Sunset From Space

Sunset From Space
Originally uploaded by Noangel1.

This photograph was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day.

The picture shows Europe and Africa at sunset.

Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the city lights or so I am told.

The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. It seems that lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and
Barcelona, and that it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and
Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness.

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest
western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde islands.

The Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly during both daytime and at night

To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

An interesting perspective.

Nightswimming

I have never been comfortable in the dark.  As a child I couldn't sleep without a nightlight and I still leave a lamp on at night. In daylight I am serenely happy on mountains, in forests, on rocky outcrops or anywhere else for that matter. At night, being helped along by torchlight presents no problem.  This is fun, exhilarating, intensely exciting.

 

But the deep, dark night is different.  In the pitch blackness you are locked out of your ability to 'know'. I am not afraid of owls, snakes or spiders jumping out and pecking at my nose, I just don't feel comfortable without my vision. I am about as happy in a forest at night as any other human and I am envious of bats, cats, owls and snakes. 

 

To humans, night is an alien territory.  Without our vision it becomes frightening to touch, to taste, to hear, even to smell.  Long ago, nocturnal animals were believed to have magical powers. I'm not surprised. 

 

But this night was different.  A group of friends and I decided to take a break from our training camp and head into the forest for a swim. I am not the best swimmer but I wasn't saying no to an adventure. Not I. 

 

A few of us had torches, so seeing our way through the maze of thick, gnarled tree trunks would be easy going.  As we crossed the dirt road and entered the thicket we walked a little slower, forming the traditional 'snake' configuration as people do on narrow paths.  What we saw next made everyone in our little group exclaim with delight.

 

As our eyes adjusted to this unexpected scene we realized that the entire trail was lit up with luminous green glow worms!  Glow worms are tiny beetles that use light to send messages to each other in the darkness.  These little creatures produce chemicals in their stomachs and this makes them shine a bright, entrancing green into the darkness.  The light is flashed in a distinct colour and rhythm for each species.

 

The decision was unanimous! We switched off our torches right then and walked the rest of the way guided by our gaily, flashing friends.  I felt like a aeroplane being guided into the runway under cover of darkness.  It wasn't easy to find our way.  Above the knee it was just as dark as it had been; but there was something entrancing about our personal glow worm escort.

 

The air was cold and the forest sounds echoed in our ears, a squawk in the distance, the rustle of leaves underfoot, knowing your breath was vaporising off the night air, even though you couldn't see it.  We reached the swimming hole and spent a few hours there, knowing we would be tired in for our training session in the morning but knowing it was worth every second.

 

On the way back, the glow worms once again guided us on our journey.  By the time we arrived at base camp, our eyes were big, wide open, passionate. There is sweet surrender to be found absolutely everywhere.

 

 

 

 

Dolphin

P7060031
Originally uploaded by fo.ol.

Dolphin

water, ocean, glide,

prance, swim, duck,

twist, bounce, surge,

ricochet, chatter, click,

thrust, tease, race,

glide, echo, dip

dive, boomerang, mate,

push, birth, breathe,

push, suckle,breath,

nuzzle, jump, play,

think, free, hypnotise

          dolphin

           

           

Men and Nature

Skin...
Originally uploaded by Eros Leafar.

The men who work in nature are the most capable and strong you are ever likely to meet. It is interesting working with such men. You feel they might hold you in the palm of their hand and not crush you, just as they do insects and other tiny creatures. These men are macho, without the macho. It is utterly appealing. Simple, complex, sensitive, strong. Clifford, Keith, Matt, Dion, Shaun, Seamus,Dalton, Jaques...more men should be like you.

Burmese Flower Girl

Burmese flower girl
Originally uploaded by awfulsara.

Last Chance to See 

Snake

The snake had been kept in the tank for about two weeks. She was a fat and beautiful puff adder. Her brown and cream markings were a perfect foil for the landscape of rocks and sand she lived in. I used to look at her curled up in her glass prison. The owners of the nature reserve had decided she needed to be some sort of show-and- tell display.

So she stayed and I watched her. The nature conservation authorities arrived one Wednesday morning to look at her. “No” was the verdict “You can’t keep her here in this too-small tank, and besides you don’t have a permit. So she has to go, let her out immediately!”

And so the tank was taken outside and she was nudged onto the ground with a stick. Her cold body struggled to move. She just didn’t have any energy without the sun.

But now she was free.

“How awful” said the owners. “The tourists really loved to look at her, I wonder how they knew we were keeping her?”

“Yes such shame” I agreed, “I have no idea who would have done it”.

And I swear I looked completely believable.

Water, Water, Everywhere!

Seven-tenths of our plane is covered by water. Water. Without it none of us would survive. Not the fish we eat, the birds that control insect and marine populations, not the steak and chips we know so well. Not us.

Within hours we would become dehydrated, develop oedema, swell up, dry out. Our lungs would fill with our own bodily fluids. We would cough but it wouldn’t help. We would cry out but it wouldn’t matter. We would pray and beg. We would plead, but death would come.

Oedema. Death.

Water.

Let’s hope it never comes to that.

On Whales, Dolphins and Men

Dolphins seldom display aggression towards humans, even in captivity.

These toothy imps of the deep are also extremely sensitive creatures, or so it would seem. There are certainly many stories of dolphins sensing pregnancy, menstruation, cancer, and mental illness in people. Even more astounding are reports of dolphins rescuing drowning men and women.

Horace Dobbs in his book, Tale of Two Dolphins, relates the story of a woman who screeched in fear at the sight of Percy, a wild bottlenose dolphin, approaching her in the water. The dolphin swam up to her, prodded her in the belly, pushed her head under the water, and swam off.

Meanwhile back at the boat, Tricia Kirkman, a poor swimmer, finally plucked up the courage to enter the water. She did so gently. Percy approached her, turned over onto his back, and allowed her to hold onto his fins as he sailed through the water. Dolphins seem to have a remarkable ability to sense the inner world of the human being.

By dunking the first woman’s head under the water was Percy treating her in just the right way to wake her from her fearful silliness? I don’t know. I can tell you that I was once tickled in the stomach and had my head dunked under water at the same time and I was far more relaxed when I surfaced.

What about whales and dolphins in captivity? We do not yet know how being confined in small spaces affects these mammals. We do not understand what biological and psychological changes are occurring within their great bodies. We have no comprehension of their feelings and no emotional identification with them either, it would seem

Orca, the “killer” whale is typically friendly towards humans from his cement pool. The makers of “Free Willy” would not have earned their millions without this astounding attitude of tolerance. We live in a world where filmmakers benefit from animal actors kept in captivity. These mammals portray on screen the ultimate freedoms that they will most likely never experience.

I know that if anybody kept me in a tank for decades I would be, shall we say…a touch cranky. Orcas are more than capable of killing a human being and they do have a taste for mammal protein. Dolphins in the wild attack sharks by knocking them with their hard beaks and could easily do the same to you and me. Have you noticed that they don’t?

There are other interesting things to learn…

Millions of people watched Free Willy. Let’s look at a mere thousand of them. Around 170 to 200 of every thousand people who watched Willy take to the waters of freedom will die of cancer. Few mammals on earth can say that this mutation of cellular material does not have the power to threaten their remaining days. Dogs, cats, mice, and cows are all prone to cancerous infiltrations.

Blue whales, however, are not.

Between 1909 and 1935 countless blue whales were killed and examined. Not one of them was found to have cancer of any kind. Why? How had Leviathan escaped a disease humans had been fighting for decades? An endocrine adaptation? Nobody knows. Japanese and Soviet whaling vessels almost wiped the species out in those dark days.

I do wonder though. What explains this lack of aggression in the cetacean, their seemingly optimistic outlook in what must surely be a miserable situation? Why does cancer not touch these lords of the deep? Why do they seem relentlessly friendly in the face of such torture?

We know that whales and dolphins are among the most intelligent creatures on earth (look into their eyes if you get the chance). Surely an intelligent animal would not submit to a life in an alien world, a world so far removed from the vastness of the oceans as to be another planet? After all even monkeys object to a life behind bars, an animal arguably less intelligent than a cetacean.

Could it be because they have no choice but to submit to alien hands? I doubt it. An orca could kill a person without even batting an eye. The consequences of such an action could only lead to further contemplation on my part. But why not simply avenge the loss of their freedom? It would after all, only take a split second decision. And yes they do know they’re not in the ocean anymore.

Personally, I vote for this explanation:

Whales play for three times
As long as they spend searching
For food

Delicate, involved games,
With floating seabird’s feathers,
Blown high into the air,

And logs of wood
Flipped from the tops
Of their heads;
Carried in their teeth
For a game of tag

Ranging across
The entire Pacific
Play without goals

Heathcote Williams

Even in captivity whales and dolphins play. Has the remarkable ability to engage in fun and games made these animals masters not only of the deep but of cooperation and tolerance too? Enabled them to ward off the horror of cell destruction? Helped them to regard humans with an indulgence they do not deserve?

In that case…we should play more.

Hiroshima and "Little Boy"

“My God, what have we done?”

Just seconds after dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, these words escaped the lips of Captain Robert A. Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay. Seconds after the purple uranium flash lit up the sky. Seconds after the ball of flame spread its tentacles into the flesh of Hiroshima’s people. Seconds before the explosion flattened the life and dreams of a city.

Just six hours earlier. August 6, 1945, 2:45 a.m. The Enola Gay, a B-29 airplane, named after pilot Colonel Tibbet’s mother, takes off from Tinian. Its destination? The clear blue skies over the city of Hiroshima.

The Enola Gay is weighed down by its deadly cargo. She is heavy and barely clears the runway. Shortly after take off Colonel Tibbets turns to his crew. “This is history, so watch your language. We’re carrying the first atomic bomb”

(Watch your LANGUAGE?)

At some point on their almost six hour journey the bomb, code named: “Little Boy” is armed by its crew. Then the wait for news from three weather planes sent out earlier to gauge weather conditions over Hiroshima, Kokura and Nagasaki.

Major Claude Eatherley tells them what they want to hear. His coded message informs the crew of the Enola Gay that conditions have never been better. The weather is perfect for dropping an atomic bomb.

The captain and crew hover above the city at 31 600 feet.

8:15 a.m. plus 17 seconds. The crew protects their delicate eyes with special goggles. It is time. The world’s first atomic bomb is unleashed on the city of Hiroshima.

At least 78 000 (probably many thousands more) were killed or injured in the explosion over Hiroshima. Those who escaped death stumbled through the flattened wasteland of a broken city, their flesh turned to melted, raw, charcoal, their hair incinerated. Their families were dead or would be maimed for generations to come. They would become known as the “hibakusha” and “higaisha” (victim) rather than “seizonsha” or “survivor”, a term believed to dishonor the dead.

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the construction of the bomb. “The decision was implicit in the project. I don’t know whether it could have been stopped”. He is reported to have said.

Yes. There were men who spoke against using the atom bomb in those dark days. A small group of scientists and military men suggested proving the bomb’s power on an isolated, uninhabited area of Japan, fighting an “ordinary” war or simply warning the Japanese of the existence of the bomb. But conventional warfare was considered too “time-consuming” to be viable, given the Soviet threat.

But the bomb over Hiroshima did achieve something. On August 9, 1945 The Japanese Supreme War Council met to discuss surrender. Unfortunately they were too late. At 11:02 that same day, a second atomic bomb was exploded over the city of Nagasaki. On September 2, Japan surrendered.

In his poem, “Morning”, Sankichi Toge tells us something about the thoughts of Hiroshima’s people after that ill-fated day:

“They dream:

That those swine in man’s shape
Who do not know how to use the power
From the earth’s center except for
Slaughter
Survive only in illustrated books for the
little ones.
That the energy of ten million horsepower
per gram, one thousand times as strong
as high explosive,
Be delivered, out of the atom into the
hands of the people,
That the rich harvest of science
Be conveyed, in peace, to the people
Like bunches of succulent grapes
Wet with dew
Gathered in
At dawn.”

So I ask you now. Was it worth it?

What do you think?

Save the World In Under 10 Minutes!

According to AskMarsVenus.com their team of Love Experts can help you to:

· Learn why men don't call...
· Learn how women unknowingly push men away
· Learn how to get a commitment from a man!
· Learn when it's time to leave a relationship
· Learn the truth about online dating, and how you can find online love!
· Learn to communicate your loving feelings without offending or pushing someone away!

In fact, I learned that at Mars Venus you can do it all!
“It doesn’t matter whether you are single, married, searching for love, or recovering from a broken heart, the Relationship Coaches at Mars Venus can help”. It is important that you don’t wait because:

“While it may sound crazy, you can change your life with one phone call. Our coaches can resolve some issues in as little as 10 minutes!” Completely confidential! Call now! You can even ask Dr John Grey (author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) a Personal Question in the “Love Q & A Section”
How exciting it would be, I thought, if I could find a Coach-For-The-Planet Web site!

Can you imagine…?

At EarthCoaches.com our experts can help you to:

· Learn why men destroy the earth and how to stop them!
· Learn how to prevent desertification, erosion, global warming and much much, more!
· Learn how to get a sense of international community. Yes it is possible!
· Finally understand the truth about species extinction and what causes it. Yes it can be prevented!
· Unravel the secrets of war and learn how to cultivate peaceful solidarity. You thought it wasn’t possible? Think again!
· Understand why it’s important to love your fellow man and how to get him to love you back!
· Explore the secrets of human existence in 5 easy steps.

“It may sound crazy but our Earth Coaches can resolve some issues in as little as 10 minutes!” Completely confidential! Call now! You can even ask Dr Highly Unlikely a personal question in the “Earth Q & A Section”

Me: “Dr Highly Unlikely, what is the reason mankind is so intractably stupid?”

Mutual Admiration?

Enter a more tribal me.

On my list of “Things to do Before I Die” you will find:

“Be canvas for bodypainter” (oh paint me, please) (really).

Tiger, snake, dragon, abstract, geometric, alien from another planet…latex? Either way it doesn’t matter. I’ve got time. It’s the journey I am interested in not the art. Surely there must be something intensely intimate in allowing somebody to paint your skin.

The semi-erotic aspect of allowing your skin to be colored and patterned appeals to the sensual parts of me. The very act itself seems to invite a kind of vulnerability that is quite foreign to me. I think I could learn something about myself that would help me in other areas of my life. Am I starting to sound a bit New Age?

By the way, none of this ties in with the point I am about to make.

I would like to be transformed into a tiger because I can relate to the courage, stealth, and power of this magnificent animal, same for the snake and the dragon. I suppose I admire them. The alien is just for fun.

I wonder if tigers in Siberia or India would fancy the chance to be painted to look just like us in a spirit of mutual admiration.

I doubt it.

I hope that we continue to need natural forces more than they ever need us. At least that way I know there is hope for the planet. Unfortunately the Custodian Ship is about to embark on its maiden voyage. Or so it would seem.

On Gough Island

I watch her at night. The small, grey creature with the twitching nose is quite delicate. From my vantage point in bed my house mouse seems docile and innocent. She scurries from room to room on a restless quest for food. Does she know me too, this little scrap of fur and tail?

At the very least she knows I like to eat cookies in bed; knows, too, that I am not a threat. No mousetraps or poisons lurk in unseen places. My house mouse knows who’s in charge here. Life is good.

On Gough Island the mice are fat and happy, too. But these are no ordinary mice. Incidentally, this is no ordinary story.

Gough Island is a remote British Island that you’ll find in the south Atlantic, should you choose to look for it. Home to some of the world’s most important seabird breeding colonies it has been well protected, until now. In what can only be described as a plague, “Supermice” threaten their untouched world.
Once ordinary British house mice, I am sure much like my own, these mice are evolving.

But how did British house mice get onto an island in the south Atlantic? Did they swim? Did some bizarre climacteric event cause these mice to suddenly appear on a far-off Island? No. Supermice arrived on the island the same way you and I would - by ship; probably in the 19th century.

As these first mice huddled and hid in boxes and luggage they surely had no inkling of the aberration they were to become. As their tiny feet made landfall and they hurried off into the nooks and crannies below they must have seemed a timid curiosity for the ship’s captain and crew.

These days there is no need to hide, or run or forage for crumbs on the beach. There is meat for the taking and take it they do. There are no natural predators on Gough Island, the reason for the success of so many of its seabirds. The reason, too, for their apparent demise.

Gough Island mice are now twice the size of their timid ancestors and no longer eat cookie crumbs. Instead they have developed a taste for meat. The meat of baby birds to be exact. Each and every year a million or more albatross, shearwater, and petrel chicks (some of which weigh as much as 20lbs) are eaten…alive. These baby birds have no defense mechanisms in place to deal with an attack of Supermice.

So they simply sit in their comfortable nests, wide-eyed and staring, as mice, four, five, six, eight, gnaw into their soft, warm bodies under cover of night. They don’t even know they are being quietly eaten alive. Eventually they bleed to death or their inner organs, heart, kidneys, liver, lungs are eaten until there is nothing left but a pile of feathers and bones. It takes several days.

Without the observations of ornithologists Richard Cuthbert and Erica Sommer we would not know what we now must accept about the humble house mouse. On an island with no human inhabitants or natural predators the house mouse reigns supreme. So why should we care? What does it mean for you and me?

Gough Island is important. Roughly 99% of the world’s Tristan albatross and Atlantic petrel live on the island. 99%. These birds might not survive the next few decades if these mice are allowed to run rampant. There are about 700 000 mice on the island. 700 000! and just 2000 Tristan albatross pairs remain. The ground-nesting Gough bunting is a small finch found nowhere else in the world. No prizes for figuring that one out.

Is anything being done about it? Money always helps, and it’s pouring in to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. More than £60,000 has been awarded by the UK government's Overseas Territories Environment Programme to figure out how to handle the Supermice plague.

I once saw an Atlantic petrel, gliding on the south east wind off the coast of Cape Town. A bird from the southern Atlantic - an extremely rare sighting in South Africa. She was not cute or cuddly, but I, personally, would like the chance to see another one. I hope I get the chance to do so. I hope she gets the chance to come back. We deserve the chance to see her. She deserves the chance to raise her chicks to fly free.

And so I am looking at her now, my house mouse, a little differently.

The World In a Black Dress?

I once spent three months working on an island. This mere speck of land suspended in the Atlantic Ocean is found just off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa and doesn’t look like much from air or sea. In fact, it is critically important.

Home to large populations of important local sea birds, Dyer Island is also a winter haven for many bird species from other continents.

Colonies of Cape cormorants, endangered African black oystercatchers, jackass penguins, skuas and terns all make their home here in one way or another. Nearby Geyser Rock supports a large colony of Cape fur seals and the great white sharks that feed on them. But that is not the point of this story.

Completely cut off from civilization and its comforts, life on an island is not easy. Simple things like water (bottled) and food (vacuum packed and frozen) become intensely valuable. Electric light (there was none) becomes a rather elegant sophistication and flushing toilets (difficult without water) a diamond-ray of luxury. Our one treat was a daily shower in rain water. If indeed you relished dousing your body in cold raindrops. I didn’t.

And so it was that while attempting to avoid my own demise from bacteria and the harsh African sun I set about saving the lives of young penguins by shoving a tube down their throats (a thing they did not thank me for). I tried, also, to save the lives of unborn cormorants, wrapped tightly inside their little shells.

These birds-to-be were at the mercy of an over-population of egg-stealing seagulls. With a bloodthirsty screech they would swoop down, grab an egg, and fly high in the sky, dropping the fragile oval onto the ground to retrieve the tasty embryo within. This is what I did and loved to do. But this, too, is not the point of this story.

The baby penguins eventually got fat enough to be allowed to return to their ‘natural’ environment (the one which nearly killed them) and so did I. Standing on the jetty, scratching my peeling skin (so much for sunscreen), and twisting my straw-like hair over my finger I watched the boat arrive.

Back I would go, to take-away food and traffic lights. As I helped tie the boat to the dock and loaded my backpack onto the deck I wondered which was better: this wholesome land of discomfort or the decadent world of modern conveniences. Still, I was almost home and the penguins would survive without me.

My boyfriend was waiting for me when I got home. In his eager little hands he held (oh magical of all objects) a little black dress. All shiny and strappy was this sexy little scrap of extravagance. I scratched my skin a little more and glanced sidelong at the shower. “Oh! Try it on!” he said, looking like a puppy-dog about to pounce on a Frisbee. So I did, just to please him.

I eased the silky fabric over my sun-scorched body, placing the straps just-so over my flaking shoulders. Sidling up to the mirror I looked for all the world like an old sea hag lurking inside a shiny black cocoon. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and tried not to think.

And then I knew that standing there dressed in something that felt entirely alien to me, I was a little like the world. Festooned in the shiniest of bells and whistles this world fails to hide its history. Like me, it does not forget where it has been. It retains the memory of all the roads traveled and all the battles won and lost.

A few hours later, a little pampering soothed my itching skin. Weeks after, the brown bits peeled off to reveal new, pink flesh. In a few weeks I looked almost like my pre-island self. Still, in the mirror today I saw wrinkles I know that little scrap of island gave me.

And finally I arrive at the point of this little anecdote. It seems to me that just like my boyfriend, eager to dress me in an outfit of his fantasies; we often fail to notice the real presence of the earth as we bury our heads in our own private sandpit. Which brings me to the Big Question: Do we really see the planet we live on?

The aim of “The Lava Lamp” is to illuminate this point somewhat. I am not going to try to answer big questions here, but I am going to ask them. I think we should all be a little more aware of how the natural world affects us - you in your little corner of the world and me in mine, and all of us on one big chunk of molten rock. We need to start thinking and talking about the planet we live on. Just a little bit.

Earthling 

Why "The Lava Lamp"?

Why “The Lava Lamp”?

Did you know that the earth’s centre is made of iron? That’s right, we live on iron! The middle of our world is enormous, almost the size of our moon. Temperatures in the earth’s core typically reach 5000 ºC. The planet we live on is…hot.

But there is more…

Surrounding the earth’s inner core is the mantle (are your geography lessons coming back to you?). The mantle is really the bulk of earth and is made up of (you guessed it) hot rock. So, in essence we are living on…lava.

This combination of iron and molten rock is the earth that feels so solid beneath our feet. It is here that the real work of life on earth occurs. As we sleep, powerful convection cycles continue to shape our earthly home. And yet our world is delicate.

I hope to illuminate just how fragile this iron-driven world can be if we let it.

Thus...”The Lamp”.

Whether it’s a monsoon in Mumbai, a sick pig in China, or a starving child in Niger, I want to bring you a little sense of what I believe to be the inter-connectedness of all things. The issues I want to shine a spotlight on here are the same things I am learning myself. There has to be something important about the way the earth impacts us. There must be something crucial in the way we impact on our world. Why then, don’t we pay it more attention?

Not all of what you will read here is new information. It is, however, information that is often either ignored, forgotten or that we simply just aren’t aware of. Not all of what I do on this Blog will matter, but I hope some of it will. I think we all need to become more aware of the planet we live on.

I am not taken to crumbling in the face of adversity. I am not that kind of sensitive, but I am sensitive. Being sensitive can sometimes mean doing nothing. Being sensitive can also mean taking action. It can also mean allowing others to take responsibility for their actions so that they might learn from them.

The earth might benefit from an increased sensitivity in all these forms as can we in our own lives.

Feel free to comment as much as you like. I would like this offering to be for all of us…on the hot planet.