RASC: Kudos

Good science comming out of Ottawa. Those fine, healthy individuals at the Ottawa Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) have put out a statement of position on...

Long Weekend: Smithers, BC

Four hours drive.

Three cups of coffee.

Two roadside urine stops.

One beautiful mountain range.

Trillions of snowflakes blanketing the caps.


Smithers.




I could hear the voices of the past.

Or was that just a car passing.....who knows.

And what satiates oneself more than finding the biggest of...something....anything. Well, on the way to Smithers everyone is profusely lucky enough to witness the Worlds Largest Fly Fishing Rod.

Moon Venus encounter. More below.

We took a short drive out to (New and Old) Hazleton where we encountered utterly amazing scenery and quite a neat (Old Hazelton) city. Everything was closed, as the preponderance of biblical factories (aka churches) were strewn across the landscape - effortless suggestion that the missionaries got there first and were able to inform them of the death penalty for working on the sabbath or any other random day that warrants god resting. Regardless of the ruthless death-hold that a lived-out fictional story has on the area, it cannot suppress the beauty of the billion years old geology and biology at play here.



Close encounter; moon/venus proximity peak of the year (could I be understating this and really mean decade...?)

Me, carving up some herbivorous delight while breaking eardrums with my version of birdsong.

Here we sit on the second of our two hiking trails. Behind us, again, the town of Smithers and the Babine Mountain Range. This is the exact moment (I believe, at least) that I got too much sun this day!

What a sight to wake up to, as the aromatic morning coffee wafts through the air and birds chirp out their myriad songs.

The same mountains, but now at sunset. The last glimmer of day wastes its time on the protruding peaks of the mountains, leaving only shadows and birdsong to quell our desires of sunlit faces.

We went on a couple of hiking trails, this being the first. Where we reached the cliff we could see a panoramic view of Smithers proper, the periphery of nature and of course the mountains in the background.

Crystal bought a new knife (finally). Now I am worried. I sleep less. I wake earlier.

Talking shit...

...about Mother Teresa.

An enticing quote to start:

"...faith is the surrender of mind..."

If only I could add the bible....

...to this list.

I think that the world - one neo-democratic village, region, province, country at a time - would be a greater and more sustainable place. But why stop at 'the' bible. Every myth has a bible of some description, most equally fraught with horrific legalities and reverent punishments for the most insignificant misdemeanor. So why stop at one archaic fiction of hate? Add them all.

A Few (Vitally Important) Geology Lessons:

There are some very cogent attempts to explain, through science and the investigative process, the inaccuracies and inanities of the chattering Young-Earth groupies. Their espousal's of a young earth (most regularly cited age is 6000 years, but some go as far as 10 000...) by this crowd are shielded from reality by their reverence to their myth-story. Well, as I have had equal opportunities to defend the science side through my myriad biblical confrontations, I thought I would link to a thorough explanation of the most basic tenants of the bible crowd.

The topsoil idea is the best, I think .

Long Weekend Roundup

Long weekend over, almost, and my newly scorched skin now rests at home reminiscing of the mountains, trails and star filled nights in Smithers. In a laze (partially) from the sun and countless uphill footsteps of the weekend, I am simply choosing to say little and to pass along hints of my new found passion, birds, and link up with 'The List'.

When you are finished ambling through the newly posted bird sightings, check this out.

Charlie is my Darwin, alright!

A nod of my gleaming new "fake" cowboy hat to PZ for leading me to this.

Hail to the new god: Rais the roof

Something to read with your coffee...

Richard Dawkins has posted a relatively new article that he co-wrote with Jerry Coyne. I strongly suggest that you check it out.

The premise of the article is to articulate an educational problem, an educational issue and an educational void. I will not go into it, as work beckons, but I hope you take the time to enjoy it and to ponder its meanings.

Here is a quote that I feel enunciates the issue well:

Intelligent design is not an argument of the same character as these controversies. It is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for "both theories" would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened?

More birds...

More birds here!

Mating northern flickers, two warblers and a forgotten one from the winter. There are two species of duck that are yet to be identified, but when they are their names will rank among the already listed.

Behemoth of the Night Sky

In 1610 Galileo only mused the possibility of this vista.....
In 1655 Christiaan Huygens only assumed that there must be more...
in 1675 Giovanni Domenico Cassini rendered possible the idea that there was in fact more...

And through the potent minds of many others between 'then' and 'now' we have the flight of Cassini, in Giovanni's honour, taking images that would have rendered these and myriad others speechless.

Seen edge-on through the rings of Saturn are two moons Titan (large) and Enceladus. If you take this to a high enough resolution, cryovolcanos become visible in the southern hemisphere (bottom...north is 'up'). Titan is the only known and suggestively proven satellite in our solar system to support a gaseous atmosphere. Spurious thoughts of life have arisen, not only recently, and this majestic planet-of-a-planet harbours much more potential research, interest and mystery.

This image is a rarely portrayed one, leave alone the fact that it was no imaged until 2006, and one that lends curiosity to the size and perplexity of our own solar system.

When before have we seen a waxing crescent moon of another planet? I dare say it would be rare if any.

And all this from a cloud of dust, gas and a little pinch of physics and chemistry many billions of years ago. Beautiful.

Ornithology from the North

I have decided to keep a tally of 'new' birds encountered here in the northland of our pride filled country.






The evolutionary traits of birds are some of the most exuberant and pronounced - obviously pronounced, that is. There are, of course, many more spectacular delights in the carbon-based world (well, speaking as a geologist there are many geological ones too...carbon or non-carbon based) that far outweigh that of the birds in a much less displaying fashion, but for now we will shy away from the pages of these other entities who have evolved astounding traits or techniques such as sea squirts, "newts", hermit crabs, butterflies and all their evolutionarily bountiful kin, and focus on the birds.

Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)
Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
Grey Jay (Perisoreus canadensis)
Common Merganser (Mergus merganser)
Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)
Barrows Goldeneye (Bucephala islandica)
Stellar's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)
White Crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys)
Wilson's Warbler (wilsonia pusilla)
Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia)
Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus)
American Coot (Fulica americana)
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
Evening Grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus)
Yellow-Rumped "Audubon" Warbler (Dendroica coronata)
Dark Eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)
Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana)
Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)
Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris)
Townsend's Warbler (Dendroica townsendi)
Pine siskin (Carduelis pinus)
...the list continues...

Carbon Quote

A quote:

All life is based on the element carbon. Carbon is the major chemical constituent of most organic matter, from fossil fuels to the complex molecules (DNA and RNA) that control genetic reproduction in organisms. (www.earthportal.com)

I wait in agony for a young-earth biblical fundamentalist or allah praising faithful to argue this simple comment. Bring it on.
Im taking this in baby steps...

One more game

Canada's last active hockey team (Ottawa, of course, being a sovereign entity based on chicanery and contrapositive ideologies...) plays what is perhaps its last game of the year tonight. Not a significant deal, in light of real issues permeating our minds every moment of every day, but a supple diversion.

Republicans grasping for a strand of hope...

https://www.conservativebookclub.com/Join/SingleBookJoin.asp?sour_cd=sb250az&prod_cd=c7020

...to convince the people 'of the world' that their economic engine and ideological framework of a religion centred world is not annihilating the ecospehere.
So, they publish and flog their attempt to refute scientists, naturalists, ecologists, anything-ists - the people whose job and lifestyle it is to study, learn, understand and explain nature. And they are explaining something that doesn't jive with the bible, or with oil-based economies. So, people dont want to believe it.
They complain about inane aspects and ideas.
They resist change.
They resist realizing that they are wrong.

And now they have published books, and I am sure that someone who is yet decided about problems with our environment (for some reason...) will read this, credulously believe that it is the word of correct science and go to bed at the end of the day thinking their SUV and their non-stop A/C is nothing if helpful to the economy.