not effervesce with acids; it easily fuses under the blowpipe into a black or gray bead.
And:
From the several recorded accounts it appears that the quantity of dust which falls on vessels in the open Atlantic is considerable, and that the atmosphere is often rendered quite hazy; but nearer to the African coast the quantity is still more considerable. Vessels have several times run on shore owing to the haziness of the air: and Horsburgh recommends all vessels, for this reason, to avoid the passage between the Cape Verd Archipelago and the main-land. Roussin also, during his survey, was thus much impeded. Lieut. Arlett found the water so discoloured, that the track left by his ship was visible for a long time; and he attributes this in part to the fine sand blown from the deserts, “with which everything on board soon becomes perfectly caked.”
Professor Ehrenberg has examined the dust collected by Lieut. James and myself; and he finds that it is in considerable part composed of Infusoria, including no less than sixty-seven different forms. These consist of 32 species of siliceous-shielded Polygastrica;3 of 34 forms of Phytolitharia, or the siliceous tissues of plants; and of one Polythalamia. The little packet of dust collected by myself would not have filled a quarter of a tea-spoon, yet it contains seventeen forms.
In 2007, several microbiologists published in Environmental Microbiology an article titled “Life in Darwin’s dust: intercontinental transport and survival of microbes in the nineteenth century.” The abstract:
Charles Darwin, like others before him, collected aeolian dust over the Atlantic Ocean and sent it to Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in Berlin. Ehrenberg’s collection is now housed in the Museum of Natural History and contains specimens that were gathered at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Geochemical analyses of this resource indicated that dust collected over the Atlantic in 1838 originated from the Western Sahara, while molecular-microbiological methods demonstrated the presence of many viable microbes. Older samples sent to Ehrenberg from Barbados almost two centuries ago also contained numbers of cultivable bacteria and fungi. Many diverse ascomycetes, and eubacteria were found. Scanning electron microscopy and cultivation suggested that Bacillus megaterium, a common soil bacterium, was attached to historic sand grains, and it was inoculated onto dry sand along with a non-spore-forming control, the Gram-negative soil bacterium Rhizobium sp. NGR234. On sand B. megaterium quickly developed spores, which survived for extended periods and even though the numbers of NGR234 steadily declined, they were still considerable after months of incubation. Thus, microbes that adhere to Saharan dust can live for centuries and easily survive transport across the Atlantic.
Darwin relied on finding the means of dispersal of many organisms because, if all life on earth is related through common ancestry, some organisms had to have found ways to travel to new locations (single centers of creations versus the multiple centers of creation that some naturalists, like Louis Agassiz, postulated in order to stay true to scripture). Whether floating as seeds may do, hitchhiking on the feet or in the bowels of birds, or transporting via logs or other flotsam, or even on trains and cars, life finds a way (yes, Malcolm) to new places.
Year of Darwin – Thomas Near
I am not ready for this!
this evening, in Bozeman – but it has been snowing straight since late Thursday night…
Other Bozeman residents’ hail videos
Crazy Hailstorms in Bozeman Today
First, around 3pm, we had a quick rain and hail storm, which woke my son up way too early from his nap (his window was open, and he came into the living room a little scared). Here’s a video I took:
Then, in the evening, when leaving the local farmer’s market, a second hail storm hit, and we had to pull over in the public library parking lot and wait it out. The hail was hitting my windshield so hard I thought it was going to crack. I opened my window and got struck on my side and it hurt. My two year old son was not excited at all about the car being pummeled by balls of ice. Here is a video someone else took of the hail at the farmer’s market:
And this is a photo of some of the hail. Most intense hail I’ve ever seen, and someone else claims it’s the most intense they’ve seen in Bozeman in their 21 years living here, while another local resident relates the hail to their garden – or what used to be a garden. We saw several trees which had been knocked over on the way home, and there was flooding in the streets and gutters and shoulders all around… Crazy weather!
We spoke too soon…
Compare to this.
Dispersal Event 3/12/2007
A negative review of the Darwin exhibit in Toronto, and thoughts on Alfred Russel Wallace:
National Post: DARWIN DUMBED DOWN: The Royal Ontario Museum’s new exhibition does a disservice to the man and his work
Uncommon Descent: Why the recent article in Nature calling for Wallace recognition is right AND wrong
Literature (A discussion of ID-related Reading): Why Alfred Russel Wallace deserves to be remembered
Barbara’s Blog on reading Quammen on Darwin and Wallace
2009 Darwin celebrations at the Darwin Museum in Moscow
The World’s Fair has two posts about/with Jan Golinski’s British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment
The Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology at Princeton (4-5 April 2007)will have papers presented on “A Crop of Better Babies: Industrialization of Children’s Health inAmerica, 1910-1920,” “Herd Books, Breeders’ Associations, and Natural History in the United States, 1860-1899,” “Adventures Through Time: Barnum Brown’s Abyssinian Expedition of 1920,” and “Stephen Jay Gould vs. Conway Morris: Design Space and Its Implications for Evolution,” among a few others. See the program here.
And from Oswego State University of New York:
Free preview of ‘Origin’ in progress March 14
A free preview of the music and development of “The Origin,” Richard Einhorn’s oratorio-in-progress about the life of Charles Darwin, will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, in Waterman Theatre.
The preview will feature passages, details and discussion from composer Einhorn and musical director Julie Pretzat, professor of music at SUNY Oswego. Kitka, a vocal ensemble with European roots, soloist Jacqueline Horner (of Anonymous 4) and the College Choir and Oswego Festival Chorus will perform selections from the production.
The seeds for the production took root when Mary Avrakotos, coordinator of the college’s Artswego Performing Arts Series, and Pretzat talked to Einhorn when he presented the multimedia production “Voices of Light” at SUNY Oswego in 2004. Einhorn told them about his idea to compose a production on Darwin’s life, and Artswego pursued the necessary grant support to bring it to fruition.”
Richard has spent years thinking about this piece and researching everything,” Avrakotos said. “He’s become a kind of Darwin scholar, and he’s translating his knowledge and passion into his work.”
The preview will feature some very powerful pieces and give audiences a flavor for the finished production, Pretzat said. Selections will include “200 Beetles,” showing Darwin’s thought process as he works on his theory of evolution; “Annie’s Memorial,” which Pretzat called a “devastating” piece about the passing of Darwin’s daughter; and the doo-wop-influenced, triumphant and “very funny” “Winged Seeds,” she said.
Among other things, audiences will realize it is not an overly serious or heavy production, and is “very accessible music, very tonal, very pleasing to the ears,” Pretzat noted.
“This is a piece about a really interesting man and the different thought process he had,” she explained. “He really roiled things around in his head for years. His theory took so long to get published because he was so conflicted about it.”
Einhorn also will discuss the artistic process and his research on Darwin at a free College Hour informance at 12:40 p.m. Wednesday, March 12, in the Campus Center Auditorium.
The original hope was for a world premiere at SUNY Oswego this spring, but the additional time will make the finished product even better and allow for more educational opportunities like the preview, Avrakotos said. The new date for the premiere, February 2009, will fall during the month of the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth.
The creation and production of Richard Einhorn’s “The Origin” is supported by grants from Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Music Fund and Entergy.
For more information, contact the Artswego office at 312-4581 or artswego@owego.edu.
Happy Darwin Day 2008!
I realized I never officially said Happy Darwin Day for 2008! I am going to go relax and read a short book that I received for review, and hopefully I will be able to post my thoughts about it tomorrow or soon thereafter. It was actually a quite nice day here in Bozeman, so I am sorry to those dealing with bad weather… If you can remain inside, then get cozy with your laptop, and immerse yourself in Darwinny goodness here and here.
[Picture]
First Snow
We had our first snow of the season here in Bozeman yesterday. Last winter, my son was too young to really experience being in the snow, since he was either in our arms or in the car seat. He was a little skeptical about it, but he loosened up and enjoyed watching some neighborhood kinds build snowmen and throw snowballs. Here are some other pictures.
