ANNA’S HUMMINGBIRD A male Anna’s Hummingbird showing his bright, irridescent gorget.  This color is not contained in any pigment in the feathers, but is caused by the refraction of the light which is caused by the physical structure of the feathers.

ANNA’S HUMMINGBIRD  A side view of the same Anna’s Hummingbird. The gorget on his chin appears black now as the angle of the light changes and is no longer refracted.

       While leaping along some volcanic rocks on a Pacific beach in Guanacaste province in Costa Rica, I dropped my camera into a tide pool.    It was only underwater for a second before I snatched it out.  I immediately dried it with my bandana, took the lens off and opened the battery compartment, looked inside and saw it was all dry.  Apparently some water got in,  possibly through the control knobs and buttons, because it wouldn’t work.  It appeared that everything turned on fine, but the release switch to take the photograph wouldn’t work.

     After investigating I found that to clean and possibly repair the camera would cost more than I was willing to pay (especially since such cameras could not always be repaired, but you would have to pay to find out), so I decided to get another camera along with a lens which I have had my eye on for a long time.  This lens was the Nikkor 18-200mm lens with vibration reduction which allows the shooter to take photos at lower speeds.  Of course with telephoto lens this vibration reduction (VR) would especially come in handy.  The lack of some sort of telephoto lens on the Costa Rica trip was frustrating since other people were getting great bird shots with their telephotos, whereas I had to be satisfied with my 18-55 mm!  Some people have accused me of dunking my camera into the salt water so I would have the excuse of getting a new camera.  I totally deny this…at least it wasn’t a conscious action.

    Anyway I have found that for the first time, I am able to take half-way decent photos of birds.  I say for the first time although back in the early seventies I had a cheap Spiratone 400mm lens ($34!) which was half the length of my arm and which you had to manually stop down after focusing with the lens wide open.  It didn’t have a vibration reduction mode incorporated in the lens of course, and the photos I took were usually blurry.

   This past Thursday I went down to the local park by the waters of Puget Sound where this little male Anna’s Hummingbird has been hanging about for the past 3 or 4 years and was able to take these shots shown above.  You can check this site for more.  The little male would turn his head back and forth which would cause his brilliant gorget to flash on and off like a neon light as the light angle varied.  This is the same fella whose “chirping” displays I talked about before.

Central America is the site of contending crustal plates–notably the Cocos Plate in the Pacific Ocean which is being subducted beneath the Caribbean Plate right off the western coast of central america at a rate of 72-81 mm/yr.  It’s this area where the Central   America Volcanic Arc exists which forms the volcanoes of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica (See photo above of Volcan Arenal).  To the north there is the North America Plate which is moving to the west at about 20 mm per year resultng in further seismic turmoil.  Then to the east the North American plates dives beneath the Caribbean plate as does the South American plate to the south.

     South America was part of the great southern land mass, Gonwanaland.  When it drifted away from the rest of the southern continents it remained in relative isolation for over sixty million years.  Once the link between North and South America was established there was a great influx of North American fauna into South America and vice versa to  a lesser extent.  The great marsupial fauna of South America died off mostly as did other less successful groups.  Some of the South American biota moved into North America.  Central America remains today one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.

    Costa Rica and the rest of the isthmus has acted as a filter bridge in this great migratory process that really picked up steam only three million years ago when the connection was complete between North and South America.  The diverse topography of Costa Rica has resulted in refugia where species could still live after dying out in other areas.  This combined with the species from the north and from the south has resulted in a tremendous amount of biotic diversity in this small area.

    It is estimated that in this small country there are 500,000 to 1,000,000 species of plants and animals with most remaining unknown.  Insects by themselves make up about half of this diversity, whereas 850 species of birds can be found–about ten percent of all known species of birds.  North America has about half that number.  Others estimate about 160 species of amphibians, 220 species of reptiles and about 10% of all known butterflies.

   And all this in the second smallest Central American Nation (El Salvador is the smallest).  Only 119 km across at the narrowest point in the south and 280 km wide at its broadest point, it is quite easy to drive across the country in about five hours.  Solely in the tropical latitudes it still exhibits a broad range of distinct climate zones (12). 

The eastern Caribbean side is the wettest whereas the western pacific slopes are the driest. When I visited the Pacific coast area of Costa Rica (Guanacaste), the hills and countryside was covered with trees devoid of leaves.  It was strange seeing black howler monkeys sitting in leafless trees.  This was in sharp contrast to the rainforest on the Caribbean coast.   Most areas have a rainy season, or “green season,”  (May-November) and a dry season (December-April) with the rainfall almost everywhere following a predictable schedule.  Usually the highland ridges are wet with the windward sides being the wettest.

This is Concepcion, a volcano,  forming part of an island (Ometepe)  in the middle of Lake Nicarauga. It was putting forth steam and smoke just as our plane flew over. There was a heavier cloud of material that you can just see on the other side of the volcano which was proceeding down the NW slope towards the small communities just seen on the margin of the island.  This sort of thing must be common, because right at this time the pilot announced that we were beginning our descent into San Jose, Costa Rica without even mentioning that there was an erupting volcano just below us!   The last eruption is said to have occurred last December with gas and ash rising 150 meters into the air.  Maybe the above photo doesn’t depict an eruption?  Hmm…looks like it goes at least 150 meters into the air.  Addendum:  I just found this site which I quote:

“On 8 March [just when we were passing over!] an ash and gas plume from Concepción rose to 2,100 metres altitude and light ashfall was reported in nearby communities. Low levels of seismic activity and occasional small explosions producing light ashfall were reported during subsequent days. On 12 March Washington VAAC issued a volcanic ash advisory reporting an eruption producing an ash cloud that reached FL100 (10,000 feet / 3,000 metres altitude). According to news reports there were two further explosions on 14 March. No casualties or damage resulted, although civil defence alerts remained in place for communities around the volcano. The Nicaraguan geological service INETER described the volcano on 19 March as ‘practically in a full eruptive phase’, with 34 explosions between 18:00 on 17 March and 11:45 on 18 March. On 19 March it was reported that the Nicaraguan government was sending army and navy units to the area around Concepción to strengthen civil defence preparations and prepare evacuation routes, ‘just in case’. The location of Concepción, on the island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua, makes floods and tsunamis a potential danger if the volcano were to erupt.

However, shortly afterwards activity at the volcano began to decline, with INETER reporting on 22 March that degassing and seismic activity had fallen to low levels in comparison with the preceding days. On 24 March INETER confirmed a ‘considerable reduction in activity’ but reported continuing ‘anomalous’ levels of seismicity. The current situation is that activity remains low, but the volcano continues to be carefully monitored.”

The northern end of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. Note the line of  steaming volcanoes.  Lake Managua is just to the north of Lake Nicaragua.

   My father returned home from the hospital today!  He had open heart surgery last Monday (Jan 25) which went very well.  I guess they said that he could have gone home yesterday (Friday), but he said he wasn’t ready to leave yet!  Four days seems like a very short stay after such major surgery, but I guess that is the norm now if the patient is doing well.  He was in ICU until Wednesday.  He is at my sister’s place where he will stay for about the next two weeks as he recovers.  I sincerely thank everybody for their prayers and good wishes.

     Needless to say I am very relieved and overjoyed that he is doing so well.  He has never had any sort of major illness, no surgery, and as a child, I can’t remember him ever being sick.   His experience which seemed to come out of the blue with no warning (good cholesterol levels, blood pressure about 120/70, etc) makes me much more determined to live the sort of lifestyle that precludes such problems–exercise, proper diet, etc.

     Last Thursday (Jan 21)  my father had some chest pain after returning from the store.  It wouldn’t go away,  and soon my father realized that this wasn’t the normal discomfort that he sometimes felt from the acid reflux which he sometimes has.  Then he did something out of character–he asked his next door neighbor to call an ambulance.

    I understand how out of character this was for him, because I am just like my father in many ways.  We both would tend to ignore pain until it became overwhelming, and for him to ask for an ambulance shows that it was something out of the ordinary.   I am still surprised that he did this and didn’t try to drive to the emergency room by himself.  It just goes to show that he was experiencing something out of the ordinary and that he is much smarter than I am.

     The next morning he had an angiogram and instead of a stent which they thought he might need, they found he had two coronary arteries which showed some blockage.  He would need double bypass surgery.  The interesting thing is that they found that his EKG was normal.  A slight elevation of heart enzymes showed that he had a mild heart attack also.

    My father will be 86 in March and has always been extremely healthy.  The doctor, one of the best in the Dallas area, said that he doesn’t consider the patient’s age in considerating this procedure, but their health, and that my father was otherwise in excellent health.

     The operation will take place at 7:15 am CST tomorrow.  I’d appreciate any kind thoughts or prayers sent my father’s way.

     It is Christmas Eve, 11:55 pm, and I am alone at work, getting ready to go out into the frosty night.  Once again I think back on past times with my family as I have many times before.  I haven’t posted much lately because I have been working so many long hours, but soon it will be all back to normal.  Merry Christmas to All!

      I was wondering why people were staring at me at the Mississippi visitor’s center last summer after I had pulled off Interstate 10.  I checked my zipper, nope…wiped my nose, nope nothing there, then I realized that I was wearing two pairs of glasses, one low down on my nose and the other right above it. 

       I have always had excellent eyesight, never needing glasses…until a few years back.  More than a few years actually.  Presbyopia is an ailment that inflicts many people as the lens of the eye looses its flexibility and can no longer accomodate close vision.   When this condition got to the point that I could ignore it no longer, I bought two expensive pairs of glasses.  “Over a hundred dollars for the frames?” I almost shouted in disbelief to the clerk.  “I can get a pair of sunglasses for a few dollars that has perfectly good frames!”

     “Oh no!,” she said, horrified, “these glasses are much finer, much lighter and stronger.”  So I ended up spending several hundred dollars for two pairs of glasses.  Years later I realize that…I was absolutely right, and was foolish to have bought such thin frames that snapped the first time any pressure was put upon them, and I never did get used to the bifocals.

     Now I get my glasses at a place that has satisfied my needs in many ways, and I have never had second thoughts about the glasses that I buy there—the Dollar Tree.  I buy glasses for close work for one dollar with a diopter value of about 2.5.  I also found that recently I have problems seeing far away–especially when driving at night, and I found that these one dollar glasses with a diopter of about 1.25 are great for seeing far away.  I even found some sunglasses with a diopter value of 1.25 which are great on sunny days.  These glasses work wonderfully well and are durable.  I have some that I’ve had for years, and I usually never have any problems with them unless I sit on them.

      So that day as I was driving down I-10 I was wearing my “far away glasses” (1.25) and doing perfectly fine until I needed to look down at the speedometer or something else on the dash board like the radio controls, and then I needed my “close up” (2.5) glasses.  Both were hanging about my neck by cords, and I found that by placing the close up glasses low on my nose and my far away glasses up higher on my nose, I could switch back and forth with no problems.  However, I had neglected to pull one off my nose when I went into the visitor’s center.  

        I found that method works very well, but I haven’t quite overcome the attention I get when I do it, so I usually only do it at home.  However, I have left the diopter labels on the lenses in order to tell the glasses apart, and I always get comments such as:  “You still have the label on your glasses.”  “I know,” I reply,  “And I still have the label on this one,” pointing to the other one hanging about my neck.

When I reached the beach on my walk two Sundays ago, I saw a large black body out in the water, then a great fin protruding above the surface.  At first I was confused as to what I was seeing,  then everything clicked into place, and I realized that I was watching a pod of Orca or Killer Whales coursing north through the narrows of Puget Sound.  I immediately began shouting with excitement.  Not only was this the first time that I had ever seen these magnificent creatures, but they are rarely seen this far south in the sound.  They had just passed the park which I was in and were taking their time on their way north, their backs and fins protruding above the water.  I stood there watching them until they disappeared.  Then I realized that I had been the only one shouting, but I felt blessed and full of energy.

The Killer Whale got its name from the fact that it often was observed eating whales, but there are at least three different groups or Orcas which seem to have specialized in either fish and squid eating, and those which eat almost exclusively marine mammals.  I was tremendously excited after seeing the Orcas pass, and while musing on them I was curiously reminded of the end of the universe.

I was reminded of the death of the universe by the fact that Killer Whales occupy the top of their food chain, and thus their numbers and biomass are severely limited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which basically says that energy tends to go from ordered states to disordered states, and during any transfer of energy some energy is lost to the system (converted to heat).  Thus every time a cow eats its supper (plants) roughly 90% of the energy in the plants is converted to heat and lost to the system (ecosystem in this case).  So consider the following marine food chain scenario:

phytoplankton (100%)—->zooplankton(10%)—->small fish(1%)—->larger fish(.1%)—->seals(.01%)—–>Killer Whales(.001%)

Suppose the phytoplankton by means of photosynthesis captures a certain amount of energy from the sun.  We’ll say this amount of energy is 100%.  This represents what we start out with in this food chain.  The zooplankton (small floating animals) eat the phytoplankton, but about 90% of the available energy is lost, so the zooplankton only ends up with 10% of what we started with.  Then the small fish eat the zooplankton and the same thing happens, 90% is lost and the small fish end up with 1% of the original amount.  And so on…until we end up with the Killer Whales which in this example will end up with only 1/100,000 of what we started with–all due primarily to the Second Law of Thermodynamics!   Not much energy is available to the top predators in food chains.

Or consider this alternate food chain:

phytoplankton (100%)—->zooplankton(10%)—->Great Blue Whales (1%)

The Great Blue Whales by eating much lower on the food chain (zooplankton: krill mostly), theoretically has 1% of the energy with which we started–a thousand times more potential energy than is available for the Killer Whales!  So theoretically the biomass of Great Blue Whales could be as much as the total biomass for the small fish in the first food chain…just concentrated in much bigger bodies, potentially much more biomass than in the Killer whales.  Two strategies exist in this case:  by eating at this level in this food chain, you can be small and extremely numerous or large and much less numerous–the biomass should be about the same.  I think there is a lesson here as the human population density soars above 6 billion people.  Can we continue to eat high on the food chain?

So why did all this make me ponder the end of the universe?  Because if energy continues to go from concentrated sources of energy to less concentrated sources (entropy), then eventually the universe will run down.  All the stars  and other energy systems will have dissipated their energy into heat, there will be no more people, spiders, planets, stars…nothing but a universe in which the energy is evenly distributed–the Heat Death of the Universe.

I was reading the paper today, and when I got to the funny papers (comics), I found an odd thing.  I kept seeing the same references to volunteerism and community service in many of the strips.  Below is a summary of what I found:

1. Garfield: “Today I volunteered to help clean up the city park.”
2. The Born Loser: girl volunteered to rake leaves for the born loser who had hurt his arm.
3. Stone Soup: woman building houses for charity in Thailand.  (I hate this strip and never read it…did this time for the survey).
4. Pickles: The old lady volunteered to read to schoolchildren.
5. Luann: A service “team” started at high school “Woohoo! Volunteers rule!”
6. Baby Blues: Children volunteered for too many projects.  “Ok, I got everything straightened out with your service coach.”
7. Pooch Cafe: Pooch volunteered to visit sick kid in hospital.
8. Dennis the Menace.  Dennis volunteered to wash the Wilson’s windows.  Sign read: “Volunteer to help others.”
9. Blondie:  Dagwood volunteered to help with a senior citizens’ project.
10. The Family Circus:  Kids helping out in the kitchen.  “Hi, Mommy!  Can I volunteer to be some ‘nother help?”
11. Marmuduke: He starts a homeless shelter for dogs in the house.

Eleven out of 22 comic strips dealt with volunteerism–50%!  “Ok,” I thought, “obviously it must be Volunteer Week or something like that.”  But no,  Volunteer Week was April 19-25.  What the heck is going on?  It must be something that has been in the news or perhaps being pushed by somebody…but for the life of me I have no idea what.  I have noticed this happening before–the comics suddenly dealing with a particular subject.

Ok, I just googled some more and may have found what is going on: “18 October: The media blitz has arrived.  As we reported, in June, the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) announced a commitment to incorporate volunteering and service into both news programming and ongoing fictional television series beginning the week of October 19.   EIF has branded this effort as “iParticipate” and opened a Web site at www.iparticipate.org.  There you can learn about the initiative, keep up with a blog about it, and view video clips of celebrities answering the question, “how do you serve?”” http://www.energizeinc.com/news.html

Ok…it’s some sort of media blitz by the Entertainment Industry Foundation.  I guess it even involves the funny papers.  How does this work?  Do the comic strip writers receive their subject du jour from somebody, and they dutifully accomodate their strips to  promulgate the subject?

Why am I not thrilled?   Volunteerism is a good cause isn’t it?  And the media has been influencing us for years to buy products, etc.  Brainwashing for a good cause is good isn’t it?  Why does this leave a bad taste in my mouth?  (making mental note of those strips who participated and those who didn’t)

     I am reading The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers for the second time and have been struck again by just how much I like and admire his novels.   I have read and re-read his books since discovering them years ago, and they never fail to entertain and enthrall me.

      Every time that I read one of his books I am tempted to sit down and devour it as soon as possible, but I try to strictly limit myself.  I try to stretch it out as long as possible, like a wonderful meal, savoring every aspect of it.  Anything really good in my opinion is worth taking one’s time with–and Tim Power’s books are very, very good.

     His books could be labeled fantasy I suppose, or science fiction, but these labels really don’t do his books justice.  Often his novels deal with historical events with the supernatural thrown in.  His history is exact, but it is interpreted in his own unique sort of way.

     It probably doesn’t matter in what order the books are read, but I would definitely read these three in order since they are sequels: Last Call, Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather.  These three books are a must read if you are interested in Tim Powers, although all of the others are very good.

     The Anubis Gates is such an incredible and disturbing book that I limit my reading of it because parts of it are actually painful to me.

    If you are interested in unique and strange stories, you must read the novels of Tim Powers.

Here’s some birds I saw in Panama.  The page and plate numbers refer to the Birds of Panama.

We are sentient beings. As conscious entities we often look for meaning in what at first appears to be an uncaring universe.  This seems to be the way we are, constantly seeking for meaning that relates to our own lives.

Religion and philosophy are attempts to render meaning to our lives.  People of long ago, living in constant contact with the natural world, often looked to nature for meaning, searching for meaning in the behavior of animals, in the weather, and in other natural phenomena.

We have a rational, logical side to our nature, and we have the great body of information given to us by science, and by that great tool, the scientific method which can give us demonstrable truth, truth that can be demonstrated to others.

But our soul cries out for other truths, truths that are more subtle than that learned by the blunt tool of science, truths that do not lend themselves easily to demonstration.

There have been times of great emotional storms in my life in which I searched for meaning in the small things about me…times in which I tried to quell the storm within and tried to listen to that “still, small voice” that speaks to us all, but often goes unheard in the turmoil of modern society.

At such times I often go for walks and look for insight in the world about me.  And if I am able to still the waters within,  I often hear things.   This morning I heard the small brook speaking to me.  The rains had lessened recently, and the voice of the little stream had changed, become more melodious and fuller as its flow diminished.  It’s gurgle and burble sounded like an ancient voice that spoke a language that hovered on the edge of comprehensibility.

An eagle sounded as I ambled along, a sound that I have heard so often, that it threatens to become commonplace.  I stopped to listen and to appreciate more fully the wild character of the call.

Then I remembered that two nights ago when I stepped from my car about two hours after midnight, I paused for a second and looked up at a rare, clear, night sky at the Big Dipper.  I remembered how long ago my father pointed out to a small boy how the Big Dipper is always pointing to Polaris, the North Star, and showed me where it points.  I checked, and sure enough, it is still pointing to this guide star.

As I paused there in the darkness, I heard the oh-so-soft hooting of the Great Horned Owl.  It was immediately answered by another.  I had often wondered why I seldom heard owls even though my house is surrounded by forest.   The calls were so faint and soft that I know that I could have easily missed them as I rushed from the car into the house.

So I stood there longer in the darkness, wondering if further mysteries were to be hinted at.  Then far off over the Sound, I heard a growing sound that increased until it sounded like the yapping of hounds in the sky.  For a second I thought of the hunting dogs of Diana, or Artemis, coursing through the night sky in pursuit of some unknown prey.  I shook my head, but the sound remained the same.  I told myself that it was Canada Geese on their northern migration, but I have heard these geese many times, and this did not sound the same.  Whatever it was, it gradually faded, growing fainter until I was left standing in the dark listening to the soft hooting.

Perhaps I should pause more often and slow my pace and open my eyes…and ears…and mind.

I loved the way that this writer found meaning in the birds of a walk that he took.  In fact I admire his entire blog.

I read an article in the paper today which got me thinking.   Apparently back in 1999 the federal government enacted a law banning videos that show cruelty to animals.

The law was especially designed to limit the sale of tapes of fights between pit bulls and “crush videos” that show women crushing to death small animals with their bare feet or high-heeled shoes.

The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said the law restricts free speech illegally, and rejected the government’s argument that the law is justified by a “compelling interest in protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty.”

The government has appealed this ruling and the Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear arguments both pro and con.

This got me thinking about how hard questions of censorship can be.   On the one hand, I find such acts of cruelty to animals so incredibly disgusting that it nauseates me to think of it, and on the other hand I have always been a staunch advocate against censorship and for freedom of speech.

I can understand that when a person’s cherished beliefs are trampled upon by somebody, one’s first reaction is to want to stop it immediately.  For example, my first reaction was to sympathize with the law banning such disgusting acts, because it supports my belief that animals should never be treated in such a manner.

Such in all probability is the reaction of some people to Mark Twain’s use of the “N” word in Huckleberry Finn (notice that I impose self-censorship here in not spelling the word out?).  There have been several times in which attempts have been made to ban the teaching of this book in high schools for this and for other perceived undesirable attributes about the book (Here is a list of the ten most banned books in American schools).

Also to a certain extent, it is understandable when extreme religious groups act to ban books, activities, moves, etc. which offends them.  Witness the censorship imposed by the Taliban in areas that they control.

One could go on and on listing acts of censorship and repression by various groups, governments, offended citizens, etc. down through history, but it seems mostly to boil down to somebody knowing what is best for other people, and making their minds up for them as to what is objectionable and what is not–the “I know better than you” mentality.

It isn’t so bad when such people do not have the power to censor, but it is different when they do have the power to decide for me what I can be exposed to.

It seems to me that we should be extremely wary of enforcing censorship, because I think that people naturally tend to want to censor offending items, often ignoring any extenuating facts.  As a people we should resist with all our might such tendencies in our society.

Spring is marching on here.  A couple of days ago my feet were slipping on the front steps, and for a brief flash I thought there was frost.  Further examination revealed that there was a thin, slippery layer of what appeared to be yellow flour.   As I walked to my car I could see a fine fall in the air of tiny particles in the slanting rays of the morning sun.  It was the pollen of the Douglas Fir tree , and it had coated my car with its profligate scattering of germ plasm.  It was deja vu all over again.  I had written almost the same exact words two years ago on this blog on April 7.  Check that post for a photo of the pollen on my car windshield.   These dates lend credence to my impression that this entire season is almost two weeks late because of the unusually cold winter that we have had.  It has not been really cold, just 6 or 7 degrees cooler than usual.  This apparently has delayed the flower blossoming, etc.

Douglas Fir pollen on my mailbox

I was thinking this two nights ago as I went out into the night and smelled the wonderful perfume of the budding cottonwoods.  When the trees begin to put forth their leaves, a delicious, sticky resin that coats the tender buds puts forth this incredible aroma.  This is the Balm of Gilead, believed to be that mentioned in Genesis that was gathered from the tree Commiphora gileadensis, native to southern Arabia.  I love to rub these buds between my fingers, smearing the sticky stubstance all over and then deeply inhaling the smell.  Normally I smell this perfume at the first of April, but it is just now coming forth almost three weeks late.

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.

The horse tails are also putting forth.  Their hard bodies with silica on their cells used to be employed as scouring rushes.  They are putting forth their reproductive bodies now (strobilus, see photo) and also their vegetative structures which when fully formed, open up to provide a beautiful display of wispy plants which  has given rise to their name of horse tails.  The one photo shows the plant coming up through the hard asphalt pavement of the road.   These are all photos that I took this morning on my walk.

Equisetum strobili which produce the spores of Horsetails.

I just had to include another photo of a beautiful clump of Trillium that I found this morning and a shot of the early Azalea/Rhododendron(?) that is blooming in my back yard just now.

The Trilliums are at their height, and provide a visual delight on walks through the woods just now.

Trilliums are blooming all through the woods.

              About 12,900 years ago, most of the large megafauna of the New World disappeared.  This included the Mammoth, Mastodons, giant ground sloths, saber tooth tigers, camels, horses and many others.  This happened very rapidly and has been a source of speculation amongst scientists.  Most of the speculation has fallen into one of the following categories:

A. Climatic Change: Apparently at this time there was a period of intense cold which some say could have initiated the extinctions.  Others say that since this was at the end of the last glaciation, the warming temperatures could have caused the extinctions.  Others say that the climate became more “continentalized” with colder winters and hotter summers. However these same fauna survived previous interglacials without the large extinctions, so something doesn’t seem quite right about this hypothesis.

  B. Human overkill: Some say (I think Paul Martin popularized this hypothesis) that the extinctions coincided with one of the large human migrations into the area.  They point to other extinctions in other parts of the world (e.g. Australia) where extinctions coincided with the advent of humans into the area.

    This is succinctly summarized thus: “1- animals go extinct soon after the introduction of humans and 2- extinctions are greatest where humans have arrived last – the New World – and are least where humans were first – Africa. This is based on the reasoning that in Africa animals learned and evolved as H. sapiens developed new hunting techniques. The animals of new territories were naive about hunting and were more vulnerable – there was a greater gap between the ability of the hunter to kill and the ability of the animal to evade being killed. This predicts that the later H. sapiens entered a territory the more animals will be killed. “    For a fun, informative site that explores these questions see here.

C.  Disease:  A third hypothesis suggests that the invading humans brought some sort of pathogen with them that wiped out the megafauna.

Up until now the previous three hypotheses or combinations thereof were the only serious reasons put forth for these extinctions at this time.  However, I just saw a NOVA program which presents a fourth hypothesis:

D. Extraterrestrial body impact with the earth as shown on Nova’s program, The Last Extinction.   This program gave tantalizing evidence that a comet or asteroid impacted the earth approximately 13,900 years ago and which could have contributed to the extinctions.  The idea can be summarized thus:

• There is a dark band of material separating the strata at this age.  Before this band the megafauna was widespread in North America, and after the band the megafauna was basically extinct.  This “black mat” made up of cinders and burnt plant remains has been examined at over fifty sites in North America.
• There is a high amount of Iridium in this layer.  Iridium is found in high concentrations in meterors and comets, but not that common in the earth.  Louis Alvarez found a similar high concentration of Iridium at the Cretaceous/Tertiary border which indicated that an asteroid impact probably was a factor in the extinction of dinosaurs.
• Investigation of the Greenland ice layers also showed a high amount of Iridium in the ice of this time.
• In this black mat was also found nanodiamonds of a hexagonal crystaline structure which is formed only under high impact situations.
• Upon examining the Greenland ice layers of the same age, they found the same hexagonal nanodiamonds.  Both the Iridium and nanodiamonds were not found in layers just before (older) and just after (younger) than the layers of 13,900 years ago.
• They hypothesize that if the comet fell onto the ice or into the sea and if it was comprised of a group of small bodies instead of one large one, then there would be no impact crater.  One is reminded of the Tunguska Siberian Comet impact of 1908 which devastated a large area but left no impact crater. 
• It seems highly likely that a large extraterrestrial body hit the earth 13,900 years ago.
• This could have had an impact upon the sudden disappearance of the megafauna.

   They didn’t really address the impact upon the human population.  I wonder if there’s any evidence of this?   I know they said that the Clovis Culture was present before the “black mat” layer, but not after.  Oops!  I just found this site which discusses this same subject!  It also lists some objections as follows:

    “However, it is not clear why megafaunal extinctions caused by an impact event in northern North America would have extended all the way across northern Eurasia and down to the southern tip of South America (presuming a single primary cause for these similar and roughly contemporaneous regional extinctions), while sparing some of the small, isolated (and thus potentially most vulnerable) megafaunal populations on nearby islands. In the cases of the wooly mammoths of Wrangel Island or St. Paul Island, the Steller’s sea cows of the Commander Islands, and the ground sloths of the Antilles, the island populations survived for thousands of years after related populations on nearby continental land masses died out.”

   If  you get a chance watch this Nova program.  It is absolutely fascinating.

Today, while on a walk I was staring at the pipe where my little stream exits after traveling beneath and across the road.  The stream parallels the road for most of the way down to the beach, and just before the beach is reached, the stream enters a large concrete pipe, travels beneath the road, and exits on the other side of the road where it eventually runs into the sea.

This end of the pipe is covered with moss, and the water as it exits,  splashes merrily on a pile of rocks below.  So I was standing there, staring almost hypnotized at the smooth stream of water as it came out of the mossy pipe and watching the splashing of the water.   As I watched, I was aware of something that began to niggle at my attention.  I gradually realized that it was the splashing of the water on the rocks that was beginning to rankle me.

I could see that the splashing of the water appeared to be  almost random in the pattern of the drops as they bounced about.  The water as it exited appeared to be smooth and uniform with no visible turbulence.  Thus it seemed to me that if the water flow was uniform and constant then it seemed that the splashing should be uniform with the drops falling in a recognizable pattern.  But it wasn’t.  The drops splashed in what appeared to be an erratic and  random sort of way.  The splashing was not uniform at all.

This set my mind off on several tangents.  The water flowing through the pipe reminded me first of all of laminar flow and turbulence, and how when Werner Heisenberg (of quantum mechanics fame) was supposedly asked what he would ask God when he met him, said “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.”

This apparent dissonance in the splashing of the water also reminded me of one of the problems in the Big Bang Theory.  According to the theory the early universe should have been uniform and smooth, but it was not.  It appeared after a short while to be lumpy and dimpled.  Gravity alone doesn’t seem to be the reason that the universe has congealed into galaxies, stars, planets and people in such a short time.  Perhaps dark matter had something to do with it?

And what about the little game called Quincunx that Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin, came up with (from which developed the pin ball machines)?  Think of a board with nails stuck in it with slots at the bottom.  When marbles or steel bearings are released at the top and allowed to fall to the bottom, each one strikes a nail and bounces either to the left or to the right before eventually arriving at one of the slots at the bottom.  Here is an illustration of the apparatus if you find it hard to imagine.  Due to the fact that there are many more paths to the center slots than to the slots at the margin, more marbles collect in the center slots than those at the sides.  Eventually a bell shaped or normal curve is formed.  The fate of one of the marbles is unknown when it is released at the top, but the fate of many of these marbles can be predicted statistically.

This in turn reminded me of a fertilized egg as it proceeds through the blastula, gastrula and other early stages of the embryo, each cell containing the same DNA and each cell, like the marbles falling down the plank, eventually turning down a particular developmental path becoming specialized into epithelial, nervous, connective or muscle tissue.

And what you may ask does all this have to do with anything?  Well, the apparent randomness of the splashing water proceeding from what appeared to be the smooth flowing water through the pipe, made me think of turbulence, which reminded me of the lumpy nature of the universe which reminded me of the apparent randomness of the bouncing marbles which actually show a pattern, which reminded me of the identical cells developing down what seemed random developmental paths to form organized tissue.

When I put it that way it all makes sense…doesn’t it?

I’ve spent a great deal of time categorizing things.  We all do this from birth, some more than others I think.  As we grow up from early childhood, we are always learning new things, and trying to place everything in the proper perspective.  We learn to name things.

As a child I learned the names of all the common trees and birds.  I learned most of the flowers in my mother’s garden, and then later after becoming interested in snakes and other reptiles, I learned  the names of most of the ones in that part of Texas where I grew up.  I memorized the scientific names of all of them and proceeded to learn the scientific names of amphibians, birds, flowers, insects, plants and so on.  I still have an intense interest in learning the names of everything.  On a recent trip to Panama I was extremely frustrated because I didn’t know the names of anything!

I think that learning to differentiate between things is a good thing in many respects.  I can tell a black oak from a red oak,  and Bufo woodhousei from B. valliceps for example.  Learning to differentiate between all the various living things that have interested me has given me an intense appreciation of just how varied and diverse life is on earth.  It has also organized my mind and the way that I think about things.  We need labels, tags, names to get a mental grasp of the universe in order to make some sort of coherent sense of it.

However, I have noticed something about this naming process.  After I had learned all the various minutiae concerning the genera and species of a wide spectrum of creatures, I was immensely perturbed when somebody changed the name of a beloved and well known species.

Due to the  esoteric regulations governing the taxonomy of flora and fauna, it sometimes happens that a diligent taxonomist finds a problem and feels it is necessary to rename an organism.  This has become especially common as DNA analysis has revealed that a group that was believed to contain an assemblage of closely related organisms was found to be made up of widely different types of organism which didn’t not share a common ancestor.  In other words they were found to not be that closely related.   There were groups of birds, for example, that were found to be made up of individuals that weren’t that closely related (e.g. ratites).  This invariably results in a renaming of the organisms.

I have become highly incensed when this has happened, and I know that other people react the same way.  However, I got to thinking about this, and realized that changing the name of an organism did not change the creature in any way!  The organism remained the same, the bird was the same bird, the snake the same snake (re: the genera Haldea and Virginia!).   I still have to stop sometimes and remind my self that the pointer is not the object! To name something is not to possess it or to change it in any way (despite stories about how knowing the true name of something gives one power over it); the essence of the object remains the same.  And this essence is unknowable in an ultimate sense.  We can intimate the essence, but it remains forever outside of our grasp.

      Last May in western Tanzania, two men with long knives forced their way into a family’s home while they were eating breakfast and hacked off the legs of a young girl and made off with them.  She died soon afterwards.

      A few days ago a twenty year old man in Burundi was attacked by a group of men who hacked off his arms and legs, the fourth such butchery in this country in the past month.  A string (more than 40) of such murders have occurred in the past year in this part of Africa including that of an 8 year old boy who also had his arms and legs hacked off and a 6 year old boy in February who was dismembered alive in his home.   

     These unfortunate people were all albinos, and were murdered out of a superstitious belief that their body parts have magical potency.  These albino body parts can bring thousands of dollars in Tazania where witch doctors use them to make lucky charms.

 One albino woman had her tongue,  eyes and breasts removed in a similar attack.  Another man tried to sell his albino wife for her body parts.

     Albinos are not always so mistreated.   Albinism in the Hopis is about 100 times more frequent than in the population at large (1 in 200 as opposed to 1 in 20,000).  The Hopis apparently value the members of the tribe that exhibit this trait, with albinos often becoming chiefs, healers and religious leaders.  They are also spared from working in the fields in the direct sun, and also apparently enjoy a sexual advantage.  The lack of pigmentation in albinos makes them much more susceptible to skin cancer, so this behavior most likely increases the lifespan of such Hopi.

        One possible factor in the high number of albinos in the Hopi besides their sexual advantage and their protection from the sun, might be genetic drift, or random change that can occur in small populations.   High incidences of albinism can also be found in small protected squirrel populations in city parks for example.  Here random changes and protection from predators probably aid in the spread of this character.

     What causes this loss of pigment?  Traditionally it has been considered to  be a recessive mutation in the gene that produces melanin (pigment).  Take the following example:

        Let A=gene for normal pigmentation.  Let a=gene for albinism (a person needs two a’s to have the albinism trait).   Thus the cross between two people with normal pigmentation but with a hidden recessive gene for albinism would look something like this.

                         Aa x Aa==> 1/4 AA, 1/2 Aa and 1/4 aa.

Thus there would be a one chance in four of having a child with albinism. 

     However, it has been found to be more complicated than this.  There has been found at least four different mutant genes that produces the common form of albinism (oculocutaneous albinism which produces a lack of pigmentation in the eyes, skin and hair) .  These mutations are on non-sex chromosomes (autosomes).

      There are other types of albinism in people: Ocular albinism (a lack of pigmentation only in the eyes) which is a mutation on the X chromosome and  more obscure types of mutations that interfere with pigment production.

     In other animals such as birds and reptiles there are other types of pigments besides melanin which can be responsible for brown, black, gray and yellow colors.  Mutations in the genes controlling the production of these pigments can result in a variety of effects.