h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gooday Wazungu, StM, and Bran (who now has other things besides his thesis to distract him),

Wazungu, do keep us posted on how long it takes for you to get a reply from the PM or his designated minion, and what is said. My guess is that some secretary will write back to you in about three weeks, advising that your enquiry has been passed on to the Minister who has portfolio responsibility for that issue. What won't be said, but which will be a fact, is that the PM's office will have asked for a copy of the response, so this pretty-well guarantees that you will get one. On the other hand, the PM could respond direct, but I would be really surprised if that is the case. And talking of updates: WHAT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE POTATO COMPETITION?

GM/GE. To clarify. Tasmania's government has UNILATERALLY BANNED further GM/GE research/development/growing etc etc crops in this State until satisfied that it will not pose any kind of hazard to Tasmanians or Tasmania. This is the second occasion this year that Tasmania has defied a national and international edict or WTO protocol. We won the first and I think we have already won this one.

Well, I better get back to the 'Golden Age of Elizabeth I'. How I can extract an essay from this desk full of notes and photocopies, of random thoughts and jottings, is beyond me at the moment, but it will happen. Take care y'all,

Walter.

Hello folks

Just popped in for a moment to give you this address: http://www.h2g2.com/A331084. It'll tell you all you need to know about gin including how to make a perfect gin and tonic.

Bran has other things to distract him, Walter? Tut. Hope it's interesting.

I'll do a proper message tomorrow.

Good night all.
Sal

I jumped into this conversation following case, who I've been nattering to on h2g2 for a bit. I was about to say how I really think we ought to protect bioversity, and that perhaps we also need to proritise - which is an idea I find interesting...

when I noticed the heading "Aliens the big danger"

What exactly is going on here???

purplejenny

Hi Everyone

A very quick post to explain Walter's cryptic remark. A job has been advertised in medieval history here in Tassie that I am going to apply for, but expect the field to be very competitive. Hence having more to think about. It would be my perfect job ... teaching and researching all this great stuff. I'll have to wait and see what the rest of the field is like. I am led to understand that many on them will have completed PhDs (and I am a bit under a year off). So ... all a bit exciting, and a bit nervy.

Oh, UMP the wattle-birds that we have here do sound like the ones you describe (officially called a yellow wattle-bird).

I'll keep you all posted on developments as they come in. Take care everyone.

Cheerio
Bran.

Evening all,
I was wondering what the distraction was too. And where the "Holidays" came in? And whether the Eliz.I essay is the one that was a week late a week ago?

I looked up your gin recommendation Sal, ARE junipers the same as sloes? I thought juniper was an evergreen for some reason. I still haven't tried it, maybe at the next marking session. Will help make the scripts look better?

My head is still too full of The Fisherman's Reel to post anymore. I got it right tonight! For the first time in months of trying. We made a right fisherman's knot of a couple of other dances though.
Good night from me too.
Wz.

I hope it works out Bran, good luck. Very distracting!

Thats one question answered anyway.

Hello purplejenny, as I said before I can't tackle anything else tonight and I need to reread Case's posting. He covers a lot of ground in one go. Prioritising conservation in that way isn't something I've thought through and it needs thinking through.
Wz.

Gooday Wazungu, StM, Bran,

Wazungu, I have no idea why or how the heading 'holidays' got on top of that posting. I can only assume that I must have been in remote control auto-pilot, wistful and slightly envious of a workmate who has just arrived back after a European holiday and another who sets off for the same destination this weekend. And yes, the essay is the same one, getting later, longer and more chaotic by the day. It is my very last history essay and I do so want to go out with 'a bang'. Perhaps I should worry less about the mark and more about finishing. After this one is done I have a Classics number to do, similar length, on Caesar Augustus: summer will have come and gone before I finish at this rate of progress.

And the potato competition?

StM, thanks for the G and T article. I noticed that someone had posted to it saying that junipers and sloes were probably the same thing - can anyone enlighten us? And I never realised there was a 'Plymouth Gin', now I am going to have to look out for it in our local bottle shops. Of course, in this part of the world the G and T season is really approaching fast, already it is light until about 8.00pm, so plenty of time to sit around the terrace sipping - now, if only the temperature would increase a few degrees. We sat outside the other evening, with Ben the Vandal waiting patiently to be fed the ice cubes, and it was just so peaceful and relaxing - hard to believe that we hadn't done that in the evening since late Autumn. Well, back to some work, so take care y'all.

Walter.

Morning all

Wazungu, you have me. It's a fair cop. I'll come quietly. No need for any rough stuff. I looked sloes and junipers up in a dictionary and although they're both described as little blue/black berries that grow on a thorny bush, they grow on different thorny bushes. And of course, they're both used to flavour gin. Can't remember where I got that piece of misinformation from in the first place, only that I've carried it with me for years and have taken it for granted. Sorry to have polluted this waterhole with it and thanks for putting me right.

Where do you get your organic catalogues from? It looks very interesting. Mostly, all the little critters who make a living wrecking my efforts to keep a pretty garden, get left to their own devices because I'm reluctant to do anything that might upset the birds and frogs and things. It would be nice not to have the slugs making free with everything. I do use garlic (chopped and pushed into the earth of plant pots) to discourage greenfly and that seems to work fairly well. It would be nice to have some other non-toxic deterrents in my gardening armoury though.

How lovely to see and hear buzzards. Wow. I also saw the polar bears at the Africam site. It's unexpected and not very African but very exciting.

Bran, that job sound right up your street - absolutely ideal! I'm hoping ever so hard that you get it.

Walter, It seems the Tasmanian government is under the impression they're running a democracy and the WTO can stick that in their pipe and smoke it. Why can't we Brits have a government with a backbone too. We just seem to get the same whichever party we vote for.

There was a programme on the other evening about what would have happened if Henry VIII hadn't fallen out with the pope. I just caught the very tail end of it when they were talking about Elizabeth I. I wish I'd managed to watch it so I could tell you what they'd had to say about her. They did say that Britain would never have had an empire and we'd be just like any other catholic country in Europe but that was a general statement - not specifically about Elizabeth.

I'm glad someone else also thinks sloes and junipers are the same thing Walter. That's cheered me up. I thought I might be the only one but I suppose the idea must have come from somewhere so perhaps I'll go and put that other poor deluded entity right. I like the sound of the Plymouth gin too - and the Sapphire gin and I'll be looking out for them.

I'm going to do a reply to that humungous posting of yours now Case. Boy, that was big. I thought my posts were big but they're quite humble in comparison to message 200 on this thread. I don't think I'll ever feel self-conscious about the length of mine again.

Speak to you shortly.
Sal

Good Evening All

A quick post before bed to say thanks for the well-wishes re the job. It closes in the middle of November so there is a little time to go yet ... this leaves me more time to plan my attack. In full medieval style I shall have a battle plan, and am considering wearing plate-armour to the interview. If all else fails, I shall challenge the other candidates to a joust! Yoiks!

Thanks also Wz for the post about the Camelot info that you found. It seems that Shropshire has it all sown up! I bet the Cornwall people would have a word or two to say about it though. And that Scottish bloke who last year claimed it all happened on the Borders and down to Hadrian's Wall.

Till the morrow ...
Bran.

Good Evening All

A quick post before bed to say thanks for the well-wishes re the job. It closes in the middle of November so there is a little time to go yet ... this leaves me more time to plan my attack. In full medieval style I shall have a battle plan, and am considering wearing plate-armour to the interview. If all else fails, I shall challenge the other candidates to a joust! Yoiks!

Thanks also Wz for the post about the Camelot info that you found. It seems that Shropshire has it all sown up! I bet the Cornwall people would have a word or two to say about it though. And that Scottish bloke who last year claimed it all happened on the Borders and down to Hadrian's Wall.

Till the morrow ...
Bran.

Oh Dear, I have repeated myself.
Sorry.
B.

Afternoon everyone

Case, couldn't agree with you more about the planting of non-native species in sensitive areas. People shouldn't do it and the only thing that will stop them is legislation that actually gets enforced. If people are planting rows of conifers or eucalyptus they must be doing it for profit and they'll carry on doing it until they're stopped.

Also agree with you about education. Ecology should be something every child learns about from an early age. On that subject, in this forum, you may be preaching to the converted. If you go back through the thread you'll see that one of Wazungu's big concerns is the food chain and how it seems not to be understood by those in a position to break it. Ecological systems certainly are complex and we fiddle them with them at our peril.

Here comes a note of dissent. I was the one who mentioned glamorous species getting attention. I don't decide which species to save and allow to die out. Of course species are dying out even as we speak and some species would be dying out even without our species driving them to the brink. However, it seems wrong to me that we should be deciding who's worth saving.

This is just my opinion and I could be alone in this point of view for all I know, because I hadn't previously looked at it from this point of view. I don't believe our species should be making those decisions any more than I think we would be deciding which genes should be inserted into which species of plant or animal. The genes have made an impressive job of taking care of themselves up to now. I'm concerned about individual animals _right_now_ not in a million or a billion years time. If you start looking at those kinds of time scales, well the sun will swallow our little planet in the distant future.

Why should we take it on ourselves to decide the course of evolution? Look at the Burgess Shale. Most of the animals alive only some half a billion years ago have left no descendants. We ourselves have, in all likelihood, evolved from animals similar to modern bacteria. If a devastating ecological disaster occurred leaving only, say, nematodes and cockroaches and maybe a few other simple life-forms, don't you think that in another half a billion years time there will have evolved an equally impressive range of biodiversity, to what we have today?

I think that instead of picking and choosing the genes that get into the future we should be making an effort to reduce our adverse influence on the survival chances of other species in general. The idea of genes leaves me cold. They strike me as the charmless little wrigglers that influence mindless behaviour to further their own selfish interest. It's individuals, the vehicles that carry the genes, who have the capacity to suffer.

I have no ambition to control evolution but I do think our species has the capacity to engineer a bleak future for itself by using our planet and all its fabulous diversity of life as a mere resource to be used up and thrown away. People, as you say, should be educated and a broad assault should be made on this destructive mentality rather than concentrating on saving just this species or that. Apart from anything else, with our level of violence, wastefulness and arrogance, it'll be a matter of some wonder if we're here in even one million years' time to be aware of the progeny of the elephant and the cycad.

In a way, concentrating on saving a particular species while the rest of the planet goes to hell is a bit like what the RSPCA does. It's a good organisation for which I have nothing but admiration but it's also like a plaster on a festering sore. The RSPCA runs around with a dustpan and brush clearing up embarrassing messes. It saves the government doing anything about the high level of cruelty in the midst of this nation of "animal lovers". They're pretty toothless really. If they campaigned against, for example, fox hunting, vivisection or other bits of institutionalised cruelty, they'd lose their charitable status. Suits the government fine. Looks as though something's being done and nothing really changes.

Better stop before this becomes an essay.
Sal

Good evening to anyone wanting to read a confused post on Case's genetic selection ideas!

I also hadn't considered prioritising species for conservation by concentrating on certain species because of their potential. But I've been thinking about it and like Salamander, I'm not happy with making such decisions. My instinctive reaction was that it wasn't for us to decide. You aren't alone in that opinion Sal. You'd have to be very certain of the consequences of a species disappearing before deciding to allow it to happen while concentrating on preserving a different one. For me it comes back to the foodchain and ecologies. You mentioned yourself Case how in an ecology everything is linked. Could you really ever be 100% certain of all the consequences of losing, say, a rodent species, even it was replaced by another one someway down the line of evolution.

Prioritising is however a practical way to deal with an almost overwhelming task. And something that in practice most of us probably do, even if its just in deciding to support one environmental charity as opposed to another. Maybe those decisions are not always made on properly thought out criteria which is where your ideas would come in. But I'm still uneasy about accepting prioritising as a principle.

I completely agree that education is very much needed. Particularly on the interdependence of all species. This is partly why I'm uneasy about suggesting prioritising as a principle. Any admission that a species can be allowed to die out (in an unnatural way) undermines the message that everything is linked, that we break those links at our peril, and that we need to aim at saving all species from unnatural extinction.

We can't afford to dilute that message, or suggest that in principle man has the right to decide which species survive. Because that implies the right to decide that another species goes, which in turn implies the right to do something that causes another species extinction. I don't believe we have that right. Even though, in practice, each individual one of us makes choices about which threatened species to support and which to ignore.

I 've made a choice. I chose years ago to support the saving of habitats, letting whatever lives in them look after itself.

Alien species are a real problem, (definitely a big danger purplejenny!). We lose species even in the UK because of them. We learnt about military rows of conifers the hard way here some years ago. As Sal's mentioned before, they covered whole hills in Scotland with them. But new plantations are better. The forestry commission took a lot of criticism I think and now they often include patches of deciduous and native trees. Organisations like the RSPB had a lot to say about the sterility of the timber plantations too, so education is the answer here too.

I hope some of that makes sense to someone. Its hard to explain when something seems wrong put forward as a principle even tho' it may be necessary in practice at an individual level.
Wz

This post has been removed.

Wazungu, you must realise that I never said MAN has the right to decide which species stay, and which go. What is happening is that MAN is at the moment destroying EVERYTHING. So "we" - by which I mean the people who believe that this is a wrong thing, and who at the moment form a small minority of mankind, must focus our very limited energy in such a way as to achieve the best possible results.

If MANKIND in its entirety set the right priorities, we should of course, and in fact COULD EASILY save ALL species!

Do you understand the difference? Every species ought to be saved. But so many are now being destroyed that "we" (that is, conservationists, not humans in general) have no choice - we have to save some, and I say rather than blindly trying to save something here, save something there, we must try to save those whose disappearance will be the greatest loss to worldwide biodiversity first, and next try to save all the others. In PRACTICE there will be a difference in the results that come from a haphazard approach and a methodical approach. A haphazard approach to conservation will lead to a lot of extremely unique and highly irreplaceable species vanishing, while those species could be saved quite easily by a methodical approach.

In all of this we have to evaluate our values, our principles, our priorities. Just WHAT is it we want to save? Do we want to save the ecology of the Earth as a whole? The ecology of the Earth as a whole is very robust. You can look at the fossil record since the emergence of life, about 3500 million years ago, for a proof of that. All of the time species were dying out, and every now and then there was a massive extinction. Every single time the earth came through it without even a hiccup. It can survive a decrease in biodiversity of over 90% and still maintain stability. That's the way it works. There is outrageous redundancy in the amount of different living species, if the only goal was the maintenance of a stable global ecology.

Do we want to save INDIVIDUAL animals, or improve their quality of life? Then we fail from the start, because death is built into the web of life as a necessary feature. Creatures die, they are killed and eaten all the time. What humans do is not so bad compared to what happens to most living creatures anyway in nature functioning optimally. I would even say the negative connotation we attach to death is artificial, and often dangerous and destructive. Rather than focusing on individual creatures we should focus on species, because it is actually true that if a species is healthy - if there are many living individuals in it, they reproduce frequently, population dynamics are stable - then the individuals of the species would also be happy, as fully actualised as nature allows them to be. If a species dies out, it is much worse than the deaths of thousands of millions of individuals that naturally occur during the long lifetime of a prosperous species.

And now my contention is this: people must realise that "species" is an utterly artificial construction! Nature itself does not recognise or impose this distinction. There is not an objective thing such as a species. It is a category invented to facilitate classification. That means we can draw the lines seperating "kinds" of creature anywhere. Up to now I've talked of "species" as if they actually exist, but it's merely because everybody talks that way. In truth, what exist are TAXA: that means groups that contain creatures that are related at a certain level, that share certain features. There is an infinity of actual taxa for instance, the offspring of a single pair of animals constitute a taxon, while all living creatures also constitute a taxon; in between there is an infinity of levels. My contention is: we should focus on the highest taxonomic levels first. For the ultimate practical example, consider this: we cannot preserve every individual living creature forever, no matter what we do; but we can preserve Life, so long as there are always enough living creatures coming into existence to replace those that we lose. This is the necessary, essential renewal that operates in life. It operates at the level of individual creatures replacing one another in successive generations, but it also operates at all taxonomic levels above that: species, genera, families - where these words merely indicate arbitrary divisions in complexity that we impose to make our systems of classification easier.

The practical issue right now is not allowing a species to die out or not. That is not something that is in the power of the concerned humans at this moment. All that is in our power is to save those species that we can - or let me put it a better way, to save those TAXA that we can. A taxon is a more fundamental, but harder to grasp concept than a species, just like ecology is a more fundamental but harder concept to grasp than a haphazard collection of individual animals and plants. That's my point: we'll be able to achieve more, in real life, if people grasped the tougher concepts. The tougher the concepts they can grasp, the better their understanding, the better the results. And I now contend this: we are not doing the job alone - if it depended only on our limited rational powers, we could never be successful because no person can grasp the full complexity of life. But Life itself is also hard at work. It survived very well for very long without us. We can only help, assist - and we should. As the only creatures with the facilities needed to even BEGIN to comprehend the full complexity of Life, the Universe, and Everything, we have a responsibility, and it is a very hard responsibility - one that calls for very hard choices.

The interconnectedness of all things is something that goes very, very far. It has some implications that are easy to understand, but some that are very, very tough, but also exceedingly profound. Most people are willing to take things only to a certain level, and then they dig their heels in and refuse to go further. But in the quest to save the planet, ultimately we will have to face head-on the toughest questions about the meaning of existence. All I can say right now is, don't be afraid of this confrontation, don't be afraid of the answers you might find. Ultimately, Life is Good. There is no need for fear.

Gooday Wazungu, StM and Bran (who I looked for at uni this morning but missed),

Yes, you've got to have a much more healthy respect for the juniper berry once having drunk a G and T made to StM's formula. My parents used to make sloe wine (not sloe gin), and I can remember as a boy surreptitiously 'sipping' a bit here and there; as far as I can recall it was thick-ish and sweet.

I think that a potato growing competition being run from the local pub is about as quintessentially English as it is possible to get, and it sounds like a lot of fun, as well as something that gives a sense of community. And that chairman of the Village Hall committee, what a life - just pop off to the canal boat, or reel in a couple of fresh salmon!! Some people lead idyllic lives. I'm not sure if we have mentioned it, but one of Tasmania's booming industries is aquaculture, chief of which is Atlantic Salmon production. In practical terms, we get wonderful fresh salmon at about five dollars the fillet (maybe 200 grams), and smoked salmon for about eight dollars for 200 grams. NB: a pound is about $2.75 at the moment, although the way the currency exchange rate is falling at the moment, if you wait until tomorrow it might be three dollars to the quid.

Caesar Augustus is the BIG Roman, the one who avenged Julius Caesar's murder and went on to put paid to Antony and Cleopatra, and was in charge when Jesus was born. Although he didn't realise it at the time, he was the first of the Roman emperors, and has spawned about five TV series, twenty films, a thousand books, ten thousand articles, eighteen billion essays (and still counting) SO WHAT CAN THERE POSSIBLY BE LEFT TO SAY ABOUT HIM?

Waz, the subconscious and the conscious have been working overtime, so much so that me and the beloved have decided, more or less, that either in September of next year or April of 2002 we will on a big silver bird to Europe; it depends largely on the beloved's work commitments. 2002: it sounds a long time when you say it quickly, but it isn't really. And we will need every day possible so as to save up for the trip. Me, I've already started counting - the days as well as the dollars.

Back to the essay, which is another day late, but really, quality is worth waiting for!!! Take care, friends,

Walter.

I want you all to realise that one of my goasl is informing people about the real meaning of biodiversity, and stimulating them to think "bigger" than they used to think. I also want to stress this: big goals don't EXCLUDE small goals. In fact, the big goals make the small goals possible. If you fail at the biggest goal of all, there won't BE any small goals left! Get it?

When I talk about prioritising conservation, I don't include genetics alone. But still, genetics is not unimportant. Genetics make the difference between a benign commercial crop plant and a rampant, impossible-to-eradicate weed, as demonstrated by the example of the Canadian oilseed rape. It makes the "difference" between the different kinds of species. Without understanding and recognising the importance of genetics, you have no basis for forming a concept of biodiversity! And I want people to understand biodiversity! It's important - VERY important!

I hope to live long enough to be able to show people EXAMPLES. I know that an essay in words, lots of them abstract ones, cannot do the job alone. One way in which I aim to teach people all around me about biodiversity is by cultivating plants. I can tell you this - until people SEE FOR THEMSELVES the variety of different "kinds" that there are, they just will not "get it". They will be oblivious. Right now I sit here with literally hundreds of thousands of different kinds of creatures in my head - I know them intimately, I know what they're about, I understand what makes them different from each other, and what makes them similar to each other. I also have in my head thousands of different places, thousands of ecosystems. Not only that, I have in my head the entire pattern of life as it changed throughout the history of the Earth, starting three and a half billion years ago. I truly believe I can see the big picture. Therefore I know that it is humanly possible to achieve an extremely detailed awareness about the richness of life on Earth. Even more important than knowledge, whether it be book knowledge or life experience, is a inner, intuitive sensitivity to the rythms, cycles and systems of the planet. I believe I have that. How? I don't know. But I have been unusually sensitive to all living creatures since I can remember, and I have grown up in one of the most ancient places on Earth, where it seems as if all of history is ever-present, where all times and all things converge into a single experience. I want to share that, but I can only do it a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit at a time.

Sal, you talk about helping individual creatures here and now. That is important. But even so, you cannot discount the groups that those creatures belong to. This is an existential problem - what is more "real", the species or the individual? How about a compromise: they are both real. Help the one and don't neglect the other. And, in my previous post, I talked about "taxa" being more fundamental than species. I want people to be able to see ever-bigger pictures! And that also includes time. We have the problems we have now because people did not consider what might happen after their own lifetimes. We must not make the same mistake, neither on a smaller nor on a bigger scale than our predecessors. When will the sun expand? About five billion years from now. We know about that now, so we should already start planning for that eventuality. When that happens, we must be able to pack up and leave, and take EVERYTHING with us. Think big! Be optimistic!

You mentioned the Burgess Shale, and the time-scale of evolution. It is true that, if a disaster wiped out almost everything, the present biodiversity will again be achieved in probably even LESS than half a billion years. That is the point I also made in my previous post - the Earth, as a whole, can recover. But if no such disaster happened - if we managed to save say 90% or more of present biodiversity, then half a billion years from now (provided no other catastrophe happens) biodiversity will be way, way, WAY beyond anything we can imagine right now! Will we still be around by then? As an optimist, I say, yeah, sure!

We pick and choose the genes that go into the future all of the time. You do it by deciding to have children, or by deciding not to have children, or when you decide to have a cat or a dog and decide whether they will have offspring or not. Everything is interconnected, remember! Every action of ours has real results. We can only either do it in ignorance, or with understanding. If the idea of genes leave you cold, perhaps it is because of a misperception, perhaps you see a conflict between the seeming impersonal determinism that operates at the level of genes and heredity, and the intimacy and freedom of living creatures. But that is a misperception - the one does not exclude the other; we are creatures that are at the same time physical and spiritual, and our essence goes right down to our most basic component parts. If we are the manifestations of our genes - which we are - that only shows that genes are much more wonderful than they might appear to be on superficial inspection. I would go so far as to say that the genes carry little bits of the soul!

Richard Dawkins wrote the book "The Selfish Gene" as an effort to challenge the way people perceive nature, but that doesn't mean that his views are absolute. There is no real conflict between genes and the organisms that carry them; to believe that there is, is to get carried away with abstraction. Science is not reality, it's just a description of reality - a simplified key to enhance understanding of the patterns in nature, but not the patterns themselves, not nature itself. The map is not the territory. Nature, reality, is what it is; it is not lessened by the limitations of our attempts to describe it.

The concepts of "genes" and "genetics" still need a lot of work. But they do express something that is real and active in the world. I would say, once we understood these things properly, we would find that the capacity for joy, and the capacity for suffering, DO exist and operate even in the genes themselves!

We are getting into existential questions. That is good. We DO need a new, world-wide mindset, something to replace the destructive, exploitative attitude that has reigned up to now. Have courage! We will find a way.

I want you all to realise that one of my goasl is informing people about the real meaning of biodiversity, and stimulating them to think "bigger" than they used to think. I also want to stress this: big goals don't EXCLUDE small goals. In fact, the big goals make the small goals possible. If you fail at the biggest goal of all, there won't BE any small goals left! Get it?

When I talk about prioritising conservation, I don't include genetics alone. But still, genetics is not unimportant. Genetics make the difference between a benign commercial crop plant and a rampant, impossible-to-eradicate weed, as demonstrated by the example of the Canadian oilseed rape. It makes the "difference" between the different kinds of species. Without understanding and recognising the importance of genetics, you have no basis for forming a concept of biodiversity! And I want people to understand biodiversity! It's important - VERY important!

I hope to live long enough to be able to show people EXAMPLES. I know that an essay in words, lots of them abstract ones, cannot do the job alone. One way in which I aim to teach people all around me about biodiversity is by cultivating plants. I can tell you this - until people SEE FOR THEMSELVES the variety of different "kinds" that there are, they just will not "get it". They will be oblivious. Right now I sit here with literally hundreds of thousands of different kinds of creatures in my head - I know them intimately, I know what they're about, I understand what makes them different from each other, and what makes them similar to each other. I also have in my head thousands of different places, thousands of ecosystems. Not only that, I have in my head the entire pattern of life as it changed throughout the history of the Earth, starting three and a half billion years ago. I truly believe I can see the big picture. Therefore I know that it is humanly possible to achieve an extremely detailed awareness about the richness of life on Earth. Even more important than knowledge, whether it be book knowledge or life experience, is a inner, intuitive sensitivity to the rythms, cycles and systems of the planet. I believe I have that. How? I don't know. But I have been unusually sensitive to all living creatures since I can remember, and I have grown up in one of the most ancient places on Earth, where it seems as if all of history is ever-present, where all times and all things converge into a single experience. I want to share that, but I can only do it a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit at a time.

Sal, you talk about helping individual creatures here and now. That is important. But even so, you cannot discount the groups that those creatures belong to. This is an existential problem - what is more "real", the species or the individual? How about a compromise: they are both real. Help the one and don't neglect the other. And, in my previous post, I talked about "taxa" being more fundamental than species. I want people to be able to see ever-bigger pictures! And that also includes time. We have the problems we have now because people did not consider what might happen after their own lifetimes. We must not make the same mistake, neither on a smaller nor on a bigger scale than our predecessors. When will the sun expand? About five billion years from now. We know about that now, so we should already start planning for that eventuality. When that happens, we must be able to pack up and leave, and take EVERYTHING with us. Think big! Be optimistic!

You mentioned the Burgess Shale, and the time-scale of evolution. It is true that, if a disaster wiped out almost everything, the present biodiversity will again be achieved in probably even LESS than half a billion years. That is the point I also made in my previous post - the Earth, as a whole, can recover. But if no such disaster happened - if we managed to save say 90% or more of present biodiversity, then half a billion years from now (provided no other catastrophe happens) biodiversity will be way, way, WAY beyond anything we can imagine right now! Will we still be around by then? As an optimist, I say, yeah, sure!

We pick and choose the genes that go into the future all of the time. You do it by deciding to have children, or by deciding not to have children, or when you decide to have a cat or a dog and decide whether they will have offspring or not. Everything is interconnected, remember! Every action of ours has real results. We can only either do it in ignorance, or with understanding. If the idea of genes leave you cold, perhaps it is because of a misperception, perhaps you see a conflict between the seeming impersonal determinism that operates at the level of genes and heredity, and the intimacy and freedom of living creatures. But that is a misperception - the one does not exclude the other; we are creatures that are at the same time physical and spiritual, and our essence goes right down to our most basic component parts. If we are the manifestations of our genes - which we are - that only shows that genes are much more wonderful than they might appear to be on superficial inspection. I would go so far as to say that the genes carry little bits of the soul!

Richard Dawkins wrote the book "The Selfish Gene" as an effort to challenge the way people perceive nature, but that doesn't mean that his views are absolute. There is no real conflict between genes and the organisms that carry them; to believe that there is, is to get carried away with abstraction. Science is not reality, it's just a description of reality - a simplified key to enhance understanding of the patterns in nature, but not the patterns themselves, not nature itself. The map is not the territory. Nature, reality, is what it is; it is not lessened by the limitations of our attempts to describe it.

The concepts of "genes" and "genetics" still need a lot of work. But they do express something that is real and active in the world. I would say, once we understood these things properly, we would find that the capacity for joy, and the capacity for suffering, DO exist and operate even in the genes themselves!

We are getting into existential questions. That is good. We DO need a new, world-wide mindset, something to replace the destructive, exploitative attitude that has reigned up to now. Have courage! We will find a way.

Good evening everyone,

Bran, I forget to say there's a very easy way to make yourself some plaits. Just put three pairs of tights on your head and get a friend (I'm sure Walter would oblige) to plait three legs on each side. It worked for my cousin, he looked very fetching.

Walter, that sounds like an excellent decision on the holiday. Will you be finished with essays by then? Have you decided where in Europe? Or are you going to spend the next year planning it all? A friend of mine is suggesting a holiday in the Pyrenees next spring, which sounds excellent.

Aquaculture sounds a lot better than fish farming, is it the same thing? Fish farmed salmon is getting cheaper here but it doesn't taste as good as the wild fish.
BTW I found a piece about Eliza I in a forum. I copied it for you, 'tho maybe you've heard it. It lowers the tone but its a story which, true or not, I can't think would ever be told of any Royal Personage except a Tudor, which must say something about them.
"The inventor of the toilet was one Sir John Harrington, godson of Elizabeth I. However, his design had one major flaw that wasn't addressed until 1775. That design flaw... sewer gas. There was no "house trap" (a U-shaped pipe you'll find under your sink) to keep the stink from coming up the pipes. Plus, he managed to piss off Elizabeth when he wrote a tribute to himself entitled "The Metamorphosis of Ajax." He made too many puns in it, and Elizabeth got tired of the jokes about her new "throne" that she banished Harrington and threw out his toilet." .
Have any of the 18bn essays dealt with Caesar Augustus' views on godsons, (or Zeussons), bad puns or plumbing?

Case,
I still need time to take all your posts in. Actually I'm thinking of copying them to my biochemist sister and brother in law, if you don't object. They're as keen on conservation as I am, but much more science minded. On first impressions however I'm not disagreeing. I think that although I instinctively didn't like the idea of prioritising I was already realising that in practise we already do it and, given finite resources, it's maybe necessary in order to make the most effective use of those resources. I still think however that it's a very sensitive issue and open to misuse.
You said that when you said " "we" must prioritise" you meant we the minority trying to stop species being destroyed. When I said ""we" don't have the right to decide which species go and which stay" I meant we mankind. I cannot separate the two. I cannot say that yes I can do this because I know what I'm doing but you can't because you don't. I believe that anything I decide I have the right to do I must recognise everyone else's right to do. I'll say this species is most important, Tom Dick or Harry will say it isn't. How do you decide who can and who can't make decisions on "priority species".
The concept will almost inevitably be misused to justify developments which damage the environment on the grounds that no life which has "priority" value is affected.

On the other hand I completely agree that every conservation project ought to be evaluated to make sure it is the best use of scarce resources.
I feel I'm going in circles here and beginning to argue about terminology. But you have to be very careful about using a word like "prioritising" which anyone out there will probably feel equipped and entitled to do, when in fact they don't have the background knowledge to do what you actually meant by it.


Anyway enough of that for now. It was a long day at work today. The director's finance committee meeting was not a lot of fun. I could have done with one of Sal's and Walter's G & T's afterwards. I'm just going to check out h2g2's front page and then get some sleep.
'til later,
Wz

Evening everyone

Bran, don't challenge the other candidates to a joust. Those sticks they use look pointy and potentially dangerous. You might get hurt. Just impress the interviewers more than your rivals. That'll do it!

Wazungu, there was another item on the news about BSE today. Not one to shout at our govt about though. It appears that cases of people being infected are actually on the increase in France and Portugal. A British minister (sorry didn't catch her name) thought it was because the people in those countries are still eating cows over 30 months old. The British government seem to regard this 30 month thing as some kind of magic number - as though they knew something for sure.

My brother's spuds should be represented at your village competition. They could act as the back marker and save anyone else the embarrassment of coming last. I have a couple of bags in my conservatory. I'll have to eat them quickly before the slugs finish them off. They're full of holes. I'd like the slugs better if they would just eat one at a time and not start on another one before they finished the last one. Instead every potato has one or two holes.

Was Caesar Augustus the one followed by Caligula and Claudius, Walter. That was a brilliant series, "I Claudius", with Derek Jacobi (sp?).

My sloe gin is well under way now. Hope the sloes don't smother the subtle flavour of junipers (blush). I've never made it before. The crab apples are being made into crab apple liqueur by my friend and she's been given a mountain of pears that she's turning into Bullwinkle Perry. If I cease to make sense about mid December, bear with me. Normal service will be resumed just as soon as the seasonal beverages have all been consumed.

I've noticed that a year can pass in a couple of months Walter. As I get older time's shrinking - something to do with the proportion of one's life already lived - just about everyone notices it. That holiday will be on you before you know it unless you're under 30 years of age.

I'm off to do a separate message re genetic selection now.

Speak to you all later.
Sal