1. Governor to close 80% of state parks. Please take action
2. Job opportunities
3. Field trip Saturday 30 May to Ring Mountain in Marin County
4. Animal Investigators: the First Wildlife Forensics lab, Saturday 30 May at 4 pm
5. Feedback
6. Bird diversity lessens human exposure to West Nile Virus
7. San Francisco Butterfly Count Wednesday 3 June
8. Bank swallows return to Fort Funston; your help needed
9. Ted Kipping's meditation on French broom
10. Roger Raiche's grape cultivar 'Roger's Red' mystery cleared up
11. Two from Denise D'Anne
12. Nominations open for 2009 Leopold Conservation Award
13. Registration open for Cal-IPC 2009 Symposium
14. Oaktown Native Plant Nursery Sale May 30 - June 13
15. Break with the Age of Entitlement?
16. The greatest wonder of the world: the living cell
17. Astronomy miscellany: Galileo, International Year of Astronomy, et al
1. Governor proposes closing 4/5 of state parks!
From Neighborhood Parks Council:
We have just learned the details of Governor Schwarzenegger's budget plan that if approved will close at least 80% of California's entire state park system.
Beginning July 1st, the Governor will cut the parks core funding in half and then eliminate all core funding (ie, General Fund monies) in twelve months. Without this money, there will be no choice but to close the majority of our park system.
Your elected officials need to hear from you now! These budget decisions are being made right now and your voice is critical to help California's most treasured resources. Get the facts and take action TODAY! Click here: www.calparks.org
***********************
2. Job opportunities
Muir Beach Biological Monitor
The Parks Conservancy and GGNRA are implementing the restoration of Redwood Creek at Muir Beach. During construction and revegetation efforts, a team of biological monitors will be hired to oversee activities to protect the site's listed species and ensure compliance with other Best Management Practices relevant to the project.
Go to http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment.asp?job=3020 for more information.
Mori Point Biological Monitor
The Parks Conservancy in partnership with the GGNRA is implementing a trail enhancement project at Mori Point that includes the conversion of an existing road to an elevated trail through sensitive habitat for the California red-legged frog and San Francisco garter snake.
Go to http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment.asp?job=3019 for more information.
Project Information Coordinator
The Project Information Coordinator (PIC) provides park users and local community members with project updates during project implementation. This includes providing on-site public engagement support to build community awareness and address concerns, maintaining public engagement statistics, illustrating trail and access alternatives, and maintaining perimeter fencing and signage.
Go to http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment.asp?job=3018 for more information.
**********************
3. Field trip
Ring Mountain, Marin County
Saturday, May 30, 1 pm
Sponsored by California Native Plant Society Santa Clara Valley Chapter
Join Kevin Bryant as we explore this serpentine treasure that is picturesquely perched above San Francisco Bay. We hope to catch the very rare Tiburon Mariposa lily Calochortus tiburonensis in bloom, plus lots of other serpentine species. This is the only place in the world C. tiburonensis has ever been found growing in the wild. The hike is approximately 3-4 fairly easy miles, and should last about 4 hours.
Directions: For a no-host carpool, meet at Edgewood Road Park and Ride off Hwy. 280 at 11:30 am. Cross the Golden Gate Bridge and continue on Hwy. 101. In Corte Madera, exit at Paradise Drive. The previous exit is Tiburon Blvd./Mill Valley. Go right on Paradise Drive about 1 mile past all the houses and a school on the left to the wide gravel pull-off just past Westward Drive. Look for the Marin County Open Space entrance sign, which is where we will meet.
For more information, contact Kevin at (408) 353-8824 or mtngreen17@verizon.net. A link to County of Marin Open Space Preserves with a map of Ring Mountain can be found at www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/PK/Main/os/osdring.cfm.
**********************
4. Tomorrow, Sat, 30th, at 4PM on BookTV (on CSPAN2) will be aired a 53 minute discussion by Laura Neme: "Animal Investigators: the First Wildlife Forensics lab, solving crimes , saving endangered species, etc."
******************************
5. Feedback
Don French:
Regarding the Onion and their jabs at presidents, this article ranks as my favorite Onion piece of all time: . Such perfect pitch! I laughed until I cried. www.theonion.com/content/node/38718
Onion will do that; it's very a-peeling.
Don French:
The periodic table of videos is spectacular! Thanks so much for letting us know about it. The first one I watched, Iron, includes a great story about some Berkeley pranksters and a tram (possibly BART).
The period table of videos led me to a similar site, also from the University of Nottingham, the sixty symbols of physics and astronomy: http://www.sixtysymbols.com/#. I really like this stuff but maybe that is because chemistry, and especially physical chemistry, was my major in college. Still, I recommend these videos to everyone. They are interesting and informative, and the presenters are really charming people, as are most scientists that I have had the privelege of knowing.
Alice Polesky:
This is a fascinating BBC piece about how rooks, a member of the corvid (crow) family, not only choose the appropriate tool for a given task without thought, but can quickly figure out and create a tool on the fly. What's even more interesting is that they don't do this in the wild, because they don't have to.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8059688.stm
ML Carle:
Hi Jake, PBS featured Dan Ariely, behaviorist economist, last week, in a pseudo debate between a behavioral economist and a neoclassical economist. His book just came out, and I think I may spring for a retail hardback. The chimp article seems like it may be a part of his argument. ML
Jeanne Koelling:
Hi Jake: After an absence of a few weeks, today I revisited the Duncan and Castro Open Space and, as Don Bailey described, the northeast facing slope is chock-a-block full of Ithuriel's spears. Beautiful: A purple blanket covers the slope. Don and his group have done a great job holding back most of the invasive weeds in the area where the Ithuriel's spears are blooming. The allium seems restricted to the lower part of the slope.
(About Triteleia laxa)
The common name Ithuriel's spear comes from a story in Milton's Paradise Lost written in 1667. In that story, the angel Gabriel asks the angels Ithuriel and Zephon to search through the Garden of Eden for "...some infernal spirit...who escaped the barrs of Hell on errand bad..." They search and find Satan disguised "...like a toad, close at the ear of Eve." He is trying to influence her with "discontented thoughts..." Ithuriel touches the toad with his spear and Satan returns to his own likeness in a great flash, since "...no falsehood can endure the touch of...." Ithuriel's spear.
In Edith S. Clement's book Flowers of Coast and Sierra, she states that the plant is "Fancifully likened to the spear borne by the Angel Ithuriel, because of its straight slimness of stem...."
Quoted from Edgewood Explorer Dec 2000 article by Bob Young
Ron Maykel:
As always, thanks for Nature News.
Your info on comets is thought provoking. On comets? You may find reading about the wormwood (comet) star being prophesied to bring the end to earth, interesting. It may give one good reason to indulge in absinthe!
Someone ought to initiate a Doomsday Project, just to keep tabs on all of the End-of-the-World scenarios. Sort of like bookkeeping. It would keep some cyber-nerd busy.
On a wild flower note. I discovered a meadow colored with yellow mariposa lilies and Ithuriel's spears. It is my understanding that California poppy, Matillja poppy and mariposa lily were the nominees for a official California State flower in 1890? The C. Floral
Society was entrusted with the task to vote on one of the three. The C. poppy winning with a vast majority, the mariposa lily got three votes with the Matillja poppy getting no votes. Apparently the C. poppy was not legislatively designated the state flower until 1903.
Would you happen to know why the California poppy was so popular over the other contenders?
I can only guess, Ron. Point 1: What's not to love about this plant? Although there are some serious rivals (two of them named in your citation), it's hard to beat the poppy--plus it has a long season of bloom. Point 2: The poppy grows up and down the state, so would be widely known, whereas the mariposa lily is less often seen and has a short period of bloom. Point 3: It grows very readily from seed, and people have been scattering seed around since Day One, so it's a constant companion. Beautiful as is the Matilija poppy, its range is very restricted, being confined to a few southern California canyons, so it would not have been as commonly known. Although I wouldn't say it is difficult to raise, it is a little tricky, and would not have been nearly as widely known in 1890.
And our much-loved botanist, John Thomas Howell, says it all:
No poet has yet sung the full beauty of our poppy, no painter has successfully portrayed the satiny sheen of its lustrous petals, no scientist has satisfactorily diagnosed the vagaries of its variations and adaptability. In its abundance, this colorful plant should not be slighted: cherish it and be ever thankful that so rare a flower is common! John Thomas Howell, Marin Flora
***************************
6. From Cornell site:
Chemical-free pesticide: http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2009/04/barn_owls_israel.html
Study: Bird diversity lessens human exposure to West Nile Virus:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/wuis-sbd100608.php
*****************************
7. The next SF Butterfly Count
Wednesday, JUNE 3rd, 2009. 9am - 5pm. This intense, one-day inventory of all the species in our county will begin at the Randall Museum (199 Museum Way) before heading out to assigned sites. Don't be intimidated -- you'll always be with someone who knows their stuff ****Bring Your Lunch*** A $3.00 participation fee goes towards habitat conservation. It looks good that each person will also receive a brochure I've been working on with Nature in the City -- "The Butterflies of San Francisco" to help you focus just on what you should see that day. This event is sponsored by Nature in the City and the North American Butterfly Association. We broke the record last year with 21 species...come help us do it again! Info: Liam O'Brien, liammail56@yahoo.com
*******************************
8. Bank Swallows at Fort Funston
The swallows have recently returned from South America and are digging new burrows. This federally threatened species is under high levels of disturbance at Fort Funston. On weekends and hot days, hundreds of beachgoers and their roaming dogs, kites, fireworks, etc. can be found on the beach and the cliffs above the colony. This really is a special, sensitive, and threatened bird and one of the greatest treasures of the Bay Area.
The GGNRA is looking for volunteers who would be willing to spend an hour or two below the colony on weekends (even a single visit would be helpful) for the next three months. This is an opportunity for a birder (or non-birder) to observe the interesting and entertaining social dynamics of this colony. Volunteers would also be extra eyes and ears (advocates) for the swallows and could report disturbances to nearby park rangers and the natural resources office. They could also share their knowledge with the public.
**If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact:
J. Patrick Furtado
Wildlife Biology Intern
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, National Park Service
john_furtado@nps.gov
Office: (415)331-0729 (no answering machine)
Cell: (203)889-7784 (cell phone is best as messages can also be left there)
www.nps.gov/goga/
***********************
9. Meditation on French broom
Standing by the side of a road in Marin County this Spring awaiting a part for my work van, I looked over at a cut-over hillside of French broom. All seemed quite OK with that treatment. The bush closest to me had simply sprouted 15 new stems. Each stem had an average of 15 secondary shoots which each averaged 15 tertiary shoots. Each of these averaged 5 lovely and fragrant yellow pea flowers which in turn averaged 5 seeds to the pod. Since California, unlike Montpellier, France, lacks the myriad of broom seed herbivores, all of these should be viable. Doing the math [ 15x15x15x5x5=], led me to the appalling realization that just this one shrub could produce up to 84,375 seeds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look out California! - Ted Kipping
**************************
10. From Roger Raiche: Mystery of the grape cultivar 'Roger's Red' solved
I just got off the phone with Jerry Dangl, a researcher at the Plant Services department at UC Davis, and he has finally resolved the origin of the ‘Roger’s Red’ selection, once thought to be the native grape, Vitis califronica. Indeed, as many suspected, it is not pure Vitis californica. His DNA analysis shows that it is a first generation hybrid (F1) between the native V. californica and a wine grape (Vitis vinifera) cultivar known as ‘Alicante Bouschet’. This grape, ‘Alicante Bouchet’, is unusual in that it has both red skin and red flesh – most red grapes and red wine gets its color from the skin only.
Jerry Dangl, plans on doing some more analysis before officially releasing his findings, and probably the two of us will produce a short article intended for either or both Pacific Horticulture magazine and Fremontia (the journal of the California Native Plant Society). But I wanted to get the word out to those who grow or propagate this vine (Roger’s Red), as many of you have been asking for years what the ‘story” was on this selection. This selection has been grown and sold now for nearly 25 years, with the assumption that it was an aberrant fall leaf color form of the native grape, and probably thousands have been planted in yards, etc. throughout the state and beyond. This email is just the initial attempt at correcting this naming error.
However, the upside is that it is half native, and not a fully European grape selection that seeded into the wild. And for those who don’t care if their grape is 100% native or not, it is still the same beautiful and fruitful selection that it was yesterday. However, in the future, it should never be sold as Vitis californica, as it is a hybrid grape. Those of you on this list who are connected with botanical, horticultural or nursery institutions, should take a moment to correct your records to reflect this new information.
I do apologize for my initial mis-identification error, especially to those who strive to have a completely native landscape/garden. However, I have received so many letters and comments from folks who have been thrilled by this grape and the joy it has brought them, their families, their neighbors and their wildlife, that I don’t actually feel that bad about making this selection. Further, I myself questioned the full nativity of this plant as far back as 1990, but was not able to get the Botanical Garden to move on certifying its identity. But that is all “water under the bridge”, and at least now we have the correct identity of this vine.
***********************
11.
Two from Denise D'Anne:
BEYOND CHRON - May 27, 2009
Dear Editor: The Earth does not have the capacity to contain the trillions of tons of waste created daily in our so-called civilized society. Extending out in the future the present accumulation of waste from electronic devices, packaging material, plastic storage containers, automobile parts, toxic batteries and other devices, we will have to consider looking to outer space for another planet where we can repeat the pattern that is destroying our present planet.
We should not delude ourselves that we will be able to recycle our way out of this predicament. Partly, because, many items are not recyclable, most people will not recycle and there are limited markets for such material. Also, to be considered the transportation costs and the pollution created by reconstituting any material.
One-solution: charge high taxes on manufacturers as a disincentive in producing things our society consumes.
(An irony of the present struggle to work our way out of the present economic difficulties is the universal nostrum: "We've got to get the economy moving again." That is, we've got to put people back to work making things that we don't need, just like we were doing before--and which will mostly end up in landfill. It consumes finite resources and it pollutes, but it stimulates the economy. Is there another way? JS)
YOU GOTTA LOVE SOCIALISM
President George W. Bush, the leading proponent of socialism, through tax cuts,in 2001 gave those making over $100,000.00 a year tax cuts of $4,754.57 and those making under $100,000.00 a year cuts of $158.61. YEP, everyone got tax cuts with the help of 1/3 of the Democrats. Socialism knows no distinction between parties.
*****************************
12.
“Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.” Aldo Leopold
2009 Leopold Conservation Award
The Leopold Conservation Award recognizes private landowners' commitment to responsible environmental stewardship and land management. The award underscores the fact that many ranchers, farmers and foresters are on the front lines of conservation and should be recognized for protecting the environment. So often, voluntary conservation by private landowners provides a more effective, efficient, and durable means of protecting land, water, and species than the government’s regulatory programs.
As in past years, finalists in 2009 will be selected in part based on their commitment to responsible and sustainable land management, the overall health of their land, implementation of innovative practices and dedication to community outreach and leadership. The Leopold Conservation Award Review Panel will evaluate properties in two categories: (1) Nurseries & Crops, and (2) Livestock.
The grand prize of $10,000 and a crystal rendering of Aldo Leopold, author of the "Sand County Almanac," will be presented at the California Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention in December. Runner-up prizes of $1,000 will also be presented.
The deadline for nominations is July 10.
For more information and a nomination form, visit Sustainable Conservation or contact us at (415) 977-0380.
"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."
Aldo Leopold
“The most important characteristic of an organism [including the land organism] is that capacity for internal self-renewal known as health.” Aldo Leopold
***********************
13. Cal-IPC 2009 Symposium - Visalia October 8-10
Registration Now Open
October 7 - Advanced Herbicide Control Field Course, Kaweah Oaks Preserve, 7 miles East of Visalia
October 8-10 - Symposium, Visalia Convention Center, Visalia
Join us at the Visalia Convention Center, the Gateway to the Southern Sierra. Our 18th Annual Symposium promises a great line-up of talks, posters, and activities. This year’s keynote speaker will be Rich Minnich, UC Riverside, discussing his new book, California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions. The book casts new light on the historic prominence of forbs in the state's ecosystems and the devastating impact of invasive's plants throughout California.
Our invited sessions address wildland weed management on the leading edge, including leading edge projects, climate change and new tools and techniques. Confirmed speakers are listed on our website: http://www.cal-ipc.org/symposia/index/php
Other activities include Saturday field trips and our new field course on Advanced Herbicide Control Methods. Field trips will take a Grand Weed Tour throughout Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, visit Kaweah Oaks Preserve and Atwell Island, and interact with a park naturalist regarding winning public support beneath the world renowned giant sequoias. Attendees of the pre-Symposium field course will gain deeper understanding of herbicide formulations,modes of action, selectivity, application methods and safety.
***********************************
14. Oaktown Native Plant Nursery Sale - 25% off until Saturday June 13!!
Saturday May 30
Tuesday June 2
Saturday June 6
Tuesday June 9
Saturday June 13
After that we will open on Tuesday only (except by appointment ) until after Labor Day. Check out our up to date inventory on line http://www.oaktownnativenursery.info/
********************
"I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor."
-- King George III of England
****************************
15. Institutions share same delusion, by Madeleine Bunting
The Age of Entitlement has been discredited. A new, green life will require us to make a break with the past
One would hardly expect a revolution to be plotted in a discussion in Carlton House Terrace...let alone incubated in a government-appointed Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). But these are times of unprecedented political exhaustion with the mainstream, and with that comes a fast-growing appetite for radicalism and an abrupt break with the status quo.
In the latter category is a bold paper, Prosperity Without Growth, by the SDC economist Tim Jackson. It asked if we could imagine a capitalism without economic growth. Capitalist economies grow by creating and promising to fulfill new desires; without growth they are plunged into crisis. It has been deeply built into the system as a way to generate rising incomes and employment. All governments see their primary task as growth in GDP - this is perceived as the primary measure of progress. But that cannot continue if we are to have any hope of making the kinds of cuts in carbon emissions to which the UK is committed.
This is the kind of politics no mainstream politician dares address. It requires abandoning a half-century of political assumptions: your children will not be better off than you and may be worse off; car use will have to be dramatically curtailed; working hours will have to be reordered to share employment; foreign holidays will be rarer; cheap food a thing of the past. And along with these unpalatable home truths will be the need for intervention in the minutiae of people's lives: how much you heat your home or use water; how you move and eat.
The role of state intervention will be huge; people's choices will have to be "edited", admits Anthony Giddens in his recent book, The Politics of Climate Change. Leaving individuals to find the moral strength to resist the cultural pressures will simply not be effective. Our lives will have to be regulated in ways that we can't imagine. Consumer advertising will have to be curbed to prevent it exploiting insecurity to create new markets. The Australian government's banning of all light bulbs that are not low-energy is a glimpse of what is required.
What will be difficult is the governance of these changes: what kind of state will be required to push these changes through and what powers will it need? Giddens suggests that there will have to be a return to small self-reliant communities and perhaps they will have to have a role in carbon allocations. Crucially, how will we weigh the loss of personal freedoms against the hope of survival of human beings?
Equally difficult will be the massive cultural revolution required to reorient a set of values rooted in an entitlement to an unfair proportion of the planet's resources. The illusion of a good life conceived in terms of individual material advancement has to be exposed as an advertising con; rising affluence has not produced rising levels of wellbeing but a dispiriting scrabble for advantage, argues Tim Jackson.
The light at the end of the tunnel is Jackson's insistence that it is possible to imagine a way of life with less wealth that could actually be far more sustaining of human wellbeing. The problem is that we need politicians brave enough to start taking us down that road - and we have discovered that they are riddled with the very disease we need to cure.
Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 22.05.09
************************
16. Beautiful building blocks of existence
How We Live and Why We Die, by Lewis Wolpert
"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again," Alex Tan once claimed. That is just the half of it. When we cry, we do a lot more than just clear up our vision. We improve our health. Tears, it transpires, help us fight infection. They contain lysozyme, a chemical that can cleave the sugar chains in the walls of invading bacteria. Thus washed with tears, a bacterium simply bursts open and dies. So a good cry has its advantages.
Lysozyme, we should note, is just one of the thousands of chemical workhorses whose combined efforts keep our cells healthy and active, a set of observations that takes us to the core of this intriguing examination of the basic unit of life: the cell. These tiny entities - named from the Latin, cella, for small rooms - are, quite simply, "the most complex objects in the universe", according to Lewis Wolpert.
And given that all living things on our planet are made of cells, any attempt to understand how and why we live and die obliges us to study cells, their components and the forces that maintain and destroy them, argues Wolpert. As he says: "It is only from cells that we can find out what life is."
Cells cover us in skin, carry nerve impulses, absorb food, fight infections and move oxygen around. Each of us has about 200 different types of cell in our bodies. Yet despite their diverse functions, all cells are similar. Each is, in effect, a ball of "watery salt" that contains a nucleus that holds two metres of genetic material. This, in turn, directs the manufacture of proteins from which new cells are made.
In addition, a cell is covered with a delicate membrane that carefully controls what passes in and out of it; possesses tiny power packs, called mitochondria; exploits chemical scissors called enzymes to assemble complex chemicals or to split them up (as lysozyme does); and uses microscopic pumps to keep concentrations of sodium and potassium ions at their correct levels.
For good measure, all this highly sophisticated machinery operates at an extraordinary rate. Enzymes act on about 1,000 molecules a second. thus we can think of ourselves as collections of cellular sweatshops in constant, feverish operation. Two million red blood cells, which carry life-sustaining oxygen around our bodies, are manufactured every second in our bone marrow while billions of nerve impulses constantly travel through billions of the nerve cells inside our brains. Even on the outside, there is plenty of activity: the outer layers of our skin are replaced a thousand times during a normal lifetime, for example.
Yet, as Wolpert notes, all these cells in our bodies - and in the bodies of all other creatures - operate independently. "There is no overall controller of this cellular society: it is a true co-operative," he says. And this is one of the most extraordinary features about life on Earth: its individual members are composed of units whose assemblage arose through blind chance and that cooperate without any central control. (Our brains have limited control over only a few cells, such as muscle, and no influence at all over skin growth, liver function or heartbeat.) For Wolpert, a civil engineer turned biologist, that functioning is simply "miraculous". Thus he has devoted his professional life to an object of such sophistication that it "almost always turns out to exceed one's expectations".
And, by and large, he has done his tiny charges justice in this succinctly argued work. There are no florid touches or biographical interludes, just straightforward accounts of cells in action. The overall impact is perhaps a little too dry for my liking. On the other hand, Wolpert has had the sense to tell a good story with minimum fuss and allow nothing to divert attention from what he believes is the greatest wonder of our world: the living cell.
Review by Robin McKie in Observer, 05.09
*******************************
17. Astronomy miscellany
The Galileoscope: An International Year of Astronomy 2009 Cornerstone Project
The Galileoscope is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators. No matter where you live, with this easy-to-assemble, 50-mm (2-inch) diameter, 25- to 50-power achromatic refractor, you can see the celestial wonders that Galileo Galilei first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today. These include lunar craters and mountains, four moons circling Jupiter, the phases of Venus, Saturn's rings, and countless stars invisible to the unaided eye. The Galileoscope costs just US$15 each plus shipping for 1 to 99 units, or US$12.50 each plus shipping for 100 or more.
(AND you can even see them sometimes in San Francisco! Last night on my way home I saw the crescent Moon hanging ever so beautifully and clearly in the western sky, shortly before the fog rolled in. The Moon played a very important role in Galileo's upsetting discoveries when he saw mountains, ridges, valleys, shadows on what had been considered a perfect sphere, a belief that shattered classical ideas--including religious ones regarding the perfection of the heavens. It played a role in Galileo's difficulties with the church.
___________________
...The long-standing misunderstanding between Galileo and the church led, in 1979, to a request by Pope John Paul II that the case be reopened with an eye toward reconciliation. The papal commission reviewing the Galileo affair encountered numerous difficulties, however, and the pope's official concluding statement in 1992 fell far short of his original goal. Although it is widely held that John Paul "pardoned" Galileo, he simply regretted the "tragic mutual incomprehension" that had persisted between science and faith.
Excerpt from Science News 23 May 2009
____________________
Celebrating astronomy's illumination of the mind
Astronomy is a special science.
As the French mathematician Henri Poincare observed more than a century ago, it was astronomy that inspired the origins of science in general. In ancient times, people observing the night sky saw that its "multitude of luminous points is not a confused crowd wandering at random, but a disciplined army," he noted. Such observations provided a clue that nature's chaos concealed order that humans could discern. It was astronomy, in other words,that taught humankind that the world obeys natural laws that people are capable of discovering.
"Under heavens always overcast and starless, the Earth itself would have been for us eternally unintelligible," Poincare wrote in The Value of Science. "The stars send us not only that visible and gross light which strikes our bodily eyes, but from them also comes to us a light far more subtle, which illuminates our minds. Astronomy...has given us a soul capable of comprehending nature."
...the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope fully warrants this year's International Year of Astronomy celebrations. All this attention to astronomy stems from its attachment to the curiosity infused in the human spirit, not from practical uses like those expected from other sciences. Not that astronomy is useless--historically, it has been fertile with applications, from aiding the earliest calendar makers to navigation guides for ships in the dark. But mostly astronomy's usefulness is not its applications, but its inspiration. "Astronomy is useful," Poincare wrote, "because it raises us above ourselves."
Excerpted from editorial in Science News 23 May 2009
________________
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field has imaged galaxies as far as 13.4 billion light years away, only .3 billion (300 million) light years from the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang. The UDF can depict objects as faint as the glow of a firefly on the moon.
_____________
A reflection while shaving on the finite speed of light
Stars are further than we comprehend.
We view at last the news they send
and read the past. This face I see
is out of date, a counterfeit, a sham-
someone I was looking out at who I am.
Graham Walker
"The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a machine.
Sir James Jeans (1877-1946)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment