Nice photo from Texas Storm Chasers:
David Reimer’s great shot of lightning, about 10:00 p.m. in Norman, Oklahoma, July 11, 2013
Good luck, and keep ’em coming, David!
(Mark Twain observed: “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.” (Letter, August 28, 1908))
3 Comments | 
Art, Nature, photography, Science | Tagged: Art, David Reimer, Lightning, photography, Science, Texas Storm Chasers | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore was elected vice president largely because he was on the ticket with the very popular Gen. Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War.
About 15 months into his presidency, President Taylor took ill after presiding over July 4 festivities in blazing heat. He died on July 9, 1850; Vice President Millard Fillmore took the oath as president the next day, and served out the term. 163 years ago today, Millard Fillmore served his first day as President.
Millard Fillmore in an 1850 lithograph by Francis D’Avignon after a photograph by Matthew Brady (unclear if this was before or after his ascending to the presidency) – Library of Congress image
Taylor had encouraged New Mexico and California to draw up state constitutions, which would have disallowed slavery in those states. To southern leaders who threatened secession, Taylor promised to personally lead the army that would hold the union together by force, and personally hang those who had proposed rebellion.
Fillmore had presided over the Senate during months of furious debate on issues that always seemed to come down to slavery. Because he didn’t hold to the views of the Whig Party which had elected the Taylor-Fillmore ticket, even more than Taylor had strayed, the cabinet resigned. Fillmore appointed Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, and proceeded to push for compromise on issues to avoid war. His machinations helped get California admitted as a free state, but left New Mexico as a territory. His support of the Fugitive Slave Act alienated even more Whigs, and by 1852 the Whigs refused to nominate Fillmore for a term of his own. He left office in 1853, succeeded by Franklin Pierce.
Fillmore’s greatest accomplishment as president, perhaps, was his sending a fleet of ships to Japan to force that nation to open up to trade from the U.S. The political furor over the Fugitive Slave Act, the Missouri Compromise, and other issues around slavery, tend to eclipse the memory of the good that Fillmore did.
Nota bene: Controversy surrounded the death of Taylor. Because he had threatened southern secessionists and incurred anger from several other groups, from the time of his death there were rumors he had been poisoned with arsenic. Officially, the cause of death was gastroenteritis; popular accounts note that he had, in the heat of July, drunk milk and eaten cherries and cucumbers. Certainly strep, staph or other bacteria in the milk could have created a problem. In 1991 a team led by George Washington University Law Professor James Starrs exhumed Taylor’s body from his Louisville, Kentucky burial plot, and tested his remains for arsenic at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Analysis presented to the Kentucky medical examiner indicated arsenic levels way too low for a poisoning victim.
[This is an encore post, in parts.]
More:
“An Available Candidate: The One Qualification for a Whig President”. Political cartoon about the 1848 presidential election which refers to Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott, the two leading contenders for the Whig Party nomination in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Published by Nathaniel Currier in 1848, digitally restored. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Despite the cynicism of many , Zachary Taylor won the Whig Party nomination, and the presidency. Taylor died just over a year after his inauguration.
3 Comments | History, History images, Millard Fillmore, Presidents, Slavery | Tagged: California Statehood, Compromise of 1850, History, Millard Fillmore, Presidency, Presidential Succession, Slavery | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Brilliant piece from Grant Snider — history teachers, this should be a poster in your classroom, no? Art teachers?
Grant Snider’s “American Art, exploring a country through its paintings”
In the course of a junior-level, high school U.S. history class, students should experience each of these works, and many others. This is one whimsical way to work with serious and uplifting material, no?
Mr. Snider has a short essay — inspiring — and the information on each of the works he portrays, at the Modern Art site (I’ve added links below, here).
Since that formative vacation, the art museum is always one my of first stops in visiting a new city. In the comic above, I’ve curated my ideal collection of 20th-century American art. Here’s a list of works in order of appearance:
Ellsworth Kelly, “Red Blue Green”
Wayne Thiebaud, “Refrigerator Pie”
Stuart Davis, “Colonial Cubism”
Andy Warhol, “Campbell’s Soup Cans”
George Bellows, “Dempsey and Firpo”
What are your favorite American art works, and what do they portray or demonstrate that you like?
More:
8 Comments | Art, Cartoons, Education, History, Learning, Museums, Travel | Tagged: Art, Cartoons, Education, Grant Snider, History, Learning, Museums, Travel, U.S. history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
From Smithsonian Magazine: The Colorado River Runs Dry A boat casts a forlorn shadow in a dry river channel 25 miles from the river’s historical end at the Gulf of California. Photo by Peter McBride (Go see the entire slide show; spectacular and troubling images)
As John Mashey has been quietly but consistently warning us for some time . . .
From ClimateRealityProject.org:
Join us and stand up for reality. http://climaterealityproject.org – This film exposes the parallels between Big Tobacco‘s denial of smoking’s cancer-causing effects and the campaign against the science of climate change — showing that not only are the same strategies of denial at work, but often even the same strategists.
If you watched that all the way through, odds are high you’re not a denier. If you can’t watch it, you really should think about it, hard.
More, and useful resources:
5 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Environment, Environmental protection, Global warming, Politics, pollution | Tagged: air pollution, Big Tobacco, Climate change, denialism, environment, Global warming, John Mashey, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Yosemite’s Nature Notes #20 (I’m behind): A short film discussing the astonishing manifestations of granite in Yosemite National Park.
El Capitan in Yosemite National Park viewed from the Valley Floor — one of the more famous granite formations in the Park. Wikipedia image
The film is simply named, “Granite.” Steven Bumgardner produced the film.
Yosemite’s chief formations are granite, an igneous rock. Much of the terrain was carved in the granite by glaciers and glaciation — so what Yosemite shows is how fire and ice combine to make rock, to make rock formations, and to make rocks of astonishing beauty.
(This is not a place to bolster creationist ideas. This is real science, looking at God’s handiwork first hand.)
A North Carolina university makes field trips to Yosemite? I’d love to take that class!
Watching this film, you get a sense of how important it can be to the education of our children to travel in the summers, to take vacations to our National Parks, and to places like Yosemite.
Where are you taking your kids this summer? Kids, where are you going?
Enjoy it. Geology lessons are often fun, and this one, on film, is more fun than most.
More:
Close-up of granite from Yosemite National Park, valley of the Merced River – Wikipedia image
Leave a Comment » | Geography - Physical, geology, National Parks, Natural history, Nature, Travel, Yosemite | Tagged: California, geography, geology, Nature, Science, Steven Bumgardner, Travel, Yosemite National Park | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A burned home is seen in an unidentified neighborhood west of Highway 89 in Yarnell, Arizona July 3, 2013. Reuters, via International Business Times
From a much longer story you should read by Felicity Barringer and Kenneth Chang in The New York Times, Tuesday, July 2, 2013, page A13 of the National Edition:
Since 1970, Arizona has warmed at a rate 0.72 degrees per decade, the fastest among the 50 states, based on an analysis of temperature data by Climate Central, an independent organization that researches and reports on climate. Even as the temperatures have leveled off in many places around the world in the past decade, the Southwest has continued to get hotter.
“The decade of 2001 to 2010 in Arizona was the hottest in both spring and the summer,” said Gregg Garfin, a professor of climate, natural resources and policy at the University of Arizona and the executive editor of a study examining the impact of climate change on the Southwest.
Warmer winters mean less snowfall. More of the winter precipitation falls as rain, which quickly flows away in streams instead of seeping deep underground.
The soils then dry out earlier and more quickly in May and June. “It’s the most arid time of year,” Dr. Garfin said. “It’s windy as well.”
The growing season also starts earlier, so there is more to burn.
“The fire season has lengthened substantially, by two months, over the last 30 years,” said Craig D. Allen, a research ecologist at the United States Geological Survey station at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.
The fire potential is exacerbated by the past policy, beginning around 1900, of putting out all fires. Fires are a natural way of clearing out the underbrush. With that natural rhythm disrupted, the flammable material piled up, so when it did catch fire, it ignited a giant fire that burned hotter and wider.
This total-suppression policy began to ease as early as the 1950s, when scientists began to see fire’s role in ecosystems. It was completely abandoned nearly two decades ago.
But in the 1970s, the Southwest entered a wet period, part of a climate cycle that repeats every 20 to 30 years. “That wet period helped keep a lid on fires,” Dr. Allen said. “And it also allowed the forests to fluff up.”
Since 1996, the climate pattern, known as the Pacific decadal oscillation, has swung to the dry end of the spectrum, and the region is caught in a long-term drought.
Stephen J. Pyne, one of the nation’s leading fire historians and a professor at Arizona State University, said, “How we live on the land, what we decide we put on public and private lands, how we do things and don’t do things on the land, changes its combustibility.”
In many landscapes, he added, “you’ve enhanced the natural combustibility” by building hundreds of thousands of homes in fire-prone areas, and for years suppressing natural fires, allowing a buildup of combustible materials like the “slash” debris left behind by logging.
The article explains how this is the dry phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation; so we can hope the wet phase will be wet enough to suppress fires. However, the simple fact of additional effects brought on by PDO does not mean warming goes away when the PDO switches phases. Note especially the lengthening fire season over three decades; incrementally, warming is making these well-known cycles, warmer, and too often, destructive or more destructive.
More:
Sign welcoming visitors to Yarnell, Arizona, with wildfire in the background: “Elevation 4,850 ft., ‘Where the desert breeze meets the mountain air.'” Sedonaeye.com image
Monthly values for the Pacific decadal oscillation index, 1900 – 2010 Black line:121-month smooth Data source: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1 Comment | Science, Politics, Global warming, Climate change, Cost of Green, climate_change, Forestry, Environment | Tagged: Politics, Climate change, Science, Global warming, Forest Fires, Arizona, Forestry, Wildfires, Bandelier National Monument, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Stephen J. Pyne | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s David Barton‘s screw-up of a John Adams letter:
David Barton’s “Wallbuilders” website featured John Adams’s description of July 2 — but conveniently edited out Adams’s own words, to make it appear as something else. Barton misses the history! What sort of anti-American cuts the words of John Adams when Adams defends liberty’s heritage?
Other groups make the same error as David Barton’s Wallbuilders, but without obvious cover ups, restricting their comments to “Independence Day.” Accuracy helps, always.
“The . . . day of July, 1776?” What day?
[Barton’s site changes annually, but it keeps repeating the cover-up.]
Faithful readers, and good students of history know that John Adams thought, in 1776, that July 2 would be celebrated as Independence Day. Why? July 2, 1776, was the day the 2nd Continental Congress voted to declare the colonies independent of Britain, and no longer under the rule of the Crown or Parliament.
The Declaration of Independence — the press release explaining Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence — sat ready to be discussed. The Congress did not adopt the Declaration until two days later, on July 4.
Our Independence Day celebration falls on the date of the adoption of the Declaration, not the date of the actual resolution declaring independence.
This is a point of great humor among historians. Even John Adams, more prescient than most soothsayers, could not predict accurately when Americans would celebrate independence. Here at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, we often make a post on or about July 2, noting that humorous discrepancy.
That’s interesting. It’s inspiring to know these august figures, near-gods in the American pantheon of the 21st century, got things wrong. It’s humorous. It’s good history.
What in the hell was David Barton thinking?
What evil purpose is he trying to serve by hiding real history, in such a bizarrely petty way? Why create a hoax when the words themselves support the point you’re wishing to make, that John Adams thought Americans should celebrate independence?
Screenshot of David Barton’s webpage, showing his bizarre butchery of Adams’s words.
Sheesh! He comes so close to getting something accurate, but he can’t resist monkeying with the words of the Founders. David Barton reminds me of the guy who cheated at golf so much that, one day when he hit a hole-in-one, he wrote “0!” on the scorecard. A man who will lie to us about one of the most famous letters in American history will lie about anything, for fun.
More:
‘David Barton said what?’ By the time this portrait was painted, Adams knew Americans would celebrate the 4th, and not the 2nd; he seems to be glaring right at David Barton, to tell Barton to quit jerking around with history – John Adams, ca 1816, by Samuel F.B. Morse (Brooklyn Museum) Wikipedia image
4 Comments | 1776, 4th of July, Declaration of Independence, Historic documents, History, Hoaxes | Tagged: Accuracy, David Barton, Declaration of Independence, Famous quotes, History, Hoaxes, John Adams, Misquotes, Revisionism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s a day of tradition — oddly enough, since we are in reality a very new nation, and Lee’s resolution to declare independence from Britain came on July 2.
A soak in Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub is nothing if not a steeping in tradition. Fly your flag today, to celebrate the independence of the American colonies of Britain.
Fourth of July: NPR has already read the Declaration of Independence (or will soon, if you’re up early), PBS is ready to broadcast the Capitol Fourth concert (maybe a rebroadcast is available, if you’re off at your own town’s fireworks — check your local listings), your town has a parade somewhere this weekend, or a neighboring community does, and fireworks are everywhere.
At the White House, traditionally, new citizens are sworn in — often people who joined our armed forces and fought for our nation, before even getting the privileges of citizenship. Fireworks on the Capital Mall will be grand, with the White House hosting a few thousand military people and their families from some of the best views. Traditionally, five photographers, chosen by lottery, get to shoot photos of the fireworks from the windows of the Washington Monument; will that occur, with the Monument shut down from public view for repair from the earthquake?
There will be great fireworks also in Baltimore Harbor over Fort McHenry, the fort whose siege inspired Francis Scott Key to write the “Star-spangled Banner” from his boat in the harbor, in 1814. Firworks will frighten the bluebirds nesting at Yorktown National Battlefield. I suspect there will be a grand display at Gettysburg, on the 150th anniversary of the end of that battle. July 4, 1863, also marked the end of the Siege of Vicksburg; tradition holds that Vicksburg did not celebrate the 4th of July for 83 years after that. I’ll wager there will be fireworks there tonight. In Provo, Utah, the city poobahs will have done all they can to try to live up to their self-proclaimed reputation as having the biggest Independence Day celebration in the nation. The celebration in Prescott, Arizona, is muted by the tragic deaths of 19 Hot Shot firefighters last week; will drought halt the fireworks, too? There will be fireworks around the Golden Gate Bridge, in Anchorage, Alaska, reflecting on the waters of Pearl Harbor, and probably in Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas Islands.
Fireworks on the Fourth is a long tradition — a tradition that kept John Adams and Thomas Jefferson alive, until they both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in 1826, the sounds of the fireworks letting Adams know the celebration had begun (Adams erroneously celebrated that Jefferson, the Declaration’s author, still lived, unable to know Jefferson had passed just hours earlier).
Last flag on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and the U.S. Flag — Apollo 17 on the Moon (NASA photo)
If you’re not on the Moon, here are some tips on flag etiquette, how to appropriately fly our national standard.
Also:
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photo of Apollo 17 landing site
This is mostly an encore post, but I so love that photo of the flag with the Earth in the distance.
Happy birthday, Kathryn!
Fireworks in Duncanville, Texas, for July 4 — Kathryn Knowles’s birthday. We’re always happy the town chimes in with the celebratory spirit.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and the cast of thousands of patriots including George Washington.
Leave a Comment » | 4th of July, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History, Independence Day, Patriotism | Tagged: 1776, 4th of July, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag, History, Independence Day, NPR, Patriotism, PBS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
What year is this? 2013?
Shouldn’t the Sputnik Revolution in science education have obviated the need for this video, like 30 years ago?
One more time, the basics of climate change/global warming, with Bill Nye the Science Guy explaining; from the ClimateRealityProject.org:
http://vimeo.com/climatereality/climate101
climate change, CO2, global warming, science, Bill Nye, environmental protection, Clean Air, Air Pollution
More:
Cover of Newsweek Magazine, from March 4, 1957; notice this concern about U.S. science competency came seven months before Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union. Science deniers then delayed action until after the Soviets demonstrated clearly that the U.S. was behind. (Image from Computer History.org)
1 Comment | Carbon Dioxide, Climate change, climate_change, CO2, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, Politics, pollution, Science, Sputnik | Tagged: Bill Nye, Carbon Dioxide, Climate change, CO2, Education, environment, Global warming, History, Politics, Science, Sputnik | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A scientist at work:
Amanda Holland with one of her research subjects, in South Carolina
Kathryn’s cousin, Amanda Holland, moved from researching condors in California, to buzzards in Georgia and South Carolina (for the University of Georgia, I think).
Here she is with one of her research subjects. Much lore is out there about handling carrion-eating birds for research — they vomit on you only if they like you, for example — but wholly apart from that, how great is this photo of a scientist at work?
I told her to copyright the photo (it is), and to hand on to the meme. Can’t you see a character in Game of Thrones, or some other fantasy, who carries her own vultures to clean up after she devastates some other army in battle?
Eagles and falcons and owls are okay, but what other bird could conceal the results of the battle, so the warrior princess could move on in stealth?
Science field work looks like great stuff. My experience is that it’s tiring, and sometimes lonely (though in very beautiful locations) — but the psychic rewards of actually increasing knowledge keep a lot of scientists going. There’s not a lot of money in it.
Look at the friends you could make!
4 Comments | Bird Watching, Ornithology, Research, Science | Tagged: Bird Watching, Ornithology, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
“The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
— John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
1776 filled the calendar with dates deserving of remembrance and even celebration. John Adams, delegate from Massachusetts to the Second Continental Congress, wrote home to his wife Abigail that future generations would celebrate July 2, the date the Congress voted to approve Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring independence from Britain for 13 of the British colonies in America.
Scene of the crime — Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Second Continental congress approved the resolution to declare the colonies independent from Britain – (Photo credit: diablodale)
Two days later, that same Congress approved the wording of the document Thomas Jefferson had drafted to announce Lee’s resolution to the world.
Today, we celebrate the date of the document Jefferson wrote, and Richard Henry Lee is often a reduced to a footnote, if not erased from history altogether.
Who can predict the future?
(You know, of course, that Adams and Jefferson both died 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1826. In the 50 intervening years, Adams and Jefferson were comrades in arms and diplomacy in Europe, officers of the new government in America, opposing candidates for the presidency, President and Vice President, ex-President and President, bitter enemies, then long-distance friends writing almost daily about how to make a great new nation. Read David McCullough‘s version of the story, if you can find it.)
(Yes, this is mostly an encore post.)
More, and Related articles:
The Lee Resolution, passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776 – Wikipedia image (Wait a minute: Are those numbers added correctly? What are they?)
13 Comments | 1776, 4th of July, Declaration of Independence, History, John Adams, July 4 1776, Quotes | Tagged: 1776, Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, Fourth of July, History, John Adams, July 2 1776, Quotes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A couple of photos I stumbled on recently.
The Seeger family in 1921; the youngest one is Pete, in his father’s lap:
The Seeger Family, 1921 Pete Seeger, the now-93 year-old folk singer, is sitting on his father’s lap. Pete’s father was musicologist Charles Louis Seeger, Jr.; his mother was the violinist Constance de Clyver Edson. The other two children are probably Pete’s older brothers Charles, III, and John. This photo probably was taken while Charles and Constance toured the American south to teach music, after his having to leave UCLA because of his pacifist stance during World War I.
And 92 years later, with Judy Collins:
Judy Collins and Pete Seeger, photo by the preservationist David Rocco, at the Clearwater Festival in Hudson, New York, June 15, 2013. (We think that’s Pete’s wife, Toshi, on the far right edge of the photo.)
More:
6 Comments | Folk Music, History, Music, Pete Seeger, photography | Tagged: Clearwater Festival, Folk Music, Judy Collins, Music, Pete Seeger, photography | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ta-ta, Google Reader. There are other Translating Fish in the Sea.
A lot of readers subscribed to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub through Google Reader. Alas for them, and for reading at this blog, Google Reader will close down on July 1, 2013.
Education automation guru Larry Ferlazzo points to a number of alternatives, almost all of which work here, too:
There are plenty of alternatives to Google Reader if you still want to subscribe using an RSS Reader (see The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down).
After trying out fifteen or twenty alternatives out there, including the new Digg Reader, I have yet to find a service that I think is a great replacement.
However, there’s no value in letting the “perfect be the enemy of the good.”
I’ve finally determined that Feedly is my primary alternative — with a caveat.
I really like Mr. Reader, which is only an iPad app. However, it “syncs” with Feedly. So I’ll be using Feedly on my desktop and on my iPhone, but Mr. Reader on my iPad.
I hope you’ll continue to follow, after the Google Reader shutdown.
On the right side of this blog you’ll find a button for RSS subscriptions, and to follow me on Twitter. You can find me on Google Plus, but I generally don’t post everything there (I should consider it, I know). You can subscribe to this blog on e-mail — again, with a button on the right side.
Are there other feeds, or other ways to follow that you think I should use? Please let me know in comments.
More:
4 Comments | Administrivia | Tagged: Administrivia | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Still shot of the Supercell near Booker, Texas – photo by Mike Olbinski (copyright, rights reserved)
Photographer Mike Olbinski was on the road, near Booker, Texas, when the storm rolled in. According to him, he was on the wrong side of the storm to get great photos, and he set up at the wrong spot . . .
Judge for yourself:
Olbinski said at Vimeo:
Find more of my work here: mikeolbinski.com
Also follow me on Instragram for storm photos and whatnot – instagram.com/mikeolbinski
Still print of this storm can be found here if interested: gallery.mikeolbinski.com/stormchasing/h6015e87e#h6015e87e
Technical deets: Canon 5D2, Rokinon 14mm 2.8…first three clips were at 1-second intervals = 880ish photos, the last sequence was around 90, 5-second exposures
Music by Kevin MacLeod – incompetech.com/
————-It took four years but I finally got it.
A rotating supercell. And not just a rotating supercell, but one with insane structure and amazing movement.
I’ve been visiting the Central Plains since 2010. Usually it’s just for a day, or three, or two…but it took until the fourth attempt to actually find what I’d been looking for. And boy did we find it.
No, there was no tornado. But that’s not really what I was after. I’m from Arizona. We don’t get structure like this. Clouds that rotate and look like alien spacecraft hanging over the Earth.
We chased this storm from the wrong side (north) and it took us going through hail and torrential rains to burst through on the south side. And when we did…this monster cloud was hanging over Texas and rotating like something out of Close Encounters.
The timelapse was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a Rokinon 14mm 2.8 lens. It’s broken up into four parts. The first section ends because it started pouring on us. We should have been further south when we started filming but you never know how long these things will last, so I started the timelapse as soon as I could.
One thing to note early on in the first part is the way the rain is coming down on the right and actually being sucked back into the rotation. Amazing.
(Read more there.)
More time-lapse clouds and storms, and photos you can buy, at Olbinski’s blog.
Leave a Comment » | Nature, photography | Tagged: booker texas, Mike Olbinski, Nature, photography, Supercell | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Don Prothero posted this on his Facebook feed, from Unearthed Comics:
Unearthed Comics, Sarah Zimmerman, copyright 2013
It’s an old question: Can one understand the science behind the beauty, and still be in awe of the beauty?
Can one understand evolution in biology, or geology, or physics, and still be in awe of the universe?
About a year ago I wrote on this issue. Mark Twain said no; Richard Feynman says yes, and the scientist appreciates the beauty more.
What do you think?
From my earlier post:
Mark Twain wrote about how too much knowledge can spoil beauty for a beholder. In Life on the Mississippi, Twain described how the natural beauty of the river changed for him once he started serious study to be a river pilot. That wonderful sunset revealed the river was high, hiding objects of danger. That beautiful little ripple told him a snag waited underwater to pierce his boat.
Cover via Amazon
. . . The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot’s eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody’s steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling ‘boils’ show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the ‘break’ from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty’s cheek mean to a doctor but a ‘break’ that ripples above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn’t he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn’t he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade? (From Life on the Mississippi, Chapter 9; from the University of Virginia Library, Electronic Text Center)
Oh, it’s great literature. But I’ve always been troubled by the anti-science nature of Twain’s complaint, that if you know something really well, you’ll lose respect for its beauty. What better way to discourage a young person from learning science, from learning about the stars, the trees, the rivers and mountains?
It was not so for me. The more I learned about western trees, and grasses and wildflowers, the better I grew to love the dry, hot western desert mountains. The more I yearned to learn about the geology that carved spectacular canyons and isolated pinyon pines from ponderosa with a sea of sagebrush — and the more I learned, the more I appreciated how delicately balanced the whole thing was.
Then I found Feynman. He put into a few words what I felt. He described a continuing discussion he had with artists, about beauty and the relationship of science to the appreciation of it. He recorded an interview for the BBC in which he reiterated much of the story, with the added advantage of his wry delivery.
I have a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty. […] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. (From What Do You Care What Other People Think? page 28)
What do you think? Can scientists appreciate beauty as well as artists? How about the rest of us?
Does learning improve our appreciation of beauty as we increase our understanding of nature, or is learning a barrier to awe?
4 Comments | Mark Twain, Richard Feynman, Rivers, Science | Tagged: Beauty, Mark Twain, Nature, Richard Feynman, Sara Zimmerman, Science, Unearthed Comics, Vacation | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 