Category: Education

Earth Day and The 11th Hour

Some very thought-provoking ideas.

John H, a good friend of us here in Payson, lent us the Leonardo DiCaprio film The 11th Hour.  More information on the film’s website.  Here’s the trailer,

The plot of the film, if plot is the right word, is as follows,

With contributions from over 50 politicians, scientists, and environmental activists, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, and journalist Paul Hawken, the film documents the grave problems facing the planet’s life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans’ habitats are all addressed. The film’s premise is that the future of humanity is in jeopardy.

The film proposes potential solutions to these problems by calling for restorative action by the reshaping and rethinking of global human activity through technology, social responsibility and conservation.

Whether or not you watch the film, and I strongly suggest you do, the action website that supports making a difference is For the Love of Action.  Drop in and make your own mind up.

Following on from that film is this apt reminder of the world we have created.  I tend to write articles a few days ahead of the publish date, so it wasn’t possible to have this post come out on the 20th April, last Wednesday, which was Earth Day.  Shame.  Because as this email from the Alaska Wilderness League pointed out, it’s also a sad reminder of our love affair with oil.

Dear Paul,

The next Deepwater Horizon could be amid the broken sea ice and polar bear habitat of America’s Arctic: unless we prevent it now. Donate to the League.

It was one year ago today. I remember sitting in my living room after dinner when the news alert flashed across the screen:Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico; 11 workers dead or missing. 

Huddled around the office television the next morning, there was no way we could anticipate the true magnitude of the disaster. Images of ruined lives and tarnished lands poured out of the Gulf formonths on end. As the oil industry’s feeble attempts to contain the destruction grew evermore cartoony – ‘top hat,’ ‘junk shot,’ ‘top kill’ – we learned just how little they had prepared for the eventual catastrophe of an oil spill.

Our government rubber-stamped the faulty plans for this oil rig. They had a chance to prevent this disaster, but didn’t. What’s worse: they continue to approve plans for America’s Arctic that are functionally identical to the plans that caused the Gulf disaster. America’s Arctic could be our next Deepwater Horizon tragedy. The effects of deadly crude oil spilling into the broken sea ice and polar bear habitat of America’s Arctic would be disastrous: unless we stop it.

We are fighting the next horrifying oil spill every step of the way. Help us prevent it – donate now! 

When Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf, the League had just completed a campaign to highlight the incredible annual migration of Arctic birds that begins in the Arctic Refuge and extends through each U.S. state. Some of these birds fly as far as the southern tip of Argentina! Many of them rely on critical nesting grounds around the Gulf of Mexico.

The League moved quickly to save these birds, distributing ‘Arctic Garden Kits’ to help donors across the country to provide sustenance and shelter to Arctic birds in their own backyards. Proceeds from the fundraiser helped us fight faulty plans from moving forward in America’s Arctic for the last two summers.

Shell Oil, the biggest threat for Arctic drilling, remains undaunted by our success. Their drilling plans for 2012 have ballooned from one drill rig to six. This is their big move – their cards are on the table. We need your help and support to go over the top to stop their escalating plans.

Help us stop the next disaster in America’s Arctic. Give today.

The way in which the League responded to the Gulf disaster – stemming the damage to wildlife and preventing the next disaster – was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. You have a chance to be a part of this continuing work. Help us save America’s Arctic before it suffers the fate of another Deepwater Horizon.

Thank you for all that you do,

Cindy Shogan
Executive Director
Alaska Wilderness League

Finally, let me close rather pointedly, perhaps, by this video of the fires in Texas which are burning out of control and have already scorched 1.6 million acres.; long-term drought being part of the cause.

Beautiful minds, today Stephen Hawking

The second of two fascinating films about two very beautiful minds, Hugh Everett III and Stephen Hawking.

I am slightly hesitant in pursuing this, after my article about Hugh Everett on the 19th.  Said slightly tongue-in-cheek following a fascinating, as always, exchange of comments with Patrice Ayme.  Here’s a taste of Ayme’s writings, and here’s the exchange,

Patrice first wrote,

The question is: what happened? The multiverse answer is that, whatever it is, it happened in one universe, and it did not happen, in another universe. And if it is not a matter of discrete choice, as in a 2 slit experiment, an uncountable number of universes will be created. In other words, if one wants a proof of the insanity of some of today’s physicists, the multiverse is all we need. According to this lamentable spasm of the mind, during every single, smallest amount of time imaginable, an uncountable infinity of universes appear.

OK, the inflationary universe has the same problem, and is about as insane. But being surrounded by mad men does not excuse one’s own insanity. So we shall laugh.

To which I replied,

Dear Patrice, the challenge presented at this end, in terms of how to evaluate your comment, is that your anonymous profile (that is truly respected, by the way) makes it impossible to determine your academic and social backgrounds. Therefore are you replying from the position of a great thinker, or of a great thinker with significant scientific and philosophical accreditations? Your writings are powerful and impressive but nonetheless to assume (as I read into your approach) that the world of quantum physics is a ‘done deal’ is not something I can share. I anticipate that you will feel similarly ready to laugh on Thursday when I publish some words on Stephen Hawking. ;-)

Eliciting a further very thoughtful reply from PA,

Thoughts have to learn to stand on their own. The authority fallacy (if you forgive this neo sentence) is no ersatz for truth. Some (previously) immensely respected physics Nobel prizes were member of the Nazi party before Hitler. That did not make their physics any less insane.

Most top thinkers of the scientific revolution in the 17C were not respected tenured professors at the university (although Galileo and Newton were, not so for Kepler, Bruno,Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Leibnitz…). We have no historical distantiation to judge what’s going on now.

I respect some of the work of Hawking. And certainly respect him tremendously as a person (although he dumped his wife for his nurse).

I appreciate the fact you tease me with Quantum Mechanics as a “done deal”. I actually believe that QM is the most precise theory we have, but it’s most certainly false or crazy as Newton basically said about his own theory of gravitation, and pretty much for the same reasons… This shows that I have to express myself more clearly…

In any case QM got no traction with the Quantum computer, so far. To say the least, many questions have been found to not be answered…

As far as accreditations are concerned, I will refer to the PhDs of Qaddafi’s children, and the movie “Ghostwriter”. Speaking of Harvard, what about Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”, of an incredibly low scholarly level, and the numerous professors there on Qaddafi’s payroll? Does that mean they were accreditated by Qaddafi?

I am quite familiar with academia, and I think too much credit is given, quite often.

I am going to put a more extended version of my various remarks on my site, insisting on the fact QM, however impressive, is no deal. The multiverse was a desperate attempt to make it a deal, precisely, as it was made to eschew the problem of the non existence of a detailled mechanism of wave packet collapse. [Ironically I was once punished on a “philosophy” site for saying that QM was a live subject of research; I never went back to that site, which has academic pretentions: they had told me they checked with physics professors…]

Best wishes to you too, and I look forward chewing on Hawking very slowly… meanwhile I shall put my anti-multiverse blast on my site…

So here goes!

Prof. Hawking

Professor Stephen William Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England.  His own website has a nice summary of his life which may be read here.  There is a huge amount that could be written about this most amazing man.  His book A Brief History of Time has sold in the millions which for a man who deals with some pretty big personal challenges, is no small feat.  Here’s a relatively recent talk (2008) from TED2008,

But like the Hugh Everett posting, I wanted to draw your attention to the 48 minute programme, originally from the BBC Horizon series, that explores some of the challenges that are starting to appear to Hawking’s long-held theories about the start of the universe.

The film may be watched from here.

Alain de Botton

An excursion into the nature of self!

I had not heard of Alain de Botton before coming across a series of his TV programmes via Top Documentary Films.  But, clearly, that has been my loss because he appears to have quite a following.  So over the next 10 days or so, I’m going to include some of his material in upcoming articles in the hope that you enjoy them as much as we have.

But first, an introduction to Alain de Botton from a TED Talks video from July 2009.  Enjoy.

Plan B Movie for Planet Earth

This is a ‘must see’ video for all to watch.

On the 17th March, I wrote another piece inspired by Lester Brown’s book, World on the Edge.  That piece was about what Lester Brown calls Plan B and shows that there are positive, real solutions to the dilemma that us humans have got ourselves in.

Anyway, I was delighted to see in my email in-box the following,

PLAN B: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION—THE FILM

Plan B video

For the month of April only, you can watch a streaming edition of the film Plan B on the PBS website. So if you missed the initial release for whatever reason, here is your opportunity to watch it at your leisure.

Based on Lester Brown’s Plan B book series, this 90-minute film, by the award-winning film producers Marilyn and Hal Weiner, follows Lester as he speaks in Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, New Delhi, Rome, Istanbul, Ankara, and Washington, DC, and visits with world leaders to discuss ways to respond to the challenges of climate change.

The film begins with a dramatic portrayal of a world where there is a mounting tide of public concern about melting glaciers and sea level rise and a growing sense that we need to change course in how we react to emerging economic and social pressures. The film also spotlights a world where ocean resources are becoming scarce, croplands are eroding, and harvests are shrinking.

But what makes Plan B significant and timely is that it provides hopeful solutions—a road map that will help eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and protect and restore our planet’s fisheries, forests, aquifers, soil, grasslands, and biological diversity.

Along with Lester Brown, you will hear from notable scholars and scientists including Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and former Governor and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt.

Narrated by Matt Damon, well-known for his work raising environmental awareness.

The film is available to view here.  Note that it is only free to watch for the month of April.

Joseph Campbell interlude

Just ran out of time!

My apologies but events yesterday conspired to get in the way of me offering a more thoughtful article for today.  So I hope you will be happy with another video of Joseph Campbell.

For those wanting to explore more, this is the link to the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Adjust your alarm clock!

A fascinating, perhaps even non-trivial, insight into that massive earthquake.

(Thanks to the website Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis for giving me a heads-up to this aspect of the ‘quake.)

MISH’s website pointed me to the website Space.com where there was this interesting reflection.

The massive earthquake that struck northeast Japan Friday (March 11) has shortened the length Earth’s day by a fraction and shifted how the planet’s mass is distributed.

A new analysis of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan has found that the intense temblor has accelerated Earth’s spin, shortening the length of the 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds, according to geophysicist Richard Gross at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Gross refined his estimates of the Japan quake’s impact – which previously suggested a 1.6-microsecond shortening of the day – based on new data on how much the fault that triggered the earthquake slipped to redistribute the planet’s mass. A microsecond is a millionth of a second.

“By changing the distribution of the Earth’s mass, the Japanese earthquake should have caused the Earth to rotate a bit faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds,” Gross told SPACE.com in an e-mail. More refinements are possible as new information on the earthquake comes to light, he added.

The scenario is similar to that of a figure skater drawing her arms inward during a spin to turn faster on the ice. The closer the mass shift during an earthquake is to the equator, the more it will speed up the spinning Earth.

I was also interested to read in that article more confirmation that the earthquake moved Japan! (I had mentioned it in an earlier post on Learning from Dogs.)

The initial data suggests Friday’s earthquake moved Japan’s main island about 8 feet, according to Kenneth Hudnut of the U.S. Geological Survey. The earthquake also shifted Earth’s figure axis by about 6 1/2 inches (17 centimeters), Gross added.

The Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis in space, which it spins around once every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kph). The figure axis is the axis around which the Earth’s mass is balanced and the north-south axis by about 33 feet (10 meters).

“This shift in the position of the figure axis will cause the Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but will not cause a shift of the Earth’s axis in space – only external forces like the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon, and planets can do that,” Gross said.

So if you are the sort of person that likes to be precisely on time ….. take note!

That beautiful moon

The moon is at her full, and riding high,

Floods the calm fields with light.

The airs that hover in the summer sky

Are all asleep to-night William Bryant

 

'Harvest' moon!

 

As many of you know, I wrote a piece last Monday about how close the moon will be to the Earth on the 19th, and some ideas about whether there was a correlation between close full moons and natural disasters.

Well tomorrow is the 19th and I wanted to remind everyone to take time off, be outside and just admire this wondrous object in our night sky.

A reader, thanks Suzann, pointed me to the NASA Science website where there is some good factual information about how special this moon is.  From that website, I quote:

Mark your calendar. On March 19th, a full Moon of rare size and beauty will rise in the east at sunset. It’s a super “perigee moon”–the biggest in almost 20 years.

“The last full Moon so big and close to Earth occurred in March of 1993,” says Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC. “I’d say it’s worth a look.”

Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon’s orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee): diagram. Nearby perigee moons are about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser moons that occur on the apogee side of the Moon’s orbit.

“The full Moon of March 19th occurs less than one hour away from perigee–a near-perfect coincidence1that happens only 18 years or so,” adds Chester.

A perigee full Moon brings with it extra-high “perigean tides,” but this is nothing to worry about, according to NOAA. In most places, lunar gravity at perigee pulls tide waters only a few centimeters (an inch or so) higher than usual. Local geography can amplify the effect to about 15 centimeters (six inches)–not exactly a great flood.

Super Full Moon (moon illusion, 200px)

(The Moon looks extra-big when it is beaming through foreground objects–a.k.a. “the Moon illusion.”)

Indeed, contrary to some reports circulating the Internet, perigee Moons do not trigger natural disasters. The “super moon” of March 1983, for instance, passed without incident. And an almost-super Moon in Dec. 2008 also proved harmless.

Okay, the Moon is 14% bigger than usual, but can you really tell the difference? It’s tricky. There are no rulers floating in the sky to measure lunar diameters. Hanging high overhead with no reference points to provide a sense of scale, one full Moon can seem much like any other.

The best time to look is when the Moon is near the horizon. That is when illusion mixes with reality to produce a truly stunning view. For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, low-hanging Moons look unnaturally large when they beam through trees, buildings and other foreground objects. On March 19th, why not let the “Moon illusion” amplify a full Moon that’s extra-big to begin with? The swollen orb rising in the east at sunset may seem so nearby, you can almost reach out and touch it.

Don’t bother. Even a super perigee Moon is still 356,577 km away. That is, it turns out, a distance of rare beauty.
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Footnote: Less-perfect perigee moons occur more often. In 2008, for instance, there was a full Moon four hours from perigee. Many observers thought that one looked great, so the one-hour perigee moon of 2011 should be a real crowd pleaser.

What is Reality? – concluding parts.

Yesterday, I included Parts One and Two of a recent BBC television programme put out under the Horizon banner that had found their way onto YouTube.

Nothing more to say in this Post than to let you watch the concluding parts.  As I wrote yesterday, this may change forever the way you look at everything!

What is Reality?

Things are never quite what we seem!

There’s that wonderful quote from American comedian, Woody Allen, “What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.”

But that quote may not be as silly as it first appears if I made sense of a programme  that we watched recently.  That was a documentary broadcast by the BBC under their fabulous science series known as Horizon.  As an aside, the range of programmes covered over the years under the Horizon banner is fantastic as this web page from March 2008 demonstrates.  An in-depth history of this BBC series is available on WikiPedia and the ‘Home’ page of the current Horizon website is here.

Anyway, back to this particular programme, What is Reality?  Rather than me natter on about a subject that I don’t understand, despite being captivated by it, let me allow you to watch the programme courtesy of YouTube!  Here is the first half of the programme split into two YouTube videos; the last half will be posted tomorrow.

Do yourself a favour and settle down to watch them undisturbed – as the programme says you may never look at the world around you in quite the same way again!

You have been warned!

 

More with Joseph Campbell

When I posted my introductory piece on Joseph Campbell on the 14th February, I was tight on time.  So it was pretty brief, as a piece.

But I was amazed at the number of people who read that Post; clearly this man Campbell has reached out to many across the world.  Plus there was this comment from Michelle, better known as Dogkisses.

What a wonderful man! My hero. I cried when he passed on. He is the first person who reached me in my mid-twenties.

A friend of mine introduced me to “The Power of Myth,” and gave me a video series, which is so old now the VHS won’t play. Bill Moyers (I think I have that name right) interviewed him in the series.

The last book I had about him was, “Radio Interviews with Joseph Campbell.” I gave it to my teenage son. He loved it so much, but his girlfriend said reading that book made him act differently. I laughed and said thank goodness. He said the book disappeared. I wondered how. She said it made him not want to work full time. He was only barely seventeen, and I was trying to get him to take a different path in life.

The world would be a better place if everyone could appreciate what Joseph Campbell said and for the great work he did in his life.

Thank you. A very nice way to start a hectic Monday.

And in reply to me thanking DK for her comment and offering her the chance to guest post on Learning from Dogs, this further comment,

I certainly look forward to the future posts.

I’m having a hard time with my memory and mental fatigue lately. I would have to re-read myself to be able to write about what I learned from Joseph Campbell, which actually might help me and I know I would enjoy it.

I’ve been turning back for the past few months, looking back to when I stood on more solid ground spiritually. Hearing Joseph Campbell again would certainly help me remember that time in my life, because I was reading his work. I have daily quotes from him that come to my Google reader.

Thank you for the invitation and I am truly honored that you ask. I can do some reading and see if my brain gives me anything to share.

Peace,
Michelle.

So this Post today is for Michelle.