Book Review: Big Bang

Al Denelsbeck

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.

I’m glad somebody said it

Al Denelsbeck

I had originally started a post on largely this topic when the news was full of the epic awesome wonderfulness of Steve Jobs, the man who, according to the media hype, was the most amazing businessman on the planet. When these died out rather quickly, I let the post go, but now The New Yorker has a kind of biographical article on Jobs, and I’ll simply point you to that. If you’re one of the Apple worshippers, best to just skip over that one – it’s not pretty.

No, I don’t engage in Mac vs PC wars – I think if you’re hung up on branding then you’re too stupid to take advice from, or even involve in grownup conversation. No product has ever impressed me very much, and every last one of those who tried to tell me how great Apple is could not even display basic competence in computers – funny that. But if you’re buying a Mac to avoid those nasty viruses, maybe you could save a bit of money (actually, quite a lot) and just learn how to use the internet safely instead.

Here’s another tip: when someone tells you something, there’s always a chance that it is simply made up. Remember that the next time you are assured that any product is innovative (or even “original” – if you don’t get that joke, remember what I said about grownup conversations.)

Frustrations, part seven: Still not clean

Al Denelsbeck

I actually got out last night for the Leonids meteor shower, braving the cold like a dedicated nature photographer… well, okay, to a small extent, anyway. I was unable to travel very far, so it meant trying to find a darker sky spot in an area not particularly known for it. The cities aren’t big around here, but they’re spaced just right to mean traveling a long distance to get away from light pollution effectively. My choice last night was an area largely screened by trees, and aiming north towards the most rural areas.

While I managed to spot a few meteors, I don’t think I captured any on film. And yes, I mean literally on film (though not literally captured – oh, never mind) since I was using both the digital SLR and the Mamiya 645 medium format camera. I’ve had much better luck with film for astrophotography, since it produces more color and is less prone to noise for long exposures, but we’ll have to wait a bit to see what I might have gotten – the few meteors I spotted probably fell outside the view of the 45mm lens (which is a nice, wide angle on 6×4.5 film, roughly equivalent to a focal length of 24mm on film cameras – why are we still calling them “35mm”? – and about 15mm on DSLRs.)

The five frames I got on digital showed no telltale streaks except from aircraft, which were still far too busy when I was out after 11 PM – this is kind of a north/south airway region. “Five frames?” you say (go ahead, don’t leave me hanging.) But yes, the point of meteor photography is that you’re never going to capture anything if you wait until you see it to trip the shutter, because they’re visible typically less than a second, so you lock open the shutter and just wait for something to cross your field of view. I was doing exposures between five and fifteen minutes with the digital, and the ambient air temperature was 2°C (36°F,) so both sets of batteries died out after an hour. Had I seen more than three meteors, I might have continued a little longer with the Mamiya, but I figured I was cold enough for the sparse activity last night. There was frost on the tripod legs as I packed it in.


That is pretty much my luck with meteor showers. Most happen to fall on evenings with poor visibility, regardless of how long we might have gone with crystal skies leading up to the showers. When we do get clear skies, the activity is pathetic. With one exception.

In 2001 I had just moved to Georgia, and on the evening of the Leonids, I spotted a spectacular airburst, resembling a crashing plane, on the drive home – on the interstate, by a brightly lit exit, from inside the car. It would have been awesome in a dark-sky location. So I poked around until I found a nice dark location and spent most of the early morning out there. It was a fabulous night, and I was maintaining a count of all the meteors I was seeing directly – glimpses and corner-of-the-eye didn’t count. In the first hour I was over two dozen, having shattered my old personal record of thirteen for one night when living in central New York, where the skies were quite dark and I often walked at night. By 4 AM when I was about to wrap it up, I spotted twenty just in the time it took me to pack up the camera and tripod, convincing me that the peak was coming and I should probably hang around a bit longer. That morning, I stopped counting at three hundred clearly seen, with an unknown number glimpsed, all in about five hours.

One in particular was spectacular, burning parallel to the horizon and lighting up the entire sky, fragmenting and leaving multiple trails (I checked the next day to be sure the ISS hadn’t re-entered by accident.) Even more interesting was when I realized that the tree in my field of view was flickering, indicating some light coming from behind me and suggesting I was missing a similar light show back there.

Now, the sad confession: I have no photos of this whatsoever. Well, I have most of a roll of film that I shot that night, but I wasn’t stocked up and what I had handy was Kodak Portra 400 left over from a wedding. ISO 400 is a nice speed for night photography, fairly light-sensitive and color-responsive yet not too grainy to make things ugly, but Portra 400 is an exception because of a little something called reciprocity failure. Welcome to advanced film properties.

Reciprocity is the photography function that ties together aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, and basically means you can change any of these settings by a given amount, and change either of the other two in the opposite direction by the same amount (called the reciprocal,) and get the same exposure. So you can get very fast shutter speeds if you can open your aperture far enough – the reduction of light from the shutter is compensated by the additional light through the lens. In the realm of low light photography like at night, you can compensate by leaving the shutter open for long periods of time, and can make a moonlit scene appear to be daylight if you wait long enough.

Reciprocity failure is where this breaks down. Due to the nature of the chemical reaction to light, low amounts of light don’t always register on film, and so lengthening the exposure has a reduced effect, with diminishing returns depending on the amount of light and length of exposure, often with a color shift because the different layers of emulsion have different sensitivities. Some films, like Fuji Provia 100, handle this fairly well, but Kodak Portra 400 is not among them. The images I have from that evening are all blue, grainy, and show almost no stars at all, much less meteor streaks. For the best opportunity I’ve ever had, I totally blew the pics. Even the spectacular airburst, which might have overcome the film’s flaws, was well away from the direction the camera was aimed at the time.

And sometimes that’s how it goes (or at least it does for me.) The cool stuff happens when you’re not in a position to exploit it, and when you’re prepared, it’s quiet. Last night was hardly a shower, or even a trickle. One of these days I’ll capture a decent meteor storm, but in the meantime, I’ll experiment with lens tricks like this one. Bonus points if you can tell me how it was done ;-)

Later on, I’ll provide a quick tutorial on eradicating noise caused by bad sensor pixels from your digital images. Some Photoshop tricks are actually quite useful.

But is it art?

Al Denelsbeck

It’s funny, now that I think about it, that I haven’t tackled this subject here before. I mean, what’s a blog for?

The photographer part of me has this little hate-affair with the “art world.” While opinions vary a great deal, it isn’t hard to find the prejudice that photography is not art, and this is distinctly noticeable right where I live, in a community that considers itself supportive of the arts. Heaps of rusty scrap metal welded together into a shape vaguely reminiscent of something else is considered “art” sooner and much more often than photography, and the town art council seems to specialize in promoting pottery out the wazoo. Yet in the past year, I’ve seen them feature only one photography exhibit, and only two photographers are ever listed in their studio tours featuring roughly fifty artists – but you can see as many bowls as you’d like!

Now, I’m a fair guy, and it isn’t up to me to define what someone else should like. I’ve seen some wonderfully creative uses of pottery and scrap metal, but to consider them more valid than photography? Am I missing something?

I’m going to offer a bit of perspective, portions of which I’ve mentioned briefly elsewhere. Many people think photography takes little talent, and is simply copying what already exists – “the sunset was there; all you did was take a picture of it.” Yet if that was all there was to it, I wouldn’t be seeing the huge selection of shitty images that I do, wouldn’t you think? I wouldn’t spend my time teaching people how to compose their images, recognize how the contrast and light angles work, and critiquing approaches.

As an example, I could point out how painters can put their image elements together any damn way they please, leaving out what they don’t like, and representing a situation that never actually existed. If they want an eagle soaring against the sunset where you can still see detail in the shadowed side of the bird, no sweat! And it is even considered creative to paint a frog or lizard in some colors that could never occur in nature – a painter can get credit for ridiculous inaccuracy! It’s all good, because it’s “art.”

Yet, the photographer can only work with what’s present (we will ignore the studio photographer for the time being, and the select few who do digital composites and crap like that.) They’re handed a collection of elements almost totally out of their control, and they have to portray them in a manner that still produces a strong image. They usually cannot choose a background or foreground, and cannot leave out nonartistic elements except for selectively cropping them from the frame. They may wait for the right light, the right clouds in the sky, the right position or expression of their subject. They might seek a different vantage point that produces the right background or contrast (or reflection,) or use camera technique to purposefully blur or soften elements and draw attention to their subject. And in many cases, a particular aspect of their subject existed for fractions of a second only, and they had to anticipate this and capture it at its ideal time. Good photographers actually have to know something about art in the first place, in order to put all of the above actions to good use.

I would probably be fine with this and simply shrug it off, if it didn’t affect where and how I can market my images – too many venues are closed off from public appreciation by the director who fancies themselves in some way arteestique, and is thus dismissive of photography. Far too often, when it is included, only black & white is permissible, for reasons that have yet to be demonstrated. I have to admit to no small amusement when seeing what passes for art sometimes, especially in regards to depicting animals; I recently came across a painting for sale that I was surpassing in talent in sixth grade art class.

What’s more amusing, I think, is that far too much of art is defined by how much utter bullshit the artist can produce when describing it. A wall hanging of egg cartons and soda straws might be described as “the juxtaposition of spiritual alignments allowing the essence of mind and surroundings to unite,” but I’m pretty straightforward about it myself – it’s egg cartons and soda straws, even when painted brown. I’m all for seeing the metaphor in certain elements, and actually teach my students to look for them. But it is not a metaphor if you have to tell me that it is, and the addition of artistic buzzwords does not elevate some piece higher – call me a spoilsport. The cloying pretentiousness of the art world is astounding sometimes.

It’s not a big thing, since I generally don’t “do” art, but work instead on interest and illustration. Yet I frequently take the time to put an image together in a pleasing, compelling, and artistic way – there’s no reason one cannot have both illustration and composition. My creative tendencies as a youth were channeled into photography instead of painting or drawing (though I still chase model-building from time to time.) I just find it funny that photography still gets short shrift when someone that glues broken glass together into bizarre shapes is considered “legitimate.”

Then again, maybe it’s because photography is too realistic, and doesn’t leave much room for imagination when describing it. No one needs to be told what they’re looking at, so there’s little opportunity to spew some existentialist post-modern interpretation of swirling colors.

Whatever, I’m not going to change it. I do what I like, and if someone else likes it too, great! Whether it falls into some specially defined category or not doesn’t alter it, though if someone’s perception of it is altered by such a category, well, that’s their issue. I’m sure someone can make up a description for that, too ;-)


Probably not

Al Denelsbeck

Recently, I came across two posts on probability, both of which possessing some serious issues. This is actually a common occurrence, since probability is one of those things that confuses people and is, in many ways, counterintuitive. What’s interesting about both of them is that the answers revealed are misleading in the same manner as the intuitive solutions.

The first is, “How unfathomable were your odds of coming into being?” This one is annoying in that there are countless ways that this question can be interpreted, and only one is displayed. Especially painful is the tagline at the top of the infographic which reads, “…and reveals that the odds of you existing are almost zero.” This is a classic case of misinterpretation – since you’re reading this, you exist, so the odds of you actually existing are 1 in 1, alternately listed as 1:1, 1/1, or simply 1, otherwise known as “guaranteed” (Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers get it right.) The question implied by the solution is more along the lines of, “What are the odds of known variable factors within common knowledge leading to exactly your point in time, rather than some other?”, which isn’t even accurate in itself. Start with, the odds of your dad meeting your mom being, as listed, 1 in 20,000 – that’s not true at all. You have to factor in how much your dad and mom might have traveled, how big the town they lived in was, how many people worked in the same place, and so on. And since a certain percentage of people marry their childhood sweetheart, you can run some figures on how many people were in the school they attended, within a few years of age, or in the immediate neighborhood. It’s way, way off base to create a random figure of available women (or men) and assume that anyone could have met any of them, like they were playing Spin The Bottle in a very large room…

The second part of this is, you can provide any particular scenario, compared against the number of variations, and marvel lightheadedly at the number involved. What are the chances, for instance, of the atoms within your body being at exactly such-and-such coordinates at some particular picosecond, compared to anyplace else in the universe? I could produce a number even greater than that displayed by the infographic, but again, this is meaningless; in another picosecond, the atoms have shifted position and attained yet another astoundingly high number, which turns your entire life into a series of events so improbable that you should cease existence almost immediately. Then again, it’s a fairly high probability that you will be someplace on the surface of the earth, wherever it is in the universe, and so that astoundingly high number drops drastically. In grim reality, the atoms within your body are very likely to remain in the immediate vicinity, within a fraction of a millimeter of where they were before. The variations that take place, for virtually any action or process, are usually quite small from moment to moment, often influenced by environmental factors. When your body moves at all, it moves to an area immediately adjacent to where it once was, often influenced by the trend of how you had been moving previously – you don’t reverse direction or shoot off at random angles. While your overall path can vary greatly from a starting point, how it gets there is through a series of tiny variations, many of which are extremely likely. Interestingly, this is a great analogy for evolution, which produces significant changes in small increments over long periods of time.

The likelihood of you being you, as in, thinking and behaving in a certain way, is actually much higher than implied by this whole situation, as well. You probably received your education at the nearest school, and from the same parents as any siblings, and from whatever situations you might have found yourself within (say, being shipped off to summer camp.) Those factors all serve to narrow down the chances of certain outcomes; if you were born in the US, for instance, the chances of you speaking nothing but Farsi are pretty slim. The chances of you attending a summer camp in Australia, also slim – the camp you attended is probably within easy driving distance, just due to common convenience. You probably look human, breathe air, eat protein, and shit shit. If you were truly as unique as implied by the quoted figure, you probably wouldn’t even have offspring yourself, because you wouldn’t be able to find a spouse that you had anything in common with ;-)

The other post is not as bad, and even better, the commenters are doing a good job of correcting it. Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog presents a chestnut that challenges some assumptions while falling blindly into others, making kind of a mess of the whole thing. As he mentions, there’s a probability puzzle called the Monty Hall Problem, where the actual probabilities are different from what intuition tells us it should be – mostly because “Monty” knows the goal that the contestant seeks. Very briefly: you choose one of three doors that might have a prize. Monty opens one of the two remaining that you did not choose, revealing no prize. Are your chances better with switching, or staying with your original choice? Look at it this way: you had a 2 in 3 chance of being wrong initially, and if so, Monty just showed you which one to pick. The chances are doubly in your favor by switching, as long as you don’t pick the door Monty already opened…

So, a man comes up to you on the street and says, “I have two children and one is a son born on a Tuesday.” What is the probability that the other child is also a son? Most people would say 1 in 2, or 50%.

Now it gets screwed up. Jason points out that,

It follows that the sexes of his two children, ordered from oldest to youngest, are either BB, BG or GB.

But this is wrong, because the other scenario, not listed, is also Boy/Boy, only this time the son named is the youngest and not the eldest. The oldest/youngest factor is a red herring. In other words, there are only three scenarios for two kids (both girls, both boys, and one of each) and one has been eliminated. It’s still 1 in 2.

Then, he goes on to speculate what affect Tuesday has on the situation, and the chances of the other child being born on whatever day of the week. This is called needlessly multiplying probabilities, because adding further options (hair color, time of day, and so on) does not change the original factors at all.

Then, he introduces the factor of how this particular man might have been selected. Now, we’ve ventured outside of the realm of simple word problems and into real-world scenarios that we have not been given information about. “What if the man was selected because he had one son born on a Tuesday?” Yes, you can start adding in contingencies, but all this does is show that probabilities can only be calculated within rigid circumstances. I can immediately ask, “Selected from where?” and find that this experiment was done in a town with more girls than boys in the population, and the probabilities are thus biased from the 1 in 2.

The problem, for instance, never allowed for the probability that one of the children was a hermaphrodite. We have to consider that the man might be insecure (probably over the concern that his child would turn out both gay and lesbian) and thus want to prove himself Mr. Clever Dick by putting one over on a total stranger, so the likelihood that his child is hermaphroditic is even higher than the normal percentage within any given population – it’s a great opportunity for such a trick question (though rather taxing on the child who is usually called upon to prove it.) And since you are either a dick or you’re not, the chances of the man being a dick are 1 in 2, right? Unless the man is a driver in North Carolina, in which case it’s 17 in 19…

[Okay, you’re going to love this. I paused and saved the draft right here, and checked my spam folder for its frequent new additions. There were two messages in there, one from a commenter with “shemale” in the name. What are the chances?!]

What all of this does serve to illustrate, however, is one way in which critical thinking can be applied, since probabilities are very frequently misused. And they can rarely be applied to a given situation with any degree of accuracy anyway, because environmental variables in real-world situations are too vast to calculate. I frequently remind people that math is an abstraction, and is only used with certain aspects being assumed or ‘given.’ Two oranges rarely ever equal twice the mass of one orange, and even the surface of the orange can only be calculated on a broad level, because at the atomic level there is little than can be measured…

This also puts paid to the claims, ever so frequently given, that the chances of such-and-such event (complex life, evolution, bacteria flagella…) occurring is a specific number, like one-in-a-billion. There is, literally, no way in which such a thing could ever be calculated, because there is no way to know all of the factors involved. Therefore, there is a 1 in 1 chance that any such quoted number has been pulled out of someone’s ass, and can safely be dismissed as a blatant lie intended to influence your thinking.

Glad to be of help.

Quality time!

Al Denelsbeck

Okay, this one’s for the parents of children aged, I dunno, four to sixteen or so. Use your own judgment. It stems from some thoughts provoked by another post that will be coming up eventually, and seems to me to be a fun parent/child activity that can spur some scientific and learning interest as well. I’ve never tried it, except for a variation with one of my nieces some two decades ago, so let me know how it works for you.

The rules are simple: Pick a lazy day, have a full tank of gas/petrol/electricity/fryer grease, and put your kid in the driver’s seat. Well, perhaps not literally, let’s just say ‘navigator’s station’ instead. Get in the car, and leave it up to your child to tell you where you’re both going. No, not a destination, but the route instead – all of the turns, straight out of the driveway. The kid calls the shots, within reason of course, but basically, they’re free to explore. If you find something interesting, get out and check it out.

You will want to have something to prevent you from getting lost, of course. A GPS is fine, but not as much fun as a map, which the child is encouraged to use (perhaps after getting lost – you gotta have some sense of adventure after all.) This is where the expensive web-enabled smart phone or tablet becomes more than just an overpriced toy too, since it can be used to produce more information about whatever you might find – lacking one of these (and as far as I’m concerned, more power to you,) you can take notes about such things to check out when you get back.

Here’s another fun item to bring along: a halfway decent mapping compass. Know about magnetic declination for your area, and shoot some sightings on whatever interesting landmarks you might spot. Learn the basics of triangulation, and then you and your kid can figure out just what you were seeing when you get back and trace those lines-of-sight. For this, you might want some decent topo maps of your area. The compass is also good for quizzes about direction of travel, using the sun for navigation, and various geographic activities.

We all love exploring, and this is a simple way to exploit your child’s interests, as well as giving them a little control that they may well be frustrated about (since, in case you’ve forgotten, it’s a long wait to adulthood.) You, on the other hand, are challenged to point out anything interesting that you might encounter, and to find answers to your child’s questions – as well as learning a little more about your area yourself. Much more interactive for you and your kid than soccer, more personal, and cheaper too.

Try it out, develop some variations, and use it to expand your activities. And of course, feel free to come back and tell me how it works, and what I missed ;-)

Have fun!

Religion has all the answers

Al Denelsbeck

If you’re interested in accuracy, however, that’s a whole different story…

Scenes From A MultiverseClick for the complete comic.

Scenes From A Multiverse should be a regular stop in your browsing, if it isn’t already. Jonathan Rosenberg wields the tongue-in-cheek incisiveness that makes webcomics much better than most syndicated fare. On top of that, I happen to like his artistic style, which produces very distinct, expressive characters without clutter or muddiness, and always has an appropriate background – a lot of comic artists out there never accomplish this. He also has a lot of fun with pop culture references, though I suspect I miss more than a few of these because I’m largely out of that loop.

He has a book, of course, and you know christmas is coming up, as well as Festivus, the Feast of Saturnalia, and FGOAF (Fuck Going Outside And Freezing.) If you are in one of those situations where you’re obligated to get something for the pious religiocrat that you know, you can always send along a copy and see if they get the message. Alternately, it is a great way to show you appreciation of your favorite wildlife photography and critical thinking blogger. You can order it online, which means you’ll miss out on the camaraderie of holiday shoppers, I’m sorry to say, but you can usually duplicate this good cheer by having someone slam your fingers in a door a few times. Joy, schmoy, tears are tears…

Amateur naturalism, part three

Al Denelsbeck


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!


Drop the ‘Straight’

Al Denelsbeck

I used to think the column “The Straight Dope” was pretty good, and well researched. I was first introduced to it about twenty years ago, when it was carried in the local independent newspaper called, for some unknown reason, The Independent (this is a local publication, not the British one.) Many years later, I found it online, and made a habit of stopping by semi-regularly to see what was new, and even reading past columns. Still do. The no-nonsense style of the column tended to succinctly skewer some of the weirder claims left untouched by mainstream media, and be a voice of reason among ads proclaiming the wondrous properties of Vitamin B complexes for stress reduction (remember those?)

But it seems the head honcho, Cecil Adams (which may be a pseudonym) has been slipping from such standards recently. I’ve already briefly dealt with his take on nuclear power, which completely dodged the largest issues and made some claims worthy of industry shills (look for the third highlighted link in that rather long post, if it helps.) Just a few days back, he gave his indications of wishing to rejoin lame-duck mainstream media with his slippery answer to the question, “Does god exist?”

For someone who claims to do research, Adams somehow never mentioned that his potential “proof” of god’s existence is widely known under another name, the Cosmological Argument (which I’ve also dealt with.) This is a shame, because anyone wanting to know more would find a wealth of information using that term in a search engine, most of it showing the Cosmological Argument to be the sophomoric failure that it is. Adams’ entire reason to trot this trope out is that, if we assume ‘first’ cause to mean ‘underlying’ cause, then there certainly could be something like that for the universe as we know it, and if you want to call that god, then you’re all set. As the message repeated from so many religious folk goes: stop there and don’t ask any more questions!

Because, of course, in the guise of an underlying cause, such a force is indistinguishable from the four fundamental forces, or ‘interactions’ if you prefer, that we already know and deal with constantly, two of which being gravity and electromagnetism (the other two deal with the binding of atoms.) Now, please note that Adams is not saying that something akin to gravity is created by god – he’s saying that it is god. Or could be considered that, if we found it, and we might, because there must be something.

Not a mention of how this really doesn’t represent any god that anyone invokes, ever, and even stretching like a child’s toy to elevate the mystery to supernatural status, still only constitutes a weak form of deism, unlike the monotheism that is sought in its place. Not a word about how theology is simply a method of finding a reason for an answer already decided upon. No exploiting of the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how learning, and science itself, really works, by bringing up the idea of using facts to lead towards a conclusion, and the actual existence of something (like electromagnetism) to lead into the investigations of the cause. No consideration that ‘proof’ is interchangeable with ‘preponderance of evidence,’ and doesn’t have anything to do with philosophy. Not even the simple analogy of Santa Claus and the Sandman, cultural concepts that are rampant yet, curiously enough, not supported in any way* – the reader may draw their own parallels.

I’ll be fair: Adams might have shied away (or been chased away by his editor) from simply saying, “No.” Even most atheists have been far too accommodating in allowing how a definitive statement of god’s non-existence is logically impossible, though we have no trouble whatsoever with saying the exact same thing about Santa and the Easter Bunny. We do this because the lack of evidence, and the historical sources of such stories, is enough to make the simple statement that they do not exist, and fretting about this being a definitive absolute truth statement is what we get to see instead of a decent argument for actual existence (much less evidence.) Most of the people on the planet do the exact same thing with god – just not the god they believe in, but each and every one of the other gods throughout history and cultures which they examined just as closely as their own (which is, “not at all.”)

But let’s be real, Adams’ answer is not dodging the issue; it’s actually paying lip-service to a puerile concept that is logically, rationally, and scientifically corrupt. It not only has absolutely no reason to be invoked, it doesn’t even work as intended. And in an age when fundamentalists are trying every trick in the book to get accepted, and with elections rolling around, what we really need is some straight-forward, hard-hitting commentary, and even just a simple demonstration that critical thinking is a good thing. Instead, we get Cecil Adams’ featherbrained sellout. And he gets paid for it, too.

* Yes, I know there is historical evidence for Saint Nicholas. That’s not who children think is supposed to be coming down the chimney, is it? Plus, I’m sure we can all agree that he’s gone now, right?

Do you like exploring?

Al Denelsbeck


Google Earth is a fun program, allowing the user to examine just about anyplace on earth (and elsewhere) from the vantage of aerial and satellite photos; I spend no small amount of time checking out areas of interest, finding places I’ve been and little curiosities.

Along those lines, I finally finished a project I’ve been planning for a while, which is to upload some Google Earth placemarks to select images within the photo gallery of the main site, linked to the actual areas where the photos were taken. In many cases, the placemark gives my shooting location as accurately as I can provide (especially since many of these were taken years ago, and in some cases the terrain has even changed!) You will need Google Earth installed to take advantage of this, but if there’s an interest, I can always put in latitude/longitude coordinates, which should work fine with online mapping services like Mapquest and Bing.

So if you like exploring, check out the gallery for the “Google Earth” buttons and poke around. I can tell you that the most interesting aspects can be found with the image seen above, and the one seen below. You have to find them yourself ;-)

Happy exploring!


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