I finally got around to publishing an image gallery tab for the blog collecting all of the artwork Heather has done for TVG over the years. I've put links to the posts they were draw for and dug up some raw scans where I could. I'll continue to update it as images are added.
For those interested in her other work (painting, sculpting, other illustration projects), you can visit her other blog and peruse.
And the LORD said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.
And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.
And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold, the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.
And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.
And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the LORD which he commanded Joshua.
And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.
And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcass down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day.
-Joshua 8: 18 - 29
When Captain John C. Frémont first beheld the Joshua tree, he saw not what the Mormons are purported to have seen in its limbs: the spear-tip of Joshua in its sharp leaves, bent and raised at the enemies of God, relentlessly held aloft until the inhabitants of Ai were slain, stones of the city were heaped the scattered desert rocks and their king was dangled from the upper reaches of a tree perhaps not so different than the giant yucca itself. Frémont noted only “their stiff and ungraceful forms” and declared the Joshua tree “the most repulsive tree in the vegetable kingdom.” His contempt was mild compared to the violent myth behind the honorific given by the Latter Day Saints.
When a pack mule toppled over a cliff, Frémont lost his botanical collection, including the information gathered regarding the Joshua tree. The yucca was finally described by modern science in 1871 after samples were collected during a War Department railroad survey of the Southwest.
First I want to draw attention to the more recent comments of this post about the state of the oil in the gulf. Beyond my feeble attempt to explain the situation, we've had some folks drop by with a bit more experience. Thank you for that.
Found this post yesterday about the "brown residue" that's been found in different areas along the coast:
Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University scientist conducting oil analysis for the federal government, sent two researchers to accompany the newspaper to areas where the brown material was coming ashore in early August. Water and residue samples were collected from the tip of Dauphin Island to about five miles down the Ft. Morgan peninsula.
“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s got some hydrocarbons in it, but it does not match the oil from the Deepwater Horizon,” Overton said, adding that he has received samples collected by federal officials in other places that appear similar. “I have to think it is biological in origin.”
Monty Graham, a marine biologist with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said that just because the material coming ashore has a sheen associated with it and contains some of the components of crude does not mean it flowed from the broken well.
“At some level, somebody better define oil. This three letter word is starting to get pretty complicated,” Graham said. “Are we looking at the remnants of oil, of oil that has been worked over by the microbial community? The microbes take what they can, then just leave the parts they can’t eat. That’s likely happening out there on a microscopic level. I’d speculate that’s what we are seeing.”
Overton said he believes that the brown material is likely plankton that ate bacteria that has been consuming some of the oil floating in the Gulf.
Dr. Samantha Joye of UGA and her team headed back to the Gulf as well. Probably a good idea to keep an eye on the Gulf Oil Blog for any new insights:
We’ll be conducting many operations similar to those we conducted on our May/June cruise but our collaborators be doing a lot of work at higher trophic levels to see how oil and gas are moving through the food web and we’ll be collecting sediment cores to see how much oil is on the bottom. Our cruise plan is ambition. We want to locate and map (again) the mysterious deepwater plumes that were discovered on the Pelican cruise in May. We will be further documenting the plume’s distribution and following up the rate measurements we did in May/June with additional rate measurements and a suite of geochemical constituents.
Matt Nisbet has a post up at Big Think referencing a brief interview with Peter Groffman regarding the recent open-access science communication issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Both are worth a read. I was linked in the article (this post, a brief review of some of the content), and while I appreciate it, I do want to clarify and perhaps expand the gist of my post.
Nisbet’s post stated that I feared the “dumbing down” (his words, not mine, despite the quotation marks) of the science for public consumption. I think that certainly represents one of the concerns of framing critics, especially those in the scientific community. Personally, that’s not high on my list. I’m sure the ESA and associated scientists will be able to represent the science behind the problems and potential solutions plainly and efficiently.
The post I wrote was an attempt at expressing a general aversion for comprehensive marketing schemes and questioning, when it comes to the “humanities” portion of the plan, whether or not honesty – in worldview, philosophy or fiction – was important enough to preserve in its entirety. Some of the papers in the publication sounded like every business case, proposal and requirements doc I’ve ever read or written, which is fine, by the way; it’s typical. I’m sneering because documents like those are mostly industry fluff and setup language for the real meat, which can be boiled out rather easily and comprises a very small portion of the actual verbiage. We toss charts and graphs into technical documents to fill them out and give a visual for the sake of color or flow (or because it’s a standard) instead of representing an accurate depiction of process.
I’m being stubborn. Ultimately I think it’s sad and reflects poorly on us that people in positions of influence believe these kinds of campaigns are the key to reaching "the public," that only through demographical media saturation can we ever hope to teach science and instill environmental stewardship. Advertisers have to petition tribally to encourage us to buy; McDonald’s runs unique, culturally stereotypical commercials for WLITE 101.3, WURBAN 105.7 and WROCK 99.1 and it’s permissible to assume that the listeners to those stations are okay with being pigeonholed. I’m usually told something along the lines of “What do you expect?” or “You think this is new?” or “It’s just personal preference. I actually like that commercial,” and probably rightly so. It just doesn’t sit well with me.
Dan has an awesome video (Attenborough) of a gang fieldfares defending a nest from a young raven via dive bomb defecation.
Johnny is back at Ecographica with a post about squirrel frogs.
Mark has a great post about "Preachy Twits" - the frequent emails he gets from atheists and Christians trying to convert him. Great comment from Razib in that thread as well about whether or not people's beliefs defines them - contributes largely to their identity - and how that influences dealings with others' beliefs. It's an important distinction.
Another great vid at Everyday Biology: Exploding sphagnum moss in slow motion.
DIY solar power units for $799? Sounds like a step in the right direction.
The Nats signed 17 year old prodigy Bryce Harper to a $9.9 million contract.
The gulf oil is moving into "deeper waters," according to USF scientists where phytoplankton and other basal organisms will be threatened. I've been reading stories like this for a week, scientists concerned about the settling oil on the ocean floor and the potential toxic effect on the food chain.
This is in addition to GA scientists stating that 80 percent of the spilled oil lingers in the Gulf's waters, starkly contrasting the claims by the US gov that it's mostly gone.
Grandma pulled open the door to the minivan, ankle wiggling in the wet sod. Her cheeks were flushed when she mumbled “Out,” trying to pull her low heel from the mud. I pushed at my sister’s back, sitting on the edge of my driver’s side bucket seat. She was tangled in her seatbelt, and reached back to slap me before falling out of her seat and stumbling out of the van and up the road. I was close behind her.
There was a small dark lump toward the shoulder side of the lane. Hannah ran quickly ahead. She ducked the low hanging branches from the thick growths of laurel that covered the slopes framing the road. Over my shoulder, grandma was following.
“David Jonathan,” she said, taking a breath. “Get your sister.”
Got a heads up from Grrl regarding the wall of text from my feed and I think I have it fixed. It involved a change of the feed address, so I believe you'll need to subscribe to the new feed addy instead.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Had to write something down about this before bed. I was out reading by the fire, and just as it fell black, I heard crunching from the edge of the tent pad. I assumed it was Oscar eating until I noticed him passed out next to my chair. Heart skipped a beat.
I flashed the light on the food bowls, nothing. Waited about a minute and watched two little pointed ears rise up from behind the timber frame. A raccoon, of course.
So we watched her (him?) finish off the last of Oscar's dinner* not ten feet away. The dog couldn't have cared less. He glanced over, sniffed and went back to sleep.
All the food - even the locked cooler - is now locked tightly in the car. Last year we had a murder of crows in the hamburger buns while we napped, this year a bold little kibble thief. On the right foot it seems.
*Oscar's bowl has been thoroughly cleaned and he's vaccinated.
Finally getting away for the weekend after a busy few months. This is the first time we've gone camping this year, and I have a ton of reading to catch up on. It's funny; day to day I have a difficult time plowing through books like used to. I still read just about every night, but it takes me a lot longer. So when I have a chance to do nothing - when I have a choice to do nothing - I usually try to get back to reading with the intent to finish.
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Voltage Gate is the personal weblog of Jeremy, a sci/tech writer with a background in biology. For a list of the more substantial posts written here, select a category from the Selected Posts drop-down.
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