This, of course, means that I’m a miserable soul person wretch, and merely want to [...]]]> I am a big meanie; I admit it. I am one of “those people” – those who want to deprive so many others of their happiness and joy, their motivations, their reasons for living. I am… an outspoken skeptic.

This, of course, means that I’m a miserable soul person wretch, and merely want to inflict my pain on as many others as I can. I mean, why else would I be doing this? How could I possibly want to take away the magic which fills people’s lives?

This isn’t hyperbole, by the way – I’ve actually dealt with this attitude from some people, and it’s almost scary. It’s a bit like they regret Toto pulling aside the curtain (hopefully you’re not thinking of an eighties band…)

Here’s a little background: I used to be one of the “magic” people, not only religious, but believing in myriad things, from visiting aliens to telekinetic powers, dowsing (which I’ve actually done) to the Bermuda Triangle. Much of it was quite some time ago when I was young, admittedly, but it wasn’t more than a decade back that I was very suspicious of the circumstances of Kennedy’s assassination. All of that is gone now, and not one tiny fraction of it is missed in the slightest. On the contrary, I’m a lot happier as a skeptic. Things now actually make a hell of a lot more sense, and I’m pleased that I left gullibility behind. I did not lose any “magic” – I lost bullshit, and in most cases, replaced it with a better understanding of how things work, of science, human nature, and mass media.

In fact, I have rarely come across anyone that regrets leaving behind some previous belief, and when you think about it, it’s a ludicrous concept. Either you believe, or you don’t, and if you once did and stopped, it must be because it’s no longer believable. In such circumstances, no one regrets the loss of their belief; they regret that they once believed for as long as they did.

No one can take away magic with skepticism or critical thinking – that’s also ludicrous. The only thing that can be done is to show that it’s not really magic (or mysterious, or evidence of strange otherworldly powers and influences, and so on.) No one can destroy a god with an argument; no one can extinguish the life of the Loch Ness Monster with logic. Decrying the efforts to help people see past emotional blinders is, to be blunt, incredibly anti-social and downright demeaning. Think about it: the argument against skepticism is actually for allowing people to live in ignorance, denying the real world in favor of fairy tales that make them feel good. How is this different from drug addiction? And more importantly, isn’t this treating belief as a pacifier for an emotionally and mentally inept adult? Does anyone hear Nicholson shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!” here?

I’ve heard the argument that, for instance, religious people are happy that way, which I don’t believe for a second – I’ve heard more whiny bitching coming from religious people than I ever have coming from skeptics. In too many cases, religious folk are convinced that there’s some huge conspiracy going on, from scientists and Darwinists and all that, to take away their special privileges, or corrupt their children or something along those lines – fostered in their minds by those who gain money from being religious leaders, imagine that. And sure, I’ve talked to plenty of people who vehemently resist the questioning of alt med efficacy, the existence of aliens, or the government ties to the twin towers collapse. This is hardly as meaningful as it first sounds, since I’ve also talked to plenty of people who just as strongly resist the questioning of their political parties, taste in music, or favorite sports teams. So what? People resist, not necessarily being wrong, but being told they’re wrong, and even someone posing the possibility. This hardly means that letting them go on in ignorance is better for them, or that their emotional state is so delicate that it should not be tampered with.

Further along those lines, being happy is not a binary state, where either you’re happy or you’re not. You can be happy, and then become happier. At the same time, most people do not look back fondly on times when they were ignorant yet happy, convinced that the mere state of happiness was all that mattered; they often consider those times an embarrassment, when they were young and foolish and gullible. Even when they reminisce about their childhood delight in Santa Claus, they can still enjoy the holidays without the idea, shocking as that may seem. From my own perspective, I’m better off no longer worrying about hell and judgment, or trying to correctly interpret scripture despite what my better nature told me about human behavior. I can see strange lights in the sky and not assume I’m seeing a UFO, but instead ask, “What am I seeing?”, and thus pay close attention to the details. I can walk around a dark old house or forest at night without thinking every sound signifies specters and demons and sasquatches. Sasqui. Whatever.

Notable throughout all of this is that I, like many others, actually want answers. I want to know how things work and what the real reasons are. Those beliefs that I abandoned were corrupt; they always had been, but it took a certain level of understanding for me to realize it. Countless nagging questions that I had while growing up are gone now, replaced with real info, and most especially, with the ability to question. Things are not always how they seem or how they’re presented, and in many cases there’s an agenda in the background. Even without such machinations, though, there is often pandering to emotional responses rather than intellectual, and the one simple, inescapable fact: we can always be wrong. But there’s one particular emotion that many people place above all others, and that is the satisfaction of finding the right path, the most accurate answers. This is more than simply never admitting to being wrong; it requires diligence in seeking corroborative evidence, in not trusting in oneself too closely but seeking supporting info instead. That’s critical thinking, and applied this way, it is far more satisfying than merely believing in something because it is appeasing. It makes many puzzles fit together, dodges scams, and dispels fantasy. I’m happy with that, and am willing to share it, too. Meanie that I am.

This past summer, [...]]]> Okay, I admit it: I have no idea what the hell “yore” is. But since it’s not the season for nature photography, I’m hearkening (yeah, ditto) back to a time when it was. That I’m intending to make this an occasional habit is indicated by the ‘part one’ in the title…

This past summer, a tree alongside the house played host to a fairly common sight, which was a minor invasion of planthoppers. Gardeners usually consider these a pest, because of the damage they can do to preferred plants given adequate numbers of them, but I’m more egalitarian – it’s all grist for the mill (I’m just slamming out these ancient phrases, aren’t I?) Especially since they have an interesting relationship with another insect.

In nymph form, like the brown example at right, they display a curious ‘tail,’ which is actually their fecal matter, unused material filtered from the sap that serves as their food. While the species shown here (almost certainly Acanalonia conica, though at least one source indicates that the nymph form is green instead) displays only a simple plume reminiscent of cotton candy, some planthopper species produce long and distinctive ‘tails,’ in some cases appearing iridescent from the light diffracted through their crystalline structure. Once they become adults like the green examples here, however, things change a little bit.

In both forms, they attach themselves to plant stems with a proboscis and suck sap from the plant, largely remaining in place for longer periods of time. The adults excrete waste in liquid form, generally a drop every five to ten minutes. What the planthoppers have no use for, some ant species do, and it’s usually a matter of time before an ant colony discovers a planthopper colony and the milking begins. As the planthopper squeezes out a deuce, it usually remains attached to their hind end for a minute or two, and if the ants are on schedule, they will come by and suck up the offering, using this as their own food.

I first witnessed this one evening as I was examining the trees by flashlight, while the camera was not in hand. This, naturally enough, was a challenge, so I returned the next day and set up a rig to capture this behavior as it occurred. This is easier said than done, since my planthopper subject here is about 8 mm long, so I was working in fairly high magnification. And that means that depth-of-field is quite short, so the range of sharp focus is tiny. The slightest breeze would move the supporting branch, carrying my subject well out of focus, but even when perfectly steady, the planthopper could be in focus but the ant, approaching ever so slightly from the side, would not be. Moreover, the planthoppers usually chose spots under a leaf to retain some shade, and I can’t say that I blamed them, because I was sweating buckets getting these daytime pics. But that shade also meant reducing light and contrast. Coupling this with the small aperture being used to get the highest depth-of-field, the light was reduced so much that the longer shutter speeds to compensate meant that the hyperactive ants, which never held still even while drinking, would be blurred out. So this also required strobe units to provide enough light for a fast shutter, offset to the side for better light characteristics. This occasionally leads to its own problems.

Okay, quick explanation here. Small aperture means more depth-of-field, but less light – this results in underexposure unless you lengthen the time the shutter is open (usually producing motion blur) or add some light from a strobe. Now, the light from a strobe drops off exponentially, in inverse-square proportions, meaning at twice a given distance, your photo subject receives only 1/4 the amount of light; at four times the distance, only 1/16th. When working with close subjects only a dozen centimeters or so from the camera, it’s very easy for the light to drop off to almost nothing on the background leaves, even when they’re little more than a hand’s length further away. This light falloff, and the small apertures, are what produces the dark backgrounds in so many insect photos even when taken in daylight. To compensate, you can add another strobe unit specifically for the background, or use light diffusers that allow the background to receive more light while your subject receives it only peripherally, balancing out the affect.

None of this is very portable, and usually requires not only a tripod, but an extra bracket for the main strobe, and perhaps a stand for the secondary – not something that’s going to work well with moving subjects. That’s why I could even accomplish this with the planthoppers, who obligingly stayed put even when I loomed close, counting on their camouflage for protection. Ants don’t seem to worry about anything and constantly ran back and forth no matter what my actions, but they presented their own challenge anyway. Shiny black bodies are difficult to photograph, since it takes a certain light angle to capture detail properly; otherwise you get very little to distinguish, as seen above. A good softbox diffuses the light and makes ant bodies stand out better, but even small examples of these are bulky and don’t lend themselves to use within the branches of a tree.

So sometimes I cheat a bit, and set up my own conditions. Here, a nymph was collected on a leaf and carried over to a table on the porch, where the leaf was placed in a clamp (actually a “third hand” soldering rig, a huge help for macro shooters) and the lighting adjusted as needed. Even when the nymph wanted to move around, all I had to do was slide the rig along the table to keep it centered, and rotate as needed to get the facial angle I wanted. This allows for nice detail shots, helpful for both identification and biological uses, while still remaining a fairly natural setting. That’s one of the benefits to shooting macro: an appropriate “set” can be a few centimeters across and doesn’t require a team of gaffers.

If you were paying attention, you have noticed the difference in eye color seen in these images. This is not indicative of different species (though the pale green one two pics up certainly is,) but instead different times of day. For reasons I have yet to determine, planthoppers (and other insect species) have eyes that change color when it gets dark, which means the red-eyed examples show that I was actually shooting at night. This can be more useful than you might have thought, partially because of the difference in appearance or behavior of your subjects, but also because the breeze has often died down and the plants are holding still better. Not to mention that there’s no longer any chance of sunburn or sunstroke, which I figured we could all use the reminder of right now when the weather’s cold.

It is admittedly hard to believe that such a thing could come about on [...]]]> Having taken a break longer than I should’ve, we now return to the “But how?” series of posts that examine how things might work if we stop using religion as a default explanation. Our topic for this evening is “life.”

It is admittedly hard to believe that such a thing could come about on its own, dictated only by the simple processes of physics – until, at least, one examines it closely. In fact, even defining it is actually a tricky thing to do. Like many of our concepts that we established in the days before scientific accuracy (‘species’ is another,) life has become less obvious and more difficult to pin down as we attempt to define it unambiguously. In essence, it is a cycle of chemical and energy interactions in a collection of molecules that can replicate itself. We have to be careful, though, because we don’t want to consider ‘fire’ alive, and there still remains arguments as to whether viruses should count. Being mere strands of DNA, they do not replicate without a host cell, but given an appropriate host they both thrive and evolve.

As an exercise, let’s compare life to other properties around us, maybe something as simple and unassuming as rocks. While they don’t reproduce, they do change, quite significantly actually, and last a hell of a lot longer than any life while doing so. Able to travel down into the molten depths of the planet and back up again, simple minerals change their nature constantly, if slowly, and range from basic organic residues that we generally call ‘soil’ to gemstones and radioactive elements. The ratios of these within the crust of the planet actually allow life to exist in the first place, providing the necessary support for vegetation, a convenient and key part of the whole food chain. There’s also the interesting processes where minerals exchange places over a long period of time, producing remarkable casts of once-living creatures (in the right conditions) that we can examine as fossils, millions of years after they stopped moving about on their own.

And if you want remarkable chemical and energy interactions, it’s hard to hold a candle to the stars (sorry,) which use just four basic forces to not only concentrate energy into a form that even permits life in the first place, but creates the special elements that are ripe for energy exchange itself, through the fusion within their cores. Life just has atoms and molecules trading energy, all of which it has to get from stars; stars have atoms rearranging their structure to create entirely different elements. This process also takes a lot of time, not only to produce such elements, but to shed them when the star ends its own ‘life’ cycle and blows them away into the depths of space. Everything that we generally consider life lasts such a brief fraction of time compared to stellar processes, or even geologic ones, that it seems nothing more than a flicker.

Was there perhaps some magical moment that started it all, with the first living cell billions of years ago? And more often asked (usually without wanting to hear an answer,) is this an event that defies scientific explanation? That really depends on what is considered “defying.” At present, how this actually occurred isn’t known – yes, it has been admitted. Yet, this doesn’t mean that we have no clue, or that the process is so mysterious that it seems magical. We have evidence that amino acids, the heart of DNA, can spontaneously form in conditions similar to what early Earth must have been like, and we can see simple mechanisms to form cellular bodies; the few missing parts, such as whether proteins or DNA came first, are still being pursued experimentally. These are not considered farfetched occurrences in the slightest, but even if someone really wants to insist this is where the magic occurred, they’re parlor tricks, not exactly awe-inspiring events. We have a stack of known, or in some cases just highly plausible, chemical binding processes that explain reproductive cells, with some individual steps in the middle where our knowledge is sketchy; making some claim that ‘this little step’ is where god must’ve jumped in can only be considered grasping at straws. Bearing in mind how far in our past all of this occurred (supported by multiple lines of evidence,) it should be more amazing that we have as much information as we do.

Do we instead find animation and direction to be marvelous, the ability to function in broad ranges and exercise ‘free will’? Aside from the silliness of free will as a concept, animation isn’t something particularly unique or compelling. Plants are animated, as anyone who has battled kudzu and crabgrass can tell you, and viruses aren’t animated at all, but reproduce like crazy across entire continents by riding on coattails. Our weather systems produce motion that makes human beings look feeble, the oceans never stop moving, and as mentioned, even the planet’s crust gets around a bit. All of these come back to the simple exchanges of energy explained in the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

So, perhaps it isn’t life itself that we find so magical, but the concept usually called a soul. Though this is tricky too, since we have special rules for souls; in most cases, they have to be bestowed by a creator, and may be imbued with pre-existing qualities (like original sin.) Or they may be recycled among a populace, like in hinduism. The soul is the special part of life, motivating and distinguishing us as individuals; it can be molded, so it seems, only by our actions, yet most religions have proscriptions against taking life, even when this shouldn’t affect the key bit that merely departs the mortal vessel upon death. And of course, we have no good definition of soul in the first place, and certainly cannot show its existence. Perhaps the best support for the idea is that, while we replicate our bodies by reproducing, every person starts with a clean slate, bearing nothing that their parents learned despite how inordinately useful this might be. We’ll go into this a little further on.

The soul also seems to be regarded as the seat of emotions, as I mentioned earlier, and carries our personality out of (and sometimes into) the living shell of the physical body. Yet it also carries our memories and experiences, a curious attribute since during the period of its occupation within a body, memories and personalities can be altered or outright destroyed by mere physical damage to the brain, often by something so trivial as alcohol. This leads to the idea that the soul is controlled and beholden to the physical structure, rather than the other way around. And since virtually all emotions revolve around survival as mortals, we have little use for the soul to retain these after departing the living vessel. There are more than a few problems with the concept overall.

So not the soul, but perhaps the particular nature of human minds themselves? We actually have multiple levels of mental awareness; there’s consciousness, and sentience, and sapience, allowing us to consider bacteria as not worth very much because it has none of these, even though it does have life. And in fact, sapience is what allows us to lord it over the other animals, since we generally consider humans as the only species that has it. Except that, in terms of cognitive ability, it’s a really hard thing to pin down, and those that study animal behavior keep finding aspects of thought in other species that we used to believe only we possessed. It also bears considering that many of our older ideas were born from human conceit, especially when, not all that long ago as our species goes, we used to think the ‘savages’ from continents other than Europe failed to possess such traits.

Perspective may be important here. While we might think whales don’t possess higher cognitive abilities because they can’t use cell phones, whales may just have their own standards of intelligence, and find humans don’t count because we spend too much time killing one another, or mucking with the ecological balance. We’re pretty impressed with our own brains, but when one considers how much of our time is devoted to thinking about celebrities or getting emotional over sports, we have to face the fact that a lot of mental activity is spent trivially, and the vaunted properties of our wondrous intellect starts to unravel. The function of higher cognition certainly seems pretty useful at times, allowing us to piece out what stars are made of for instance, but much more mental effort is engaged in actually dodging such activities in favor of emotional supplication, making it hard for us to feel superior. Not one other species on the planet, to our knowledge, has ever tortured or killed large numbers of the same species to consolidate a power structure through fear, yet we do it all the time.

Lots of things on this planet have life, including rabbits, trees, slime molds, and bacteria, so considering it something special requires accepting that the planet is crawling with it. Yet despite the abundance, the effect can barely be seen even from a short distance into space, and at best, examining the Earth with a powerful telescope on Mars would only reveal a curious color to find (green) to give any indication of life in the first place. While the billions of us here on the planet have the ability to use vast amounts of resources important to us, such as petroleum and vegetation, the chances of this affecting the planet itself, much less any other part of the solar system (a tiny speck in comparison to the rest of the galaxy, much less universe,) is infinitesimal. What we affect is only life itself, including our own, but the processes that the planet goes through will continue long after we are gone, and will probably wipe away every trace of our lives in relatively short order. We can wonder whether we might find indications of life on Mars precisely because it’s so minor that it may only leave faint vestiges behind.

The energy exchanges among the elements within our bodies take place only in certain conditions of temperature, where water can be a liquid. While this seems very specific, in fact all elements undergo phase changes at different temperatures and pressures – more of them take place at extremely high temperatures, actually. That’s the nature of energy. Life is a curious thing to get fired up over, since it is strictly a brief affair, and once ended, almost none of the involved elements have changed in any way. Like ripples on a pond, a pattern of behavior and reaction may form briefly, but the water remains the same.

Even when recognizing all of this, there are very good reasons why we find life pretty cool, if not extremely important. We look at the behaviors that other species engage in and call them ‘survival traits,’ but this is misleading. The urge to see life as important (or to fear death if you prefer,) as well as the function to reproduce, are both very likely what we call emergent properties. Countless species in the early history of life on Earth may have had no such things; those that developed these had a specific advantage over those that did not, and it’s easy to see that both avoiding death and passing along the genes are key steps in maintaining an advantage, and would likely crowd out other life forms that lacked them. Upon reflection, the point where the ‘magic’ happened isn’t the beginning of energy exchange within a group of cells, but the point where such a collection of cells could replicate their properties, starting a lineage of traits. Which might have been there from the start, because of the incorporation of DNA into the cellular structure.

Believe it or not, the trend of seeing life as amazing may simply be because, ingrained deep within our systems, cherishing life is the best way to avoid death – the stronger this urge, the faster we run from predators. If we have a hard time defining what is so special about life, and why we humans hold a unique place among all other animals, the inquisitive must consider that the properties of life itself didn’t instill such feelings. When we think about it, self-preservation is by nature conceited. Many of our other traits are exactly the same way, and duplicated to various extents in other species as well. Our social instincts, sex drive, sense of fairness, reactions to threat, attractions to certain foods, and many many more, are all subconscious and evolved functions that provided benefit and thus were favored by natural selection.

But because of the method of reproduction, what we pass on to our offspring is the instruction sheet for building a human, which remains the same throughout our lives (with perhaps some very small exceptions, as has recently been discovered.) Nothing that we do throughout our lives alters the DNA that we were born with, so our offspring benefit only insofar that we actually reproduce at all, and did not die beforehand or fail to find a mate. We do not pass on what we have learned or what happens to us, only some basic properties – the structure of the brain, but not its contents. So each individual builds their own matrix of experience, their own memories and impressions, allowing us to think that we’re unique while at the very same time recognizing the similarities fostered by those duplicated instructions. We may find one hair color more attractive than another, for instance, but have the same desire to seek physical attractiveness in a mate.

In a worldview that believed in a higher purpose, the reduction of life to traits derived from natural selection may seem depressing or pointless. Except, what was that higher purpose supposed to be? In most cases, it’s to enact a plan that we’re not privy to, and thus we’re relegated to following simple instructions anyway, such as the ten commandments or some such. Or one may consider getting into heaven to be the goal, where we experience a life devoid of conflict and pain – somehow, this is not supposed to be boring or pointless itself, perhaps because too few people actually think about what life is like in the first place. To get to this paradise, we are required to be good to one another, which amazingly enough works just dandy in the evolved life form as well. I’ll leave pondering the “chicken or egg” argument as an exercise…

But can we live a fulfilled life without the grander purpose in the universe, motivated only by the good feelings we get when we provoke the proper stimuli? When it comes down to it, that’s all that we’ve ever done. We get good feelings from lots of simple functions, everything from helping someone else in need to solving a puzzle, from racing down a hill on a sled to eating a damn good pizza – our pleasures and fears are immediate and self-centered, not transcendent. Yet we still want an overriding goal, which is fine, really, but we already have one ready-built into the living system: to help the species survive and thrive. Is this really such a bad purpose?

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a much better one than any religion offers, since it doesn’t involve drawing the lines between groups of people, such as ‘sinners’ and ‘saved,’ that turn life into a competition within our own species. It reduces the conflicts by taking away arbitrary distinctions. It changes our focus from selfishness to community. And it makes us abundantly aware that life is fragile and brief, and should not be spent in pursuit of what comes after, but what we have now. It even emphasizes our position within the ecosystem of the planet, and helps us realize that, in order to achieve our goal, we have to have much greater foresight than our own individual deaths.

The answer to the question, “To what end?” then becomes very simple: “To no end!”

Big Bang by Simon Singh is named [...]]]> This was a book that, I admit, wasn’t on my reading list, but when I came across a copy I began reading it out of interest. It is a credit to the author that I stayed with it, and chose to throw it into the review lineup.

Big Bang by Simon Singh is named in a very straightforward way, since it lays out the entire history of the currently-preferred theory of the origin of the universe, colloquially called the “Big Bang” by one of its early detractors. But Singh doesn’t just stick to the theory itself; he builds virtually the entire history of cosmology, taking care to elaborate on the various details that form the foundations. I was fairly familiar with the general principles and most of the science before I started reading, which meant that this was an already-solved mystery for me, and yet, I found the development of these details quite interesting – not to mention that Singh introduced several new aspects to me as well. From my position as an enthusiast about astronomy, cosmology, and science in general, I found little that he glossed over or failed to explain.

It’s easy to have a book of this kind become something of a list, merely pointing out the key steps, and the potential for a dry, clinical synopsis is pretty high – see Wikipedia, for example. Instead, what is presented is the process itself and those who participated, the trials and successes they experienced, and even the personalities they displayed. While Singh doesn’t concentrate on any particular person within, it is easy for the reader to get a taste of what each person was like, and how this affected the discoveries they made.

That’s the sneaky part about this book. There’s an underlying message about the humanity of even scientists, where emotions and personal preferences colored the progress of the theory throughout. Those that view scientists as some kind of elitist snobs might relish this aspect, since it reminds us that we’re all human and prone to errors and bias, but scientists don’t hold some particular attitude or caste simply by being scientists, any more than truck drivers do. There’s a deeper message than that, because within the sometimes-astounding mental prowess sits the subconscious influences of emotion, ego, and even complacency. To see how it affected our scientific progress is a great reminder to remain as open-minded as possible, and to accept mistakes rather than try to deny them. The discoveries that we make are greater than the human concerns that preoccupy us (and even blind us) all too often.

Another subtle aspect that I caught was how much the various wars influenced our progress. Countless scientists abandoned promising research to perform some function during wartime; some of them died doing so. These abrupt stops and long interruptions clearly had an affect on our pursuit of knowledge, only on rare occasions positively. It is easy to accept the ideology of serving one’s country, but in most cases, scientists do so at the expense of serving mankind instead. And there’s even the bonus of finding how many significant contributions to the whole theory were made by those with little or no training in the fields, something that we non-scientists can appreciate, at least.

Singh devotes the last chapter to the issues yet to be resolved with the theory, and provides a bit of perspective on the way. It is easy to read the book and consider the perplexity of the people at the time, before stellar spectra or nuclear fusion were discovered, but we’re in the same position now, with the questions of dark matter, the inflation period, and dark energy. Opponents of science like to consider these as damaging to the theory, yet they are merely gaps awaiting further understanding, which is how science progresses. Such gaps do not cause the numerous supporting factors that we now have to vanish, and any alternate explanation has to take these same factors into account. The main reason that the Big Bang is favored over the Quasi-Steady State for cosmological theories is that it explains much more, and even predicted a major discovery, two decades before we had the ability to make it (the Cosmic Microwave Background.)

The reader also meets another aspect of scientific theory that assures us of accuracy, that of cross-disciplinary support. Astronomy used to consist of merely observation and careful mathematics, but we garnered so much more information when we found that it tied in with the physics of light, nuclear interactions, radio waves, chemistry, and so on. In fact, the basic laws of physics, of merely existing, got simpler as we found that everything we see obeys the same sets of behaviors. The periodic table of elements, originally listing all known matter in the order of their atomic weights, was eventually found to also list them largely in order of their abundance in the universe, as well as the number of protons in the nucleus. This was evidence of how stars form nearly all elements from the fusion by-products of hydrogen, while the presence of these elements blocks certain wavelengths of light within stars and tells us how massive, and old, they are. The xenon gas that forms the functional portion of every camera flash is the residue of not just normal stellar activity, but of rare supernovae, and tells us the sun is a son itself, being at least second-generation in the universe (it’s considered third generation, actually.)

One might ask how much use cosmology has to us; what purpose there is to knowing how the universe began. But this is the same kind of thinking trap as “serving one’s country,” above. Knowledge gained is available to be used everywhere, and it’s impossible to predict how, but I can list two prime examples. The first is, with the knowledge that we gain from space probes devoted to entirely unrelated tasks, we are (hopefully) developing the ability to ward off a cataclysmic collision with some wandering asteroid, a fate that affects this planet periodically and unpredictably. The second is that, by changing our impressions of human life from “deliberate and goal-oriented” (which religion provided us) to “incidental and insignificant” (which is what nature tells us,) we can see that our continued existence on this planet is not guaranteed, but requires careful stewardship, which might help head off doing something irretrievably stupid like depleting our natural resources too far.

While Singh mentions religion only in passing, I have more than a faint suspicion that Big Bang is written, at least in part, in response to the anti-science emphasis seen far too often today. Cute little sound bites and over-simplified arguments attempt to disguise the overwhelming body of evidence that we have regarding things like the Big Bang theory, and Singh’s book is a distinct, approachable, and entertaining response to such childish tactics. Anyone can deny whatever they choose, but this book demonstrates that they cannot do so with cosmology from any standpoint resembling intellectual honesty. Those with enough integrity to leave behind the gutter rules of debate will find there’s far too much evidence in support of the universe’s age and behavior to even create an argument.

Singh’s writing is concise and free-flowing, almost conversational, and while he talks about some of the more involved portions of physics, it is at a level understandable by virtually anyone. Anyone expecting a science book to be dense and require specific knowledge will be pleasantly surprised, and Big Bang can be handled by any reader from middle school on up. The biggest fault I had, virtually the only one, is that he deals with specific aspects of cosmology at the expense of the chronological order, so that the book skips back and forth a little and makes it hard to place things in the context of then-current knowledge – this is mostly true for the earlier sections. Other readers may find this easy to ignore, however. Big Bang is a great primer that brings the reader up-to-date with the efforts we’re making right now to piece together the largest historical event, well, ever, and is altogether fascinating, humbling, and encouraging.

Reptiles (and amphibians, which I’ll also refer to here but will use the same term for each just for convenience) are perhaps the most misunderstood of animal classes, which is [...]]]>
Our next topic in the series is reptiles – you can also refer back to the posts about insects and birds if you like.

Reptiles (and amphibians, which I’ll also refer to here but will use the same term for each just for convenience) are perhaps the most misunderstood of animal classes, which is unfortunate because they’re actually pretty cool. They become more prevalent with warmer climates mostly because they’re ectothermic, or “cold-blooded,” meaning they gain body temperature for higher levels of activity from outside sources. As such, you can find frogs, snakes, and lizards in virtually all of the US, but more of them in the southern states, and for longer periods of the year.

Now, a word about venomous snakes, up front. They do exist, and their venom is in varying degrees of potency, but the risk from such is shamelessly overstated. Snakes cannot eat people, so they have no reason to pursue us or attack us – aggression is simply not a trait of snakes. Biting is used only in defense, and generally requires some serious provocation. While it’s true that we can do this by accident, for instance by stepping on a snake, the circumstances where this can happen are rare. A little knowledge and attention is enough to render any area with venomous snakes completely safe, even for those actively seeking out reptiles.

So, what do I need? Really, very little is needed to pursue reptiles as a subject of interest, and you can do without any of these, but they might help at times.

Proper clothing. All of the snake guides recommend higher boots, thick socks, and long trousers, so I won’t go against this, even though they’re a pain in hot weather and I personally have never run into the faintest situation that would merit them. Does one story mean more than collected knowledge? It shouldn’t. Bear in mind that if you’re looking for ground dwellers, you’re going to spend a lot of time crouched and kneeling and crawling, so dress appropriately for that, and I’ll reiterate the kneepad advice from the insect post. Also think about rough rocky areas, briars, and poison ivy. Then again, when considering frogs and aquatic species, you’ll want to be able to wade, and get into the muddy and marshy areas. I’m very fond of waterproof hiking sandals myself, but be sure they can stay firmly on your feet in sucking mud. In other words, flip-flops aren’t appropriate. For anything, really…

A little trailblazing knowledge. I was remiss in not mentioning this earlier, but it is easier than nearly everyone believes to get lost in the woods. A compass does you no good at all if you don’t know how to use one, so doing a bit of research (right now, actually) and learning some basic directional tips is time well spent. A good handheld GPS unit is invaluable, properly used, but not necessary if you use good habits. Trails that are obvious in daytime can vanish entirely at dusk, so be prepared.

A small set of binoculars or a monocular. Something handy and able to focus closely. Believe it or not, they’re very helpful in identifying species from a short distance away, letting you stay far enough not to spook them. Many small lizards will be out in the open to bask in sunlight, but will scamper into hiding as soon as you get close, so this makes it possible to confirm that you’re seeing a lizard and not a knot on the tree. Most people never consider binoculars for reptiles, but they’re remarkably useful.

A good flashlight or head-mounted light. Many reptile species are primarily nocturnal, especially most snakes and treefrogs, so having the ability to spot them at night is paramount. It’s even easier when you have both hands free, thus the head-mounted light. As always, extra batteries are important too, especially if you wander even a short distance from known territory.

Observational Journal. As mentioned in the other posts, it doesn’t matter what you choose, whether it’s a pocketable notebook or an audio recorder or whatever; just keep track of what you’re noticing. Most important is getting down all of the details while they’re fresh in your mind. Also important is to refer back to it from time to time, to refresh your memory and compare observations, and help yourself build a pattern of information.

Identification guide. Good versions of these are rarely something that you can carry with you, and it’s more useful to have a complete one than a convenient one. Ones that identify the species within your region, rather than, say, all of North America, are more likely to correctly identify something that you spot. Finding a perfect match and discovering that it lives a few thousand miles away happens more often than you might think, or at least it does for me.

Snake stick. The folklore usually refers to a forked stick, but that’s not as useful as a pole with a short right-angle bend at the end – an old golfing putter even works, but the bend being made from 6mm (1/4″) rod or something similar is better. What you want to be able to do is pin one down for capture, or alternately slip the bend underneath to pick it up by the middle of the body, which doesn’t trigger the defensive behavior in snakes as often as pinning or grasping does. There are dedicated snake tongs, but they are of limited use in some terrains, and without the bend they cannot be used to pin a snake down. The other use, for more than just snakes, is for poking around under things and overturning rocks and logs without putting your hands anyplace close. Anyone’s comfort level with such pursuits is likely to be different from mine, but if it’s a known non-venomous snake species and smaller than my wrist, i simply grab it, but then again, I shrug off snake bites…

Collecting bag. I don’t recommend collecting reptiles at all – it’s better simply to observe them, but you may want to house them temporarily for photos or some such. A fine cloth bag without any tears or even tiny holes is fine – I’ve used a zippered pillowcase. It remains much cooler in hot weather than canvas, and easy to soak to keep aquatic and moisture-reliant specimens (such as newts and treefrogs) comfortable.

A thermometer. This is handiest if you’re really into detailed notes, which I recommend. A digital one with a separate probe works the best, able to get air and water temperatures, but even an old-fashioned glass tube style works fine, you just need a little patience. For those, they work better if they’re hanging on a cord at least a little away from your body, so you’re generally reading ambient air temperature rather than being influenced by body heat.

So, what am I looking for? Some basic habits can guide you a lot. First, rock and brush piles are homes to many species, especially if they have an area exposed to early morning sunlight. Most of the ground lizards like walls and fences with plenty of crevices, while frogs and toads usually want some source of water not too far away. A heavy rain, especially in the spring, will bring out more of the amphibians, and treefrogs are primarily nocturnal so this is a great time to start spotting them. Their calls will often give you a good idea where to start looking, though most stop calling when they suspect danger is close.

Watching reptile behavior is a lot harder than birds, at least in part because many things prey on reptiles, so they don’t tend to do a lot in the open. Additionally, many of their food sources are in hiding too. And if they suspect danger is in the area, they usually cease any typical behavior. So more often, you’re likely to stumble onto something interesting rather than specifically going out to observe it. To that end, you’ll want to learn how to walk softly and quietly, since many reptiles gain as much information from vibrations as they do hearing; snakes don’t even have ears. Frequent pauses to simply observe and listen are very helpful, and when you hear even a faint rustle, home in on it visually and wait for signs of movement.

It takes a little practice to pay attention to your peripheral vision (this is one of the places where video-gaming comes in handy, believe it or not.) Another thing that helps is being able to spot patterns, since nearly all animals have some symmetry to their coloration, and distinctive body shapes – I’ve spotted countless snakes from recognizing the body shapes, how they taper steadily and uniformly, unlike branches. And small movements are often indications of reptiles, so when you catch that little flicker, look hard – your quarry might be right there in plain sight, relying on camouflage or simply remaining motionless to avoid attention. This works for you too, by the way – remaining motionless does more for not being noticed than anything else.

Warming patches. Because of their circulatory system, many species need to warm themselves in the sun, especially if the night was cold. Snakes can often be found basking in the early mornings in the spring and fall, since the nights are colder then, and they sometimes need the extra energy to digest the evening’s meals. Very often, this means roads and sidewalks, which warm quickly in the mornings and retain heat in the evenings. Turtles need the same, and adore logs and rocks near the banks that provide good sun yet deeper water alongside for quick escapes. Fully aquatic newts and larval stages, as well as some frogs, will bask submerged in shallow water instead. For the ground lizards, it sometimes takes very sharp eyes to see them in their native cover because they blend in so well. Learn these types of areas well, so that you pause and examine them closely on first sighting, before you approach and scare off whatever was basking thereon.

By the way, snakes do not have eyelids either, so may sometimes be fast asleep while basking and we think they’re looking right at us. They may not notice slow subtle movements, but will almost always wake up when a shadow falls across their eyes. And while I’m on the subject, snakes with cloudy eyes are very close to shedding, and cannot see very well – they will usually be more irritable because of this, and should simply be left alone.

Habitats. Just about anything serves as a reptile habitat, so a complete list is rather difficult. Since we talked about sunlight, think also in terms of places to seek shelter, to cool off when the day’s too hot, and of course, places that provide plenty of food – very often this means insects, for the frogs, lizards, and smaller snakes. Moist earth is another attractor, because it means worms, grubs, and burrowing beetles. Areas with lots of crevices are popular with numerous species – people that don’t like snakes in their yards are advised to keep rock and brush piles from accumulating, so naturally that’s what we’ll be looking for. Meanwhile, anoles like low plants and bushes. Treefrogs usually like the higher tree canopies, but venture down for food (all year) and mating (in the spring), especially when the weather’s nice and wet. Frogs, of course, like fresh water, especially with still areas for egg laying.

Investigating. Naturally enough, turning over logs and rocks will reveal more species than simply waiting for them to pop up, but this is where you expose yourself to the greatest danger as well, especially in areas with venomous snakes, but also where there are stinging and biting insects. First rule is, always assume that whatever is underneath is the most hazardous species in the area, and act accordingly. Never put your hands blindly under a log or rock, even just the edge. Roll the rock or log towards you, so it is between yourself and whatever used to be underneath, rather than away from you and leaving a great opening for it to strike/swarm/spray/hypnotize. Do this while standing with feet firmly planted, so you can leap away as needed. Also don’t leave yourself the opportunity to roll it onto your feet. By the way, most venomous snakes can sense body heat and will aim for the warmer object in the vicinity, so ensure this is not your hand (mostly by keeping it out of the vicinity.)

When lifting rocks in a stream, it usually works better to pick an area with a decent current and expose into the water flow, or sideways to it, so disturbed silt will be swept away from the area you’re trying to see rather than into it. The same goes for wading upstream rather than down. Of course, it also helps to be facing a little towards the sun, rather than away, so you’re not trying to see into your own shadow (nor alerting species to your presence with the same.) This may mean choosing your time of day carefully.

Many reptile species, especially the small ground lizards, will freeze and count on their camouflage when danger threatens, but often not for very long. It’s easy enough to wait them out, especially if you caught a glimpse of movement – just remain motionless for a few minutes, and frequently they’ll assume it’s clear and reveal themselves again. When photographing, raise the camera and wait (this is when you find that holding it up to your eye for a while is much more fatiguing than suspected) – when the subject moves again, you won’t spook it back into hiding by having to raise the camera.

Aquatic species. Once you’ve frightened a frog into the water, you can just about forget seeing it again if you’ve lost sight of it initially – they’re remarkably good at seeking cover and waiting out the danger. However, snakes cannot hold their breath half as long and usually haven’t prepared themselves for a sudden dash into the water, so may surface quickly. But they will usually work towards cover of some sort, like border plants or brush, and bring just their nostrils and eyes above the surface to check for danger for several minutes. Turtles can stay down for a long time, but basking is popular and often competitive, so waiting for a bit near the abandoned log may produce investigating heads peeking from the water fairly quickly. Waiting for them to assure themselves that it’s clear enough to climb out takes a lot longer, though – sometimes it’s more useful to remember the spot and move on, to check it on the return trip. Newts and salamanders rarely surface and instead poke around under rocks and submerged leaves for food, so revealing them takes some poking around yourself, usually very gently so they’re not induced to flee.

Handling. Provided you’re quite assured of species identification, handling of most reptiles isn’t terribly difficult. All species may bite, which is best to be avoided, but I’ve been bitten by so many things that I find it overrated as a danger (squirrels are worse than any reptile that has bitten me, but I’ve never come close to being bitten by a venomous species either.) Far more likely, however, is having something defecate on you, the prime defense of countless species. This is often pungent and hard to wash off, and of course you don’t want it in open wounds, but otherwise the defense is usually harmless – it tastes bad (so I’m told,) which detracts from the primary danger of being eaten. Turtles, and some frog species, also wield claws on the hindlegs which can be painful. Smaller species are of course delicate, and can be hard to restrain without risking injury. Snakes are best grasped gently just behind the head with the rest of their body supported, or occasionally they can be picked up directly in the middle of their body, which remains balanced and doesn’t strain them. Frogs and smaller lizards can usually be scooped or cupped, and this will often require both hands to enclose them fully without gaps – your hands should be perpendicular to each other, the fingers of one hand closing the outside edge of the other, and even then, salamanders will show you every gap that you missed ;-). Virtually no reptiles have any fear of falling and will throw themselves from your grasp at any height, so it’s better to keep them low enough that they’re not injured when this happens.

Always remember, though, to wash hands thoroughly after any and all handling, due to the large number of illnesses that can be transmitted. This means good soap and scrubbing, not rinsing in a stream or splashing on the sanitizer.

Identification. As always, a good guide is important, but not often very handy to bring with you. Learn the dangerous species first – you can tell the difference between the venomous Copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix) and the harmless Corn Snake (Pantherophis guttatus) in the photo that opened this post, right? It’s important to know that reptile species are widely variable in color, even among the self-same individual – see a snake immediately before and after shedding and you’ll know what I mean. Instead, what you’ll want to pay attention to is pattern. A camera comes in handy to help identify species, but even then, it might not work. The second frog seen here could not be positively identified because the key traits were the belly coloration and the webbing on the hind feet; with turtle species, it can be the number or shape of the marginals (the edge pieces of the shell, or “carapace”) or the stripes along the eyes. It takes time and practice to even know what you should be paying attention to, so don’t get discouraged.

Keeping notes. “Be meticulous” is the key here. Dates, times, seasons, temperature, weather conditions – all of these may hold clues as to why you’re seeing certain behaviors, or may indicate patterns. And as I said before, it’s also easy to mistake patterns too, especially if behavior depends on aspects we cannot distinguish ourselves. What you really want to accomplish, however, is knowing what typical behavior is for certain species and classes. Lizards virtually always appear more agitated than snakes – this is normal. But do you know what signs denote territorial anxiety?

Housing species. Once again, I don’t recommend this. The diet of wild animals is often hard to replicate, making it easy to introduce developmental issues and illnesses, and they often depend on both certain temperatures and UV levels as well. Countless reptiles can harbor zoonotic organisms – ones they can transmit to humans, like salmonella. And of course, no matter what the aquarium, it isn’t going to compare to their life in the open. But there isn’t even any reason to keep them; reptiles possess very simple brains, which means that they never bond to people, never learn anything, and really have no ‘personality.’ They’re simply there, requiring care but doing little besides eating and sleeping. I will, on occasion, do temporary housing to gain certain photos, but this lasts no more than a day or two and they are always returned to where I found them. I’m also careful not to do this during mating seasons, after obvious meals or with laying individuals. Better overall not to even consider it, and recognize that the point of naturalism is to let it remain natural.

So once again, with all that said, go out and do some observations! Reptiles display habits and behavior in a class all their own, and are often more abundant than you might think. They are more challenging to pursue as a subject than insects or birds, and may require more effort and patience, but they’re just as interesting and informative. Have fun!

As I mentioned before, Sylvan Heights Bird Park provides great opportunities for close encounters, and to the photographer, the urge to do personal portraits of the birds is practically irresistible. [...]]]> And so, our saga resumes where it left off, with our heroes trapped within the confines of a completely non-treacherous and non-threatening bird park…

As I mentioned before, Sylvan Heights Bird Park provides great opportunities for close encounters, and to the photographer, the urge to do personal portraits of the birds is practically irresistible. I found myself breaking my own personal rule, however, which is to avoid direct portraits and try instead to include more setting and interest within the frame – in other words, not to make the subject quite so dominant, like the Demoiselle Crane (Anthropoides virgo) seen here, but instead part of a scene. In my defense (remembering what was on my mind at the time,) this is often hard to do with subjects that wander at will and don’t take direction too well, and one’s attention tends to concentrate on focus, light, and the poses of the birds. I know I spend no small amount of time, in situations like this, waiting for the critter to turn their head just right to get a nice catchlight in the eyes, a bright reflection that adds a lot to the character and “life” of the animal. Many animals prefer not to blind themselves and so don’t pose where sunlight is directly hitting their eyes too often, the selfish gits.

As it is with most zoos, you take the opportunities that you have, and plan to return later on to reap a whole different set of images, when particular animals are more accessible, and when plumage and light conditions are different. In this way you build a wide portfolio of images from any one location. There’s also the interesting concept of getting used to the species, knowing you already have several frames of simple portraits, and so subsequent trips means that you try for something more creative, artistic, expressive, and so on. For instance, I got spoiled on Great Blue Herons in Florida, where close approaches are surprisingly easy at times, so I almost ignore them here in North Carolina where I cannot get within twenty meters of one.

I’ve spoken before about exposure compensation, and in situations like this, knowing how to exploit it almost automatically will help produce much better results. We were in sunny, high contrast conditions, which can be hard to work with in the first place, because cameras (film or digital) tend to capture very narrow ranges of light, so on days when the ranges are wide, it’s easy to fall outside the envelope and lose detail in either bright or shadowed areas, sometimes both. At the same time, a large variety of multi-colored subjects often challenges the exposure logic within cameras. Is the camera obtaining its light reading, and thus setting “proper” exposure, off of the white feathers, or the black? Or even the background? I was delighted to finally see a Crested Screamer (Chauna torquata) in person, having read about them in The Drunken Forest by Gerald Durrell, but I have other frames where the sunlit crest feathers are overexposed and lose all detail in the glare. It’s possible to get a general ambient light reading, with an external meter or by aiming the camera at a good midtone, and use those settings on manual exposure throughout, but this would need to be done for all light conditions throughout your shoot, and with birds turning into and away from the light, it’s usually easier to adjust exposure compensation back and forth a bit, bracketing as needed. I always caution people that the preview image provided by the LCD is a truly horrible way to judge exposure, but with a lot of experience and comparison, it can provide a rough judgment. The same may be said for using histograms – birds with white feathers will naturally provide some peaks in the highlights, but how much is too much?

To the park’s credit, it is often possible to work multiple sides of the aviary or pond areas, and thus exploit the light conditions a little more. Provided, of course, that one can convince the birds to cooperate. This is where spending a little time, coming back through the same areas, and returning to the park on other days comes in handy.

At one point we noticed a local native Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) hanging out on the outside of the peacock cage, who was only mildly anxious at our approach. A little later we questioned a park worker, who informed us that it was actually a wild fowl, not a park resident, who had taken a shine to the peacocks and turned stalker. I admit to being a little curious over this, since both the peacock and the turkey were males, but I’ve seen territorial disputes between caged and wild birds before, and this situation didn’t have that appearance. (I digress for a brief anecdote: Many years ago while visiting a wildlife refuge in Florida, I saw my first Pileated Woodpeckers, surprisingly large birds, and then checked out the nearby rehabilitation clinic. There, an unreleasable captive who’d had a wing amputation would get apoplectic over a wild visitor, who would periodically sit on the timbers right outside the captive’s fence and beat a territorial drumming, well aware that the resident inside could do nothing about it. And you thought only humans could be sadistic…)

Situated in the transition area between cotton fields and wetlands, the park creators exploited this a bit and put in two other attractions: an observation blind over a beaver pond, and a “treehouse” gazebo on stilts over a wetland expanse. It was unfortunately the wrong time of year for either, but I imagine they’re great observation areas in the spring (we will, hopefully, find out.) There are also a couple of tanks of poison dart frogs, and a honeybee hive with a glass side. The main building offers a gift shop and some kids’ activities, though it appears the best opportunities come through their scheduled learning programs.

Despite my desire for some different subject matter on this trip, I yielded to temptation when I found a pair of Wheel Bugs (Arilus cristatus,) a variety of assassin bug, mating on a fence post. Their piercing proboscises, for draining the insides from the other insects that make up their food, are plainly visible from this angle. This past year has been almost entirely dedicated to bug shots, without my intentions – I’ve simply been unable to do enough traveling to provide opportunities for other subjects, and have been milking the local area for everything I can. I probably should begin a bobcat or fox portfolio project…

Species breeding programs, like the ones this park is built around, actually accomplish an astonishing amount. Numerous species that were on the brink of extinction have recovered, in part, due to the reintroduction of healthy animals that got their start in a protected and managed environment. Those people that work around such species for months or years at a time gain valuable experience in their behavior, diet, and physiology, contributing to our overall knowledge of the animals among us. Such programs are only part of the story, however, and need the assistance of public awareness, sanctioned areas, and often federal aid, both in the form of funding as well as regulation and enforcement of protective measures. The public portions serve to garner interest in the situations, essentially sneaking in a bit of conservational awareness to individuals who simply came to look at the pretty animals (let’s just agree to ignore the wheel bugs for the moment.) It’s disturbing, in a lot of ways, that banks and automakers receive government handouts while wildlife programs, which really do contribute to the health of the planet overall, have to beg and scrounge for funding. Even worse, when everyone starts fretting about the economy, such programs are often hit very hard.

So if you’re in the area, go pay Sylvan Heights Bird Park a visit, and if you’re not, find the counterpart program in your own area. It’s a small amount of effort that we can put forth, and worth a lot more to us than, for instance, seeing the latest pile of 3D CGI offerings from talentless Hollywood producers. Plus you’re allowed to bring your own food.