Missed it by that much

Al Denelsbeck

Sunset in Tycho
There are a few minor photo challenges that remain in the back of my head, waiting for the right opportunity to tackle them – some of them are inconsequential, hardly anything to catapult me onto the pages of National Geographic or even The Daily Mail. This is one of them.

I mentioned before that I’ve long wanted to capture the sunrise on the central peak of the lunar crater Tycho, which takes some pretty specific timing, not all of which is within my grasp; despite the length of lunar days, the ideal moment may still occur when the moon is out of sight behind the Earth. But it also occurred to me that perhaps I could get sunset instead, and so I’ve been keeping this in mind too.

A brief bit of the physics involved. Tycho sits very close to a central position on the moon, when seen from our vantage point on Earth, so sunrise and sunset therein will take place at either the first quarter (half moon, heading towards full) or last quarter (half moon heading towards new.) This means the sun is either leading the moon into our sky by roughly six hours, or trailing it by the same amount – it has to be shining on the moon from the side (again, according to our vantage.) So the moon will rise about six hours behind the sun for Tycho’s sunrise, and be visible for half of our day and half of our night. For sunset, the moon rises six hours before the sun and, again, be visible for half the night and half the day.

This means Tycho sunrise might be captured in the evening before midnight, but sunset has to be well after midnight – in this case, around 4 am for the moon to get high enough not to be obscured by trees, or dimmed by thicker atmosphere. I was up pretty early this morning (I have a weird sleep schedule anyway) to get the shot above.

And yet, still missed it. Tycho can be seen as the darkest crater about one-fifth of the way up from the bottom, sitting right on the terminator (line of shadow) – not that big crater, but the much smaller one that looks like a hole. The entire crater floor, including the central peak, is shrouded in shadow, and the sun is only hitting the top edge of the far wall. I had been out the previous morning, and the shadow was well away from the crater, so this morning was the best time I could arrange, but it was too late.

Branches over amber moonI even took a quick look at the images I’d gotten soon after moonrise, when it still wasn’t free from obscuring trees, and there’s no indication of the peak in those either, so it seems sunset on that peak occurred while the moon was someplace below my horizon. At least I tried.

Now, if I was much more capable of math than I am now, I could possibly calculate the exact time period when the peak will remain in the light while the crater floor is shadowed. I’d also have to be more obsessive than I am now, so it ain’t gonna happen. I imagine someplace online, someone has already worked it out, but I’m going to yield to laziness right now. Snark all you want – I was out twice in the wee hours of the morning, ice crystals crunching under my feet, just to get these images. For nothing. Nothing!

But here’s another perspective. While on the moon, there is no Earthrise or Earthset – not in most fixed locations, anyway. The moon is tidally locked with Earth, meaning the same side faces Earth all the time – mostly. There’s a slight wobble. But anyplace within Tycho, the Earth remains high overhead. It changes phases, just like the moon does for us, but there’s never a dark night in Tycho. When the sun is below the horizon, the Earth is at least half full, and when the Earth’s phase drops down to a crescent or less, the sun is high in the lunar sky. A ‘full Earth’ occurs in the middle of the lunar night, and a ‘new Earth’ occurs during lunar midday – this means that Earth goes through all phases in the course of one lunar day/night cycle, which averages 29.5 Earth days long.

The classic photo of Earthrise, taken by Williams Anders during Apollo 8, occurred because the Apollo spacecraft was orbiting the moon – that’s the only way to see this. Almost. There are some locations on the moon that do see Earthrise, just by the barest amount, because of that aforementioned wobble (technically, “libration.”) From our vantage, they sit in a narrow band that marks the outer circumference of the moon, the limits of what we can see from Earth, and the libration means that the Earth peeks just barely above the horizon once a lunar day. While the far side of the moon, never seen from here, also never sees us.

If you saw the caveat that the lunar day averages 29.5 Earth days in length and wondered about it, that’s another curious aspect of the orbital mechanics, and a demonstration of relative measurements. Picture the sun, moon, and Earth laid out on a grid, surrounded by stars. For now, we’ll consider the sun fixed on the grid among the stars, while the Earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the Earth – the Earth, at the same time, is rotating to produce its own day/night cycle. The moon is rotating itself as it orbits the Earth, but mostly keeps one side facing Earth – its orbit and its rotation are synchronized, except for that libration.

The moon completes a full rotation, measured by that grid, in a little over 27 Earth days – but because it’s riding along as Earth orbits the sun, that isn’t enough to complete a day/night cycle on the moon; the Earth is almost one-twelfth of the way along on its own yearly orbit of the sun, and so the sun angle is slightly different now, and it takes another two days or so to complete that light cycle. Yet, this varies, because Earth’s orbit around the sun isn’t a perfect circle, but an egg-shaped ellipse with the sun off-center, and as it draws closer to the sun, it actually accelerates in its orbit a little, slowing back down as it draws farther out in the course of the Earth year. The moon is dragged along in this acceleration/deceleration cycle, so the lunar day changes length slightly in this time too.

Makes you realize how much we’ve simplified terms like “day” in the face of the physical actions of orbits and rotations. Astronomers have lots of specialized terms to pin down what, exactly, they’re referring to at any given moment.

From a better source

Al Denelsbeck

I posted about this before, with my own feeble efforts in illustrating, but here’s a better version, courtesy of Bob King at Universe Today: Sirius, UFO trickster extraordinaire. It features a brief but very cool video.

Note also the image in there of Kenneth Arnold with the sketch of what he saw. In case the name is unfamiliar, Arnold is the guy who sparked the UFO ‘craze,’ and established the term ‘flying saucer’ by being misquoted – he said that the objects flew like a saucer skipped on the water, but as you can see, he didn’t consider them to resemble anything at all like a saucer. Remarkably, though, from that point on many people began seeing saucer-shaped craft. Imagine the odds of that.

Arnold’s description of the shape of the objects also changed in later years – still not into a saucer, though. Undoubtedly, the aliens suppressed his memory of the actual shape and substituted another; it all make sense if you try really hard.

Anyway, check out the post at Universe Today – it’s cool.

Man against nature

Al Denelsbeck

There’s nothing particularly deep about this one (and I hear you wondering how that makes it different from my other posts, and I’m ignoring you,) but it’s just a perspective that, it seems, too many people fail to grasp.

There is a surprisingly common concept of “man against nature” that keeps popping up, not just from asinine reality shows, but routinely in outdoorsy types who feel they have something to prove to… themselves? The world? I’m not really sure what the exact motivation is, to be honest, but the gist is this: you’ve proven some point by pitting yourself alone against the elements, one person isolated from all civilization, living off the land and your wits.

I’m fairly certain much of this is viewed as harkening back to our distant past, when we didn’t rely on grocery stores and raised livestock – when we had to hunt, forage, and fend for ourselves. The belief is that, if we demonstrate that we can do this again, we’re fit examples of the species and capable of dealing with whatever nature throws at us. In some cases, it’s viewed as being ready for the eventual collapse of civilization, the government, or high-speed internet access.

A quick note that’s slightly irrelevant to the main topic: there is no separation between ‘man’ and ‘nature’ – we are as much a part of nature as redwood trees and beluga whales. We didn’t get dropped on this planet by aliens, so everything we do is natural, and that includes roads and pizza parlors. However, we do have tendencies to view urbanization as ugly, which is fine, and the overall convention is that ‘natural’ refers more to areas that have seen little impact from Homo industrialus, but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that there is any demarcation between human activities and ‘nature’ – and especially not that nature is some kind of harsh environment that we’re unfamiliar with.

There’s a more direct point, though: There was never a time when humans survived as individuals. The evidence for group, social behavior, as in tribes or foraging parties that cooperate to thrive, goes back well into the fossil record, crossing over numerous species distinctions into the point where the evidence is too sparse to make any judgments – at least several million years, and if our cousins the great apes are any indication, it goes back to before we split away from them, since they have the same behaviors. We never faced ‘the elements’ as individuals. And by extension, none of the traits we’ve developed in all that time reflect any need for individualism at all.

Let’s emphasize these time frames a little. ‘Lucy’ (Australoptihecus afarensis) existed 3.5 million years ago, was likely fur-covered, possessed only rudimentary vocalizations, and stood half as tall as we do today – and shows distinct evidence of tribal behavior. The split from chimpanzees runs at least 7 million years ago, and the split from ‘lesser primates’ such as gibbons, which also have social behavior, goes back 15 million years – over four times further back than Lucy. To all evidence, our distant relatives were cooperative long before even leaving the trees.

Moreover, there are virtually no ‘higher’ species that survive as individuals either – some of the big cats are largely solitary, but most others are still social, as are virtually every ungulate and herbivore to be found. It is extremely likely, in fact, that the big cats were a strong factor in keeping our ancestors from being solitary, since we were no match for them until we developed both pack hunting and, especially, weapons.

So the idea that we should be able to go out on our own and survive is, to be blunt, total horseshit. It reflects a completely unrealistic idea of what our past lives were like, and what we were ever expected to face. It is even less a measure of our fitness than choosing to live in the forest canopy without ever touching ground – we likely lived like that much more recently than we lived as solitary creatures.

This isn’t to say that anyone cannot tackle this as a challenge, but it’s no different from any other weird challenge to see if it can be done, like tightrope walking across large chasms or eating three-dozen hardboiled eggs in two minutes – entertaining to the easily amused, but ultimately pointless. Those who have attempted the solitary survival exercises and didn’t survive, however, didn’t fail at anything more than an unrealistic goal – not having skills that we never had isn’t exactly surprising.

There remains an emphasis on having such skills in the event that we find ourselves alone in the woods somehow; it’s not hard to find survival courses (and once again, television programs) dedicated to teaching these skills, completely separate from the idea of camping or hiking to enjoy the environment. Sure, whatever, but the chances of someone unprepared abruptly finding themselves isolated in the woods are minuscule – we might hear stories about those it’s happened to, but this is more a reflection of our curious media than the likelihood of it happening to any one of us, and compared against the general population, the chances of it occurring are even less than of winning any given lottery, itself ridiculously rare. There really aren’t that many circumstances where it can occur. Meanwhile, the chance of driving one’s car into a lake are thousands of times higher, and how many people know how to handle that?

Xtreemkooldood pursuits, like mountainbiking up towers and wingsuit surfing or whatever, are by themselves rather questionable – there’s really not much that’s being proven by them, especially not ‘fitness.’ It helps to know what the word even means; it has nothing to do with physical strength, endurance, or accomplishment, since nothing in our lives requires us to utilize these. If we survive and reproduce, we’re ‘fit’ as far as biology is concerned, and about the only aspect that might have any bearing at all on this is impressing the opposite sex enough to win out in the sexual competition – naturally, that’s if we aren’t just seen as obsessive, self-absorbed, or immature. Even then, there are probably easier and cheaper ways to accomplish this.

And if we really want to tear into the idea of ‘fitness,’ it requires examining what we might want to accomplish with it. Biologically, the ‘goal’ is reproduction – except this isn’t a goal, it’s just the tendency that emerges from natural selection. It doesn’t reflect what might be best for us, only what propagated the genes most effectively; it does, quite frequently, lead to extinction as well. If we would prefer not to follow that path, our fitness depends on seeing where we can improve on what selection has produced – for instance, recognizing that judicious use of resources is better than overextending ourselves – and planning rather than waiting on beneficial changes. Our cultures can spread ideas and attitudes faster than anything genes can promote, and will do a hell of a lot more for us than knowing how to skin squirrels. Just sayin’…

Succinct

Al Denelsbeck

That’s the best description, though ‘slick’ works pretty well too. Professor Ceiling Cat brought these to my attention: four new short videos from the British Humanist Association, each addressing one of the main philosophical issues of life, if I may be so dramatic; to be more specific, issues that humanism handles a hell of a lot better than religion does. Simple, direct, and surprisingly complete – and, moreover, narrated by Stephen Fry, which is like getting extra provolone on the pizza. All four are quite good, but I’m featuring the one I resonate with best, a message I’ve made efforts to communicate numerous times before.


Underlying this question, and the other three addressed in the videos, is a simple concept: that we evolved to consider these important, because they all affect our survival. Confidence in our senses and surroundings, the fear (and thus avoidance) of death, the interaction with our fellow tribal members in a mutually-approved way, and naturally, the general improvement of our well-being. There’s really nothing complicated, or even deep, about it at all. It’s just that centuries of religion and philosophy have embedded in our culture the idea that these must be much bigger than all that, that there is some rule to the universe or intent from a creator that reflects the strength of our feelings about them. But that’s just ego, the importance of the individual, coloring our perceptions – another evolved trait.

Part of the reason I chose this particular video as the one to feature is because it also addresses the frequent reaction to this information. Very often, people really don’t like hearing that they’re less transcendent than they believed, that their lives and emotions are just an emergent property of thousands of years of evolution, rather than a part of something important. The feelings are too strong to be dismissed so cavalierly. But emotions aren’t really proof, are they? They’re capricious and remarkably easy to manipulate, which we can recognize when we stop to think about our reactions when we watch TV or read a book or, bitch please, worry about who won what vapid sporting event. Useful answers are the ones that explain and predict the circumstances of our world, and the analogs of these emotions that appear in other species, the portions of the brain that alter how these emotions appear and are expressed when triggered by drugs or damaged, and just the bare logical sense of traits that reflect survival skills, all point to us being on the right track with this simple explanation. Thousands of years of revelation, of philosophy, of scriptural pronouncements, all together did not produce the amount of useful information that the last fifty years of empirical science has.

And I have to point out something directly, because it’s surprising how many people miss it: this does not change anything about our lives except for our own attitudes. We did not suddenly become lesser beings, god did not suddenly vanish, the superimportant meaning to the universe (that nobody seemed to know anyway) did not just fall apart. Nothing’s changed – life still goes on as before. But now, perhaps, we’re a little bit closer to not wasting quite so much time and effort on vast misconceptions fostered by our egos. As that paragraph above implies, we can actually do more important things when we stop trying to reinforce how important we are.

Spring and equinox and all that jazz

Al Denelsbeck

Unidentified leafhopperShocked as I am to report it, the calendar event of the vernal equinox and the weather coincided quite well – the skies cleared and the temperature got into the twenties (or the seventies, if you prefer,) so I did indeed get out to chase a few spring subjects. It was exceedingly few – it’s still a little early for spring in North Carolina, and more so with the temperature fluctuations we’ve had this year, but there were a couple of things to be found. The most interesting one is shown here, having attracted my attention by waggling when I was doing a close examination of the rosemary bush for the resident green lynx spiders. If it had held still I would have missed it easily, since it’s but a few millimeters long and wonderfully camouflaged as a dried rosemary leaf. I have yet to identify this, other than as a ‘leafhopper,’ which really doesn’t narrow things down too much, but I can at least pronounce it a juvenile, due to the undeveloped wings.

My model here was reluctant to hold still, or even remain out in the open, so I have few really detailed images. It possesses a few physical traits to remind me of a jagged ambush bug – it has several elaborate flourishes in its chitin, including a lower ‘face’ plate that looks like it’s intended to prevent rocks from striking the oil pan – but the proboscis leads visibly well back under the abdomen like a typical leafhopper and those legs are positioned more for jumping than grasping, so I doubt this is a predatory specimen.

Unidentified leafhopper
Here’s a slightly better look. The dark plate on the back about midway along the body will later develop into wings, and below/behind the well-camouflaged eye you can see the typical leafhopper antenna – interestingly, it has a groove immediately behind that it can fold into, something that the ambush bug has as well. In some of my images, those whitish spheres along the edge of the body don’t actually look attached, but more like pollen that it’s been nosing through – or, perhaps, globules of rosemary oil that the leaves exude, which makes even casual handling an aromatic experience.

molted exoskeleton and fingertipI discovered the evidence of a recent molt, likely today’s, on the underside of a nearby rosemary leaf. The image below illustrates the scale fairly well, since that’s my fingertip in the background, but also visible are the white spheres that can be found on the leaves – whether these really are what decorates the leafhopper, or its camouflage just resembles this, I am unable to say. Just full of info today, aren’t I?

Scrounging around in the yard, I found a few other examples of insect life, but nothing too exciting – some woodlice and centipedes under rocks where they could gather a little heat from sunlight absorption, a couple of early colonies of ants, and the same (I’m almost certain) black widow that I photographed last year, significantly larger in girth and likely to produce an egg sac soon. She has a nice protected shelter underneath a wooden box that no one is likely to mess with, and I’m inclined to let her remain there, even with impending young that will spread out on their own. Black widows (in this case the southern variant, Latrodectus mactans) like dark, quiet nooks, and just about the only place they could find like this is the crawlspace under the house that no one ever goes into. This species has lived in the area for a long time, and wiping out her or her egg sac really won’t make any difference. Moreover, I’m the only one who ever gets into the habitats they like, and I’m well aware of the possibility of running into them and fine with it. It is a considerably lower risk than fucking with your phone while driving.

aconite bloomJust for the counterpoint, I sought out the aconite flower that I’d photographed encased in ice only three days ago, none the worse for wear it would appear. This (and the other images soon to follow) represents barely visible color in the yard, which is primary dormant grass, mud, and the sporadic patches of wild onions. With little growing, the rain and melted ice doesn’t get soaked up by anything and the ground is like a sodden towel – I use ground pads at this time of year to do low-level photography, because I’d get sopping wet otherwise.

In fact, let me segue off into a side topic while here. In the yard, I use carpet tiles to toss down, since they’re about 60cm square and have a durable, waterproof rubber backing, but these are way too bulky to carry around in the field. There, I use carpenter’s kneepads or a small auto floor mat, a thin square of polyethylene (or something – plastic, anyway) that rolls up tight enough to either wrap around a tripod leg or stuff into the pocket of cargo pants. What I really need are waterproof pants, but even I will only go so goofy looking – not to mention that everything I’ve ever seen makes more noise than bubble wrap in a daycare center. I suppose I could always check out those latex bodysuits that are available in, um, ‘specialty’ shops, but what would probably work best is cutting up the ground pieces from an old camping tent. While not as durable as a floor mat, they’d be considerably easier to carry around.

red dead nettle flower laughingI don’t think the red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum,) among the first plants up in the spring, copes well with repeated freezes, since it’s barely making an appearance this year – this is one of the very few examples to be found throughout the yard. But it seems to be amused anyway…

(Okay, I doubt anyone has gotten the same impression that I have, so I’m going to illustrate it for you and then you won’t be able to get it out of your mind. Not only does this look like an open, braying mouth, but the orange pollen head up there reminds me irresistibly of buck teeth – turning this into the classic depiction of a country yokel, hyuk hyuk hyuk. I apologize for doing that, but add that this is typed in a very insincere way and you can tell that I’m not sorry at all.)

I often wonder what pollinates these early bloomers, since I can only occasionally spot a flying insect whenever these appear each year. I used to think, for instance, that daffodils were wind-pollinated, but it seems very few flowers actually do this. It also stands to reason that those that do would gain no benefit from bright colors, scents, or nectar of any kind. With this inviting alleyway and the pollen head positioned to anoint the back of a foraging insect, it’s obvious that something must perform the spread of genetic material for these flowers – I’ve just never seen what. I could always stake out the blooms until I see the culprit, but I’m afraid my curiosity will not demand that much patience – it’s not exactly a burning question.

CrocusPollenI close with a tight macro shot of The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog’s crocus, which I may try to get out tomorrow morning and make another attempt at an opening sequence. I just happened to like the detail of the pollen, but I can’t even tell you why. Maybe it has something to do with being a hue that we’re naturally attracted to. Perhaps I have bee genes, though I don’t recall coming back inside and doing a little dance after finding these, so probably not (I’ll let you try to get that image out of your head as well.)

In any event, I’m trying to make the most of it, because the cold weather is forecast to return in just a few days. The flowers are coping with this better than I am, I suspect…

Thanks for the guidance

Al Denelsbeck

I was about thirteen or fourteen, I believe, when an uber-religious friend talked me into attending the summer camp his church recommended, with assurances of countless activities including water-skiing and nature hikes, the kind of stuff all summer camps promise. There was almost none of this, even less than most camps produce, and instead there were numerous christian indoctrination sessions – this came as no surprise to me even at that age, and I willingly admit I was ridiculously naïve when younger (save the comments until the end, please.) But I will credit it for something crucial to my outlook now, something that they certainly didn’t intend.

In one of their evening bible sessions, the counselor was discussing the story of David and Goliath, and at one point provided this little gem: “It is said that David took three stones with him, [it was five, but bear with me] and many take this to mean that David was unsure of himself, that he had extras in case he missed. But David had absolute faith, because god was with him – he knew he only needed one stone. The reason he took three was that Goliath had two brothers, who David would have to slay as well, and so he had a stone for each.”

Now, this church was adamant that the only true, correct bible was the King James version, and so that was the only one we all had in our possession – and it’s pretty clear that no such brothers are mentioned in the slightest. It even trashes the narrative, since Goliath was the Philistines’ champion, and his death caused a rout – David wasn’t about to go find any brothers in the circumstances, nor would there be the slightest need. I remember suddenly thinking: Hey, wait. We all have the same book, and that isn’t in here. So where is the counselor getting this information from? They don’t make a Teacher’s Edition bible. And with that, I knew he was making it up.

In the same camp, we had a campfire story of some nice christian dude who worked at a railroad yard, who brought his young son into work with him one day. Like all good parents, he was paying no attention to his kid and discovered, to his chagrin, that his child was playing on the tracks right smack in the path of an oncoming passenger line. Switching the passenger train to another track would derail it, but letting it go would kill his son. With faith in salvation and god’s plan and all that horseshit, he allowed the train to plow over his son and thus spared all of the passengers, some of which were undoubtedly unsaved heathens, but so it goes. The point, I believe, was that faith in god meant you could kill your son without misgivings.

While the story had a profound effect on me as an adolescent, mostly horror, it only took a few days or so before I realized it was nonsense too – and this was long before I heard about the Trolley Problems, the well-known psychological examination of moral decisions using fictional scenarios, to which the counselor’s story bore a remarkable resemblance. Once again, these fine, upstanding baptists were lying their asses off to the kids in their control care – and, I have no doubt, knowingly as well. And that started a very long observation, still taking place, of how often religious folk exuberantly and hypocritically lie in their efforts to “spread the good word.” I always thought it was satan that was supposed to be the Prince of Lies, but maybe I missed the subtle nuances of scripture in that regard.

The worst thing is, this is rampant, and not just in brainwashing camps. It takes no effort whatsoever to find wild interpretations of scripture provided as doctrine, much less the countless instances of things just made up out of, if you’ll pardon the expression, whole cloth. Just about every time I hear some respected religious leader speak, and in almost every written article, I find something that is clearly not from any established source.

Now, one could argue that these might actually be examples of divine revelation, god expressing his thoughts through individuals – the kind of blanket statement that provides a nice counterpoint to cynicism, or so it would seem. The curious thing about open-mindedness, however, is that it does not go only one way; there is also the possibility that the person is outright lying, that the person is delusional, and even that some other non-corporeal being is using this person as a relay, for any variety of purposes. Most people urging objectivity manage to halt inquiry entirely at the option they most favor, hard as that may be to imagine, and it should be noted that this is no way resembles having an open mind – precisely the opposite, in fact. But even when practiced with rigor, having an open mind doesn’t actually lead anywhere, since there are thousands of possibilities to be considered. The counselor might have been telling the truth, and if so, David was confident in god’s existence – perhaps. It still remains a story, after all, its authenticity impossible to establish. Or the counselor might have been lying, which means he was trying to propel his agenda by imparting falsehoods to impressionable adolescents – the ability to recognize such, by the way, will certainly come in quite useful later on in life.

Such speculations about divine revelation falls flat when it comes up against the clearly fictional stories passed along as fact, endlessly forwarded through e-mail, such as this list. Whoever first kicks off any of these chains quite clearly knows they’re fabrications, while indisputably geared towards a religious agenda. This entire resource was created to counteract the pervasive attempts to subvert, denigrate, and deny established science – take a look at the list of creationist claims being addressed there (and for preference some of the sources cited within,) and try to fathom how much effort has been poured into the act of, as it is occasionally known, “lying for jesus.”

I don’t have to belabor the fact that not just all major religions, but all societies we know, are pretty dead set against lying, dishonesty, falsehoods, and so on. But what’s most stunning about this is how often we are all assured that religion is responsible for inspiring, instilling, and maintaining moral behavior in people – many people even insist we would be savages without it. This moral guidance is quite possibly the biggest lie of them all – and the competition is stiff.

There are a lot of avenues of examination that can be followed with this, and some of them will come up in later posts. Right now, I’m going to come back to the personal angle, which is the effect it had on me – and, I doubt I’m alone in this regard. Seeing the amount of intentional deceit perpetrated in the guise of ‘moral superiority,’ I realized at a young age that trust was actually a stupid thing – it invites abuse. The edifice of respectability that has been built up around religion (and, indeed, many other things discovered later on) is an elaborate disguise, hiding the true nature if we’re gullible enough to fall for it all. You could call this an epiphany if you like irony – it’s certainly not the kind those counselors were hoping to provoke. But, sometimes, it’s the conniving little shits that provide the best lessons.

A thousand words

Al Denelsbeck

cryogenic aconite
I think this is the probably the best single image representation of this winter’s weather that I’m likely to achieve. I never spotted this winter aconite flower before the freezing rain came, but was lucky enough to see it afterward.

Not quite as much rain this time, so no issues, though I’m pretty sure I heard a nearby transformer blow last night. But we’re not out of the woods yet…

African Drums, by Luke Despain

Al Denelsbeck

When I was growing up, my dad had some record albums by a guy with the fabulous name of Babatunde Olatunji, who specialized in African drum music. This is almost a worthless statement; African is a big place, with over 50 countries and dog knows how many different cultures, so “African drum music” is almost the same as saying “American guitar music” – it doesn’t specify any particular style. Nevertheless, Olatunji tackled quite a few of them, and I find some of them to be excellent. Others, not so much.

So I was searching around for music samples to know which album I should purchase, and came across this independent composition. I can find little information on composer Luke Despain, but it seems pretty clear that he’s not a professional musician or ‘big name,’ which is a shame – he should be. This track is somewhat misleadingly titled African Drums, since it’s synth work all the way and the drums aren’t a huge part of it. Call it anything you like, however – this is a pretty damn solid piece of work, and considerably better than a lot of popular music out now. Despain has an excellent sense of balance and progression, and if I knew more music terms I’d explain this better, but since I don’t, you can fill in for yourself.

The site this embedded track comes from was being a little fussy playing his other tracks for me, so if there’s any difficulty, you can also try here.

According to a comment he made on YouTube, Luke Despain performed this for a Broadway play later on – I doubt that’s surprising to anyone. Here’s hoping he gets tied in with a major label or film studio sometime soon.

First mud

Al Denelsbeck

Southern chorus frogsThe other day, with the warm weather assuring us that it was here to stay (dishonestly, I must add,) I donned shorts for the first time to meet with a student and go out seeking the first real signs of spring to a nature photographer, which is generally wildlife in search of booty. While I had earlier been hearing the evidence of the critters pictured here, I had yet to go down to their typical lairs, which are small ponds and even puddles surrounded by high grasses. These are likely southern chorus frogs (Pseudagris nigrita nigrita,) though I stand to be corrected – I am using an Audubon Guide for identification, which unfortunately lacks strong descriptions and photos to make firm distinctions; at least three species could fit what you see here, especially when they give markings as “three stripes along back that may be broken into spots.” All likely chorus frogs in this area have spots…

The most distinctive trait of them, however, is reflected in their name. This was nothing more than a large puddle, and at 3 pm they were advertising for mates in their manner, which is a reedy high-pitched vibrating sound. You know you’re closing in on them by the increase in apparent volume, but generally as you get close they see you and stop making any noise at all. We had pinpointed the puddle but took some time to finally spot a few, since they are no more than 3 cm in body length and colored much like the mud and grasses of their habitat. Suffice to say that when I got this photo, I hadn’t even seen the second one to the left.

As we stood there, they decided all at once that we were no threat, and began the chorus again. I don’t have enough experience with them to know for sure what triggers it, but they don’t sound off alone; everyone in the area speaks up, possibly because they’re in competition with one another. There are no false starts, no lone voice ringing out before the others start to chime in – within a second, half a dozen or more frogs are all calling together. When close, the sound is unbelievably penetrating, certainly uncomfortable and making conversation a bit difficult. I regretted not bringing any kind of recorder along with me, but I got plenty of shots of them calling. We’ll get back to this shortly.

In the same puddles scampered a large number of tiny fishing spiders, not even a centimeter in leg spread and mostly a deep reddish brown. As I watched, one set off at high speed across a tire rut filled with water, passing in front of another that was perhaps twice its size, unseen by either of us until it shot out across the water and seized the smaller. We might think of this as cannibalism, but I have no idea if they were the same species or not; we eat mammals ourselves. Not to mention that spiders aren’t a social species, and have no reason to cooperate with each other. Food’s food.

fishing spider eating another
I would have liked this image to be a bit better, but I was shooting in natural light without flash and couldn’t afford to stop down too much, since it would have slowed the shutter speed and my own movement would have ruined the shot. As it was, I was in kneepads, propped on my elbows in the mud at the edge of the puddle, trying not to get my hands filthy. While getting some of the frog pics, I buried my sandals in the mud so thoroughly that I was in imminent danger of leaving them behind, or simply falling over because I couldn’t extract my feet to maintain balance, to the amusement of my student. Nevertheless, that is why I wear them, and to me, getting the shot is worth the mud and inconvenience – they’ve received this spring’s christening.

protective brown snakeThe next day, I was determined to capture the sounds of the chorus frogs, and went to a nearby park that has lots of water basins. The biggest one, that provided some of the action shots from last year, was curiously still – it’s early yet – and while I could hear the frogs sounding in the middle distance, they were never calling at any body of water I came across. Subjects to photograph were so sparse it seemed almost like a total waste of time. It goes like this sometimes, even though I can usually find something to capture.

Then, a minuscule brown snake (Storeria decayi) that was basking on the concrete path displayed its reluctance to yield, which provided some great poses – there’s no way I should have been able to take as many shots, from as many different angles, as I did. This behavior is often an indication of a recent meal, since snakes need a certain body temperature to maintain digestive energy and will often warm themselves on sunny surfaces in the morning after finding food. Their mobility may be hampered by the mass in their abdomen, but even if not, they would rather stay in the sunlight, so will defend themselves more vigorously than at other times, when diving into the underbrush is their chief defense. However, I spotted no telltale swelling or change in girth at all, so I considered it unlikely in this case; it might have simply been the first time out since the torpor of the winter months. It’s not often that I get to see a raised head pose, and when I do, it is often accompanied by a vibrating tail, the threat display of far more than just rattlesnakes. This is quite impressive, because it’s a blur, and it can make a great drumming sound against a solid surface, but a fiercely creepy rattle in dry leaves – unfortunately, my subject here wasn’t so inclined, nor did it strike at me as I lay on my side right in front of it with the camera.

brown snake scaleAnd I can’t let this go without a scale shot. While I’ve seen bigger, brown snakes really aren’t very impressive in size no matter what, though they do outclass the worm snakes.

Satisfied that the trip produced at least a few shots, I wandered back to the areas with all the water, and this time around, the frogs were calling actively. I had brought along two different audio recorders – my MP3 player with voice memo function, and an old-school microcassette recorder I’ve had for years. I was counting on the MP3 player, since it produced files already in digital format, but despite being right on top of the frogs and practically going deaf, the sound quality was particularly lacking, with a seemingly mechanical backbeat that had to be from within the player. Luckily, the cassette recorder was able to patch between the earphone jack and the Line In port of my sound card, and I recorded the playback through Audacity, which is an excellent free audio recording and mixing program.

Now, the difference between the two days. I was sitting right smack on the edge of a catch basin that was, at most, 2.5 meters across, with numerous frogs sounding off in very close proximity. I’m pretty good (though not perfect) at spotting such critters, especially when they’re announcing their presence at ear-shattering volume. And yet, I did not see one frog at all. They had to be above the surface, and unlike the previous day this water was perfectly clear, and the grasses at the edge were not thick at all, but the frogs maintained perfect concealment. It is entirely possible that this was a haunted puddle, brimming with little tormented amphibian spirits with unfinished business (I’ll leave the speculation of what this could be to you,) but for now, despite the urging of my ego, I’m going to go with their ability to hide being better than my ability to spot them.

chorus frog calling sequenceSo, as I provide the recording that I made that day, I give you a photo sequence of a frog from the previous day, when I could actually see them. The first pic was ‘at rest,’ as it were, while they were all silent. But imagine the next two alternating regularly during the call – the inflated belly during the silences, with the distended throat sac while emitting that bad-bearing squeak that you can hear by clicking on the tag below. It should be said that there was never the appearance of expelling the air – it simply switched places, being recycled as it were, since the sound is as internal as humming is to us. I had originally tried to produce an animated gif (pronounced “hor-hay”) of this, yet couldn’t get it to appear less than bad claymation and gave it up after playing with it far too long last night. It would undoubtedly be better in true video, but I’ve never bothered to get a digital camcorder and have little enough use for a low-end model – I’d want something that could do serious macro work, but that would require supplemental constant-light sources and a whole lot of playing around for, what, the blog and website? Not justified (no offense.) Anyway, this recording was started as I was a short distance away and approaching, ending up just a few meters from the frogs – the volume is, hopefully, able to express the idea without getting too obtrusive.


There is an added bonus in that you can drive the cats nuts with this. Actually, you can drive anyone nuts with this, I suspect…

The fine line

Al Denelsbeck

Out in some states in the western US, places where sparse plants compete with rock and Star Trek villains for attention, there can be found a thin grey line between sedimentary layers. This line, an abrupt change in the composition of the sandwiching rock above and below, is a visible remnant of one of the most recent world-changing events, an actual border between geologic periods. It is, to be dramatic, the day the dinosaurs died.

With that lede out of the way, now let’s get down to more accurate stuff. Not all of the dinosaurs died then, and it sure as hell wasn’t a day – single days don’t leave distinctive sediment layers. But this demarcation in the rock is what used to be called the KT boundary, or the line between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, Tertiary being the one we presently live in (and ‘C’ already in use for the Carboniferous period, so geologists went the product advertising route, or perhaps simply liked Krispy Kreme donuts.) Now, however, the present period has been renamed the Paleogene, and it has now become the K-Pg boundary, and not somehow the Cr-Pg one – whatever.

For decades, this boundary was known, since the sauropod fossils largely stopped everywhere above it, in newer sediment. But it wasn’t known what caused this mass extinction. It was assumed to be some kind of major event, since mass extinction just doesn’t occur every day, and something pretty radical to take out so many species. But until the late 1970s, everything was speculative.

At that time, various geological surveys had revealed that the sediment layer was rather high in the element iridium. Iridium doesn’t appear often in the mineral record, and it has two primary sources: volcanic eruptions, and asteroids. This layer of iridium was being found in the same boundary layer the world over, indicating an event of catastrophic proportions; a volcanic plume that extended, with noticeable sedimentary deposits, across most of the planet is a hell of a big eruption, or series thereof. And the same can be said of an asteroid impact. One way or another, the planet was radically affected by the event(s), to be changed forever.

An eruption (or series thereof) that big, extending ash deposits across most of the world, would also be producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases, perhaps for very long periods of time – centuries to millennia. This would naturally slam the climate and thus the plant life, and untold other portions of the ecosystem – not hard to see how this could wipe out quite a few species. On the other hand, a major asteroid impact that produced that much particle matter in the atmosphere would also have a drastic affect, but from cloud cover reducing the warmth from sunlight, rather than trapping it as greenhouse gases do. There would also be the effects of the immediate impact crater and the tectonic activity triggered by it, including massive tsunamis and shock waves. The biggest difference between the two would be the length of time the effects lasted; the impact scenario is generally envisioned to be a shorter period of time than a lasting series of volcanic eruptions.

Pretty much everyone knows the asteroid theory is the favored one, and this is because we actually know the asteroid that remains the prime suspect. Geologic surveys revealed an ancient crater on the tip of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, near the town of Chicxulub (“CHEEK-shoe-lube,” a popular lubricant in kinky adult stores in Mexico. Okay, not really.) The crater, now determinable only by the circular gravitational anomalies, the shocked quartz, and the peculiar cenote caverns of the region, is massive – and more importantly, dates to that exact time period. “Exact,” in geologic terms, means within a few hundred thousand years. This is a small portion of the interesting controversy about the K-Pg terminator.

Because before this crater was found, there was another possible culprit: a region of intense volcanic deposition known as the Deccan Traps, in what is now India. They also date from that time period, and feature lava and ash deposits that indicate a vicious, long period of vulcanism, one considered capable of changing the atmosphere of the entire planet. This remains a competing theory, and to me, a curiously compelling one, since the volume of basaltic deposits from lava are enormous – over 512,000 cubic kilometers, or 123,000 cubic miles, and this is today’s figure, after 65 million years or so of erosion. The lava flows themselves, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick, cover an area the size of Spain. The gases emitted into the atmosphere from these eruptions, over a period of perhaps 30,000 years, had to have been of a remarkable volume themselves.

A bit of perspective. The geologic feature thought to be responsible for these eruptions, something called a mantle plume, would have been positioned off the coast of Madagascar, near Reunion Island – that’s where the Indian tectonic plate was then. In the time since, India has traveled north and collided with the Asian plate, rather forcefully, since this collision formed (or is forming, to be accurate) the Himalayas. Seen on a relief globe or decent 3D mapping service, this crumple zone of Earth’s crust is eminently visible. It’s an interesting illustration of timescale.

While the consensus seems to lean towards the asteroid impact, we still don’t know for sure. One of the main reasons why this is not settled is that the extinction of species appears to take place over a period of 300,000 years, which seems unlikely with something as short-term as the after-effects of an asteroid. But we’ve never seen a major impact event, or even a relatively minor one – we’ve seen, at best, tiny little things, like the Chelyabinsk meteor which didn’t really impact (it shattered and produced fragments, no craters, much less one 180 kilometers across – that’s almost the distance between Philadelphia and DC.) Would there, for instance, be ripple effects among species, certain ones getting hit first, whose loss caused Change A in the ecosystem, leading to Species B eventually dying out, with Change B resulting, and so on? We really can’t tell – the fossil record isn’t that detailed, nor do we have more than a cursory knowledge of the foods or habits of the species extant at that time. Species also go extinct without the help of any such dramatic events; the real causes may be multiple and murky, or even coincidental.

Another thing that I suspect might temper the Deccan Traps idea is the long time frame over which they occurred, perhaps never dumping too much gas into the atmosphere at once. 30,000 years is a significant length of time – much longer than humans have been on the American continents, longer than we’ve been without Neanderthals or mammoths. Yet there’s also the fact that the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) extinction, 252 million years ago, coincides with another major volcanic period, a suspicious detail that makes one think, at least.

There is no doubt, however, that both events had their effects on the time period. The Chicxulub impactor produced debris extending across most of the US and Mexico; the Deccan Traps are among the largest volcanic deposits known. The asteroid impact effects might have been too brief to cause so major an extinction; the Deccan eruptions might have been spread out enough not to change the climate radically. It is even possible that both are at fault, a coincidental one-two punch that prevented the potential recovery from either alone.

I have no images to illustrate even this thin sediment line, since I’ve never been out west – I have plans to go, since I’d really like to see this for myself. I’d also like a rock sample that contains that line, but (departing from the original topic a little) I also find this a little silly. Holding such a rock in my hands won’t impart anything more to me than research does, considerably less in fact, and to be honest, any such rock around here might have its own link to cataclysmic events – I just don’t know about it. Like meeting a celebrity or viewing a famous painting, the thrill is all in our heads, a strange emotional sense provoked by a perceived importance rather than any external stimuli. I suspect that the sense is actually confirmation; we’ve heard all the stories, but it takes the input of our eyes, ears, fingers, to tell us they were real. We may never know exactly what happened 65 million years ago to eradicate so many species, but right there sits a memorial, the barest hint of an abrupt turn for species on Earth. The rocks are the only remaining witness, but we, at least, can sometimes read their story.

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