It struck me recently that many of you readers that come to Learning from Dogs on a regular basis, say, over the last 18 months, may not be clear as to why it’s called what it is, and the deeper issues behind the name.
First, the name. Quite a few years ago I was sitting chatting with Jon Lavin, the co-founder of the Blog, in his home in South-West England. My German Shepherd, Pharaoh (that’s him on the home page) was sleeping on the floor while Jon and I were nattering about the works of Dr David Hawkins of Veritas Publishing. Jon mentioned that David Hawkins had measured the consciousness of dogs and that they came out about 205. In other words they were integrous creatures and firmly on the truthful side of the boundary between truth and falsehood.
I was fascinated by that idea. Later, back at my home, less than an hour away from Jon’s house, I was idly looking at domain names that were available, and imagine my glee when I discovered that learningfromdogs (dot) com was free. It was rapidly grabbed.
A rather chaotic period of my life descended upon me but the notion that we have much to learn from dogs stayed with me. Much later, when I was happily settled with Jean, the vision and purpose of the Blog got me under way. The first post was published on 15th July, 2009.
The ideas behind the theme that dogs have an extraordinary relationship with man is contained in a very early piece written for the Blog back in July 19th, 2009. That article is called Dogs and integrity. But nothings stays still. In that piece, I wrote,
Because of this closeness between dogs and man, we (as in man!) have the ability to observe the way they live. Now I’m sure that scientists would cringe with the idea that the way that a dog lives his life sets an example for us humans, well cringe in the scientific sense.
However, on Sunday evening we watched a video from PBS that showed that scientists are now taking a very close interest in dogs and why they have such a special relationship with man, perhaps even a critical part in enabling man to prosper as hunter-gatherers. Here’s a preview of that video programme.
Unfortunately, the video is not freely available from PBS. However, it was based on the BBC Horizon programme, The Secret Life of the Dog, which I wrote about back in the 25th January, 2011. (The YouTube link on that post appears to have been curtailed.)
Luckily there are a couple of options to watch this fascinating and very revealing documentary. You can either watch it in sections from YouTube, the first 10 minutes is below, or you can watch it in full, if you don’t mind some Chinese translations here. Your choice.
That’s enough for today, I shall return to this theme next week.
A documentary on PBS entitled Parallel World, Parallel Lives traces in a deeply personal way, the efforts of the son of Hugh Everett, Mark Oliver Everett, to find out more about his father, who died in 1982, just 51 years old. Mark Everett is an accomplished musician and much of his music makes it onto the soundtrack of the film. Here’s a brief extract from an article from Scientific American.
Hugh Everett III
Hugh Everett III was a brilliant mathematician, an iconoclastic quantum theorist and, later, a successful defense contractor with access to the nation’s most sensitive military secrets. He introduced a new conception of reality to physics and influenced the course of world history at a time when nuclear Armageddon loomed large. To science-fiction aficionados, he remains a folk hero: the man who invented a quantum theory of multiple universes. To his children, he was someone else again: an emotionally unavailable father; “a lump of furniture sitting at the dining room table,” cigarette in hand.
A fascinating programme and one which shows great courage and bravery from Mark Everett in dealing with his memories and emotions about a brilliant but emotionally flawed father.
A wonderful tribute to Yuri Gagarin and all his team.
When I recently wrote of it being 41 years since Swigert on board Apollo 13 transmitted “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” I also included a closing reflection as follows,
Finally, this Post is published, not only on the 41st anniversary of that memorable Apollo Flight but the day after the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight of a human into space, the 12th April, 1961.
Coincidentally, our favourite documentary film website, Top Documentary Films, featured on April 14th the new film First Orbit. We watched the film that night. It was a most unusual format for a film, yet a most haunting experience. Watching the credits, it then became clear that the film was a co-operative venture made especially for the 50th anniversary of that remarkable, historic flight.
Of course, had I previously been aware of the venture and this remarkable film then it would have been promoted on Learning from Dogs in good time before the anniversary date. However, better late than never!
Indeed, there is a dedicated website in recognition of this First Orbit. Here’s the background to the film,
April 12th 1961 – Yuri Gagarin is about to see what no other person has seen in the history of humanity – the Earth from space. In the next 108 minutes he’ll see more than most people do in a lifetime. What sights awaited the first cosmonaut silently gliding over the world below? What was it like to view the oceans and continents sailing by from such a height?
By matching the orbital path of the Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin’s Vostok 1spaceship and filming the same vistas of the Earth through the new giant cupola window, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and documentary film maker Christopher Riley, have captured a new digital high definition view of the Earth below, half a century after Gagarin first witnessed it.
Weaving these new views together with historic, recordings of Gagarin from the time, (subtitled in Englsih) and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the world on this historic anniversary.
The music in the film is most beautiful, quite moving. Here’s the background to the music from the First Orbit website,
First Orbit’s producer Christopher Riley first worked with Philip in 2006 on the Sundance Award winning feature documentary film ‘In the Shadow of the Moon‘ and since then Philip had been working on a new suite of music inspired by spaceflight.
“We’d been working with some of these tracks on another project” says Chris, “and we suddenly realised how perfectly they could compliment ‘First Orbit’ as well. We contacted Philip to ask his permission to use them, only to find that his entire Cloud Song album was already in orbit onboard the International Space Station!”
“NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, had them on her iPod” says Philip. “Her husband Josh Simpson is a friend of mine and they’d listened to a lot of my music together before she left, so I made up a playlist for her!”
Quite by coincidence Cady had been listening to the music in ‘First Orbit’ at one end of the Space Station whilst European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli was shooting for the film at the other end, without either of them knowing the connection!
Back on Earth Chris and the film’s editor Stephen Slater took Philip’s tracks from Cloud Song and weaved them together with Paolo’s new views of the Earth to create the different moods of the film; from the first views of snowy Siberia to the darkness of night over the Pacific Ocean and the homecoming over Africa, as Gagarin starts to re-enter the atmosphere.
The result is a mesmerising combination of imagary and music which we hope convey the spectrum of emotions which no doubt went through Yuri’s mind as he gazed down upon the Earth.
Finally, here’s the film. It’s an hour and thirty-nine minutes and, as I said, an unconventional film experience. But if any part of you either remembers the event or wonders what it was like, those 50 years ago, then find somewhere out of reach of interruptions and watch the film.
Things do not change; we change.Henry David Thoreau
To a great extent, my thoughts in this article will make less sense if one hasn’t watched the Rupert Sheldrake video included in the Post on the 10th January, 2011. It’s 1 hour 20 minutes long but every minute will captivate you, trust me.
But if, for whatever reason, you don’t watch that video then the following YouTube videos are offered where Sheldrake speaks of the evidence supporting telepathy between cats and dogs and humans. The demonstration of a dog knowing when their owner is coming home is enthralling.
The science behind this link between, for example, the dog and its owner, is what Dr. Sheldrake calls an example of Morphic Fields.
I must confess that if someone had said to me, say 10 or even 5 years ago, that some form of energy field links the brains of dogs and their owners, or of cats and their owners, I would have been at least confused, at best very skeptical. Then comes the evidence, statistically valid, that being rung on the ‘phone by someone close to you can be anticipated frequently before the phone is picked up creates even more uncertainty.
Settle down and listen to these videos (they are sound recordings only but nonetheless fascinating),
55:55:20 – Swigert: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
Apollo 13
Probably one of the most famous phrases from the whole Apollo program, these immortal words were uttered shortly before 10.10 PM EST on April 13th, 1970.
There is so much material around that it would be pointless covering too much ground in this Post. So why the Post today?
Because today, too, is the 13th April. So on this day, 41 years ago, the world came together held its collective breath and prayed for a successful outcome to this scary disaster.
There are some wonderful archives around from NASA. Here’s one that covers the chronology of events of that famous accident.
The following includes events from 2.5 minutes before the accident to about 5 minutes after. Times given are in Ground Elapsed Time (G.E.T.), that is, the time elapsed since liftoff of Apollo 13 on April 11, 1970, at 2:13 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST). 55:52:00 G.E.T. is equal to 10:05 PM EST on April 13, 1970.
Also, those who want more information, may wish to go here, here and here
And 41 years ago, this coming Sunday, i.e. April 17th 1970, with the whole world praying for their safe return, Apollo 13 splashed down near Samoa.
Four hours before landing, the crew shed the service module; Mission Control had insisted on retaining it until then because everyone feared what the cold of space might do to the unsheltered CM heat shield. Photos of the Service Module showed one whole panel missing, and wreckage hanging out, it was a sorry mess as it drifted away. Three hours later the crew left the Lunar Module Aquarius and then splashed down gently in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa. From here.
In a very real sense, Apollo 13, like a number of the other historic Apollo flights, is a wonderful reminder of something that this Planet needs right now. A coming together of all the peoples of this beautiful planet, a unity of mankind, to remind us in these fragile and difficult times of the saying, ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’
Finally, this Post is published, not only on the 41st anniversary of that memorable Apollo Flight but the day after the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight of a human into space, the 12th April, 1961.
Can we really make sense of the science of climate change?
Those that come to this Blog on a regular basis, and many thanks to you, by the way, will know that, overall, I take the stance that climate change, global warming, etc., etc. is real. At the very least to me it is reasonably described by the saying that most pilots are familiar with, “If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt.” In other words, if something is worrying you don’t hesitate to get your ‘arse’ on the ground.
The planet’s climate systems are incredibly complex and like processes and systems much less complex than the earth’s atmosphere getting to real hard evidence is challenging. Please accept that my personal position is unchanged; for me there are sufficient signs to suggest that climatic changes may be more likely, than less likely, to substantially harm humankind’s existence on Planet Earth within the next generation.
However, Dan Gomez, my very good Californian friend of 40-plus years, is much more sceptical. I respect his intellect greatly and, therefore, respect his opinions. Dan recently sent me a number of documents that raise valid questions. Over time I want to share these with you and invite anyone who wishes to comment on Learning for Dogs to do so, or even better submit a guest post.
But before going to the first of Dan’s documents, let me share something that was reported by BBC News recently. It’s this.
New York is a major loser and Reykjavik a winner from new forecasts of sea level rise in different regions.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in 2007 that sea levels would rise at least 28cm (1ft) by the year 2100.
But this is a global average; and now a Dutch team has made what appears to be the first attempt to model all the factors leading to regional variations.
Other researchers say the IPCC’s figure is likely to be a huge under-estimate.
Whatever the global figure turns out to be, there will be regional differences.
That IPCC report may be accessed here and the main website of the IPCC is here. But even the BBC’s report shows that scientists are still learning more, as time goes on.
Ocean currents and differences in the temperature and salinity of seawater are among the factors that mean sea level currently varies by up a metre across the oceans – this does not include short-term changes due to tides or winds.
So if currents change with global warming, which is expected – and if regions such as the Arctic Ocean become less saline as ice sheets discharge their contents into the sea – the regional patterns of peaks and troughs will also change.
“Everybody will still have the impact, and in many places they will get the average rise,” said Roderik van der Wal from the University of Utrecht, one of the team presenting their regional projections at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna.
“But places like New York are going to have a larger contribution than the average – 20% more in this case – and Reykjavik will be better off.”
The news item also contains some fascinating evidence of the influence of gravity from the mass of the polar ice caps. Read the full article here.
Gondola's for hire in a few year's time?
Now on to one of Dan’s documents. It is from the website detailing the history of plant fossils of West Virginia. The document refers to the climate of the carboniferous period. Here’s how it starts.
West Virginia today is mostly an erosional plateau carved up into steep ridges and narrow valleys, but 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period, it was part of a vast equatorial coastal swamp extending many hundreds of miles and barely rising above sea level. This steamy, tropical quagmire served as the nursery for Earth’s first primitive forests, comprised of giant lycopods, ferns, and seed ferns.
North America was located along Earth’s equator then, courtesy of the forces of continental drift. The hot and humid climate of the Middle Carboniferous Period was accompanied by an explosion of terrestrial plant life. However by the Late Carboniferous Period Earth’s climate had become increasingly cooler and drier. By the beginning of the Permian Period average global temperatures declined by about 10° C.
Interestingly, the last half of the Carboniferous Period witnessed periods of significant ice cap formation over polar landmasses– particularly in the southern hemisphere. Alternating cool and warm periods during the ensuing Carboniferous Ice Age coincided with cycles of glacier expansion and retreat. Coastlines fluctuated, caused by a combination of both local basin subsidence and worldwide sea level changes. In West Virginia a complex system of meandering river deltas supported vast coal swamps that left repeating stratigraphic levels of peat bogs that later became coal, separated by layers of fluvial rocks like sandstone and shale when the deltas were building, and marine rocks like black shales and limestones when rising seas drowned coastlands. Accumulations of several thousand feet of these sediments over millions of years caused heat and pressure which transformed the soft sediments into rock and the peat layers into the 100 or so coal seams which today comprise the Great Bituminous Coalfields of the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe.
One needs to read the full article to properly understand this period of history of the planet. But it includes revealing diagrams like this one.
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time
Here’s how it concludes.
What will our climate be like in the future? That is the question scientists are asking and seeking answers to currently. The causes of “global warming” and climate change are today being popularly described in terms of human activities. However, climate change is something that happens constantly on its own. If humans are in fact altering Earth’s climate with our cars, electrical powerplants, and factories these changes must be larger than the natural climate variability in order to be measurable. So far the signal of a discernible human contribution to global climate change has not emerged from this natural variability or background noise.
Understanding Earth’s geologic and climate past is important for understanding why our present Earth is the way it is, and what Earth may look like in the future. The geologic information locked up in the rocks and coal seams of the Carboniferous Period are like a history book waiting to be opened. What we know so far, is merely an introduction. It falls on the next generation of geologists, climatologists, biologists, and curious others to continue the exploration and discovery of Earth’s dynamic history– a fascinating and surprising tale, written in stone.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
On the 28th March I wrote what I thought was a concluding piece on the subject of ‘meaning’. I used some of the most amazing details about the universe to highlight the fact that, in the end, if our civilisation doesn’t get it’s collective act together then from the perspective of the universe it is all pretty irrelevant. In that piece I quoted from Prof. Brian Cox, “Everything we are, everything that’s ever been and everything that will ever be was all forged in the same moment of creation 13.7bn years ago from an unimaginably hot and dense volume of matter less than the size of an atom.”
Now, in fairness, Prof. Cox did allude to scientists exploring the notion of what might have happened before the Big Bang. Anyway, a couple of nights ago we watched a BBC Horizon programme, now on YouTube, that looked much more closely into this fascinating topic. The link came to us from the website Top Documentary Films that set out the introduction to the BBC programme.
They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago.
But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.
Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang.
Neil Turok, Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, working with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, has proposed a radical new answer to cosmology’s deepest question: What banged?
Answer: Instead of the universe inexplicably springing into existence from a mysteriousinitial singularity, the Big Bang was a collision between two universes like ours existing as parallel membranes floating in a higher-dimensional space that we’re not aware of.
One bang is followed by another, in a potentially endless series of cosmic cycles, each one spelling the end of a universe and the beginning of a new one. Not one bang, but many.
Sir Roger Penrose has changed his mind about the Big Bang. He now imagines an eternal cycle of expanding universes where matter becomes energy and back again in the birth of new universes and so on and so on.
I have referred yesterday to the series on the BBC hosted by Professor Brian Cox called Wonders of the Universe. Well we managed to watch the last episode last night, entitled Messengers. Like the other three episodes, it was breath-taking.
In this last episode, Prof. Cox speaks of the universe still expanding with the outer edge, if edge is the appropriate word, being about 8.7 billion light years away. Thus the age of the Universe is about that; 8.7 billion light years. Note: NASA has a piece that suggests that this figure may not be confirmed. But let’s not worry too much about the precise value. But we will take a short detour to understand a little more about the ‘light year’.
So to measure really long distances, people use a unit called alight year. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Therefore, a light second is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or:
A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers). That’s a long way!
That is a single light-year. Now reflect on the outer edge of the universe being, say, 8,700,000,000 multiplied by 5,865,696,000,000 miles away. Don’t know about your mind, but my mind has no ‘feel’ for that distance whatsoever.
OK, next proposition put forward by Prof. Cox. That is that scientists believe that ‘The Big Bang’ was the instant that the universe erupted, if that’s an appropriate word, from a single point, smaller than the size of a grain of sand.
That has no rational meaning whatsoever. Now my mind just goes into la, la land! But at the level of magic, mysticism, the spiritual, then one does experience the deep meaning of the creation. Our creation. For we are part of the universe and the universe is part of us.
Just like the rose. Trying to describe it cuts nothing compared to closing one’s eyes and simply breathing in the perfume.
Here is that last episode, in four parts from YouTube. Watch and prepared to be transformed.
Brought forward as a result of the Japanese earthquake.
I had this item scheduled for publication on Friday 18th March, the day before this month’s full moon. But recent events in Japan made me decide to bring it forward to today for reasons that will be clear when this Post is read further.
The world is set to experience the biggest full moon for almost two decades when the satellite reaches its closest point to Earth next weekend.
On 19 March, the full moon will appear unusually large in the night sky as it reaches a point in its cycle known as ‘lunar perigee’.
Stargazers will be treated to a spectacular view when the moon approaches Earth at a distance of 221,567 miles (356,577 km) in its elliptical orbit – the closest it will have passed to our planet since 1992.
The full moon could appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter in the sky, especially when it rises on the eastern horizon at sunset or is provided with the right atmospheric conditions.
Moon apogee and perigee
This phenomenon has reportedly heightened concerns about ‘supermoons’ being linked to extreme weather events – such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. The last time the moon passed close to the Earth was on 10 January 2005, around the time of the Indonesian earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was also associated with an unusually large full moon.
Previous supermoons occurred in 1955, 1974 and 1992 – each of these years experienced extreme weather events, killing thousands of people.
However, an expert speaking to Yahoo! News today believes that a larger moon causing weather chaos is a popular misconception.
Dr Tim O’Brien, a researcher at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, said: “The dangers are really overplayed. You do get a bit higher than average tides than usual along coastlines as a result of the moon’s gravitational pull, but nothing so significant that will cause a serious climatic disaster or anything for people to worry about.”
But according to Dr Victor Gostin, a Planetary and Environmental Geoscientist at Adelaide University, there may be a link between large-scale earthquakes in places around the equator and new and full moon situations.
He said: “This is because the Earth-tides (analogous to ocean tides) may be the final trigger that sets off the earthquake.”
Volcanoes have reportedly erupted in Japan, Indonesia, and Kamchatka Russia today, presumably due to the massive Japanese earthquake. There have been no reports of damage from the eruptions.
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