I had been planning for my next post to be about helicopters and my new-found love of them; however, without suitable images and with an awesome video which I would be unable to include until I’m not hampered by a spotty satellite internet connection, I’ve had to postpone that post.
In the meantime, I thought I’d post some links to some articles and blog posts which have caught my attention this week. I’ve noticed this as a feature on a few other blogs, and think I may adopt it myself.
The first post regards an interesting hydrological problem which I was previously completely oblivious to. Rivers convey sediment in three ways: solution, suspended load and bed load. The first two, solution (material dissolved in the water) and suspended load (material floating within the water) are relatively easy to measure, but apparently it is very difficult to measure bed load (material which rolls along the bed of the river). Listening to Rivers by Brian Romans at Clastic Detritus details the mostly unsuccessful attempts in the past to measure bed load and an innovative new way to measure it using seismometers to basically measure the sound the bed load makes as the sediment moves along the bottom. Geophysics meets hydrogeology.
The second post is from Frank Swain at SciencePunk. Five iconic science images, and why they’re wrong examines several science-related images which almost everyone will recognize and explains how they are misleading. I am particularly interested in the attention he draws to March of Progress.
The March of Progress
I recently read Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature by Brian Switek which has a fantastic quote which addresses the very common problem in our understanding of human evolution that March of Progress inadvertently reinforces:
There was never an “ascent of man,” no matter how desperately we might wish for there to be, just as there has not been a “descent of man” into degeneracy from a noble ancestor. We are merely a shivering twig that is the last vestige of a richer family tree. Foolishly, we have taken our isolation to mean that we are the true victors in life’s relentless race.
The other images Swain discusses are interesting in their own right. Although I like to believe that I do not suffer from these misconceptions, examining a scale model of the solar system was nevertheless surprising.
I'm quite pleased with how this conveys the actual experience of looking through binoculars, at least for me.
Finally, because I don’t feel like I can finish a post without some sort of photographic contribution from myself, I’ve decided to include this photo which demonstrates the success of a brief experiment I performed on a recent canoe trip to the Chiniguchi wilderness. Apparently it is in fact possible to extend the zoom capabilities of a camera with binoculars. The camera was able to focus; however, significant motion blur was added due to the challenges of holding both the camera and binoculars still. I will have to repeat the experiment with tripods in the future.
Dear Jeremy, Thanks for your blog, Keep them coming. I find them very interesting. The following quote gives me something to think about.
“There was never an “ascent of man,” no matter how desperately we might wish for there to be, just as there has not been a “descent of man” into degeneracy from a noble ancestor. We are merely a shivering twig that is the last vestige of a richer family tree. Foolishly, we have taken our isolation to mean that we are the true victors in life’s relentless race.”
It would be interesting to learn more about that view. Grandma
PS. I think Dave, your uncle, might be interested in getting your blogs.