Nature programming to look forward to (tonight)

Television programming not to miss tonight comes as Frozen Planet on the Discovery channel, according to the Associated Press article, "Frozen Planet thrills with its shots, stories," by Frazier Moore.
    The seven-part series's producer is Alastair Fothergill, who also produced the documentaries The Blue Planet (2001) and Planet Earth (2006). Moore writes that the series

takes a fresh look at Antarctica as well as its north-end counterpart, the Arctic, in seven gorgeous episodes premiering tonight on Discovery. And while you may not be ready to dismiss filmdom's stars and screenplay writers as unnecessary, Frozen Planet makes a strong case that Nature—captured in the wild—can equal Hollywood for epic sweep and drama.

    The version of this AP article that I read in a morning paper includes the information that

The many up-close-and-personal scenes they bagged say as much about Frozen Planet as the vast scope of the enterprise, which can be expressed in remarkable statistics: four years in production; 38 camera persons; 2,356 combined days in the field; 1-1/2 years at sea; 840 hours trapped in blizzards.

Apparently a work of love, and a work we can look forward to loving. David Attenborough was heavily involved; he does the narration.

In awe of Nature's four billion years on Earth

Where does the inorganic realm of non-life end and life begin?

From Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986), by Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) and Dorion Sagan (born 1959):

Cyanobacteria

The tasks undertaken by bacterial teams amounts to no less than the conditioning of the entire planet. It is they that prevent all once-living matter from becoming dust. They turn us into food and energy for others. They keep the organic and inorganic elements of the biosphere cycling. Bacteria purify the earth's water and make soil fertile. They perpetuate the chemical anomaly that is our atmosphere, constantly producing fresh supplies of reactive gases.

    The British atmospheric chemist James Lovelock [born 1919] suggests that certain microbially produced gases act as a control system to stabilize the living environment.  Methane, for example, may act as an oxygen regulation mechanism and ventilator of the anaerobic (oxygenless) zone, whereas ammonia—another gas that reacts strongly with oxygen and therefore must be continually resupplied by microbes—possibly plays a major role in determining the alkalinity of lakes and oceans. A so-called greenhouse gas (like carbon dioxide) that lets in more radiation than it lets out, thereby increasing the temperature of the planet, ammonia also may have been important in the control of the ancient climate.
    Methyl chloride, a trace gas in the earth's atmosphere, may regulate the ozone concentration of the upper atmosphere, which in turn has an effect on the amount of radiation which reaches the surface. This influences the further growth of gas-producing microbes. The list goes on and on. The environment is so interwoven with bacteria, and their influence is so pervasive, that there is no really convincing way to point your finger and say this is where life ends and this is where the inorganic realm of nonlife begins.
    ...For tens of millions of years excess oxygen was absorbed by live organisms, metal compounds, reduced atmospheric gases, and minerals in rocks. It began to accumulate in the atmosphere only by fits and starts. Many local populations were killed off, and many adaptations and protective devices evolved. From blue-green cyanobacteria that produced oxygen part-time emerged grass-green bacteria that emitted it continually. Thousands of species of aerobic photosynthesizers arose adapted to rocks, hot water locales, and scums. But by about 2,000 million years ago, the available passive reactants in the world had been used up and oxygen accumulated rapidly in the air, precipitating a catastrophe of global magnitude.
    People are gravely worried today about an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from 0.032 to 0.033 percent caused by our massive burning of fossil fuels...The Archeo-Proterozoic world saw an absolutely amazing increase in atmospheric oxygen from one part in a million to one part in five, from 0.0001 to 21 percent. This was by far the greatest pollution crisis the earth has ever endured. [pp. 92-93, 107-108]

47 Days to Retirement

Today I told a professional colleague in South Florida (whom I've never met but with whom I've had a pleasant relationship working via email) that I had 47 days left until retirement. He kindly sent me best wishes and three wry quotations about the uncertain advantages of retiring:

"A retired husband is often a wife's full-time job." –Ella Harris
"Don't play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty." –Harry Vardon
"The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off." –Abe Lemons

    Yes, even though most retired people I've talked with put a positive spin on retirement, there are two sides to it. I'll be exploring them soon.

Coming back on Monday

A colleague at work often thanks me for my "hard work" on our projects. I told her this morning that I could say the same thing about her work. "I'm sure that you work at least as hard as I do," I said.
    I added, however, that I didn't consider it hard work. "It's fun," I said, "it's entertainment."
    Not to be outdone, she said, "That's why you're so good."

A little later, another friend said he was motorcycling down to Myrtle Beach tomorrow. I said that was great, "Maybe you'll have such a good time at the beach you won't even want to come back on Monday."
    "I never want to come back on Monday," he said.

It occurred to me that the "it's fun" philosophy might be expressed in terms of always wanting to come back on Monday.
    Life is a bowl of fruit, isn't it?

Photo taken with my Motorola Droid (cropped and "negativized" there too)

"Up against the sky!"

The sky was above Sinjuin^* Bautista, California.

Taken on my afternoon walk along the canyon road

Taken from our hosts' kitchen sink this morning

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* If "Sinjin" is the way "St. John" is rendered (in English) when used as a name, then "Sinjuin" [SIN-win] for "San Juan"?

Sinjin is actually an attempt to represent phonetically the now rare name "St. John." As a given-name, "St. John" is sometimes pronounced as [SIN-jin] or [SIN-jun] in the UK. I presume this to be a relic of Norman-French origin (see also Sinclair for St. Claire). [–Behind the Name]

    This came up because our Google Navigator directed us to "turn right onto Sinjin Canyon Road"—in the same voice that the Google droid will read a book aloud to you, highlighting each sentence visually as it proceeds....

At JFK

Photo made with Droid on Feb. 21

In the late seventeenth century, or so I'm told by a family genealogist, the first "Dean" from whom my father descended lived for a time in Jamaica, New York.

Sunlight on a blossom

...makes me happy, as John Denver more or less said¹.

Original photograph
(taken on January 29 with Nikon D60, hand-held)

Poster edges filter effect (Photoshop)

Dry brush

Cutout (a Salvador Dali effect?)

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1.  

Another response to Valentine's Day's sense of fire & life?

Henry Suso (1300-1366)

When I facetiously referred to self-flagellation in "Morris & Ken have made up" (January 27), I identified the scourge as a possible instrument of my self-mortification for offenses committed.
    I had, of course, heard of more serious methods, such as Flannery O'Connor's character Enoch Emery's wrapping barbed wire around his chest (Wise Blood, 1952). I hadn't, however, heard of the following "irrational extreme to which a psychopathic individual may go in the line of bodily austerity," as William James mildly put it in The Varieties of Religious Experience: Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901, 1902. James quotes "the sincere Suso's account of his own self-tortures. [Henry] Suso, you will remember, was one of the fourteenth century German mystics; his autobiography, written in the third person, is a classic religious document" [p. 281 of the Library of America edition of William James: Writings 1902-1910]:

Motomynd: Quick post-Valentine's Day communiqué

Ahh, Valentine's Day...the time for love and romance!
    And:

• The busiest week of the year for private investigators.
• February 15 is the most popular day for people to start an affair, because they were disappointed with February 14.
• There is a website devoted exclusively to married people wanting to have affairs. It employs 120 people and does a billion $$$ of business a year.

    There is something thought-provoking and tragic in all this....
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Note from Moristotle: Could this be the site Motomynd's third bulleted item refers to: http://www.ashleymadison.com?

Brilliant parody

Hellfire?

To the Editor of the Durham Herald-Tribune: Thanks for printing James R. Hardy's entertaining letter on February 11 ("First presume everyone who's convicted is guilty"¹). Bravo for your astute recognition of his brilliant parody of a frantic religious lunatic. He got the tone just right, and the ignorant self-righteousness. Bravo to Mr. Hardy, too. Of course. [Published on February 15²]
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1. Mr. Hardy's brilliant parody of a frantic religious lunatic:
   

   First presume everyone who’s convicted is guilty
   In Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12 and Leviticus 24:17, God commands murderers of his creatures to be put to death.
       State Democrat legislators enacted a very bad law, the so-called Racial Justice Act. The Act allows convicted murderers to reverse their death sentence to life in prison. Republican legislators voted to repeal the act, but Gov. Perdue vetoed the repeal.
       Perdue and Democrats have sinned against God by disobeying his command to put murderers to death. When sinners die, God sentences them to hell, where they remain forever; there is no escape.
       Democrats and Perdue have served Satan, embraced and become a party to the sin and evil of murder.
       I ask Perdue and Democrats who enacted the Act: Is coddling murderers worth spending the remainder of your existence in hell, where the fire is not quenched?

2. 

The book-wallah

This book-wallah is not an itinerant

This morning's commute reading (on a Triangle Transit Authority bus from Hillsborough to Chapel Hill^*) included the following "hilarious scene depicting the itinerant 'book-wallah,' in [George Orwell's 1937 novel] Burmese Days," quoted by Christopher Hitchens in his 2002 biography, Why Orwell Matters:

His system of exchange was that for any book in his bundle you gave him four annas, and any other book. Not quite any book, however, for the book-wallah, though analphabetic, had learned to recognise and refuse a Bible.
    "No, sahib," he would say plaintively, "no. This book" (he would turn it over disapprovingly in his flat brown hands) "this book with a black cover and gold letters—this one I cannot take. I know not how it is, but all sahibs are offering me this book, and none are taking it. What can it be that is in this black book? Some evil, undoubtedly." [p. 124]

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* Thursday was my last day for commuting by van from Mebane. My new work schedule dictates longer hours on my employer's premises.

Finches and a Wren ahopping

Whose heart doesn't dance at the sight of a feisty crowd of frolicking, feeding birds! I was taking a break yesterday from writing a community-watch newsletter when I happened to look out into the back yard. I had to set up my digiscoping equipment right then and there (even if I don't get the best results taking photographs through two panes of glass).

Click to enlarge photos, none of which has been retouched

Then Carolyn thought she saw "our Woodpecker" on a tree directly behind the feeders. I took many but none was focused. Either the double-paned glass really played havoc at 200+ feet or my camera was focusing on the wrong thing amongst all the branches.

Siegfried's at home at Elliotte's

Elliotte Manning is one of Siegfried's favorite people. He's the only groomer Siegfried has ever known, and almost the only one Wally ever knew—except that sometimes Elliotte would suddenly disappear from whomever he was working for and we would have to do a bit of detective work to discover where he'd gone.
    So weren't we happy when he started his own business, over two years ago (September 2009)? Elliotte's Pet Spa & Salon, Inc., in Durham, North Carolina.
    His partner James took the lucky picture of Siegfried mid-lick on Wednesday.
    May you be there for a good long time, Elliotte & James.

Practice for school

Today I asked the dishy young lady who uses an office near mine in the afternoons if she was an intern from the campus. "No," she said, "I'm a temp. In the mornings I teach primary school."
    After I lowered my eyebrows I asked her whether they were giving her interesting work to do here.
    She grinned. "Well, it's appropriate for my other job. I've been filing things alphabetically."

Morris Dean to announce officially later today

It was a difficult but quick decision

No, not that he will not be a candidate for President of the United States. Morris will today notify the appropriate officials at his place of employment that he plans to retire effective this May 1, a year earlier than he had previously been anticipating. Moristotle has been authorized to say so, unofficially. Here, now.
    Details later.

8:43 p.m. Now is later. In my own voice now.
    HR and my supervisor have been notified and tomorrow I begin to complete the paperwork that needs to be submitted (of which there seems to be a huge amount).
    For several months I've been committed to a retirement date of May 1, 2013, and that felt good. I didn't anticipate that making the date official (by involving HR) would make me giddy with a sense of relief and lightness.
    A fellow van commuter, a dishy blonde in her mid twenties, said, "God, I wish I could retire!"
    I said, "Honey, you've got a few years to go. I've been in the 'work force' [a term I can't quite take seriously, it so demeans the human spirit somehow] for forty-five years."
    Eighty-nine days to go. And counting.