27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
The Progressive Effects of Education
Homo sapiens, “knowing man,” is the species that uses information to resist the rot of entropy and the burdens of evolution. Humans everywhere acquire knowledge about their landscape, its flora and fauna, the tools and weapons that can subdue them, and the networks and norms that entangle them with kin, allies, and enemies. They accumulate and share that knowledge with the use of language, gesture, and face-to-face tutelage.
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The mind-altering effects of education extend to every s... 1 
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notes28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Geological and Social Impact of the Himalayas
When you look at the planet from low orbit, the impact of the Himalayas on Earth’s climate seems obvious. It creates the rain shadow to beat all rain shadows, standing athwart the latitude of the trade winds and squeezing all the rain out of them before they head southwest, thus supplying eight of the Earth’s mightiest rivers, but also parching not only the Gobi to the immediate north, but also everything to the southwest, including Pakistan and Iran, Mesopotamia, Saudi Arabia, even North... 1 notes
notesThey scorch the Earth and scorch the societies that live there. (Note: I disagree, this is overgeneralizing and ignores social ills of societies in more temperate climates)
09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Elegant Description of Environmentalism
Man has generally been preoccupied with obtaining as much 'production' from the landscape as possible, by developing and maintaining early successional types of ecosystems, usually monocultures. But, of course, man does not live by food and fiber alone; he also needs a balanced CO2-O2 atmosphere, the climactic buffer provided by oceans and masses of vegetation, and clean (that is, unproductive) water for cultural and industrial uses. Many essential life-cycle resources, not to mention recreat...Folksonomies: environmentalism
Folksonomies: environmentalism
1 notes
notesWe need more than production from the land, we need a clean environment because we live in that same land.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Are Humans Parasites?
A lot of people ask, 'Do you think humans are parasites?' It's an interesting idea and one worth thinking about. People casually refer to humanity as a virus spreading across the earth. In fact, we do look like some strange kind of bio-film spreading across the landscape. A good metaphor? If the biosphere is our host, we do use it up for our own benefit. We do manipulate it. We alter the flows and fluxes of elements like carbon and nitrogen to benefit ourselves—often at the expense of the b...
1 If so, then we are very bad at it since we appear to be killing our only host.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Venus is Hell
Venus thus seems to be a place quite different from the Earth, and alarmingly
unappealing: Broiling temperatures, crushing pressures, noxious and corrosive
gases, sulfurous smells, and a landscape immersed in a ruddy gloom.
Curiously enough, there is a place astonishingly like this in the superstition,
folklore and legends of men. We call it Hell. In the older belief – that of the
Greeks, for example – it was the place where all human souls journeyed after
death. In Christian times it ha... 1 notes
notesVery similar to it as Carl Sagan describes the planet.
09 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Ancient Observation of the Changing Landscape
So it is clear, since there will be no end to time and the world is eternal, that neither the Tanais nor the Nile has always been flowing, but that the region whence they flow was once dry; for their action has an end, but time does not. And this will be equally true of all other rivers. But if rivers come into existence and perish and the same parts of the earth were not always moist, the sea must needs change correspondingly. And if the sea is always advancing in one place and receding in a... 1 notes
notesFrom Aristotle's "Meteorology". He sees that rivers dry and flow and move.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
How the Path Became <em>the</em> Path
A crushing backload, indeed: fiddlehead ferns, downy woodpecker, pickerel, granite flake. Canada mayflower, moonrise, bluebirds, spring peepers, monarch butterflies, glacial scratches on bedrock, and, of course, the human history of my path, which in its transformations over the centuries encapsulates in many surprising ways the history of our nation and of our fickle love affair with the natural world. Step by step, year by year, the landscape I traversed became deeper, richer, more multidim...Folksonomies: nature naturalism
Folksonomies: nature naturalism
1 notes
notesHow Raymo's walk become more and more infused with meaning.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
It Takes Numerous Experts to Explore a One-Mile Path
Of course, no one person has the time, knowledge, or skill to learn everything about a landscape, so in my walks 1 have relied upon the labors of generations of botanists, ornithologists, zoologists, geologists, ecologists, meteorologists, astronomers. cultural historians, and a host of other specialists who have studied with particular care some feature of the natural world. Whenever possible, I queried people I met along the way: the old people who grew up in the landscape, who knew it in i...Folksonomies: expertise specialization
Folksonomies: expertise specialization
1 notes
notesChet Raymo lists all the individuals he needed to consult to fully understand the path he walks each day.
