Ten Thousand Visits!

Today, theforcethat had its 10,000th visitor. I think it is fitting that the 10,000 visitor was not an American but rather a person from Turkey.

Click on the image to see the visit details.

I remember my brother's radio studio in a converted coal cellar with all his transmitting equipment and being with him as he scanned the dial for new contacts. He would get all excited when he made a new contact and when he received a post card with the call letters of the contact to post on his wall.

How communication has changed in about 50 years. Are we any better off? In some little ways yes, but at times I think we are in a race between increased understanding fostered by increased communication and increased intolerance as nationalistic and fundamentalist reactions against the modern world become more violent. It's not always clear who is winning.

My 10,000th visit was from a person who came to my site via a search for flowers and I hope he or she enjoyed the water lily from my pond. I would like to hope that increased understanding is winning... one click at a time.

Can an Endemic Species be Invasive?

In a recent post I referred to Red Cedar as an invasive species saying:

"So what we have in red cedar is a species, that has at least some of the characteristics of more traditional invasive species: adaptability to many habitats, suitability as an early successional species, rapid dispersal, ability to crowd out other species by direct competition for resources by altering microclimate and indirectly by allelopathy."

Today I received an interesting response from another Kansas Blogger, Gaia Gardener, who took issue with my characterization of Red Cedar as an invasive. Gaia argues:

"I think that labeling this plant as invasive is just an excuse by certain elements of the agricultural community to 1)justify attacking the species with herbicides and 2) to try to shift blame for groundwater and surface water shortages away from human overappropriation and overuse, often by those same agricultural interests.

"I know that redcedars are a nuisance, and I've pulled and cut out many a cedar seedling or sapling myself. In fact, we've just bought a new home, complete with a 5 acre pasture that has redcedars speckled liberally throughout it. And we've started cutting them out. But a weed is just a plant out of place, and I love redcedars in their proper place. Let's not put a negative label on a plant that encourages us to "throw out the baby with the bathwater," metaphorically speaking."

I have lots of sympathy for Gaia's point of view here. But successful weeds are a bit more than plants out of place. Successful weeds often have high reproduction rates, good methods of dispersal, rapid growth rate, often some attribute such as allelopathy that gives them an advantage of other species-exactly the sort of characteristics that we attribute to invasive species. Gaia and I think agree that the root cause of Red Cedar's invasive tendencies is poor land management, especially failure to understand the role of fire in prairie maintenance.

The fact is though that human activities are altering the ecosystems of our planet providing opportunities for endemic species with invasive (OK use weedy if you want) tendencies to spread and these species may prove to be less benign than Red Cedar.

For instance consider the diatom, Didymosphenia geminata recently discussed in a Christian Science Monitor report. The report notes that even where the species is endemic and usually a minor component of the flora of cold streams the diatom has become a major problem, prone to major blooms even in warm water streams.









Now outbreaks of this diatom historically occur from time to time, but appears that it's characteristics lend themselves to invasiveness in ecosystems that are excessively disturbed. Perhaps there is normally some keystone species or grazer that keeps this species down. This diatom also has recently invaded parts of the world such as New Zealand where the species is not endemic, as shown to the left.

Image from http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/didymo showing a young colony of "Didymo".







The United States' EPA has additional background information on this diatom at http://www.epa.gov/Region8/water/didymosphenia/archived/didymosphenia.html

So it seems to me that regardless of whether you call them invasive or weedy or tramp species, the fact is species with characteristics similar to classic invasive species are going to become a greater and greater issue for us as human mismanagement of formerly natural systems gets more intense.

By the way the individual organism is quite beautiful; it is the mats that are the problem. Here is an individual Didymosphenia from the EPA site. Could we have predicted that this individually beautiful diatom would respond to human disturbance as an invasive?

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Ice pictures

Water is amazing stuff for such a simple compound, endlessly varied in form. Today I was out at Baker Wetlands with my son and I got caught up in shooting pictures of the thin sheets of ice I was encountering. So here are some of the best with links to larger images on my flicker photostream.



I love all the contrasting textures in this image, the leathery surface of the leaf against the slick half melted ice. Reminds me of the woodland pools of my home in New England where in March you can find wood frogs calling. No frogs here.



The fluorescent looking blue in this ice ledge is of course the sky.



Another ledge with little stalactites of water that had refrozen on the under surface of the ledge.



This is an odd shot of an air bubble in a puddle trapped underneath the ice. What makes it odd is that the entire boundary between the air and the thawed water was apparently still frozen. This possibility wasn't clear to me in the field, so I will have to watch for this sort of thing and check to see if my interpretation is correct.



This is another bubble shot. Notice all the little bubbles including some that appear attached, yet unfrozen to the main bubble. It isn't clear to me if the big bubble still has a frozen boundary or if the smaller bubbles just have not merged with the big one because of surface tension. This sometimes happens.

Lenten Message: The Theology of the Worm

Lent is usually a difficult time for me because it is when I enter the Dark Night of the Soul. I reexamine myself and wrestle, more so than usual that is, with questions about how I relate to God, the Church and to Creation. It is especially difficult this year because I have not been happy with the direction that my Church has been heading...and yes- even though I quite frankly have not been comfortable going to Mass for sometime- it is MY Church, being a cradle Catholic. Even when I was most detached from the Church about 30 years ago I would still circle round, reread the Passion or the works of Thomas Merton or St. John of the Cross.

(Image credit: Caenorhabditis elegans, an important organism in modern genetics.
http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/newspub/apr01rpt/Microarray.asp)

This year I have not delved into the mystical aspects of the Church's tradition, but find myself drawn into the here and now of a Church that is sliding backwards deeper into that selective amnesia that characterizes much of modern Christianity, an amnesia furthered by the link between Christianity and the selective politics of today's social conservatives. What am I supposed to think of a Pope for instance who uses the sacrament of communion as a political weapon? Who rather than reaching out to the GLBT community and encouraging integration into the Church and the development of committed relationships the Pope says:

"[W]hen civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has
any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be
surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational
and violent reactions increase."

So GLBT people are not entitled to the basic protections of society and the basic right to form committed relationships. It is as if the Pope only cares about getting to heaven and would rather jettison large parts of the Body of Christ that don't match his conception of what that Body should be like. We are told by Paul that the body has many parts but how long will the Body survive if its parts are jettisoned?

The Church's role as a teacher is not being called into question. Recall that most Catholics at least in the United States, don't agree with important aspects of the Church's teaching on birth control, abortion and the use of condoms for instance. Certainly the Church Hierarchy needs to explain it's positions on these issues. But a patient teacher does not throw a student out because that student doesn't understand a particular lesson, nor does the teacher fail to heed the student's arguments and forget that the teacher can learn from the students. Can the Church not learn from the students? The Church's inflexibility on any number of issues is excused as upholding objective or absolute standards. Any bending is seen as giving into relativism.

For instance, in my last post I mentioned a Cardinal Biffi who views any attempt at dialogue and consensus as being due to the Antichrist as if the Rule of Faith is completely set, and inerrant and were one to grant that much, that only the hierarchy can interpret faith for us. Of course my beef here is nothing new historically, but it is sad that this same hubris is found all through out Christianity and leading to divisiveness in the non Catholic Christian world as well.

What got me motivated to write today was a response to my last post from Elissa Malcohn over at Chronicles from Hurricane Country. She writes in response to my post:

"From what I can see, and the way I interpret the scriptures, Jesus never called
himself Christ; it was a title given to him by others (Simon Peter being the
first to do so). "Christ" means "someone anointed as a ruler" according to my
Random House College Dictionary.

Instead, Jesus referred to himself as
Son of Man, reserving the accolades for God: "...whoever humbles himself like
this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:4, New
International Version)Humility versus Ruler.And Mark 10:43-45 -- "...whoever
wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be
first must be slave of all.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be
served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."Slave versus
Ruler. Ergo, "Antichrist" can conceivably mean a state closer to what Jesus had in
mind. Which makes being a pacifist, ecologist, and ecumenist quite all right."

She makes a good point. In the Catholic tradition, the the Pope is often referred to as the servant of servants. And during lent, the "slave to all" idea and the concept of God becoming human...son of man is emphasized a lot.

But people are not very good about generalizing across domains. so the Christ as the "Prince of Peace" or "Lord of All" too often gets emphasized. From my way of thinking, even the resurrection upon which Christians pin their hope, is not really at the center of Christ's message. I notice in the New Revised Standard Edition of the Bible, the phrase "son of man" is rendered "mortal" or "human" implying to me the insignificance that we have. God becoming human is at the center of the message of Christ and teaches us by example and parable how we are to treat each other. None of the political hot button issues really matter then in terms of the what God did and what we are to do. For persons of good faith may disagree on them.

Probably the best statement of what God did is not in the Bible but in the wonderful Purcell song "Lord What is Man?". This is one of my favorite pieces and it is based on an anthem attributed to Dr. William Fuller the Lord Bishop of Lincoln (1608-1675) which reads in part:

Lord, what is man, lost man,
That Thou shouldst be so mindful of him?
That the Son of God forsook his glory, His abode,
To become a poor,
tormented man!
The Deity was shrunk into a span,
And that for me,
O wound'rous love, for me.
Reveal, ye glorious spirits, when ye knew
The
way the Son of God took to renew lost man,
Your vacant places to supply;
Blest spirits tell,
Which did excel,
Which was more prevalent,
Your joy or your astonishment,
That man should be assum'd into the
Deity,
That for a worm a God should die.
Oh! for a quill, drawn from
your wing
To write the praises of th'Eternal Love;
Oh! for a voice like
yours to sing
That anthem here, which once you sung above.

Hallelujah!

The deity shrunk into a span...that for a worm God should die. So God became as a worm to try to touch us little worms. How petty- all the hot button issues that some conservatives love to use to divide the Body of the Church become seen from the vantage point of a God who became a worm, like us.

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Evangelicals aren't the only ones...

...to have a split over environmental issues. In my own Church, we have folks such as this (fortunately retired) Cardinal Biffi saying pretty weird things:

"the Antichrist presents himself as a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist. He convokes an ecumenical council and seeks the consensus of all the Christian confessions, conceding something to each one."

This is the supposed claim of a 19th century Russian Philosopher, Vladimir Solovyev.

Biffi then goes on to note that there are absolute values such as truth and beauty and the good, but curiously- solidarity, love for peace and respect for nature are merely relative values. I wonder if Biffi can spell Seamless Garment?

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Laboratory Safety Bush Style...

Now I know from his pronouncements that our President is not exactly scientifically literate, but here he is attempting to get a coveted Darwin award, presumably in the company of people who ARE scientifically literate and understand a modicum about lab safety.

I hope the jar just had water in it but this image certainly is not promoting laboratory safety!

By the way I tracked this down since I thought that maybe this is one of those Urban Legend type things but the incident indeed did happen on a recent Bush visit to Novozymes .

So you might hurry on over to the Novozyme web site and see the video of his visit before the company realizes that the video is maybe not the best thing for potential investors to see.

Tip of the antennae to Matt at the Behavioral Ecology Blog for this gem.



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A Matter of Priorities...

According to an article in the the New York Times the Policy Director of the National Association of Evangelicals, Reverend Richard Cizik, has come under attack for speaking out about global warming and other environmental issues.

Who is attacking him? Why non other than Focus on the Family's James Dobson, Gary Bauer from Coalitions for America among others.

Why are they attacking him? Well because they believe that Cizik is using Global warming as a distraction from the great moral issues of our time time.

What are the great moral issues of time? You guessed it: abortion and homosexuality.

I guess the things we are doing to our planet and the social justice issues associated with our behavior as a civilization aren't important.

Cizik is motivated by the idea that we ought to be good stewards of creation as noted in this article on belief net, which calls this idea "creation care". Those of my readers who might be tempted to give Dobson and company any moral credence might be interested in this statement about Creation Care from the Evangelical Environmental Network. This statement has been endorsed by a wide range of prominent Evangelicals.

I doubt that Cizik's beliefs about homosexuality and abortion are much different than Dobson and company's but clearly he takes a broader view even of these issues. For instance he recently unfurled a banner at an anti abortion rally that said "Stop mercury poisoning of the unborn" according to an article on the Audubon Society's website.

Of course some opponents of Cizik and the Creation Care idea are busy noting that one of the past presidents of the National Association of Evangelicals is Ted Haggard, who recently was involved in a homosexual sex scandal. For instance at The National Center Blog, Amy Ridenour is all too eager to paint Haggard as a liberal global warming activist.

My world view and religious assumptions are quite different than Cizik's but he and other Evangelicals are beginning to understand that environmental issues do have a moral and ethical component and that morality is much more complex than a myopic preoccupation with a few hot button issues that should be between a person and their God.


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Mendel's Garden #12 March 5

...over at the Behavioral Ecology Blog . The call for submissions is here and submissions are due on March 4.

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