 A QUIET
STAND OF ALDERS "The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth All set neere to him long flourisheth." -- William Browne, c. 1613 |
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A QUIET
STAND OF ALDERS "The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth All set neere to him long flourisheth." -- William Browne, c. 1613 |
Presentations & Events
 Recent Presentations God and Natural Selection (PDF) Altruism for Fun and Profit (PDF) Global Warming (PDF) Evotour 2012: Part One, Eclipse of the Sun May 27, 2012
I've been on a journey to California and back, visiting sites of evolutionary interest and making Darwin videos about these places, which I will post on my YouTube channel. Evotourism is a new concept, which may someday draw attention among science-literate tourists the same way ecotourism now does. I am looking into the possibility of leading evotours, and my first step is to visit or revisit sites of evolutionary interest and make videos of them. Until the day before I left, I was not planning to include the eclipse of the sun in my tour. Then I read that the eclipse would be seen clearly in New Mexico, and I knew I would be going through New Mexico as part of my trip. So I rearranged my schedule to be in Gallup, NM on May 19, to watch, photograph, and, if possible, make a video of the eclipse, which was to occur at 7:30 mountain daylight time. I left my motel room about 6:00 and headed south on a state highway, expecting to easily find a place to pull off to the side of the road and set up my telescope and my camera tripod. This turned out to not be so easy to do. I wanted a clear view of the horizon, but there were few places from which I could do this. And almost the only side roads, off of the state highway, were private ranch roads with cattle guards. The residences did not look like the kinds of places that would welcome loiterers even outside the fence. At last I found a side road of a side road with a church sign, and a little dirt spot to pull over. To my surprise, when I set up the telescope, I discovered the eclipse had already begun a little before 7:30. The disc of the moon was approaching from the lower right. I quickly set up my camera and took still photos and took some videos, which I tried to narrate despite the occasional cars whooshing down the country highway. For a perfect moment I saw the annular eclipse—the moon forming a perfect black disc centered in the sun. It was impossible to take photos or videos of the eclipse without the filter, and therefore nothing else was visible—until right at sunset, when the moon had nearly passed to the upper left, when a sun with a big bite taken out of it nestled down into piñon branches. Humans used to think that gods or demons caused the sun to darken and the moon to turn to blood (eclipses) and the starts to fall from the sky (meteors). This is the language used in the scriptures we still revere. The scientific view of nature, starting with Copernicus and Galileo and other astronomers, and continuing with physics and chemistry and biology, and finally the evolutionary understanding of humans and even the human brain, has shown us that the universe is not full of demons but that we are a part of its natural laws. We are at home. For all I could tell, the people in the convenience store and driving along the road had no idea that an eclipse was occurring. The few people I talked to had no interest. They were totally absorbed in their own pleasures or problems or projects. In the old days, eclipses disturbed people. Today, they should be sources of wonder. But it appears that the geocentric theory has not been replaced by the heliocentric theory as much as by the egocentric theory. (This is adapted from the May 20 post on my blog.)
January - March 2012
The Evolution of a New Economy? In Memory of Lynn Margulis Equilibrium Economy? Exuberant Chaos Altruism: The Third Alternative for Ecology and Evolution Appealing to the Basest Instincts April-June 2012 Some Species Will Love Global Warming Emergent Properties and Human Creativity: Boy, Do They Emerge! |
About  Honest Aba blog about evolution and related topics Follow me on Twitter Books:  New Brunswick, New York: Facts on File, 2011.  Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2011. (Mandarin Chinese edition - Taiwan: BWP 2011)  New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009. (paperback 2012)  New York: Facts on File, 2007. Upcoming Books: Encyclopedia of Evolution (Revised Edition) Articles |
