The Voltage Gate

When We Let Nature Push Back

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:00:48 -0500

I finally had a chance to get out to Sweetwater Creek State Park last week, and we picked a perfect day for it. It was warm and slightly muggy, just the type of weather to bring out some of the Georgia wildlife I've been looking forward to seeing. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to film them, but I did get some pics of things that don't move (perceptibly anyway).

There was a small beaver dam only about a half mile into the walk, but unfortunately the beavers weren't around.

The ruins were perhaps the most interesting part of the park. This was once the New Manchester Manufacturing Company, a textile mill built in 1849, and primarily produced a type of coarse fabric called Osnaburg. In 1861, the Confederacy contracted New Manchester to produce materials for their soldiers' uniforms. On July 2, 1864, Union forces under Sherman's command captured New Machester (the company town and the mill), arrested its employees and burned it to the ground. The 70 or so employees were forced to take an "Oath of Allegiance" to the government, and were dumped off across the Ohio River, and told not to return south until the war was over or face imprisonment, showing just how sweet a guy Sherman really was.

All that's left of New Manchester now is these ruins and the millrace that led to the water wheel. The ruins are gated off (except on tours), so this is as close as I could get.

The way plants grow down is somehow different than up north. I'm used to mainly pine forests, the towering conifers spaced out among blankets of dead needles and sporadic fern. It's never too crowded in the mountain forests of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Georgia, at least in the areas I've been, is a little more populated.

There are entire swaths of sidewalk in my neighborhood that have been consumed by brush, broken by tree roots and barricaded by twisted vines. Midtown Atlanta is hardly neglected by the city, but the plant life down here just seems more aggressive, and forces you to look beyond the pavement and man made structures to the veritable tangle of vegetation between blocks, behind homes. It's easy to imagine that you can actually see the slow takeover, witness nature's reclamation.

It always brings my mind back to precolonial America, the idea that the entire Eastern US was covered in deciduous forest, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. It's the same feeling I get from that primeval, aboriginal fantasy that plays out in our minds when we think of alien landscapes towering ferns and sauropods. What would it have been like to walk in those ancient, untouched Appalachian forests? To hear wolves at night and know that you were most definitely alone in the wilderness, with the exception of the native tribes? Frightening, perhaps, but none the less, an exciting concept.

Americans thought of wilderness in interesting ways back then. The Puritans equated their flight to America from England with Christ's journey into the desert wilderness or the exile of the Jews. So it was considered an appropriate setting for a test of spiritual hardiness. When more and more settlers came to the country and started establishing communities, the wilderness was perceived as working against them, they worked to conquer it.

The American wilderness broke against the successive waves of development to the extent that we had to sanction areas to preserve so that they could never been exploited. Still those boundaries are tested, especially in the past eight or so years, and it seems like nothing is safe from our influence, directly or indirectly.

But there are those moments, that exist maybe only in my mind, where I see nature pushing back, breaking concrete and barring passage, and we just let it, and I get a great sense of peace from that.

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Why Blog? Seriously, Why Do I Even Bother?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:15:33 -0500

This question has been on my mind a lot lately.

My life has been turned around completely in the past year after graduation. I wouldn't say that I have changed, but my environment has, drastically. About this time last years is when I lost my ties to the academic community after graduation and I needed to find a job or to set up a cot in my parents' basement. It took a lot longer than I expected, but fortunately I am employed and quite far away from Maryland. In other words, in the past year, my priorities changed. Blogging was one of my top priorities for the first year I was doing it, but in the past year, that impulse has slowly faded.

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Pushing Back the Bioblitz

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:20:13 -0500

Another postponement: As I'm sure many of you noticed, the Blogger Bioblitz isn't going to happen as soon as I wanted it to. I tentatively scheduled it for this coming weekend, but I just got a break to start working on it, and it's a bit late to start advertising now.

In July I'll have some time off to get everything off the ground again and we can go from there. My apologies to everyone who's been gearing up and looking forward to it. I'll have more information after this coming weekend.

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Oekologie

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:03:40 -0500

Ian had some RL issues come up, so this months Oekologie will be a little late.

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Attenborough Speaks of Life and Science

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:45:32 -0500

I'm always ready to hear what David Attenborough has to say off the cuff, and if you're as much of a fan as I am, this interview is right up your ally. He talks of his life as a documentarian, poignant moments of his young life, his parents, global warming:

ANDREW DENTON - VO: Are you optimistic for the future of the planet?
SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: No, no. Ah well I, ah, I think it's very difficult to think that it won't get worse. I'm not necessarily saying that it's going to um become intolerable or that we're going to disappear or anything of that sort. Um but I think that living conditions will get worse.

[snip]

I think there will certainly be global warming, ah and as a consequence of global warming um a lot of there will be famines, ah there will be the amount of land ah on this earth which is suitable for growing food is a very small proportion of the earth's surface ah and it just happens to be the proportion on which we've decided to build all our cities um and I think that it will be becoming increasingly hard for people ah to get enough food and when on a worldwide sense. I mean there is a gleam of hope in that ah some people say that first of all we're going to peak on the audience uh on the on the population of this planet around 10 million though exactly why and whether it's that's really true I don't know but let's say it is. Ah and secondly that ah wherever ah there is female emancipation and literacy and the ability to restrict, ah popula-, ah birth cont-, ah,... then that population, the birth rate does fall, which is an argument for literacy and education and that you do that not only because it's the right of human beings but because the human population demands it.

And even creationism:

ANDREW DENTON: Let's talk about the imagination of human beings. You're strongly on the record as being opposed to the concept of creationism. Why do you feel so strongly about it?
I feel so strongly about it because I think that it is in a quite simple historical factual way wrong. Um the arguments I would ah put forward ah now that we are um more knowledgeable about the world as a whole, we know that every single society has want has found it necessary to get some explanation as to how human beings came into existence and Australian Aboriginal societies and or some sections of it think it was a great sort of rainbow serpent that arches up in the sky and which vomited up the first human being from a water hole ah and there are people in South East Asia who think that the world started as a sea of milk in which there was a great snake and demons were pulling at one end and ah and another lot at the other and they churned it and it turned into coagulations which human beings and there was a there was a people 3,000 years ago wandering around the Middle East ah who thought that ah, the, what happened there was a garden and ah a man from the sky created, m-m-made, moulded out of mud, blew into it and then and that was the first man and then in order to make the the woman he took a rib out of its side. Now all those things can't be right. How do you ah decide which you're going to believe or are you simply going to accept what it was your mother told you or your father told you? Ah well there are good historical clues to be found and they're found all over the everywhere and they're all the same everywhere. I mean the truth about our own bodies, about the shape of our own bodies and what they look like, ah the ah looking at fossils and the ground, looking at the rest of animal creation and so on ah and if you do that which is the same everywhere and if you no matter what nationality of people who look at that you come to the same conclusions which is that all life has evolved over a very long period of time and you can plot the course and the range in which it works so um simply from a taking an objective point of view ah the answer is that that life has evolved on this planet.

ANDREW DENTON: But of course not everybody does to come that conclusion and there are plenty of people who would say to you all very well David but God did that.

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: The idea that that when people say why don't you give God the credit for all these wonderful things. When people say that ah they nearly always want to ah as take the example of butterflies or hummingbirds or orchids or something, lovely. Um and I'm or I write back because they write to me on ah on this and say yes well it's all very well ah but of course um I think of a little boy sitting on a bank of the river in West Africa with a worm that's boring through his eyeball and which will certainly turn him blind ah within a few years. Now this God that you so-, that created every single species, he must presumably have created that worm. Now are you telling me that this is a Christian God who um has compassion and mercy for every individual one of us and that he did it he did it did it deliberately put a, in, ah make a worm and put it in the eye of this child. I, ah, this worm can't exist anywhere else. Well I don't find that compatible with the notion of a of there being a a merciful creator, God. If you're a creationist do you actually believe that this worm together with tape worms and everything else actually were created at the same time as Adam and that God said OK I'll make Adam and I'll give him, I'll kick him out with every, every one of these little animal parasites. Did he do that? And if he didn't do that, then what had happened presumably is that these worms related to other worms in the Garden of Eden and eventually moved into the ... in which case they then changed and so they couldn't live anywhere else as the condition is now. They've evolved. Dear me, there's a rude word.

ANDREW DENTON: If you don't see that as compatible with the concept of a merciful God that worm that bores into the eye, does that therefore that life has no meaning?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Ah it would mean that life ah has ah evolved. Ah I don't think we can know what the, whether there is a purpose of life um and the, ah, for all I know there are all kinds of divine purposes which are beyond our cognition.

ANDREW DENTON: We're in a time of great debate. Which is more powerful do you think, faith or knowledge?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: I think in the end you have to vote for rational thought because there are all kinds of beliefs that you can have, all kind of beliefs that are plainly ah wrong um and by that I don't mean religious beliefs, I mean you can believe all kinds of things about um ah what food to grow or or where to go or what dangers are or how to organise ah and you can believe all sorts of things that are wrong but it is much better that you should have a rational ah insight into what these various problems are, so rationality has to win over faith.

I think what I appreciate and respect most about Attenborough is his pragmatic worldview. He's not vicious or hypocritical or gloomy or theatrically pretentious like many of our modern heroes of science. He's just straightforward and honest.

It's nice to hear a lack of optimism from someone who is genuinely concerned with the environment. Why? Because I'm sick of hearing about political will and living green. It's a load of crap, and the NGO's, politicians and other proponents that push these memes know it's just a smoke screen. Do I want things to change? Yes, most definitely, by any means. Do I think the world's conditions will change for the better? Perhaps sometime in the distant future, but not before we have more problems. I'm happy that someone as prominent as Attenborough is acknowledging the reality of our predicament publicly.

As far as his comments on creationism, Attenborough has made this statement before, supported by the same specific example (the infected child). This, I think, has always been the strongest argument against a personal god, the idea that God blesses certain people with wealth and prosperity and leaves others to fend for themselves, suffer financially or through a life of physical or emotional pain.

When I graduated from college last year, one of my mother's friends congratulated me, sort of. Instead of praising me for hard work, she told me that God had blessed me with intelligence and helped me along through college. I couldn't help but be offended by this statement. First of all, if he blessed me with a brain and a degree, why not everyone? Does he love me more? Second of all, way to lessen my hard work. Last time I checked, God wasn't paying my bills and showing up for my tests and labs. What a stupid, insulting remark to make to someone.

Anyway, always good to hear from Attenborough. A note to the transcriber of the interview: what's up with the ah's and um's haha's? I'm all for accuracy, but that's a bit much. Reading all of these pauses is a lot different than hearing them. It breaks up the sentences into nonsensical phrases, especially when they're stringed together.

Tip: John

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Plant Sensitivities

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:45:13 -0500

Yet another great Monday morning read from Wayne (even if it was posted over the weekend): an explanation of the thigmonastic response, leaf folding in plants, and the differences between movement in animals and movement in plants.

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Evaluating the 2008 Farm Bill

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:00:55 -0500

Critterthink, the blog of the Center for Native Ecosystems in Denver, CO has posted a guide to the 2008 Farm Bill from a conservation perspective, highlighting what they call the good, the bad and the ugly. If you haven't had time to review the bill yourself, take advantage of the hard work these folks put into breaking it down for us.

The Farm Bill is an omnibus bill passed every few years, setting a policy toolkit for agriculture in the US. It has massive implications for industry, food, foreign policy and, for our purposes, conservation and the environment.

Here are a few things that stuck out for me:

The new Farm Bill includes the Endangered Species Recovery Act, which will provide tax deductions for private landowners that volunteer to conserve habitat on their lands for threatened and endangered species.

An excellent idea considering many of the trouble areas are on private lands, and NGOs can be a bit intrusive. The guilt trips haven't really worked.

The Wetlands Reserve Program will be reduced by about 25% to just 185,000 acres per year.

Not good. We have already eliminated well over half of the 215 million acres of wetland in the continental US, with some states nearly destroying all of the major wetlands within their lines.

And this bit is just far out of control:

High commodity prices and federal subsidies for corn ethanol production have created intense pressure to plow under remaining native grasslands. Conversion of these lands to corn production not only destroys important imperiled habitats that are home to numerous declining species of birds and other wildlife, it also releases large quantities of carbon stored in grassland soils. A strong Sodsaver provision would have helped counteract these pressures by eliminating federal support and insurance payments on newly broken out land. Sodsaver provisions were included in both the House and Senate bills, as well as the Administration's farm bill proposal only to be taken out during Conference committee. Now producers in the prairie pothole region will be incentivized to break out their lands for fear their Governors will opt into this program. At least parts of the permanent disaster relief program will likely exacerbate the problem by guaranteeing producer income on even the most marginal of newly broken lands. Taken together with the bill's significant retrenchment of the Conservation Reserve Program, the net effect will be to add to rather than ameliorate the pressure to plow under fragile native grasslands--destroying habitat while contributing to climate change by releasing carbon stored in the soils.

Climate change is also contributing to the invasion of brush into the native grasslands of more arid climes in this country. I'm reviewing a paper on the subject and should have something up about it today.

I spent most of my life in close proximity to bogs and marshlands, so the reduction of wetland protection bothers me a great deal. They are beautiful, unique environments where it takes a sharp eye to pick out some of the most brilliant curiosities you won't find anywhere else. I had the fortune of seeing firsthand different kinds of wetlands. The eastern shore of Maryland is home to salty, coastal wetlands where stalk legged herons pick through the muck for food. On the other side of the state, in the mountains of Garrett County, there are bogs that stretch miles, weigh stations of sorts, purifying waters that flow clean off the rocky heights of waterfalls downstream. In the fall, the sphagnum turns deep red, matching the autumn treetops and blueberry bushes that surround the thick, low lying mats of moss, soaked in the muddy bog. Sarracenia purpurea grows on little hummocks, small white flowers poke through the sphagnum and in a couple of months, when everything is covered by layers of snow and ice, the skunk cabbage will still be visible, producing enough heat through its own respiration to melt the winter around it.

I don't think I have ever stepped into an environment so alien, so unique as a bog or marshland, and I hope to track down some local wetlands in Georgia. Perhaps this time I'll have some pictures to go along with the descriptions.

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Strange Nomenclature

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:20:49 -0500

Wayne found a neat little site the other day and was kind enough to share it with us. Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature is a site of the strange and notable names given to organisms over the years. It's definitely worth a look.

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Geophagy in Amazonian Bats: Detox or Nutrition?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:45:36 -0500

I finally got around to blogging about this study published in PLoS One a few weeks ago, regarding geophagy in tropical species of bats. The study provides a nice overview of the literature and some of the potential reasons why they (and we) do it.

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AFKs and Guild Mergers

Tue, 27 May 2008 10:49:21 -0500

Ugh. It's been a busy couple of weeks, but it looks like it might be slowing down a bit. We had a few projects to finish up at work and Heather and I finally had a chance to spend some time together away from work. So excuse the short hiatus.

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I'm Huge on YouTube

Mon, 19 May 2008 11:00:28 -0500

Well, not really. But I'm surprised that I've racked up over 66k views and 86 comments from this video of a peculiar lion roar at the Pittsburgh Zoo, so I thought I'd share it here.

I think someone could start a series of blog posts/videos called "Stupid Things People Say at Zoos". You could literally spend one day at any zoo and have enough material for months of blogging. I swear that guy you hear in the background shadowed us all day.

I've got some more videos I've been meaning to upload, including one of the red panda in the Atlanta Zoo, and another of a polar bear from the Pittsburgh Zoo.

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Atlantans, I Need Your Opinion

Fri, 16 May 2008 13:23:56 -0500

This weekend, should I visit:

Panola Mountain or Sweetwater Creek?

I want to do some hiking/photography.

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Video Game Aggression Supported by "Scant Scientific Evidence"

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:50:24 -0500

Finally we have a bit of reason from the academic community regarding video games. Peter Kierkegaard of the University of Essex wrote a piece for the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry claiming that, according to his review of the literature, there's no direct evidence of real life violence being caused by video games:

Kierkegaard has studied a range of such research papers several of which have concluded since the early 1980s that video games can lead to juvenile delinquency, fighting at school and during free play periods and violent criminal behaviour such as assault and robbery. Evidence from brain scans carried out while gamers play also seem to support a connection between playing video games and activation of regions of the brain associated with aggression.
However, Kierkegaard explains, there is no obvious link between real-world violence statistics and the advent of video games.

The overarching claims that video games breed RL violence have always seemed a bit silly to me, especially the research that has been done involving deceptively pointed and contextualized measurements of blood pressure, heart rate and other physiological factors before and after playing games. The conclusions made in these experiments are that video games produce all of the biological signs of aggression or desensitization or addiction. The media takes an additional step, claiming that the research shows that video games are destroying the minds of our children and making people more violent. I'm glad Kierkegaard is challenging this conclusion.

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Oekologie #16 Is Up!

Thu, 15 May 2008 09:00:39 -0500

Cash has a fresh Oekologie for us, nestled in the Scientific Blogging community, at his blog, Science and Supermodels.

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Oh, Marietta

Wed, 14 May 2008 10:00:28 -0500

Marietta is a strange place. It's rather large and spread out, housing posh bedroom communities, shiny office buildings, chain restaurants and old, poverty-line neighborhoods all wrapped up together in noisy ribbons of highway. I drive through a portion of Marietta every day.

One turn off of my daily drive, some old button-pusher is selling Obama '08 tee shirts complete with a picture of Curious George eating a banana from his bar in Marietta. His intent is obvious, equating African Americans (or at least this particular African American) with monkeys, but the crank denies it, claiming he just sees a resemblance between the cartoon character and Obama. (You can hear more about it from other Sciblings here, here and here.)

I've been down here for a little over two months now and I'm still baffled by this area sometimes. To and from work I see a massive diversity of young professionals in and out of the city. There's also a huge and thriving gay community in the city and the surrounding area. All things considered, the supposed conservatism of the south has not really made itself apparent to me as of yet. Granted, most of the people I have met so far are not from Georgia originally. They're imports from the north like myself.

Still, I encountered much more racism and backward thinking in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and not just in the rural areas. I have spent equal time on both sides of these states and within their cities, and by far have encountered more of this kind of play innocent, "I'm not a racist but..." kind of attitude that this bar owner is selling. It's not just the south folks. I would expect to see something similar right smack in the middle of Fell's Point in Baltimore or at some dive in Norristown.

That said, there's obviously a lot of folks in this area who agree with the bar owner. Two reasons: Until yesterday, the majority of votes were "yes" in the poll at the AJC website that asked if the tee was okay and the bar owner has completely sold out of the shirts and is currently filling a waiting list of orders.

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