Greenie, Birdo, Foodie, and Karaoke nut

I have a bloody paid account. I need to use this feature.

This debate has come up a lot in my LJ reading lately. It has me bashing my head on a wall. Creationists insist students should be informed that evolution is a theory and should be taught ID along side it (as a science). Okay, no scientist worth their salt ever said evolution was not a theory. This problem crops up from people knowing nothing about the scientific method - which is the FIRST thing that should be taught to anyone studying science.

ID/creationism is not a science because it does not follow scientific method. They keep harping on about how there is scientific evidence to prove ID. I've yet to see any.

So, there are two options in my mind. Come back to reality and teach science in a science class and religion in a religion class. Or if they must let them teach ID as a science - with one condition. Make sure all the students are thoroughly educated on the scientific method first and give them ALL the info. Then you can let them decide as the creationists so desperately want. Anyone who knows about the scientific method is just gonna laugh at the ID argument as a science and it'll be placed back where it belongs soon enough.

[Poll #808986]

Brilliant LJ post by riverrealm, posted to naturalliving.

I had a lot of thoughts after reading the comments to the recent post about black widow spiders. I was intrigued that people in a natural living community feel it's justified to purchase and use Raid because of their fear of spiders. It makes me think about the origins of industrialized societies' phobia of predators. It seems there have been pre-industrial societies who lived with predators, and respected/valued the things they do to keep our planet in balance, without resorting to spraying poisons that end up in the earth, the water, on our skin, and in our lungs.

Predator phobia seems to originate from various sources--

the monotheistic attitude (reinforced by the bible) that we are created in g*d's image and therefore superior to nature and should tame/control it (making it easy to turn various species into the Other if convenient),

the moralization of nature (some animals are "good," some are "evil"),

people like Peter Benchley writing inaccurate books like Jaws (and Spielberg making a movie of it), spawning profit for some and the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of sharks,

similarly inaccurate books/movies about spiders (made for profit),

the concept of hunting/killing for sport (bears, wolves, foxes, sharks, etc being particularly valuable trophies),

the profit to be made from cattle/domesticated animals (making it "okay" for ranchers to shoot wolves, jaguars in South America, etc etc),

the industrialized lifestyle where the main animals we interact with are "cute" domestic animals, making any other animals/insects seem ugly/frightening/killable in comparison.

Everyone agrees that predators are dangerous and can do great harm. Same with cars (in fact cars kill and maim many more people than spiders), but I don't see people freaking out and spraying poison everytime they're crossing the street and a car appears.

Most, nearly all, predators do not specifically and aggressively target humans. More often, humans do not bother to learn about the predators' behavior in order to reduce the chance of meeting one. Many times, an animal is going about its business and happens to cross paths with humans-- it is not stalking the human, and is often just as frightened as the human upon meeting. (Peter Benchley later wrote about diving and encountering a great white shark face to face. The shark turned around and swam away. Part of me wished that shark had behaved like Jaws.)

I feel it's important to examine why we're so afraid of certain animals, to the point where we are rendered senseless by fear and poison seems like the answer.

This pretty much expresses my sentiments exactly. But you'll see that when you read my comments on the post.

About a week ago the sea wall at Saemangeum Peninsula in Korea was finally closed.

This pretty much spells doom to a large majority of the Great Knot population, which feeds on tidal flats that now no longer exist. A lot of other waders are also put in great jeopardy by this scheme, and the Spoon-Billed Sandpiper faces extinction within a few years.


A Great Knot on it's way to freedom after being banded in Broome.


A Spoon-billed Sandpiper - one of the world's cutest, and rarest waders.

For years injunctions have been placed on the Korean Government preventing them from completing this seawall, but always they appeal and somehow win.

Why do they need to "reclaim" (as if it was theirs in the first place) this land? Well, first it was gonna have factories on it. Sorry boys, these are tidal mud flats. Need a reminder of what you're going to be trying to build on?

( Here's a shot to give you an idea. )

( Or you might attempt to build a factory on this. )

"Okay," they say, "We'll put golf courses on it!"

Hello, oceanic mudflats. Salt galore. Just TRY to grow grass on it. And the building infrastructure to go with the golf courses (WHY do you need more golf courses?), again, mud.

Now of course, the Korean Government can't be made to look stupid over this. They HAVE to save face at the expense of anything. So it was pretty much a case of, "Well we're gonna do it anyway because we can do whatever we want NER!" And they finished it, and claim they're gonna put rice paddies on it. PLEASE people, NEVER EVER buy Korean rice.

WHY do these people get away with such hideous environmental crimes? It's 100 times worse than any war crime. Hitler may have attempted to eliminate a religion, but these people are eliminating entire species by the bucketload and getting off scot free. It makes me sick.

An e-mail sent to Ricki, my boss at the BBO, from Danny Rogers sums it up I think.

Hi Ricki, All is as well with me as can be expected right now, given that I'm at Saemangeum and they closed the sea-wall yesterday. Such a tragedy. Over 100,000 shorebirds using the system at the moment, and in the next couple of days they are going to find out that they aren't just experiencing an unusually neapy tide, but that the tide will never come in again here. We're going to have some bad population declilnes over the next couple of years, I think mostly in Eastern Australia.

Black news, I'm afraid.

Danny Rogers was been researching waders over the past 20 years or so.

A little more info on Saemangeum

[20:09] Gemfyre> desirable - understanding of current environmental issues
[20:09] Gemfyre> well DUH!
[20:10] metaphyzica> environmental understand and control is a necessary role for all human beings on the earth
[20:10] metaphyzica> the world is falling into peril
[20:10] metaphyzica> save the whales
[20:11] Gemfyre> land rights for gay whales!
[20:11] metaphyzica> lol
[20:11] metaphyzica> and dolphins...they too have their place in gay society
[20:11] metaphyzica> but im a pro-gay supporter
[20:11] metaphyzica> so i should not joke
[20:12] Gemfyre> well dolphins are technically whales anyway
[20:12] * Speedy has quit IRC (Exit: )
[20:12] Gemfyre> and dolphins appreciate the joy of sex with both genders
[20:12] Gemfyre> as do bonobos
[20:12] metaphyzica> dolphins r awesome
[20:12] * Gemfyre goes back to working on her application
[20:12] metaphyzica> whats a bonobo
[20:14] Gemfyre> some say it's a subspecies of chimpanzee, others call it a full species
[20:14] Gemfyre> homo sapiens closest relative
[20:14] |Jade|> also called pygmy chimpanzee
[20:14] Gemfyre> Google it, fascinating critters
[20:14] Gemfyre> yes, that's them
[20:14] Gemfyre> very horny lil' critters
[20:15] metaphyzica> do u believe in evolution or intelligent design
[20:15] metaphyzica> they must be related to humans then
[20:15] Gemfyre> true advocates of "Make love not war"
( See the rest of the geeking )
[20:29] Gemfyre> shit why couldn't I write essays like this?

"...we resolved to make a nature documentary entitled "You Should Have Been Here Yesterday", which would feature shots of the perches that rare species had just vacated only moments before."

...I took a photo of the fence post the Rosy Starling sat upon - about a year after it was seen there.

Today I saw some of the big advantages of homeschooling.

A kid in our shadehouse/camp kitchen doing his maths and spelling and occaisionally being distracted by things like wallabies and goshawks at the bird bath. That is brilliant, being able to take your kids around the world at any time and still teach them the basics.

You can also alter what you teach. I almost butted in when dad was trying to explain how to spell "month" because it's spelled with an o and not with a u which would make sense. I wanted to explain that the word month is derived from moon because it's a full cycle of the moon, but I decided not to because dad was doing the teaching. But if I have a kid and teach them spelling I'd certainly teach them word roots as well if I knew them - it just makes understanding words and spelling so much easier.

That cuckoo wasp is still up to her dastardly deeds.

This is one of the prettiest insects I've ever seen. Plates in irridiscent/metallic yellow, green and blue.

Ah yes, and I am working on a new LJ icon for myself. ;)

That Science at the Movies thing I went to last night was okay.

They had loads of trouble with it, first the laptop wouldn't talk to the projector, and lots of other things went wrong. Lucky the presenters were also kinda stand-up comedians so they saved it a bit.
I won 2 Starburst lollipops for knowing Stegosaurus was spelled wrong in a scene from Jurassic Park. They paused it there and everything, too easy. It's spelled "Stegasaurus" in the scene.
Too many kids. "Lollipop if you can tell us which movie this is!" etc. Lots of yelling over bits, pretty annoying.

The science wasn't as in depth as I would have liked either. I didn't really learn much new. I did however discover a few things to look up.

- A National Geographic mockumentary on what kind of aliens could theoretically be out there. Forget all this movie-driven humanoid crap. This thing takes into account conditions on the planet (or moon) and then figures how creatures may have evolved in this. Looks fascinating.
- The alligator in Lake Placid is not an alligator. A quick look at its teeth gives it away - this is a crocodile. I haven't seen Lake Placid - it looks a bit too stupid for me.
- They didn't cover Dante's Peak. *sulk*

Immediate obliteration zone of the KT meteorite was around 2000km. Okay, few questions – have these been researched?
- Did ANYTHING in that area survive? Did all families evolved in that particular area get obliterated?
- Has research been done to see if the species that occur there after the KT boundary arrived many years after that event – suggesting life slowly migrated back into that area.

Made my brain tick anyway, which is why I went. I like how they said that the only exactly true thing in one of those movies is that politicions know jack shit about science/the environment and that to me is truly terrifying. These people have the lives of millions (human and otherwise) in their hands and they're just destroying our home.

Over the last couple of weeks a drama has been unfolding right outside my bedroom. A mud dauber wasp was busily building a nest on the back of Stu’s chair. We watched her as she hovered about with fat green caterpillars and manoeuvred them into the tiny holes in the compartments she had built. She would then plug the holes. But the chair, being a chair, got moved around a bit and eventually our poor wasp gave up after preparing two compartments.

The next morning I saw what I assume was the same wasp busily building a circle of mud on a shell outside Chris’s door. By that evening I noticed to my amazement that it was a completed compartment. These compartments give any human made pottery a run for its money with craftsmanship (or should that be craftwaspship?) Each one is wide and round at the bottom and tapers to a tiny protruding hole at the top, the sides are perfectly smooth. She brought a paralysed caterpillar for each hole and shoved it inside before laying eggs upon the unfortunate grub. She got a little ambitious one day and try as she might, couldn’t get the huge caterpillar she had into the hole. She built about a 5 compartments – approximately one a day until she was done. I thought that was it.

The next day she was still flying about and I noted that she was building up an outer wall of tiny clods of mud. In the end she created a rounded dome of mud over the compartments inside. This dome is nowhere near as smooth sided as the compartments – it’s built for defence, not beauty. Inside this fortress her young can hatch and munch upon a fresh caterpillar – they are paralysed, not killed – and take the time to peacefully metamorphose into adult wasps before breaking free and continuing their own lives. For a few days the mother wasp hovers around and sees off anyone who looks too close.

That was about a week ago. Mother wasp has obviously decided her babies are safe inside her fortress and has gone off to do whatever mud-dauber wasps do after laying eggs. This morning I noticed a small hole in the top of the dome. The telltale sign of the cuckoo wasp. Later this afternoon we saw her in her metallic green-and-blue glory going about her work.

The cuckoo wasp digs a perfectly round hole in the nest of the mud-dauber, deftly removing the hardened mud. She then uses a long ovipositor to lay an egg in one of the compartments next to the egg of the mud-dauber wasp. We watched as she dug, then turned around and laid her eggs. Once her egg hatches it will eat the caterpillar stored for the use of the mud-dauber larvae. It may even eat the mud-dauber larvae itself. Either way, the mud-dauber loses.

I don’t know how long wasp larvae take to metamorphose and break out of the nests, and I don’t know the telltale signs of them having done so. But I will be watching this nest like a hawk to see if I can find out.

Awesome critters. I used to be terrified of anything waspy, but I'm quite used to having these guys buzz around me, I haven't been stung yet.

One began to build a nest on Stu's chair outside his room. We watched as she brought caterpillars back and shoved them into the tiny hole of the segment. Then the chair got moved. She abandoned the nest.

However the next morning she was busily beginning a compartment on a shell just outside of Chris's room. In the morning the groundwork was laid, by the afternoon a complete compartment with a little hole was finished. She must have shoved a caterpillar or two inside, laid an egg and sealed it up, before building about 4 more segments on the same nest. I thought she was done when the hole in the last segment was closed but no.

Today she flew back and forth carrying small clods of mud, and built the nest up to a smooth, round surface. It's now a thick walled fortress for her developing eggs. There's still a possibility of cuckoo wasps invading anyway. I'll keep and eye out and let you know when the babies emerge, I'll know because they will dig holes in the nest to get out again.