Accidental Blogger

"The Immutable, Dusty Path"

A very interesting article at 3 Quarks Daily about dust.

African Butterfly Bush

I just posted this on Facebook and thought I should share the photo here. An African butterfly bush which I planted in early spring is flourishing in my front garden. I had never seen this plant until I found it in a nursery and decided to bring it home. This bush is not to be confused with other common butterfly bushes which attract butterflies (I have some of those also). This one is so named because its flowers look like butterflies. I love  it. Hope you enjoy the lovely and unusual botanical specimen.

 (click to enlarge)

Taj Collage (Sujatha)

The Taj Mahal and the gardens around it now:

 

 

 

 

 

and below, before the 1900-1908 renovations by Lord Curzon: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This comparison was prompted by Ruchira's email mentioning a recent book published on the gardens of the Raj: "The book claims that while English women of the Raj period

introduced exotic European flowers and residential green lawns in India, Lord Curzon's manicure of the grounds of the Taj Mahal may have been a wrongheaded attempt at landscaping."

It is evident that the greenery takes a larger share of the focus with the earlier design, harkening back to the general principles of Mughal Gardens, of which Shalimar Bagh in Kashmir, built by Emperor Jahangir for the redoubtable Empress Nur Jahan is an excellent example. But the clearing of the greenery that was part of the main approach to the Taj Mahal, Curzon forced the viewer to focus on the building and architecture. The garden became a thin  frame around a central 'monument to love', rather than part of a harmonious whole in a sylvan wonderland.

What do you think? Does the Taj look better with the severe manicure of the grounds or with the lush greenery preceding the 20th century 'makeover'?

The bird that made a big splash

I am currently in New Delhi, staying where I always stay, in my parents' old house where I spent a large part of my youth. At the request of a friend I photographed the inside and outside of my home and posted some of the pictures on Facebook as three albums showing different parts of the house.

It is nearly the end of winter in India; spring is just a few weeks away. Delhi is full of migratory birds as well as those that live here year round. Many of these birds congregate in the backyard of our house throughout the day, partly because of the grains of rice, crumbs of bread and a clay pot of fresh water to be found there. So far I have caught sight of parrots, nightingales, magpies, doves, crows, sparrows and one  species of song bird that I did not recognize. Yesterday afternoon I took my camera to the backyard. After exercising considerable stealth and patience and working around a bright sun, tree branches and skittish birds, I managed to capture some decent shots of the avian visitors. (There were many more blurred shots than pictures in focus) Most of the photos of the Delhi home created some interest on my Facebook pages but the "Birds in the Backyard" collection is the biggest hit by far.

One photo in particular has garnered a lot of admiration. It shows the unnamed "songbird" I mentioned earlier (I have now been told it is an oriental magpie robin) - an unusually friendly bird in a pensive mood and strategically framed. The most common comment that viewers have made about the photo is that it looks like a painting, a Japanese painting in particular. It is true - I thought the same when I saw the photo I had managed to snap - a lucky shot of "life imitating art."

 

Concrete Jungle vs Concrete Common Sense

As usual, being familiar with the living conditions in much of the Third World, I say that this makes a lot of sense. 

Homo narrans (Sujatha)

Swedish author Henning Mankell (of 'Wallander' fame) posits in the New York Times that better than calling our species Homo sapiens would be to call us  Homo narrans, or Man the Storyteller.

"It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours.
Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.
So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue."

 With the explosion of the internet, we have gotten into hyper-storytelling mode. A million new videos, a million new blogs, a billion new tweets... The human animal is quite capable of ignoring the present in its search for the newest narration.
So, when do we have the time to stop the talking and tweeting, and really listen? Or can we listen without indulging in a reciprocal "That is your story, and it reminds me very much of the time that I...", starting off on a fresh narrative of our own. Maybe that is the point.
I will forgive Mankell his anthropocentrism when he ascribes storytelling skills only to humans. Other species do manifest the storytelling ability, to varying degrees, as far as we can tell from scientific studies. But note, that is only based upon what we know to be provable. Maybe there is still a lot more to be learnt about the storytelling modes and mechanisms among, say, elephants. But we are still preoccupied with figuring out the physical mechanisms rather than going to the next level to find out the grammar of those languages.
Till we get out of the unspoken base assumption that we are the only species in the planet capable of narratives, we as humans will continue to ascribe to animals the voices that we cannot  hear or understand, making up our own stories about their lives, as they likely do about ours.

(cross posted from Fluff 'n' Stuff)

Time to Change the Blog Picture's Motto? (Sujatha)

The motto below the cat picture,  "He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat." seems no longer apt. We have been seriously maligning rats, who apparently show empathetic behavior and even a degree of altruism that was hitherto unsuspected. Or maybe just unnoticed and unstudied.

"The first evidence of empathy-driven helping behavior in rodents has been observed in laboratory rats that repeatedly free companions from a restraint, according to a new study by University of Chicago neuroscientists."

Empathy has been observed and studied in higher primates and large mammals, but while we use lab rats to test out a variety of medical, biological, even cognitive theories, it hadn't been definitively proved that rats would show any further degree of willingness to assist the helpless. At best, a concept called 'emotional contagion', in which individuals mirror the emotional state of others in the vicinity, had been explored.

This NPR interview, with Peggy Mason, one of the lead authors on the new paper, discusses in layman's terms the design of the experiment and what exactly the results imply. One of the most interesting implications  is that this sense of empathy not only extended to the rats freeing trapped companions, but also sharing a special food (chocolate chips) with them.

The interviewer, hoping perhaps to end the segment on a light note threw this out.

"PALCA: Well, all I can say is I wouldn't try that experiment on humans because I'm sure they'd leave me trapped. Most of my colleagues would leave me trapped and go for the chocolate and then let me out...."

So rats, have been getting a bad rap, just because of cultural perceptions that see them as 'fleeing a sinking ship' (where else could they flee when the water enters the area that they are in) and hence cowardly. It has just evolved into a popular meme and mindless pejorative, just as we categorize pigs as dirty (they love baths much like other mammals and avians and wouldn't wallow in the mud if they had access to clean water baths.).

But that might be too much to hope for, that just like the word 'gay' is finally losing its pejorative connotations, the terms ' ___ is a rat' or 'a pig' will make their way into history as quaint archaisms. We could be losing the shorthand associations of those usages in an entire body of literature that would no longer invoke a visceral reaction. Imagine x years in the future, when somebody reading 20th century literature stumbles across "He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat." and now has to puzzle out a meaning that would have jumped out at him in earlier times.

However that may turn out, in the context of the horrific fire that trapped and killed over 80 people in Kolkata, India, yesterday, with staff running away from the scene instead of assisting, it seems to me that the worst label humans could attach to such behavior is merely 'human'.

 

 

Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2011 (Norman Costa)

Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2011 (Norman Costa)

From giant oval storms on the surface of Jupiter to colourful wispy remnants from a supernova explosion and the dazzling green curtain of the Northern Lights - nearly 800 images were submitted for the latest Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.

See and hear more.

An Irene narrative: Journey through devastation in Vermont (Norman Costa)

An Irene narrative: Journey through devastation in Vermont (Norman Costa)

"...Tropical Storm Irene triggered the worst natural disaster in Vermont since 1927. At least three people drowned, and two are missing; hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed; the state's road system was broken in so many places they have not yet been counted.

"Across southern and central Vermont, small neighborhoods and some entire towns were cut off from the outside world for two or three days, without electricity or telephones, with dwindling supplies of food and water.

"As the state, towns and utilities worked to understand and respond to the crisis, neighbors rallied, communities pulled together to help flood victims, and individuals banded together to begin the recovery while still numb with shock.

"Free Press reporters and photographers fanned out throughout Vermont. These are scenes from the first week of what might well be the storm of a century that still has 90 years to go."

Read more HERE.

My Live Blog for Hurricane Irene (Norman Costa)

My Live blog for Hurrican Irene (Norman Costa)

by Norman Costa

 

1:01 PM, Monday, August 29, 2011

The clouds have gone,

The sun is shining,

Goddess is in her Heaven,

And all is right with the world.

 

4:34 PM, Sunday, August 28, 2011

Sunday	3pm	4pm	5pm	6pm	7pm	8pm	9pm	10pm
Forecast	Cloudy	Cloudy	Rain	Rain	Cloudy	Cloudy	Cloudy	Cloudy
Wind mph	22 W	39 W	46 W	45 W	44 W	42 W	40 W	34 W

I'll be honest. I was looking for some excitement from Irene. What a disappointing date. The kitchen window is not leaking. I don't see any downed trees, or even limbs. There are some scattered leaves. The sidewalks and streets almost dry. Big friggin deal!

My friend in Connecticut called to say they have trees down and no power. Her cell phone battery is going dead. She won't be going to work, tomorrow. At least they have some bragging rights.

The remaining stats on rain and wind, above, say we will have a little rain and maybe the wind will blow. Well, whoop di doo!

I think it's summed up by a headline on CNN.com: "New Yorkers unimpressed by Irene." I live in Poughkeepsie, now. But, I'm a New Yorker. I'm not impressed by Irene. 

Wait a minute. The trees are swaying. There's a wind. Really. Let's see what happens.

Hunting The Replicators: How Did Life Begin? (Norman Costa)

Hunting The Replicators: How Did Life Begin? (Norman Costa)

by Adam Frank, Astrophysicist, University of Rochester

"Amoebas are alive but rocks are not. What is the difference?

"For many people, one of the greatest difficulties in understanding the scientific narrative of cosmic evolution is how nature took the path from non-life to life. This question of "abiotic genesis" haunts many a science and religion debate with advocates of scriptural literalism unwilling to grant that natural processes, unmediated by a higher intelligence, could have taken "dead" matter and created living material.

"Now the path from "just" molecules to "something more" has gotten a bit more clear as researchers take a crucial step toward building the holy of holies: a self-replicating molecule.

"Part of this story, however, is the funny thing that happened to scientists studying the origin of life over the last 80 years. Their perspectives were profoundly rewired.

"In the 1950s, chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey performed a brilliant and brilliantly illustrative experiment. Miller and Urey created a simulated version of the early Earth in a test tube. An "atmosphere" of hydrogen, ammonia and methane was created in one flask. An "ocean" of liquid water was held in a separate flask. The two were connected and a high voltage discharge was set up in the atmospheric flask to act as lightening (and a source of UV light)."

Read more HERE.

 

Move Over Barney, Here comes the Fracosaurus (Sujatha)

There's been plenty of rainbows and peaceful green fields juxtaposed with happy faces and natural gas logos and clip art on the TV ads from the Marcellus Shale Coalition. But some companies have been taking this a step further. Catch 'em young is the motto, so here comes the Fracosaurus, or actually Talisman Terry .

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"Community outreach efforts in shale communities target adults first, then high school students and finally the elementary set, said Larry Michael, the executive director for workforce and economic development at the Marcellus Shale Education and Training Center at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.

When the Marcellus Shale industry arrived, "The initial priority was to put in programs to get people off the unemployment rolls," he said.

Now, his team is working at the high school level, offering curriculum and training to teachers over the summer. It will begin the elementary-education rollout sometime after the summer."

As far as coloring books go, the literary content never outweighs the need to provide a scribbling surface for your toddler, while infusing them with a healthy, subconscious dose of whatever propaganda you are agreable to dishing out.  Maybe this is aimed more at the parents than the crayon-wielding demographic. If they are old enough to read the words, they are past the 'color within the lines' simplicity of accepting whatever they are told without question. A kid-friendly coloring book might help convince them that it is not all about profit and environmental pollution, but about energy independence and 'conservation'. 

Disasters - natural and man-made

Post tsunami Japan, 2011 & Nagasaki, 1945: (image via Dean)

 

No time to grieve

Perceptions from Japan.

 

Sendai, Japan

WHEN the earthquake struck, I was at the hot springs in Sakunami, about 15 miles from my home in Sendai. I was playing host to a couple from Britain, and as I soaked in an open-air bath with Ben, the husband, powdery snow began to shake off the surrounding boulders. The next moment, small pieces of broken stone came tumbling down.

“It’s an earthquake, a big one,” I said, urging Ben on to the changing room next door. Without bothering to dry off, I pulled on my bathrobe. As I struggled to keep my legs from buckling and tied my sash with trembling hands, I was struck by the terrifying realization that the great earthquake off Miyagi Prefecture, predicted for so long, had at last arrived.

The fierce rolling of the earth lasted longer than I had ever experienced. As I learned later, this was not just the predicted earthquake. It was a giant quake in the waters off Miyagi; off the Sanriku coast in Iwate Prefecture to the north; off Fukushima Prefecture to the south. It lasted six minutes.

More here.

Fast facts about the Japan earthquake and tsunami

In the Scientific American. (via 3 Quarks Daily)

Another hominin lineage that interbred with (some) modern human populations..(omar)

The human family tree has some additions to it: There is big news about the Denisova hominins....I will wait for Razib Khan and others to blog on it and post links to their (sure to be) interesting commentary. Until then, this is a good summary of what we know..

And here is Razib's initial comment, which includes links to many other comments..

And I have changed hominid to hominin to reflect current practice.

Putting numbers on feelings

August 2010 has been a torrid month in Houston- it is winding down to become the hottest August on record. The high temperatures and humidity have made the days unusually uncomfortable with heat advisories being issued nearly daily. Two days ago the Houston Chronicle ran a mildly amusing editorial named The ugliest August. It described synapses melting in fearsome heat filled days.

Here in the depths of a Houston August, we sometimes suspect that the heat has melted our brain. So we run little tests. Sometimes we ask ourself poll questions like, "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" If the answer is yes, and if we think that we learned that from the media, we walk very carefully, holding our head up straight, so those liquid neurons don't slosh out our ears.

Another little test we run is to read SciGuy's blog on the Chronicle's website. Eric Berger uses graphs and words like "correlation," and we feel smarter just looking at that stuff on our screen. If the heat had truly liquefied our lobes, wouldn't we be on TMZ reading about Mel Gibson's latest phone rant?

(Okay, so we were reading that. And we'd like to reach out to Mel, who's clearly a fellow sufferer of Melted Brain Syndrome. It's just that we're afraid he'd call back.)

Where were we? Oh, yeah. SciGuy. On Friday, he started his blog with the line, "It's been so hot this month that…" Our overheated synapses got all excited: Was SciGuy going to crack jokes? We braced for stuff that would knock 'em dead at the nanotech centers — "so hot that 'heat death of the universe' takes on a whole new meaning!" … or "so hot that climate-change skeptics could cook their numbers on the sidewalk!"

But no. Instead, SciGuy dazzled us with data. It's so hot, he wrote, that "this month is on pace to become the warmest month on record in Houston. Any month. Ever." It's so hot that the average monthly temperature of 88.3 degrees is a whopping eight-tenths of a degree warmer than any previous August on record. So hot that this August has already had two — two! — daily minimum temperatures of 83 degrees, a level of overnight misery achieved only once before in 110-plus years of records.

There's no respite, we realized. This vicious month is giving no quarter. There's no chance for a melted brain to cool down. Demoralized, we slumped in our chair, leaned back, and felt our neocortex dribble down our neck. At least it made our neck feel cooler.

So okay, it wasn't really even mildly funny after the first paragraph. But I was thankful that amidst all those numbers that SciGuy is throwing around, there is no mention of the heat index which is regularly reported on TV weather reports alhough not on the Chronicle's own weather page.

I have always been mystified by the concept of heat index and wind chill factor. While there is no dispute that higher humidity on a hot day makes us feel hotter and howling winds during chilling temperatures can cut like a knife on the skin, how can the meteorologists say "exactly" how hot or cold one is supposed to feel due to these indices? I need a light cardigan or a shawl on a clear and breezy 70 degree night. My husband feels comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt on 55 degree days. During his high school years my son played hours of tennis in July when the thermometer would regularly hover in the high 90s, often climbing to triple digits while I sat under a tree or an umbrella fanning myself,  drinking copious amounts of iced water and wishing for the matches to end.

Who knows exactly how hot or cold a person feels? Perhaps 97 degrees Fahrenheit and high humidity feel like 100 to me, 105 to my husband and merely 97 to my son, while the meteorologist confidently tells us that it should feel like 103.  Measurements of weather phenomena have made tremendous advances but it would serve the public well if weather reports stay within the bounds of measurable parameters. Despite sophisticated instruments, predicting weather remains an inexact science. Having lived for a long time in tornado and hurricane prone regions of the country, I know this first hand. But rather than accept the fact that weather conditions are routine and for the most part, uneventful parts of our lives, the men and women reporting them on TV have become performers who are called upon to joke, scare and embellish.  Instead of  stating mere facts like the barometric pressure, the exact temperatures, relative humidity, wind velocities and the inches of snow and rainfall and occasionally issuing necessary warnings during severe weather, they must spice up the daily weather report by providing the measure of "feelings." I don't see the utility of the heat index and the wind chill factor and also why the weather segment of TV news has to adopt the sensationalist mode that has crept into all other forms of news reporting.

 

Anything for Gas (Sujatha)

(Trailer of Gasland)

There's a large industrial park close to my home, filled with large buildings and tasteful landscaping. All were empty last year; all are filled this year. They have been leased by companies seeking to drill for natural gas in the remnants of countryside and rolling hills, now crowded out by McMansion subdevelopments and strip malls.

A large building sits near the wetlands nearby. Once host to a mental health facility, it has now been sold for a pittance to another developer, who hopes to remake it into mixed commercial and light industrial use. It abuts some of the most prolific wildlife in the area, all living in and around man-made wetlands created to provide sanctuary for wildlife displaced by highway building. The local mental health advocates now want to allow the natural gas companies to move in, drill for gas and turn over a portion of their profits to mental health. Meeting after local meeting has these advocates pitted against the environmental activists. It's a tug of war whose result is yet to be determined.

It has been a slow awakening to the wealth of natural gas that is to be found in the Marcellus shale formation. After the coal ran out ( and this area is quite completely 'undermined' in the most literal sense.), nobody thought that there was anything worthwhile to extract, till new techniques such as fracturing or 'fracking' the shale to release the gas were developed. The downside is that millions of gallons of water are needed for the purpose, and mixed with toxic chemicals that form part of the 'fracking fluid', lots of elaborate mitigation and water purification methods are needed to render the waterways safe for use in drinking water supplies.

The companies are already complaining about the regulations, suggesting that the millions of dollars they will spend on regulatory requirements and taxes would be better spent on creating 10,000 new jobs. But it would be a short-sighted choice. Luckily both the DEP and concerned citizens are taking a closer look, in the aftermath of the recent blowout at a Marcellus shale natural gas well in West Virginia.  What had happened not too long ago at Hickory PA, could now come to this part of the county.

Here's what a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article had a few days ago:

"The industry noise began with a "blowout" on June 3 at a Marcellus Shale well outside Penfield in rural Clearfield County. That well, adjacent to the Moshannon State Forest, spewed natural gas and drilling wastewater contaminated with toxic chemicals into the air for 16 hours.

On Monday, drillers hit a pocket of methane in an inactive deep mine, causing an explosion and fire that flared 50-feet high for four days, destroyed a drilling rig and burned all seven workers on the well pad, located in a farm field near Moundsville in West Virginia's northern panhandle.

"We're horrified by the possibilities of that happening here," Ms. Borowiec said about Marcellus Shale wells planned for a pad 1,500 feet from homes in Upper Burrell. "The more research we do the more horrific it is, and I don't think a lot of people know what's going on."

The Pennsylvania and West Virginia accidents at gas wells tapping into the mile-deep, gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation have alerted some for the first time to risks that accompany what some have termed a gas-drilling gold rush, and heightened serious safety and environmental concerns for others.

Spill Baby Spill: Anatomy of a Disaster (Sujatha)

If this investigating professor is to be believed, it started several weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig, positioned several miles offshore, drilling in 5000 ft deep ocean, was due to be capped and moved to another location for drilling. Based on his interviews with people who were involved in the rig's operation

"There was an "intense kick" of natural gas  caused the rig to be shut down over fears of a catastrophic explosion just weeks before one such influx of gas did so."

Deepwater Horizon is one of the most advanced rigs of its kind. Or at least, it was, till it became an expensive piece of trash(albeit insured for up to $560 million), lying 1500 ft from its original position on the sea bed. The Swiss-based company Transocean, one of the largest contractors for oil drilling, owned and operated over 150 similar rigs for various oil company customers all over the world. Deepwater Horizon was being used to extract sweet crude for the BP oil company, moving from location to location as it completed the drilling, relying on precise positioning in the ocean locked in place by GPS systems.

After the drilling operation was completed, BP had another contractor, Halliburton, come in to cap the drilled location, and that was completed 'successfully', according to the parties involved. Until it wasn't, and 20 hours later, on April 20, the oil rig exploded catastrophically. The initial days were spent in looking for survivors and the rig sank on April 22. For a few days, reassuring statements regarding the small amount of oil spilling into the gulf were being put out, but not for long. The spill was growing at a tremendous rate and the amount released per day was eventually admitted to be five times as much as had been previously thought: 210,000 gallons a day, rather than 40,000.

Timeline (from chron.com)

In a hearing started yesterday in Congress, and continuing today, the blame-game of Musical chairs continues with full gusto, while the administration mulls its options to split the Mineral Management Services into separate bodies for regulation and lease oversight, given that the unholy nexus between the MMS officials and oil industry executives contributed considerably to  lax regulation and this disaster.

"A top American executive for BP, Lamar McKay, said a critical safety device known as a blowout-preventer failed catastrophically. Separately, the owner of the rig off Louisiana's coast said that BP managed it and was responsible for all work conducted at the site. A third company defended work that it performed on the deepwater oil well as "accepted industry practice" prior to last month's explosion.

"We are looking at why the blowout preventer did not work because that was to be the fail-safe in case of an accident," McKay, chairman and president of BP America, said in testimony prepared for a Senate hearing Tuesday. A copy of his testimony was obtained by The Associated Press. "Transocean's blowout preventer failed to operate."

The chief executive for Swiss-based Transocean, which owned the oil rig and the blowout preventer, shifted blame to BP.

"All offshore oil and gas production projects begin and end with the operator, in this case BP," CEO Steven Newman said in his Senate testimony, also obtained by the AP. Newman said that BP was responsible for submitting a detailed plan specifying where and how a well is to be drilled, cased, cemented and completed.

Newman also said that BP's contractor, Halliburton Inc., was responsible for encasing the well in cement, putting a temporary plug in the top of the well, and ensuring the cement's integrity. That cementing process was dictated by BP's well plan, Newman said.

A Halliburton executive, Tim Probert, said the company safely finished a cementing operation 20 hours before the rig went up in flames. Probert said Halliburton completed work on the well according to accepted industry practice and at the direction of federal regulators."

Efforts to manage the spill ( now exceeding 3 million gallons and counting) included the use of a high-tech dome to cap the spill and siphon off the oil through a sort of funnel to a ship waiting above it. But this attempt was doomed, with methane ice-crystal formed inside the dome, buoying it up too high to contain the leak.

In a masterpiece of misstatement:

""I wouldn't say it failed yet," said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP, the London-based company that owns the leaking well. "What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work."

Low-tech attempts are being made as well, by volunteer groups such as Matter of Trust.
They are calling for donations of human and pet hair to use in creating home-made booms and mats to soak up the oil from the spill, based on prior experience with the Cosco Busan oil spill clean-up.

As we humans bemoan the loss of pristine beaches, now risking the messy tarballs that are washing up on beaches from Louisiana upto Galveston, and Florida, and the terrible smells wafting on-shore from the gazillion gallons floating on the surface as the spill takes on the dimensions of Texas in square miles, we are but the chickens while the birds, the fish and the shrimp are the pigs. ( Scrum terminology: Chickens are involved, but the pigs are committed.)

We've all seen the one gannet that seems to be the only bird being cleaned after the disaster, on myriad TV screens and internet article photos. But there are others, unseen and unsung, being presumably cleaned of the oil in their feathers. But no hard numbers seem to exist for these unfortunates.

One German expert went so far as to advocate euthanizing them, stating that their survival rates even after cleaning and release into the wild are not good.

But I suspect her advice stems from the use of older technology. Newer studies with more recent oil spills and cleaning methods have shown that while mortality is still higher than normal for cleaned and rehabilitated birds, released birds that make it past the initial month or so have as good a chance as any unaffected bird to survive in the wild.

As for aquatic life, the list of risks are too long to enumerate, all depending on the types of terrain along the coastline where the spill will come ashore.Ecosystems in the marshlands,lowlands and mangroves are most at risk compared with sand and gravel beaches,or even the deep sea, where fish populations can swim away and evade the worst effects of the spilled oil. But bottom-oriented populations of fish that live close to the ocean bed could be impacted by the tarry deposits that remain in the vicinity of the well-head. as will predator species that rely on them for food.

Fishing is done for several years, possibly, in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe, some day as fishing trawlers move back into the zone, they may find a new kind of fish population, evolved to deal with the exigencies of surviving in polluted ocean waters, and not necessarily ready for human consumption for another generation.

Cactus Flower

This post is a cut & paste transfer from Facebook where I have been recording the unusual but surprisingly beautiful progress of a cactus plant. Readers who are on my FB list of "friends" may have already seen it. Click on the images for an enlarged view.

I have had several cactus plants for years - indoors and outdoors. Some on my sunny back porch bloom from time to time . For the first time, an indoors one is sporting a bright flower. Could it be because I placed this one near a large frosted glass window which gets a lot of light?

But what are those two fuzzy growths... on the two sides forming an isosceles triangle with the flower? Are they future blooms? They grew in the past couple of weeks. I don't remember the pink flower sprouting something like this prior to blossoming. Or perhaps I didn't notice.

 
  

Within just one week, the cactus has gone from sporting a small pink flower, two symmetrical side burns, a rapidly growing bud on a stem, to a large white bloom!

The changes were visible to the naked eye almost by the hour. It was like watching time lapse photography. I have never seen a cactus do this. Has anyone?

The photos chronicle the changes from start to finish, starting last Sunday.....

 

The white flower on the long stem is completely different in its look, color, shape and texture from the little pink one that had bloomed close to the cactus bulb. This one is as big as the body of the parent cactus.

 

The cactus is in our master bathroom next to a very large window which lets in a lot of sunlight throughout the day. My husband speculates that the surfeit of light and the moisture from the shower has fooled the cactus into thinking that it is in a very hospitable place for propagation. He thinks that while the pink flower is the usual bloom, the white one is of a more precious variety, containing the pollen. The cactus wants to start a family!

Alas, the seeds will just be falling into the bathtub next to it or on the window sill. 

Jiggling the earth

Could it be that mullahs and other fundamentalist religious leaders know more about meteorology and geology than we suspect? Earlier this year Pat Robertson blamed the Haitian temblor on voodoo and a pact with the devil. An Iranian mullah recently blamed scantily dressed women for earthquakes.

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

A group of women, led by a graduate student in Purdue University decided to put the Iranian cleric's theory to test by organizing a "Boobquake" on Facebook. Then, see what happened!

 

Living architecture: the root bridges of India and Japan

The following came to me from a friend in an e-mail. I am copying it here with minor edits. I have never seen a root bridge in India, having never been to the far northeast corner of the country. I did see several interesting bridges in Japan but can't recall seeing a living / growing one. (Please click on the thumbnail photos)
 

In the depths of northeastern India , in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren't built -- they're grown.

 
 
Grown from the roots of a rubber tree, the Khasi people of Cherapunjee use betel-tree trunks, sliced down the middle and hollowed out, to create "root-guidance systems." When they reach the other side of the river, they're allowed to take root in the soil. Given enough time a sturdy, living bridge is produced.

 

The root bridges, some of which are over a hundred feet long, take ten to fifteen years to become fully functional, but they're extraordinarily strong. Some can support the weight of 50 or more people at once. One of the most unique root structures of Cherrapunjee is known as the " Umshiang Double-Decker.It consists of two bridges stacked one over the other!

 
 

Because the bridges are alive and still growing, they actually gain strength over time, and some of the ancient root bridges used daily by the people of the villages around Cherrapunjee may be well over 500 years old.

But these are not the only bridges built from growing plants. Japan too, has its own form of living bridges. These are The Vine Bridges of Iya Valley.

 

One of Japan's three "hidden" valleys, West Iya is home to the kind of misty gorges, clear rivers, and thatched roofs one imagines in the Japan of centuries ago. To get across the Iya river that runs through the rough valley terrain, bandits, warriors and refugees created a very special - if slightly unsteady - bridge made of vines. This is a picture from the 1880s of one of the original vine bridges.

 

First, two Wisteria vines, one of the strongest vines known were grown to extraordinary lengths from either side of the river. Once the vines had reached a sufficient length they were woven together with planking to create a pliable, durable and, most importantly, living piece of botanical engineering.

 

The bridges had no sides, and a Japanese historical source relates that the original vine bridges were so unstable, those attempting to cross them for the first time would often freeze in place, unable to go any farther. Three of those vine bridges remain in Iya Valley. While some (though apparently not all) of the bridges have been reinforced with wire and side rails, they are still harrowing to cross. More than 140 feet long, with planks set six to eight inches apart and a drop of four-and-a-half stories down to the water, they are not for acrophobes. Some people believe the existing vine bridges were first grown in the 12th century, which would make them some of the oldest known examples of living architecture in the world.

To Fly or Not to Fly (Sujatha)

Through the cloud of volcanic ash spewed by the Icelandic volcano Eyjafyallajokull, that is. As thousands of flights were canceled over the weekend, desperate travelers sought any possible way out of airport lounge purgatory, driving across countries and paying unprecedented prices for one-way taxi or bus rides.

The flights resume, after a few test flights were made by 'intrepid' airline executives. "No problems. We can handle this." But a few anecdotes don't make data. Existing data shows:

Item 1 : $3.2 million worth of damage to a NASA DC-8 flown through volcanic ash spewed by a sister volcano Hekla. Interestingly, this detailed study shows that the plane appeared to function fine for about 68 hours of flying time after the passage through the ash cloud. The damage became evident only after that time. This could account for the preliminary 'no problem' assessment for the commercial jets' test flights. But will it result in failures as more air time is accumulated?

Item 2: Data and photos of engine damage to Finnish air force planes that flew through the ash spewed by Eyjafjallajokull a few hours before airspace was finally closed.

Item 3: What happened to  British Airways and KLM flights in the '80s.

"In one incident, all four engines of British Airways flight shut down when flying though the ash of an Indonesian eruption in 1982. The same thing occurred in 1989 when a KLM jet flew through a cloud of ash in Alaska. Both flights were able to restart their engines, but only after losing more than 10,000 feet of altitude.

"Even when you set aside things like potential law suits from loss of life, and things like that, the damage to the plane by flying through the ash can run into tens of millions of dollars," says Benjamin Edwards, a volcanologist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.

KLM, for example, had to replace all four engines on the aircraft, which was less than a year old, at a cost of $80 million."

I hope that this resumption of flights doesn't lead to any problems, but the track record for airplanes flying through volcanic ash clouds, is unfortunately, NOT GOOD.

A Tale Of Two Temblors

AP report compares two recent earthquakes and their after effects - in Haiti and in Chile.

 

The Depraved Never Rest

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, two right wing media commentators have been heard spouting their usual reactionary drivel.  Televangelist Pat Robertson blamed the people of Haiti for bringing about their own misfortune by making a pact with the devil and Rush Limbaugh used the occasion to cast aspersions on President Obama, who he said would exploit the disaster to curry favor with African Americans!

Meanwhile, decent human beings are doing their best to assist the people of Haiti. Please find out how you can help. (My contribution went to Doctors Without Borders)

Donate over the Internet:

• The American Red Cross: site link; donation link.
• Doctors Without Borders: site link; donation link.
• Partners in Health: site link; donation link.
• UNICEF: site link; donation link.